Saturday, October 16, 2010

Panic Attack

I'm in kind of panic mode today.  I found another lump in my breast.  This time it is in my left breast.  So, what do I do with that information? 

I don't think I can go through this whole process again.  Tom has tried to reassure me.  I say tried because my terror has taken over.  He is looking at it logically....here are his points of value.

1. They just did a pet scan about 6 weeks ago.  This should have shown any large tumors.  (In my head "It wasn't a large tumor six weeks ago...I felt nothing then.")

2.  They just did a mammogram in July and it didn't show anything.  (In my head, "That was three months ago...it probably wouldn't have shown up then.")

I don't know how fast cancer grows.  They said the one in the right breast was aggressive.  They also said that if I get cancer in my left breast that it would be a different cancer because cancer doesn't spread from breast to breast...(Yeah, that is reassuring, I guess.) 

I was thinking that I would have to start all over again with my OB/GYN doctor and get the mammogram and biopsy if necessary but Tom thinks I should just go to Dr. Waples my cancer doctor and let him figure it out.  He's probably right.  I know he is thinking more clearly than I am right now.

I guess another question would be, if I am doing the chemotherapy right now, would I have to do it again after they took the lump out of the left breast?  Surely not. 

Alright...breathing, breathing, breathing.  I'm probably just being silly.  I've had lumpy breasts all my life.  Why should that stop now and why should I worry more than I ever did?  (Inside head, "Because I'm in a terrible place right now because of one lump in my right breast...and I don't think I can do this all over again.")

I'll call Dr. Waples on Monday.  He'll know what to do.

I'm gonna go do the treadmill and get rid of this anxiety.  Thanks for listening to me panic...I promise to try to have a more positive post tomorrow.  8-}

Friday, October 15, 2010

Moments in Time

I had a 'moment' yesterday when I was waiting for my blood to be drawn at the lab.  Tom and I were sitting in the waiting area and this other 'bald' lady was sitting there also.  She got my attention and said how much she liked my do-rag.  She asked where I had gotten it and I told her all about the braided part of it that goes around the actual turban.  That way you can mix and match to whatever clothes you are wearing that day.  Then I asked her about her hat...it was really a cute beaded hat and she actually had gotten hers locally and told me where to get one.  It wasn't really my style but it looked cute on her.  Anyway, after I chatted with her and they called her in, I just burst into tears.  It had felt really good to talk to someone that is going through the same thing without really dwelling on the fact that we were going through the same thing.  I am undecided as to whether I need to get involved in a 'support group' which would probably just make me cry all the time or not.  I sure don't want to have more moments like that one. But I did enjoy talking to her.  (You can see how confused I am about what I need here.)

I finally finished decorating the new TV area and below is a picture of the final product.  I have never really decorated the living room (we've been here for three years and still had not gotten it done).  I was always so tired all the time (before diagnosis of cancer) that every thought of decorating was just too much to handle.  I don't know how long I've had cancer but something has really been sapping the strength out of me for quite a while.  I was just telling Tom that I feel better the third week after chemo than I have in many years.  The next thing I'm going to do is find some 'toppers' for the windows in the living room.  I believe in a nice burgundy to go with the rug on the floor and the vase stuff.  Of course, I didn't really get the burgundy of the rug showing in this picture...you'll just have to trust me on that one.  8-)


Anyway, this is just a good sign that I am mentally coping and ready to move on with my life from my own viewpoint.

Hope everyone is doing well and having a great day! 

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Sitting In The "Chair"

Here I am...sitting in chair eleven. They have numbered all the chairs at the Cancer Center. I guess it is like waitressing...you know how they number the tables for the waitresses so they know which ones are their tables?  It's the same only here it is nurses that take care of the patients in chairs.

Isn't it amazing that there would be a Cancer CENTER here.  Actually there are more than one in town.  Kinda makes this town a suspect for causing cancer (paranoia dancing around in my head...LOL).   I think it is natural when you end up with cancer to wonder why you got it.  I wonder that a lot...I SURE don't want to do whatever it was again. 

I have the pleasure of having Kendra as my nurse today. I had an allergic reaction to the saline they were putting into my port to clean it out. Allergic to saline...can you believe it? It caused my throat to close up just like when I have an asthma attack. It eventually passed but it was pretty scary.

Kendra just told me a story about how once, when she was giving a patient her steroids, her patient said she was on fire in her "personal area". The woman asked for a glass of water and so Kendra goes to get her one thinking the woman is thirsty. When she gets back with the water, the woman proceeds to pour the water down her pants. She wanted to put the "fire" out...how crazy is that? I absolutely rolled on the floor laughing at her as she told this story.  She is a very graphic story teller.  8-)

The doctor has once again said that I can do without the neulasta shot...YIPPEE. No bone pain this time either. I am greatly relieved about that.

