Pushing Through

My bones are creaking this morning, from too many days in a row of getting up and down ladders and hefting books and heavy boxes and crawling around on my hands and knees picking up random detritus, all in an effort to get the school library ready for academic prime time.  It was a mess, and now it is much better, but my body is much worse for the wear this year.

After the last year and a half of breast cancer treatment, my muscle tone is shot and my body has, unfortunately, gotten used to a much lower level of activity.  My usual ability to push through is still there intellectually:  the spirit is definitely willing, but the body is way, way too weak for what my mind thinks that I can do.

Irritating.

The good news is that I could still get things done, and my room looks wonderful and is almost ready for students.  I still have some shelves to clean and books to reorganize, but overall it is looking really good at the moment.

Today will be a partial rest day.  There is laundry to do and kitchen cleaning to catch up on, although Mr. ReddHedd helped tremendously yesterday by doing dishes and a lot of laundry while The Peanut and I were at school working on my room.  The day to day doesn't stop while extra stuff gets piled on, but this year we have managed to muddle through it without too much impact at home.

We've begun making more healthy food choices in earnest, and I can feel it making a difference in me, even with the achy knees this morning.  So that's a good thing.  I have eaten more veggies this week than I have in a long while, and it has made a difference in mental sharpness, even though it hasn't shown up on the scales just yet.  Can't expect an overnight miracle, but I am happy with the direction we're going at the moment.

As in most things in life, the key appears to be pushing through whatever barrier decides to throw itself into your path on any given day. 

Get Out of Your Own Way and Find A Way to Laugh: A Few Thoughts on Surviving the Next Wave

As long time readers know, the last few years have meant one wave after another crashing into our little family, pummeling and buffeting us to and fro as life crashed over the lot of us.  Last year's breast cancer diagnosis and its resulting surgery, chemo and radiation were just the tip of the iceberg.

I wish that I were kidding.

But on the back end of all of this, sitting here in our lovely sun room with a nice breeze blowing through the open window screen, birds trilling in the trees outside and sunlight streaming in, I have to tell you that life is really, really good. 

We ought to spend more time savoring the joys and triumphs and a lot less time fretting over the things that annoy or worry us.  Because it is in savoring the journey, the little things each and every day that make us happy, that we find our happiness along the way.

That happiness is everything.

Without question, the thing that has gotten me through every single hurdle, bump in the road, and nasty pothole over the last ten years and counting, is what I am about to share with you.

Get out of your own way and find a way to laugh.

It seems really simple, but the truth is that reminding myself of this when all seemed dismal is what has brought me back from the brink time and time again.

My curse is that I over-analyze everything, and if given the opportunity, I will worry something six ways to Sunday in order to completely and totally break it down and analyze it to death. The result of this, though, is that I get stuck in a repeating loop of awful that spirals down into dismal worry and perpetual gloom if I am not careful.  No one wants to live in that mind-space permanently, believe me.

What we found during the depths of my cancer treatment, though, when the chemo was taking its toll and I was only up and about for maybe 2 or 3 hours in any given day, is this:  if you can find a way to laugh, even if it is just a little bit, the world seems a little brighter and life seems a little more bearable.

If you can string together several days in a row where you find a way to laugh, even on the worst day of the worst week of the worst crisis of your life, then you can get through anything.

Is It Summer Yet?

This year is whizzing by so quickly that I can barely catch my breath.  It is as if I blink and another month has flown by me.

But I am exhausted, and the days are not moving quickly enough toward summer break.

Am spending today getting a number of things done, including a bit of research on recovering strength and energy after cancer treatment.  I'd like my energy back, please.

I have had it with feeling so pooped.  There have to be some pro-active steps that I can take to rebuild my energy levels and feel a little more like my old self instead of like an ancient, staggering zombie.  Please tell me there is something, other than patience and time, that will help.

In the meantime, part of my morning will be spent dreaming of summer, when sleeping in will be a possibility and warmth will return.  (she types hopefully, as it was in the 30s here when I woke up this morning...brrrrrrrr!)


If anyone has suggestions on how to get back to normal, or at least closer to it than I am right now, I'd love to hear them.

