Rest

Life after cancer has been an incredible challenge. Some weeks are good and others not so much. These last few weeks have been real rough, though.

Everything was going well. I was waking up early every morning to work out, was eating right, getting a decent amount of sleep, then suddenly everything went to crap.

On Saturday, I woke up and felt like my body weighed 3x, the world was spinning, and my head was killing me. We went grocery shopping on Sunday and I barely remember going. People probably thought I was pretending to be a zombie early for Halloween.

When it was time for work, it was difficult to concentrate and focus on any task, but that disconnected feeling would come and go with no real explanation why. When working with data and numbers all day, this condition is “sub-optimal.” I was watching my health metrics go from perfection to WTF real quick, and there was no explanation why.

I’ve been using the Oura Ring to track my overall well-being for years. It gives a nice 0-100 number that provides an idea of how your day is going to be. I usually score in the 90’s and can feel the difference when it dips into the 80’s. It quickly dropped hard into the 30’s and it scared the hell out of me.

Turns out that I was dehydrated. This wasn’t apparent until I peed a dark orangish-red. Honestly this came as a shock, because I monitor my maximum fluid intake as to not damage my remaining kidney. My heart rate was now between 80 and 100 while at rest, my blood pressure spiked, my body temperature was now averaging +3° over baseline, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, my muscles were cramping, and everything felt fuzzy. This is what those on dialysis feel like. It’s an awful feeling that I certainly don’t recommend any of you try - even if it trends on TikTok.

Usually kidney issues happen slowly over time. However, there are rare “acute” cases where immediate attention is needed. At times, my brain was begging me to call the doc and get hooked up to something - fast. “I don’t care what tubes and pipes you gotta inject me with, but it’s gotta be better than this” is all that repeated in my head.

There is a silver lining to all this. I’ve lost some weight and body fat %, but I’m also slowly starting to recover and feel better every day. My health metric has since increased from 30 to 48 and I’m starting to get some okay sleep and a little appetite.

There is so much I want to get done with personal projects, work projects, and working out. This hit me hard from out of nowhere and caused those plans to be on hold until things are back to normal. I took a few days off from work to chill and focus on recovery. Thankfully I work for an outstanding company and have a great team that is not only sympathetic, but also push me to rest when my stubbornness says otherwise.

I’m not going to be touching a computer much, but I did manage to make an update to the Exercise Timer how-to, and plan on updating the Health Dashboard soon. Lots of really neat updates were made and I’m excited to share them with y’all.

See you soon.