I wrote the portion above while getting the chemo treatment.  I stopped writing while there because I was on my IPAD and while the IPAD is a cool toy, it leaves much to be desired for typing data in.  We are home now after having a nice meal at Cracker Barrel.  (Breakfast for me, lunch for Tom)

We went to Walmart after we ate and I found a Thanksgiving Wreath for the front door and two big vases for the living room with some stuff to go in the vases.  I had spent so much time decorating for fall in FarmVille (Reference online game) that I thought I might as well do something decorative in 'real life' too.  I spend so much time here right now, it is good to shake up the scenery now and again.  8-)

I was happy to see that my new puppy in Farmville (whom I named "Fickle" because he runs away if you don't feed him every 24 hours) had not run away while I was gone since I wasn't able to feed it on time today.  (Thanks Mom for the hints and tips for puppy raising!)  My mom, sister, husband and I all play Farmville together...we have a lot of fun passing gifts back and forth.  It feeds my giving spirit.   lol

I feel fine after the chemo treatment...the steroids of course have me on an artificial "I can do anything" high.  This will last at least until tomorrow night so I'm gonna go take advantage of it and do some treadmilling in a little while. 

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

More Random Musings

Here I am again.  Tomorrow is my next chemo treatment and as usual I feel like running in the opposite direction.

I've been feeling really good the last few days and have even been doing the treadmill.  I hate to go back to the bad feelings that chemo brings on but I guess I don't have any choice.  I've been feeling so good that when I sent out an email for work this morning, to all the schedulers here, someone accused me of being "perky".  HA. 

There is very little going on new here.  It rained really hard last night...BIG storm.  I had my earplugs in and I heard it crashing around out there.  The birds are all happy and singing outside right now.  I have the windows open so I can hear them and to torment the cat with them...muwah wah wah.   (See wide body tormented cat below)

 

There is this girl at work who is kind of mean all the time to people.  One day a bunch of us were standing at the guy's cube that is next to hers just chatting and laughing (ok, yeah, I have a big laugh and it might have been a little loud) and she stands up and says "Could you guys SHUT UP...I'm on a telecon."  We all kind of looked at each other and skulked away.  (We moved to my office and had a good laugh over it.)

Today she has all these women at her cube and of course I'm working from home and chatting on the IM with the guy she told to shut up and he says they are all laughing and cutting up at her cube.  I told him that he should say, "Could you guys SHUT UP...I'm on an IM."  I thought it would be funny but he wouldn't do it.  So much for my fun today at work.  I SO would have done it if it had been me.  (Of course, I would have made it into a joke...and she would have been laughing by the time we were done.)

Now that we have the new TV hooked up it is really amazing.  It is like being there in the movie with the actors...it is so clear and sharp.  I'll bet actors hate the new LED TVs because it shows every wrinkle on their face in great detail.  I know I wouldn't want to be seen in that great a detail on any screen.  HA!

Hope everyone has a great day!  I'm going to go enjoy the rest of mine.  8-)

Monday, October 11, 2010

What a Dream...

I don't sleep all that well since the diagnosis of cancer.  But that is ok...I just stay in bed until I have gotten enough to get through the day.

Last night I SLEPT.  Big deep sleep with lots of dreams.  The one just before I woke up for good was a doozy.

I dreamed that I was at work and I had all these really hard things to get accomplished.  I wasn't well and I couldn't figure out why I wasn't well.  At some point in the dream, my sister was telling me she wasn't well either.  Then we found out that she was pregnant.  (Good one on you, Sis.  HA!)

Apparently I was doing really really well at my job because my boss calls me into her office and says to call all my family together because she wants to give me an award.  (This was a woman whom I had never seen before...I have two male bosses so this was particularly weird.)

Well, the award ceremony was in this big building with a dance floor.  They had live music and my mother and father came and my aunt Imazo came.  There were lots of people from my work place.  I remember that part of my clothing kept ending up in my hands instead of on my body (yeah, aren't dreams really weird?).  I remember pulling Mom aside and asking her what we were going to tell my boss about my Dad being there when he was supposed to be dead.  She started to tell me what to say but I got pulled away.

When my sister arrived, I corralled her to take me to the restroom so I could put all my clothes back on.  (Luckily the parts missing were undergarments and not outer garments...HA)  I remember I had this suitcase with all these clothes in it and medical papers.  I'm in the restroom telling my sister about her pregnancy and then I'm telling her that I'm pregnant too.  (Yeah...that one is pretty much impossible since I had a hysterectomy when I was 30.)

We went back to the party and my mom and dad were sleeping in cots that someone had pulled out for them. 

