a bad case of the four o’clocks

I definitely think that something is up w/ my chemistry. I don’t know if it is because I am still jet lagged, or because today is day two of reduced lexapro, or both, but I’m definitely having a serious case of the Four O’Clocks. I can’t really focus my eyes. I’m kind of in doldrums. I went for a bike ride to try to energize myself. I rode myself pretty hard. I’m a little numb now, but I’m still pretty damn out of it.

I’ve been working all day. Today is the first day back in the work saddle since i got back from Europe. But I keep thinking about this article O sent me about slowing down. Dana Jennings writes in his nytimes Cancer blog:

But recovery means wholeness: mind, body and spirit. And I reached a point last summer and fall when I realized that even though I was back at work, once again juking and stutter-stepping my way through the streets of Manhattan, I hadn’t recovered at all.

I thought I had weathered the trauma of diagnosis and treatment, thought I was ready to focus on the future. But my body disagreed.

Physically, I was game, but I soon realized I was going through the motions as I became more and more tired. I felt like a spinning quarter about to nod to gravity and wobble to the tabletop. Mentally, I couldn’t focus: I became shawled in the monochromes of depression. And spiritually, I wasn’t angry — I did want to know what this cancer could teach me — but just right then I couldn’t make sense of my cancer-blasted interior landscape.

I hated to admit it, but I had to excuse myself from the day-in and the day-out if I wanted to fully heal, if I wanted to recover.

I was running too fast O sent it for me to slow down. I feel like I have to work harder to clear my plate so I can then rest.  But it doesn’t work that way does it…

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I am 30 year old Brooklynite who was diagnosed with Stage III Melanoma in February 2008. I started this blog after the first day of high dose Interferon chemotherapy in June 2008.

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