New Priorities and Resolutions

Six weeks out of chemo and life is settling into a routine that I’m content with, but I’m surprised by the recent changes in my priorities.  I’ve never been the most motivated person.  In fact that’s a flaw that I’ve always hated in myself…although not enough to do anything about it apparently. 

Two weeks out of chemo I started going to a yoga class.  The first one was really difficult and I was frustrated by how weak I was.  I think I mentioned before that I fell over twice.  After that I started working out two days a week in addition to the yoga and that felt really good.   Then I upped it to 3 days a week plus the yoga and now I’m figuring out how to organize my life to up it to 4 days plus yoga.  I’m reading fitness articles and trying out new classes.  I’m ordering new exercise clothes and Bluetooth headphones.  I’ve become a gymaholic and I love it.  I get excited on my gym days and find myself bummed on the days that I don’t get to go.  I’m addicted to the endorphins and I care about how my body looks for first time in well…ever.  (I’m also disheartened by how few people understand the term “Linda Hamilton arms”.  The nineties were not that long ago people.)

But behind this new found hobby/lifestyle/obsession is the fear that the cancer will come back.  The tracking cookies embedded in this wonderful world we call the internet know about my cancer, so every social media site I go to pops up articles about cancer and new research and treatment.  It’s creepy but occasionally I see something interesting.  When I started with my treatment, I was intense about kicking fear to curb.  We are constantly told about all the things that cause cancer (it’s everything by the way) and it’s easy to fall into that paranoid space but I was adamant that wasn’t going to be me.  And yet, it is me.

I’ve started drinking the occasional glass of wine or beer but I hesitate every time because I worry about my body.  In fact I rarely finish even one glass.  I worry about my sugar intake and I’ve completely given up meat except for fish.  I check my moles more frequently than I probably need to and I will make my husband look at them, just in case they look different.  It’s not the kind of fear that has taken over my life, it’s just that voice in the back of my mind that reminds me more often than I like that I’m not invincible and that shit happens that we cannot control.  Knowing that and having actually lived through it are two completely different things. 

And so I work out, and I feel powerful again and in control.  Between working full time, parenting full time and exercising I am having a hard time finding time to work on my knitting and my dyeing and I am missing it.  I still have projects going but it’s definitely taken a back burner.  So this year as we approach the time of resolutions, mine will be to find time to do it all.  I will get my business off the ground this year.  I will have a rockin’ body, and I will be a bad ass mom who is always planning new adventures.  My garden will thrive and there will be taco parties again.  It's a tall order but what can I say, I'm motivated to live the life I want.

When Sickness Pulls You Back

It's been almost a month since my last post and there are a variety of reasons for that but the one that pops out the most in my head is time.  After my last treatment I was determined to jump back into my life.  I was ready for what I liked to think of as "the new normal", not a return to what once was, but a better, more proactive version of my life, and I did.  I took on more responsibilities around the house and with my daughter.  I started working out 3 - 4 times a week and joined a yoga class.  I felt amazing.  I still had to get my weekly blood draws and I dreaded them so much.  Once a person who could tout being fearless in regards to needles, I now go into cold sweats thinking about them.  I can do it, but I really don't like it.

Which takes me to Friday, when I was scheduled to have my first CT scan post chemo treatment.  In my head, this was the day, the final day and I was feeling rather good about it.  They were going to scan me and see absolutely nothing.  I took the whole day off because I knew that it was going to take hours but I honestly thought it was going to be no big deal.  I was just going to drink some stuff and get in the machine.

The day before I got a call telling me how much I was going to need to pay for said scan, one of these days I'm going to do a post about our incredibly screwed up insurance system but that is not today.  So I had to fast, no food, no water...no coffee.  I dropped my daughter off at school and had some time to kill, usually that would land me in a coffee shop (one of my happy places), but not that day.  So instead, I took my leisurely time and just went early.  The building was new to me, which is surprising because after my experience, you would think I would know the ins and outs of the entire hospital complex, but Medical Plaza 4 was new ground.  I found out right away that it is the basically the cancer building.  The cancer center, the breast cancer center, and the digital imagining center...where they look for cancer.  Once I negotiated down my financial responsibility I was taken to the women's waiting room.  It was of course, the first freeze of the year so it was very cold and I was instructed to change into a hospital gown and scrub pants.  I was joined by older women in similar garb wrapped in blankets.

A nurse came in and took me to the lobby where I was given a liter of iodine water that I was told to drink within 15 minutes.  I made a joke that I had only done CT scans with IV contrast.  To which the nurse answered, "Oh, you're getting that too."  Remember when I mentioned the cold sweats?  Well, getting an IV is actually worse than a blood draw for me.  So for forty minutes, I thought about this, while freezing and drinking iodine water.

Finally they took me back to the IV room and the nurse who was helping me turned out to not be great at placing IVs.  After two unsuccessful attempts, she said that she was going to get help and the room started to spin.  When they came back, I was in the process of trying to pass out.  I was dizzy, nauseated, and according to them, completely drained of color.  They immediately put an ice pack on my neck and alcohol under my nose to keep me awake.  Then the doctor came rushing in with a stretcher and they laid me down and started taking vitals.  Pretty quickly, I started feeling better and they offered me juice, but if I drank juice I couldn't get the scan and I really didn't want to have to do all of that again.  The new nurse placed my IV and it was much better.  She moved me to a wheelchair and wheeled me down a hall to room right next a large window where I was placed in front of my own reflection.

There I saw a sick person.  A person wearing a beanie and a hospital gown, wrapped in a blanket and I was overcome with so much anger.  I thought I was done with all this.  The scan itself was uneventful and quickly I was back in my own clothes and in my car.  I spent the rest of the day in bed watching TV and feeling generally sorry for myself.  Thankfully, that afternoon I was called into work and I took my daughter and the day got better.

But the next day, I started feeling really strange, just off.  We had a busy day scheduled but that night, while we were at a friend's birthday party, I had to leave early.  When I got home, I was shaking so bad I could barely take my coat off.  I was freezing.  I took my temperature and found that I had a temperature of 100.8.  Normally, that's not something to be worried about, but in all the chemo literature, anything over 100.5 requires a call to your doctor.  I waited a little while in bed but I still felt bad and finally I gave in and called the answering service.  I have a really good doctor who is on call all the time, so he called me back personally at 10:00 pm.  We talked for awhile about where I was in the treatment and how I wasn't having any other symptoms.  In the end he said he wasn't that worried because it could be a reaction to the CT scan or a mild infection brewing so he said to take some Tylenol and call him in the morning if it wasn't better.  It wasn't, I called and he put me on antibiotics but all yesterday I was in bed feeling pretty crappy.  Last night my fever went up to 102 and then finally broke in the middle of the night.  So this morning I feel better but now I have to go to my oncologist where he decided that besides talking about my scan, he wants to do more blood work today.  Oh good.

At least I got in some good Penny Dreadful watching while sick in bed.