Silent Threat: Breast Cancer Chronicles

Mother Nature's Little Gift Returns

Hahaha.  So Monday, after more than six months of no period..iiiiiiiitttttttt'ssssss back! lol.  That mess hit me hard too, probably because it has been so long and the hole loss of iron thing.  I've been light headed and the like since Monday.  What fun!  It's kind of a double edge sword, now that it's back, I have to go through the hassle of every month feeling yuck and out of it.  On the other hand, if it wasn't back, I would be sitting around wondering if I was ever going to be able to have kids.  Not to say that this means I will, but at least it makes me feel better.  lol.  Now my breathing is acting up.  I think it's crazy, maybe cancer took my mind off of asthma, but I didn't seem to have any problems with it while I was going through treatment.  Strange huh?  Anyway, I'm tired, I'm out of it, and I can't breathe.  I'm going to try to go to sleep.

The End of One is the Start of Another

Monday, February 16, 2009 was the end of radiation treatment.  I went six weeks with nothing but darkened skin and slight pain under my arm.  Sometime last weekend, my skin broke.  Not a lot, just a small place near the back of my underarm.  That meant that on my last day of radiation, I got a new prescription, burn cream.  You think it would be easy putting burn cream on a not so big place of broken skin, until it's under your arm and the skin surrounding it is burnt from radiation, so you can't use tape or anything that will stick to the skin to hold it in place.  Laugh at that one..since I'm sure you're thinking the same thing I was...how the hell does the dressing stay in place then!  Answer: It doesn't!  So I put it on in the morning, tape what I can and wait for it to fall off, which it does and quickly, and hope the clothes I'm wearing don't rub so much as to make the day painful!  All that said, Monday was the day.  No more radiation!  I had the techs help me with my movie and they got some amazing footage! Great stuff!  Had dinner with J2 after work and we were both out of it..not the best dinner date..lol.

The week has been just as hectic as everyday since I returned to work, with no slow down in my future it seems.  Good, since I like being busy.  Bad, since I feel like I still haven't caught up on all the rest I missed pushing myself to keep up with life through the Cancer of it all.  What can you do though, it's built into my DNA to work the way I do.  It's just who I am.  Can't wait for vacation!  I may do nothing but laze around.  I generally would try to do stuff..still want to scuba dive.  Maybe that will be my one thing, otherwise, I've done all the watersports I care to do, I've done snorkeling twice, drinks and sun is all I really need and some nice blue water!

So Tuesday, February 17, 2009, I started taking tomaxifen.  So far no real side effects.  I know I'm going to have to keep up with the water I drink, as if I don't do that now..lol.  We shall see what the future brings.  Five years of this little white pill.  Six months from round about now, I should be able to start the finish of my reconstruction.  Three months from now, I'll check back in with my surgeon and my plastic surgeon.   Two months from now, I'll high tail it out to the middle of the ocean, hit the bahamas I think and aruba..never been to aruba before.  Love seeing new places, love even more that those new places are sunny and beachy...hahaha. 

 

This pic is probably from a week ago.  Now the entire radiated area under my arm is pink as the skin has peeled off.  It's starting to peel all around, but it's not painful and hopefully by the end of next week, I'll start healing.  The end of next week will be what about nine days since the final day of radiation.  Then I'll have about a month to heal before heading off to fun in the sun...hopefully I can wear a swim suit without too much hassle.  Maybe I'll get some of those things you wear over them, just in case. 

Last Day

Tomorrow is my last day of radiation!  Woo hoo!  Yippeee!  All that!  I'm so happy that it's over and will be so happy when my skin starts bouncing back.  I went out with some friends to Martinis and Imax..had a great time.  The movie we saw was just ok, but it was fun being out and about in celebration of being 99.9% done with radiation.  Had a few drinks, good conversation and then went out and had some more drinks and good, hilarious conversation with my sunshine.  It was a good night.  And when it was all said and done, we laid around the house just chill and then everybody got up and started eating all the random food in my house.  People always say they love being at my house because I always have a thousand things to eat..random, but I love to eat and I love to feed people, entertain, whatever.  So it was great to have people in the house and be able to feed them and just hang out.  What fun.  I have a lot to say, just about philosophies of life and my take on the things going on in and around my life, but we'll save it for another day because I have to go to sleep soon to be able to make it through the day tomorrow. 

Last day of radiation and me and Joyce are going on a girl date to my favorite mexican restaurant, just a coincidence, but what perfect timing!  A month and a half from now, I'll be cruising through the sun..can't wait for the chance to vacate.  I haven't been anywhere since we went to jamaica too long ago..probably it's been a year and half or so since I've gone anywhere besides home and that's just too long!  I need some fun in the sun in my life!

Did I do an update on my social experiment?  Went out on two dates with this dude who I thought was cool..he guessed my "secret" before I shared it, but I was thinking about bringing it up soon anyway.  It didn't change anything about how we related to each other and while he was curious about the processes, it really wasn't a topic that garnered much convo.  Unfortunately, the second date was the last date, but score one for the male species..lol.  I doubt I will ever start off with "Hi my name is ____ and I had cancer." So I doubt I'll ever have "data" on someone liking me despite cancer..where cancer comes before the like..but so far so good.  Everybody is loving the short..barely there hair and think I should keep it this way.  It accents my facial features well apparently, or something like that, who knows, but I know I'm not going to keep it this short because I'm used to having hair and I want my hair back.  I'm loving the process though..although it's just too damn slow..getting to see me like this is cool.  I never would have known I could look so damn cute with no hair otherwise!

