Shake, rattle and roll!

----I should mention that these blog posts often get started one day and finished several days later, thus making the timelines a bit muddy for the reader. I apologize for that...but hopefully it will still all make sense!----

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Awright, whoever's in charge needs to get their shit in gear. 7.3 or something in Japan, followed by 8.8 in Chile, not to even mention all the "bigger than 90% of normal earthquakes" aftershocks, tsunami warnings.........this is not business as usual--well, unless there's some sort of celestial bowling going on, BUT....

Regardless, I don't think duck-and-cover, as taught in elementary school, is going to work in these cases.

Very nerve-wracking! Sheesh!

Now, where were we?

Ah yes....Day 22 was running errands and getting ready for surgery day. We had it all in line to get the chores and miscellany done on Tues so that we could get up and out for surgery in the morning. Lloyd would take me to surgery, stay till I went in, and then head home to deal with dogs & kids. Dad & Cheryl would drive up to the hospital in order to bring me home from surgery.

But, as usual, life threw us a curve Tuesday night, in the form of a rather large & nasty kidney stone. Not my kidney, Lloyd's kidney!! This is a man who never asks for help, never takes advil unless he's got a near migraine - and then, he takes ONE advil. Anna came running to get me, and he swallowed the rather large, to say the least, dose of painkillers that I handed him without question. That's how I knew he was in serious trouble!

Change of plans time!!!

Unfortunately, as I've learned, the only thing you can do about those things is WAIT, and endure pain that's been described to me as far, far worse than childbirth. Luckily, Lloyd has a wife with a wee bit of medication to make the waiting a bit easier. Even luckier, I had Dad and Auntie coming and we were able to change plans a bit, so that they'd get up here early and Cheryl could go up the mtn with me for surgery and Dad could stay with Lloyd in case something changed and he needed to get to a hospital. I was NOT leaving him alone...

When Dad and Cheryl arrived in the morning, they brought me a big surprise. A 6ft tall surprise! Joshie!!!!! Right on! I haven't seen him since my wedding, but Josh and I grew up like siblings. Having him up here was a fantastic surprise, and made me feel even more confident.

Suddenly, there were competent adults everywhere!!! Whew!! Sometimes, you just need the cavalry to show up at the right time.

Dad stayed here as planned, Josh drove me up the mountain and Cheryl held my hand a lot, both literally and figuratively.

By the time I was home from surgery, the kidney stones seemed to have made their way to the bladder and settled down, meaning that Lloyd's major pain was over. (He actually passed the stone about a week later and it was HUGE by my standards...it was about the size of a large lentil. Bigger than a split pea, smaller than a fresh pea. Ow.)

Day 24, and we're back in the chemo lab. The infusion went very easily, thanks to my newly

installed port! Nothing much to report that night, except for some extreme-exhaustion-driven nodding off at odd moments and my favorite new bit of strangeness, which I call "speaking in tongues."

Explanation - I've always talked in my sleep. I've even held conversations in my sleep, as a number of relatives will attest. Lately, times when I've been exhausted beyond rational explanation, heavily medicated, and pumped full of chemo-poison on top of that, I seem to start talking from within a dream. I can sort of tell that I'm doing it sometimes, and it's strange because it's almost like seeing myself from the outside. I seem fully awake, and talk in a perfectly normal manner, 'cept for the teeny problem that what I'm saying is complete gibberish. Speaking in tongues. ;-P

The strangest thing is, even after getting my Neulasta shot on Friday, which gave me a pretty good wallop last time, overall I didn't have any miserable "tunnel" days this time. None! Sure, I felt icky, I was really tired all the time and had some barfing here and there, but nothing at all like last time was.

Hmm, I hope they remembered to add the chemo meds to the IV bag!! ;-)

Joshie had to go home on Sunday night, but Cheryl stayed until Wednesday, which was fantastic. I'm learning that getting her up here, all to myself, is the greatest! ;-) Muhahahahahaha!

But I cried when she left...even though I know she'll be back in a month.

She is the single greatest thing that happens to this household during all this cancer bullshit - she takes care of me, lets Lloyd take time off, days off if he wants, gives the kids lots of fussing over, cooks dinner that they all love, you name it.

