Hair....the Off-Broadway Production.

Here's me about 1.5 years ago:

More hair than I knew what to do with.  Enough for at least two other people.

Here's me after chemo:

What a noggin'!  

I kept having visions of the chick in the first Star Trek movie who was taken over by V-ger:

OK...so, she's prettier than me and her head is much smoother.

Finally, I had some peach fuzz by the end of October:

By November I was rockin' a very thin, gray buzz cut.

Now, I have some nice helmet-hair with which I can't do a single thing, but which at least covers my head.

I look a little butch, but I'm not complaining.  I won't have to keep the hair out of my eyes when I run that 5K in February.

A few more months and I will probably have a nice little afro as my curly hair grows out.

I'll be sure to post an updated photo for comparison.

Peter's Mother-in-Law

There's a story in Luke 4:38-39 in which Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law.

It's brief:

Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon's
mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her.
So he bent over and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once
and began to wait on them.

I've always been slightly irritated by this story. This woman has been sick for who knows how long, Jesus comes over, heals her, and then she gets up and starts taking care of everybody....waiting on company immediately after recovering.

It bristles against my feminist leanings.

Men.

Always expecting us to take care of them.

I understand Peter's mother-in-law, now.

I woke up today feeling the tide turning in my typical, week-long suffering from chemo. I was still physically weak, but I had a mental alertness and an energized will to get out of bed and do things....anything. It had been a restless night of achy joints and inconsistent sleep, but I knew the worst was over. Instead of laying in bed, waiting for DH to get up with the kids and get them ready for school, as he has done during my bad days, I sprung out of bed and decided to make pancakes for everyone.

I felt well enough to be of service to someone else. I had a desire to care for my family because I haven't been able to when I have been in the depths of side effects. I wanted to wait on them out of gratitude and love for them.

So.....I won't read about Peter's mother-in-law with a haughty sneer any longer.

I get it.

Last Chemo!

Tomorrow is my last chemo treatment of Taxotere and Cytoxan.

I will be so ecstatic once I get past the next week of suffering and start the recovery process without having to be knocked down again a couple of weeks later.

Overall, I have been OK, but I have felt much weaker due to becoming slightly anemic. My red blood count has gone down consistently after each treatment. Last time I was a 10.2; below 12 is considered anemic. My counts will probably go down a little more, but hopefully not too much. If they get close to an 8, I may have to have a blood transfusion...which I do not want.

Monkey is getting better and actually made it to school today...but now the Rationalist has a slight fever, says he feels funny, and is starting to form blisters inside his mouth...joy. Despite all my efforts and reminders to wash hands, not share food, and keep their distance from each other, I couldn't keep it from spreading.

The main concern now is to keep me from getting it. I'm given tons of steroids during chemo which suppresses the immune systems ability to fight infection. That, combined with the damage my body takes from the chemo itself, puts me in danger of infection. The chemo can also cause mouth sores and blisters on its own...so getting this little germ my boys are carrying would be bad news for me.

I'm praying a lot...and plan to not leave my bedroom for a week!

I probably won't post for a while again.

I'll be too busy trying to get through this last gauntlet.

The good news is that when I get back to regular posting, I won't have to whine about hating chemo.

Me:0, Chemo:2

So....have I mentioned how much I hate volunteering for torture chemo?

I mean HATE!....with a capital H.

My husband keeps having to listen to me enumerate the many reasons why I am not ever letting them do this to me again. I won't. I'll run off to Hawaii, or buy some kooky "natural" cure online, or surround myself with crystals and incense and chocolate....anything other than purposely letting someone poison my body and making me suffer for a week.

This past week was difficult, not just because I felt so awful, but because the seriousness of my body's reaction reminds me that I am dealing with a monster. There's a reason the treatment is so drastic.

I actually forget, sometimes, that I had cancer in me. It's not so much forgetting, as possessing a combination of denial, faith, and optimism.....although the line between faith and denial can be hard to discern.

