Wah, wah!

May I gripe a little about how my time is used these days? I have so many medical and cancer-related appointments. Radiation Therapy every day, Monday through Friday. Herceptin treatments every three weeks. Blood tests every other week. Surgical follow-up visits. Medical Oncologist appointments, Radiation Oncologist appointments, etc. etc. Now, don't get me wrong, I am so very grateful for and appreciative of all of the treatments and care that I am getting. It's all keeping me alive and healthy and I love it. I'm just getting tired. Seems like I don't have many uninterrupted hours. Hours uninterrupted by a trip to Sinai. It kind of reminds me, a little, of when Olivia was very small. You get small parcels of time when your kids are little. An hour here, two hours there. Then it's time to care for the little angels again. That was a wonderful time and I love Olivia and her brother Alex so, so much that taking care of them was a pleasure. They were (and are) precious and adorable and very, very dear. Not so for cancer. I loathe the cancer. I despise it. If I could I would smack it right in the face. Squash the living daylights out of it. I would love to hook it up to the bumper of my car and drag it up and down York Road until it's a bloody mess. But I can't. So, instead, I offer myself up to the wonderful folks at Sinai to bash the cancer for me. Often.

Radiation Tx the First

Had my first Radiation Therapy treatment last week. All I have to say is: Ouch! It was hard to have my arms up over my head for one hour and twenty minutes. There were tears, but I held still and we did some good work. The therapists and physicist were working very hard for me. They were very skilled and compassionate. The reason why it took so long is because there is so much set-up and planning involved in the first treatment. Subsequent treatments will be much shorter. Maybe fifteen minutes. Whew! I was grateful once again that my body is strong and my recovery is good. I really thought that I was doing some damage that would hurt later. But, nothing hurt later.

While I was lying there, I decided to write a reminder for my female friends and relatives: Do your monthly self-exam!! Get regular mammograms!! Please! Had I not neglected self exams, because I was too afraid, and put off my last mammogram, because I was 'too busy', I might not have been laying on that cold slab having my arms pulled off. So, do those exams and get that mammo. Guys, remind the women that you love to do these things. Tell them Jane made you do it, if necessary!

More About Hockins

A hilarious addendum to last night's post about the bill from Hopkins for the Breast Cancer Clinical Trial interview. I opened a letter received in the mail from them. They want me to contribute to the "Fund for Johns Hopkins Medicine"! Oh, the irony. I can't stop laughing...

A Raw Deal

I have given up the fight with Johns Hopkins. On Aug 16, I blogged about my experience with trying to enter a Breast Cancer Clinical Trial at Hopkins. I had received a bill for almost $400.00 and was upset that it could cost me money to participate in a trial. I mean, who ever heard of paying money to be in a drug regimen trial? I hadn't, but apparently I'm behind the curve. I called and called Hopkins. The Billing Dept, the Outpatient Medical office, and Dr Emens herself, twice. Dr Emens was just emphatic that the interview she gave me earlier in the month was billable to my insurance and that whatever portion of the bill not paid by my insurance was up to me to pay. She told me that this was standard practice, that all her interviews for the trial were billable. This was new to me but, as I said, I am out of the loop. Sometime in the last 15 years, doctors and medical institutions starting billing insurance companies for trial activities like interviews and blood tests. Surprisingly, the insurance companies pay for 'reasonable and customary' fees. And the rest is left up to the insured, just like 'real' medical care. Who knew? Still, I kept arguing with Hopkins and Dr Emens. I was not told until after the fact that I would be billed for the interview.I was billed just as if I had sought medical treatment at Hopkins, which I didn't, because I get perfectly adequate - better than adequate!, wonderful! - treatment from my docs at Sinai. Not to mention the fact that finances are tough now for us. I usually only work two days per week; quite a drop in pay! The "I can't afford this because I have cancer and have been unable to work much" excuse holds absolutely no water with anyone at Hopkins. Plus, when I told some of the story to my Oncologist, she knew the secret already - that patients now pay to be in clinical trials. So, instead of letting Hopkins send my bill to a collection agency and ruin my good credit, I pay. Not much at a time, though. I did manage to weasel them into only $10.00 per month with no interest!

A Plus!

Yay - no more binding, crushing, smashing, restrictive giant sports bras! And no extra layer to capture sweat! Just me and a t-shirt! (And pants, of course.) Ahhhh...

More surgical adventures

I had a small surgery done yesterday. The boobette is gone. The fluid and tissue that had collected in it was removed. The boobette was a seroma, or collection of fluid, under the skin following the mastectomy. My left side has healed up flat. Well, somewhat flat; there are always small puckers or bumps in the skin left behind with the scar. The seroma was on the right side. I think I did a few things after the mastectomy that might have contributed to the seroma. I didn't know that such a thing could happen, so as long as I felt capable of doing something, I did it. I think pulling weeds in the garden and doing an upper body workout at the gym didn't help. The surgical site was still healing inside and that strenuous activity may have caused more fluid to be encapsulated. The surgery I had yesterday was much, much less extensive than the mastectomies. But, this time I'm favoring my right side until the healing has really progressed. I'm even clicking the mouse with my left hand. I'm eating with my left hand also, but I've had years of practice at that. When I take a lunch break at work, I'll often do a crossword puzzle and write with my right hand while I eat with the left.

Boobette

I should write about happy things. More happy things happen than bad things. It's incredible that, even with cancer, life is still so good. I have almost no hair, but it's growing back. I have breast cancer, but the fight is going, mostly, very well. I've been through a lot, but I can still bike and do other things that I love. It's just that I have so much more to say about the crappy things that happen! I guess that's just the way people are sometimes. Get me mad and I'm off and running - at the mouth, that is. So, yeah, I'm mad right now. Mad that the 'seroma' that was a result of the right side mastectomy didn't 'just go away' as promised. It never even began going away. I have had a 'boobette' on my right side since the surgery. I will concede that the surgeon did a good job. That , being aware of my future plan to explore reconstructive surgery one day, a little extra skin was left behind. It was probably just happenstance that the seroma, the boobette, never resorbed. Now, though, the thing is infected! That's right, infected. The right side of my chest is the color of a deep blush and I'm on antibiotics for ten days. It's messed with my range-of-motion, feels puffy and stiff and made me really mad!