I’ve been out of touch for so long, and wondering how my friends are doing. E-mail (home, not work) is best, or a comment on this blog.
We see the oncologist on Thursday (way too early) to decide when to resume chemo. I’ll let you know what we decide.
It. . . it was beautiful, man; it really took me back to about a month ago, which was like the last time I picked up the phone. So groovy!
And there was a person on the end of it; but not just any person, a person who hadn’t given up on me.
No guarantees about picking up the phone in the future, but I have to say that the anti-depressant appears to be doing its job.
People have been noticing the change in my voice and tone; I laughed at one of Brian’s jokes for the first time in weeks (and no, it wasn’t because they were so bad before that. . .); I got up and met him at the garage door today, which freaked out both him and the dog, it’d been so long.
Thank you to everyone who has persisted, e-mailed, visited, loved.
Especially Brian.
On my little break from chemo, please don’t be surprised that I am being so quiet – only a little blogging, no phone calls or e-mails. Now that I’ve had time to quit wallowing in the cancer and its treatment, I’m wallowing in my depression. My normal depressive behavior is to do just that – withdraw and keep my feelings to myself.
Fortunately for me, I’ve got Brian here to help keep me sane.
I met with my counselor, Counselor Troi, today, and she took a lot of notes, with the end result that she doesn’t know how I’ve managed to go so long without an anti-depressant. So tomorrow I start one (sorry, the name escapes, me).
The bad news about that is that it’s going to physically depress me for a couple weeks – i.e., low energy, etc. Right in time to just about the time Dr. Medici wants me to start chemo again.
So how am I going to know if it’s working?
Also, Nurse Serenatia called today, and told me what I already knew – it’s going to take months to get back my energy to where it was – months I don’t have.
Thus ends the homily on depression for June 23, 2010.
Thursday, Monica and Linda and Heather came over to have lunch with me.
Monica hit the kitchen like a storm, preheating quiche, slicing bread, prepping something or other; I set the table, and we were ready to eat.
Sausauge quiche, fresh-from-the-garden-asparagus salad, several types of fruit, bread, and who knows what else – it was all delicious!
We spent most of the time talking about work past; changes that are going on there now, and just laughing and having fun.!
Thanks for the food, fun, pep talk, and hugs – I was in need of them all. I agree, we should do it again
Last Wednesday, my friend Leah had arranged a little work-folks get-together. She came and picked me up, and then dropped me off at the door of Rock Bottom Brewery, where we met with Carrie W., Jenny, Kristin, Shi-Yi, and Wendy. Brian met us there, also, not only to say “Hi”, but as my ride home.
I enjoyed seeing and chatting with everyone, although I was pretty much wiped out after a little overp an hour. Thank you for coming, everyone who could make it; and I’m sorry some of you were either sick or had other plans already – hopefully we’ll be able to visit sometime soon.
Unless the doctor changes my chemo regimen soon, I may be completely limited to home visits, as my energy levels are so low that I sleep all night, and most of the day also. There is an open invitation to come visit, as long as it is arranged in advance; and with the caveat to please call before coming in case I’m having a bad day.
I was still wallowing in my misery come the weekend, because one week goes just like another.
I did have some relief – my friend Sue came to visit on Thursday, and it was so good to see her. I met her in my first support group – you remember, the one where I actually was helping support, not just being supported. She was having her surgery on the Tuesday after my Friday surgery and was very worried about it. I got dressed on that Tuesday, and had Brian drive me over there while she was in pre-op so I could show her my dressings, and how quickly I was up and around. She told me once that my doing that helped her get through her surgery easier emotionally.
Her coming to visit me when I was so down was sort of the equivalent for me.
A couple friends who had planned to come by on Friday had to cancel, but we’ve rescheduled for later – as it turned out, Friday was a very physically down day for me, and I really needed to sleep, so it worked out for both of us.
By Saturday I was back into full tailspin mode again, just seeming to be unable to shake all the nasty fatigue and pain – I can lessen the pain using the pain killers, but that ups the fatigue and inability to focus, and what is a good balance one day isn’t the same the next.
