Physical fatigue of treatment
Next there's the physical fatigue of treatment. I spent three nights in the hospital after my surgery, and that was the time I experienced fatigue that's beyond fatigue, a fatigue so palpable it seems you could touch it. I wanted to shrivel into the fetal curl of a woolly-bear caterpillar, spin a cocoon of sleep and tell my doctors to wake me when it was time to leave. I learned that sleep is bliss, that sleep heals, that sleep is the essential post-op drug.
I also dozed off where I least expected to. During radiation, I sometimes napped inside the TomoTherapy machine, lulled in my lassitude by Pink Floyd and Metallica. It was the radiation, which lasted more than seven weeks, that resulted in the most profound fatigue.