> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.timeweget.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Six Stairs and a Cane - URL: https://www.timeweget.com/six-stairs-and-a-cane/ - Published: 2026-09-12T02:45:56.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-12T02:45:56.000Z - Description: Six stairs left me winded, my new cane is still sitting unused, and a PET scan is coming Monday. With my first mogamulizumab infusion 12 days away, I am learning how quickly cancer can turn ordinary tasks into calculations of energy, distance, and what my body can still manage. - Author: Time Keeper - Tags: Health, Living With Cancer, Mycosis Fungoides, Mogamulizumab, Cancer Fatigue, Mobility Living With Cancer **My new cane arrived today, although I have not actually taken it anywhere yet.**I had planned to give it a trial run around the block, partly to see how it felt and partly because buying a cane only to leave it sitting in my room seems to defeat the purpose. Instead, it has spent the day waiting for me because I am simply too fatigued to go for a walk. Considering that six stairs and a load of laundry were enough to completely wind me earlier, I suppose I have already answered the question of whether I actually need the thing. ## Six Stairs There are only six stairs between me and the washing machine. I grabbed an ordinary shopping bag with some clothes in it, went downstairs, loaded the machine and climbed back up. I was not hauling a hamper full of towels, moving furniture or carrying anything remotely heavy, but by the time I reached the top I was completely out of breath and had to stand there for a while until my body settled down again. A few years ago, I would not even have registered those stairs as physical activity. Now apparently doing laundry qualifies as an endurance event, which is not exactly the athletic comeback I had imagined for myself. 6 **Not six flights. Six stairs.** Down to the washing machine, laundry into the machine, and back up again. That was enough to leave me completely winded. That is one of the stranger things I am learning about being sick. Cancer has all the obvious dramatic parts, with oncologists, scans, unfamiliar drug names, hospital appointments and conversations about what is happening inside my body, but a surprising amount of the actual experience happens during completely ordinary moments. Nobody has to explain to me why a cancer treatment might be difficult. What I was less prepared for was standing at the top of six stairs trying to catch my breath because I had put some clothes in a washing machine. What actually changed The stairs have not become steeper, the washing machine has not moved farther away and the ordinary world around me has not suddenly become more physically demanding. My body has changed, which means moving through exactly the same world now costs me more energy. ## So I Bought a Cane My legs have been aching quite a bit lately as well, particularly around my knees and ankles, and I cannot tell you exactly why. There have been enough medications, symptoms, side effects and assorted bodily nonsense over the past few months that I have stopped trying to assign every ache its own tidy explanation. The pain, fatigue and occasional light-headedness finally convinced me that having something solid to lean on would probably be sensible, particularly when I am walking any distance or crossing a large parking lot. I would rather have the cane with me and discover that I do not need it than get halfway somewhere and realize that stubbornness was a poor mobility aid. Buying one turned out to be much stranger than I expected because apparently the cane industry has developed a tactical division. I found an astonishing number of products advertised as heavy-duty self-defence canes, tactical walking sticks and assorted objects that seemed much better suited to repelling an invading army than helping someone walk through a grocery store. Some of them weighed a tonne, and several had handles that looked spectacularly uncomfortable if you actually intended to put your body weight on them. Somewhere along the way, the market seems to have divided into mobility aids and medieval sidearms, so I made the fairly radical decision to buy the mobility aid. The part I had forgotten The next problem is remembering how to use it properly. I walked with a cane for about a year after an unrelated health problem roughly 15 years ago, so this is not entirely new territory, but apparently muscle memory has an expiration date. There is a proper rhythm to using one, with the cane moving in coordination with the opposite leg, and when you have done it long enough the whole thing becomes automatic. Mine is currently anything but automatic, and I am going to have to practise until I stop consciously thinking about where the cane goes on every step. At the moment, my hand and my legs seem to be operating under separate contracts and neither side has bothered to read the other one's terms. ## Monday Means Barrie **MON** PET Scan Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie is about a 25-minute drive from me. These days, however, the distance is only one part of the calculation. I may end up needing the cane sooner than expected because I have a PET scan at Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie on Monday. RVH is only about a 25-minute drive from me, which would normally be insignificant, but I am finding that distance changes when you are already tired before you leave the house. We have