Silent Threat: Breast Cancer Chronicles

In Crazy Pain

I can't believe I'm still in so much pain from this last expansion.  Usually it takes a couple of days for my body to get used to the new volume, but I really don't remember any of the previous expansions being this painful!  At this point, I've popped to percocets and I am still in pain!  And apparently, something is not sitting right with me since I just threw up everything in my stomach (which was not much to begin with), yay!  A and J both called this morning and basically told me I have to come to Decatur tonight or tomorrow because of my pain level.  They don't want me at home alone and so far away from everybody when I'm in such pain.  I understand their concerns, but really do not like being not at home.  Given the fact that I'm in pain and throwing up, if I can't drive down tonite, I may actually allow them to come and get me.  Sigh.  I hate needing people.  I hate feeling like I shouldn't be alone.  And sometimes I really hate that that means I can't stay in my own home or that I have to have others come stay with me.  I like my house, aside from the fact that it's so far away from everyone else, and I like being at home.  Sigh.  Today is not a good day!  It'll get better though, I'm calling it! 

Expansion

Today I'm not as angry as I was yesterday or as frustrated.  After many emails back and worth with my plastic surgeon and a number of calls to radiation oncology, we finally got the scheduling worked out so that I don't have to start radiation planning until I get back from my christmas trip home and I'll be able to get my final expansion.  So I'm keeping this short because I'm in considerable pain, but I wanted to document it while I'm feeling it lest I forget how much expansion hurts!  I feel like I've talked about the expansion process in previous posts, but I'll cover it again now.  They use a magnet to locate the port that allows them to insert fluid into the expander, then with what feels like a big needle the nurse pushes the fluid into the expander.  The first couple of times I could not feel the needle at all, just the pressure of something being inserted into my body, but no pain.  Then I could feel the pinch of the needle somewhat in my right breast because the port is higher up on that side and I started getting feeling back in my breasts from the top down.  Today I could feel the needle on both sides, but that's not where the pain comes in.  Getting expanded causes tightness in your chest cause they are stretching tissue.  I feel like your back and chest also has to get used to the extra weight of it all too and I always feel like I should stretch to help ease the pain after my expansions. 

After my drs appointment today I went to Js house for a couple of hours cuz I was meeting J2 for a "girl date" at 6 and didn't want to go all the way home and then drive back to the city.  My "girl date" was great, so much so that it lasted 4 hours!  Much needed though...much needed.  So about 10ish, I'm headed home and talking to a friend about possibly meeting up to hang out on my way up and it hits me that my chest is starting to hurt, I mean really hurt.  My drs appt was at 2 pm today.  By the time I got home, I thought it may be easing up, but took a couple tylenol anyway.  Stayed on the phone with MH and when I tried to sit up again, I realized that I was in excruciating pain.  I mean it literally felt like my back was on fire and hurt so bad that I didn't even want to sit up for the purpose of getting more pain meds!  On top of killer pain across the top of my back and shoulders, my chest starting hurting like crazy again too.  My chest feels almost like it's trying to contract or constrict, my back, really I can't describe the pain in my back and just attribute it to the change in weight of my chest.  The good news is it usually doesn't last but a couple of days, but for now, I'm laying here hoping I don't have to use the restroom any time soon and trying not to screw my face up too much in the meantime.  I've always prided myself on being able to tolerate pain, but this ish is intolerable!  I mean it's at least an 8 on the pain scale..if not higher!  Only one more expansion before start radiation (which I'm not looking forward too as if I was looking forward to any of it I guess).  It's the next chapter in the never ending saga that is my life with cancer though, so I'll have more to write about at least!  lol.  Till then, I'm going back to reading "Double Cross."

In a Perfect World

 

In a perfect world this is a perfect depiction of what I would've done to my radiation oncologist today!  I mean really!  Clearly in a perfect world I wouldn't have cancer at all, but since it's not a perfect world and I do and it's not nice to flip your doctors the bird, I'll just write about wanting to do it now!  I  knew today would be a fitting day to wear my "fuck breast cancer" sweatshirt!  And the way I'm feeling right now, this may be a perfect week to wear that ish!  To say I'm tired of having my life dictated by doctors and doctors appointments is an understatement!  Maybe I'm dense, but what is the rush on starting radiation when my post surgery pathology report came back cancer free, I'm still getting herceptin, which is targeted at my cancer specifically, and my lymph node biopsy was negative??  Seriously??  I know in theroy if there is microscopic cancer in my lymphatic system it could spread during the downtime, but if it does radiation isn't going to help me anyway and it could have already spread since surgery, so what's another week or two???