In my mind, I don't really believe that I am going to have to deal with cancer again. I've tried to "get through" everything that has been thrown at me, looking forward to sometime in September when I will be "done" with treatment/cancer. Of course, I won't be done. I'll be monitored and tested and watched closely for at least a couple of years. I'll have to always be vigilant.

It brings up memories of a woman I knew many years ago who had to go through treatment three different times, for three different cancers--a mother of three children. I brought her meals and visited her, but I know that I probably had no concept of what she was dealing with, emotionally. She recovered and is hopefully doing well, having moved away some time ago. Still, I wonder how useful I was to a woman who has battled such a monster.

Anyway, the realization that I may never be "done" with cancer, in the way that I want to be, washed over me during the worst of my days this week.

It is frustrating to feel powerless; to know there is only so much control that I have over my body, what it does, how it responds to treatment and the permanent effects of the treatments I have had, surgical or otherwise.

It sucks.

I could use many four-letter words to elaborate, but I don't want to offend all of you gentle readers, who are probably as sick of hearing about chemo as I am of experiencing it

Day Before 2nd Chemo

I measure everything by my treatment dates now.

"Oh, that's the week before chemo. I'll be feeling fine let's make plans for that week."

"Oh, that's the week after chemo. I'll be feeling like crap and having to stay out of public places...no can do!"

"Oh, the first day of school is 5 days after my treatment. I might not be well enough to take the boys that first day."

I have all my dates circled on the calendar and am working the entire family's schedule around it. It's kind of a bummer. I'm just glad that after the first week of misery that I seem to rebound and start to feel normal. Let's hope that pattern continues.

Today I called up some friends of the boys, and their mom, and we hung out at the park and watched them run solidly for an hour, chasing each other, hiding from each other, and climbing the enormous oak trees. We came back to our house so that the boys could show the Wii to their friends and let them play with it.

I talked and visited with their mom, who is the sweetest.

It was a good time, and a great way to spend my last day before I go in for treatment tomorrow.

I'm hoping that I will do better this time around, now that I have more of a sense of what to expect. I have all my necessary meds and preparations all stocked up and ready to go. Maybe I can manage my symptoms better this time around.

Here's hoping.

The Beginning of Baldness?

My hair is starting to fall out.

It's a little early. Cytoxan, one of the chemo drugs I'm on, usually causes hair loss within 2-3 weeks. I'm a few days shy of the 2 week mark, but some of my hair is already committing hari kari by leaping from my scalp onto the deadly spikes of my brush, or the distant ground below. If I listen closely, I can hear their muffled screams as they plummet to their deaths,"Aaaiieee....!"

I have enough hair on my head for twenty people, so it's not noticeable at this point, but if the process begins to accelerate, I'm going to have to shave my head. I can't walk around spontaneously leaving clumps of hair in a trail behind me like a molting animal.

I may call my sister-in-law, a hair-dresser, and see if she wants to do the honor of shaving it for me. I'm not sure if that would be a good idea, or not. She can be emotional and I don't want her to freak out when it's done and my head is bare. I'll be doing enough freaking out for myself.

She's Alive!

I'm feeling pretty good, now.

Definitely manageable.

The only problem is my White Blood Counts were too low--1.5. 4 is the low end of normal. They have given me shots over the last two days to try and force my body manufacture more cells. Having my counts so low puts me at a high risk of infection.

I've been washing my hands...A LOT.

Overall, I am recovering. I can do things around the house and I'm not having the pain that I experienced that first week after treatment. I get tired out and feel a little weak sometimes, but I am in so much better shape than I was before.

Thank You God!

Reluctantly Attained Insight

I wrote this on Tuesday, July 8th.

This is the first day that I have felt was manageable since Thursday. Chemo hit me hard and still reaches out to sock me every once in a while. It was way worse than I had anticipated. I spent most of the time bed-ridden and in pain from my body's reaction to the treatment.

I realized a few things.

Prolonged physical suffering can reduce the average person to despair. I have had pain in my life. I have had several surgeries before, other times of not feeling well, but none of it can compare to how I felt this past week.

