Quick Update from Gloomsville, My Temporary Residence

I got my drain out today. It hurt a little, but hey, pain comes with the territory and it wasn't a big deal. The medical assistant who pulled it told me that some people deal with those things for 3 weeks! Mine was out in about 5 days. It sucked to have to drive all the way to Denver for a 10 minute appointment, but I'm happy to have the thing out. I didn't hate it as much as some people did, but it was unpleasant.

Also, I rescheduled my surgery for February 9. I just didn't want to wait any longer than necessary, and the appointments that were already scheduled for that day are meaningless since I'll be having another surgery. Plus, maybe this way I can eat some birthday cake (or Toasted Almond Pie) with my dear friend Amber on her birthday.

As far as radiation goes, I rescheduled my consultation appointment to Feb. 23 because apparently I have to have time to heal. After that, I schedule a simulation appointment, and then my daily radiation appointments will start. Apparently it will take up to two weeks after my consultation to do the simulation. Fantastic. I wonder if we could make this process take any longer. As it's so enjoyable and all.

As you can see, I'm still in a pretty lousy mood. I'm going to lie low for the next bit until I deem myself worthy of human companionship. I'm seriously no fun right now.

I Spoke Too Soon (Not an Inspirational One)

So I recounted my dramatic pre-surgery in my last post. And I told you that I was doing pretty well. The pain isn't terrible, and I'm getting further and further along the road to recovery with my physical therapy exercises.

So that's the good.

And here's the bad.

I called today to find out what's going on with my pathology report. I got two parts bad news. Part one was that there was a small section that was positive for cancer in my sentinel lymph node. I was really hoping and praying that there would be no cancer in my nodes. I don't know the significance of this yet; hopefully I'll know more soon. Part two was that the surgeon didn't get all the cancer out, so I have to have a re-excision.

What does re-excision mean? It means that I have to have another surgery.

When a lumpectomy is performed, the surgeon needs to remove the tumor along with a margin of healthy tissue surrounding it, keeping all the cancer contained. When the lump is removed, it's sent to pathology, and the pathologist examines the outside very carefully to make sure that all the tissue surrounding the lump is cancer free. If they find something on the outside, however, the surgeon has to go back and take more tissue, still trying to get "clear margins."

I knew this was a possibility, but for some reason didn't really think it would happen. And then when I knew I could find out my pathology results today, I was really hesitant. I could sense that I'd get bad news. I was right.

Don't get me wrong; this next surgery should be relatively easy in comparison to what I've just gone through. She won't be messing with my nodes, which is the only part that really hurts now. And she only needs to take 1/4". And I won't be under general anesthesia; it'll just be a local anesthetic (yay... again... needles in my breast...) and some loopy medicine. I'm sure I'll heal up quickly.

The part that gets me is that it's ANOTHER bump along this already too bumpy road. I feel like at every crossroads I run into complications. And each thing seems to add weeks onto the total time it's taking to get well again. I'm worried that because I have to have another surgery (which, by the way, isn't scheduled until Feb. 12), I'll have to wait to start radiation. I know that radiated skin doesn't heal as quickly as normal skin, and I'm guessing that after this next surgery I'll have to take even more time to heal and THEN start radiation, adding maybe 3-4 weeks to my finish date.

What's 3-4 weeks when you've been in hell for almost 30 weeks?

I guess I shouldn't get ahead of myself because I haven't talked to anyone about whether this will stall the radiation process or not. I just have a bad feeling about it. Mostly because nothing seems to go right for me anymore.

The news that I have to have another surgery sent me into a half day of depression. It's not a huge deal, really; it's a pretty simple surgery and re-excisions happen. But it's on top of all of this, all of this cancer bullshit. I realized today, because it has become abundantly clear to me, that I am tired. I haven't felt good (as in good for a normal person) in over 6 months. That is a long fucking time to not feel good (sorry for swearing Mom and Dad). If I didn't feel nauseated, I felt tired. To distract from the fatigue is pain. I get sick or an infection in my toe. I no longer have the capability to lie down when I feel yucky and wake up feeling fine. I wake up and I am still tired. I still have cancer. I am still recovering from treatment. I am still weak. I am still living a life that I do not like, let alone recognize.

