3 Down 30 To Go

It's Friday and that means I've finished my first week of radiation. Sort of. Monday was a holiday and Tuesday was the test run, so really I've only had 3 of my 33 treatments. Only 30 more mornings of dragging my butt out of bed and heading down to the oncology center to be zapped. I get weekends off though which is nice for two reasons. 1) I get to sleep in tomorrow and 2) that gives a nice symmetry to my treatments as the 33rd and final treatment will occur on a Friday. I should be done at 9:30a.m. on Friday July 10th. Yeah, don't expect to see me in the office that day. There will be some celebrating to do. If I can stay awake for it.

I'm not supposed to be tired yet, but I am. I'm pretty sure it's because the office has been extremely busy--both with actual work (this is good; food on the table is good) and with the construction for the expansion of the office. And also it's because these darn hot flashes/ night sweats/ crazies keep waking me up. I have two temperatures these days: freezing, and rip-my-clothes-off-sweaty-hot. All of that combined with the fact that I have to get to the Oncology center before 9a.m and well, you have yourself one grumpy tired cancer patient. Probably not anything to do with the radiation just yet.

I did do a little more reading up on radiation and side effects. It may have been best if I hadn't. I don't need to worry about things I can't control. But if any of you are interested, here's a link to a pretty good summary from HealthCastle.com And here's a lovely photo of what happens to the radiated area. I picked a nice one, there were many photos of much more serious skin damage. I took this one to be the normal amount of damage. And see how large the radiated area is? That's the part that's supposed to stay out of direct sunlight. So now you know why I'll be in turtlenecks for the summer.

On a brighter note (although it's hard to get brighter red than that), I'm illuminated! Er, um, no, I'm a luminary! No, that's not it...I'm all lit up...okay, well that might be misconstrued...
What I mean to say is that my friend and fellow dog lover Katie Wider is participating in the Relay for Life on June 13 and 14 and she's lighting a luminary in honor of me and Seamus (he who totally kicked cancer's butt, even as it attacked his). Thanks Katie! That lightens things up nicely.

(Keep voting on the poll over to the right. Chris is anxiously awaiting the outcome. And Roryann Clements is running quite a campaign to make sure he doesn't get to cut it until December!! What does she have against Chris??)

Wig in the Wind

No posting Sunday and I've barely got the energy tonight. But that might be the wine. There was at least wine tonight.

The cement in my veins has subsided a bit. My upper arms and rib cage are still sore, and oddly so is my throat. And of course, my nemesis "dirt/metallic taste" has returned and is insisting on having things his way. I'm still fairly tired, also. I lasted at work only until 4pm. It probably would have been wise to take a nap around 2 and keep going after that, but it just didn't work out that way. So by 4 pm I was all but asleep at my desk. Oh, and it was windy today and I had to think about the hair (uh, yeah, that would be the wig) more than usual. It was all too easy to picture it just blowing off and down the parking lot as I tried to make it from my car to my office. Maybe I should carry back-up wigs in my trunk? Would this be a normal thing to do? Okay, probably not. But a back-up scarf is probably not a bad idea. Especially since the late afternoons find me itching to take the hair off. I don't think I'm going to last long with these wigs. I'm liking the scarf look more and more.

I got home a little after 4 and went straight to bed. I napped, soundly, until 5:30. Then Brein and Roryann Clements (Omakase, you remember, yes?) came over to do some wine tasting with Chris (it's all in the name of Chris's new wine website/ blog...which you'll hear about soon enough). I participated a bit--even "healthy" I can normally taste only the whites, as I'm allergic to American reds. Some of the wine still tasted good to me, and some of the cheese and breads did as well.( Which was a good thing because that turned out to be dinner!) Normally I have a decent nose for wine and I'm not too awful at identifying the particular characteristics (even if I do occasionally say "smells like dirt" and Chris has to gussy that up to "Earthy on the nose"), but I was no help this time. "Metallic taste" really had no credibility. And "earthy in the mouth" is not really what one looks for. So I was really "cancer girl" just pretending to participate. I was also a lot less drunk. Damnit.

All of this is to say, I have to admit that over this past weekend and today it has occurred to me that...I'm tired of cancer. Sure, it was fun while it lasted, but um, can we move along now? It's been 3 months. That seems like enough time. (It was in fact three months ago exactly that I received the "highly suspicious of malignancy" phone call.) There's just so much to think about and really everything changes. Not much gets to stay the same. Which is annoying. It's hard not to be a "cancer person." This past weekend I kept apologizing to Chris for his having to go through this too. Not that I chose it, or it's my fault, but I just felt bad for him. He assures me that cancer or no, he would have been home watching the March Madness all weekend anyway. I know (from years past) that this is true, so I also know that I was just in a weird/bad/sad/tired place. And that's what cancer does--it finds a million little ways to push you to those places. So now it's time to push back. I'm through with the meds, the Neulasta shot cement effect is wearing off, and I've got more than two weeks before I have to go back for more chemo. Time for margaritas with my friends.

