Big update progress news!

Major big news...

I don't know anything for sure yet, but I found out yesterday that there may in fact be NO internal radiation happening at all.

I'm scheduled for an ultrasound at my GYN's office on the 12th, to see where all my internal organs are sitting (what's left of them, ha ha) and just how carbonized they all are after the month+ of nuking.

After the radiation doc sees the results of those, he'll know a couple of important things--if my intestines and bladder are sitting in such a way that would make the internal radiation just too damned dangerous to them to go forward and if they've been too damaged by the treatment thus far to handle any more torture.

He's conferred with my surgeon, and the two of them are of the opinion that I might not even need anything else after this nuking and chemo are done; that I might have been beaten to enough of a bloody pulp that anything else would be superfluous. Who knows at this point!

All I know is that it is, in a way, good news. Well, good news if I don't NEED any more treatments; less good to find out that my internal portions have been so damaged that they can't take any more. At the moment, I confess that the best part of it all is learning that I get to sleep in Monday, Wednesday and Friday of next week. I could REALLY use that right now... I felt pretty destroyed last night after chemo, and zonked out really early, somewhere between 9 and 10. Tomorrow, I have to go from radiation up on the mountain allllllll the way down the mountain and across the valley to see Dr. Andy to get refills on the all-important pain pills. That is an exceptionally major trek, an hour and a half, and there is just no way I'm strong enough to do it, so thank god, as usual, for my darling husband.

Left to my own devices today, I never would have made the crawl down the stairs. It is only fear of screwing up on the last three days of radiation that made me fall in the general direction of the kitchen. It will be all I can do to get back up those stairs and perform some semblance of showering and dressing....yes folks, it is that bad today. It is really a bad, bad, crappy day in cancerland. Coffee is helping. Maybe I will wear my sock monkey jammies to radiation. No one would bat an eye.

I have no real idea what the state of my intestines is, in relation to being carbonized, but I can tell you from my experiences of the last few days, they're probably crumbling apart, based on what they're doing to me and the pain they're causing me. I get to alternate the diarrhea with sort-of constipation, with extreme pain and bleeding. That leads me to think things are not so happy down there in the nuclear fallout zone. Peeing is also excruciating--that feeling like you have when you have a major urinary infection, only in my case, it's just from being essentially sunburned to all hell from the inside out.

All that, and every ounce of my scrawny body feels like it's operating in double gravity right now. Very hard to lift my legs and I'm made of stone. I guess all the warnings about the side effects kicking in around week 4 were for real, huh? At first, it really wasn't all that bad, but now, I feel like I'm just destroyed.

I'm starting to really understand that as soon as these treatments are over, I DO DO DO have to act as if I just came home from surgery all over again and go to bed for a couple of weeks to recover. It seems almost like "faking" or something, because I don't have any gaping incisions or something, but the theory is that I'm supposed to treat myself as if I do to try and recuperate. Maybe they can give me some sort of major sedation to force me to lay still. We all know that isn't my strong suit. Well, except right now. I'm only typing to keep from laying still.

Maybe I can find a place in the house to just scoot all the Christmas stuff over and let it sit there till next year. There's an idea, since I don't see myself getting it handled any time soon...

Ok, my DH is in the shower and is almost done, so that means I should start hauling myself up the stairs for my turn. I keep telling myself that all I have to do is get clean and marginally dressed and crawl to the car........................Sounds like running a 10k right about now.

Good news, but a crappy-ass day folks. I guess mixed blessings are the best we can do today, so I'll take what I can get.