I AM TIRED OF LIVING THE LIFE OF A 25-YEAR OLD BREAST CANCER PATIENT.

If it's another 3-4 weeks until I start radiation, plus 5-6 weeks of radiation, that could be as long as 10 more weeks. Two and a half months.

I want to move on. I want to move. I want to work. I want to ski. I want to be me again.

I also realized today that my life is dictated by other people right now. I do whatever the doctors tell me to do. Take this chemo. Have surgery. Have more surgery. Do radiation. Be here at this time on this day. Wait until the doctor is ready for you. Take these drugs. And none of it is fun. I am trying to keep myself alive and so I do what they say, and there is no guarantee that it will work. I feel like the more I do and the more I find out, the worse I feel and the worse my prognosis gets.

I don't want to live in statistics, but according to http://www.breastcancer.org/, patients with triple negative cancers (yours truly) have a survival rate of 77% over 5 years versus 93% of patients with other breast cancers. That means, for those of you who aren't great with the numbers, that one out of four will be dead in 5 years. Those are not great odds. Of course, that statistic includes all stages and grades of cancer, so it may not be so helpful, but still. Not good on a little Carrie's mindset.

I can't help but wonder still why this happened to me. How this happened.

I cried today. A lot for me. I am feeling very tested. And very tired of cancer. I know I can do this; I know I'll make it through the surgery. I know I'll get my range of motion back. I know it will stop hurting. I know someday I won't be tired and I'll feel great again. I know I will ski. But today was a hard day.

Oh yeah, and I totally acted like a jerk and yelled at my mom, which probably didn't help her at all. I just couldn't talk about it anymore. I didn't want to talk about cancer anymore, or surgery, or anything related to how much my life sucks these days. I didn't want to be on the phone. I didn't want to be in my own skin. I usually don't feel like I have a crappy life, but taking a candid look back at the last 6 months, it's been pretty damn bleak. I know, though, that it could be worse. But today wasn't a "count your blessings" day.

What I wanted to do today was call my ex-boyfriend and just SCREAM at him (no, not Marc, he got me pretty flowers... actually I have lots of pretty flowers right now). Hmmmm, that's healthy.

Even though it isn't representative of my feelings tonight, I'll leave you with some good news.

Tomorrow I'm going to Denver to get my drain removed. Yay! I think it's going to hurt, but whatever, what's new. And tonight I finally took a shower, and when I was washing my hair, I could really feel some of it coming back in. Not to say it's all growing yet, but at least there's something starting.

So there you have it. I'm going to do my physical therapy exercises once more, brush my teeth, take an Ativan, and hope the sun shines a little brighter tomorrow. The truth, whether I can see it or not tonight, is that it usually does.

Another Step on This Long Road Completed

Welcome back to CarrieHatesCancer, where something is always happening!

So yesterday was surgery day, and it went... pretty well. But lemme tell ya, we got off to a bad start.

The first part involved my pre-surgery prep stuff at the breast center at Rose Medical. I had a REALLY nice nurse, so that was great. She told me parents and sister, who all came to my big surgery day, that I'd be back in about twenty minutes. And she said that the doctor who would be performing my wire localization was a good one. What's a wire localization? Well, let me explain...

In my pesky right breast, I had a metal clip (sort of like a small metal bead) placed into each tumor at the time of my biopsy. These clips mark where my tumors are/were. So that the surgeon can find the tumors to perform a lumpectomy, the radiologist inserts thin wires through the skin down to the tumor. The wire sticks out of the skin and made me look like a porcupine!

The wires are inserted into the breast with a hollow needle with the wire inside of it. But the radiologist first injects lidocaine, a numbing medicine, into the breast. This stings A LOT, plus has the charming sensation of a needle being pushed deep into the breast. Yeah. I know.