I feel like every time I turn around someone is telling me what I have to do "right now." I don't like anybody telling me what to do at all, so being told that I'm going to start radiation planning on Friday is really annoying.  I'm sitting there thinking that Christmas is next week, so they will say we can start this whole charade the following week.  I was not prepared to be told that we would start this week!!  What the hell!  So much for having time to wrap my mind around shit!  If the doctor's had their way, I'd be stuck in the A by myself for Christmas just so I could make drs appointments!  Damn..can I get a holiday!  I spent my birthday sick from chemo, turkey day recouping from surgery, and now I should spend Christmas worrying about starting radiation and whether or not my tissue expanders are expanded enough to hold a larger than my normal breast size implant post radiation.  Thanks!  Not to mention I haven't seen my plastic surgeon since the monday after my surgery because she had her baby before my next appointment.  What's the big fucking rush?!?!  Can I breathe?  Really?

What would my mother say, the same shit A just said, "Well, you've been taking your drs advice for this long and look how things are turning out, I wouldn't stop now."  I don't wanna stop taking their advice, if that was the case, I would say fuck radiation all together and put my money on herceptin! But I'm not doing that because their advice makes sense.  I'm just so fucking tired of being told what I have to do.  How do I challenge what the drs says since they have knowledge I'll never have.  Yeah I do my homework, yes I understand a lot of what they say and what I don't I look up, but I don't run my own tests or interpret my own test results.  I can't do anything but trust them.  At the end of the day though, they don't have to go through the treatments they reccommend, they don't have to suffer the side effects.  My radiation oncologist won't suffer the cosmetic consequences if we start radiation before the plastic surgeon has finished expanding, I will.  Yes my life is the most important, but haven't they saved that already or am I just being dense again because I'm tired of compromising?  It's not my fault there are two holidays post surgery.  But because they are there I'm gonna get screwed out of those two extra visits to plastics?  If it doesn't compromise my health, I think not!  I'm tired of not being in control, I'm tired of putting things off because of this nonsense!  I want to go back to doing things my way!  I want to go back to living my life on my terms, not cancers and not my drs.  Too bad that's not reality.  In a perfect world I wouldn't be sitting here with my face screwed up banging away at the keys on my poor laptop (like it's to blame for my bad mood) because I'm not happy with the radiation process starting so soon after my follow up appointment!  In a perfect world I wouldn't have been robbed of my autonomy by a deadly disease!  But it's not a perfect world and there isn't ish I can do about it, but the same thing I've been doing for the past 8 months!  Bitching, moaning, laughing, crying, and fighting like hell!  Fuck cancer!  If it's not gonna cost me my life, I want bigger boobs and shouldn't I get what I want at some point along this damn road of mine???  I'm bout to have a drink...FUCK!  I'm So Tired of This Shit!

Transforming

 

Looking back is hard and awe inspiring.  I can't believe that in eight months I've been through and done so much.  I've grown up.  It's amazing to see where I was then and to look at where I am now. I was happy then, but I was ingnorant to some things in my life that I didn't know where important until I was forced to look at life through the distorting clarification that muted cancer conversations inspire.  At 27, I was still a child.  I own my home.  I drive a luxury vehicle.  I have a career as opposed to just a job and all of this I had when I started my journey, but I was still a kid.  I felt like I was playing dress up at work and at home, I was trying to be the perfect girlfriend.  I wasn't necessarily trying to be what people expected, but I didn't know what I expected or really wanted from life.  I was focused on building the life that I thought I was supposed to have and wasn't enjoying the life I already had.  It still angers me that cancer interrupted my life and my plans, I would definitely prefer to have learned life lessons through some other means, but it didn't work out that way.  I used to sit around and wonder when I was going to feel like a grown up, when I was going to look like a grown up, and what it even meant to be grown aside from paying my own bills.  Now, I'm a bald chick with no breasts and no nails and eyebrows and lashes that are just now starting to look somewhat normal again, but I feel more like a grown up and a woman than I ever have in my life.  I think I look more like a grown woman too..how weird is that.  It does make me sad looking back on life and realizing that my innocence is no more, that I've lost my blinders, and that I've had a monumental paradigm shift.  I will never be the person I was before, but the person that I am now is pretty damn amazing.  How is it that it seems as if I've lost so much of what makes me a woman, a girl, whatever, over the past eight months and yet I've emerged more of a woman than I ever felt like I was before.  I'm still me, I'm still beautiful, but I'm a better me, a stronger, healthier, more beautiful me.  I could do with out the hot flashes and I'm so glad the night sweats have ceased, but when I look in the mirror, scars and all, I'm happy with what I see.  I'm proud of myself for being a woman, for fighting like a woman, for womaning up and taking control of my life and my health. 

