Swing of things

I guess with week two, we're getting into the swing of things. Although I can't really say that things are getting any easier, at least we know what to expect. Kind of anyway. We know where things are on the chemo floor. We know who to see to get lab work done. We know the nicer nurses. We how where to go to get checked in fast, and we know how to go back and remind them if it's taken more than 15 minutes. We're getting into the groove.

We started out the week on Tuesday with a visit to the Urologist (aka the Kidney doctor). It's been decided that on Friday, I'll be getting a stent put into my kids to help it drain, because at this point, it has zero function. Honestly though, right now I don't even care if I lose it or it goes back to working; I just want the pain to be gone. I feel so not like myself. I either am in terrible pain, or I'm so doped up on pain medication that I'm not me. I don't know why people go out and try for that feeling....it's such an out of control reality that it's a type of pain in and of itself.

Anway, I digress. It was decided that Friday is my surgery for the kidney stent. On Wednesday, it was round two of chemo. Week two also means two drugs, which are hung consectutive (one right after another) of each other, and a longer day treatment visit. When it came time for the second drug though, things didn't go as planned, and I had some terrible reaction to it; my chest got tight - I compared it to an elephant sitting on me - and I had a hard time breathing. Right away they pulled the treatment and gave me some benedryl. After things calmed down, we restarted the treatment, and after a few minutes, it turned into the same reaction, so we stopped. Which meant that I had to go back today and try again. It took us five hours to do a two hour treatment, because we had to go so slowly, but it's done.

We then had an appointment it the Hemotology Onconlogist - the chemo doctor. She deleted some medications, upped me on some others, and added still more. We're set up for a port insertion somewhere before my next chemo treatment; it means I'll get a permanant port for my chemo treatments and lab draws - no more needle sticks! Yay for me, because I have a serious phobia of needles. She also somewhat warned me of taking more care to stay away from people that could be sick and/or large crowds, because my white blood count is very low and I am susceptible to infections easily. I'll still go to church (because I want to), but if I go out in public otherwise, I need to wear a mask or take precautions to stay away from people. I'm turning into such a freak.

I also have to go back to the cancer floor tomorrow to get a injection that will boost my white blood count. My understanding is that it's very painful, both during and after, and causes a lot of bone pain. Yay, something else to look forward to.

And now it's time to close. I'm so tired that I can barely keep my words straight, but I want to write things while they're fresh in my mind. So goodnight world....I hope for dreams that are pleasant and completely cancer free.

Things they never tell you

I started Chemotherapy this week. It was a most unpleasant experience. Maybe it would be easier if I'd been prepared.

It started out pretty decent. My nurse, Bonnie, was fantastic. She could tell that I was anxious, so after getting me started with my IV (which, by the way, I don't do well with, since I have a terrible phobia of needles), she hooked me up with some IV Ativan, which is a great anti-anxiety medication. It helped me to relax while she got things going. After the Ativan and a bag of Zofran (to help prevent the nausea that goes along with chemo), she came over dressed in a spacesuit. Or something like it. Apparantly, the stuff can burn skin if it touches it, so the precautions the nurses take are pretty big. They put on these big protective gowns and gloves (did she have a mask? I'm not sure), and hook that big bag of poison right up to you. (This is something they don't tell you in advance...they just let you find it out yourself.) Yep, that stuff she was protecting herself against went into my veins.

Another thing they don't tell you is that it burns. My arm felt like it was on fire the whole time. Bonnie brought over a warm pack (weird, the heat actually made it feel better), and it helped. Luckily the Ativan helped me to relax enough to sleep for most of the treatment. Afterwards Austin got me loaded up in the car and I slept almost the entire three hour ride home. (Had to have been boring for you Austin - sorry love.)

I kept expecting to start throwing up, but it didn't happen. I guess the Zofran did it's job well. I felt a little sick on Friday, but not too bad. Mostly the insane tiredness was what I dealt with. I slept the day away on Friday as well, but then was up most of the night on Friday night/Saturday morning. Saturday came and went and the tiredness didn't go away. That's something else I didn't know. I expected to get the treatment, get sick, and then be fine. I had no idea I'd turn into a walking zombie for days on end. I'm still exhausted.

Another thing nobody warned me about is food. I'm not turned off by smells; it's the taste. Nothing taste the same. The biggest crime in it? My favorite, my one vice, Dr. Pepper; it no longer tastes like Dr. Pepper. Even my toothpaste and mouthwash tastes funny. It's really a weird experience.

So....things they never tell you about with chemo. Wonder what next week will bring, since I'm getting two rounds of it.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmm.

Easy to forget...too easy to remember

Today I sat down with Annah to do her nails. She wanted both her fingernails and her toenails painted, and being the fun mom that I am, I accomodated her. I removed old polish, cleaned them good, buffed them out, and finally repainted them all (in two different colors mind you!). Then I did my own fingernails (my toenails are still beautiful from my pedicure almost 2 weeks ago). Things were very normal.

And then I remembered. I have cancer. It's easy to forget though. Things are still pretty normal around here, except for the little alarm that goes off on my phone every four hours to remind me to take some kind of medication. Or when I glance in the mirror and see my short hair. Or when we have prayer, and the kids pray for mommy to feel better. Or when I'm just so tired that I have to stop what I'm doing to take a nap. Okay, so maybe not completely normal, but still mostly normal.

Oh, my hair. I went today and had it cut short. Really short. I figure that if I'm going to lose my hair to chemo, then I'm going to do some of it on my terms. It's going to fall out, so why not go ahead and get the short "do" and enjoy it a little. Besides, it should help get the kids kind of used to things, or at least used to the changes. Poor Annah fell apart when she saw me. Jacob wouldn't come to me. And Jonathan just said it was ugly. I try not to take any of it personally.