Oh, and I got a jury duty summons today. Yep. Of course I did. For April 20th. Which is....day 12 after the next chemo round. I sure hope they let me postpone that. Did I mention I have cancer?

Cement Trucks and Gravy Trains

Cancer Vixen described it as a cement truck unloading into your veins. Yep, I'm gonna say she was right.

Yesterday at about 4:30 I had the Neulasta shot--the one that will help prevent the white blood cell massacre that occurred on day 12 of the last chemo round. Not a big deal getting the shot. I'm getting surprisingly used to needles and shots (I'm sure I've lost count at this point). And I felt pretty good afterward. Just a little tired, but I'm sure that had everything to do with the pre-Neulasta cocktail. Which, sadly, is not what you are thinking. It was a "cocktail" of Claritin, Benadryl and Tylenol. Washed down with Gatorade. Mmmm. Yummy. I didn't have nearly as much energy as I had on day 3 of the last round, and I have to say, I was a little disappointed with that. I keep searching for the slightest silver lining with this whole cancer thing. (Did I mention my weight was exactly the same at the second visit, by the way? So no weight loss either!!). I napped, I watched TV with Chris for a bit and then I zonked out. Notice there was no blog post last night? Too, too tired. But of course, I'm taking the steroid medication and drinking a lot of fluids, so naturally I have to get up and head to the restroom a couple of times a night. Which is when the cement truck hit.

The first time I got up it felt like somebody was pushing me back down. It wasn't painful, so much as, just, wow, each of my limbs now weighed 200 lbs. How was I going to lug all four of them to the restroom? I managed, swinging them along into some kind of momentum, and then took a little more Tylenol while I was at it. Then I quite literally fell back into bed, ever so thankful I didn't cause the bed to crash down to the bottom floor. I stayed in bed most of the morning, and no, I didn't make it to Walk with the Animals. Somehow I knew the "Walk" part was going to be a bit difficult. But Chris and Seamus represented and Chris dutifully had folks say hello to me anyway, so I felt not quite as left out. I think this may be the first Walk with The Animals that I've ever missed--and this is the 17th one! But here's what I would have seen in person:

That's Brein and Roryann, (drumming up votes for the blog poll), and then RHSPAC's new Executiv Director Denise Perry,
and the folks at Ruff House Doggie Day Care who take care of Seamus when we have doctor's appointments and the like. And then just a general shot of the festivities. I told you, Chris was just keeping me in the loop.



It has taken most of this day for the heavy feeling to mostly leave my legs. But my neck, shoulders and arms are still pretty "heavy." And I have a hard time swallowing--and my tongue is swollen. Yeah, I didn't know a tongue was "bone" either, but there you have it. Maybe that's the antihistamine effect. I don't know. I just know it needs to stop.

So the cement truck arrived, but so did the Gravy Train. Yesterday (pre-cement shot) Stacey Aldstadt came by and brought lunch (Subway sandwiches and Lay's potato chips!). She also drove me around on a few errands so Chris could stay home and watch the March Madness (he deserves this). Oh, and I went out in public with just the "exotic scarf" look. It was a little warm for a wig, I thought. Plus, come one, the scarf is Coach. Then after we got back from the cement shot (2 hours there and back), Barbara Abel came by with dinner (California Pizza Kitchen) and a few girlie gifts for me. And today, post-Walk, Kristin Tillquist came by with lunch (Simple Simon's!) and a bag of totally indulgent magazines for me. Which is perfect given that my limbs are trees and I need to stay in bed until they return to their normal-ish state. Kristin even brought a magazine of short hair-dos, which was totally clever. Lots of styles I'll be able to try out by the end of this year (fingers crossed). So yeah, there's my silver lining. I have good friends and they continue to show up bearing food and gifts. My dad and my brother both checked in on me today by phone too, so that was also nice.

By the Sunday following chemo round 1, I was able to go into my office. I don't think that's happening this time. But, I am hopeful the stack of files and mail that I brought home and that my ever-loyal and hardworking paralegal Laureen Pittman dropped off on Friday can be attended to in the comfort of my home office. There just isn't room in there for me and the cement truck anymore. Or the tree-limbs. Always room for the Gravy Train though. Just ask Seamus. The gravy train has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated by Seamus.