Oh.  Radiation is driving me nuts.  The weekend before my last week of radiation, my skin started to burn and peel. I don't think it has broken completely, but I do think that I'm losing skin and getting some blisters, but not a lot.  It's darker than ever and getting dry and tight, but hell, tomorrow is the last day.  My underarm is where I'm having the most problems and it hurts, but not as bad as it could I suppose.  The worst part of it all is the everday of it.  It has been exhausting.  I'm working probably now more than I did before and going to the dr every morning, then not getting home till 6/7 pm.  It's been doing the most.  They gave me toradol for pain..I took it for two days and it made me sick as hell!  First, I had breathing problems like you wouldn't believe..felt like I was going to pass out and apparently looked just as bad and then went through 3/4 hours of being crazy sick to my stomach.  I had to sit at work until almost 7 pm until I was good enough to drive home!  The next day, I didn't have breathing problems, but was sick to my stomach for hours and had only eaten macaroni in hopes that I had gotten sick due to something I ate.  Since I first took the toradol last week, the pain has eased up and even though they gave me a perscription for ibuprofin, I doubt I'll take it.  What else.  Oh, tuesday I'll start the five year pill (aka tamoxifen)..yay!  I have ambien for sleep and if it doesn't get better with the end of radiation, they are going to have to give me ambien cr or I'm not going to get any rest.  All last week, even with sleeping and pain pills, I was waking up at 3 am and not able to go back to sleep.  Which sucks since I have to get up at 5:30 to start my day and even though I should probably be taking a nap during the day, I'm at work from 8 to damn near 6 everyday.  Probably that's what is causing my sleeping problems, but again.  It's almost over, so maybe things will even out on their own and I'll be able to sleep and eat like normal again.  If I haven't written it yet, I eat something for breakfast (like a bagel or something) and then lunch and haven't been eating dinner at all.  Thankfully, I'm not dropping crazy weight, but if I keep up, I will drop all the weight I gained and I don't want that.  In the next couple weeks though I'm gonna start going back to the gym, since I should have more waking hours than I've had in the past month and maybe that will help increase my appetite. 

I did herceptin the first week in Feb., I think on the third.  It didn't make me as sick as I used to be with herceptin and taxol, but I think it did make me sick that sunday and I took off work that monday cause it was so bad I couldn't sleep.  That's also when the pain in my arm started, so it was a double whammy.  I would say the 27th I will get to see what it's like to be on just herceptin, but I'll have tamoxifen in my system too, so I'll never know what it's like to be on just one medication until I'm just taking tamoxifen.  I'm a walking effin pharmacy!  That's all for now.  Let me find the shirt I want to wear tomorrow so I can pop some pills and head off to lala land!

Two Days!

I have two days left of radiation.  I can't belive that I've made it six weeks of everyday, 7:30 in the am and on to work for longer hours than I worked before Cancer.  I'm exhausted and in pain now.  My under arm skin is starting to blister or break or something and burns like you don't know what!  Imagine the worst sunburn you can think of and then amplify that feeling..that's what the skin under my arm feels like and lucky me, that's the part of your body that does the most rubbing.  What can you do though right?  I find it funny how hard I am.  I was in crazy pain on Monday because of my arm and it hurt like hell to put my arm above my head as it was pulling the skin..I thought my face was screwed up because I was whincing, but then I caught a glimse of my face in the glass of the radiation eye and I just looked like my normal blank face self!  No wonder people get the misperception that I'm strong..I'm not as strong as people think, I just don't show pain as readily as some others.

The only side effects really have been fatigue and the painful skin under my arm.  But I've been going through this for six weeks, my skin doesn't feel all that dry and it dosn't appear to have contracted that much, nor do I have blisters or anything anywhere but under my arm and even those really don't seem to be blisters..just painful bumps.  My skin is dark and kind of angry red under my arm, otherwise, just darkening around my armpit and moving into the center of my chest.  I got a mean tan on one breast...hahaha!

My hair is growing back, but so super slowly.  I would say it's never grown this slow, but I've always had a lot of it, so I probably never noticed the speed of growth like this before.  I can't wait to be done with these everyday drs appointments.  Then it's on to the tamoxifen.  Yay.  Three months and I check in with the plastic surgeon, three more months and I'm done with herceptin and ready for my final implants if all goes well (and it has considering).  

I'm so over the complications of life right now it's not even funny.  You know, all the extra stuff we accumulate and feel we can't live without..life is so much simpler without it.  Simplify and chill out.  That's my motto from here on out.  We shall see how simplifying my life goes over the next few years.  Simple, family, friends..that's what life should be.  That and work..lol..can't live without it..haha.  Just don't want to have to work.  What's mine should be mine, not dependent on my job or income. 

It's been an interesting month or so.  I'm getting back to being me again and that means I'm more uptight than I've been in the past 8 months.  When focusing on cancer and health, you don't stress too much over anything else.  Now I'm back to me, worrying about the things that didn't get done around the house, worrying about the fact that cancer messed up my five year plan, worrying about the fact that I feel like I have to do it all now.  Catch up immediately and make everything right.  Not possible, but that's me.  Big aspirations, big plans, all now.  That's America too though right?  Immediate gradification.  I'm trying to chill out.  Most of the stuff I thought was important before is lower on my list of priorities these days, but low priorities still freak me out if I can't get to them when and how I want.  Chilling out.  It's gonna be hard.  Rebuilding myself is going to be hard.  Life is hard.  What's new?