Just a quick update to say that this week went more smoothly, 11 down, 17 to go. I still find it incredibly unnerving each time I surrender to radiation but things went pretty smoothly this week. The positioning was quick, not a lot of adjustments, and I felt like I was breathing somewhat normally. Even though I didn't actually walk to/from radiation, I did get the walking mileage in 3 days this week starting Wed. Also, I managed to stay awake all day yesterday with no naps and today is also looking pretty good! Looking forward to the weekend off.
Wildflower report - It's still early in the year but I did get to Edgewood once this week to check on the wildflower status. It was nice to see the early bloomers: Hounds tongue and Indian warrior have a good start and I also saw one blue witch and some gooseberry.
Thanks also to the generous food posse that continues to keep me well fed : Melanie, Angus/Melissa and Parnian.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
6 Down, 22 ( or so) to go - Radiation is different
So, all I can say is Radiation is different and the theme for this segment seems to be " I don't know". The first full week was kind of a bumpy ride on all fronts. I'm hoping it will smooth out starting next week!
Just as a reminder, radiation therapy is every day, Mon-Fri, for 20-30 min. People keep asking me and they keep getting surprised by the answer. Anyway it is every day and I started last Thurs 1/14. The first 2 sessions went pretty well. I walked the 2 miles to my session, primed with Ativan so I would "breathe normally" and followed directions and everything went according to plan. I had to lie down for a nap each day but no big deal. I had a nice weekend and walked the Dish both days and felt pretty good about things.
I won't go into details, but this week the naps got longer and more unpredictable, the joints ached, I ran a fever, I vascillated between insomnia and spending the day in bed and my rad machine went on the fritz Thurs so I missed a treatment. My rad onc said I probably had a touch of flu; my breast cancer support group buddies said they also had a rough time during the first week and theorized that it takes the body time to get used to this new form of assault. I'm hoping that no matter who is right, next week goes more smoothly and that I will at least be able to walk to and from treatment!
For some reason, the radiation portion of my treatment is messing with my head more. I think part of the fear comes from the fact that the treatment is invisible, controlled by computers and machines and that the setups are so complicated. One small cough at the wrong time, or a simple error in positioning or a small glitch could result in accidentally radiating the heart or lung and we wouldn't know. During my most recent treatment, the machine inexplicably stopped in the middle of radiating me. Nothing bad happened and we simply resumed the sequence but it reminded me that things don't always go according to plan. While I was writing this I got distracted by an article in today's NYT, another reminder of the complexity of radiation therapy : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html?pagewanted=1&hp
And now for the good news :) Radiation therapy is very effective at preventing local recurrence in breast cancer and I'm all for that! So, I will just have to trust my rad onc team, show up for each treatment, follow directions, lie still and breath normally!
I will nap when I need to and have fun when I am able. I will accept that I don't know how I'm going to feel from day to day or moment to moment. Friends, please forgive me if I don't answer the phone or email or if I can't make plans because I don't know how I will feel or if I bail on a plan that I made. Until the end of February, I'll be in the land of "I don't know".
As always, thanks to all of you for your support in all the ways that you show it!
Just as a reminder, radiation therapy is every day, Mon-Fri, for 20-30 min. People keep asking me and they keep getting surprised by the answer. Anyway it is every day and I started last Thurs 1/14. The first 2 sessions went pretty well. I walked the 2 miles to my session, primed with Ativan so I would "breathe normally" and followed directions and everything went according to plan. I had to lie down for a nap each day but no big deal. I had a nice weekend and walked the Dish both days and felt pretty good about things.
I won't go into details, but this week the naps got longer and more unpredictable, the joints ached, I ran a fever, I vascillated between insomnia and spending the day in bed and my rad machine went on the fritz Thurs so I missed a treatment. My rad onc said I probably had a touch of flu; my breast cancer support group buddies said they also had a rough time during the first week and theorized that it takes the body time to get used to this new form of assault. I'm hoping that no matter who is right, next week goes more smoothly and that I will at least be able to walk to and from treatment!
For some reason, the radiation portion of my treatment is messing with my head more. I think part of the fear comes from the fact that the treatment is invisible, controlled by computers and machines and that the setups are so complicated. One small cough at the wrong time, or a simple error in positioning or a small glitch could result in accidentally radiating the heart or lung and we wouldn't know. During my most recent treatment, the machine inexplicably stopped in the middle of radiating me. Nothing bad happened and we simply resumed the sequence but it reminded me that things don't always go according to plan. While I was writing this I got distracted by an article in today's NYT, another reminder of the complexity of radiation therapy : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html?pagewanted=1&hp
And now for the good news :) Radiation therapy is very effective at preventing local recurrence in breast cancer and I'm all for that! So, I will just have to trust my rad onc team, show up for each treatment, follow directions, lie still and breath normally!