Today was a sad day.  I hate waking up and not being able to do the things in my life that I need to do because of pain or being sick or having cancer interrupt my life in some form or fashion.  I hate waking up and not pushing through the pain and doing what needs to be done.  I hate being weak.  But I look back and miss the person I was, at the same time, I realize that I'm not weak.  I am strong.  I had to look life/death in the face and make decisions most people will never have to make.  As hard as they were, I made them.  I pushed through.  I did it.  I'm doing it.  Fuck cancer.  I have the right to be sad and upset.  I shouldn't beat myself up for showing emotion.  I'm going through some emotional ish and I'm better for it.  I'm walking tall.  I'm standing strong.  I am. Me.

These are the Days of My Life

  It is about 4/5 weeks post surgery.  I have long since left heavy narcotics behind me..sigh..being high was kinda cool feeling...lol...now I can half understand why people do drugs.  Not really funny I know, but true, to be able to feel good/out of it/numb when you're in pain, not such a novel idea.  My nails look like I've spent the last year of my life biting the hell out of them...more like chewing them off.  My toenails are discolored, with one of my big toenails turning black and separating from my toe.  It looks like other nails are separating too.  What fun.  They say it's not fungus, just one of the lasting joys of chemo.  Did I say yay yet?!  I'm having hot flashes like crazy.  I'm still tired on and off all day.  My left shoulder is in pain.  I think because I use it more than my right arm, even when I know my arm hurts, I use it more.  It's my dominant arm and it's force of habit, but I'm thinking it's keeping me in pain.  My heavy ass expanders are getting bigger..I have something like boobs...haha! What else do I have to complain about?  I really can't believe that after losing my hair, losing my fingernails, and losing my breasts, now I'm losing my toenails too.  Wow! My hands still look like they were burned, they are getting lighter though.  My hair is growing back and itching like crazy in the process, but it's finally growing in around where my hair line was before so I don't look like a balding man anymore.  No offense!  I can painfully get shirts on and off over my head.  I'm still stiff, my strength is nil, and if I do too much I pay for it with pain.  Otherwise, life is peachy!  Laugh!

It's so annoying sitting here in bed, in my house, resting, recouperating.  It's boring. I've been trying to read, but I can't stay awake when I do.  Normally, when I read, I can't go to sleep.  It's strange with it being the other way around.  I'm not always happy being trapped in the house with nothing to do and nobody to keep me company, but it's a funny thing, having worked in some form or fashion since I was a kid, i'm quite enjoying doing nothing all the same.  I have started trying to clean up around my house, which hasn't been cleaned in quite some time given the lack of energy caused by six months of chemo.  I do have to admit that a good old fashion cleaning has made my guest bathroom sparkle like the ones in the Mr. Clean commercials! 

HOT FLASH!!  I'm 28 and too many times a day I want to kick off my shoes, rip off my clothes and just scream!!!  WTF!!!  Hot flashes are way more annoying than painful toenails, but man, losing my pretty toenails hurt after having to cut my beautifully self manicured fingernails.  I really am laughing right now bcause I'm sitting here thinking about how breast cancer really has stripped me of all the things I thought made me a woman...on the outside that is.  I took pride in my hair, nails, and my overall phyiscal appearance.  One by one, I lost the things that I thought made me me.  On top of not looking like me, I got super constipated, got shingles, got burned from the inside out, and any other number of embarrasing things I was lucky enough to get to share with my oncologist.  Even as I write this, I'm sitting here smiling.  Alone.  With no boyfriend, no family, no friends, in my house, by myself because I was too tired to stay and visit with Angela and Aisha.  And who cares.  I slept all day, I'll probably be sleep again soon, but so what!  I'm happy.  Bored, but happy.  Lonely at times, but happy.  I may not have my breasts, I'll never have real nipples again and the fake ones won't be of any use to me, but again, who cares!  I've learned to be stronger than I've ever had to be in my life by myself and I've learned to share my burden with those around me.  Before I depended almost entirely on one person for emotional support and I wouldn't let anyone else in, now I've let go of that reliance and begun to appreciate the others in my life. 

That's why I went to J2's bday dinner last week, went to MY's holiday party this week, and will go to Tracy's holiday cocktail party next week.  It's why I've been home to visit more than I've been home in the past couple of years combined.  Not because I'm sick, but because being sick has made me appreciate people more.  In that respect cancer has been a gift..strange thing to say huh?  It's the little things!  The little things make life what it is, so that's what I'm enjoying.  Sitting around this morning with J talking about family, talking about men or boys (haven't decided which yet, although they think they are men), talking about cartoons and eating breakfast at 2pm.  What better way is there to spend a sunday? 

By far the best thing I've learned is how to be selfish.  I'm still perfecting selfishness, it's hard and it's going to take time, but I'm learning that not everything has to be shared.  I'm not a bad person if I keep some of my stuff for myself.  It's not helping, if I'm hurting myself.  It's also not helpful if history keeps repeating itself.  Here's to a new year, a new me!  A 2.0!  Bigger, better, stronger!