Because my last ultrasound gave good images of my tumors, the radiologist decided to use ultrasound to guide him to my tumors. Since my last ultrasound, though, I'd had one last chemo treatment. I did tell him about that, and that the most recent MRI showed that one tumor was no longer visible and that the other had shrunken significantly. Anyway, he used ultrasound to find my clips and tumors, and inserted two localizing wires into my right breast.

I'd like to take a moment and say yes, it is as unpleasant as it sounds. But if it were performed only once, or twice, it would certainly be very bearable.

So once the wires were in, a radioactive substance was inject into me. This was to help the surgeon find my lymph nodes in surgery. Then the nurse ordered a mammogram to make sure we got the wires in the right place. Going into the mammogram, we already knew that Wire #1 was something like 1.3 cm past the tumor. He tried to pull it out a bit, but the wires have little hooks at the end to keep them in place. And since I'm a youngster, my breast tissue is still quite dense. So imagine trying to pull a fish hook attached to a wire through a sirloin steak. And Dr. Radiologist said he *thought* he got Wire #2 in the right place, but it was hard to tell, and something about it not being an exact science. (Oh really? Isn't that what this should be? I know I'm coming off like he was a moronic ass, but he was actually a very nice man.)

So off I go to get a mammogram. They said it would be a light smoosh (very technical term, sorry I forgot what they really said) and it was.

When the results came back, it turned out that he'd missed my tumor entirely. There was some discussion that what the radiologist had termed "12:00 and 1:00" was more like 11:00 and 12:00 to him. (To the uninitiated, they indicate where tumors are in the breast as if the breast were a clock. Weird, yes.) Anyway, he takes another stab (ha) at it using ultrasound again, and then I have more mammograms. I've had probably 20 more mammograms than all my peers. The mammograms come back, and show that he missed the other tumor again.

At this point, I get to wait in a little alcove where my parents and sister have been waiting. The original time quote of twenty minutes has been WAY overshot. The doctor came to talk to all of us to get everyone up to speed with what's been going on. He was very apologetic, which was nice, but it would have been nicer if we could have just gotten the damn wires in place on the first try. Anyway, he spins it as a good thing, sort of, because it means the tumors are very difficult to find now. Which is, truthfully, a good thing. And he tells us that we're going to try another approach using the stereotactic table. He admits that we should have just done this from the beginning, but my ultrasound films made it appear that he'd be able to find the tumors using ultrasound.

The stereotactic table is a long bed-like table with a hole in the middle. I get myself situated on the table, with my right breast hanging through the hole. The table then rises up so that the doctor will be below me, kind of like when you drive over the hole at the oil change place and the guy is underneath, changing your oil. A technician starts taking some pictures trying to locate both clips. She can't find both, and then gets me to put my arm through the hole as well. She still can't get both. Then she messes with my breast and squashes it to the point that tears are coming to my eyes and I'm yelping "OW OW OW!" (Keep in mind, there are WIRES in my breast, and squishing it around does not feel dandy.) She has finally found both and gets the doctor.

I'm about ready to snap at this point because I'm in quite a bit of pain and nobody seems to care. I'm thinking to myself that it's Friday, and I have to have surgery to remove breast cancer from my body. That I'm 26, and that my friends are at work. That people my age are out there thinking, "Thank God it's Friday" and making plans for a fun night out. And here I am with my breast bleeding and smashed in some stupid machine, with three wires poking out from the skin, awaiting further torture. And that once that's done, I'll be ready for a potentially disfiguring surgery. Usually the "it's so unfair" thing doesn't bother me, but at times like this, times when the cosmos seem to be rubbing it my face how much my life sucks, I have trouble holding it together. I'm really stressed out at this point because of the pain and the frustration and the fact that the nice nurse told me it would take twenty minutes and it's been hours. I want to have a total freak out meltdown, but I don't like to do that in front of people and there's always someone around. And then they're back, the doctor and the technician.