I will nap when I need to and have fun when I am able. I will accept that I don't know how I'm going to feel from day to day or moment to moment. Friends, please forgive me if I don't answer the phone or email or if I can't make plans because I don't know how I will feel or if I bail on a plan that I made. Until the end of February, I'll be in the land of "I don't know".
As always, thanks to all of you for your support in all the ways that you show it!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Cancer takes a holiday - I wish!
Cancer takes a holiday.... well at least it felt that way! I had so much fun during the birthday/Christmas/New Years break that at times I actually forgot that I had cancer. It was such a wonderful mental break!
Quick update: Drains *were* finally removed a week later ( Fri Dec 11) and I regained some mobility. I started physical therapy and I continued my weekly expansions through the month of Dec with my final expansion on Dec 30. Once the expansions were complete, I was cleared for Radiation and if all goes well I will start daily radiation therapy this coming Thursday ( Jan 14).
Pathology report: On Dec 18, I met with my oncologist and received the pathology report results from surgery. It turned out to be as good a report as possible - 0 out of 8 lymph nodes removed had cancer, the margins on the tumors were all clear and large and the cancer is grade 1 ( least aggressive). There was atypical hyperplasia ( pre-cancerous cells) found in the right breast which helped me feel comfortable that a prophylactic mastectomy on the right breast was the right decision for me.
To wine or not to wine... and other dietary concerns. During this appointment I also asked my oncologist about long term dietary guidelines.There is so much discussion on the web about cancer and diet and I just wanted to hear what she recommends. Also, I hadn't had alcohol for 6 months and was curious what she said about that. Basically, for me she recommended a healthy, balanced diet and lots of exercise. A glass of wine or two is fine. Live life to the fullest. So, I headed into the holiday season with a prescription for fun!
Birthday fun. Having a birthday on Dec 22 means that my birthday is often absorbed in the general holiday craze. Mostly I don't mind.... I'm used to it. But, this year was different. I really wanted to celebrate my birthday separately from the "other holidays" and I wanted to thank everyone for all their support. So, I threw myself a thank you/birthday party and had a ball! I was thrilled that so many folks were in town and able to make the party. For my actual birthday, my friends Barry and Katrina hosted a crab and champagne dinner - probably my favorite food combo! And then, the E-girls took me out to Range for a delicious dinner and wonderful drinks. And as a special treat, I got myself a new car - a VW Eos - my first convertible!
Holiday fun - For the remainder of the holidays, I enjoyed lots of eating and drinking with friends, continued expanding my walking range, basked in mostly beautiful weather and took drives with the top down. On New Year's eve I burned scraps of paper to ritually "destroy" things I'm done with ( like cancer) and ritually "manifest" things I'd like to have more of ( like wellness and friends and fun).
Back on the C-train for Radiation. Well, the holidays are over, everyone is back at work and I'm back on the C-train for the next leg of killing cancer cells - Radiation therapy. The initial appointment is called a simulation and has several steps. First, we made a custom mat that is molded to the shape of my back that I will lie on during radiation treatment. This ensures that I am in the same position each time. Then, dots were drawn on my torso as markers to line up beams and scans were made to help plan the radiation fields so that the formerly cancerous area is radiated but the lungs, heart, aorta, etc are missed. Once the scans are reviewed, the dots are converted to permanent tatoos. I now have 5 alignment tatoos - my first ink! It then takes about a week for the radiation oncology team to plan the radiation treatment. The dry run is scheduled for Thurs Jan 14 and if all goes well I will start treatment that day.
Sounds easy but, so far, radiation has been much harder mentally than I had expected. I actually "failed" my first simulation appointment. We had made the molded mat and I had the ink alignment dots. But as soon as I lied down for the scans I broke down. The important thing in radiation is to remain calm and breathe normally. I don't know what happened but it felt like the whole weight of this disease came crashing down and I began to have an anxiety attack and starting gasping for breath. Then I just broke down in tears. We had to reschedule the simulation for the next day.
I felt terrible. Throughout this whole ordeal I have been strong and it felt awful to break down like that. But radiation is different. With chemo and surgery, I would gear up for the treatment and then tough it out. With radiation, the important thing is to breathe normally and relax into it. I need to surrender to the technology and expertise of my rad onc team. Apparently surrender isn't my strong point but I'm gonna have to learn quick!
