Finally,
after a long year with many doctors’ appointments for both me and Matthew,
things are settling down a little. The appointments are fewer and farther
between. Last week, I saw my lead doctor, Dr. Colette Magnant, and she gave me
the big thumbs-up and said come back in a year.
Of course, during that year, I will also see my medical oncologist a
couple of times, and my radiation oncologist, and my plastic surgeon, and the
research nurse who is administering the clinical trial I’m in, and probably
others I’ve forgotten.
I’m
tolerating the drugs okay. The clinical-trial drug messes up my stomach, but
nothing I can’t handle. The Tamoxifen has launched me into Crazy Menopause
Land. Hot flashes? Yep! Emotional moments? You bet! I literally got weepy in
the greeting card department at Target this morning. Oh, my. Crankiness? What do you think? You got a problem with
that? Screw you!
It’s
sort of like being a teenager. The highs are pretty high, and the lows are
pretty low. I’m sure I’m delightful to be around. Have you ever been to
Yellowstone? In some of the geyser basins, you have to walk on wooden
boardwalks, because there is only a thin crust of earth over the thermal
features. You break through that, and underneath it’s boiling water. There are
beautiful crazy colors, but if you fall in, you’re done. That’s what I’m like,
right now.
And then there is something called
lymphedema. A few days ago, I had an appointment with a specialized therapist
who is an expert in preventing lymphedema. Lymphedema is where part of you—in
the case of breast cancer patients, it’s your arm--swells up because your
lymphatic system is screwed up. Basically, if your body was a parking lot, the
lymphatic system is like the storm drains.
They drain runoff from all your other parts. Unfortunately, they are the
first place breast cancer spreads. When I had my mastectomy last August, my
surgeon removed nine lymph nodes from my right side. That is approximately a
third to a half of the lymph nodes that are supposed to take care of draining
my right arm and the right halves of my chest and my back. If this whole
quadrant doesn’t drain properly, your arm can swell up. I have been told I will
have to be watchful of this the rest of my life. Once you have symptoms, it is
very hard to get rid of them.
So far,
I haven’t had any problems. But they are worried about me because I am going to
South Africa next month. It’s a long trip; one of the flights is 14 hours long.
And on long flights, a person like me who is missing a bunch of lymph nodes can
suddenly swell up like a balloon.
What
can you do about it? Exercise and
stretching help. I have totally been working on those. I’m supposed to drink
gallons of water, so I hope the seatbelt sign isn’t on. I’m supposed to eat
healthy food for three days before I fly. Salty stuff makes you swell up and
fatty stuff clogs up the lymph nodes you’ve got left.
And you can’t drink much alcohol.
Unfortunately, as I believe I have mentioned, I have a phobia of heights. That
includes the height of 34,000 feet. And I’m a little claustrophobic. Airplanes combine my two best neuroses! Until
now, I’ve been able to fly, thanks to a naughty combination of Xanax and white
wine. But white wine is out now, so I may have to investigate new pharmaceuticals.
I’m sure that if I end up like the woman in the movie Bridesmaids, my
helpful children will post video on Facebook for everyone to enjoy.
The most
attractive thing they are advising me to do is to wear a compression sleeve and
glove on my right arm and hand. It is pretty darned uncomfortable, and it is claustrophobic
in a whole new way.
And I am here to tell you these
items are not glamorous. The sleeve is a thing that looks like Spanx for your
arm, but it’s made from a heavier-duty fabric. The sleeve squeezes your whole
arm, from your wrist to your armpit. You also get a very tight glove made out
of the same stuff. It is so hard to get on that they advise you to tug it on
with those big blue textured-rubber gardening gloves. And it is about as
attractive as you can imagine it would be, to wear a girdle all down your arm.
And I’m sure it will improve my attitude immensely.
You can buy expensive, exotically
colored compression sleeves that make you look like the blue people from
Avatar. You can get ones that are colored like Mehndi henna tattoos. I am tempted to take a Sharpie and design my
own, something with barbed wire and buffalo skulls, that I could wear later to
the Testicle Festival in Clinton, Montana. But I don’t want to get too wacky. I
don’t want to get arrested. I will
already be setting off the TSA’s metal detectors with my robo-boob. I’ll be making my airline seatmates nervous
with my hot flashes and my grouchiness and my in-flight stretching exercises.
They’ll see me tugging at my compression sleeve with big blue gardening gloves
and wonder if I’m some new kind of bald female underwear bomber. Wish me luck!
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