Peering Under The Surface

It is quiet in the house this morning.  In the neighborhood, too.

The cold is getting to everyone, I think.  Even though it has warmed up into the 30s, spring is so far away as to be laughable, and it feels like the entire world has hunkered down to survive the chill until we can get to the next patch of sunshine.

But hunkering down has become too much of a habit for me, and it is time to break myself of it.

This week, I noticed something alarming about myself:  doubt has become endemic in my day to day decision-making.  Not just of the "can I succeed at this" variety, but the "will I even be able to start let alone finish this" and the "should I even attempt this" sort, too.

Cancer has left me second-guessing everything about myself.  That is unacceptable.

Hooray! Last Day Of Radiation

It is the last day of radiation.  Hooray!

There cannot possibly be enough celebration at this point.  But we are certainly going to try our best.

Ahead, there will be more testing and a number of years of tamoxifen or something similar, and a bazillion scans and appointments and whatever else may be needed.  My doctor will be going over some of that with me today, and there will be more discussions with even more doctors to come, I'm certain.

But this is a huge milestone, and I am going to savor the heck out of it.

Thank you, one and all, for all the support and encouragement through all of this.  It really has meant the world.

PS -- Radiation comfort tip of the day:  a cheap men's cotton t-shirt, turned inside out so that the seams aren't touching your skin.  It may indeed be nirvana.  Bless you, kind nurse, who taught me this.

Seemingly Endless

This is the part of the treatment slog that feels seemingly endless.  The grind of going, every single day during the week. over and over again, to get voluntarily irradiated.

Not only is it mentally unnatural, but it has begun to be physically grueling as well. 

I have a little less than two weeks left after today's session.  While I used to be able to say that I could grit my teeth and get through anything, doubts have begun to creep into my thoughts on this front.  As I sit here this morning, swollen and achy, it isn't exactly a given that I will continue to trudge forward back into the radioactive fray, mostly because I fear an increase of the already substantial raw pain that has become more of a constant this week.

Sometimes it feels as though the whole of life is survived this way.  On the darkest of days, after a long slog like this has already been with its months and months of treatment, it can certainly feel that way.  On a day when just putting one foot in front of the other to force yourself back for another day of a whirring, blistering few minutes of zapping that have such longer lasting effects afterward.

Today, though, is Friday, which for me means that I get two days off to just begin to heal up before I subject myself to yet another full week of this.  For the first time in all of this trudge, this morning I am literally having to force myself to get ready and go.  It is a hard place to be for someone who hates to be a whiner and, even worse, hates to be cowardly in the face of a challenge she knows she must meet.

And meet it, I will.

I will because there is nothing for it but to grit my teeth and get through it.

Hope your day is better than this.  Tell me something fun that you are doing with your day, or with your weekend, or post a link to something hilarious in the comments.  A giggle would go a long way today...

A Change In The Light

The light of the sun has shifted ever so slightly, so that the color of the light is more glowing, more mellow, more flattering to the landscape on the whole.  The golden days of autumn are fast approaching, with their fiery leaves and glorious cool mornings rapidly bearing down on the last remnants of summer.

There are most likely a number of hot "dog days" left, but you can feel the crispness of autumn in the air this morning.

Lately, the constant shift and tug of time, pulling me swiftly, swiftly forward, has been a far more conscious experience even as I far too often feel like I am standing outside of the swirling chaos, looking inward from some place far away from myself.  The ever-present hum of daily cancer treatments, the whirring and buzzing of the radiation equipment and the feel of being trapped in a constant arcade game as it zaps my cells, day in and day out, does not lend itself to a feeling of reality.

It is a surreal way to live one's life, five days a week.  Week after week after week, coming so quickly on the heels of the flat out exhaustion of chemo that I have barely had any chance of catching my breath.

I am at the halfway point of the radiation, and beginning to see a shift in the light at the end of this treatment tunnel.  But what that means going forward, I have no idea.  There will be more scans, more tests, and several years of tamoxifen or something similar to come.

This morning, though, as I sit here in our sunroom bathed in the glorious golden-hued autumnal sunlight, my world feels ever so slightly like a bit less of a slog.

