Thanksgiving and all that

Hello everyone,
I hope you all had a pleasant holiday however you choose to acknowledge it. As always my kids and I did ours on Wednesday then they go to their Dad's on Thursday. We had a nice meal and I was having a "good" day in terms of energy level. My son prepared nearly the entire meal and my daughter did all the cleanup. I started to protest but it occurred to me that for all the bitching I do about lack of support for people on treatment I should just relax and be THANKFUL that they did all the work. One family tradition we have is that as we sit down to eat everyone lists things for which they are thankful, and I was truly thankful for my family. They don't always get it when I'm exhausted or sick, but how could they really? they are 17 and 19 as I recall at that age one's capacity for empathy is still developing. In fact I believe that although the seeds are planted in early life, empathy is a trait which develops over an entire lifetime-hopefully.
Today was not such a good day, I felt terrible all day, neck ache, headache, nausea and just generally feeling out of it. It seems to go that way, a good day or two followed by feeling like crap. I'm in my 9th month of treatment now and starting to feel very toxic, and really have had just about enough. But two months to go and it will be over; then begins the 6 month trial period to see if I attain SVR. I honestly try not to have too many expectations one way of another. We hear a lot of people talk about the power of positive thought in the healing process and although I do firmly believe this myself I find it difficult to apply specifically to healing my Hep C. I feel that, for me, it's probably more productive and healing to maintain positive perspective in general and that will extend to my physical well being. I tend to get a bit obsessive and if I were to spend hours sitting around focusing on my liver, I think it would do more harm than good. But that's just me, and my way of doing things. Other than coping with side effects and participating in education, support and advocacy (mostly online) I try not to think about it too much. I don't countdown the weeks until EOT I couldn't even guess how many shots I've done (although I could figure it out if I wanted to) and even following my lab results I only pay attention to what is absolutely necessary.
This process of managing side effects is enough of a task all by itself, as far as the rest, what will be will be. Because this is such a difficult process and for me the sides have been pretty bad, I appreciate having a day to remind us to focus on things for which we are Grateful, it's good practice for every day!
© 2010 Jennifer Hazard