Welcome Home - After 26 days of Isolation

After 26 days of being in isolation with a caretaker, I moved back home to be with my family. My husband and boys had taped a huge “Welcome Home” banner to the wall and there was a gorgeous bouquet of flowers waiting on the kitchen table.

There were huge benefits to being away and equally big benefits to moving back home. The first few days of being away I was receiving heavy doses of chemotherapy and really needed someone to care for me. My mom, a friend, and my brother alternated in this role which allowed me to focus solely on getting better. In the early days, there was a lot of sleeping and recovery. I’m glad that I had this time and I’m thankful that my boys didn’t see this side of the treatment. More recently, my doctor gave me permission to be on my own, but still recommended that I be in isolation. The isolation was to protect me from catching a cold, or something worse, when my immune system was at its weakest.

I do believe that one of the reasons my recovery was so speedy is because I was away from my family. I did not have to worry about being a mom or a wife. All I needed to do was take care of myself. By focusing on getting better, I was able to recover quickly.

At this time, the benefits of being home outweigh the risks. My immune system is still recovering, but my body has some protection from viruses and infections. Returning to being a mom and wife has brought more purpose to my daily life. Each day I wake up with a list of things to do, and I muddle my way through them. Most days begin and end with cuddling those people who are most important to me. Some days I'm more tired than others, and resting and recovery are still high on the priority list. On occasion, I have enough energy to complete the things on my to do list, and many days I don’t, and those items slide to the next day.

There is an idea called “spoon theory” that likens the amount of energy a person has to spoons. It is particularly relevant to people who are in recovery or dealing with illness, but I think it also applies to the general population. As an example, one might awake with 5 spoons of energy. They could choose to complete 5 separate tasks, or a chore might require a large spoon, or multiple spoons. Regardless of how many spoons a person wakes up with, once the spoons are gone, there are none left, and the drawer is empty until someone does the dishes (or rests). This theory explains how energy is used up until it is replenished. It also identifies that not everyone wakes with the same amount of energy or spoons on a given day and that even the same person might find they have a different number of spoons on different days.

Each day, I find myself using up all the energy I have which leaves me feeling exhausted by the end of the day. I’ll be honest, often there is a nap in the middle of the day just to keep me going. Regardless, each day, I seem to have a little more energy, however it is not anywhere close to the amount of energy I had before diagnosis. I think back to days when I would go to work and run a household and I know I am a long, long way from having that much energy.

The bright side is that I am working on increasing my energy level, but it will take time. The doctors figure it’ll be six months to a year before I have both my energy back and my immune system functioning well. My job now is to accept that I can’t do everything I want to do. I simply run out of steam. I am learning to have patience with myself on the days when I do not finish the to do list. I’ve learned to prioritize those items that are most important and they get done first, everything else can wait.