I can't see the doctor, which adds a different edge to everything. I can't see when he again injects lidocaine into my breast, which hurts more and more each time. He puts in the wire. Then he injects more lidocaine in my breast, and I ask why, because I thought he had gotten Wire #1 in the right place. He said he wanted the wires to be perfect, so he was going to do that one again. Another wire is placed. So now I have had 5 injections of lidocaine and 5 wires placed. He then wants to pull out the wires that were misplaced. Two of them come out with very little pain. Then he tries to pull the third and it hurts a lot. He says he'll quit trying and leave it. He attaches a little note to it to have it removed during surgery, and indicates that this wire does not lead to any tumors. Seriously, I had a little note attached to a wire IN MY BREAST. It looked a little like I had raised the flag at Casa Bonita meaning I wanted more sopaipillas.

I think I had to have another mammogram to prove that he got the wires in the right place. This time they were indeed FINALLY in the right places. YAY!

When I come out, I had gotten some little bag full of samples and a nice robe. I think it's because I was a pretty good sport, considering the morning I'd had. It pissed me off that there was a sample of shampoo because I'm bald, but then my parents reminded me that it was a sign of optimism, that it was for my future hair.

My surgery time was 1:15 and I think it was about 1:00 when I was wheelchaired out of the breast center. What was supposed to take about twenty minutes took over three hours. The nice nurse was the one to wheel me to my surgery so we didn't have to wait for a transport. She told me that I did a great job, that this was the most difficult wire localization she'd ever seen, and that she admired my attitude in a difficult time. That was nice. Then she left, and I was with new nurses.

I changed into a different gown and put on an extra pair of socks with no-slip grips on them. A nurse came in and took my vitals, and she brought a selection of hats her mother had made. I picked a funny pink one. She tried to get an IV in me, which meant more stinging lidocaine. Two tries, and then she gave up, giving another nurse a chance. The other nurse didn't use the numbing stuff, which meant it hurt more, but she did hit my vein, which meant we didn't have to keep trying. At this point I was really over having people stab me with needles.

The anesthesiologist came in and talked to me and made me drink this sour grape antacid stuff.

Then my surgeon came in to talk to me. I had one burning question for her: the day before my surgery, a surgeon friend (and also a young breast cancer survivor) told me that if my surgeon made her incision around my nipple, I'd probably lose sensation. As a huge reason I wanted to keep my breasts was that I wanted to keep sensation in my breasts, this concerned me. I brought it up to my surgeon, and she was pretty surprised. I asked how likely it was that I'd lose sensation, and she said there was maybe a 15% chance. I asked if she made the incision higher, would I lose sensation? She said no, I wouldn't, but that most girls my age prefer not to have a scar on their breasts over losing sensation. She told me to think about it for a while, which I tried to do, but of course there are people everywhere and I'm all jittery about having surgery. She comes back to ask me what I've decided, and about five pairs of eyes are staring at me. I'm hemming and hawing, and she says, from my experience, it seems that 15% is too high of a risk to you, and I don't want to be talking you into having the incision around your nipple and then you lose feeling. I decide she's right, and she will make the incision on my breast. I had decided the night before that I'd rather have a scar and feel my nipple than no scar and no sensation. I think I made the right choice, and the scar shouldn't be visible in a swimsuit or in clothes.

I get moved into the OR and switch beds. As I'm lying there, I say, "I know I should have asked this earlier, but how many times do people die from an operation like this?" The nurse told that she couldn't remember it happening once in her 9 years at the hospital. The anesthesia goes in... and I go out...

The lumps were going to be removed as one sheet, not separately. And a blue dye was injected into me to help the surgeon locate my lymph nodes. I peed bright blue when I went to the bathroom as we were leaving the hospital. Think Windex colored!

When I wake up, I'm very sleepy and grouchy. I think I was dreaming about someone I'm mad at, and that made me grouchy. I got to talk to the surgeon about my lymph nodes, and I think she said that she ended up taking out 10, and that one is suspicious for having cancer in it. She said something like, "This is a very sophisticated conversation to be having as you're coming out of surgery, Carrie. I'm thinking you must be pretty smart." I took that as a very big compliment, as I find my surgeon to be a very smart woman. Anyway, I can call on Tuesday to find out the pathology on my nodes.

