Little Indignities

Even when I’m feeling fine (ish) these days, there are still the little indignities that come with cancer and chemo that add up to feel like A BIG THING instead of a lot of little things.

-Waking up to pee four times a night.

-Still can’t sleep comfortably on either side because – incision on left, port on right.

-Have to wear a hat to sleep because my scalp/hair rubs weirdly on my pillow.

-Waking up in a drenching sweat because of the above hat/chemo sweats.

-Still sleeping in a bra, almost three months after surgery.

-Not being able to bathe. Sure, I shower everyday but there’s something about a long soak in a hot bath that makes me feel so good and I haven’t been able to do that in almost three months thanks to the open wound my incision became.

-Still having to shave my stupid legs even though I have no hair on the top of my head. How is that fair and just?

-The weird film/taste in my mouth that is a near constant state. It’s not metallic like some people told me it would be but I can’t seem to drink enough water(see having to get up four times a night to pee) or brush my teeth often enough to get rid of it.

So many little things. But I know they'll be worth enduring. Every single day is a day closer to when this is all over and I'm taking steps to leaving it all behind me, getting well, feeling well, being well.

What Gave It Away?

While at WalMart last week, during one my hardest days after chemo yet, the girls and I were waiting on a bench for my mom to be ready to take us home. I’d feel icky enough to be not want to drive myself to town that day.

Yes, that should have been the sign that I should have just stayed home. I know. Live and learn.

After a bit, I decided to use the bathroom, leaving Lyss and Liv on the bench watching our cartful of groceries.

As I started to enter the bathroom, I was stopped by a woman who was waiting outside the door for a friend.

She said, “Excuse me, ma’am, but are you a cancer survivor?”

I said, “Well, right now I’m a fighter, but I plan to be a survivor.”

She fist bumped me and told me she’d fought cancer five times. FIVE TIMES! Holy shit. Five freaking times. She explained that her first fight was with thyroid cancer, then she fought breast cancer four times.

She said her last fight ended seven years ago and she’s currently cancer free.

You go, Warrior Woman.

I told her I’d just had chemo three days prior which is why I looked so terrible.

She looked me in the eyes and said, “You look beautiful. You’re going to beat this and come out stronger.”

And then she let me go to the bathroom where I tried to poop for the seven hundredth time that day. (It didn’t work, but the third time I went in to try did so…aren’t you glad you read through this entire post?)

But honestly, other than my hat and chemo pallor, I wonder what gave me away as a cancer/chemo patient. As of this moment, I still have my eyebrows and eyelashes. I still have more weight on my bones than is necessary or even recommended.

Maybe once you go through this you just know. You recognize fellow members of the club you never wanted to join. Maybe.

Chemo Diaries - Chemo #3

Ahh, the cumulative effects of chemotherapy. So expected and yet still so painful.

And this time, there was blood. Ugh! But it was only a little and only on Friday and Saturday. Still…ewww.

Anyway. This chemo session was a little different because Tom took me. I know! He got to be my driver. We arrived, I got hooked up and he stuck around a bit before running out to Aldi (his favorite store EVER) and I think maybe Walmart (his least favorite store EVER.)

He was back before I was done, so he sat down and watched as my nurse finished up the process.

This was the first time she had trouble with my port. She first time she accessed it, there was no flow so she tried a new needle and that did the trick. Thank goodness for Lidocaine and its numbing effects, though I did feel the second access. Not pain so much as…pressure? Yeah, that’s it.

I woke up that Tuesday night in the usual sweat. Ick. I hate waking up sweaty at 1am. It’s just so gross.

But then again, there is nothing about chemo that isn’t gross. The feelings of just being sick, being out of it, of not being in control of anything. Yep, gross.

Wednesday, I got through most of work. Go me. I know, I say that a lot but damn it, I’m a freaking warrior here. My chemo nurse says so.

Thursday Alyssa and I headed to see Justice League. Wonder Woman is so awesome. I didn’t feel too bad, just run down. Not so much that I couldn’t drive to and from the movie and eat way too much popcorn and drink a frozen Coke but just kind of ick.

Did I mention that Olivia started coming down with a cold on the Sunday before chemo? No? Well, she did.

By Thursday evening I wasn’t just suffering from the effects of chemo, I was also stuffy from catching Liv’s cold. Yay elementary school!!

Friday was so hard. I felt pretty awful all day

It started with, you guessed it, the poop problem.

Let’s remember that my biggest fear going into chemo was diarrhea. And let me say here, I have not yet experienced full-on diarrhea, much to my relief. However, chemo is messing up my natural ‘rhythm’ of three or four BMs a day. I know, yuck, but this is all about full disclosure so there you go.