Anyway, it's easy to forget things when we're having those normal moments. But then it's too easy to remember when I see myself in the mirror, or when I have pain, or even when we talk about getting a babysitter so I can go to my treatments. It's always there, lurking in the background. I remember feeling that way after we lost Andrew....there would be very normal moments, and then suddenly I'd realize I felt happy when I was supposed to be feeling sad. It took a long time to get over that, and I don't figure I'll be getting past this for quite a while. But it's okay to feel happy, even when underneath the sadness and the fear are there. Because if I stop feeling happy during those normal moments, then the cancer wins. And that's just not going to happen.

The C word

It's an ugly word. Foul is every way, scary to both those who have it and those who don't. But it's something that happens to other people, right? Not to me, certainly. At least, that's what I thought, somewhere in the back of my mind anyway. But it's not true. Because I have it. I have cancer.

I guess I should back up a bit, because, let's face it, that's a pretty shocking statement. I've been thinking on this, and I guess it started about three or four months ago. At least that's when I noticed things. I was having some pain in my left hip. Nothing I couldn't handle, but it was uncomfortable. But I'm on my feet all the time, I usually have at least one baby on my hip, sometimes two. I'm up and down the stairs, I'm chasing kids around the house. It's normal to have pain, right?

Except my pain didn't go away. It started getting worse, and I complained to Austin about it. He'd massage my back and hip and it would feel better. But it had moved from just my hip to my lower back and was even more uncomfortable. I was taking Aleve and using some aspercreme (you know, the smelly old-people stuff), and it took care of the pain for the most part.

But then I started not being able to sleep because of it. I'd wake up in the night hurting so badly I couldn't go back to sleep. I'd get up in the middle of the night to take hot baths. And then one morning, as I was massaging my side (which had started to hurt), I found a knot. It was just under was left ribcage, on the left side of my abdomen. And I knew right then that I had a problem.

It was during the weekend that I found it, so on Monday, I went to the doctor. The doctor didn't have a very good poker face; when he examined me, I knew even clearer; this was bad. He ordered a CT scan for the next day.

I had the CT scan, and the doctor came out and told me that this was outside his specialty, but he believed it was a lymphoma. I cried a lot in that waiting room that afternoon. Over the next few days, we were referred to a Surgeon, who examined me and looked at the CT scan. He felt the same way, and ordered a Biopsy. I had the biopsy done (the shoved a big long needle through my back to get to this thing), and then we had to wait four whole days for the results. When the surgeon walked in to the room, I could tell just by looking at his face that we were in trouble. He confirmed that it was cancer, and it was malignant.

Dr. Gill referred me to an Oncologist - a cancer doctor. So we went to see Dr. Ackerman. She told us that she believed that what I have is called a Sarcoma. A very rare type of cancer. To complicate matters, it is pressing on my left kidney, blocking it's use. Because of the rarity of it, Dr. Ackerman referred us to Dr. Esnaola, a Surgical Oncologist, to do major surgery to remove the cancer. The catch? Dr. Esnaola is in Charleston, SC.

Dr. Esnaola works at Hollings Cancer Center, at the Medical University of South Carolina. When we met with him, he because talking about options. Surgery, Radiation, Chemo. We were overwhelmed, because we believed we were just going to talk to him about Surgery. Dr. Esnaola revealed to us that not only is the tumor blocking my kidney, but it is also pressing against my Aorta, the main blood supply leaving the heart, and that at this point, surgery wasn't even an option, so we would need to consider other options.

Stunned isn't even the right word to destribe how we felt. Dr. Ackerman and Dr. Gill had both led us to believe that it just needed to be removed, and that Chemo wouldn't work for it anyway. So we were definity caught off guard. We would up talking with Dr. Marshall, the Radiation Oncologist, and with Dr. Simiaha, the Hemotology Oncologist. After what seemed like a ton of tests and pokes and prodes, it was finally decided that Chemotherapy is where we will begin. And that begins next week.

Which leads me back to where I began. I have Cancer.

I am so afraid. I don't want to do Chemo. I don't want to be sick, I don't want to lose my hair. I don't want to be scary looking to my kids. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be the person everyone feels sorry for, that everyone is talking about. I don't want to be the person that needs so much help, the one who can't take care of things. I don't want to die. Because I could, you know. I don't want to, and I'll fight like hell to keep that from happening. But that thought is there, in the back of my mind; like a bad taste you can't get out of your mouth and won't go away.

To top it all off, Austin lost his job. No real explaination of things...just a "Your services are no longer needed." kind of thing. And they knew what was happening with us. So here we are, neither of us working really (although I'm still doing a bit of babysitting when I'm able to), tons of expenses just to go back and forth to Charleston, not able to pay our basic bills, and I have cancer. Freaking cancer. But I'm trying to be open-minded, to realize the timing is okay.

And it is. Better than okay. I think the Lord knew that I needed Austin at home with me. Not that I think Heavenly Father got him fired, but I think that he would have lost the job anyway, and the timing was just worked out where it helped us. I can't drive because of the pain medication I'm taking. There are days I can't pick Jacob up and put him in or out of bed, or into the high chair. So having him here is wonderful. And we've been blessed beyond explaination with food and help. So i can't complain too much. Or at least I shouldn't. I do my fair share of it. Austin is struggling too; he's a typical man, one that wants to provide for his family and take care of things, and right now it's out of his hands. But we're trying to do our part in everything. Still looking for jobs, still keeping faith, still trying to be strong (notice I said TRYING - believe me, we have our moments!).

So, there you have it. I have Cancer. But I'm still here. And I plan to be for a very long time.

(P.S. - I was having a very down day when I began writing this. It's amazing how letting things out helps to cleanse the soul; I feel much better now!)