I slept most of the ride home. Once I got home, my parents got the reclining chair set up right next to the bathroom in my old room. I set my phone alarm to go off every four hours to take a percocet, and my mom ended up sleeping in the same room because she was worried or something.

Today was a pretty slow day, but I haven't been napping all day or anything. I slept in, ate, got a visit from my brother and sister-in-law, watched some Gilmore Girls with my sister and mom, and now I'm ready to eat dinner.

This was a long post; thanks to everyone who made it to the end! Surgery wasn't as bad as I feared, and I'm not really in much pain at all (yay for percocet!). I have this surgical drain thing that's gross, but I think I'll talk about that in a later post.

Ciao!

'Twas the Night Before Surgery...

Hello everyone! Tonight is the night before surgery, and I'm a little jittery. I wanted to update my blog before surgery, though, in case it's a while before I get back here. I just realized that I never got my Mexico photos up. Sheesh. But I have been a little busy...

Let's see. I went skiing on Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday after hearing that I might not be able to ski for a while. Even though I could maybe ski groomers after three weeks, I think I'll just wait until I can ski whatever I want. It's just too tempting; I know if I went up with the intentions of skiing groomers, I would somehow make my way over to the moguls. So wait I will. And allow some healing to come to this poor little body of mine.

I had sushi for dinner tonight for the first time in MONTHS! It was great! The spicy stuff still hurts my tongue, but it was well worth it. Mmmmmm yum!

Last night I had this ridiculous dream. First off, I forgot to go to the pre-op part of tomorrow and just showed up for the surgery. Instead of not eating after midnight, I had eaten a granola bar and a cheeseburger. And I had forgotten my films in my car in Fort Collins, to which only I had the keys. What a mess.

I am getting REALLY tired of feeling under par. I realized that since my last treatment, I haven't had a single day where I felt really good. I've had a cold wandering in the wings for the past week or so, and now I feel downright sick. It's not awful, and I did call the surgeon's office to see if it's OK. They said they'd reassess tomorrow, but that the surgery is still on. Thank God! Even though I'm very nervous and scared for tomorrow, I don't want to postpone. But with surgery, I'm sure I won't be feeling top notch for a while, and then not too long after I'll be starting radiation. I just have no clue as to when I get to feel GOOD, or even GREAT, again. It's a bummer (to say the least) to feel icky all the time. Tired. Sick. 75% of normal. Downright yucky.

"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired" would be a good motto for me.

I spent the day today trying to feel decent and getting things ready for surgery and recovery. I shopped for food, picked up my prescriptions (I've been to the pharmacy more times in the past 6 months than in my entire life, I think) and packed my things for tomorrow. It's going to be a really long day-- we'll leave Fort Collins at 7:30 for my pre-op stuff at 9:30. And surgery is scheduled for 1:15 or something. That should last an hour to an hour and a half from what I've heard, and then an hour or two for recovery. Then we trek back home, and hopefully get there by 6:00. Oy!

I was so happy to finally have a surgery date and to know for sure what my surgery was going to be. And while yes, that is nice, I am now feeling anxious and scared. I don't know why; I charged into chemo like I owned the place. I think it's because I haven't experienced much pain in my life (and for that I am blessed), and that worries me. And I really would like to be active again now that my body is on the mend, but I have to wait to be healed. And I am not looking forward to having a surgical drain hanging out of my body, and having to measure whatever fluid comes out of the wound. (Ew.) And I just heard from a friend (who happens to be a surgeon) that if the surgeon makes her incision around my nipple, I will lose feeling in it. That better not be true. And after this surgery, I may be disfigured to an unknown extent. And most of all-- tomorrow I will know if there's cancer in my lymph nodes. While I have embraced any and all knowledge and information regarding me and this dumb cancer, I face the answer to the lymph node question with trepidation. I am very VERY afraid to have cancer in my nodes.

