I see it’s been a week since I posted to the blog. It seems longer. Now that that chemotherapy is over there’s nothing more to do to treat the disease. I am hopeful that the chemotherapy has had the desired effect and knocked out all the Burkitt’s cells. I will know more mid-March when I go back in for tests, including taking a sample of my bone marrow. In the meantime, I have been left with peripheral neuropathy in my feet, and to some extent in my fingers.

Neuropathic pain does not respond to painkillers. It feels like constant pins and needles in my feet. Walking is painful, like walking on broken glass, so I find that I am discouraged from moving around much. I have been religiously doing the exercises that the physiotherapist drew up for me at the hospital, and today I began gentle exercise on the treadmill (20 minutes @ 2.1 mph, 1 degree grade). It hurts to exercise but I’m impatient to regain some strength in my calves so I will try to keep it up. We also bought an automatic foot and calf massager, the iSqueeze, which I use several times a day. I have no idea if any of this will speed up my recovery at all; by all accounts it takes several months for the neuropathy brought on by chemotherapy drugs (mainly Oncovin) to subside, and even then, it may never go away totally.

The weather in New England has been merciless this last week. It was just warm enough on a couple of days last week that I could take a stroll around the yard, but today, with subzero temperatures outside, that’s out of the question. I can’t wait for this winter to end!