I went for a hike at Edgewood to calm down. I left a lot of tears on the trail and it took a while for me to calm down but finally I was breathing normally again. It was probably a long overdue release and I felt much better afterwards. The next day, I practiced some relaxation techniques but also took some Ativan as backup and "passed" the simulation.
Quick update: Drains *were* finally removed a week later ( Fri Dec 11) and I regained some mobility. I started physical therapy and I continued my weekly expansions through the month of Dec with my final expansion on Dec 30. Once the expansions were complete, I was cleared for Radiation and if all goes well I will start daily radiation therapy this coming Thursday ( Jan 14).
Pathology report: On Dec 18, I met with my oncologist and received the pathology report results from surgery. It turned out to be as good a report as possible - 0 out of 8 lymph nodes removed had cancer, the margins on the tumors were all clear and large and the cancer is grade 1 ( least aggressive). There was atypical hyperplasia ( pre-cancerous cells) found in the right breast which helped me feel comfortable that a prophylactic mastectomy on the right breast was the right decision for me.
To wine or not to wine... and other dietary concerns. During this appointment I also asked my oncologist about long term dietary guidelines.There is so much discussion on the web about cancer and diet and I just wanted to hear what she recommends. Also, I hadn't had alcohol for 6 months and was curious what she said about that. Basically, for me she recommended a healthy, balanced diet and lots of exercise. A glass of wine or two is fine. Live life to the fullest. So, I headed into the holiday season with a prescription for fun!
Birthday fun. Having a birthday on Dec 22 means that my birthday is often absorbed in the general holiday craze. Mostly I don't mind.... I'm used to it. But, this year was different. I really wanted to celebrate my birthday separately from the "other holidays" and I wanted to thank everyone for all their support. So, I threw myself a thank you/birthday party and had a ball! I was thrilled that so many folks were in town and able to make the party. For my actual birthday, my friends Barry and Katrina hosted a crab and champagne dinner - probably my favorite food combo! And then, the E-girls took me out to Range for a delicious dinner and wonderful drinks. And as a special treat, I got myself a new car - a VW Eos - my first convertible!
Holiday fun - For the remainder of the holidays, I enjoyed lots of eating and drinking with friends, continued expanding my walking range, basked in mostly beautiful weather and took drives with the top down. On New Year's eve I burned scraps of paper to ritually "destroy" things I'm done with ( like cancer) and ritually "manifest" things I'd like to have more of ( like wellness and friends and fun).
Back on the C-train for Radiation. Well, the holidays are over, everyone is back at work and I'm back on the C-train for the next leg of killing cancer cells - Radiation therapy. The initial appointment is called a simulation and has several steps. First, we made a custom mat that is molded to the shape of my back that I will lie on during radiation treatment. This ensures that I am in the same position each time. Then, dots were drawn on my torso as markers to line up beams and scans were made to help plan the radiation fields so that the formerly cancerous area is radiated but the lungs, heart, aorta, etc are missed. Once the scans are reviewed, the dots are converted to permanent tatoos. I now have 5 alignment tatoos - my first ink! It then takes about a week for the radiation oncology team to plan the radiation treatment. The dry run is scheduled for Thurs Jan 14 and if all goes well I will start treatment that day.
Sounds easy but, so far, radiation has been much harder mentally than I had expected. I actually "failed" my first simulation appointment. We had made the molded mat and I had the ink alignment dots. But as soon as I lied down for the scans I broke down. The important thing in radiation is to remain calm and breathe normally. I don't know what happened but it felt like the whole weight of this disease came crashing down and I began to have an anxiety attack and starting gasping for breath. Then I just broke down in tears. We had to reschedule the simulation for the next day.
I felt terrible. Throughout this whole ordeal I have been strong and it felt awful to break down like that. But radiation is different. With chemo and surgery, I would gear up for the treatment and then tough it out. With radiation, the important thing is to breathe normally and relax into it. I need to surrender to the technology and expertise of my rad onc team. Apparently surrender isn't my strong point but I'm gonna have to learn quick!
I went for a hike at Edgewood to calm down. I left a lot of tears on the trail and it took a while for me to calm down but finally I was breathing normally again. It was probably a long overdue release and I felt much better afterwards. The next day, I practiced some relaxation techniques but also took some Ativan as backup and "passed" the simulation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
