It’s
been six months since I updated this blog. Frankly, nothing has been going on, cancer-wise,
I am happy to say. But it’s the time of year when I tend to have a bunch of medical
tests come due, so I wanted to let you all know that it seems to be going as
well as it possibly can. And another thing is making me very happy—we may be on
the verge of solving a little medical mystery that has had my crack team of
cancer doctors puzzled for some months now!
So, I’ve
had a bunch of tests. This is never fun.
For each one, my blood pressure jumps and I get the inevitable “scanxiety,” as
others have called it. You imagine all kinds of things while you are sitting
half-naked on some doctor’s exam table.
I had my nasty breast MRI in
December. Nothing wacky was found. This is one of my least-favorite moments of
the year, for a couple reasons. For one
thing, the MRI is inside one of those large, extremely loud and clanky
tube-shaped scanners, and I am claustrophobic.
You also have to remain perfectly still for more than 20 minutes, while
not thinking about claustrophobia or the fact that your nose itches and you can
neither sneeze nor scratch it or they’ll have to start over. I generally end up frazzled to the point
where, when it is over, I barely make it to the car before I burst into tears.
For another thing, they have to
inject you with “contrast,” and this means they have to give you an I.V. When I
had my I.V. for my colonoscopy a few months back, it took them six tries to
find a vein, and I was black and blue and crying by the time they were done.
But when I mentioned my lack of viable veins to the person getting me ready for
the MRI, she decided to bring in reinforcements. She called in a nurse they
referred to as “the vein whisperer,” and damn if that woman didn’t find a
gusher with one try, and painlessly, too.
I want her to be my nurse from now on, please.
Then,
after Christmas, while on vacation, I got sick with a basic head cold, and a
few days later I had serious problems breathing. It turned out I was having a
severe asthma attack. I had had asthma
as a kid, always allergy-related, with one notable flare-up once a few years
ago. I didn’t realize a cold could set it off, and at my age. Live and learn! In the process of figuring out
why I couldn’t breathe, they had to rule out other more scary stuff—particularly
pneumonia and metastasized breast cancer. It was a scary hour or so while
waiting for the X-rays to be looked at, but in the end they were all negative. No tumors in these lungs!
Then,
when we got home to Maryland, just because it was the beginning of the year, I
had my regular appointment with my OB-GYN.
Again, all good.
And today, I had my annual
appointment with my radiation oncologist, who seemed absolutely delighted with
how things are going, now that we are two years out from the end of treatment.
It was she who had told me, in 2011 that she would never be telling me I am “cured,”
but that the best we could hope for was a long, long remission. But remission
we have! She was really happy. “This is
good,” she said. “This is really good,”
and she hugged me. And she was very,
very impressed with the way the new boob turned out. “It’s really good,” she
said. “Really good.” When you see your
oncologist that happy, it is more reassuring than I can say.
And
maybe we made some progress figuring out why I still haven’t got my hair to
grow back!
All my
many doctors (I have six now, if I didn’t forget anybody) have agreed, it is
strange how poorly my hair has done. Only about half of it came back after I
finished chemo, and that was two and a half years ago. This is not how it is supposed to go. I still
have a big bald patch on the back of my head, and it’s pretty thin on the
sides, too. In the morning, when I wake up, I look interesting, and not in a
good way. My youngest, Matt, enjoys sculpting my hair into various amusing
shapes with his hands. One day last week, I woke up looking like the Sydney
Opera House. My doctors have been
sympathetic, but they are much more worried about me being healthy, than about
me being attractive. Given the problems I could
be having, I shouldn’t be whining about having hair like my Great Aunt Em when she
was in her eighties. No, I should probably be thankful to be healthy and if my
hair was gone entirely, well, things could be worse.
Of
course, the hair thing bugged me even though I was supposed to be all about
life and health, and not about appearance. Once in a while, you catch a view of
yourself from a mirror that shows the back of your head, and yes, appearance
DOES matter.
So
today, one of the nurses in radiation oncology was taking notes on me, and she
asked me how the Tamoxifen was going. I
told her I was seriously considering stopping taking it, even though it is
supposed to be keeping the cancer at bay, because I was blaming the drug for my
achy hands and achy knees and ongoing baldness. “It makes me feel old,” I said,
and I had been spending considerable time thinking about quality of life versus
quantity of life. I expected her to take me to task, and remind me—as others
have done—about how the benefits of Tamoxifen outweigh the risks for the vast
majority of people like me, etc. etc.
She
stopped me in my tracks.
“Achy
joints. Alopecia. How is your libido?”
“I’m
sure there is some libido around here somewhere,” I said, and she laughed.
“Has
anyone ever tested your thyroid levels?” she asked.
“No,
not as far as I know.”
Well,
it turns out that an underactive thyroid can cause swelling and pain in joints
in the knees and the hands. And it can
cause hair loss. And it can cause dry
skin, and weight gain. I have all of those. I was gobsmacked. Why hadn’t anyone
asked me this a year ago?
But why would my thyroid be
slacking off all of a sudden?
My radiation
oncologist, who thinks the nurse is on to something, explained that I had had a
lot of radiation to my upper body in 2011. Some of it was deliberately pointed
at lymph nodes near my thyroid gland, because cancer cells had spread to a
bunch of lymph nodes, and we were trying desperately to wipe out any that were
still out there. The thyroid may have taken a little friendly fire, which can
reduce its hormone output, over time.
So the next step is another blood
test—can I have the vein whisperer again, please--and if it turns out my
thyroid is underperforming, I have to take…more pills and probably for the rest
of my life! But if it means my hair grows back and I lose weight and my knees
don’t hurt, I for one will not be complaining.