I learned somewhere around the time she was leaving that I now need ANOTHER type of infusion, something called Ferrlecit, which is an iron supplement of some sort or another. Once per week, for 8 weeks. I guess we need to get my red cells moving too. Whatever!! They tell me when to show up, I sit down and they can infuse whatever they want.

Believe it or not, that's pretty much it. The last days of February faded away with very little fanfare. I have some sickness each day - I can count on at least one good puke, a big headache, and a lot of muscle & body aches, no matter what, with two or three additional little side effects thrown in there for fun...........but it's all survivable. I can deal.

Tomorrow, I'll be seeing the dermatologist who volunteers some time at the cancer center, at the Brighter Days program he runs, where we learn more about taking care of our fragile cancer-skin, he gives us amazing free samples, and talks to each of us in turn personally. I can't wait to have him look at this bizarre breakout I'm having on my scalp. It only figures that I shave my head and it looks like I'm a mutant with all these bumps on my scalp. Ah well.

Dermo seminar, then my iron infusion, and then I'm done for the week. Next week is chemo cycle 3, along with allllll kinds of other appointments. Should be a blast. ;-)

A wee bit behind...

Port surgery, chemo, and visitors of the coolest kind have me more than a little behind. S'ok, I'll get it done as soon as I can!

I'm in the nasty days of chemo recovery, and I feel like hell, but Auntie is here, so poor Lloyd isn't stuck with me all by himself.

More soon, but till then, my friend Darcy kicks ass!

I feel like a chihuahua...

...Mostly hairless, rather helpless, so therefore I just get pissy and bad-tempered & snap at people a lot.

Day 17- After my consult with the port surgeon, my next doctor-y thing was to head out to see Andy. That's always a pretty drive out the back roads, and worth the wait involved, to talk to him and Lorrie. It's a doctor visit and a shrink session all at once! Well, at least I come out feeling like it was, because talking to him makes me calmer and gives me a lot to think about.

Day 18- Friday, and yoga time! Ahhhh...... I sat down with Lisa, and explained to her everything that was going on with me physically, so that she could design a practice for that afternoon that fit my immediate needs. We did entirely restorative poses, combined with her working my head, neck and shoulders in some cranio-sacral massage sort of ways, and damned if she didn't get rid of almost all the achies in my neck! The only bad part was that the entire session was over in less than 2 minutes! Ok, it only felt that way, but STILL. I think I was just so deep under (meditating), which I usually am when I'm at her studio, that it was like falling asleep, while the time just whizzed by.

Regardless, Lisa is a HUGE help in managing this beast of a disease - as much as my doctors in many, many respects. I saw her for some private sessions before my very first surgery, to help with pain management and such, and the effects she's had on me are profound. Her role in my cancer fight can't be overstated. I know not everyone fully understands what kinds of things yoga can do; and I know not everyone really "believes" in it, which is fine, but I've learned so much that I am fully confident in saying that it is a VERY powerful TOOL. If I could see her twice a week, I would, and I would probably be a far, far healthier, happier person for it.

As it is, I'm going to be able to do an other 90 minute session like this one before my 3rd & final chemo cycle of this set (before we CT and see what these boogers are doing, and start ANOTHER set of chemo cycles) thanks to a far-too-generous Christmas gift from my father in law (Thanks Pop!!! I love you!). RGD & EJD, thank you again for this one. You guys rock, and I love YOU very much too.

Day 19-20 Sleepover! I got to have a friend come over to play! Dawn came up from the Bay Area Saturday afternoon for a fantastic visit. We didn't do anything special, just had pizza and watched a movie and talked (which was the important part); then got up and went out to brunch and talked some more. Actually, the really important part is that she was here, because my hair was falling out in handfuls, and I REALLY needed one of my friends here for that. Talk about lucky timing!

It is, of course, nothing against my darling husband, but I just needed a friend of the female kind. Poor Lloyd is about as frazzled with my hair loss as I am, but Dawn was able to tell me truthfully when she thought it was time to go for it and shave it all off. Sitting in a restaurant trying to discreetly collect the piles of long hairs gathering on my scarf and shirt and lap was both horrifying and disgusting at the same time!

The best part was just having a friend up to talk to. I swear, I want to have a slumber party, as if I'm 10 again. Maybe I can rent a hotel suite in the Bay Area and shove all the furniture around... Anyway, thank you Dawn, just for being here, and being here to *tell me* what I needed to know. It's fantastic having another cancer survivor to talk to, who I know won't pull any punches, and will tell me the truth.

