Ready For Healing

Merry Christmas at the Conservatory

Today I finished radiation therapy. It feels great to check that one off!

The affected area has gotten more and more sore, and because I try not to complain in the blog too much or get too graphic, I'll just sum up my experience in one word:

Ouch.

But it's going to get better soon, so I'm not letting it get me down very much. Plus I'm going out for a celebratory cocktail with my sister-in-law tonight, so I have that to look forward to.

There's always something to look forward to.

I sense a few "how this experience has changed me" posts coming sometime, but for now I'm focusing on healing, readying myself for the next step, and enjoying each and every day to the absolute fullest.

Almost Done

Rainy Day at the Conservatory

24 radiation treatments down, 6 to go!

Overall this hasn't been very difficult. I'm a little tired, and just in the last week the "sunburned" area has gotten sore in places, but I'm doing very well.

That said, I'm really looking forward to being done next Thursday.

The day after I complete radiation I go in for my quarterly MUGA scan, which measures the efficiency of a certain function of my heart. This is required since I'm taking herceptin, a drug which can damage the heart. The scan itself is easy.

And then on Monday the 17th, because apparently I can't stay away from the hospital for a single weekday, I have a herceptin infusion (not difficult but takes awhile) and an appointment with my oncologist, when I assume I'll hear all about tamoxifen, the estrogen-suppressing drug I'll take for at least five years.

Then I'll be back to visiting the hospital just once every three weeks for the herceptin. That will be good!

The Hair Report

I hope to be ready to retire Mavis next month sometime. My hair is growing in nicely, but I'd like to wait until there's a bit more of it before getting it colored and showing my short 'do to the world.

The rest of my hair is back in full swing. My eyelashes, which did not get the memo about falling out until after chemo was done (!), are in the process of coming back in.

The body is amazingly resilient.

And now I'd like to put in a plug for the God of Makeup for making it possible for me to go through this whole ordeal looking pretty damn good.

Fun Stuff Completely Unrelated to Cancer

B. and I mark our 25th anniversary of togetherness tomorrow, and we're celebrating by spending the afternoon after my radiation appointment together downtown, eating dinner at our favorite restaurant, and staying at a downtown hotel for the night. Nice.

I love the Christmas season, and I'm thankful that I'm done with the major treatments before Christmas this year. I'm shopping, we're baking, we're getting our tree next week, we're getting together with people, we've got the holiday playlists going - it's all good.

Tattoos and Trees

I'm officially The Girl with the Tiny Purple Tattoos, although the three barely discernible dots don't make much of a "look at me with my cool tattoos" statement.

I've had seven radiation treatments (only 23 to go!), and so far it's no big deal. Every weekday at 1:30 I'm there for about 10 minutes, then I go back to my regular life.

They play a lot of Dean Martin in there, so afterwards of course I find myself wanting a vodka tonic. I'm not sure if listening to the King of Cool is clinically proven to soothe the jangled nerves of cancer patients, but it's a good distraction from the beeps and whirs of the machine.

One of my favorite city parks is near the hospital, so I'm making it a habit to stop by every day after the treatment for 10-15 minutes to connect with nature.

Walking among stately trees is a nice antidote to spending time in the windowless radiation department. On rainy days I visit the conservatory, which has been around for 100 years and is filled with orchids, succulents, and everything in between.

In addition to trees, a conservatory, an art museum, ponds, and city views, this park has a dahlia garden (my favorite flower).

Would I be noticing the beauty of dahlias on a sunny November afternoon if I weren't going through cancer treatment?

Seems doubtful.

Next Steps

Chemo Done

The final chemo treatment was a little over two weeks ago, and now I'm feeling much more like my normal self. I can't tell you how exciting it is for me just to feel normal. Chemo is such an invasion of the whole system, and I'm ready to be left alone. I'm also very grateful that I avoided some of the side effects I was most dreading, such as neuropathy (which can be permanent).

Radiation 

But of course there's more to go. Yesterday I had a consultation with the radiation oncology team and learned about the plan.

Many times women who've had a mastectomy can skip radiation, but if there is lymph node involvement and/or the tumor(s) extend beyond 5 cm, radiation is advised. Well I could check both of those boxes, so radiation it is. Plus I'm young and healthy (I know, 45 isn't exactly young, but in the cancer world it is), so I think that means I can take it and am at low risk for getting some things that could bother older or sicker patients.

I go in on Monday for a "planning session" where they scan and x-ray the area and there's a lot of set-up. I get three tattoos that look like pen dots (and being tattoos, will be permanent).

Then 1-2 weeks later I'll start the daily radiation appointments. I'll go in every weekday for six weeks. The radiation treatment itself takes just five minutes, but counting travel time it will probably take a little over an hour out of my day to attend to this.

The main side effects are fatigue, which is cumulative, and getting a "sunburn" on the skin that's being irradiated. For me that's the whole right chest wall and lymph node area.

I'm not sure how uncomfortable the skin is going to get or how much peeling there will be, but it sounded like most people aren't restricted from moving their arm or have to take major pain medicine. I'm also not sure how tired I'm going to get, but I was told that walking daily (which I'm already doing) helps significantly. So I'm going to go into this assuming it's all going to be manageable.

Plus, it's not going to be as hard as chemotherapy! Everyone seems to agree on that. It's good to have the most arduous chapter behind me.

There are other possible side effects that aren't nearly as common, and I'm just not going to worry about those. I was told that the big studies have shown that the benefits (namely reducing the chance of the cancer coming back in that area) outweigh the risks for patients like me, so I decided to trust that and go ahead with it.

How I'm Doing

While I'm not exactly looking forward to radiation, I've accepted that it's what I need to do. My perspective on what is "difficult" has changed this summer! That can work to my advantage. In fact, my perspective on what constitutes a "problem" or something to worry about has also shifted this year.

I need to guard against doing too much too soon, as I don't have all my energy back and won't for some time yet. This is not what I do best.

The Return of My Hair

I'm looking forward to watching my hair grow back. Not all of it fell out, but enough that I look pretty darn bald. It's supposed to start coming back in a couple of weeks. At first it may be downy and/or curly. I don't know when it will be long enough for me to feel comfortable to color it (oh so much gray!) and wear it short - I'll just have to see how it goes.

In the meantime, Mavis is on the clock.

Home Stretch

Five chemo treatments down, one to go.

If my chemo regimen were a marathon, I'd be at about mile 22. I'm not a runner, but it doesn't take too much imagination to guess that at mile 22 one is tired. Very, very tired.

I think that going through chemo has a lot in common with running a marathon, except for that whole I-didn't-actually-want-to-do-this thing. Plus there's no souvenir t-shirt.

I feel relieved that there are 22 miles behind me, yet the final 4.2 miles loom in front of me and there's another really big hill to climb. So this week it's time to slow my pace, hydrate at the water station and gear up for the last push.

One big difference between my experience and running a marathon is that I'm doing this alone, not in a group of other runners. For a variety of reasons I deliberately decided against joining a support group of people going through cancer treatment. I don't regret that decision, but since I don't know anyone currently going doing what I'm doing, many parts of this journey have been lonely experiences.

On the one hand it's been very important to me to keep living my regular life as much as possible, and that's been really helpful. Doing normal things with normal people helps me feel normal, and feeling normal feels good.

Yet cancer treatment is an alternate universe that you have to be in to really understand, and it's an intense and highly emotional experience. In that way it feels similar to becoming a new mom. And when you're a new mom, it's affirming to meet other bleary-eyed, hormonally-challenged women who have suddenly become a food source and are thinking about the things you're thinking about, like what kind of pacifier to buy and how not to go completely crazy.

I think I've found a way to address my need for this new kind of community (women who are doing or have done the diagnosis/surgery/chemo/radiation/survival shebang) without committing to sitting around and talking about it a lot with strangers, and that's through exercise programs for survivors.

I've started going to a Qigong class offered by a local cancer education and resource center and I've joined a group that offers all kinds of different fitness opportunities (triathlon training, yoga, weight training, dragon boat racing, the works) to female cancer survivors, which I'll explore more after I'm done with radiation. These are free programs, which I'm very much appreciating.

In the meantime, "normal" life goes on. M. started high school and C. started middle school a couple of weeks ago, and emotions have been running high around here. B. is in a very busy time at work. I have clients to see, family and friends to keep in touch with, a dog to walk, and so on, just like you.

But I'm pacing myself, trying to rest when I need it (that's still extremely difficult for me!) and feel happy to be coming into the home stretch of this challenging race.

The Post about My Hair

Well, I've been curious about when (or whether) I was going to write this post, the one about hair.

I guess it's today!

I told you a while back that the chemo drugs I would be on (specifically one of them) would definitely lead to hair loss. And then I went on radio silence about hair.

As you might imagine, the knowledge of sudden, impending hair loss due to chemicals coursing through your bloodstream to kill cancer cells brings up all your hair and vanity issues front and center, very quickly.

Plenty of you who see me regularly already know my hair story. But now I'd like to share in the blog.

My Love/Hate Relationship with My Hair

What woman doesn't have a love/hate relationship with her hair? I have yet to meet her. Although I liked certain aspects of my hair - its color (from a bottle for years due to lots of grey), its body, its uniqueness, the fact that it was mine (I felt a certain loyalty to it) - it would not be the hair I'd order from the factory (too thick, too coarse, too hard to manage, too grey).

