I was talking with my friend B. and he asked if I’d done a tarot reading about my situation. “Oh yes,” I said, “and I got bubkus. Nada. Chaos. I know it’s often tough to read for oneself, but I really got zip.”
I continue to be fortunate in that every medical professional I’ve worked with (with a few minor exceptions) are warm, caring, knowledgeable, competent people. My oncologist is one of those. He could see how nervous I was, and one of the first things he did was to start at the beginning and have me tell him about what my cancer journey has been like.
I finished with “and so it was more than a little shocking to be told on Friday that I am a good candidate for chemotherapy.” He immediately said: “I’m not so sure about that. It’s one thing I want to talk with you about.”
It turns out that there is a test (Oncotype DX) that is for a specific population of women with breast cancer. This test provides a very specific answer to the question: does she have a high likelihood of breast cancer recurring (and therefore is a good candidate for chemotherapy)? In reading about it, it looked liked I was a perfect candidate (invasive, Stage I, ER+, lymph node negative). But it is very new (just out of clinical trials in 2007) and I wasn’t sure if my oncologist knew about it, and if I really was a good candidate.
He did, and he thinks I’m a ‘poster child’ for the test. Good thing: they (the lab that does this test is in Sunnyvale, Ca, I believe) examine the tissue already removed. I don’t have to do anything. We’ll get the results in a week or two.
IF I DO have chemotherapy, it would take about 3 months with chemo sessions 1x/3wks. The plan is that I would be in chemo for a day, recovering for a couple of days, and then working like normal for a few weeks. So, disruptive, but not horrid. And fairly brief.
I left that office feeling like I’d been given good news, and it was sort of appalling that I felt that way when really all I’d been told was that I’d be waiting for an answer again.
This is one of the cruelties of cancer, your definition of ‘normal’ becomes skewed. I wonder how long it will take for my definition to right itself?
I have a cold.
A common, everyday, garden-variety cold.
Fresh hell: trying to take an aspirin, water in mouth, and you feel a sneeze coming on. What will win, the swallow reflex or the sneeze reflex?
This is so not fair.
(off to drink tea, I’m already resting gosh darn it*.)
*and no, those aren’t really the words I’d like to be saying at the moment. Feel free to insert your own favorites.
It’s been a good and bad day.
Good, because one of the last procedures I’ll need for awhile was done and I have a lot more freedom. Yes, the drain is gone. I no longer have a tube and hard plastic stuck into my body. Just an ache where it was.
Bad because the extent of my cancer is wider than we thought, and I have been recommended to see a medical oncologist about starting chemotherapy. This was a nasty surprise given that my surgery went so well and everyone felt they’d ‘gotten’ all of the cancer cells. To be clear, I don’t necessarily still have cancer . . . I just MIGHT have cancer cells spread throughout my body.
Yeah — that makes it better, doesn’t it?
I’m learning not to take anything for granted. There is no certainty. I must simply say ‘yes’ and accept.
Thank you for your continued support. It means a great deal to me. I’ll keep you posted on what all of this means.
Yesterday was quiet, more sleeping and watching movies all day long. I have several discs from CSI:Miami, Season 1 (which I never watched on TV) to keep me company. It’s a bit gory, but I like the bright sunshine and the plot lines are nicely simple. One thing: my sister arrived. She promptly cooked dinner and helped J. do some housework. We needed the help and she is a blessing.
Sleeping on my back is weird. Getting into and out of bed is hard, and painful. I’m glad I’m in fairly good shape, I can’t imagine doing this if I were frail, weak, or obese. To get in bed, I sit on the edge, as far back as I can. J. helps my turn my legs onto the bed, I then tighten my core muscles, stiffen my torso, and let J. help me lie down. Just before the last inches there is a horrid ‘tearing’ feeling in my chest, on the left side of my breast-like object, right where it meets the sternum. It brings tears to my eyes, its worrying.
Another dozy night . . . although I feel like I slept for longer periods, like an hour or 90 minutes. At 7am, my IV alarm went off. This happened yesterday, and its disconcerting at first. But the alarm just tells us that there is about 20 minutes left of drip. So, it was annoying, and it woke me up, but I didn’t worry. After a few minutes I called in and was told someone would be by in a few minutes to take care of it. That woke my bladder up, so I decided to go ahead and get up and start my day. The leg-massagers (more about them in a moment) were annoying, but I managed to get them unhooked and swung around so I was sitting on the side of my bed. Minutes passed. I stood up (yay! NO dizziness!!!!) and verified that yes, the only thing preventing me from going to the bathroom was the IV monitors’ electrical plug into the wall. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bend over to pull it out. So I had to wait, listening to the alarm, which was still low on the annoying scale, but growing higher. At 7:20, I called again — apologies, we’ll be right there! And at 7:35 someone came. Just in time, I was getting desperate.
The tough thing about surgery and pain meds is that the whole process really does horrid things to your body. I’m not a doctor, but how I’ve come to think of it is that when they do major surgery, they have to shut your whole system down to be able to work freely. So, recovering from surgery means restarting all of your systems. Its one reason they are so concerned with your bodily wastes — its an easy way to see that many systems are functioning again.
Friday the 13th! Today is very weird, not only because I woke up in a hospital, but because I have large gap in my memory of yesterday. I rely on my memory a great deal, having gaps is fairly distressing, even if I know why. In a way, it gives me a glimpse into why people with amnesia freak out so badly, it must be incredibly disorienting, frightening.
Now that my pain meds are greatly reduced, I’m feeling more able to write again. So I’ll be posting a series of ‘time machine’ posts starting from 11/13 and going forward. I may repeat myself, but they are the posts I would have written at the time, but couldn’t. The posts will be put up in real time, but dated in the past.
As an update for today (11/25): I still have a drain in, so I am still quite limited in my mobility/abilities. I am quite stir-crazy and bored. I am doing some work which is at least challenging. I am slightly grumpy. Hopefully the drain will come out Friday.