Good to be back

Phew!  A lot has happened since I last posted.

I finished chemo.....well the first round anyway.

I have been through surgery....and expansion (wow!).

I have been prepped for radiation.

And, I have started my second round of chemo.

The positive side of things is that my hair is growing back, my eyebrows are completely back and I have enough eyelashes to wear mascara again!

During my break from the blog I read The Silver Lining by Holley Jacobs.  It is a great book by a nurse who journeyed through breast cancer.  The order of her treatments was different than mine but it was good to know that what I went and am going through is pretty universal and could have even have been worse.  Holley always looked for a silver lining and I have tried to do that as well.  I tend to think of myself as a "glass half full" kind of girl rather than "a silver lining", but its all the same in the end.  Although I enjoyed her book, there was not really much in the way of "bad" details that can come along with cancer treatment.  She did share her ups and downs but I would like to share more of my details in hopes that other people can be prepared.  The intent is not for people to know what I have gone through and feel sorry for me or think of me as some kind of hero (although thinking I am does help me get through the rough days;-), but to let people know there are good days, bad days and days in what feels like hell.  However, the bad days pass and the good days out number them in the end.

I am ready to blog and share some more of my story, so stay tuned.

First Round: Part 2

The second week after chemo went pretty well.  I really felt great with a few exceptions that I would need to keep in mind going forward.

My nadir.  This is a term that I was completely unaware of before it happened to me.  It basically means the day(s) where all of your numbers are low.  Your red blood count, white count, platelets, etc.    This time actually came for me while in Target .....shopping, after all it was just days before Christmas, where else would I be.  Thankfully, my mom was with me.

We were going right along minding out business, filling out cart, when I decided that I needed a snack.  I had neglected to bring one with me so I just walked right over to the snack isle and opened a box of Triscuits and dug in.  I munched for a couple of isles as we made our way to the girls department where I needed to get some pants for Ellory.  I started to feel really light headed and just sat down right there in the floor of Target.

A few seconds later my doctor called to tell me that he had received the gene testing back and in fact I was positive for the breast cancer gene (more on that later).  As I was sitting there in the floor, talking to the doctor, I was also directing my mom on which outfits and sizes to get for Ellory.  Waste no time people, shop from the floor if you must :-)  I guess I sat there for a good 7 or 8 minutes until I felt better and then quickly went to check out.

I mention this nadir thing because it is something that I really have to keep in mind.  Typically it happens about 10 days after chemo.  Mine happened 7 after the first time and then 5 days the second time.  This is a time that I need to be careful because my numbers are low and I a susceptible to GERMS!  Unfortunately, it is about the time that I was really starting to feel great and wanted to get out.  Going forward I will just keep those handi wipes and anti-bac close by.

Another strange occurrence this second week was the mouth sores that I mentioned in an earlier post . I guess that I really expected them to just show up the day after chemo or when I was really feeling sick.  Instead, they showed up about 9 days after.  And, they did not show up in the form of "mouth" sores, mine were actually in my throat.  For the most part my throat just felt raw and sore.  I could kind of feel them back there and it was the worst when I was swallowing hard or crunchy things.

All things, considered I would rather have them in my throat than in my mouth.  I am a talker and could not imagine having sores in my mouth that would inhibit my talking!  The pain did get pretty bad when eating so I called the doc and they called in a prescription for Magic Mouthwash.  I thought that was a really catchy name.  Come to find out, that is the actual prescription name.  It is basically a thick liquid laced with lidocaine that basically numbs your mouth and throat so that you can eat.  There are no healing properties, just numbing.  But it worked.

By the weekend I was back to my old self, maybe even better.  I now had a realistic perspective on what I could expect surrounding chemo and knew that I would and COULD make it through.  I spent the weekend getting the house and fridge ready for the next round that would take me down for a couple days.

I went into round two channelling MC Hammer "Let's Do It" and Brittany Spears "Hit Me Baby One More Time"!  Let's do this thing.

I also walk around the house and randomly kick.  The kids know it means that "we are kicking cancer's but"!