radiation & chemo so far

It has definitely been interesting.  Thought I’d write some of my impressions.


By the way, I originally intended for this blog to be about my adventures as a new mom, living in and traveling around Asia.  Change of plans!  For the next several months, it's about being a new mom undergoing treatment for breast cancer.  Not nearly as fun, but I'll probably have just as much to say.  When it's over, I'll get back to my original intent and start having those Asia adventures with my little family.

Radiation has been easy.  No side effects except for a little redness on my chest.  I just lie on a table and a machine rotates from my right side to my left and makes all manner of beeping noises for about 10 minutes.  Then I get up and go home.  No pain, no discomfort.  Well, the super corny Thai soft rock playing in the room makes me a bit uncomfortable, but I make it through.  I truly don’t feel anything, physically.  It almost makes me feel like nothing’s happening, that they’re just messing with me.   

There are 2 bummers about radiation.  First is that I have to go 5 days a week – so that’s my morning, every day.  Traffic makes the taxi ride way longer than it should be, so I have to be away from Sam for an hour and a half to two hours every morning.  I hate leaving him, but Abuelita (Ian’s mom) and/or Khun Na (our babysitter) keep him very happy while I’m gone.  The other bummer is that to position me properly for the radiation, the techs drew all over my chest and abdomen with marker about 6 weeks ago and covered all the marks with tape so they won’t wash off.  I look silly.  I have green, blue, and red lines, squiggles, and x marks all over me.  It really limits what shirts I can wear – it seems like anything other than a turtleneck shows some of the marks.  It’s still 90 degrees almost every day here, so turtlenecks are out.  So I’ve just been walking around with strange ink and letting people be puzzled about it.  

Very happy that I’ve got 25 out of 30 sessions under my belt, and I’m finished next Friday.  That means mornings with my wee son and no more strange ink!

Chemo, not so friendly.  I am not a fan.  2 down, 4 to go.  I’m definitely counting.

My first chemo was on Dec. 4, and my second was on Christmas day.  My doctor gave me the option to postpone the Christmas session, but I said no way.  I want to plow through this – get it over with as quickly as possible.  I have a session every 3 weeks.  The first 3 are one type of chemo, and the second 3 are another, tougher, type.

The room is pretty much what I’d pictured – lazy boy chairs lining the walls, paired with less comfy chairs for patients’ companions.  The staff is incredibly friendly and sweet, and they do everything they can to put you at ease.   Ian and I made the really tough decision for him to stay home with Sam, both times.  My chemo sessions are on Sundays – weird, right? – and that’s Khun Na’s day off.  We knew they would be lengthy appointments, and they were (the first was 7 hours!  2^nd was 4), and his mom just didn’t feel comfortable being alone with Sam for that long.  So she went with me, and she was absolutely lovely, but I missed Ian.  And he was at home going nuts with worry – I think it was harder for him than for me.

They start by giving me infusions of anti-nausea and anti-allergy meds.  Then they start the chemo drip.  At the first session, my body rejected the chemo within the first 3 minutes.  It was crazy – I felt an intense pulsating pain in my chest and back, and I really had no idea what was happening.  A nurse saw me turning in my chair to try to alleviate the pain and came running over.  She disconnected the drip and the pain immediately stopped.  Pretty scary.  It’s always scary when you see a nurse break into a run.  She gave me another infusion of anti-allergy meds and started the chemo drip again, this time at half speed, and it was ok.  At my second session, they started at half speed again, and everything was fine. 

For the first 2 days after a session, I have to wear long sleeves and gloves when touching Sam, because the chemo drugs themselves can come out in my sweat.  It’s annoying, but not too big a deal.  At least I get to hold him.

It takes a couple days for me to feel the effects of the treatment.  After my first session, I braced myself to feel terrible.  I felt like I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for it to hit.  But I felt surprisingly wired, verging on an adrenaline rush.  I ran from one end of my apartment to the other, putting stuff away, compulsively tidying up – I guess I was preparing for being laid out, and I wanted to get everything in order, but it totally stressed Ian and his mom out.  They kept telling me, “Sit down!  You just had chemo!!”  But I had way too much nervous energy and couldn’t contain myself.  Of course, a couple days later I was halfway comatose.  It feels like a bad case of the flu.  Body aches, total exhaustion, sore throat, nausea.  Here’s me laying around with my sweet baby boy - he didn’t mind a bit that we were taking it easy.  We were great co-nappers. 

 

I started to feel better about 5 days after the first session, but after the second, it took 8 or 9 days.  Sam and I did lots of lying around together this time too.

Well, you see the pictures – I did lose my hair.  It was pretty surreal, like having a nightmare actually happen.   I’d heard it could happen 2 weeks after the first session, and it did – to the day.  The Sunday before Christmas, I started to pull out clumps of strands.  By Wednesday I was pulling out major handfuls, and by Thursday, I had bald patches on the top of my head.  I started wearing a hat that day.   It was kind of fascinating, to pull it out all day long.  Some people like to peel sunburned skin or pop zits – I’m one of those.  So pulling it out was even a little bit fun.  But it also terrified me and made me burst into tears periodically.  I waited until Christmas Eve to deal with it, because I was getting together with two of my closest girlfriends, Geneva and Susan.  We had fun hacking away at it, trying bangs, a bob, a short ‘do.  We couldn’t really tell what I’d look like with those hairstyles because the hair was so sparse at that point, but it was still fun.  Then Ian took the clippers and did away with the rest of it.   I was pleasantly surprised!  My head shape isn’t bad, and I didn’t look too crazy with a buzz cut!  I look a little crazier now that it’s almost all completely gone, but that night, it wasn’t traumatic at all – it was just fine. 

So I started wearing scarves, and I don’t mind them.  I have a little collection going, and a couple of them are really pretty.  I had this idea that I’d wear all sorts of big earrings to compensate for lack of hair, but my friend Rebecca pointed out that combined with the scarves, you start looking like a fortune teller… 

We’re getting through this.  Ian has been wonderful, his mom has been great.  Our friends have been amazing, bringing us meals every Monday (even when I’m feeling fine!), checking in on me all the time, keeping me company.  My family has been incredibly supportive – I get a care package in the mail nearly every day.  I’m not even kidding.  And my friend Rebecca arranged, on my family's behalf, for flowers to come to me every week.  Really, I am engulfed in support from everyone I know.  I can’t even begin to keep up with all the lovely emails, cards, and facebook messages I get.   Thank you to ALL OF YOU!!!  You’re making all of this totally bearable.

And the bottom line is that I get to be Sam’s mom, no matter what.  Yeah, going to the hospital every morning is a drag, but he’s there when I get home, and the rest of the day is awesome.  I get down every once in a while, but it’s hard to stay down when this is the cuteness that is nonstop all day every day:

 and the ultimate: