Susan G. Komen 5K

I am so flattered and honored that one of my besties, Jennifer Archer, started this for me. I haven't seen many responses on Facebook where she advertised this, so I am cutting and pasting it here! I don't know how I will be feeling to do a 5K at the end of September, so don't know if I will be there to walk, but I definitely want to be at the finish line to thank my friends! If you are in the area, and would like to walk, let me know and I can pass the word along to Jennifer. I believe she said it was a $30. registration fee which I am sure goes to support the cure!

Sunday, September 25th Susan G. Komen 5k in Lombard (Yorktown Mall). Join the team I started Friends of Francesca!

Woo hoo!

Good news, as of 5 minutes ago - bone scan results came back normal! Yay! Hoping and praying we get the same results on the CT scan next Monday.

Anticipation . . . oh it's making me wait

I am realizing that the longer one is forced to wait, the more likely it is for bad news to cross their mind. I was hoping that I would hear from my doctor today about the results of my bone scan yesterday. They said they'd have the results in 24 hours. Granted, I know that the doctor is busy and may not have even had time today to look at the report - if she even got it today. I just wish that my test results were as urgent to everyone on my "medical team" as they are to me!

The scan itself was much easier than I thought it would be. I went into the hospital diagnostic department at 11:30 and was taken back for a teeny-tiny injection. I was expecting to have to drink a gallon of stuff (in an earlier post I had said barium, but I was wrong. Isn't that what you drink before a colonoscopy?), but instead, they just gave me a drop of something that absorbs into my bones. Didn't feel a thing. Then I waited for two hours. I read more of The Help, which I am loving, and had a light lunch in the cafeteria. What a nice cafeteria CDH has! Deli, salad bar, sushi bar, paninis and all kinds of hot dishes, too! I just opted for a salad this time. At 1:30 I went back to have the scan done. I layed on a table like an MRI machine and the technician slid me in. There was an x-ray panel about 5 cm from my face. I stayed like that about 4 minutes and then the table moved back out ever-so-slowly as the x-ray panel captured my body. Once my head was out, I could see on a computer screen above me, what was being photographed, in tiny dot-art style black and white. Pretty cool. The whole thing lasted 20 minutes. Painless.

The painful part, as usual, is waiting.

A Night without Cancer

Last night Beni and I got to do something we probably won't be doing for a long while - or maybe for the next 15 years, since that is how long it took us to go to our first concert together. We went with two great, long-time friends, The Bucketheads, to see Blake Shelton and Brad Paisley in concert. What a great show! The entertainment was fantastic and the people-watching may just have rivaled it! Lots of cute, drunk, young cowgirls in boots and short shorts and one group of older, totally wasted, white trash two rows in front of us. Until last night I had never seen a woman with a beer gut. "Ridden hard and put away wet," as Beni would say, was the best way to describe her. Entertaining to say the least. I don't think I've ever been to a concert where so much beer was consumed and I've been to my share. At $11. a pop, I stuck with water and am proud to say that I was able to hold my pee the entire time! No waiting half an hour in line to sit in a nasty public restroom and listen to other chicks hurl for me, thank you. Brad Paisley, walked through the crowd in the seats, twice, stopping only twelve rows in front of us, to sing two songs. What a guy!

Somewhere during the show, I remembered, just for a moment or two, that I had cancer. It was surreal and bizarre. I had to ask myself, 'Wait, do I really have cancer, or was that just a bad dream?' It was hard to imagine that here I was, carefree and not thinking about it, but in less than a month, I will be bald and sick from chemo treatments. I made myself snap out of it and enjoy the rest of the night, knowing that those carefree moments would be few and far between in the next year. I know it will be fine and I am not sad. I just know it is going to be a rough road ahead. I know my friends and family will bring sunshine to my dark days and that in a year, I will be putting all of this behind me.

When we got the diagnosis, Beni wondered if we should still go to this concert. I said as long as we hadn't started treatment, or had surgery, why not? It was the best thing we could have done, because it was one big hoorah before I go on a little haitus, and one night that, for the most part, I was able to forget I have cancer.

First Chemo on August 16th

Drumroll please . . . My first chemo has been scheduled as of 5 p.m. today for 1 o'clock on Tuesday, August 16th. I am glad to be getting started with this so that the meds/chemicals can start killing/shrinking my tumor(s), but can't believe the ridiculously bad timing. The following Thursday, the 18th, I start work. The nurse who scheduled it said I'd probably feel worse the following week. Great! Just in time to meet my new students on the first day of school on the 22nd. They will hopefully get to see my real hair just before before it starts falling out in clumps. Maybe by the second week of school I will have a brand new look. Who wants to go wig shopping? Hit me up!

Tests Scheduled

So, yesterday, I posted that one of my frustrations is that the doctors seem to want what we do, which is getting this cancer nastiness in-check and out of my body ASAP but unfortunately, it seems that hospitals and insurance companies aren't as worried about me as I would like. My bone scan is scheduled for Monday, August 8th. I get to drink some Barium and then wait 2 1/2 hours until they run the test. Then I wait until the following Monday, August 15th, to have the MUGA scan and CT scan because I have to wait 48 hours minimum to get the Barium out of my system. That starts at 9 a.m. and ends around 1 p.m. I still have not heard a word about scheduling my first chemo. The waiting game continues . . .

Frustrations

So, the past few days have been spent stressing over what I should do about work. Ideally I would love to take off a semester or even a year and focus on nothing but getting better and resting, but it seems that we would have to make a HUGE lifestyle change in order for that to happen. Because I am a teacher and do not pay into Social Security, but rather TRS (Teacher Retirement System), and because my cancer is not work-related (or if it is, I can't prove it), I only am eligible for 40% of my salary. That won't be enough to pay the bills.

Of course, to make matters more frustrating, I am teaching a brand new Honors class which I had planned to prepare for when I got back from my California vacation in the middle of July. Well, needless to say, I have had more pressing issues on my mind since then and have been unable to concentrate on planning.

Many school districts, like Beni's, have what is called a Sick Day Bank. Naturally, my district does not. A sick bank allows employees to donate some of their sick days so that others who may need them can use them. For example, since Beni has never had to take maternity leave and stays home less often when the kids are sick, he has FAR MORE sick days accumulated than I do. He could donate 5 days to his district's sick bank and then a new mom or someone like me, could pick up those days to add to their own. My new mission is going to be to get our union to look into this! It will be too late for me, but might help someone else somewhere down the line.

Another frustration is that on Tuesday when we met with the oncologist, the nurse was supposed to schedule me for a CT scan, a MUGA scan, and a bone scan before the end of this week. This all needs to be done before I can start chemo. Wednesday went by without a word and today, when I called, she said she sent the order to the hospital and the hospital registration personnel would call me with the appointment information. I am still waiting. Why is it that the doctors all say that we want to get the ball rolling as quickly as possible, but there seems to be no rush to schedule appointments to get the ball rolling?!!!

Finally, how is it that I know of people on welfare, and people who are illegal immigrants, that have had operations and get all sorts of benefits for their care and recuperation, but as a tax-paying, hard-working, American citizen, I am going to have to struggle through my disease and work rather than recuperate in the way that a non-employed, welfare recipient would be able to do? I just don't get it! The system SUCKS!

I guess I'll stop complaining and get to work. It seems I have a lot of planning still to do.