I just wanted to give everyone a quick update since I haven’t blogged for a while. I used my “really good-feeling” week to fly out to Montana to see my mom and sister. I got back yesterday. My brother and nephew popped up from California for the weekend, and my friend Dave was in town, so it was really a wonderful time. Saw a whole bunch of local friends, too. It was great. Ate huckleberry ice cream. Saw the camas blooming up on Lolo Pass. Drank some beer! Dragged my mom (an octogenarian teetotaler) to the Lumberjack Saloon, if those of you who know her or it can visualize that. She struck up a conversation with a biker who had a lovely green Harley. He was charmed.
The medical front was pretty boring there for a week or so. Not much had happened right after the most recent chemo treatment, the usual migraines and whatnot, but nothing too different. But the medical professionals had said that chemo would get harder as it went, because some of the effects are cumulative, and they were right. I was tired longer this time, and had more stomach problems that still haven’t gone away. The sense of taste was really messed up almost the whole three weeks this time. And the latest weirdness—something called neuropathy--in my fingertips, which basically means they’re sort of numb. A hassle if you are trying to do beadwork! As a result, I haven’t tried to do any this week. Also, my fingernails are turning brown, which is something they do right before they try to fall off. Sometimes that happens, for the same reason your hair falls out. It is now a race against time, because the LAST chemo treatment is tomorrow! Perhaps the fingernails will get better before they get much worse. Time will tell.
The other thing that happened with the last chemo treatment is I ended up with massive bruising on my arms, along with another big Taxotere burn. I looked like an IV drug abuser, but more so. So the nurses decided to send me to Sibley Hospital today to have them install a temporary port (more like a catheter) in my arm today. It has an IV outlet on the outside, and inside there’s a tube that winds all the way into one of the chambers of my heart. They can pump the nasty chemo drugs straight into my heart, with no bruising or chemo burns on my arms anymore. Probably should have done this on Day One of chemo, but nobody could have predicted my veins would wimp out as badly as they did…
Whine of the day: I have seen enough “breast cancer awareness” items lately. I don’t mind the ones that are sold as fundraisers for mammograms for poor women or for cancer research or something. But I suspect some of them belong in the Shameless Commerce Division. This week I have seen: pink breast cancer awareness folding camp chairs, breast cancer awareness tennis balls, breast cancer awareness zip lock bags, and even a large breast cancer awareness propane tank. I’m pretty aware of breast cancer now, thank you very much. But whether one extra woman actually went and got a mammogram because of any of these products, I doubt very much.
Wish me luck tomorrow for my LAST chemo! Yippee! Someone will have to buy me a drink when I get my sense of taste back! For now, enjoy my newest bumper sticker, from Rockin’ Rudy’s in Missoula:
