Hi blog followers and friends!
Chemo has ended! Hooray!! For now. Barring possible future metastasis.
Do not get breast cancer as an elderly person. Please. In my recent hospitalization I met an elderly woman who had to be helped onto a commode everytime she needed to go to the bathroom. I felt so sorry for her as she waited for help for ages and ages each time she buzzed and called for help. You need to get breast cancer when you are young enough to handle chemo too. Do not get it when you are infirm and have trouble getting to the toilet and remaining on it for hours at a time in the middle of the night.
Eighteen weeks, six chemos, an operation to insert a port in my jugular vein and vena cava, a biopsy of a chest node, a hospital stay for a possible superbug, a re-opening of the mastectomy wound oozing fungus, stomach pain, nausea, two months of painful heartburn, random diarrhea, week-long diarrhea, zinc cream on my ass like a baby, weeks of agonizing constipation, vomiting, getting hubby to burp me and read to me, injecting my own belly with needles full of white-blood-cell-stimulator, home-nurses' visits where they inject your butt, blood tests in your lymphless arm cos the "good arm" has all its veins shot, food tasting like metal, a billion different pills to take twenty times a day, constant doctor appointments, herceptin injections via my port, crying, raging, and feeling sorry for myself later, chemo is over.
And how were YOUR past four and a half months?
World of difference. Feeling myself again. Blues and anger all gone.
I feel great!
I wrote to a newly diagnosed, stage three (like myself) lady on the HER2 breast cancer support website where women with this kind of aggressive cancer all over the world support one another, that "chemo will take you down, way down. Give in to the tears, the rage. When it is over, however, it is really over and you won't even remember how sick you were for the four and a half months."
This is so true. I am way luckier than she, though. She has two young kids and is thirty four years old. What a drag for her to go through chemo at Christmas time. I am so very lucky to be finished chemo in time to start regaining hair and energy in time for a fun holiday season.
The fact this newcomer to HER2 breast cancer is only thirty four is not unusual. Hundreds of women on the site find their breast cancer in their late twenties and thirties and forties, apart from the more commonly accepted fifty year age mark. This makes more incomprehensible the recent news that the Canadian task force on Preventative Medicine has recommended no woman be screened for Breast Cancer before the age of fifty. Insane. My new surgeon, Dr. Mirsky, is outright angry at this news event. "There are women who would be dead without screening prior to the age of fifty!"
I saw Dr. Mirsky recently to discuss reconstruction. He did an uncomfortable search for lumps on my existing breast. He suggested June for my reconstruction. I will be four months past radiation by then so the new saline bags won't be burnt by the remaining radiation.
He, himself, will retire in April. But he has a couple of surgeons lined up for me who will both participate in the surgery. The procedure is this: I will have my existing boob removed (high chance of a separate cancer in your second boob if the first had breast cancer in it). Two flat bags will be inserted in my chest wall. A cup of saline solution will be injected into each. Then, every three weeks, I will visit the surgeon's office where he will inject more and more saline. The time after surgery, apparently, is agonising. Also the time between saline injections. Reason is, that the skin is learning how to stretch to accommodate these new saline boobs.
At a time when you think your boobs look normal enough, after enough saline injections into the "expanders" you go back into surgery. The saline is drained, and replaced with silicone, as the skin has been stretched enough to accommodate the new silicone bags. People who want nipples can then have them put on. I was told that if I didn't want them (which I don't) that i could have tattoos for flat nipples, the reason for which is that taking a shower at the health club will not be quite so embarrassing. We will see. Not sure I need anything other than lumps to make clothes look normal. But I do want to join a gym. And I don't want women staring at my nipple-less mounds.
Recent fact: Canadian women, in an international study, choose reconstruction less often than any other nationality. I think i understand why women choose no reconstruction. The whole issue is embarrassing and ridiculous. For me, though, I have all along railed against the idea of being left with a single ridiculous boob flying around. I hate my prosthesis bras. They don't fit right which i knew ahead of time anyway. I have a wide swimmer's upper back and have always had a problem fitting bras. I returned to the store run by a woman whose sister in law died of breast cancer and she scared me so badly I couldn't return a second time. She regards a customer returning for a refit a challenge of her talent at fitting. The prosthesis was too big and she gave me a smaller one but it, too, is too big. And the eighty five dollar bras are too small too.
Saturday, when I knew I had to get into one of the bras for the party that night, I twice drove to Merivale Rd looking for the Fabricland that the net says exists there, and could not find it. Fabricland, I heard, sells these expanders you sew into your bra when it is too small. Saves eighty five bucks. When i bombed out i went home and got out the sewing kit and sewed pieces of velcro into the strap to make it bigger. This is the kind of crap I tried to avoid back in June when i BEGGED, unsuccessfully, the surgeon, grumpy, nasty Dr. Lorimer, to take both my boobs. So you see, reconstruction, for me, is a hateful process, full of bitterness. All the American women on the HER2 website get a bilateral first thing after finding the breast cancer. Canadian surgeons, according to Mirsky, just don't do it. Bad enough recovering from the expanders being sewn in and the skin stretched; having to additionally recover from another mastectomy is stupid and awful!