And although I had long hair practically my entire life, I was almost never satisfied with how it looked or how well I could style it. My hairstylist used a blow dryer and made it look fabulous, but I could never achieve that look myself, despite the eight kinds of goo, gels and serums I own (sound familiar to every woman reading this?!)

Yet I also refused to experiment and get it cut short. I had convinced myself that I just have very difficult hair.

I was in a rut.

Confidentiality

Some patients don't mind the fact that anyone who cares to notice can see they are in cancer treatment. I am not one of those patients.

I know I wanted to have some kind of hair option for when I had no hair. I looked into all kinds of wigs. None of the ready-to-wear wigs even slightly resembled my hair. Too silky, too Raquel Welch, too Halloween. None of them were even close to my shade of kinda red/kinda brown.

A friend told me about her friend who had a wig made out of her own hair, so I looked into it."You can't even tell it's a wig!" was the common refrain I heard as I did the research.

Sign me up.

Getting the Haircut

Three days after my first chemo treatment I went to a father-and-son business in town who create wigs for women who lose their hair through chemotherapy or a condition such as alopecia. They are amazing people who do an incredible job. It's an art.

I brought just the right friend with me for the haircut, and it was an interesting and somewhat empowering experience rather than being traumatic. My hair was cut to a short crew-cut length and then the rest of it was made into a wig in one day. You just have to see to believe it. There's even a fake "part" in it that looks real.

In the meantime, I got a preview of what I'll look like when the hair grows back in a bit, and I'm happy to say that I think short hair will suit me. Bonus!

"Mavis"

It's funny that I felt my hair was so much a part of my identity, but when it was cut off and made into a wig it just became the hair I used to have. I did not lose my identity just because I lost the hair. For some reason I named the wig Mavis, maybe because it seems like a humorous name for a working girl. She sits on a wig stand in the closet until she's on shift.

It's been great wearing the wig whenever I want to be inconspicuous and just blend in. This isn't  important around family, but it's nice around acquaintances and in social gatherings. I can relax and think about something besides cancer when I know that I'm not an obvious billboard advertising cancer treatment. I don't have any hard-and-fast rules about when I wear the wig and when I don't. I decide in the moment.

I'm grateful to live in a climate with mild summers, that's for sure.

Planet Bald

My hair has fallen out at different rates in different places. I'm almost bald on my head (a lot of the crew cut fell out and then I had it shaved to make wig-wearing easier) yet some hair is still growing there. My eyebrows and eyelashes have thinned but are still hanging in there.

At home I forget that I'm almost bald until I catch a glance at myself in a window or mirror. Then it's a bit startling. With the chest port and the bald head I remind myself of an alien. But I'm used to it and it doesn't upset me very often.

What I keep remembering is that this hair loss is temporary. This fact, coupled with having a wig that looks like the old me, keeps this whole hair loss thing from being completely horrible.

Facing hair loss is one of the many examples of things I've had to do this year that I dreaded yet somehow managed.

By the end of this adventure I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Reflections at the Halfway Point

When I started chemo I noticed that I no longer felt the same desire to write in this blog. I'm reflecting on that today.

If this were my journal (which I don't keep often but have kept off and on since I was 10) there would be a lot more ranting and incoherence. It would be of course way more embarrassing for me and probably not one bit more interesting to you.

If this were my memoir, there would be a lot more excruciating detail about any possible drama because my editor would no doubt insist I include them to sell books. The horrors of nausea! The acquaintance who has shunned me since learning of my cancer! The incompetent nurses, the hospital errors (I'd have to make those up), and of course, my anger at God (which I'd also have to make up), and What It All Means.

This is not to attack memoirs by cancer survivors. And I'm sure if I were motivated I could write a decent one. But still, you have to reveal A LOT and be very vulnerable in order to make the kind of connection with your readers that makes your story interesting. And as you know I haven't even revealed on Facebook that I had cancer, nor do many of my clients know, so I am miles away from baring my soul to the general public.

This blog is like a newsletter for friends and acquaintances. And with chemo there's not a lot of news - it's lather, rinse, repeat, times six. Same old story.

Humor is one technique I've used to help me blast through my natural reserve at sharing any of this very personal information. I could share a little bit of what it was like to lose a breast by talking about my trip to the fake boob store, for example.

But there hasn't been much to strike my funny bone since chemo began. And the things that are funny I've wanted to share with friends and family just in person. I've been turning inward more and wanting to keep detailed information within a smaller group of people. I think this is natural.

Going through chemo makes me feel very exposed, very set apart. Frankly I just want to blend in. But this is a unique experience that's changing me - physically, emotionally, mentally (temporarily let's hope!) and spiritually.

And so I find myself bobbing back and forth between life as usual and life as something wholly different. I feel the same, yet completely different. I look the same, yet completely different. My relationships are the same, yet are completely different.

This is what it feels like to me right now.