Fear is so depleting.

Yesterday, I had my three month, since I finished Keytruda, visit with my oncologist.  I went expecting blood work, which I already knew does not show anything for a breast cancer patient, and a breast exam.  But I also had a couple questions.  The first was that I have been having some terrible constant indigestion.  Bloating and burping, I have been taking some over the counter medications for it, but it is never anything I have had an issue with before and I wondered if it could have something to do with chemo, perhaps changing my digestion system somehow.  I have also had some nausea with it.  Dr. Allen stated that it was probably nothing, or perhaps due to my weight gain, but that he wanted to get an MRI done of the brain as it perhaps could be that the cancer had spread to the brain.  Me: down the rabbit hole.  

He also asked about my weight, I have gained 50-60 lbs since I finished the radiation treatment.  And no I haven't been as good as I could be.  Looking back, I vacantly got through the treatment. Kinda in limbo.  and then after, I still did not connect with myself, but continued in the same vein, but also adding in some old habits, such as doing things for others, not putting myself first.  I began to panic about this also.  I have gone through so much, and have been so blessed with all the positives.  My uterine cancer did not spread, my breast cancer was found early and I had a complete response.  But I realize I haven't learned enough, I did to put myself first and don't allow others to influence me.  We have had nonstop visitors for the last year and enough was enough, I do not want to do that anymore.  I also have taken on things, such as helping out at the thrift store and with Kristy and her hoarding, she also has wanted me to join her small group, something I didn't want to do, but still said yes.  I realize that I don't know how much time I have left and I want to spend it doing what I want.  I can help out one afternoon a week at the thrift and one morning at her house, but that is it, and no small group.  I also need to get back in touch with me and my body.  I need to lose weight in a way that I can maintain it, and I need to make me a priority.  

Then today, I went down the rabbit hole.  I have not researched anything regarding my TNBC, because I learned from my uterine.  However, I needed some information as Dr. Allen, tells me often, that I have TNBC and that it is very aggressive, quick to come back and .....  When I looked it up those are the words used to describe it.  It has the highest death rate and comes back quickly and deadly.  I thought I had a better outcome because mine was a complete response, in that they could not find any sign of cancer cells in my pathology.  However, Dr. Allen says that only gives me a small percentage better outcome and that the use of Keytruda bumps me up 10%.  Looking today, I found different statistics but that I have a 40% chance, may 30% chance of re-occurrence.  I researched hormonal breast cancer and it has a 98% cure rate and even HER2 breast cancer, which use to be the deadliest breast cancer until they found some treatments for it, now is considered curable, with little death associated with it.  Also, TNBC is usually found in younger women, under 40, and in ethnic groups such as blacks and Indians.  So why me.  Is it my weight, my stress level? As I read, I also learned that should TNBC re-occur, it usually first does it in the lungs.  First sign can be a cough.  I got a cold about 6 weeks ago from Kev, he never got a cough, then I gave the cold to Kristy and she never got a cough, I have had a cough ever since.  Although I have to say that it started off worse, but has slowly gotten better, now it is just a feeling that makes me cough.  I doubt it is anything too, but now I worry about it.  

I guess I am taking off the veil, I have been behind.  I have been so optimistic, but I also need to be realistic.  I am a twice cancer patient.  I am not sure what is causing it, my sister took very good care of herself, my parents where thin and healthy also, although they all three smoked, and they all got cancer, my dad was colon.  I need to take out the factors that I can prevent, such as weight, and should I have a reoccurrence, well I need to enjoy my life now, every minute and not worry so much about the future.  I can also hope that I live long enough to wait it out and have access to the new cancer drugs that are being tested as we speak.  And God, please let me live long enough so my grandchildren will know me and never forget me.  And please o'please let me love my children and my husband for as long as possible. 

But really why me? 

A One Party System

Recently, a girlfriend posted a picture of members of both parties laughing together.  To her it represented a recent past that she missed, what she didn’t understand is that to many of us it represents not two parties getting along, but one party, the political party that serves itself and not the American public.  

Researching into people such as Jovan Pulitzer, an amazing intellect and statistician, it can be seen that for the last 35 years we have been a one party system.  I can recall my father stating after an outsider, Ronald Reagan, left office that “‘They’ will never let that happen again”.  I didn’t understand what he meant, until we were Trump’d.  

Power is with those who control the information.  We see it in countries such as China, North Korea, etc, but we never thought our free America would be impacted.  California is a micro-climate of what is seen in the nation.  Their freedom is removed, they have huge inflation, the highest taxes (with the rich given exceptions, and the middle class paying for all), yet they have one of the worse school systems in the nation, and their cost of living is high, while they joy of living is low. Yet, their leaders, and media which is owned by the same,  press their points using fear and misinformation.  And most don’t bother to fact check and instead just accept their fate, and they continue to re-elect this same officials.