Brian is becoming hyperaware of my moods (for me, sometimes it seems there’s only one, which is down; but he sees variations). He said “I’m going to call Cathy and see if she can come for a visit on Monday.” I knew then he was worried, because he was calling in the big guns.
He tried to get me to go see Prince of Persia both Saturday and Sunday, but I just physically couldn’t come up with the energy.
Monday morning, I was taking it easy expecting Cathy’s arrival around noon or so, but emotionally I was worked up to a peak again. I finally called the doctor’s office to talk to the triage nurse, and tell her I couldn’t go on this way. I mean, I had 4 months of taxol/avastin treatment, and even with the pneumonia, I never felt this bad. Heather told me that there are lots of things we can do in terms of taking breaks from chemo, from lowering the dose to changing drugs, but that this level of toxicity isn’t normal, and nobody should be trying to deal with it. As I was talking to her I realized that I’d always just answered questions about what side-effects I was having, but never really told them, except for the pain, how hard they were to deal with. Also, she said abraxane is one of the hardest drugs in the chemo regimen – I just figured that since it was similar to taxol that I must just be getting wimpier than I was when I had taxol.
Heather told me that she would make sure the doctor knew we’d had this conversation, but that I had to make sure that I talked to him about it when I saw him on next Tuesday. After I hung up, I started crying and just couldn’t stop.
By the time Cathy got to the house, I was down to just sniffles, but as soon as she got a look at me, she asked “Are you OK?”
“Oh, my nose is just runny. . . . . . and I’ve been crying.”
She just opened her arms and held me until I quit crying. Again.
Everything else we talked about was secondary to that and the goodbye hug she gave me. Sometimes, touch is the only healer.
Not this week which is just finishing, but last week, I had an emotional crisis.
Brought on in part by my homebound state, which in itself is partly brought on by trying to get my pain management right, it also digs out parts of me that were the most pessimistic and cynical aspects of my personality for many years. No matter how long ago or how thoroughly I’ve changed from that alienated, hard-headed, angry, blameful, unhappy person that I was decades ago, there are remnants of her that lay in wait for just such a difficult time, popping up her little Alien head right in the middle of my chest, leaving a bloody mess for me to clean up.
Now being homebound is bad enough, and being whacked out (or not enough whacked out) on pain medication is worse, but add in an insidious little voice that tells me that I’m not good enough for my friends, and why would anyone bother to be in touch with someone who doesn’t bother to be in touch with them, and you’ve got three prime ingredients for emotional crisis.
It’s true that I haven’t been very good at keeping in touch, although it is hard to do when you spend a lot of time sleeping; and even more difficult when you can’t seem to get the pain meds balanced so that you’re awake enough without being in too much pain. But the fact is that I *know* that the people who love me love me in spite of my poor communication style. Knowing that they have full lives is much more the kind of the thing that the “normal” Julie would think, or that they’re worried about overwhelming me with contact when I’m having enough trouble just getting my meds balanced, or that they’ve been meaning to call and are just no better at it than I am.
Sadly, I have to spend so much time with “Used to be Julie” who still resides in my head just for these kinds of instances, that it doesn’t take much to push me over the edge into depression and self-pity.
So that was the state I was in for most of last week. I basically told Brian that the only things keeping me living were he and the dog and cats, family, and friends – at that point, I told him, I have no purpose in life other than to be here because of them.
I’m not sure which is more pitiful – that you could read it as being that I’m just sticking around because you poor people need me; or that it is so depressing that I could believe living because of the love I have for that group is barely enough to keep me holding on.
Brian, bless him, understands me much better than anyone, and he knew that I needed to talk about it. And talk we did, around me sobbing into his shirt – I think this is the first time I’ve had a serious cry about being told I have terminal cancer. Of course I have something to be depressed about, but there’s no need for me to go creating reasons to be depressed.
