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Friday, September 26, 2008

Chemo Party!

It started in the waiting room. I signed in, went to the bathroom and changed out of my sweaty biking clothes into dry ones, sat down in the waiting room, and a woman sat down accross from me, took a look at my helmet, and said "YOu're the woman who bikes to chemo? My boyfriend told me about you." We talked about biking for awhile -- then her boyfriend sat down and joined the conversation. Then I got called, weighed, and told to choose any bed I wanted. (There are chairs, too -- but I find the beds more comfortable -- like having a slumber party in the daytime! Of course I have never managed to nap -- though I have meant to. I even brought earplugs yesterday.....and Honey we had a party! I guess it worked kinda like bringing an umbrella so it doesn't rain....)

Anyhow I got into the room with the beds and my friend Christine was there already with an empty bed next to her -- so I got into it. Nancy was next to her, who I don't know as well but have talked to a number of times. (Christine is almost my age, married with one son a year younger than Emily. Nancy is older and widowed and that's all I know.) Then BOnnie came in. Omigod, I thought I was irreverent.... but this woman was great. She was short and broad shouldered, but when she talked I thought of Vickie. We were talking about reconstruction, which is something I'm revisiting now, more because the time to decide about it is closing in on me than because I want it, I think. BOnnie had surgery and reconstruction before her chemo (which is an earlier stage thing), so had advice for me. She mentioned this surgeon I keep hearing about at Georgetown -- people love him. HER endorsement was funnier than most, though. She said "Oh yeah, definitely go see him. He's very non threatening. He's good. And I don't even like men!" (I guess that doesn't necessarily explain what I like about her. I think it's the unashamed way she presented her unusual opinion. I really like people with in-your-face attitudes, who are so clearly who they seem to be with no hidden agendas..... I like people who don't fit in, too, and who aren't worried about it.)

By the time Joan got there she couldn't find me! I saw her looking around lost and waved and called out "Hey Joan, over here!" ANyone would have thought we were at a peace rally or something, rather than having chemotherapy! (Joan told me later that she came in looking for color, and that's how she ended up over by Nancy's bed. I was in the middle of the commotion ... she was close!

The guy with the girlfriend who started talking with me in the waiting room took the next bed on my other side -- I had thought they'd join the party, but the nurse drew the curtain, and they left it drawn. His girlfriend came to say goodbye when they left, though. She visits from out of state for his chemo, so I think they wanted some quality time together -- and I don't know what kinds of meds he's getting; maybe they makes him sick.

WE (the breast cancer crowd) are all on taxol, which doesn't do anything while it's going in, usually -- and we get benadryl and decadron first, which is a little like drinking coffee after an evening of alcohol.... we're up and down at the same time!

Around the time that Joan came another woman came by, a social worker, who is involved with a group called SOS. I made up words for the acronym (sex on saturdays?) She said it stands for Survivors Offering Support. (She agreed that sex on saturdays is good, too Nancy wanted to know how she was expected to do that, since she's widowed....) I signed up to get a "bosom buddy" (har har har) who has already sent me an email -- so I will talk with her either tonight or, hmm, look at the time, maybe tomorrow instead. Denise, the social worker, said she thought she could find me a survivor who had had a mastectomy without reconstruction, since that's what I want to have -- so maybe she did! I mean, if it's going to look fake and taste fake and feel fake, how about if I just stick a sock in my bra? Or maybe an apple, if I'm going on a bikeride..... I never seem to have enough pockets for all the food I want to bring! (My father in law thinks I should try a sandwich. It would be a funny shape, it might squish.... I could deal with that if I LIKED sandwiches!) What I really want to figure out is how to get a watermelon in there..... I really like watermelons. I guess that would be a bit large, though, huh?

Next week is my last chemo. Can you believe it? JUST when it's getting to be fun! We will have a real party, Christine said, to celebrate. We will bring stuff to share. Maybe I will make something good to eat..... of course if I make what I can eat no one else will like it. Maybe I should just stick a big watermelon into my backpack. It would be cumbersome, but it would fit better there than in my bra! I wonder how long it would take me to bike the 6 miles to Georgetown with that kind of weight in my backpack.......

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

...and then a Miracle Happened

Last weekend the aches were worse, and/or the advil and tylenol worked less well & for less long, especially on Sunday and Monday. Clearly on Monday I my daily maximum of advil and tylenol would have run out before I went to bed. Last Thursday my doctor wrote me a prescription for morphine in response to my concern about taking too much advil and tylenol in an effort to "get ahead of the pain" (take the meds at the first signs of pain rather than after it has set in) while their effects seem to be lasting for shorter periods of time. I had planned to hold onto this as a backup plan -- but on MOnday night I filled it and took one before going to bed.

I was afraid it would make me groggy and -- oh, sort of take me away from myself. The thing is, I want to function better, not worse, and I was thinking that a heavy duty narcotic would not exactly help with that. I think of morphine as a street drug and an end-of-life palliative. However, it did neither of these things; it just made the pain go away. It felt a little strange at the beginning, but not much. It didn't make me sleepy, either -- in fact I was so happy to be pain free that I stayed up reading for awhile, enjoying the feeling. The pain seemed to be starting to come back in the night and I took another one. (These are low dose every-4-hr pills, and it had been 5 hrs since my first one.) It was still 4 hours until my alarm would go off and I was no longer worried about being too groggy to function in the morning.

And then I woke up and felt fine. Well I was a little nauseous, which I had been warned about, but no pain. I did take advil at 7, and again before bed, and just now. But we are talking about a decrease from 1800mg advil plus 2g tylenol a day to just 1200 mg advil/day. Maybe I will try cutting it down to 800 -- since, after all, the only reason I am taking anything is to "get ahead of the pain," which doesn't seem to be coming at this point in such force as it was. I don't know if the morphine had something to do with it or whether for some reason it just hit me harder at the beginning of this chemo week, so there is less left of it now.

Anyway it has felt like a miracle. Last night I was thinking, gee, this is a pretty good life we have here, when I'm not going around aching all the time!

Having said that.... you're going to laugh at this, but I want to ask all you people sending me prayers and well wishes not to waste them on the aches and pains I'm having now. This will be over in a couple of weeks, the chemo and its associated pains. If I got to choose I'd want them all put all directly into my long term survival and all its indicators. A nicely shrunk tumor, as close to gone as possible by the time they take it out, and no more nodes -- or very few -- would be fabulous. No recurrences and metastases, and how about 40-50 more years of life?

I guess it's a tall order -- but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

And now I'm off to go lead a bikeride. 32 miles today, and I should come back with a loaf of bread and have my first reiki session!

Oh yeah -- of course I've had no bowel movements since the morphine. It was worth it, that one time, but .... I suppose this is why addicts inject it, hmmm? BTW my oncologist gave me morphine instead of codeine because it's supposed to be less constipating.