The saddest part for me is that our country use to be one of the most free in the world, but now we are not much different than the monarchy our forefathers fought so hard to eliminate.  We chose Trump, not because we are pro Trump, but because we are pro freedom for America.   

Second Chemo, a hard one.

 Second chemo went without a hitch, in fact none of the side effects, ie chills, that I had with the first round.  However, this one was much more fatiguing. The path was similar to the first one.  Day one, came home and slept a couple hours, day two, I felt pretty good, day three, I was exhausted.  

Day four, I, along with Judy and Karen, went to Shellys and she shaved my head. It was both hard and a relief.  My hair had been coming out, but then it was in handfuls.  I thought I might just get it cut really short, but Shelly said it would be very patchy and she was right as some areas are completely bald and others have hair.  

Afterward, Judy, Karen, and I went to Sandpoint where we did a little antique shopping, I bought some yarn, and we had lunch at the pie hut.  

It is 227 in the morning and I cannot sleep, although I am so very tired.  I just have to get through two more hard chemo and then I am hoping the 12 weekly ones are much easier.  

Also, Meagan sent me a "Fuck cancer" hat and a dish towel that says "Dear Karen you are the best chicken mom ever if we had a different mom, we would peck her in the legs and run to you, love, your flock."  

Susan Hournay sent me five antique plates of her grandmothers, they are beautiful!!!!!!!

 Have been waiting for the bone scan and ct scan to come back, so I can get on with dealing just with the breast cancer.  Of course, something else had to enter the picture.  The bone scan came back clear, the ct scan came back all clear, except for a spot on my colon.  At first the nurse told me the radiologist had put that it could be poop.  Then I got a call from another nurse that the dr wanted to get a colonoscopy to make sure.  I panicked because a similar thing happened last time I had uterine, they stated that colon cancer could be connected and that since my father and grandfather had colon cancer that I was at risk.  

I called Teena, the drs assistant, and she understand my concern.  She spoke with the dr this morning and he put in the referral with my surgeon, the same one that did my port, which I found so interesting.  She called me this afternoon and I shouldn't have asked questions cuz it scared me more.  She read what the radiologist had stated that it was a different image then any of the other areas of the colon, but could be poop.  She stated that it could be nothing, it could be a pre cancerous polyp, it could be breast cancer, it could be colon cancer.

I find it unlikely to be breast cancer as I would think it would show up somewhere else first, and I just had a colonoscopy four years ago, so even if it is colon cancer it can't be bad.   

I don't want it to be breast cancer.  

She was honest so as not to get my hopes up, but I wish I didn't know.

She stated that the dr had done it first thing in the morning, but didn't seem too concerned about it.  

I will call Monday and see if I can get a colonoscopy next week, because it has to be done at the end of my chemo cycle and if not then I will have to wait two more weeks.  She said it was not urgent, but to me it is.  I need to focus on getting through the chemo and such and not other things.  

First Chemo

 Yesterday morning Kev and I were at the hospital at 645 for a heart echo. I was scared when she needed to insert an iv and get a better picture of things as I was worried she found something wrong, but she assured me it had to do with not seeing a clear picture because of my breast tissue and such.  She stated they do it on about sixty percent of patients and as I left she said good luck at your chemo today, which made me think all was clear.

Went to see Teena who walked us through the whole cancer book, what to expect, etc.  She then walked me to the chemo room upstair, Kev had to stay behind on this due to Covid.  It is a nice open room with individual cubbies with a chair that lays back.  Usually they will access your port, take a blood sample which takes an hour to analyze, so you go back to the drs office and see him why you wait, or you just hang out.  When the blood work comes back good, you are give two bags of nausea medicine in your port and then the first chemo, which is bright red and is pushed through two large syringes.  During this you have to suck on ice chips so that sores don't form in you mouth.  Then the last bag takes thirty minutes and you are done.  

Once home, I went through a bunch of things.  My head felt like it had a vice pushing it, my body felt like it was so heavy.  I felt like I needed to eat something because I was nauseas , so I ate a third of one of the burritos Keaton brought me and then my stomach hurt so.  I had a period that I was so cold, I could barely handle it, especially my toes.  I took an edible and climbed into bed at 730.  I then had a period where I couldn't swallow.  Luckily all these things lasted a certain amount of time and where gone.  I slept through the night.  

I hear however the worse is yet to come, today I just feel shaky, but should become nauseous in the next couple days.  I plan on taking it easy.

One of the four worse down, 15 more in all to go.  

Keaton Takes Another Step.

