Hello! It’s been a while since I posted because there has been little of interest to say. I’ve been feeling great for about two weeks. Now I’m back on the steroids in preparation for tomorrow’s chemo treatment, which will be #4 out of 6. Just a few notes to clear up in the meantime.
We had an excellent Memorial Day camping trip with the eighth grade from Sandy Spring Friends School and their families and friends. It was extra special to have our dear friend, Peter Kanowski, join us all the way from Canberra, Australia, for the weekend. He’s a college buddy of mine and John’s from Oxford, and it’s one of those friendships where we might not see each other for a few years, but we always pick up right where we left off. It was really, really fun. Thanks, all, for the hiking, and the strawberries, the bacon, and, yes, the wine!
The trip was relevant to this blog for two reasons: 1) I learned that you can do a pretty strenuous hike even while you are on chemo. You just have to take it slow. 2) There were three other women in our group, alone, who have gone through breast cancer themselves and lived to tell the tale. Some of them are not very public about it, and I hadn’t even known about two of them until very recently. However, they came and spoke with me and offered their support, and it was very encouraging. On those days when you are feeling darkly mortal, it is great to have someone mention, “Oh, yes, I did that nine years ago. I remember that feeling.” Thank you, ladies, for your great encouragement!
Other notes:
For one thing, I have pretty much decided to forego the Ritalin unless my mental jumpiness doesn’t clear up after chemo ends completely. I have my chemo on a three-week schedule, and the third week after the treatment, I have felt fairly normal. If that means my craziest period will end when the chemo does, in July, I feel I can and should tough it out. I have heard from some of you who have experienced Ritalin in an effort to fight chemo brain, and I appreciate your input. I hear what some of you are saying, that in some cases it really makes matters worse. I really don’t want to see what “jumpier and crazier” feels like right now, so I’m going to give it a miss unless I sense permanent brain problems as months go by.
And a little good news—the scarring on my hand from the Taxotere burn is really fading. From what the nurse told me, I was expecting the scarring to be notable and permanent. But it has faded to the point where it is no big deal, certainly nothing I would call a disfigurement. Yay!
The latest crazy chemo side-effect is another product of the Taxotere. My eyes have decided to run all the time. I often look as if I’m crying, sometimes literally with tears running down my face, and there is a constant sniffling and coughing going on. It’s not contagious, and I’m not sad, but I look and sound like hell. I hope it’s not permanent!
I’ll leave you for today with a link to a photo of me that just appeared on the website of the regional conference of the United Methodist Church. We had our annual conference this week, and, after years of painful dithering, we finally voted to allow our clergy to conduct gay marriages, and also to remove hurtful anti-homosexuality language from our denomination’s rule book. Yay us! I was a lay delegate and did speak on the issue, and of course I looked so exotically breast-cancery that they used my photo. I did not realize I looked so bloated (I knew I looked so bald!) but it just goes to show you, life goes on even during chemo:
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