Monday, January 20, 2014

2 1/2 Weeks Out is the Bees Knees

It has been about 2 1/2 weeks since I've had my last chemo! I cannot believe that it has already been this long. I guess time flies when you are having fun and back at work! (I do really enjoy what I do, so being back at work feels good)

I think my body is also happy that I'm done. I have more energy then I know what to do with and it feels great! I spent most of my off days during chemo sitting on the couch either watching TV or on Pinterest. I spent the better part of four months coming up with all of these ideas of projects I wanted to do and now that I have the energy it is a little overwhelming because I want to get them all done at once. During my treatments I would be so wore out that even thinking about working on a project would exhaust me, so this new found energy is phenomenal, although I tend to over do myself and pay for it the next day.

I've regained the energy that I lost, as well as I don't feel like I have the infamous "chemo brain" nearly as bad as I did during treatment. I have though, started to take my Biotin, Krill Oil and B12 vitamins again, which I think is helping me a ton. Why I stopped taking them you might be thinking? Because I just did not want to have to worry about another thing to take at a certain time. My focus was chemo and just getting through it. There were so many appointments and during my weeks that I had chemo I was so wiped out that it was hard enough for me to switch out my comfy clothes and eat something, needless to say, taking vitamins on top of it. Wasn't going to happen.

The neuropathy in my feet comes and goes, but overall is pretty much under control since I've been using the Topricin regularly! Before my mom got me the Topricin, my feet literally felt at times like I had pins and needles in them, then would switch over to extreme numbness and very cold.

I did notice some discoloration in two of my toe nails and my thumb about a month or so ago, it is not painful at all, but my toe nails are now lifting away, so I've been keeping them as short as possible. Pretty hot hey? Speaking of hot....hot flashes. Still have them. Obviously I wasn't expecting for them to vanish into thin air as soon as I was done, but I have noticed that I am getting less of them then I did before. I am hoping that the Biotin will help to strengthen my nails as they grow out and hopefully prevent any future lifting.

Hair. Well I am still "bald-ish" kind of. I never really fully lost my hair and had the Mr. Clean look, but fashioned this peach fuzz that was really hard to see unless you were all up on my grape. But, the day has come where I no longer have a shiny head. I no longer have the "Homer Simpson, two hairs on the top of my head, look". I have four hairs on my head. Well no, not four, but it is most definitely coming back!!!!

breast cancer, chemo, chemotherapy, growing your hair back after chemo, bees knees

breast cancer, chemo, chemotherapy, growing your hair back after chemo, bees knees























I know what some people may think.  "She looks bald, I don't see anything" It is difficult to photograph the little fuzz that I have coming back, but the first picture shows it the best!  I consider it a halo of fuzz on the top of my head!  I didn't think it was going to start growing back this quickly, but boy am I happy!! Ask me later this year when I'm sporting a pretty sweet mullet or you know, that weird length that you can't do anything with but are afraid to make it any shorter, and I'll probably be singing a different tune. I am just excited to see what color it comes back as and if, hopefully it comes back in straight. That would be the bees knees! Actually thinking about "bees knees", what the hell is "bees knees"? If you really think about it...it is kind of a weird expression. Why would you want to be a bees knee?

 Well I looked it up here:

Meaning Excellent - the highest quality.

Origin It's difficult to know if we need an etymologist or an entomologist for this one.

Bees carry pollen back to the hive in sacs on their legs. It is tempting to explain this phrase as alluding to the concentrated goodness to be found around a bee's knee, but there's no evidence to support this explanation. It is also sometimes said to be a corruption of 'business', but there's no evidence to support that either.

Nor is there any connection with another earlier phrase, 'a bee's knee'. In the 18th century this was used as a synonym for smallness, but has since disappeared from the language, replaced more recently by the less polite 'gnat's bollock':

Mrs. Townley Ward - Letters, June 1797 in N. & Q. "It cannot be as big as a bee's knee."

'Bee's knees' began to be used in early 20th century America. Initially, it was just a nonsense expression that denoted something that didn't have any meaningful existence - the kind of thing that a naive apprentice would be sent to the stores to ask for, like a 'sky-hook' or 'striped paint'. That meaning is apparent in a spoof report in the New Zealand newspaper The West Coast Times in August 1906, which listed the cargo carried by the SS Zealandia as 'a quantity of post holes, 3 bags of treacle and 7 cases of bees' knees'. The teasing wasn't restricted to the southern hemisphere. The US author Zane Grey's 1909 story, The Shortstop, has a city slicker teasing a yokel by questioning him about make-believe farm products:

"How's yer ham trees? Wal, dog-gone me! Why, over in Indianer our ham trees is sproutin' powerful. An' how about the bee's knees? Got any bee's knees this Spring?"



Well that was way off topic. Now that I either intrigued some, or put others to bed, I am out of here! Happy Monday and hope it's the "bees knees" for you!

bees knees, breast cancer, chemo, chemotherapy

4 comments:

  1. Woohoo on your hair coming back and getting your energy back!! There is nothing better than getting back to your new normal. Wishing you many years of good health.

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    1. Thank you! I am definitely on the road I feeling like myself again!

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  2. It's such a great feeling to get past the chemo haze for the last time. Congrats Em

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