1-2-3: Support in ways of Kleenex and Flowers... :) 4: Took myself out on a Starbucks date at 9:30PM on Friday. Jeff was closing and I could only think about how much time I'll be spending in my bed next week so I figured...why not. When she asked me if I wanted whip, this time I said HELL yes (not actually though).
This week I had my last Lupron shot. This was the first time I was able to do something for the last time!
Do you know what that means?
IN ONE MONTH THE HOT FLASHES WILL BE GONE.
Next thing I know, it will be Tuesday: MY LAST TREATMENT. For real though...this is not a drill!!
TUESDAY I WILL HAVE MY LAST CHEMO TREATMENT.
MY LAST DAY OF CHEMO WILL BE TUESDAY.
I HATE SAYING THE WORD CHEMO AND I'M SO HAPPY THIS WILL BE THE LAST TIME I HAVE TO SAY I AM DOING IT.
GAH.
Okay, I'm done. That's how I feel about it though. 5 rounds done, 1 to go. This time, I don't even care. Throw whatever side effects you want at me. I can handle anything at this point.
I met with my oncologist today. For the first time, I was by myself. I felt brave. I always go into my appointments with Jeff and my mom. This is pretty helpful because sometimes the information they give you can be overwhelming. I need my note-takers. Jeff is the analytical one, if you can't tell. I'm a bit more artsy-fartsy and sometimes.... un-organized.
Today I had Crystal and Payton (Jeff's sister and niece... my hospital buddies!) to accompany me in the waiting room. Payton impressed me and kept me entertained with her best rendition of "Sugar" by Maroon5 (she is 2). She more then impressed my fellow cancer patients as she played on an app that turns your voice into a high pitched mouse sound. She had her baby headphones on and did that hilarious thing where you yell so loud because you can't gauge how loud the music in your ears is. She was bringing such joy and laughter to everyone sitting and waiting (probably anxiously) to hear how they are bearing their treatments. You could see how happy she made them and it was such a light in what can sometimes be a very dark place. Those hallways have seen too many of my tears! Crystal made me laugh by telling me Payton has named one of her boy dolls "Don". We wonder where she even learned the name "Don", much less decided to call one of her dolls by the name. I laughed so hard. I looked forward to getting a Timmies and sitting and chatting with Crystal before I went for my appointment all day yesterday. I love when we go to appointments together.
So, I go in to meet my oncologist and we get right down to business. He asks me how I fared with my last treatment, I say A-OK. Not nearly as much stomach pain, tons of sleeping, sore body (surprisingly they don't take "I feel like I got in a car accident" as an acceptable way to explain how much pain I was in. They prefer the 1-10 scale instead). I showed him my nails (which are pretty cool despite how they are peeling and slowly deteriorating...they have little white lines etched into them, one for each of my chemo treatments. You can literally see where they stopped and started growing again after each one). I asked him about the bloating and the weight gain and the sore neck that doesn't seem to want to go away. I asked him about my sparse eyelashes and eyebrows. I wanted him to give me a drug, vitamin or ingredient to help make them grow stronger and longer. I wanted him to perform magic and pull a bunny out of a hat and make it all disappear. He did tell me what it was going to take to make all of my above symptoms go away: patience and time.
Appetizing chemo diet....
Just kidding. In between my treatments I've actually been having some delicious food! ;)
Somewhere in between there I will be going for my surgery. I received a call today from my surgeon to schedule an appointment to see her. I will have way more details on when/what that will entail after this appointment, so until then... I'm not going to say much. I'm not certain what she's going to recommend. Ultimately, it will be my choice but her influence will play heavily into my decision. I DO know, from meeting with my oncologist today, that I should be going in for surgery mid-April. I thought it would be nearing the end of April, so I officially only have one more month before I mourn the loss of a body part. It feels a bit strange.
He measured my tumor at about 5cm. This is okay! Although it measured about 5cm across, we both agreed it felt different. It is taking up less space. The depth has likely shrunk... this is something we won't be able to measure until I go for surgery, but it is a good thing. The more the cancer shrinks, the less chance they leave anything behind after the surgery, the less chance of relapsing.
I don't feel anxious anymore. I'm feeling stoked. I'm feeling like I can see the light here. I listen to my body and have applied less pressure on myself to be so active. A few days this week I slept in until 2PM. I haven't done this since I was in high school. But... I am just so tired. So, I let myself sleep in. It felt so good.
I have two feel good stories to accompany my post today!
1) My beautiful, amazing sister has hair that grows like a weed (why did this skip my genes?). This week we went for lunch together and this is how our conversation went:
Me: LIANNE... NEVER CUT YOUR HAIR! It is sooo beautiful. You should grow it down to your bum. Never cut it.
Lianne: I don't know. Maybe you're right. I'll just trim off the split ends or something.
8 hours later:
What a schemer.
She's going to be participating in Hair Donation Ottawa's 5th Annual Fundraising Event. Her hair will be made into a wig for a company called 360-Hair; they make free wigs for young adults with cancer. All proceeds will go towards research specifically geared towards cancer found in young adults! You can donate to Lianne here.
2) I put some money down to get a second wig last week. I have been humming and hah-ing over this for quite some time. I wanted to play around with something a little bit longer. I wanted to be able to switch up my appearance. I was getting bored with the same look every day (the original wig I got was synthetic, if you remember! It means it can't be styled). I was having such a hard time justifying the money. So, when my mom sent me a message saying one of her friends had reached out to her and said she had "wigs" (with a plural!! That meant more then one!) that were blonde and she wanted me to have, I was so ecstatic! I just picked them up the other day. They are absolutely beautiful, well cared for, and so my style. I couldn't even wait to get home. I whipped off my hat and put one on right away. I also took a selfie. I was pretty excited...