Mostly, I am tired of the cancer stuff. I see myself as having finished "the hard part." But there's still about 8 more weeks of stuff, and then after that I suppose I'm supposed to piece my messy life back together. I want to go back to how my life was and be happy with it, but I worry that since I am not the same person I was just 6 months ago, will I still enjoy it? Cancer provides more questions than answers. I guess what I really want is to feel "normal" again; not tired, not anxious, not in pain, not weak.

What I need to do is somehow force myself to realize that tomorrow is another major step in the right direction. A step towards healing. A step that physically forces cancer out my body. A step towards the future and leaving this miserable excuse for a twenty-something's life in the past.

Regardless of my feelings, however, tomorrow I WILL have surgery (unless for some reason they think I'm too sick or something). And I'm sure in about a week I will look back and say to myself, "well, that really wasn't so bad." Luckily for me, I have the type of memory that is able to forget a lot of the bad stuff. Plus, I do have a sneaking suspicion that I'm just being a big baby about it all.

OK surgery. Ready or not, here I come. Wish me luck!

I Have a Surgery Date!

Hi everyone, just a quick note to tell you I finally have a surgery date. I will be having a lumpectomy with a sentinal node biopsy, along with the removal of some extra axillary lymph nodes. And all this will take place on Friday, January 23, just one week from tomorrow! Hooray! FINALLY!

Also to note, my surgeon was very please with my chemo response and said we have a "nice, nice, nice shot at cure." So that's good to hear.

I guess radiation will start 2-3 weeks after surgery, and will last about 5 weeks. So in my head, I'm thinking that in 9 weeks, I'll finally be done with treatment!

I think I'm ready for the next stage in my treatment. I'm a little scared about the pain and how it's going to look in the end. But mostly I'm happy to be moving forward.

The part that really sucks though is that she said I should wait at least three weeks to ski. And when I get to skiing, to "take it easy." (What is it with everyone telling me that? The whole point of skiing is to challenge myself, not to take it easy! I love moguls! Who do these people think I am? Ha!) Groomers? I think I'd rather just sit this one out than ski Mary Jane Trail all day. I KNOW I need to take things at the appropriate pace, or else my arm is going to swell due to the lack of lymph nodes. Eventually I can get back on the horse, but for now, I guess I just heal heal heal. I'm a little disappointed because I thought I could go to this big mogul skiing thing at the beginning of February. But I guess not. Oh well.

Anyway, next stop, surgery! Let's hope I recover quickly and without incident!

A Little This, A Little That... But Most of All, GOOD NEWS!

Hey everyone! I have so much stuff up in this noisy head of mine that I need to do a brain dump. So here's a mish-mash of a lot of stuff! I just added ALL my Mexico photos, and then Blogger didn't save them, and then my Internet Explorer page closed for whatever reason, and now they're gone. And it takes forever and is annoying, so I'm just going to have to do it again later.

This is sort of a big week. I had a breast MRI yesterday, which was mostly uneventful because they don't tell you anything at your appointment. The first nurse who was supposed to put in my IV for the contrast (they put liquid contrast stuff in you so they can see things better) started things off by scaring me. She stretched the tourniquet and broke it. That didn't bode well. Then she tried to hit my vein with the IV needle and couldn't get it. She tried again on my wrist and didn't get it. Then she called another nurse over and she got it. I have pretty good veins, so I hate it when I have newbies who miss them. Oh well, it wasn't that bad, just unpleasant. Perfect for a Monday.

Anyway, the big deal appointment is tomorrow. I get to meet with my surgeon, finally! I haven't seen her for almost 6 months, since I've been doing chemo first. It feels so great to finally be moving toward surgery in a REAL way. HOORAY! It'll be nice to finally know what surgery I'm really going to have, what kind of recovery I can expect, where I will have scars, how many and how long they will be, what kind of anesthesia, and most of all, a final pathology report telling us whether there's any cancer in my lymph nodes. Please, everyone, please please please pray that there is no cancer there! I'm really hoping I can schedule surgery as soon as next week, but... who knows...

I didn't say in my last post that I went to the zoo on Saturday. It was a free day, and it was nice to stroll around (in the cold...) and look at animals.