 Friday Keaton flew to California so that on Saturday he could fly with Mark and get his CFI.  I am so proud of him.  He studied hard and is ready to be a flight instructor, he seems to have a real knack for it and really enjoys it.  I told him like I did as a teacher, I went to school, passed all the tests, but I didn't know how to teach until I got in there and actually did it.  He was exhausted, I think partly because he is worried about me.  

He knows that I like to have people around when I have anxiety, so he made sure he could pick up the Bonanza, which is in calif for maintenance first thing this morning and be home before nightfall.  Also the sweetest thing is that even being exhausted after the all day test, he went to Juanitas, my favorite fast food in calif, bought me a bunch of burritos and froze them to bring to me.  I love that boy so much.  

Also I had a bone scan on Thursday,  I felt like God had it as that came clearly to me, but still I was scared.  I had to get radioactive dye in my vein and then go back three hours later.  The young man who did the scan had a breast cancer symbol tattoo for his mother and we spoke a lot about different things.  He new I was scared and as I left after the test, he stated that "You are going to do awesome." I took that as a good omen and that perhaps he had seen nothing.  

That night at five Dr Allen called to give me the good news, negative.  He also said I shouldn't be worried about the CT scan on Tuesday because he was confident it was clear.  I have to have an MRI on my breast to make sure it is two tumors or one.  

Tomorrow starts chemo.........

A Busy Week.

 What a whirlwind my life has been lately.

This week we met with the surgeon, Dr. DuTar, and we loved him.  Much more well spoken than our oncologist and super caring. (I also learned he is one of four brothers all doctors in CDA, a nurse at the hospital whispered "Catholic" to me smiling as she told me how much he is respected." He said some very important things.

The two most important was that my cancer is curable, and that he would be very very surprised if it has spread yet.  Since it has only been ten months since my last mammogram that and told me I had done everything right.  As you can imagine, this had me on cloud nine.  However, I will still be nervous until the CAT scan and bone scan come back.  

He also stated that he and Dr. Allen. my oncologist, are in connection at all times and in fact all the surgeons and all the oncologists get together one day a week and go over each persons case to make sure that everyone agrees on course of treatment and how it is progressing.  

In fact he had just had a conversation with Dr. Allen about me and within it they had obviously discussed my wanting a double mastectomy.  We had felt the reluctance with Dr. Allen about it, but Dr. D put it in perspective.  He gave us the history of breast cancer, how they started by taking off everything down to the bone, then how they realized they could leave the muscle, then how they only needed to test the first lymph node, etc.  He stated the statistics that a double mastectomy is at great risk of infection, etc, then the chance of reoccurrence and that they would be very vigilante on keeping an eye on if it grew back and if it did then they would do a mastectomy.  He stated that if it was his wife he would not want to put her through the mastectomy.  I have five months to think about it and talk with Kev.

Then yesterday I saw him again as he put in my port, if only chemo would be as surgery is.  Everyone here is very caring and nice, when I went to leave my nurse gave me a big hug even in this time of covid.  The surgery went like clockwork and Karen Snow dropped me off and picked me up. The dr placed my port so that if I wear low cut things it will be hidden, lol like that is going to happen, The tail of the port sneaks up my neck and into my jugular. It feels like a bad kink in my neck and was sore last night but keeps getting better.  

This morning I was up early to hit the hospital by 745 so that I could bet some radioactive material in my bloodstream.  I must wait three hours and return for the bone scan.  I am at the wellness bar having gluten free avocado toast and a sugarless smoothie..... the new me.  

 Keaton leaves today and Kev returns on Sunday so just a couple days on my own,  Usually I would love it, but in this state of mind, I love having someone around.  But Kev went to California to get check rides done that he already had scheduled so he could be home on Monday when I have a heart echo and start my first round of chemo.  First four rounds are every other week because they are very strong, so eight weeks in all, then twelve weeks of weekly chemo.  I am already counting down.  

Tuesday is CAT scan.  When they come back negative I will be much better.

Then Wednesday we are suppose to leave for Alpine with Karen and Steve.  We are suppose to stay at  a guest house, the Farm House, of a Lances.  I am scared because I hear one day after chemo may be very bad, but that it is different for each, and I am worried about that.  But it is Kevins birthday weekend and he is so excited for us to go and thinks it will be good for me.  I can't disappoint him.  

By the way, Kev has stepped up so much during this.  He is the one reading the two inch think book the dr gave us.  I told him I don't want to know everything, it scares me.  So he reads all about the side effects and then if I get one, he will tell me it is a side effect.  He is on the ball with coming with me to appointments and asking questions and getting info.  I love him so much.  In fact I am going to tell Teena the oncology nurse if it is bad new, call Kev so he can tell me.