Goodbye 2013! You were hell-ish. During your reign, I scored 311 on the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, where “Over 300” is the top category of stress. The surgery, that stripped me of my breasts, the wound complications that required me to spend six weeks, 24/7 on a wound vac,the six months of chemotherapy that wiped […]
Continue readingCategory Archives: Breast Cancer
But first…Magumba
This is me after my final round of chemo. Unfortunately, after six months of treatment, there is no way to know for sure that there are no cancer cells. We can spend one billion dollars to make a telescope that can see through space to the beginning of time but there is no instrument that […]
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Chemo – Round 5
After having lived through five of the scheduled eight chemotherapy treatments, I’m fairly convinced that no amount of nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, hair loss, or allergies to things I’ve never been allergic to before are going to kill me. I know this because each time I go for a treatment, which lasts up to five hours, […]
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Round 2 – The Ultimate Cure for Split Ends
The more cancer takes away from me, the more creative I have to be to find things to be grateful for. For instance, I now appreciate that my ears are nice and flat and I’m relieved to know that I don’t have a lumpy head. Nobody has called me sir yet, so that’s good, and […]
Continue reading8 ROUNDS – Round 1: Pretend to be Somebody Else
It takes time to wrap your head around the idea of baring your veins to a killer that will slowly slay your living cells one by one. So, for my first day of chemotherapy I thought it might be helpful to pretend to be somebody else. Thankfully, I didn’t have to rely solely on mind […]
Continue readingUpdate
I know I’ve been remiss but sometimes a girl has to retreat into a solitary hole and lick her wounds. No, not literally; actually I have this machine to do that for me now. What I’ve really been doing is locking myself in my office playing Angry Birds. Now that I’ve completed all levels and […]
Continue readingA Potbellied Bald Man
It’s official. I met the Oncologist yesterday morning and was told that my greatest chance of survival comes with chemotherapy AND possibly radiation. Again, like the decision whether to have reconstruction, getting treatment would be my choice, since theoretically, the surgery was successful and I should now be cancer free. But apparently, they’ve established that I […]
Continue readingHappy New Year!
It’s New Year’s Eve, 13 days after my mastectomy, and I’m facing a new year that begins with chemotherapy. I probably don’t have to tell you that my desire to celebrate 2013 rates right up there with doing this to my chin. Because I consider myself a rational soul, I’m going to honor that crappy […]
Continue readingGood News and Bad News
I lived through the surgery. That was the good news. The bad news is that the cancer spread to the nodes. The doctor took out 15 of them. It’s starting to look like chemo is in my future. Too tired to write more now.
Continue readingTrust
My mastectomy is scheduled for Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., about 34 hours from now at the . I have a little more than a day to walk around in the body that betrayed me. And yet, for my own sanity I need to place my trust in it – trust that it will be strong […]
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