OK, so I wrote that stuff yesterday, but today I got some REALLY good news! I called my oncologist's office to see if anyone would talk to me about my MRI results. My oncologist herself called back and had good news. She said my results were "marvelous," which was a good start! My tumors used to be about 2.5 cm each, but now one is 0.47 cm and the other is not visible on the MRI! She also said it doesn't look like there is any cancer in my lymph node, which was a relief. Although we will only know for sure after my surgery.

To celebrate, I took myself out to dinner for Vietnamese food. A certain "Shaniqua Johnston" said I should pamper myself, so I did. Delicious! Also, a dinner alone is kind of nice from time to time.

Well, pictures will be posted again later. I'm still annoyed about that. But oh well, today is a good day! And hopefully tomorrow I will meet with my surgeon, go skiing, and then tell you all about it!

My Crazy Day, or The Worst Day Ever

Saturday, Jan. 3, was a really hard and bad day. It was awful. A lot of things went into making it one of the worst days of my life, let alone the worst day of treatment, and I am so thankful that day is gone and since then, many new suns have risen.

How do I start this? I don't even know how to start.

I'm usually not a person with so many... feelings. On my "Crazy Day," as we'll call it, my feelings went all wonky-- I had so many emotions at once, almost all of which were negative, and most of them were pretty unfamiliar. For the most part, I am happy and strive to be positive. So when I get to feeling down, it's very difficult for me because it's unfamiliar terrain.

The day started out fine. I went to breakfast with my brother and parents. Big Brother #2 was leaving for New York (well, Detroit, but that's all details...) and my parents were taking him to the airport. My sister was out of town on a ski trip with her boyfriend and friend. So my usual buddy wasn't around. I went home, took a long and satisfying bath, and then... got really... bored. Not "Gee-what-should-I-do-now?" bored, but "What-is-the-point-to-anything-I-feel-like-I'm-wasting-my-life-waiting-to-go-to-bed-and-it's-3:00-in-the-afternoon" bored. Which legitimately scared me.

I thought "The Ghost" had vanished already, but looking back on the day, I really wasn't feeling back to normal. I think I probably still am not, but am hoping it's coming any day now.

My friend Amber called me, which was perfect because I was about to go insane. Unfortunately, this didn't prevent insanity from ensuing, but it was nice to hear her voice, to know she keeps me in her thoughts. She's been so great at keeping in touch and checking on me and taking care of me in her own little Amber way.

I felt so lost, so bored, and so weak. It's a bad feeling, knowing that you WANT to do something, but that your body is too weak to muster the strength to do it. The weakness is very hard for me to deal with. Not that I was a body builder before, but I did have the energy to do the things I wanted to do. On my Crazy Day, I had very little strength for anything except wallowing.

It started with the boredom, which led to me thinking to myself, "Why don't I have anyone to hang out with today?" Which led me, again, to my thoughts about friendship, and to a lot of neglected feelings. When you're going through chemotherapy treatment (and by you, I mean me... heh...), you really have to focus on making it through treatment, one day at a time. And with my neo-adjuvant chemotherapy (that means chemo before surgery, for those of you who aren't down with the fancy terms), I have no idea when anything else is going to happen. So focusing all my energy on finishing chemo was certainly the task at hand. And focus I did. But then once chemo was over, the emotional blinders keeping me focused were suddenly removed and I could suddenly see and feel a lot of things that I had kept bottled up.

I was suddenly VERY angry at a lot of people, some who deserve it and probably some who don't. But I realized that I felt that a lot of people whom I really thought CARED about me weren't THERE for me over this past five month period-- one abandoned me, one screwed me, and one really hurt me over and over. I think I'll talk about this part in a later post.

I guess I don't know what to do with this anger. While I don't feel it all the time, I am still pretty angry that these three people let me down. But on my Crazy Day, I was angry and had no one to direct my anger at.

