Comprehensive Update

I haven’t had much energy to keep up with posting here. I’d thought I’d be able to post yesterday and then it turned out to be one of my most difficult days yet. Today is a bit better so I figured I’d try again.

I owed an email to my foster daughter and when I was finished it occurred to me that, with a bit of editing, it might do as a post.

So, here it is.

 

The surgeries to remove the tumor weren’t fun but they were a piece of cake compared to what followed. The surgeries showed that there was no lymph node involvement, for which I was very grateful. The surgical reports appeared such that they got all of the tumor but you know how they always want as much guarantee as possible so I had a bout of radiation for five days a week, four weeks. It’s difficult for me to get myself put together and get out the door though I can manage it once a week for grocery shopping. But every day just for a 2 or 3 minute session of radiation was much harder. Thank goodness I didn’t have to go to Temple, forty miles one way. They have a clinic about ten miles from here. Still hard but not as much. Took all the energy I could dredge up just the same.

So, that took a lot out of me. Then, after I finished my last session on a Monday in April I went to a three day writers convention the next weekend in Austin. I’d signed up for that long before the radiation stuff so I didn’t want to miss it. I didn’t count on the "wet peel," as they called it, which was the skin coming off in large swaths leaving a lot of weeping tissue to cope with as well as getting myself around the hotel in my wheelchair for three days. Fortunately – and here’s a nice surprise – I had plenty of incontinence pads in my luggage so instead of using them for urine, I used them to absorb the wetness under my breast and nothing ever showed through my clothing. Who would have guessed? LOL

The day after my last radiation session I started taking the hormone pills that, if everything goes as planned, could be expected to go on for five years. Those pills are the pits! Not as bad as chemo, I suppose, but who needs hot flashes and night sweats twenty years after you’ve already had them? Not to mention other side effects like depression and weight gain and desperate sleepiness and muscle aches and joint aches (with fibro, who needs more of that?) and nasty stuff I’ve already been through.

I’ve got about another month of my first prescription taking them and then, I told the doc, I’d consider stopping them. If my situation was different I might consider keeping them up but with no lymph node involvement and a pretty clear case of getting all the tumor and the radiation killing any other cells in the area, I feel pretty confident in dropping them.

Yesterday, as I said, was an unusually difficult day and if I hadn’t fallen asleep shortly after I had my coffee (!) I was planning on emailing my doc and telling her I quit. It was a really tough day, energetically.

Today is some better and I decided I’ll finish the prescription after all. That’s today. Who knows what tomorrow might bring? *G*

SO’s been really good through all of this, taking off work to help me get to where I need to go, bringing home carry out when I can’t even think of something to cook much less cook it, and trying very hard to make it as easy for me as possible. I worry about the stress on him, too, since things are pretty tough at his job.

I just want it to be over and go back to at least where I was even with "just" the fibro. At least I could think then, and do some things I don’t have energy for now.

So, that brings us up to date. While it’s far from as bad as it could have been or could be, it’s not been easy. I’m trying to listen to my body and if it says "enough" of something, I do that. Thus, I’m not sure about the prescription as yet. If I get the message – and I usually have to get the message multiple times ’cause I’m not always sure – then it’ll be dropped when I’m sure.

I’m just grateful that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Read Full Post »

It’s Over!

Just wanted to post a bit of happy news today, at least to me.

It’s over!

I’ve had my last radiation therapy session yesterday and, while I’ll probably be having and feeling the effects of that therapy for several weeks yet, I don’t have to go for any more treatments.

I still have some “cooked meat” appearances and a weird looking sunburn, even some skin peeling and concomitant tenderness, but no more trips to the clinic, no more lying under a huge and heavy particle accelerator, no more exposing my tender skin and underlying tissues to a therapy that can kill or heal – or both.

Today I took my first pill for the hormone therapy. That will continue for five years and while I don’t look forward to that, either, it’s a lot easier than having to go somewhere every day at a certain time, just like I still had a job, and wondering if it was going to kill or heal. I just have to trust. And bless my sister for reminding me that it was a temporary “job.”

I was told that my energy will slowly return and the fatigue will slowly dissipate, that the skin appearance will slowly return to normal. It’s that “slowly” that I’m really unhappy about. I’m really not a patient person. Still, when there is no choice, I can wait even if I’m impatient.

I realize it could have been so much worse than a lump that hadn’t sent out tendrils that were obvious, that I didn’t have to have very much tissue lost. I feel almost guilty that I complain about various therapies when it could have been too late for them to work. Human nature, I guess.

So, it’s over. The tough part. Now it’s just hormones and regular doctor’s appointments. I can handle that. I hope!

Read Full Post »