Which is a desperately needed balm on a bit of a wounded perspective from all of this.  Looking on the bright side, indeed.

Planning A Trip Back To Normal

As of the last week or so, life has finally begun to feel "normal" again.

Whatever "normal" means in the wake of a major breast cancer scare and the associated surgery, chemo and radiation frenzy that follows, anyway.

Mr. ReddHedd says he knew we had turned a corner when I was willing to not only talk about a vacation, but then actually begin to plan one for our family that included making real reservations and everything.  Who knew that planning something more than a week in the future could be so daunting?

When the breast cancer diagnosis happened, he tried to get me to think about some vacation of some sort, so we would have something to look forward to on the horizon past the exhaustive slog of treatment.  But I could not do it.

I just could not allow myself to think about this in terms of "future me" when I was so caught up in the "me that is surviving today and trying to inch forward to tomorrow."  So scary and limiting, and completely unlike the me of before who loved to plan and think and dream about future fun.

Cancer treatment tended to shorten my horizon window a bit, because the hour to hour changes that occur -- especially during chemo -- didn't allow for a lot of future planning.   "Risk averse" doesn't begin to describe it.

Radiation Begins Today

It begins.  Again.

Radiation treatments will start for me this morning and I have the temporary tattoo markers to show for it:  they use them as guides so the targeted beam hits the right spot every time.   Oh yeah, I'm a rebel, I have three tattoos.  (You have to squint to see them, but still...I want the street cred.  I think I've earned it at this point and then some.)

Looks like I will have a series of thirty-three treatments in total, five days a week, every single week for almost seven weeks until they are completed, with weekends off to heal a little.  Each treatment should last about twenty minutes.

Oh joy.

It could be a whole lot worse, so I am grateful to be here and not in hospice.  Let me just say that up front.  But this has been an exhausting slog and it is not done yet.  How do parents of small children ever explain all of this to them as they go through treatment?

The staff at the UHC Cancer Center have been fantastic all the way through this.  Am so glad that they had great facilities near our house, so that I didn't have to go far away for treatment -- that would have been incredibly rough on The Peanut and she's been through enough this summer with me as it is.

But life goes on, even if our summer has whizzed by in nothing flat and not been all that relaxing.  For us, school begins again next week.

Where did the summer go, seriously??!!??

We still have school supplies to pick up and a few assorted school clothing items to snag, so somewhere today I will be taking The Peanut to shop if at all possible so we can avoid the weekend insanity of the back to school frenzy.  Somehow, in the next week or so, I also have to get my classroom ready for the kids to return.

Or, at least, as ready as I can under the circumstances.

Let The Words Fall Out

Apologies to the couple of readers who e-mailed that they were worried about no posts last weekend. Meant to set up some posts before we left and then life got away from me entirely -- didn't mean to cause alarm, everything is just fine (or fine as it can be given that there are still residual chemo side effects, but at least I can taste my morning coffee again -- woo hoo!).

We got away for a desperately needed mini-vacay last weekend.  Nothing huge, but some seriously needed time to blow off the stink of chemo for a few days of living away from the Big C(ancer) treatment-o-rama.  It has been overwhelming, exhausting, and too much like boot camp in terms of breaking me down without the adjacent building me back up phase for too many weeks in a row, and I needed a break.  We all did.

You need to pause every once in a while and allow yourself to exhale.  Never in my whole life have those words been more true than right now.

Saddling up this morning for the next rung in the treatment ladder:  radiation oncology. 

Today I find out how many weeks of daily radiation I'll be dealing with and when it begins.  Have to figure out scheduling and how to juggle The Peanut's schedule along with mine for the weeks that I'll be doing this -- so many things to try to track all at once, with a brain that is so foggy it is incredibly charitable to call it a brain at all.

Spent some time this morning trying to figure out how to make our meals even more healthfully packed with fruits and veggies.  Variety, variety, variety, so we are eating a rainbow of healthy antioxidants and assorted bits of fiber and vitamins.  Planning some yummy baked chicken thighs for dinner this evening, along with a healthy salad and some veggies of some sort.

If I get time this afternoon, I'll post my chicken thigh recipe -- The Peanut gobbles it up and pronounces it "dee-lish" every time I make it.  That's a major victory, given how infrequently little miss picky pants will eat something new. 