Amber suggested I go for a walk. This was a really good suggestion because a little walk might have helped clear my head. So I get all ready to walk, but it's almost 4:30 and I'm worried it's going to get dark. I call my ex-boyfriend #1 (sometimes referred to as "the good one") to see if he'll go for a walk with me. It turns out he was in Steamboat, which is where my sister was too, and said he would take me if he could.

Right. Because you've been there for me so much in the past five months. Moving on.

So I go outside to try to get a quick walk in before it gets dark. When I get outside, it's REALLY cold and it's starting to snow. A bad sign, I figure. So I go back inside, feeling very... defeated. And I'm starting to feel really desperate. I felt desperate to feel differently, and just couldn't change how I felt. I felt very alone, very upset, very angry, very sad, and very helpless. Very scared. Very anxious.

I got in the car to go to Whole Foods to get this lip gloss I've used before. I thought it would help with the dry mouth issues, plus it would waste a little time and maybe help my mood. I called my mom to make sure I could maybe come over if things didn't look up, but I didn't indicate to her that I was freaking out and my world was falling apart. She was sleeping but of course said to come on over if I wanted to.

At Whole Foods, things didn't improve. I got the things I needed, and then a pizza and salad because it was clear that I needed to go to my mom and dad's house. While I was in the store, I felt so weak and anxious, like the last leaf on a tree, trembling in the wind, potentially about to snap off and drift away. Standing in line I thought I was going to lose it. I got taken over by feelings of panic and fear, so strong I felt paralyzed. I was so scared that even though I did all the chemo they told me to, it wasn't enough. I felt so afraid I was going to die from cancer, and soon. I felt so helpless.

That's the thing now-- I've done all the chemo that has been shown to be effective and beneficial. And if that wasn't enough, then... what? I know I'm not done with treatment and still have surgery and radiation to go, but chemo is over. And there's no way of knowing whether or not it was "enough." The only way you know is you wait. And if cancer hasn't come back, you keep waiting. Or cancer does come back and then you know the answer.

Anyway, I went to my parents' house. I sat down in the living room with my mom and just started crying. I told her about how angry I was with the people who broke my little heart. I told her how I was scared to be done with chemo. I told her how bored I was, and how I felt all panicky at the store. How I was worried this terrible feeling and this terrible day wouldn't go away, that I was scared I'd need to be medicated for a mental disorder or something. I cried and cried and told her how I wanted to go back in time, how I wished so badly that this had never happened. How sad I was that I would never be same person I was before cancer. She just held me in her arms, and she listened. At some point my dad came in the room to see what was going on. I told him I was losing my mind, and my mom caught him up to speed.

I was freaking out. Bad.

But the wonderful part of all this was that I KNEW they'd be able to somehow fix it. They were able to make me feel better about everything. They gave me reasonable reasons that people weren't there for me, but they didn't discredit my feelings. They didn't lie to me and tell me that everything is OK and that I will be able to go back to being the same old me. They told me I would be a different person than I was, but that my new normal would be good. Or even better. They listened and they talked and they soothed and they calmed. For the past many years, I've felt love for my parents but not need. On my Crazy Day, I needed them, and they were there. And somehow they were able to shrink my head so my problems weren't so huge. I felt a lot better at this point.

Then we made the pizza I brought over (it had spinach in hopes that the iron would help my feelings of weakness) and ate it while watching a light and funny movie. I was pretty much cured of crazy. I went home and went to sleep, and the next day, everything seemed brighter.

So most of my days, I feel pretty normal. I think about cancer less and less it seems. Maybe that's because I've been trying to keep myself busy since then. If you've been wondering where I've been, I went skiing for four days and then down to Denver to spend some time with friends. I had a great time all around! Skiing was really difficult and a little frustrating because what should be a snap is actually very tiring and difficult. But I got back most of my form and technique, and now I'm just waiting on some red blood cell development and getting back in shape. In Denver, I went to dinner and a Nuggets game with some good guys and then some partying in LoDo. Sunday was a lazy day to recover, even though I was supposed to go skiing. Whoops.

One last thing-- Michelle Gray, you commented on my blog but I don't have any way to write you back! I'd love to get in touch with you somehow...!