One of the steps we decided on is that I need to get out of the house more often. The tricky part with this is a) choosing an activity that isn’t overwhelming or too long for the amount of energy I have (or am likely to have, when planning in advance). This weekend, we implemented this part of the plan by getting out to see a couple movies. You know, terminal cases can make anything seem profound, but does it seem like a bit much that I sobbed through the preview for the remake of The Karate Kid? I used up nearly half my allotment of kleenexes for the whole movie just on that preview alone! I managed to get the dose right to be able to stay awake and mostly comfortable in the movie theater seats; so we decided to try again and went to see Iron Man II on Monday. Again I hit the right dose. We did go out to dinner afterwards to The Old Spaghetti Factory – unfortunately my tastebuds are all whacked out from the chemo, so it was more or less a wasted effort on my part. Brian had leftovers for Tuesday, though. Just getting out helped my mood immensely.
The next biggest step to implement is for me to get over my fear of asking people for help. I’m afraid of being a burden, especially this early on in the whole process. In this particular case, help is synonomous with coming to visit. I’m going to figure out a way to set up a calendar that people can log into and put their name down for visits, but in the mean time, I am going to handle it manually.
I learned from a visit by my friend Sue yesterday that 2 hours is about my top max time – I was definitely ready for a nap by then. I’m having chemo on Tuesdays now for a while, while my Wednesdays have support group. Probably the best time to visit is either Monday afternoon/evening or Thursday afternoon/evening. Mornings are much more difficult for me, since they’re a prime time for sleeping. As long as I know in advance, though, pretty much any day but Friday is OK (Friday evening works, but morning/days don’t really).
The third step is for me to get out to visit people. Wednesdays, as mentioned is for my support group. Leah is putting together a small group for a beer after work next week – we’re keeping the list of names short so that it’s not too overwhelming. Brian is going to drive me there and home.
Hopefully between these three steps (and I really am going to try to make a better effort at keeping in touch, also), my current mood will stay improved as it is, and maybe get even better as I get into the hang of the whole crawling out of my shell thing. It’s doing so much better already that I’ve only cried about three profound things in this post.
(No, not really). . .
Many of mine are things that I *didn’t* do, although some are things I did do.
When I was quite young, my mom was taking me for swimming and diving lessons. I remember that the diving instructor was excited about my potential – mom said he was pushing me too hard, and that he was thinking I was Olympic material. I don’t know if that is true, but I do remember taking a dive, arching my back too much, and hitting the water such that it arched my back more.
I also remember seeing my mother freak out because I was hurt (I don’t know if I cried or just told them that my back hurt) and yelling at the instructor to save me, even though I was swimming to the ladder. I learned early, then, not to make a big deal when I was hurt, but I think I also absorbed my mother’s fears. Lessons were dropped, and I don’t know if I was the one who said I didn’t want to continue, because mom scared me out of it; or if mom was too scared for me to continue. I think early on she was a helicopter mother before there was such a denomination; which it’s too bad she later grew into not wanting to take us kids out for sports, dance, or anything else. I have no idea how much of that might be related to her fears, but I’m sure at least some of it was her alcoholic detachment to us kids.
Another example of not making a big deal out of being hurt was when mom & I were visiting her friend Mrs. Denning, and I was out on the corner of the block. A couple boys on bicycles came tearing around the corner and rode me down. They asked if I was OK, and I said yes, through my tears, and the boys kept on going. I waited until I stopped crying, thinking that would be the only sign of trouble, but of course there were marks, and maybe a torn dress. Mom went out to find the bicyclists instead of taking me home right away.
I was a shy child, and so I developed a dry sense of humor, where I sometimes would say something true in a serious manner that adults would take as a joke; mostly because I’d more often say outlandish things in a serious manner. This, by the way, is not a regret, more something that I still appreciate about myself; even though I keep it tight under control, because it can still get me into trouble occasionally.
Briefly I took ballet lessons – one of my friends was, and somehow I was invited to join. I remember very little of it, except complaining that I had a headache, which may or may have not been the case. If so, I think it was brought on by fear – even at that age I didn’t fit in, and I seem to recall a male dance instructor who was very demanding (and maybe a bit of a prima donna?), so it was probably fear.
In grade school, I took violin lessons, but I never caught on. I was too shy to practice in front of my family, and besides, I’d wanted to take flute lessons like the girl across the street. So after the first obligatory lessons, I never took lessons until piano in high school, when I was still embarrassed to practice in front of family, but managed to become good enough that I was the bethel musician several terms for the Job’s Daughters bethel of which I was a member. Although somewhere along the way I picked up playing the recorder.
