reflections

I’ve been home from work for almost two weeks now and it has me thinking back on the last 15 months. It has been a long road and sometimes it’s hard to believe that it’s my life and not someone else’s. Nobody ever believes that they could ever get a diagnosis of cancer and I certainly didn’t believe it could ever be me. But I have learned that there is no prejudice when it comes to cancer. I’m only 32 years old and I have to deal with the uncertainty of living with an incurable disease. I live my life in 3 month increments from scan to scan. I’ve had relatively great scans since last November but any moment the ball can drop again and I’ll have to start the process of choosing a new treatment plan that comes with new side effects. Luckily the physical side effects that I have experienced so far since my diagnosis have been mild. When I was getting weekly chemo the worst side effects I experienced were peripheral neuropathy, muscle pain, fatigue and change in taste. I was lucky enough ...

I am home from the hospital and feeling ok. Surgery went as good as it can go. I had a lot of nausea coming out of anesthesia so I had to get an intramuscular injection of some very strong anti-nausea medication and it worked so well but now my arm still hurts. It feels as though I just got a tetanus shot. My incisions look good but I managed to get a huge rash that covers my chest. I have a feeling that they used chlorhexidine to clean the surgical site which I am allergic to. I told them many times that I’m allergic but who knows; maybe they used something else. I just emailed my surgeon to find out what they used during surgery that could have caused my rash. It’s unbearable right now; it’s all I can think about and it’s so hard trying not to scratch it. I also have been having an ongoing headache all day and it’s getting really annoying. I just want to feel good. No rash, no headache, no pain. I stayed one night in the hospital and I have to say that all my nurses were super nice....

I will be having surgery tomorrow to take out what remains of my breast cancer and my right ovary due to a cyst that just won’t go away and is starting to look irregular. I’m a little nervous but I don’t think it has quite hit me yet. Maybe when I’m actually there getting all my pre-surgery prep done. I hate the idea of going under anesthesia. I don’t like pain medications either because they make me nauseous but we’ll see. I’ll let you all know how it all goes when I’m feeling a little better and have access to a computer. And I also want to thank everyone who is helping me these next few weeks or has offered to help. I truly appreciate it.

I think I’m starting to realize that I’m never going to get married. Everyone hopes they will find someone that loves them unconditionally and takes care of them. It would be nice to have someone in my life that supports me and takes care of me when I’m down. I read about all these supportive husbands that take care of their wives during chemo, go to all the doctor appointments and are there with their wives through the good and the bad news. It makes me a little jealous that they have all this support from their partners and I get the opposite. I’ve been dealing with this diagnosis basically on my own and let me tell you, it’s very lonely. I also don’t like talking to my family in detail about my diagnosis because it causes me a lot of anxiety. With my family, I’d rather pretend that everything is normal. It’s my mental get-away, I don’t want to think about my cancer. I just want to have fun and spend time with them. Although, I do wish that I can find someone that loves me and provi...

It seems as though everyone is pregnant and having babies. I’m at the age where everyone is still expanding their families and I just have to sit back and watch. It makes me sad to think I can’t have any more children. If I had known this when I was pregnant; I would have taken more pictures and enjoyed the moment a little more. I remember feeling horrible throughout most of my pregnancy. I didn’t have nausea but I had terrible heartburn. It got to the point where I had to sleep sitting up.  My birthing story was also very dramatic. I was admitted to the hospital on the night of July 16, 2006 and by 4pm the next day it was decided I needed an emergency C-section because I just wouldn’t dilate more than 5 cm and my uterus was getting tired. After my son was born my uterus just didn’t want to cooperate and I started hemorrhaging. They massaged it to help it contract and pumped it up with medications but it still didn’t want to cooperate. I started going into hypovolemic shock and th...