That said, I better not hear about one more of you getting cancer. NO.

So day 20 ended with my dh and I in the bathroom, hacking with scissors, and then shaving with clippers until I was bald but for my bangs. I thought I'd leave those for a while, to hang out of the hats - but as soon as I got in the shower, they started coming out by the handful, so off then went too.

At least showering is a really fast job now! No shampoo OR conditioner!!

Whether or not bald is beautiful in your book is totally subjective...my head is totally lumpy and scaly from my stupid psoriasis patches...but bald is very definitely COLD!!! It will be nicer once all the stubble falls out & it's smooth, but at least stubble doesn't fall out in giant fluffy waves on the front of your sweater!

Today is day 21. Somehow, it seems like I've been living with this; this label of being "terminal" for 20 days now. It still seems surreal and incomprehensible.

Today, I go in for labs, and pray with all I've got that I have enough happy little neutrophils, the particular white blood cells I need, that they're able to go ahead and chemo me into submission again this week. The biggest fear I have right now is that I WON'T have enough, but I should. Should. Should. Better!!

After I give them blood, we'll go off and entertain ourselves in Paradise for a while and then go see Dr. Mazj so he can tell me what my white count and stats are.

Tomorrow is my "day off" this week, so I can figure out what I need to finish up and get ready before chemo; Weds is my port installation surgery (Hey, Pauline says after I get the port, I'll set off metal detectors! How cool is that?!); Thursday is chemo & Friday is Neulasta. I should be able to do some updates during that time, but I fully expect Sat-Mon or Tues will be full-on misery, deep in the chemo tunnel, where it kills my eyes to even look for the light at the end.

As always, stay tuned, and--

A special note to some of my newer readers: Thanks guys. Having you out there, far-flung, busy adults, taking the time to read the ramblings of someone you knew once upon a time makes me feel good, like I'm really doing something worthwhile. There is a special place in my heart for all of you. For all my readers and friends, really. I never thought I'd be a blogger, because I never had anything interesting to say, or that anyone else would want to read. As I've said, be careful what you ask for.

Much, much post-Valentine's love to you all,

Steph

Playing catch-up

One of my "cancer resolutions" is to be realistic about what I can and can not get done. If I'm realistic, I'm never going to finish writing a nice thoughtful catch-up entry, detailing the horrible days after chemo and all that.

If I wait until I try to do that, it'll be chemo day again, and my "daily diary" concept will be shot all to hell.

So, lets try this: I'll give a general overview of the days from then to now, and then we'll move on and pretend the last couple weeks weren't accidentally skipped. Deal?

Deal...Day 6 was Sunday, and wasn't any fun at all. It was Grammy night, and I missed the show, damn it. I know that I had a headache the night before and I have absolutely no recollection of the early part of the day; and I mean none at all. I just know I spent the evening curled in bed with cold-packs on my head and eyes, leaping up at random intervals to barf. Day 7: ibid

Day 8: Lots of headache still, and I was still bedridden and very thoroughly miserable, but I didn't barf! Yay! I even ate eventually.

Day 9: Didn't feel good, had a severe headache, but didn't feel like total death.

Day 10: Stiiiiilllll got a headache........

Days 11-14 were pretty unremarkable. I've not had a day where I feel "good," per se, but at this point, "unremarkable" isn't a bad thing.

Day 15: Phone appointment with the hospital nutritionist who is trying to help me find food that will a) help me stay alive, b) keep me nourished during chemo and c) hopefully not get barfed right back up.

Now we're current! Yay! Whew!

Day 16, today, was my consultation appointment with the surgeon who's going to put in my port next week. It was a pretty straightforward appointment. He did the usual vital taking, stethoscope-wielding exam, which I will never understand. I guess they need to see kind of what your overall health and fitness is like before they slice you open.

What he'll be installing is one of these little boogers. This little joy of the medical device world allows me to get chemo'd without the nurses having to try and find a vein to run an IV each time. Yes, it's painful, and it's not any fun, and by the end of my chemo period last time, my veins were PISSED.

So, this time, we get a tiny incision to slip this neato little medical device inside my chest where it will get anchored and allow the chemo infusion to be delivered more or less directly, through a big fat central vein.