Crazy nightmare.  That's about all the parts I remember but I basically just remember it was crazy to me even while I was having it.  I knew it all wasn't right but when you're in dreamland, there's nothing you can do but play out the dreams.

Only thing I do know is that I never got the award in the dream.  HA!!

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Fun DAY!!

So, Saturday was a really fun day.  I had my 'beauty' appointment and Nancy made me as beautiful as she could by doing a manicure and pedicure.  Since my head is completely bald we worked on one of my wigs to make it socially acceptable.  Nancy is probably the nicest, most caring person that has ever taken care of my beauty needs.  Bless her heart, she has so little to work with...lol.  But she always makes me feel happy and attractive by the time the appointment is over.  8-)

I wore the wig all over town and felt fairly comfortable in it but it does get hot so I am still thinking my 'do-rags' and hats will be the most comfortable.  (My husband HATES this term for the head wear...he says it's the 'rags' part he doesn't like.)

We went to Sam's first because we needed some bulk items and of course had to browse through the electronics.  We are both really bad electronic addicts.  I wonder if there is an EA (Electronics Anonymous) meeting somewhere that we should be going to?  Anyway, other people in Alabama go to football games for entertainment, we like to browse through the electronics.  8-) 

We found this really amazing flat screen TV that we were both drooling over.  55 inch flat panel, LED, 1080p, etc...you get the idea.  The picture was extremely sharp and crisp.  We've been wanting to upgrade the living room TV to a larger screen for quite a while but keep putting it off.  We already have a wall mount in the living room that our current 46 inch is resting on so I told him that I thought it was time to upgrade if we could fit this TV on the existing wall mount.  (I love to watch the excitement in his eyes when he thinks we are going to actually buy something instead of just look at it.)  8-)  I just don't want to have to put more holes in the wall than we already have there.  So we took some measurements and finished our shopping there and at Wal-Mart.

We were both pretty wiped by this time but came home and looked at the TV that was currently on the wall.  It turns out that the TV that is a 46 inch is actually 20.5 lbs heavier than the 55 inch that we want to replace it with.  Our current mount is very universal so it would work with the new TV all around without any problems.  So, we started the rotation of the TVs.

The first problem we had was that the TV on the wall would require the feet to be put back on it.  For the first couple of years, the feet were on that TV and everytime I looked at it hanging on the wall, it would annoy me that we hadn't taken the feet off yet so, of course, a few months ago I 'suggested' that we remove the feet. (This required the removal of the TV from the wall so 'we' could unscrew the legs and remove them...Using the Royal WE again here.) 

We got all that accomplished and then hid the feet somewhere in the house or the attic.  You know how that goes...you think, "I'll never need those again." and stuff them somewhere that you'll never remember. 

So the first thing we had to do was find the feet.   Ugh...

I looked in the piece of furniture that was under the TV thinking we might have cubby holed them in it so we could easily find them in the future.  Nope...not there.

I looked in all the dresser drawers (WELL...you just never know where we might have put them) but to no avail. 

Tom started looking back in our exercise room in the two closets in there.  (We keep tons of electronic stuff back there...we are the pack rats of electronics.)  Again...no luck.

After checking out any possible drawers or closets in the house, we knew what had to happen next. 

(Creepy Eerie Music Here....)

WE HAD TO GO INTO THE ATTIC.

Double Ugh.

We pulled down the stairs and proceeded to climb.

Now, in my defense, I am just a little bit ADD.  (Okay...they say ADD was discovered just because of me....whatever.)  We get up there and the first box I open has an old old old old (get the idea?) photo album in it which I start browsing through.

Tom, of course, is totally focused on the job at hand.  "MUST FIND THE FEET."  (You go guy!)

I am walking over to him with the photo album saying things like, "Wow, look at how much hair you had back then."  "Is this you with your parents as a little boy?"  "Don't you look tired feeding that baby?"  Well, you get the idea.  I am working hard at distracting him because I am totally into the pictures by this time and had forgotten what we were up there for.  Sigh.  Between ADD and chemo brain, he had lost me.  Poor Tom.

After about 15 minutes of him digging through boxes, I hear is a jubilant "AHA...found them." and I am brought back to the reality of the search.  Hurrah for my hero!  We were done up there so I dropped the photo album back in the box and re-focused on our current task.  (Wow, that was easy...lol)

So, we proceeded to add those feet to the TV in the living room, move the TV from the bedroom to the guest bedroom, move the living room TV to the bedroom, and he went to get the new TV. 

I am supposed to be figuring out how to reprogram the bedroom TV to the DVD player in there but as you can see, I got a little distracted by my Blog...oops.  Heading back to do what I was supposed to be doing now.  8-)