Feb 5, 2010

Just Crush It With Your Car

Had another chemo today. There are 3 marbles in the dish and only one more of the really bad treatments. One more Adriamycin and Cytoxan, then we move on to Taxol and Herceptin and weekly treatments with less side effects. Yay! The Nurse Practiotioner and the Nurse told me today that the treatments I'm getting are really hard and that I am doing really well! That was so good to hear. I know I am strong and that I am moving through the program with a minimum of bad effect, compared to the old days when chemo was truly brutal. But I do feel pretty yucky (it's a medical term) for longer and longer after the chemo. So, I got some confirmation that I am not a whiny weakling. Nobody's saying that, but I feel like it sometimes!

I asked my nurse today if I could have the gigantic empty syringes that the Adriamycin comes in so that I could take them outside and run them over with my car a few times. But she said, surprisingly, NO! Darn, it's so rewarding to destroy the inanimate thing that has caused you misery. I have taken out and sledge-hammered the occasional recalcitrant blender or printer that has caused me nothing but grief. I put on my safety goggles and smash the crap out of it. Satisfying! I'm not up to swinging a sledgehammer right now, so I thought my car could fill the bill. But, the empty Adriamycin syringe would contain traces of a dangerous biohazard. When the nurse is giving it to me, she is swathed in a fluid-impermeable gown, wears a mask and eye protection and thick rubber gloves. So, she is safe (which is very good), but taking the syringe outside might hurt the poor road that I would smash it on! Somebody walking by might get a miniscule droplet on their shoe! But, yeah, that stuff gets pumped right into me - through my port, then it dumps into my heart and gets circulated to every cell in my body. Well...  these are not good thoughts for me to be having right now so I'll be chanting these phrases as I go up to bed: I LOVE my chemo!! It is saving my LIFE!! Go, chemo, go!!

Feb 3, 2010

Marbles

I got my marbles today! Before you read on, just get all the 'lost your marbles?/ found your marbles?' dialogues overwith.... OK, done now? Right! So, I saw this neat idea on a website for women taking chemotherapy for breast cancer. It was a set of eight small 'stretchy' bracelets made of pink and iridescent beads. Real cute. You wear all eight of them on one arm and as you finish a chemo treatment, you move a bracelet to the other arm. I've always liked a good graphic reminder. I nearly ordered the bracelets when the Oncologist told me that, instead of the usual eight chemo treatments, I hit the jackpot and will need 28. That won't translate so good into the bracelet idea. I got visions of bracelets popping off, getting too stretchy and getting really dirty over all that time. Enter the marbles! I ordered these special, online. Right now the 'Finished' plate looks a little forlorn. But, over time, I'll pack 'em in and fill up that plate, one pretty marble at a time.

Coneheads

We do kind of look like the Coneheads from SNL, don't we?

Feb 2, 2010

Finally

It's eleven days after my last chemo and I finally can say that I'm feeling good, albeit with a small head cold. It's really amazing that I have any good days, considering that I'm going through a treatment that, in the past, made people very ill the entire time that it was happening. I am a lucky girl! And - I'm a bald girl! David shaved my head last night to rid me of the last remaining stragglers of hair. In a show of solidarity, he shaved his head, too! It was actually quite hilarious to watch as the hair came off. We had many different configurations of baldness as we went: the mohawk, the bottom fringe, etc. Many apologies to those men who have permanently lost hair, but we gotta find the humor when we can!

Jan 31, 2010

Surreality

This is the one and only time I will get all "Sunday go to meetin'" on you, I promise. I am asking everyone to do one thing for me now. If you are healthy and your children (if you have them) are healthy, get off your chair and down on your knees right now and thank whatever god(s) or beings you believe are responsible for your good health. I mean that literally, go down on the floor and thank god, over and over. Cry out, shout it out (except if you are in the public library, that could get ugly). Be so very thankful that you haven't had to hear 'aggressive cell type' and 'four different types of chemo drugs' and you don't have to think about how, even after you've survived this year-long battle, you may have just had many years of your life taken away later down the road. Are you weeping and wailing yet? No? Well, get to it! C'mon - it's the last time I'll ask...