The Merits of the Case

After a weekend spent at the Klein’s lake house in Lake Redstone, Wisconsin (thank you, Dick and Kathy!), I feel refreshed and recharged. Despite the cold, rainy weather and the lack of our usual outdoor lake activities, it was relaxing and, maybe more importantly, it was away from here. It was good to be somewhere that isn’t all about breast cancer.

And today I feel almost normal. I feel strong and good and healthy…I feel like Kim, which is something I haven't felt for awhile. I still get tired very quickly, but even that feels manageable. I hope every non-chemo week is like this. If I have this to look forward to, maybe the bad days won’t seem so bad. I even feel slightly less terrified about the next treatment than I did last week. At a minimum, today I feel like I will be able to put on my game face and meet Thursday’s injection with something that resembles courage.

One chemo side-effect that has lingered and probably will until the end is a lack of ability to taste. For a self-professed foodie, this is a highly disappointing outcome. My appetite returned this week so food looks and smells wonderful to me, but eating is unsatisfying and boring. It’s interesting how my mind refuses to accept the fact that I can’t taste anything and how it continues to crave food. I find that I sit down at a particular meal full of the pleasant anticipation of a variety of sweet and savory tastes, only to find that the only things I can really experience are textures, temperatures, and occasionally the sensation of a really strong flavor, such as the bitterness of chocolate or the heat of something very spicy. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that my ability to taste will return sometime around the holidays…just in time for all the treats of Thanksgiving and Christmas.