When I was very young, I used to lock myself in the downstairs powder room and sing, because I thought nobody could hear me in there. How wrong I was! Finally my mom and older brother started teasing me about singing, what was I thinking about while I was singing in the bathroom? Just singing, of course. After that I made sure nobody could hear me by locking myself into the bedroom and turning on classical music very loud. Mom never even suggested I get singing lessons – I never asked because I was really entering my pathologically shy stage by then. Being ganged up on by mom and my brother didn’t lend itself to building confidence.
So many potential talents that were cut off from fear; the one I regret most is that I never took singing lessons – as it turns out I have a pretty good voice and a good ear; and my mandolin teacher says I have perfect pitch. Secondly, I wish I’d learned to play more than just the piano, and I wish I’d carried on with the piano, too.
So often life gets in the way, and you set things aside for something that seems more important at the time; or you put things off for the same reason. Long term, sometimes the new things are more important; but you should try to find time to continue working on the skill all the same, because it may become more important to you again in the future. The trick is to make the evaluation at the time of which is currently more important, and which is long term more important. And if you’ve stopped working on it, or delayed it, and a time comes when you miss working on that skill, don’t delay. Find a way to make it work into your schedule and your budget. Just do it.
Emily Rose, I heard your mom teasingly tell you to stop dancing everywhere; but I say dance everywhere, all the time. Just do it.
It’s not fair!
I want to see Emily Rose dance the Sugar Plum Fairy. I want to see her graduate. I want to see her become a professional ballerina.
I *might* see the first; the last is probably right out, especially if she goes to college first.
Why do I have to have cancer? There’s so many things that I want to do. I want to go back to school for a Masters at least in literature, and maybe history. I want to fill my house with quilts I’ve made as well as give away a whole bunch. I want to knit my own wardrobe. I want to bead beautiful jewelry and have plenty of occasions to wear it. I want to keep learning to play the mandolin. I want to do some voice training, so I can at least hear the ghost of the voice I might have had if I’d had training when I was younger. I want to get back into shape (if not the shape I was in at 17, at least the shape I was in when Brian and I got married). I want to read so many more books. I want to play with the friends I’ve already got, and make new ones to play with. I want to travel. I want to get to know my nieces and nephews on both sides of the family, and get to know *their* kids. I want to continue my job where I left off, taking more responsibility for the event planning, and getting to know more about designing websites. I want to touch people’s lives, and be there for them the way so many people are being there for me in my time of need. I want to play with my cats and dog. I want to love my husband and spend a longer rest-of-my-life with him than it looks as if I’ll get.
And this is how I’m feeling 6 days after getting such excellent news on Monday. Guess it’s a good thing it wasn’t bad news!
OK, now that I’ve gotten that whine out (and had a granola bar), I feel much better. Don’t worry, Ma, I’m doing fine now.
Brian’s surgery on Friday went fine, and although there was a significant enough amount of pain for Brian to actually resort to the prescription pain pills on Friday evening/Saturday morning, by Saturday evening he was down to just ibuprofen.
It just amazes me that they can fix knees with three little holes in an in-office procedure these days – when my first husband had knee surgery, he was in the hospital overnight (at least), and has a big scar running down from the top to the bottom of his knee – I think it’s around 6″ long or so.
Thanks again to cousin Jeanette for taking Brian over and waiting with him while he had surgery. I’d planned on going with them, but as the week wore on, it became obvious that the chemo was still hitting me pretty hard. So I waited at home for them.
And because I don’t really have the brains this morning to blog about anything else, here are some pictures for your delectation.
Robin's definition of foot rest
And April the cat gets in on some of the action:
April's definition of back rest
We’re going to the ballet today, and I have to remember to wear a mask, since I’m probably immune-compromised at this point. I’ll know for sure tomorrow, but around all the kids, probably best not to take any chances.
I read an article the other day that was written by a woman who has been through breast cancer, and a recurrence of breast cancer.
The impression I came away with is that there is nothing you can say to a cancer patient that is going to go over well.