Less pain and faster infusion time - hell yes! So, a minor surgery, and off we go.

The best news of all is that my dear Auntie is coming to spoil me rotten for a week and help me get through those really, really rough days after chemo, and that in itself makes me feel better.

Tomorrow, I'm off to see Andy, and then Friday, FRIDAY! I've got an appointment with my yoga teacher, Lisa, for an hour and a half of heaven.

Yay, I caught up!

That means I get to go to sleep now. More gory doctor and cancer details tomorrow...

This is what a port actually looks like. The whole thing resides under our skin and the long "string" looking part is the catheter threaded down into the vein. Looks like fun, huh?

A daily diary

INCREDIBLY excitable and happy addendum at bottom, please read!

So, I've been thinking. Well, I've been thinking a LOT, which is not surprising. Way back when I started this blog, I really had no idea what the future would hold. At the time, I never imagined THIS, but I did really plan on trying to make it a daily recording of what it was *really* like for me to go through my fight with cancer, warts and all.

It never quite evolved as far as I thought it would, but I think it's time to try and change that. There is probably someone, somewhere out there who is looking down the barrel of a cancer diagnosis, procrastinating on their yearly Pap tests, or wondering if they should get their daughter a Gardasil vaccination.

This is not to say that it will be elegant or eloquent; at times it may be little more than a day number and a few words. At times it is going to be very ugly, very unpleasant or very graphically T-M-I.

But it will be honest.

There is only one thing I need to ask you all to do. I need everyone who reads this regularly, or even ONCE, to sign up to "follow" the blog. I believe you can follow it anonymously; alternately, sign up as "Lurker12" or something. The point of having followers is basically find-ability. The more followers, as I understand it, the higher it would show up in Blogger searches for blogs about being 38 and fighting cancer.

So, please, sign up for me?

To catch things up to where we are now, I'm going to work on a very brief description of each day up till now, starting with Day 1, January 26, which is the day my heart stopped for a few minutes.

Day 1: Diagnosis day. This is the day everything changed, forever.

Day 2: The scramble...to get ready to enter chemo again, at a dramatically different level than before, to get all those chickens back in a row, and to try and start telling everyone who matters in my life what this horrible thing is that has just happened.

Day 3: My first combo-chemo infusion; a nice long day at the lab, with Aimee providing some nice company. Just like old times! ;-)

Day 4: Dad & Chris up to visit; they drove me up the mountain for my Neulasta shot and some IV hydration, and then home for some tacos and lots of conversation deep in the wee morning hours.

Day 5: Took Dad & Chris out searching the backroads for some of our cool local birdies, and were rewarded with a Bald Eagle, a couple groups of Sandhill Cranes, lots of hawks and lots of assorted ducks, geese & swans. Back down south a bit for a loop around the Sutter Buttes, our little local mtn range and a trip to In'n'Out in Yuba City and then back home. Nap for me and a drive back home for Dad & Chris. I don't think I did much that evening, at least not that I recall.

Ok, that takes us through the first Saturday. Day 6 is when life got ugly, so I'll pick up the catching up post there.

Later.

I need a nap.

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But first! An addendum...or two, to be precise.

1. Some of those very dear people I'm surrounded with have been coming forward with gifts and cash to help me do and enjoy whatever I might want. How wonderful is that?

I just couldn't think of something!!

Now I have, and it's brilliant!!! la-di-da-di-da-da-da

My yoga teacher, Lisa, is a certified massage therapist, in addition to her yoga & wellness credentials AND being an American Medical Association-accredited registered nurse. Put all that together, and she can work with me on both restorative and "fitness" yoga; "repair work" yoga, as I call it; meditation for help in pain control and getting through the worst days, AND give me nummy, nummy massages!

Yay!!

I wonder if she'd come live with me.....

I'm still not sure what the cost on this combo-service will be, but I do know that I'll be able to afford one session with her for each cycle remaining in this first set of chemo treatments.

Can you tell that I'm a little excited about this? And, I have my "extra-Auntie" (who shall remain anonymous) to thank for putting the idea in my head. Huge thanks to RGD & EJD all over again!!! I love you very, very much. (And I remember your full *real* names, too, lol)

2. I would like to ask for some comments on this post please - and in those comments, the names of some of your favorite kids' books. Ones you loved or still do, your kids love now, you name it. The more the merrier. If you have comments about the books, why you love it, great, if not, take a really quick sec, throw me a name of two, and off.