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* Which is a whole other story. I almost conned Jeff into letting me get a dog last month. It was my dream puppy: a little Yorkie. The day I was diagnosed, while I was crying, I looked up at Jeff with big sad eyes and said..."So...does this mean I can finally get a dog? To keep me company while I'm home... all alone?". He said YES that day and I will not let him forget it! Side note: our apartment won't even allow us to have a dog...
It's okay though because how cute are these faces. We were enjoying the Spring weather we were having for all of one day this week. Then it started to hail and freezing rain... remember I said in my last post... this ALWAYS HAPPENS.
Okay... now for the serious bit of the post that you may have assumed was coming (are my blog posts becoming predictable now or what?)
I spent my evening tonight reading breast cancer blogs (my new favorite past-time, apparently). On March 6th, a woman named Lisa Adams passed away after 9 years of battling breast cancer (on and off). In 2012, she learned it had metastasized to her bones, followed by her liver and lymphnodes. She wrote a wonderful blog. She did not spare us any details. You will cry at her poems and her honesty. She had about 4000 people subscribed to her Facebook, which she updated frequently, and 15 000 followers on twitter. Every single morning she tweeted the same thing.
She wrote her last blog post on March 1st, only five days before she passed. On March 5th, she updated her Facebook status to say:
Things are quite quite serious. Please do not text or email daily. I can't answer.
Doesn't that make your stomach drop?
You see the progression in her posts. Slowly, it becomes less about being a warrior and fighting for another day and more about managing her pain. There have been multiple articles written about Lisa since she lost her battle to cancer. It's brought up the topic: is blogging and tweeting about cancer a good idea?
Lisa had lots of criticism for posting so openly and freely about her diagnosis. Some feel like she should have spent that time living her life, spending time with her kids. Some feel like it opens you up to criticism... as in, you're asking for it by posting on the internet. The internet isn't like a support group, there is no facilitator to make sure things don't get ugly.
Sometimes Lisa would tweet upwards of 100 times per day. She admitted it made her feel less alone. She felt as if she was showing us what living with metastatic breast cancer was truly like. There have been articles about whether or not this is TMI. People are freely admitting it was like watching a TLC TV show unfold. They became addicted to following Lisa. Only... this is someone's real life. This isn't scripted. One day she was tweeting and the next... she was gone.
I'm a big reader. I have read lots of books by authors whom have passed away. Yet... reading Lisa felt so raw and real. I was reading words that were published only weeks (days!) ago, by a woman that was very much alive. How can she be gone? She was just able to post to her blog! I felt cheated, and then I felt sad, and then I felt dread. It can happen just like that.
There was an article published in the NY Times stating that Lisa was given too much hope. That the hospitals should not be giving someone with her prognosis that kind of hope, how we aren't allowing people to die peacefully. Most of our healthcare spending happens in the last 6 months of a person's life. She was fighting a fight she couldn't have won, despite the treatments she was enduring. She ended her last days in pain.
I think Lisa accomplished what she set out to do. She garnered the attention of high profile media, she made her point clear and she raised over $175, 000 for her hospital. She raised important issues, and asked important questions (such as, why does Run For the Cure not feature or support women with stage IV metastatic breast cancer?).
A journalist named Xeni Jardin decided to go for a mammogram when she found out two of her friends had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She figured she would make use of her twitter following and use the hashtag #myfirstmammo to remind her followers how important it was to get checked. She live tweeted her experience (which started out quite hilariously):
Making jokes helped her get through what was a nervewracking first experience (as I imagine it can be for most women). What she didn't imagine she'd have to live-tweet out to her followers were the shocking results of her mammogram:
How we are able to follow along with others in real time: learning their prognosis the moment they receive it and in Lisa's case, reading her final words just hours before she passes. I'm still not sure if I feel like I've invaded their privacy or if I feel lucky enough to be able to have been that close to someone I've never even met.
Surprisingly, I have received some questionable e-mails and comments due to things I have posted on my blog. I guess it's why this particular topic interested me so much. In reality, everyone has an opinion and not everyone is going to agree on your personal decisions. But that's the thing: it's our bodies. It's my blog. Lisa (and I, and any of you) can write and express what you want to. In the end, what you read is really your choice.
I remember once I said I wasn't going to write a cancer blog. How that was so not me. Somehow having cancer has given me a sense of purpose, though. Talking through it has made this process much easier. I understand Lisa's need to post her updates. It makes it public and makes it seem real. It helps you work out how you truly feel. I'm not sure how it will all add up, but it feels like every day things become a little more clear to me. The more cancer takes from me.. my eyebrows, my nails, my body, my hair... the less I look like myself, the more I feel like I'm learning who I really am (so cheeeeesy). When you don't have all of that to hide behind, you feel naked and stripped down. All that's left is you and your brain and your thoughts and your hobbies and your passions. All of the fluffy vain stuff can't matter to you: it can't define you anymore. And if you let it, you're destined to be miserable because trust me... this bloated, pale cancer body is no longer our standard of "beauty". I think that was important for me to realize, because I placed high standards on myself at one point in my life. Look a certain way, maintain a certain weight, touch up your roots, buy a new outfit every time you go out. In retrospect, it seems silly. When you get blindsided with something like cancer, it makes you wonder how you ever cared about those little things at all...
(Chipped nail polish still bothers me though).
xx
Sam
Find a bit of beauty in the world today. Share it. If you can't find it, create it. Some days this may be hard to do. Persevere.
RIP Lisa.