For heaven’s sake, don’t talk to them about how they look – if you think they’re looking poorly, don’t let on, because you’re likely to get “Well, of course, I have cancer, so I’m not going to be looking my best”; but if you complement them on how well they’re looking, they’re going to be upset, as if they think you don’t believe they have cancer “Well, thank you, but I feel like crap on the inside”.
Whatever you do, don’t mention either survivors or non-survivors – non-survivors remind them where they might be headed, and survivors remind them that they might not make it.
And who cares about what you’re feeling about them having cancer? Are you devastated to know your friend has cancer? Well, suck it up, because those cancer patients don’t have time to worry about you, there’s only room in there for what they’re feeling.
And don’t bother to send flowers or cards if all you want is acknowledgment of your kindness and generosity – cancer patients can’t make that kind of effort to say thank you for it.
Aargh!
Can you tell that this article rather set me off?
I’m sure that at least some of the author’s experiences warranted the kind of selfish, cruel responses she advocates, but were most people really being stupid as well as well-meaning? Probably not. I myself have run into a couple instances where someone deserved a cut, which I mostly avoided by responding kindly to their intended nastiness; but it was with people I didn’t know well, and at least one was a competing cancer patient who felt I was getting too much attention, and her not enough. I seriously doubt whether the people that this author writes about really were trying for glory by giving her flowers, or karma by telling her that they were so upset by her news that they were having trouble sleeping.
I have experienced the “Pity Eyes” the author refers to, but usually only from people who don’t know me well enough, or aren’t comfortable enough with mortality that they have no idea what to say to someone who’s just announced that they have cancer (for the xth time, even). There are times when those looks make me feel like the “Already Dead Julie”, but usually I handle them the same way that I handle the more confident people who express their shock/sadness/grief that I am back in the cancer saddle; with a smile and a thank you for the heartfelt wishes.
Because even those people who try to make me feel better by talking about how well I’m looking (and currently, other than being very bald and very tired, I *do* look pretty well), or who remark on how tired I look some days, have an unwritten text of “I hope you’re feeling well, and if there is anything I can do to help, just let me know.”
And the people that I have to comfort about me having cancer? They remind me how much I’m loved and cared about – anyone who is getting a hug from me is also giving me a hug.
How sad to live in a world where you perceive everyone in it for what they can get out of it – I know there are people like that in the world, but I guess I’ve made the choice not to surround myself with such people, but with people who are genuine and caring, even if they don’t always know what to say. No doubt the author definitely had some unpleasant experiences, some of which were brought on by jerks; but I suspect at least some of the bad experiences were driven by her own perceptions of what she thought they meant.
Being a cancer patient can be an all-consuming lifestyle, especially when you can’t just go driving somewhere whenever you want. But even if it is more of your life than you want it to be, you’re still human, and it doesn’t remove the basics of etiquette from your list of how to treat people. Is someone being a jerk? Feel free to let them know it. Is someone being awkward in expressing their feelings about you having cancer? Give them a break and take the behind-the-scenes message of “I care, but I don’t know how to act or what to say” to heart. Having cancer doesn’t give you the right to be less than human; or give you the privilege of taking your anger out on some poor unsuspecting sympathizer.
But if you are in it just for the glory, I’m sure there is someone out there who will be glad to let you have a ride on their cancer wagon ;-}
In lieu of anything illuminating or deep today (because believe me, it would take a major drilling effort to find anything deep under the load of fatigue and chemobrain riding me today, and yesterday), I’m including my very first video that I’ve ever taken.
The actor does a great job, the videographer needs some training.
**************************
Well that’s revolting – I need to pay an upgrade fee to load videos onto my blog. Forget that!
Instead, here are a couple pictures of the dog, the cat and the quilt:
Ahhh . . . the cool hardwood floor!
Robin is definitely a hot dog, and he prefers to lie on the linoleum or the hardwood floor to stay cool, even during non-warm weather.
Jeremy snuggling with my new quilt
This is the quilt that Evelyn made for me – I still haven’t gotten any of the original pictures off Brian’s camera that show the whole thing, so that post is still coming up.
That’s it for today, kids!
Many people have asked us this question, or something similar.
There’s not an easy answer, although we’re finding out more about how every day.
