Brass in Pocket - The Pretenders

Just passed the 24 hour mark of being hooked to chemo and 36 hours of being in the hospital. It has been a long day and a half. Yesterday at 7 am I was here bright and early to get my "port" placed. A device that provides those with needles and drugs to always have access to my sweet veins. I was under conscious sedation for the procedure but awake to be aware of what was going on. There was a lot of tugging while they were placing the port and I could feel the blood drip, drip, drip from my jugular vein where they inserted the catheter of the port to have central access. Good thing there were no vampires around (comment intended for you true blood/vampire fans). The port is just barely under my skin in my right upper chest. It is quite pretty, a metallic purple but you can't see it of course. It is however called a "Power Port". It requires me to carry a special card to prove that I really have the "power port" I like the name because I really feel like I am one step closer to realizing my childhood career aspiration of becoming Wonder Woman. I would also like to throw in that I am one step closer to Bionic Women too. After receiving my power port. Ooh, I felt so imPORTant. Okay there was a long list of bad port jokes that hubby had to endure, but he was supPORTive. I sure am easy to amuse. I was discharged at 11:30 from raidiology with no room to go to for my chemo infusion. I was wheel chair bound so B pushed me around the hospital we went and visited the good 'ole School of Nursing where it all started. The halls were the same institutional white, no windows, lined with florescent lighting, very stale. However, I have fond memories of going to class and being excited about what we were learning. Spending hours in the library. Going back to school someday is a day I look forward to.

So around 1:30 I was given a room. Then had to be admitted and assessed by the fellows/residents ect... The fellow was very knowledgeable about all the meds and answered all of my questions. The other resident gave me the sad, dooms day looks, and asked sadly "how's your son". Guess what lady I am alive! Anyhow after a 3 plus hour wait for Pharmacy to mix my medication I started the infusion yesterday at 7pm which set me up for a discharge target for tonight around 10 pm. Oh, another medical highlight. The nurse providing my care during the port placement was nice but after the procedure I told her I was a nurse and she said "You should have told me you were a nurse and I wouldn't have talked down to you as much". Survey says, "wrong answer". She actually did give me a survey to fill out. Am I a bitchy patient? Am I needing control and picking on the medical system and its employees, or is the system the problem. Yes, Yes and Yes. And there was a full moon yesterday which makes for crazy times in a hospital.

Taxol drug is now in, I had no reaction what so ever. Taxol is derived from the bark of a western yew tree. B and I looked it up on line and it is a very pretty tree with bright red berries and orange bark. I guess they are a rare find. I have a very flushed face right now for an unknown reason. Well maybe because I just had 20 hours of poison infused into my body. Now I am getting Cisplatin after being loaded with Aloxy and Amend, two anti-nausea meds and some steroids. Tomorrow I get one more medication, Avastin which is recommended I stay on for a year. In summary it decreases the vascular activity that can lead to tumors, however in relation to cervical cancer it is uncharted territory. My Gyn/Onc said it worked on one women who had cervical cancer metastisized through out her body. My labs look excellent. My white blood cells and Hemoglobin were a little low and that was it. They also did a CA-125 lab which is a cancer marker that is used in ovarian cancer, I am not sure if it will pertain to my situation but we shall see. It was within the normal range, so there's a baseline. So you microscopic cancer cells your days are numbered.

Note to Nurse self: someone please develop a pump that when IV tubing has air in it or is complete it will alarm at the nurses station not next to a patients sleeping head. Also, have inservice for nurses how to trouble shoot tubing and pumps.

I do feel that our ceremonious party, The Bald-n-Bash, empowered and relieved me of some of my burden. I will expand further in another post about the toilet smashing extravaganza. pictures to follow, movie and soundtrack are being created.

Here is part of what I shared at the event. It sums up how I feel about life these days:

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both.

Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction.

On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple.

Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.

Excerpted from "Start Where You Are"
by Pema Chödrön