I didn’t poo first thing in the morning on Friday as I do most mornings. So I felt ‘off’ all day.

I did manage to drag myself and the girls to town to buy groceries and have lunch. I ate half the chicken I’d ordered at Dairy Queen and the whole caramel sundae (because, duh) but once we got to Walmart, I started feeling worse and worse. We powered through and made it home with time to rest.

But back to the poop situation, because that’s why we’re all here, right? For the when the shit hits the fan. When I did finally poo much later in the day, like after 6pm, it was awful. This is where the blood came in.

I googled, “is it normal to poop blood while on chemo?”

Apparently, yes, it’s normal; and yet, so very disconcerting and disgusting. Shudder.

I felt better for a couple of hours on Saturday.
I got up, made the green bean casserole we were taking to my mom’s for Thanksgiving dinner. Sat through dinner and ate some vegetables. Then I made my way to her back bedroom where I laid on the floor and just…suffered. Is that a little melodramatic? Maybe but that’s kind of what I did. I didn’t actually sleep, I just drifted, feeling awful and hoping tomorrow would be better.

I roused myself enough to drive the girls the three miles home. At the halfway point between my mom’s house and ours, I hit a deer. The damn deer got up and ran away. My car was drivable enough to get us home, an hour after hitting the deer, after Tom and an office with the county sheriff’s department did their work.

It’s amazing what a shot of adrenaline can do for chemo sluggishness.

There was a little more blood that night when I finally had another poop but not as much as the day before and by Sunday, there was no blood at all.

I made it through an eight hour day at work on Monday and here we are, a week out and I’m feeling…okay. Not awesome but not horrible either.

My incision continues to heal. We’re at the point where Tom no longer even tries to stuff gauze into the opening. It’s barely open. There’s a tiny bit of seepage on the cause I lay on top of the incision but not enough to cause concern. I don’t see the surgeon again until December 18, at which point I fully expect him to do declare it closed. I hope.

So yeah, not so much diarrhea but just enough blood to be able to say I’m still excelling at being disgusting. Yah chemo!

One more big one and then, two weeks after that, we start the weekly sessions. I’ll admit it…I’m scared. Just a little but still…scared.

Eleven

My baby is eleven today. She’s eleven.

How is eleven treating Olivia?

Eleven is opinionated, strong-willed, argumentative, and still very snuggly. Eleven still wants back scratches at night but will screech at you at 6:30am if the sheets on her bed are messed up.

Eleven loves Barbies and YouTube videos about Barbie. She eats like an adult (loves a variety of food that does not include chicken nuggets) but still would prefer it if someone would sit next to her and spoon the food into her mouth, thank you very much. All this feeding of oneself is very tiresome.

At eleven, Olivia dresses herself and has very strong opinions on what she’s wearing each day. She CAN tie her own shoes but she very much prefers not to. She still needs washing her hair but can bathe on her own for the most part. She pushes her sister’s buttons just to see the sparks fly.

She argues with her dad because she can and he eggs her on.

I’m still her favorite person.

Eleven is going to be awesome.

Though I will confess to having said the following sentence to her, on her last day as a ten year old, “Olivia, stop talking to me. I’m sleeping.”

Yes…even at eleven, sleep can be a challenge. But life would be boring without challenges, right?

Bring on ELEVEN!

Stress Levels

My chemo nurse sat down next to me yesterday with a notepad and a pen. The other nurse had already taken my weight and my blood pressure. They were happy with both. Go me for the whole maintaining my weight and keeping my pressure at an acceptable level (110/70).

So the chemo nurse with her pad and pen asked me about my stress levels. The first question was about my stress level out of a scale of 1 to 10, with the one being the lowest and the ten being the highest, at that moment.

I thought about it and said, “One?” I mean, I was about to have a chemo infusion. I knew what was coming so I was fine with all that. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the whole thing but yeah, I also wasn’t stressed over it.

She then asked me about my stress level at home.

“Zero?” I said. I put the question mark at the end of the answer because I wasn’t’ sure I was even allowed to give a zero as an answer.

She looked over at Tom to see if I was lying about my stress level at home.

He shrugged.

I said, “Well, if I’m doing homework with our fourth grader, then my stress level goes to a four but other than that, he’s doing everything around the house, so I’m pretty stress-free.”

She said, “Everything?”

I replied, “He does all the laundry, all the cooking, he wrangles our girls out the door each morning for the bus, he makes sure I’m getting enough to eat, enough rest. Yeah, everything; I mean, except the fourth grader’s homework because she can be pill and I have more patience with her even while on chemo than he does. Oh, and I also make her bed because she’s declared that I do it better than her dad does.”