To start with, we’re scared, we’ve cried, we’ve spent long hours late at night in bed discussing serious aspects of the situation. Most of you don’t know about this because it was just the 2 of us (well, the five of us if you count the dog and the 2 cats); I’ve mentioned it briefly in the blog, or at least obliquely, but haven’t gone into great details about the hair-ripping and teeth-gnashing (this time I didn’t have to shave my head. . .).
Do you see what I did there? I answered the question as best as I know how – we live with this by making it funny. Brian and I have always spent a lot of our time making each other laugh, and I think we just don’t know how to deal with *anything* without laughing.
On Saturday afternoon, Brian took me over to the ER for the usual chest pains, this time with a side of compression and mild panic attacks at feeling as if I couldn’t breathe. As we sat there in the room between doctor and nurse visits, one of the nurses came by and closed the door – at that point, I realized that we’d been laughing and joking, and probably disturbing the sick people in the rooms around us. Who but us, I asked Brian, would go to the emergency room and act like we’re out on a picnic?
(Side note: there was nothing detected in my left lung, and the doctor said “If lying down flat feels bad, don’t do it.” And yes, he did say exactly those words, but not in a mean way – basically there’s nothing they can do for something that has generic symptoms and no obvious cause, and for the most part, the symptoms were gone by Sunday evening. So we don’t know what the problem was, but unless they get more specific or much worse, it’s yet another waiting game. Sorry, didn’t want anyone to be worrying.)
At this point, I suppose I could write a scholarly article on the value of laughter as the best medicine, but all I really know is that when Brian and I laugh together, even about something as scary and serious as liver mets, it pushes back the darkness a little, and makes my heart feel lighter.
And of course, we live with this by depending on our awesome friends and family, and the doctors and nurses, and the kindness and generosity of the people we work with who call, visit, send cards and e-mails, and who laugh with us about the absurd and silly stuff as well as the scary stuff.
Just today, my girlfriend Sharon, who was scheduled to pick me up after chemo, showed how much she loves me by making sure I was taken care of when she was more in need of some tlc than I was. Due to a change in plans, my chemo got rescheduled to next week, so I ended up calling her 2-1/2 hours early to come pick me up. She wasn’t ready, but said she would be there as soon as she could. Knowing that even if she took ten minutes to get ready to go I would see her in 20 – 25 minutes, I said no rush. An hour later I wasn’t sure if I was more concerned or grumpy, but was definitely a little of both. Just then she pulled up. As I got in the car, she apologized profusely, because right after I’d called, her 87-year-old father’s assisted living facility had called to tell her that he was being sent to the ER. She just dropped by to tell me that her husband was on his way from his job to give me a ride home while she went to the ER to be with her father. I, of course, was mortified at having felt grumpy, and told her that Brian could have canceled his appointment, or I could have taken a taxi, or something; but she wasn’t having any of that. She needed to make sure I was taken care of, and her husband was a real champ to come get me. I owe them big-time.
And finally, one of the bad ways that I live with this is to cocoon. I tend to keep to myself, don’t reach out to others, and end up spending a lot of time alone. Now, I’ve always been this way, so it’s not something that changes easily; and in some ways, the quiet solitude is good for me; but I also can get too deep into my head and start feeling depressed. So thank you for keeping tabs on me, for calling/writing, etc. I’m working on trying to be better about reaching out; but you may have seen how I dealt with it at work – I wasn’t feeling well, and was worried about what the mass on my liver meant (I had a pretty good idea, but there’s always hope). I worked from home a lot around doctor appointments, when I was in I kept my door closed so I didn’t have to run into a situation where I had to tell someone about an undiagnosed problem, and when it was confirmed and I had started treatment, I basically dropped out of sight without a word to anyone but Shi-Yi and HR. That was pretty anti-social of me, but I just wasn’t up to dealing with the emotion of telling people about my third round of cancer, and this one much more grim than the previous two.
So we deal with it in some exceptionally great ways, but also we tend to isolate ourselves, which isn’t good. Probably much like so many others both before me and dealing with it now – is it just that we don’t know anyone who is dealing with something so bad, or that they deal with it so well, that we just can’t see how well they’re dealing with it? Maybe some of each. . .
p.s. It’s not too late to donate to the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer fundraiser. Just use the link on one of my previous posts to get there. The walk is over, but the need goes on.