Yesterday we put up the tree. It is so incredibly pretty! Tim and Jocelyne brought us a pie and we had a lovely time in front of the roaring wood fire with the tree just up.
Saturday night we celebrated my brother, Barry's birthday at his house at a lovely party and I chatted with the prime minister's wife for a long time and had a really great time. Barry gave a hilarious speech and laura put on an incredible meal with three big tables in the dining room.
I want to thank Monique, Jocelyne, Jordan, and Christine for feeding me all during my chemo. Monique has two kids and a job and a partner but still cooked and baked for me like crazy. I cannot thank them enough. I had the most wonderful home nurse, Chantal, throughout. It is to her I owe having a family doctor. She was an angel. This year at Midnight Mass, I have so much to thank God for and I pray that those going through chemo at this magical time of year, will remember there is next year for having a wonderful Christmas.
Other good news: my niece, Siobhan, daughter of my late brother Steve (who died of kidney cancer ten years ago) is now a Doctor of Philosophy! She just passed her Phd. exams with flying colours and is a full fledged doctor as is my sister, Rosemary, who also has a Phd. Very proud of you, Siobhan!!
Chemo really does have a cumulative effect. By the last Taxotere chemo on November 7th there were only two days in front of it where I felt ok. I had asked my oncologist, Paul, for a prescription for heartburn pain right before it. He only knew about Losec, which I had already in my possession and which had not been working. Funny he didn't know about Nexium, which the women on my online her2 support site talked about.
In short, that last chemo on November 7th began a month of hellish stomach pain and heartburn, where poor ole dave had to burp me each evening and it still didn't work. My digestive system was in hell for a month until I finally received a phone call with great news, that I now had a family doctor! Hooray for Dr. Rowan. The first word out of his mouth, unprompted by me, was "nexium" and after the first pill i was fine. i only took it for three days, and my tummy has been normal since. It isn't covered under the free drugs for canadian cancer patients program, but it is heaven.
Hospital. From november seventh's chemo, I had eight straight days of diarrhea and heartburn. A week after chemo I ended up in hospital. There is a ward in the General hospital I never knew about. It had seventy people in it who are undergoing chemo for various kinds of cancers and who either can't handle the chemo or who got febrile neutropenia, which is what I had.
They did tests during my week at the hospital but "none of the cultures grew". My oncologist was consulted when I was sent, initially, to "Stretcher Bay" in the chemo ward at the General hospital (against my will) for observation and testing. He thought I had C Difficile, the superbug, which can cause eight days of diarrhea and fever. Poor Christine! She and I had thought we were only going to the west end of Ottawa's cancer centre from where they sent me to the General Hospital's Stretcher Bay. A long day for poor Chris!
I only had a mild fever; it never reached a hundred degrees. I had a bug and no white blood cells. Eighty percent of people with febrile neutropenia never find out what bug they had.
After I was sent to the main hospital's special chemo patients' ward, there was a sign on my room that people had to wear gloves and hospital coat to enter the room. Even the food deliverers were not allowed in, so my food was left to get cold outside the room till I figured it out and started going looking for food.
The staff was incredibly nice and responsive. My brother, Barry, and his wife, Laura's visits were incredibly welcome. Barry bought me a few nights of television too, so that was great.
Dave was a lifesaver. The first night the food people said they'd bring dinner but then they forgot. Dave heated Jordan's lasagna up, from the freezer, and it was still hot when he reached the General hospital. Very welcome indeed!
One of the effects of chemo as you know is hairloss. You also lose your eyebrows and eyelashes. I retained some of my eyebrows, however, and three whole eyelashes! Saturday night I got out the warpaint for Barry's birthday. As i applied mascara I found it weird and amusing that new eyelashes were growing in, but were only a milimetre in length. Looked very weird with mascara on the one milimetre lashes.
I had thought Saturday night was just a family dinner for my brother's birthday and I had on my wig but an ordinary top and slacks. What a surprise when I got to his house and walked into a house full of sparkly minidresses and six inch Louboutins and famous people. I was introduced to CBC reporter, Julie Van Dusen (whom I met several times before there) and Perrin Beatty. Right away I knew I was underdressed. We had a great time and the food was excellent.
My energy and my brain are still a bit low, but I expect that to increase by the day. I am so lucky and blessed not to have anymore chemo. I will be going for tattooing on my mastectomy site on Dec 20th, in anticipation of radiation beginning on January 9th. The black tattoos will tell the techs where to aim the radiation machine. Very nervous about radiation errors that can result in lung problems for life. Twenty three radiations I wish i could avoid but the stats tell me that my future survival depends on them.
What a great thing to have one's stomach back in shape. Looking forward to Christmas baking, which I began the other day with banana cake, from Christine's recipe.
I thank you all for all the incredible love and kindnesses and good wishes over the past six months, and I wish you all the loveliest Christmas season ever!
