Friday, February 18, 2011
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
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
Monday, January 31, 2011
Here I go again- White Snake
Well to continue from the last entry, my theory of no news is good news was incorrect. No news is no news. I called the doctors office again today and finally at 5:15 PM I got the call. I missed the call but there was a message from my oncologist (strike one, doctor calling usually bad) she said she scheduled an appointment for me this upcoming Friday (strike two, I have to go in and see her in person, shit, not good). I called back, the biopsy was cancer (strike three, the results). Honestly, I was so relieved to get out of limbo land that I wasn't to surprised or too upset, at least in that moment.
Here is the medical piece so far: a small cancerous lung nodule was removed, an isolated metastesis (which is an oxymoron, really) and there are no tumors anywhere in my body. But the cancer cells have travelled so they are in my "system". So the recommendation is to kill them with chemotherapy, a cocktail mixture of taxol and cisplatin once every 3 weeks. The recommendation is to check-in to the hospital and receive chemo which is infused for a whole day. The side effects can be rough so the recommendation is I spend the night in the hospital that night. Then I think I feel like shit for a few days and then progressively improve over the next few weeks until it is time to get blasted again. 6 treatments over a 4.5 month time frame. The hope is for cure, I guess it always is. I don't know the stats but I am not really a fan or believer in stats, so the outlook is good so far.
Oh and I will lose my hair. Now I will look like a "real cancer patient". At this point with all that I have been through I would gladly give up my hair for the rest of my life not to have to deal with more cancer. But I don't have that choice. The good thing is there is a plan. Our lives can move forward, we know to some degree what the next few months will look like.
In addition to standard western medical treatment I will be supplementing my treatment with many other complimentary treatments (more to come on these). Miracles are welcomed!
So here I go again....
Here is the medical piece so far: a small cancerous lung nodule was removed, an isolated metastesis (which is an oxymoron, really) and there are no tumors anywhere in my body. But the cancer cells have travelled so they are in my "system". So the recommendation is to kill them with chemotherapy, a cocktail mixture of taxol and cisplatin once every 3 weeks. The recommendation is to check-in to the hospital and receive chemo which is infused for a whole day. The side effects can be rough so the recommendation is I spend the night in the hospital that night. Then I think I feel like shit for a few days and then progressively improve over the next few weeks until it is time to get blasted again. 6 treatments over a 4.5 month time frame. The hope is for cure, I guess it always is. I don't know the stats but I am not really a fan or believer in stats, so the outlook is good so far.
Oh and I will lose my hair. Now I will look like a "real cancer patient". At this point with all that I have been through I would gladly give up my hair for the rest of my life not to have to deal with more cancer. But I don't have that choice. The good thing is there is a plan. Our lives can move forward, we know to some degree what the next few months will look like.
In addition to standard western medical treatment I will be supplementing my treatment with many other complimentary treatments (more to come on these). Miracles are welcomed!
So here I go again....
Friday, January 28, 2011
Let It Be - The Beatles
I wait and I wait. My mind doesn't want to know. I had surgery Monday. The plan was to remove a slightly "enlarged" lymph node near my heart but a small nodule was removed from my lung instead. That is all I know. My recovery from the "same-day" surgery has been quick. Unfortunately right after my surgery I loaded up with pain meds and anti-nausea meds and ended up in the "hole" for 5 hours. The "hole" is where I couldn't see straight. My eyes and ears couldn't regulate and I peed my pants. I am sensitive to meds. I should know that by now. Finally after 5 hours in the PACU I got in a wheel chair and made it home. I was out of the hole by 11:30 at night and I ate a bowl of soup and felt almost normal. So that was Monday and now it's Friday. The waiting is cruel. The longer I wait the more I convince myself all must be well. The old standard "no news is good news". Usually my Oncologist calls within a few days. Since it is Friday I forced myself to call the oncologist to find out my results, I can't wait through the weekend. However, I like living in Limbo. It is a place where I don't have to face anything bad or good. I don't have to think about my life being turned upside down. I have not had a good track record with results. So far every time I have a biopsy or surgery they find cancer. It is time for me to get some good news. I bargain, I pray and even beg to be cancer free and then usually I surrender to spirits/God, try to trust my path. I just want a break from this path. I want to move on and follow a path of peace and mundane. The bottom line is I have no control over this but it dictates how my life will unfold. If I have cancer I will have to decide. I will have to make more life and death decisions without knowing the outcome. I will have to tell all the loved ones in my life. I have come to believe in miracles through this process. I believe that I must trust what ever I am presented (most days, some days it just sucks and I am sad, pissed and feel like shit).
I called the nurses and they are not in and my oncologist was gone to a conference. So I will not get the pathology report this week because of a conference. So now I can't chalk it up to "no news is good news", damn it. I have to tell myself over and over, it is what it is. So, Alexis I am telling you again. It is what it is. But I tell you what I choose to live and be positive through this bullshit because I get to choose that. Cancer beware if you are still in my body I have news for you. I am choosing to heal. And note to doctors don't make patients wait over a week to get results. Cancer doesn't effect just me but my family, my friends, my work the whole enchilada.
I called the nurses and they are not in and my oncologist was gone to a conference. So I will not get the pathology report this week because of a conference. So now I can't chalk it up to "no news is good news", damn it. I have to tell myself over and over, it is what it is. So, Alexis I am telling you again. It is what it is. But I tell you what I choose to live and be positive through this bullshit because I get to choose that. Cancer beware if you are still in my body I have news for you. I am choosing to heal. And note to doctors don't make patients wait over a week to get results. Cancer doesn't effect just me but my family, my friends, my work the whole enchilada.
Monday, January 17, 2011
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