Systematic Weeding

Yesterday, I finished my last chemo treatment, getting all the way through the infusion with minimal hiccups and disruptions.  Gratitude is my word of the day today.

Given that this part of treatment has concluded, it is time for a bit of self-assessment.

The last few months, I have been systematically weeding out things that are not working for us or piling up uselessly in the forgotten corners and drawers around our house.  This has been an ongoing project for several weeks in a row -- a little bit at a time because, for obvious reasons, I honestly don't have the energy at the moment for wholesale cleaning.

We have accumulated way too much crap.  That's just the truth of it.

The accumulation has been ongoing for quite some time, so it isn't as though it all came in the door the same day or anything.  But holy cow, how a family of three can amass so much random crapola is beyond me.

Well, it isn't really that far beyond me.  Given how insane things have been in our lives for the last few months with a second cancer diagnosis in a three year span of time, it is understandable that the little things would get shoved aside a bit.  When you add in several years in a row prior to that of crushingly painful family deaths, and all of the adjunct work -- including making room for Grandpa to live with us for a long stretch with a week's notice to make it work?

Things just pile up...everywhere.

Let me just say up front that I would not have done anything differently.  When family needs your help, you step up -- it is what we do in our family, always have, always will.

But for my own little family's sake, it is time to do some serious weeding to get us back to some baseline of organized sanity.  Not to sound all new agey or self-help-book soaked or anything, but I am wholly convinced of this:  all of the external clutter is an outward manifestation of how topsy-turvy and crazed so much of our life has become the last few years in a row.  We need to reassess how we are doing things, and make some changes for the better for all of our sakes.  And I intend to do just that.

Miles To Go Before I Sleep

My last chemo treatment is scheduled for tomorrow.  Hooray!

That said, I am apparently dealing with taxotere toxicity at the moment, which has resulted in severe itching on the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet, and general skin pain and itching pretty much everywhere.  Ugh.

Let me just say for the record that this sucks. 

Hot baths make it worse, benedryl hasn't begun to help to cut this, and am now dealing with a hefty daily steroid dosage for a few days to try to help my body cope with the ick.  Meanwhile, I'm chugging copious amounts of water and trying to eat lots and lots of fruits and veggies to help flush out my already overburdened system to make things work properly tomorrow.  I feel like I am sloshing from fluid retention as my poor system attempts to cope with all of this, but there is nothing for it but to keep doing all the right things and hope my body finds some equilibrium somewhere by the end.

The good news is that my last chemo session should be able to proceed as planned.  Thank goodness for small favors, eh?  The last week or so has been a rough, rough slog, but we are surviving it. 

Nothing for it but to grit my teeth and keep pushing forward.

The View From Here

Samson and Delilah may have been onto something with their connect the dots on removal of hair and its relationship to loss of strength.  There may, indeed, be a direct connection.

Clearly, I speak from experience.  The photo below the fold is what chemo looks like at our house.
 
These days, I wake up early despite desperately needing more sleep.  My hair is a tiny layer of fuzz at this point, and still falling out...everywhere, and I do mean everywhere (sorry for that mental image)...that any is even left at this stage of the treatments.  My latest war has been with stomach acid and an intermittent pleural infusion pain in my chest -- but those are manageable side effects compared to the ones that are closer to when I get my infusions.

My last chemo is scheduled for next Wednesday, the 24th of July.

Or, as I think of it anyway, my impending day of freedom.  Boo yah.

Emotionally, this is all beginning to wear holes in my armor.  It is a slog -- don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise to minimize your exposure or worry.   The good news is that I have been able to cook and drive and keep up with doing things with The Peanut most days, even when I'm kind of feeling rotten and have to push myself.  There have been very few "crawl into bed and not even be able to deal with the rest of the world through the haze" days, and I am immensely grateful for that for my family's sake as well as my own.  But those days have happened, complete with wracking sobs and personal pity parties alone in our bedroom that I'm not particularly proud of after the fact.  It is harder and harder to turn that off once it starts, which makes me afraid to let it out these days.

This slog is wearing on me at the moment.

