CHEMO GONE AWRY / Plans for the future

Monday, Sept. 24th I hit an all-time LOW. My flu syptoms came back in full swing with plenty of the "best" yuckiness you can imagine. I was a wreck - just ask poor Jim who was here with me that day.

Tuesday I was feeling a bit better, shakiness aside. I refused to eat or drink much. Finally at about noon, I get a call from the Onc's office, "Uh... you forgot your chemo check-up appointment today." I had been so out of it, that I forgot totally. I rescheduled. Thankfully my Onc called me right back to check on me via phone. I told her I was having flu symptoms; fever, vomiting, diarhea, shakes, etc. She told me to come in to the office right away. I went, they took blood, and found out I was exremely dehydrated, had an extremely low white blood cell count, and toxicities that could lead to infection. I had also lost 12 lbs. So I was admitted in to the hosptial on Tuesday afternoon for fluids, antibiotics, and other meds for nausea, etc. I was in there for two days to get everything back under control. Long story short, (TOO LATE), I was discharged on Thursday afternoon and as of today I'm doing better.

Good news is we found out some things. First of all my nausea meds were giving me the shakes. I don't have those anymore. THANK GOD. I mean we were talking SILLY, GOOFY shakes here, folks. Not just minor shakes. We also went through a stream of nausea meds in the hospital that we found out don't work for me. Ativan seems to be my best bet. Heck as I type this, I'm not on any meds at all. Another thing we found out is too many Advil can be a BAD THING. I was poppin' Advil like no tomorrow for pain. This, along with the dehydration, was on its way to permanently hurting my kidneys. Thankfully they caught it in time. No perm damage. Lastly we found out my bod doesn't take kindly to that particular dose of chemo. So she's going to give me an extra week to recover, and then lower the dosage to an amount my bod can handle. HOPEFULLY.

I have some follow-up visits this week with the kidney doctor and the Onc. I'm also going to see my PS and talk about having my expanders removed. They're driving me I N S A N E. No offense Pam Anderson, but this crap isn't worth it. So I've decided to be flat as a pancake for a year. THEN I'll look at recon options.

Besides, I like being flat.

Chemo sucks so I shaved my head.

Yes, chemo hit me hard the other day. I'm just now coming off of two days worth of flu-like symptoms (body aches, fatigue, nausea, shakes) - still have the shakes and fatigue. Mom has been my Angel, coming and bringing me food - even though I told her not to. Thank god she ignored me. After failing to eat a cracker, mom comes over unanounced with a vanilla milkshake, a plain hamburger, and whatever else she thought I may be able to stomach from McDonalds. The shake and burger hit the spot and I felt better for having eaten. Then she cleaned my kitchen. I mean she CLEANED my kitchen! *sparkle* <---that was my kitchen talking. Then today she came over with soup and made me tea and proceeded to deep clean more of my house for me. Moms rock. :) So today I feel much better and can get on the computer. Typing is difficult 'cause of the shakes and I have to go back and do a lot of correcting. Grr.

After mom left, I got bored so I asked Jim to shave my head for me. This was interesting. We tried to get Erik to help but he ended up wacking me on the head with the clippers. lol When I showed him my head afterward, he touched it and gave me a kiss. Jim had me shave his head as well in what he called an act of solidarity. Awww... So here we are in all our glory:

Sippin' the Chemo Cocktail

I had my first cocktail of saline, steroids, adramycena and cytoxan today. My onc said I would only be in there for two hours. HA! I got there at 9AM and didn't get out until 1PM. (Mental note: eat a real breakfast next time.) Basically they take you to a large room filled with lazyboy chairs. There's TV's, snacks, drinks, etc. I took a book and my MP3 player. I wish I had taken my cross stictch. There was no pain involved really. The drugs are given via IV through a port in my chest. My onc is concerned about my blood pressure because apparently it's rather high. Don't ask me what it is 'cause I have no idea. I remember today that the lower number was 107 but I can't remember the top number. So she gave me a script for blood pressure meds.

So right now I've got drugs galore. I could open my own shop; D's Drug Deluge.

I'm told that side effects won't happen until tomorrow and can last a couple of days. I know one thing that's driving me nuts already and that't that I keep peeing my pants. I was told to drink tons of water 'cause it helps flush this stuff out of you but all it's doing is making me pee myself. I went to the bathroom, sat down and three mins later - voila. Had to change again. So now I'm wearing a pad. Loverly.

We're epxecting guests tonight so I should try and get a nap in while I can. This ativan is going to kick in any moment. I'll update tomorrow. I see my PS in the morning for a consulation (keep expander? remove expanders? hmm) and then I have to go back to the onc's office for a shot to raise my white blood cell levels. For right now I need to stay away from all folks with colds and and the flu. And guess who has a cold? JIM.

