Don't Call It a Comeback

It's been a while. I apologize to those of you who were following my blog regularly for updates and have had to wait a whole month and a half between entries. I got lazy. Plus, there really wasn't a whole lot to say. I worked all week, came home tired, had papers to grade (which I still do - that seems to be one of the constant things I can depend on in my life), and then on Saturdays I'd sleep most of the day away and have to catch up on stuff on Sunday. That didn't leave me a whole lot of time for blogging.

For the most part, I really can't complain about the side effects of chemo. The first round left me nauseated and even though I had started round two, I think the effects of round one were still with me for a while. I would wake up on Saturday mornings, late, and then want to do nothing but lay around and sleep some more. I was exhausted and couldn't focus enough to read a book or grade papers. Top that off with no appetite and an inability to keep meals down when I did eat them and that is pretty much how my weekends were.

Now, fortunately, I have gotten over that hump and am not as tired on Saturdays and my appetite and ability to keep food down is back to normal! Yay! Some other good news is that my hair is starting to grow back in. Right now it is just a layer of downy-like fuzz but it is there nonetheless. Once I am done with chemo treatments in three more weeks, my hair should start to grow back for real. Sadly, I believe it is coming in all gray which is a total bummer. This leads me to wonder if I will go back to coloring it, or use this as an excuse to say life is too short to worry about coloring my hair every few weeks. I'll have to play it by ear and see how it looks. I feel 42 is way too young to be gray! But, who knows, maybe I'll rock it.

This Thursday I meet with a plastic surgeon to discuss my reconstruction options. According to his receptionist, he won't even start the process until after I am done with radiation, so that may not be until summer. I'll post again after I've learned more from him.

December 29th will be my last true chemo appointment. After that date I will have to go to the infusion center once every three weeks for Herceptin until late August. It only takes half an hour to administer that IV (unlike my 4 and sometimes 5 hour chemo visits) and there are no side-effects from it, so that should be smooth sailing and I won't have to take 1/2 days off of work anymore.

On Jan. 12th I meet with my breast surgeon and we will discuss surgery. Prior to this I will have an MRI so that we can see how small the tumor has shrunk. We do know that it has shrunken but an MRI will tell us exactly how much. I am guessing surgery will happen in late January or early February. I will have to take a couple of weeks off of work and then should be ready to go back. After surgery, I will do 6 1/2 weeks of daily radiation treatments. By the time the school year is over, I should have some hair (I'm hoping at least a pixie cut) and will only have to worry about my every three week Herceptin treatments.

I'm getting there! According to my oncologist everything is going as planned. The tumor is shrinking and I haven't had any really bad side-effects. If I can just get my veins to cooperate for the last three chemo treatments I will be all good. I have never had the kind of veins in my hands that stick out, but in the beginning, they were visible. As chemo has proceeded, they have disappeared. They are hiding way down deep under my skin, not wanting to be poked or prodded. It makes it really difficult for the chemo nurses to insert my IV when I go in. There is one nurse, Gwen, that I like to call "The Vein Whisperer" because no matter what, she always finds a good one. It's funny, but now, I notice people's veins and think to myself, "Ooh, he/she has great veins! The nurses would like him/her!"

That's all for now. I have only one more week of work before Winter Break, so I will have more blogging opportunities soon. I'll post again soon.