To See The Glass Half Full

It has been a rough weekend at our house.  We knew that it was coming:  everyone who had any experience with this had told me that at some point in every chemo treatment, you hit a wall of sorts.  With my third round of chemo last Wednesday, we knew that things were going to continue to build up in my system and that there would be a chance that the wall was edging nearer and nearer.

But I didn't just hit mine, I slammed into it going full speed which is typical for me on so many levels.  It leveled me flat out for the entire weekend.

The thing is, though?

You get through it.  Bit by bit, hour by hour, the clock keeps ticking forward.  As the earth continues to turn on its axis oblivious to the agony of any one individual, what is potentially unbearable over the course of a few hours becomes history in the days to come, and then begins to vanish entirely from the line of your horizon.

As the hours tick, tick, tick forward and away from whatever it was that was so unimaginably large only moments ago, you awaken to find that that very same difficulty has already begun to be a memory that will soon be a far distant one.  Whatever seems unbearable in the moment is much more easily borne if you view it instead as a tiny snapshot moment.  It is merely a pinprick of light in an otherwise blazing sea of stars that represent each and every thing you have ever done or will do.  It is so filled with experiences and bits and pieces that make up the whole of who you are that any singular moment -- even a really devastatingly painful and horrible one -- does not eat up the rest like a voracious black hole if you put it in its proper, long-term view perspective.

What I have learned is this:  you can endure pretty much anything if you can find a way to make it small in your mind.  I have had to learn to stop magnifying the small, annoying little bits and pieces of lifetime detritus into something larger than they ever need to be, and instead focus on the happier and shiner moments of gratitude and joy that pepper the darker spots in between, to savor the blessings properly when they come my way even amidst the darkness.

Cancer may very well be rebuilding me as a glass half full person.

Still Alive And Kicking

The world is gray and exceptionally rainy, the soggy sluicing of car tires against the roadways punctuated by bouts of thunder and flashes of lightening that threaten to banish the dog to her favorite hiding spot behind the chair and away from the windows for the rest of the day.

It is the perfect day after chemo, because all that my body wants to do this morning is cuddle into a chair with a soft and warm blanket, and spend the day reading and doing as little as possible.

I may not get an entire day of relaxation, this being dance recital week and all.  But I can at least get a couple of hours of calm and quiet to savor, right?

Yesterday's chemo was a rough round.  I had a horrible reaction that felt like a burning elephant was crushing my chest and that I would never again be able to draw any decent breath -- it came on so quickly that I barely had time to gasp out a word to the mercifully attentive staff, who were already racing to my side because my pale skin had gone raspberry red in an instant.  While this is not unusual during chemo given that they are pumping you full of poisonous ick, it resulted in us having to stop the drip, immediately add in a lot of steroids and benedryl, and then go more slowly for the rest of the treatment.

They will have to tweak things going forward to deal with my body's attempt to save itself from the very thing that is being used to save me from cancer.  Go figure.

Two down, two more to go.  Then several weeks of radiation.  Then several years of tamoxifen.  And who knows what else.  It is a long and winding road, indeed. 

But if it means I don't have to do any of this again, ever?  Then I will take the road now, thank you very much, to be able to giggle over something silly with my daughter or read with her snuggled in bed or watch The Peanut graduate from college and walk down the aisle and snuggle with grandchildren and laugh my way through another wonderful vacation with the family I love so much and just sit and hold the hand of the man I love so dearly.

Shedding

This morning, I woke up, stumbled into the bathroom, ran a hand through my hair to smooth out the bedhead...and came back with a handful of my own hair.

Chemo.  What can you do?

The thing about cancer is that it feel like a series of little losses:  bit by bit by bit by bit, one right after the other but spaced just far enough apart that you can feel them fully, each and every time.  It is insidiously exhausting emotionally, even without all the physical manifestations and side effects from the treatment.

But it is what it is.  You get through it as best you can and keep moving forward, right?

The Answer Is: Chemo

We got my oncotype results back yesterday. Looks like the tumor characteristics are really aggressive, which is not the best of news.

When you add in how far against my chest wall this little sucker was buried along with the test results?  You get a team of doctors who do not want to take any chances that we have left any traces of microtumors behind to metastasize.