DRUGS

Saw the onc today. First chemo appointment is Tuesday, Sept. 18th at 9AM. She said the first four appts should only take 2 hours. She gave me three scripts; Advaran to help me sleep, a creme to numb the chemo port in my chest, and another drug to help with nausea after chemo starts. Eh, at this point I'm just ready to get started. I'm the only person on the bc message board that is looking forward to going bald. The nausea I could do without, but some folks have told me that they were just fine. Cross your fingers for me!

I'm also have second thoughts about reconstruction. I was due to see the PS next week for my first fill. But I changed it to a consult instead. I may have the expanders removed and consider reconstruction in a year or so after radiation. It just depends. I like being flat, but I'm not sure I want to be concave. I just don't think I can live with these expanders for a year. They're too hard and uncomfortable and I'm having an awful time sleeping. Hopefully this Advaran will help with that. Still I'm going to look at other options.

Last Saturday me and my friend Lisa went to see Broken Stone (BROKEN STONE ROCKS!!) at a benefit at the firefighter lake club. Here's a picture of us having an AWESOME TIME;



Notice my white knuckle grip. That's because my expanders were bugging the hell out of me. Still, it was GREAT to get dressed up (yes, that's dressy - I have eye shadow on for god's sake!) and get out of the house. As always, the band did a great job, and let's face it. The bass player is freakin' H O T.

So I'm sittin' there listening to the guys, and this tall cute fireman walks up to me, gives me a hug, and asks how I'm doing. I was like, !??? "Fine, how are you?" Later another cute fireman comes up to me and starts talking and kisses my hand and tells me he hopes I'm doing OK. !?? Later another cute fireman (are you noticing a pattern here?) comes up and starts talking to me and later dances with me. At this point, I'm thinking to myself, "CANCER ROCKS!" Turns out Jim told the guys he worked with and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on. Hey, whatever works. BRING ON THE HUNKY FIREMEN.

Break time is over. Or just about...

It's been a week since my last blog and a few things have happened so I've decided to update. A lot of folks ask how I've been doing. It's kind of up and down. On one end of the spectrum you have the physical feelings and on the other you have the emotional. Physically I'm getting better. I can now dress myself and my showers don't take so long! I'm driving but not too much. The seat belt bugs me so I use a tiny pillow but the dull pain is still there. I have to sleep on my back still and it's driving me C R A Z Y. But I take vicoden at night and it eventually knocks me out. The range of motion is really improving in my left arm. The node arm is still at 90 degrees but it's getting stronger. I'm still tender and sore and as my step-dad found out last weekend, if you run up to me to hug me - I'll flinch. Emotionally I'm doing pretty good. I hit a bit of a bad spot last night and started writing this horrific vent email from hell to Lisa. But she'll be glad to know that before I could send it, my internet crashed and it vanished. I felt better having written it though even though it never got sent. And shortly thereafter, the vicoden kicked in and I was able to sleep like a baby.

Here's me in a good mood:



Notice how flat I am. I love it! I love being flat as a pancake. And I'm not even entirely flat. And my belly is HUGE. But I still love it. This is me smiling because my ginormous boobs are gone and I don't have to wear a bra. This was taken about a week ago. The tape over my port is gone now. That's what I've been doing each night. Slooooowly removing all of the surgical tapes. So this is what my bathroom looks like:



I take off about five tapes a night. There's about 20 more to go. My boobs are totally 100% numb but the skin underneath is not. There's also this part of me that is scared to remove too many for fear of the expanders falling out onto the floor. Eww!

Went to see my PS this morning. She took a quick look and was pleased with how the recovery is going so far. She was sad to hear about the need for radiation therapy however, and said we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. She did say that it will be six months to a YEAR AFTER radiation is complete until we can do the implant switch-out. This really bummed me out. I asked her if getting expanders so soon was a bad idea. She said we could always take them out if I wanted, but we may as well leave them in for now and let the skin stretch out. I figure since I've got until January to expand them, that I can take my time and won't be in so much pain. But expanders suck, folks. They're very hard and kind of heavy and make sleeping on my side impossible.

So I got a refill on my vicoden and took off. I have my first "fill" appointment with her on Wednesday, the 19th.

NEXT UP: Onc visit on Monday to find out about chemo. Since I'm still tender, sore, and leaking, I imagine she's going to put chemo off for about another two weeks. But we'll see. I'll let you know what I find out.

Meanwhile I'm going out to see husband's band Saturday night for the first time since surgery. Also I'll be taking a teacher certification test that morning. So cross your fingers for me. Fifth grade math is HARD!