I'd really appreciate it!!

M a s s a g e s . . . . . .

The long-overdue, hardest post ever

This post is far late in coming, but I think you'll all forgive me. It's also going to be fairly short, and to the point, but I think you'll all forgive me that too.

On January 26, I was told that I had been diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic cervical cancer, which had appeared in the form of small nodules in my lungs. The nodules were observed on my routine quarterly CT scan and biopsied viva needle aspiration of my lungs.

It is more than likely that the cancer cells traveled through the lymphatic system before my cancer surgery in September of 2008, when my pelvic lymph nodes were removed. The tiny nodules in my lungs appeared as early as March of 2009 on CT scans, but were so tiny and scattered in my lungs that it was physically impossible to get a biopsy sample using any procedure available. I was sent for a complete pulmonary function test and many x-rays. In the end, the pulmonologist who read the results said that if they were his lungs, he would not worry about these little specks for even a minute.

So I didn't.

I should have.

I skipped one routine CT cycle because I had to have the surgery in November to repair the vaginal prolapse problem I was having - at the time, the nodules still hadn't multiplied, migrated or grown in any way, so postponing the scan was no biggie at all.

My next CT was the one on January 11, where the nodules were observed to have multiplied and grown. Even so, they were still so small, and so diffused through the lungs that it was very hard for the radiologist to get a biopsy sample. The biopsy was done January 19 and I was told of the results on January 26.

If I chose not to commence treatment of this metastasis, I would have a clinical survival prognosis of 1 year to live. With aggressive treatment, I am likely to have yearS. There is no way to know how many. I began chemo on January 28.

The treatment protocol for this will be 3 cycles of chemotherapy, with each cycle taking 21 days, using a combination of Taxol and Carboplatin; with a Neulasta chaser to help my white blood cells rebound. After each set of 3 cycles, a CT scan will be done to determine how the cancer is reacting to the treatment.

And then we do it again.

And maybe again, and again, and again, and again, and again...........

Lather, rinse, repeat, 'cept this time will quite notably sans hair.

Beyond that, I don't know much of anything.

The one thing we have going in our favor in this is these nodules seem to be very slow-growing, so we may be able to eradicate the fuckers. We may get to a point when there is only one more stubborn one, and they can go in and remove it surgically. Everything is up in the air.

One day at a time, as they say.

All I know is that I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that I see the date January 26 come around a LOT more times. It's kind of a 2nd birthday for me, of I suspect it's a lot like people who have kicked a drug or alcohol addiction feel about the day they got sober. A celebration of another year still kickin'.

So, the chemo process is started, and it's ugly. These higher-dose/double-dose chemo doses pack one hell of a wallop, and the Neulasta shot, for the white blood cells, has some gnarly side effects TOO, but now that I've suffered through the first round, I know what I can prepare for. Knowledge is power, right?

I know that all of this isn't really happy news....to any of us...... But you can not suddenly start walking on eggshells around me, trying to ignore the 9998lb lime-green elephant in the room. It's here, it's not going anywhere, and it's going to get poked and prodded along the line.

I am still me. I still have a pretty rude, crude, sick, black, morbid sense of humor. I will probably make lots of jokes about dying. I'm allowed. So are you.

You are also allowed to ask me as many and whatever questions you might have. You'll probably have some.

I don't know how many days I have left, but I know how I refuse to waste them - mentally, physically or emotionally.

I admit that I am horrible about talking on the phone, because I just don't *like* it all that much anymore, but I loooooove text messaging (I *might* still be 8 years old somewhere in there), I love talking via email, Facebook & Twitter, and even that good old-fashioned snail mail of cards and letters.

I love hearing what's up in other people's lives more than you can imagine!

I will promise to try my very best to give at least a tiny answer to each! (all communiques accompanied by flowers & See's Soft Centers (nut-fee) candy will of course be given priority......) ;-P

In fact, I'm going to make an effort in between barfing and sleeping to try and have a one-to-one conversation with every one of my Facebook friends (even if it's over by email) and the 2 or 3 other friends or family members I have who aren't on Facebook.

There you have it. You, my friends, are also my family, my personal support network, my rocks, shoulders and ears when I need them, and a hugely important part of my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being around.