Chemo Again

11/3/2016

The reality is that one minute you are out at Game Stop with one of your favorite people in the world, waiting for this new game to come out at 9pm because her boyfriend has to have it, laughing and joking and the next minute your at home digging through your pill bottles just trying to figure out which one it is that your suppose to take for the over whelming sense of anxiety that your starting face because tomorrow is chemo day, or as my kids and I refer to it now, medicine day. 

The bottles each do something- relive pain,  stop vomiting,  help you sleep, or help with anxiety.  On top of the never ending medicine bottles there are also recommended over the counter stuff to dig through like:

Claritin-to help with the bone pain

Probiotics- to help keep things flowing- this is a topic all it's self. 
Botine-for dry mouth.
Stool Softeners-they explain themselves
Ranitidine-for the heart burn. 

They gave me this fancy calendar my first treatment and really it's been my savior because otherwise I wouldn't have kept any of this stuff straight.  But man this is the reality of chemo.  Put one thing in your body and then try and counter act it with others and still have days where you still feel awful.

Right now as I sit on the floor of my room staring at my bottles, I really just want to go back to Game Stop because that reality is sooooo much better then this one. 

11/4/2016
So now I'm here, the start of my first weekly chemo treatment and I'm not sure I'm ready, weekly for 12 weeks, but in the cancer world you don't have a choice to be ready or not, you just put your head down and go.

Sitting with me always are my parents.  Mom is always here and my step dad has been by my side through all of the testing and a few treatments.  My step mom and my dad have been at all the chemo appointments they can.  It's amazing to know that even at 30 my parents are still my parents.   I mean it's not like I didn't know they loved me but as you grow you start your own path and  maybe you don't see each other every day and maybe you don't talk to each other every day anymore.  They are still your parents and you still love them with all your heart but you loose that amazement you had for them as a kid,  the amazement that they could do no wrong and that every word they ever spoke was true and right.   Typically when I thought about my parents prior to my diagnosis I was happy.  I felt they did a great job raising  me and coming from a divorced home I thought I was one of the lucky ones.  My parents rarely fought and they showed up to everything for me.  I never had to look around and see  my parents sitting in different areas of the basketball stadiums.  I never had to miss anything because I was at my dad.  Everyone always made it happen.  So I guess as I type that now WHY am I so surprised at the response they are giving me now.  I shouldn't be.  They are being those parents.  The ones cheering me on together.  I guess my good ol' basketball days show me who my parents are then and now.  I am never going to look up and not see all of them there.  MAN I AM LUCKY!!

Anyway, I digressed a little, chemo.  So a few posts ago I think I told you about how they put on these suits when it comes to the medicine they are putting into my body.  I tried to get a picture of it today but it wasn't great.  Wasn't sure the nurse would want a full blown picture so this is what I managed to get.

The gloves and the blue apron thing and yep she is holding the medicine, Taxol.  Now that I am on weekly I am no longer receiving two meds.  only one.  This one is suppose to be a little better for me.  I still have to be careful to not get sick,  I could still become nauseated, my finger nails have the potential to fall off, and I could develop neuropathy (?) where I loose feeling in my fingers and my toes.  They tell me that it should go away once the medicine stops but there is a small chance that it could last or I may never experience it.  They say that acupuncture is really good for it and that if it starts I should contact the free service available to me through the cancer center.  What really scares me though is that it COULD LAST!  I was so healthy before this diagnosis.  Made a choice to be the healthiest I had ever been just a year prior and after all of this is said and done  I could have neuropathy, lymphodema, no breasts and who knows what other side effects I will be told about as the time goes on.  The only thing I can tell myself to make it all okay is that I WILL STILL BE ALIVE and everything else I can manage.  The other thing I think about alot that keeps me going is that children go through this.  Children are going through worse all the time.  If they can  be strong enough and do it then man I need to buck up and get through it too!

So the only other things I really wanted to share this week are just interesting to me.  The pictures may be graphic to some and maybe you aren't comfortable looking at them. But again I am here to tell  my story and to educate anyone about this disease.  We talk about it, we know about it but we rarely see the truths behind it.  I think it's because we are taught that this area of our body is private, we don't show it, and we spend a lot of our time wishing they looked different. So when it comes to cancer in them we are afraid to show people,  it feels weird, at least to me, and I want to break that barrier.  It's not weird, we need to say it more, we need to look at images more if for nothing else but to protect ourselves.

 I had my biopsy on September 1st.  Being two months in you would think that it would just be a scar now.

My skin basically has a hard time healing because of the way the cancer sits.  From what I understand it's in the ducts and skin so the skin is all sorts of messed up.  My whole breast is basically a tumor instead of just one area holding the tumor.  So my biopsy area is just now at this point.  the picture doesn't truly depict what it looks like but it is still a hole, and it still has gung, that's my technical term for whatever comes out of your body when trying to heal. I have to still place a band aid on it every morning.  Really it's gross.  I am use to the body healing so quickly so it is sorta mind blowing to see what the cancer has done to my skin.   

Another picture that I wanted to share is 

The other day I was examining myself, like I do every day because I am constant hoping that I will feel a drastic difference to be assured the chemo is working and I noticed a piece of skin just hanging off.  So I peeled it.  Leaving this section.  When I asked my  Oncologists, Physicians Assistant yesterday she said she believed it was the chemo killing off the tumor cells.  So the cells just died and peeled off.  The body is so amazing and yet strange.


AGAIN, as always I want to end this post positively.  Blakelee is my little worrier girl.  Always by my side, sometimes to much, and always asking questions.  She is hungry for knowledge about what is going on with me.  Boston on the other hand.........well she is 11 and as long as I am there to clean her clothes, make her food, and tell her goodnight she really only cares about herself, and I mean that in the most sincere way.    So the other day Blakelee brought a scarf to me and asked me if I could do it like mine.  So we did.  she looked so cute and I loved her for wanting to be like mommy, because in the beginning she was so worried about what people would think of my having to wear scarves and hats and have no hair.  Children, especially mine, are amazing!