There is a certain level of constant nagging pain that blocks out thoughts of anything else. You can't watch TV. You can't read a book. You can't play a game. You can't even carry on a conversation. All that rings through your head is the sound of your own discomfort, and the ticking of the clock as time slowly records your suffering.

I had never experienced that before.

It made me realize how out of touch I was with what real "suffering" was like. The visceral, raw potential for your body to make you miserable is unlimited. I laid in bed wondering how people with advanced cancer do this for years. I wanted to quit after this first treatment, and I'm not just saying that. It took all my strength to keep from calling my oncologist and swearing that I would never consent to this legal torture again.

I felt that badly.

I'm sure I will have more compassion for people dealing with chronic pain/illness in the future.

Me: 0, Chemo: 1

Chemo is totally kicking my butt.

I wish I could say it was all in my head, but my achy bones, constant fatigue and the ever-present sensation that I might be sick at any moment counter that thought--that, and the fact that I have slept more than I thought humanly possible.

I'm having a hard time with it mentally. Localized pain and surgery, though drastic and no picnic, were much easier for me to deal with. Somehow the nagging flu-likeness seems worse to me than losing my breast. Trauma, emergencies, one-time events; I can deal with them pretty handily. Knowing I am going to have go through this another 3 times over the next three months somehow seems more depressing and overwhelming to me.

I just want to feel normal.

Time, please pass quickly.

When I found out about my need for a mastectomy, I asked the surgeon if I could wait until the middle to end of May before having it done. I had several reasons for this.

1. I am the only one who can do my job. My boss can fill in here and there, but not every day until the end of the school year. If I suddenly disappeared she would have to cancel weeks of shows.

2. We need the income from my job. Although my job is only part-time, it helps stabilize our income. Without it we barely make ends meet. It's doable, but very difficult.

3. We need the income from my job. Yeah, I know it's the same reason, but it's a totally different reason. Our annual out-of-pocket maximum for insurance is $3,500. Once we reach that, insurance pays for everything. That wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the timing of everything. We had just reached the maximum, but our insurance year runs from 3/31 to 4/1. We just started a new year and have to pay that $3,500 again before the insurance covers everything.

4. The Rationalist's birthday is in May. I wanted to be able to celebrate his birthday without being in the hospital or recovering from surgery for several weeks.

5. School will be almost over. By the time I start chemo, it will be in the middle of the summer. I'll be able to send the boys to Grandma's for days at a time if I'm really sick from everything. I won't have to worry about getting them to and from school, making sure their homework is done, making dinner for them.

6. I just needed time to process everything.

The reasons are very rational, responsible, and efficient...kind of like me most of the time. The only problem is that it has given me too much time. Some days I live in blissful denial about everything. Life goes along at its normal pace, and the word cancer seems like some sort of silly joke told in bad taste.

At other times, I am reminded of what lurks in the future. Seeing a sales ad for a particular style of bra that I love, but is very expensive, brought the thought into my mind that "I should get to that sale before it's over," only to remember that, after May19th, I won't be able to wear it. Any bra I wear after that won't be bought in a department store. Moments like that floor me all over again with the knowledge that there is something very wrong in my body no matter how normal I feel.

I have had too much time to research. I know what is in store for me. I want to know, yet at the same time knowledge is a burden I carry. I know that breast cancer likes to reoccur. I know that being young with it is bad. I know that the treatment for it can be worse than the disease. I know that I might go into permanent, early menopause because of the chemo and hormonal treatment.

I know too much for my own good.

I appreciate the time I have to get used to the idea of what's coming, but sometimes it seems to let the dread build up inside of me. It leaves me too much time to have conversations with well-meaning family and friends. I have to explain one more time to my mother that my breast can't be saved. I have to listen to one more,"I'm sure everything will be fine." That, in particular drives me crazy, because although I hope and believe it to be true, it seems so dismissive of what's coming.

And that's when reality sets in. I am going to permanently lose a part of my body. The body that's left is going to be battered by chemicals. Even if everything works great, it will be difficult. There's no way around it.

The saying is "idle hands are the devils' workshop". I think it should be idle minds.