They are recommending that the next step is chemo.  As much as that scares the bejeebers out of me, I have to agree with them.

My first chemo infusion will be on May 22nd. 

That also happens to be our 20th wedding anniversary.   We had hoped to spend it in Paris this year.  Sadly, not so much.  Instead, I'll be sipping a radioactive cocktail through my veins and trying not to barf all over my husband when I get home.  Ahhhhhhh, the romance. 

But you have to find a way to laugh anyway, don't you?  To counteract the lack of Paris, I'll be playing Edith Piaf nonstop for the next two weeks just for kicks.  Why not, right?

Have I mentioned lately that cancer sucks?

No matter how right the decision to do chemo may be, it is going to well and truly suck for the next few weeks.  There just is no getting around it.

A Little Good News

Got some pathology information back yesterday, and thus far things look about as good as we could have hoped for under the circumstances:  my lymph nodes are free and clear (yay!  that one is huge), the tumor is definitely estrogen and progesterone responsive, but HER-2 negative (also good news), we got a clean surgical margin well within the safety parameters, and the size of the tumor does not automatically put me into the chemo basket.

Plus, I got my stitches out yesterday.  So yay.  Good news, right?

They are doing further testing, though, because the size of the tumor and its level of aggressiveness did put me into the "needs to be looked at carefully" category.  I should get test results back from the oncotype testing within the next week or two, and we will make treatment decisions from there.

This has been such a slog, not just for me but also for everyone in my family.

When The Emotional Reality Hits You Smack In The Face

Yesterday, I received a package in the mail from a very kind and well-meaning lady from the local branch of the American Cancer Society.  It was filled with all sorts of pamphlets, informational booklets, and bits and pieces of useful stuff for someone who happens to be battling breast cancer at the moment.

The package included an especially intriguing and thick guidebook entitled "Sexuality for the Woman with Cancer."  I wish that I could say it is a naughty romp on 50 Shades of the C Word, but, alas, it is not.  Just scientific information which will likely prove useful, if not nearly as fun in the reading, and I shouldn't mock it because I'm certain that there are useful nuggets of wisdom within, especially in talking about side effects of various treatment options and how to manage them and not kill your marital intimacy altogether in one fell swoop.

However, that isn't all.

As I flipped through the materials inside the envelope, I found a glossy, printed catalog of wigs and turbans and various bra and other rebuilding accessories for the lady with her formerly cancerous boobs a'kilter.

I am here to tell you that it is one thing to intellectually try to come to terms with something in the abstract as a potential future bridge you may have to cross.  You can mull it over in your mind as a walled-off "a patient in this situation could do A, B or C, and these would all be good options if I have to deal with this" all you want, and should because planning and thinking about this sort of thing is important in a know your plan for a worst case scenario sort of way.

The emotional reality of these possibilities lowers itself like an elephant on steroids, hurtling its rear end toward the ground with you pinned underneath and no means to stop the oncoming, crushing mass when you get a visual that first time.

Doggie Devotion: You Have To Laugh

Much to my dismay, and near constant need to collapse in a fit of giggles, our westie, Roxie, has decided that the cure for whatever ails me must be found in her sticking to me like glue.  She knows something is wrong, because I'm bandaged up, moving slowly and with occasional moans of pain, and sleeping a lot.

But her little dog brain cannot grok it any further than "must fix mom and guard her obsessively."

This morning, as I sit here in my desk chair typing away, she has repeatedly thrown herself at the sun room windows to ward off the scary birdies on the feeder so that they do not get too close to me inside the house, even though they cannot get in here through the windows and she knows it.  Then she began barking incessantly at the UPS truck as it trundled by on Main Street nowhere near our house.

Although, to be fair, she barks at the rumbly UPS truck that way every day, despite the extra helping of doggie lunacy in today's pitch and timbre.  Something in the sound of the truck's engine rattle drives her bonzer yo yo every single day.

Heaven help us if a squirrel shows up on the feeder this morning.    The coming of the four horsemen of the apocalypse would be nothing compared to "operation save hurt mom from the fiendish squirrel" lunacy, I can tell you that.