. . . and I missed it.
(OK, so I started this post Saturday, but didn’t finish it.)
I’ve been immune-compromised since the last chemo, and giving myself neupogen shots. Apparently I caught something, because I felt OK Friday evening, to the point that I had everything ready to go in the morning for the walk; but in the middle of the night I started having trouble sleeping, with a little bit of everything chemo-side-effect-related cropping up. So unfortunately I wasn’t up for the walk.
Brian and Robin, however, were, so they went off to meet up with the Schrödinger Team over at the Rose Garden Arena, where “a good time was had by all”. They took the 2.5 mile route, and made good time. “They” are: Leah (thank you for organizing this year!), her husband Dan and son Marshall; Carrie, James, and Lucas (who, I understand was very well behaved! (Lucas, not James)(well, I didn’t hear that James was badly behaved, although he and Brian were apparently making plans for how they *could* get arrested. . .)); Dean and Dionne (Dean himself just had some surgery – good on him for being in good enough shape to be walking so far so soon!); and Evelyn, Chris, and Vada, who came down from Seattle for the walk. Forgive me if I missed anybody – Brian told me who was there, and I think I mentioned everyone.
I know there were several other people who made donations: Schrödinger made a sizable donation (and thank you Michelle!); Dean and Evelyn made donations as well as walking; Leah and Marshall donated/raised the most collective donations on the team; and Jenny, Dan, Kevin, and Carrie Weston all made donations. If you made a donation that I don’t list here, it is because some people chose to make “stealth” donations without putting their names on the honor rolls. But know that I appreciate those as much as the ones that are “claimed” ;-}
And special thanks go to Evelyn, who made me a beautiful quilt – I will post pictures on the blog soon. The label says:
“Nature’s peace will flow into you
as sunshine flows into trees.
The winds will blow their own
freshness into you, and the storms
their energy, while cares will drop
off like autumn leaves.”
John Muir
Laura came to my chemo session today, which also involved meeting with the doctor. Fair warning: I told her this might give her tmi about my bodily functions, and told her I could come get her when it was time for chemo; but she decided to tough it out. I think she was a little flustered by the end.
And fair warning to readers: euphemisms ahead. If euphemisms are still too much for you, I recommend you skip this post.
This week I met with the gynecological oncologist who removed my ovaries (this is not a euphemism), because about 1 or 1-1/2 weeks into chemo I developed what seemed like an abrasion that had a lump associated with it down in my lady parts (euphemism). I thought at first it might be an ingrown hair causing an abscess (non-euphemism), but not being a contortionist was unable to get a good look, and it eventually cleared up to just being a small lump under the skin. It actually took another week or so for me to have a paranoid attack about whether someone (well, OK, women specifically), can develop cancer in their flower petals (euphemism).
So in my meeting with Dr. Sweetheart, she reassured me that although it was possible to have cancer there, it much more likely is a cyst or a healing abrasion, ingrown hair, or other injury-type lump. If it hasn’t completely cleared up in the next month or two, we’ll do a biopsy, but I’m no longer totally paranoid. As to the cause of the lump, I would have to relate that with many more euphemisms than even I care to type; so let it simply be said that it is still a mystery. However, the conversation regarding cause led to many more euphemistic-laden subjects, and neither Doctor Sweetheart nor I flinched, but I sensed some going on in my peripheral vision.
Suffice it to say that Brian and I are scheduling a date night for my next chemo break-week (euphemism).
Last night, Laura had suggested that I download Scrabble to my iPhone so we could play during chemo. We chose some recliners over in the corner, and passed the phone back and forth. Now, I’m a pretty good word person, and I know some pretty good $20 dollar words. I even know some pretty good $50 words; but seriously, what kind of word can you make with the letters NEELNER? or UUSKINI? and why, when Laura was getting all the “bad” letters (Z, X, Q, etc) was she not only able to make words, but get all the Triple Letter and Triple Word scores? I, sirs, have been hustled.
Next time, I’ll have to play the cancer card.
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