Been not such a swell week. I was emotionally overwhelmed Monday, and stopped making personal comments here and elsewhere until I could get myself back on track. While not fully re-railed, I'm enough back to my usual self to resume expressing my thoughts.

Most of the chemo side effects are noticeably better already. Objectively I still feel pretty damned lousy, but compared to a week or two ago, I am golden. To the point where I need to be careful about overestimating my capacity for, well, anything.

This week I have resumed driving my car on a limited basis. I have resumed writing, with something approaching a vengeance. My sleep needs have dropped back to 7.5-8 hours from the 8.5-10 hours they have been pegged at. I suspect once I kick the Lorazepam, they'll drop a bit more. (I want my old 6 hour schedule back.) The near-crippling fatigue doesn't come now til 4 or 5 pm, as opposed to somewhere between noon and 2, and when it does, it's not as deep or overwhelming.

With one exception, the peripheral neuropathy continues as intense as ever. Yesterday the interior of Nuevo Rancho Lake reached 89 degrees, and I did not even notice until the_child popped around and complained. My temperature sense is so off-base with peripheral neuropathy that I could get heat stroke and not realize it until onset of symptoms. My hands continue to feel chilled as ever; my feet and calves continue slightly numb, which translates to some trouble walking; and my fine motor control and finger strength are shot. I make a lot more typos, and misdial a lot of phone calls, because simply hitting the right key, especially on a small device, has become damned difficult.

The only exception is that I am becoming more cold tolerant in my mouth. I sipped some ice water a day or two ago, and while my back teeth ached a bit, I did not have the sense of throat closure that cold has been bringing me for months. I even had a small milkshake on Wednesday, though I let it stand in the heat a while before trying it.

So, getting better slowly, but life has been a bit stormier than I'd like right now.

And of course, now that I'm writing, I have an enormous amount of work to do before calendula_witch and I decamp for Australia and New Zealand next month.

Ah, life.