The nurse made a note (of what, I have no idea) and then said to Tom, “You’re spoiling her. Keep up the good work.”

Ha!

He nodded and said he planned to. Then he amended, “I do make her drive herself to work.”

I mean, he didn’t want the nurse to think he was a saint or something.

I do believe we have a keeper. I just hope I deserve him.

I also made sure to let her know that when I’m at work, my stress levels are a little higher (a four maybe?) because I’m, well, working and helping people who are losing their jobs at the end of the year and I go in each day knowing I am also losing my job at the end of the year. So there’s that.

Chicago!!

We’re off to Chicago today. I get to room with two of the nicest women. I met these women through Alyssa. They’re the moms of two of her best friends. But honestly, if I’d met them in any other way, I can totally see us being friends even without having daughters who appear to adore each other.

I also get to spend some awesome time with my girl. I feel so incredibly lucky that she still wants me around. She said that she and her group of friends, the ones she’s rooming with, were discussing who they wanted to be their chaperone and they all declared they wanted me.

Awww.

She told me recently that her friends Amelia and Sabrina were arguing over which one of them was more like me. Ha! I laughed and said, they want to be like a middle-aged mom? She said they enjoy my snark and my humor and both think they’re more like me than the other.

Alyssa declared, “But since you’re my actual mom, I think I’m the one who is more like you.”

How freaking adorable is that? I mean seriously?

Her other friend, Tessa, follows me on Instagram and Alyssa said that the few times I’ve posted a picture of me after chemo, Tessa will get a little teary-eyed and say, “It just makes me so sad because she doesn’t deserve this.”

I’m getting a little weepy here myself.

Alyssa has some amazing friends and I’m so incredibly grateful. High school can be a tough time in one’s life and I’m so glad she has an great team of friends who are so supportive of each other. Though, obviously, they’re also just a little competitive, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, unless they’re competing to be more like me because, yeah, maybe not do that, kiddos?

Not because I’m not an awesome 47 year old wife and mom and human being but because, yeah, they’re all 14/15 year old girls who need to maybe not aspire to be me right at this point in their lives. They’re funny, though and I’m definitely flattered that they think I’m awesome enough to want to be like me.

And lest anyone worry about Olivia while Alyssa and I are galavanting our way through Chicago for the next couple of days, Liv is getting to spend some quality one on one time with her very favorite Gram. I’ve got her mostly packed for her night and day with Gram and she’s already planning the things she’s going to take with her. She’s also asked me at least ten times if her dad is taking her to Gram’s house or if Gram is coming to our house to get her. I promised I’d call Gram and ask her that very question at some point. I better get on that.

This means Tom gets about 40 hours of peace and quiet with maybe about fifteen minutes of Liv time just to keep him on his toes. I’m pretty sure he’s very much looking forward to having an empty house all to himself. Not that I blame him.

An Eleventh Birthday

Olivia will be eleven on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

This Sunday, her best bud, her favorite cousin, that imp Jaxon, will be ten. His dad got a coupon from Jungle George’s in Fort Wayne offering a free birthday party.

We considered doing a joint birthday for Jax and Liv on Sunday, the day my brother was able to schedule the free party.

At first Olivia was cool with that. But the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to have her ‘party’ on her actual birthday.

Last night, she and I talked about what she considered a party. She wants Barbie decorations and plates. She wants a pink cake with pink frosting and maybe a giant pink B on the cake denoting that it is a Barbie cake.

Okay.

She went on to tell me that she wants to look like Barbie too. She wants her makeup to make her look like Barbie and she wants to wear Barbie pink clothes.

Okay, but…

She wants her Barbie styling head to be the centerpiece of the table on the night of her birthday.

Okay, fine to all that but does she understand that this ‘party’ will be her, me, her dad, her sister, and her Gram and Pawp?

She nodded.

Whew.

I continued the conversation with, “You know, maybe next year when you turn twelve, if you’re talking to your classmates, maybe we can have a party where we invite some of them.”

She sort of rolled her eyes at me, as if to say, “Whatever Mom. We all know I have no intention of speaking to my classmates, like, EVER.”

Except I kind of think she WANTS to speak to her classmates. She wants to interact. She wants to be part of the fun, the groups, she antics that right now, she just observes. She just hasn’t figure out how to break the ice. I mean, we’re six years in at her school and she’s talked to maybe two classmates. So she’s got this precedence that she’s set and maybe she feels like talking to them has become this HUGE thing that she doesn’t even want to overcome.

Who knows? She still received speech therapy at school, which emphasizes communicating with her peers. That’s her biggest challenge these days.

So maybe having a goal, a friend birthday party when she turned twelve, will help her work toward talking to her peers.

It can’t hurt.