Lung Scars

They showed up on the MRI of my left breast that I had last week -- but I had already been feeling them when I breathed in deeply. I got sick the week after I was in Boston, and even after I finished the antibiotics and the inhaled steroid and stopped coughing and wheezing (that took a lot longer and had never happened to me before) and got allllll better -- still I have had this lingering feeling deep in my lungs when I breathe in deeply. It's a cold/tight feeling, like when you have bronchitis verging on pneumonia -- except that I'm not sick, not at all.

I had seen my radiation onc about this already, a couple of weeks ago, and he had declined to scan me, saying that my lungs sounded to him (when he listened with the stethoscope) like the lungs of an athlete. The thing is, they SHOULD! But that doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with them. My hope is that it means I'm going to get through this better than expected -- just because that's what all the athletic stuff has meant for me so far.....

ANyway so I had a breast MRI last week, & when I saw the breast surgeon on Tuesday she told me that the breast is fine, but there are 3 spots on my lungs which look to be consistent with radiation scarring. I had the radiation onc look at the MRI as well, and he thinks so too. As it happened I went on a hard bike ride the day before I heard back from him, so when he asked me how I felt I had some things to tell him.....

I've been riding pretty well for the most part, though I am not riding in front these days -- I've been able to ride with my usual par riders for say half of a 30+ mile ride, and then with the slower ones for the other half. That's been feeling reasonable to me -- I figured chemo fatigue, and was thinking it would get better in the next 3-6 months maybe. However -- I haven't ridden many hills. I used to ride hills, but I didn't love hill rides, and my knee seemed to be complaining at the beginning of my treatment - so most of the rides I've been riding since my diagnosis have had some hills but not many.

SO I figured that there's really no mystery about why I've been lagging on the hills lately. HOwever, on yesterday's ride I realized that there is more to it than just being out of hill riding shape. The ride I was on is a special annual thing, out in Marshall. It's very hilly, so that 32 miles count for a lot more than they would normally....... It was only the 2nd time I'd ridden it, and last year I was on chemo, so I rode the shorter (20 mile) option. I had really hoped I'd be able to ride better this year, two months out from treatment (and 4 out from my last chemo!) so I rode all 32 miles, but it was frankly brutal.

It was the hills, and it was really different from anything I've experienced before -- though I've been feeling it in bits and pieces lately, a hill here and a hill there (since that's all the hills I've been riding really.) Usually hills are a challenge, but fun. Usually I don't like the "hill rides" because it's a bit scary going downhill fast. The joke about me on hills used to be that since I braked on the downhills I had to catch up on the uphills. I DID, though -- I often passed most of the other riders on the uphills, which was the only way I managed to stay with them, since they all passed me on the downhills. This wasn't like that. Hasn't been for awhile, I realized......

This time I struggled biking UP the hills, even the moderate ones, and the trouble wasn't my leg strength; it was my lungs. I even walked up one hill -- and I finished the ride last, just behind a couple of new riders. UNderstand -- it's not that I need to be fast -- but I'm unable to ride with the people I used to ride with, because I just can't keep up with them -- and I couldn't even get to know the newbies on this ride (usually the one perk of this new slower pace of mine) because I didn't have the breath to talk to anyone really. It was a struggle to just keep up...... See, keeping up was important, because Nancy and Marla were waiting for the stragglers at every turn so that we wouldn't get lost -- and I would have felt so bad about slowing them down if I hadn't been able to keep up with the new riders who were rightfully riding in back. (Yes I know, I have a reason to be slow too -- but I'd only just heard about the lung spots the day before..... so I was only just starting to understand that.)

Then today I swam, and the pool was overchlorinated. It was the indoor pool, which had been on the fritz for almost a week, so they're just getting the chlorine levels up. The chlorine in the water was so strong that it stung Mom's eyes and made the skin on my legs and arms itch........ and I kept getting out of breath. I suppose I haven't been swimming the mile straight through since my month off due to radiation scarring -- but today I had to take so many breaks that it took me nearly an hour to swim my mile. The only time that's happened before was at the outdoor pool last summer when it was overheated and I needed to take breaks to cool off........ This time I think there was too much chlorine in the air. I guess it's good timing, season-wise, because the outdoor pool is just open, so I'll be able to swim outside where the air is fresh despite the chlorinated water. Now if they would just keep the water temperature at or below 83°.....