Soldiers' Memorial Hospital here in town and it is perfectly capable as a community hospital, but it is not a regional cancer centre, so more and more of my specialized care happens in Barrie. If something serious happens here, the local hospital can assess me, stabilize me and determine what needs to happen next, but the cancer specialists, equipment and treatments I need are at RVH. Serious illness changes your geography in ways I had never really considered before. There is the hospital closest to you, and then there is the hospital you actually need, and those are not necessarily the same place. A 25-minute drive is still only a 25-minute drive, but now I have to think about the walk from the parking lot, how long I will be inside, how much energy the appointment itself will use and whether I will still feel well enough to drive home comfortably afterward. I have started doing calculations like that all the time because my energy has become unreliable, and things I once did without thinking now have to be fitted into whatever my body has available that day. That is what the six stairs really brought home to me. The stairs have not become steeper, the washing machine has not moved farther away and the ordinary world around me has not suddenly become more physically demanding. My body has changed, which means moving through exactly the same world now costs me more energy. My brain has not entirely caught up with that reality yet because somewhere in my head I still have the physical expectations of the person I was before things got this bad. I look at a simple task and automatically think that of course I can do it, only to discover halfway through that my body has joined the conversation and would like to lodge an objection. ## Twelve Days 12 **days until my first mogamulizumab infusion**I know what the information sheets say might happen. What I do not know yet is what the treatment will actually feel like in my body. Monday's PET scan is another step in establishing exactly where things stand before the next phase of treatment begins. Twelve days from now, I am scheduled to have my first infusion of mogamulizumab, and I am curious about what the treatment is actually going to feel like rather than what the information sheets say it might feel like. I have read the possible side effects and listened to the explanations, and I know what doctors expect could happen, but none of that can tell me exactly what my own body is going to do. After the past few years, I have become very reluctant to make predictions about treatments before I have actually experienced them. Methotrexate taught me that lesson rather effectively. I was told that it generally was not that bad, and perhaps for many people it genuinely is not, but for me it was hell. It eventually made me so ill that I could not continue taking it, which changed the way I approach every treatment that comes afterward. I am not going into mogamulizumab assuming that it will be terrible, but I am not going to convince myself beforehand that it will be easy either. There is no point borrowing trouble from a treatment I have not started, and there is equally little point pretending I know how I will react simply because somebody can hand me a list of percentages. > I miss being able to do boring things without thinking about my health while I am doing them. ## Learning the New Rules For now, Monday comes first, followed by the PET scan, another stretch of waiting and then the first infusion. Somewhere among all of that, I also have to relearn how to walk naturally with a cane and get used to the fact that I may need it more often than I would like. I am still not particularly good at accepting those kinds of limitations because a large part of me believes fatigue should be something I can out-stubborn. If something used to be easy, my instinct is still to believe it should be easy now, and when it is not, I have an unfortunate tendency to argue with the evidence. Cancer, unfortunately, has shown remarkably little interest in my opinion. I am slowly learning that sitting down when I need to sit down does not require a philosophical debate, and neither does using a cane when walking has become difficult. Taking longer to do something does not mean I have failed at it, and stopping halfway through a task for a few minutes is not some dramatic surrender of independence. I am not particularly interested in turning any of this into an inspirational life lesson because I would still much rather have my old energy back. I miss being able to do boring things without thinking about my health while I am doing them, and I miss the days when going downstairs to do laundry was so insignificant that I would have forgotten about it five minutes later. Today, though, six stairs were enough to stop me for a while, and that is where things currently stand. I got the laundry into the machine, made it back upstairs, caught my breath and carried on with the rest of the day at whatever speed my body was willing to allow. My new cane is sitting nearby, waiting for me to become coordinated enough to use it without looking as though I have just been introduced to the concept of walking. Between the cane, Monday's PET scan and the first mogamulizumab infusion twelve days from now, I have quite enough coming up without pretending I can predict how any of it will go. For the moment, I think I will settle for learning how to get through the world I am actually living in rather than continuing to expect my body to behave like the one I used to have.