A quick post

I'm in Manila for work; I got here Monday evening and leave January 23. What's weird and different is that the vendors I'm here to see work US CST hours so I work at night and sleep during the day. You'd think that would eliminate jet lag but ah you would be wrong.

I'm staying in Taguig, which is very upscale. My hotel, the Shangri-la at the Fort, takes hotel service to a completely different level. Case in point, I get a daily laundry allowance and so sent out some things on Tuesday. When they came back, in addition to the hanging clothes being essentially perfect, my socks and undies were wrapped up and tied with a bow and a tiny subtle sachet.

I've shared the rest of these on Facebook but wanted to put them here too. If you click one of the photos, you should be able to see a larger version and then click through them.

This one is a panoramic day shot I took on Tuesday.

Here's a night panoramic photo. It's a little blurry, sorry.

Here's another night photo. I used the night setting on my Pixel 3XL.

This is looking out the window from the restaurant this morning (my breakfast/dinner).

And this is another panoramic photo I took about an hour ago. The sky was so much clearer in this one that I can see the Pusig river to the north and west of me and also what look like mountains further west and also north/north east.

I'd hoped to take a quick trip to one of the other islands this weekend but in light of current world events, and our current dumpster fire of a president's actions, I think I'd better not. It's odd, the first time I was in China on business in 2003, the US had bombed well honestly I don't remember if it was Syria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, but yet again we bombed another country. That was not a good time to be an American in Asia. So I think it will be better if I don't leave Manila.

July is gone?

Washed my running gear
at the hotel in a big pot!

Wow. That went fast. This is the busy time for me at work, well now through the end of April. So it’s not surprising that I blinked and we’re over halfway through August.

Recovery from the radiation treatments has gone pretty well. My skin held up just fine, I didn’t experience any blistering, although my nipple was angry for a while. What I’m still struggling with is the fatigue. I know, I know, the RO told me it could take four to six months to go away. But she also said that me being physically fit makes a big difference and that I’ll probably be back to normal sooner.

Only I’m not. It’s not that the fatigue is debilitating, it’s more that I have no reserves, no stamina the way I’ve always had. When I’m out of gas, that’s it, I don’t get any sort of second burst of energy.

Case in point this past week I traveled to Waco and then Las Vegas for work. We had long days, 12 hours, and the work is important but it’s equally tedious. Think lots of interviewing people at these locations, scoring their responses and then calibrating between the five of us on the trip. Wednesday evening, we were nearly done calibrating. One of my co-workers suggested breaking for dinner and then resuming. I was completely honest when I said look, I’m very nearly done for the day. I guarantee if we stop to eat. I will fall asleep at the table. So we kept going. Normally I would have been able to hang in there, but not last week.

And I think the radiation treatments are also continuing to affect my running, specifically my heart rate. Even with the breath holds to get my lungs and heart out of the way, I’m pretty sure there’s a scatter effect. What I notice is when running, especially if I’m fatigued (rads fatigue not tired from running fatigued), my breathing is fine, my legs are fine, but my heart rate is higher than it should be. I don’t think this is a lack of fitness issue either. I ran 7 miles yesterday morning, and on today’s run my heart rate just wanted to stay in the threshold stage (think 154 and up) and I needed it in the 140s.

I am trying to be patient. I know that things are still healing (my left pec for example pretty much always hurts now and I’m not really doing any upper body work—OT says it’s fried from radiation and it will get better), so hopefully this isn’t my new normal.