HEALTH MATTERS
(June 11th, 2008) My right boob looks like a ripe tomato now. The skin of my armpit is as sizzly as a summer sidewalk outside the door. Two weeks ago things were looking red but feeling fine. It was then that Dr. Irene She’sSoGreatIsnt’She?Gage asked if I had any “lesions”. I think they drop these little bombs on purpose just enough in advance to let you know what’s coming. These docs and nurses know just exactly how and when to slip in a little foreshadowing clue to a conversation that is otherwise quite unassuming. At the time I was feeling proud and maybe a little smug about the way my skin was holding up. So it was no threat when she sprung it on me. Last week the “therapists” just kept telling me to put on the calendula lotion but I noticed they were looking at me as if waiting for the other shoe to drop, but my skin didn’t really hurt. I’m now on the 5th week of radiation and I think my skin has almost had it, plus the muscle and tendon stretching from my arm to my chest feel as stiff as piano wires. I will see Dr Gage tomorrow and am crossing my numb fingers because now it’s really painful and my arm keeps popping up like its has its own cowlick. It seems crazy that a person’s armpit could cause them so much unhappiness. I have to say that I really don’t understand how the people I see in the Sibley waiting room manage to wear clothes on top of their scorched skin, especially all those poor sock footed men.
So now a few days have passed. I got a couple days off from radiation, Thursday and Friday plus the weekend and a “script” for burn cream called Silvadine, which looks and feels a exactly like desitin (I think they are shitting me and it IS desitin). It’s so messy. Still my skin was in terrible shape – PAIN! Excruciating. I broke down and broke out the percaset, even. Though I have been drug free for several weeks, there was nowhere else to go with this. I was madder than a hornet in a beehive at times. I felt as though I had been wearing a Horcrux around my neck for days. If you don’t know what that is you obviously have not been reading enough Harry Potter. Sorry if you have. I was in such need of distraction today, an avastin infusion day on top of radiation, that I finished HP number 7. I got so bummed about the skin pain and finally decided that the only relief I could get was to complain to everyone in site, which I did, especially at our neighborhood end of school year party at the McUmber’s house. Complaining made it a thoroughly enjoyable event for me. My rebellion also materialized in the form of ditching all bandanas, hats and scarves. I’m sick to death of the damn things and now they are out of my life. Poof, just like that.
Crusty yellow stuff was and is still oozing from my pours on my chest and under my arm and my crispy duck fat flesh could light up a room with infra-red rays. But I showed up on Monday, yesterday, and the nurse said it was no use asking the doctor to come in to check me out. She said my skin was in fact re-growing and showed me where. Like I can see under my armpit, Geez! She said my skin looked “terrific” and just because she said so, my attitude changed just enough to get me to walk into that radiation room. Last night lying down after I slathered on the Silvadine, Kyle glanced over at my bear, popping creamy boob and says, “It looks like a cinnabun”. This is why I married the guy. It hurt so much to laugh and also felt so good. So now here I am again, one day left to go. Tomorrow is IT! THE END! No more listening to Queen Latifa singing “Sweet Life” while a giant space shuttle arm rotates around me. No more cooking.
Jumping forward now 24hrs and it’s done. Dr. She’sSoGreatIsnt’She?Gage talked to me afterwards basically patting me on the head for the good job sticking it out and telling me that’s that. I really appreciated her matter of factness, I must say. I like a little handholding in a Dr. but again, I can do without the sad eyes. They do me no good at all. She talked to me a bit about support groups that are starting now. She knows she’s the last Treatment step for many people. But she released me back out into the regular world on my own recognizance arming me with a hefty stack of Telfa pads to use as shield for my recovering armpit wounds. The Telfa pads may as well be a second skin.
MILESTONES
I’ve been walking. The Tough Alliance 5K Race for the Cure team walked together on June 7th. This was a sweaty and wonderful occasion since lots of little guys came and walked with us, Lily, Lucy, Maya, Honor, Jenna, Tessa, Mollie, Freya, Sophie, and Sarah. Many of these kids are on Lucy and my soccer team and I love the fact that they were so up for doing it. It was so damn hot that all my pictures have a steamy haze in them. This really fits my memory of the day. The kids were terrifically tough and really didn’t complain. The opposite is true. See Lucy in the background stripping. I had no idea she’d done this till I looked at the pic closely, but that’s our girl. I don’t think Kyle was aware of it before this very moment. I need to thank my friend, Cathy, for her wonderful one-woman welcoming committee at the finish line. I think I ate ate least 7 of her chocolate ginger snaps all by myself. I was so happy she had a chance to meet so many of my other buddies that day. I’m very excited and looking forward to the other Tough Alliance events to come.
Here's a good look at the Tough Alliance logo that Lily helped me with. Alone, the critters are powerless, together they are TOUGH.
I’ve been running. I’m finally making some progress. At one point out on the trail I even passed some super slowpoke. My pace is right on a 10 minute mile, that’s right, Molasses. I am solid on that time. I can’t go faster but I can go farther. Up until this week I was running one mile at a time then walking for 10 minutes in between. I could do about 3 miles of running that way. But yesterday I ran 2 consecutive miles and today I felt so good I ran 3 miles straight. That’s big. I’m trying to add 1 mile per week to work my way up to the 13 I need to run by Oct. Most days I think I can’t do it since my skin is still in a good amount of pain and my arm usually feels like I have several rubber bands wrapped around it. But I can do it. My arm sock helps for sure. And all of this exercise is making me sleep like a baby.
The exercise plus Gin and Tonics. Kyle proclaimed them the official drink of summer. I’ve never really liked them before but times change, don’t they. I can only sip them and finish about half before I fall asleep, but I do like them quite a bit. Maybe I developed a taste for the hard stuff at our recent girl scout sleepover when Penny broke out the Jack Daniels. I’m not sure you can really call this a milestone but maybe more of a turning point or perhaps a season in the sun.
HOW WE’RE DOING
Fine and dandy. I finished my design class and have been burrying every other thing I have to do under the carpet. I want to retreat now. I need to drop out for a while. I understand it’s pretty common that people need time AFTER they finish with all this crap, not during. I see that for me, I don’t need time to “process” or even to feel sad, though I still need to be alone to let it all hang out occasionally. Basically, I need time to space out and ponder patterns of light made by the shadows of leaves on the sidewalk. Just now I have the ability of a little kid to be completely unfocused for long periods of time. You may recall that in the beginning of this year, I felt as though everyone else was moving in slow motion. Well now the tables have turned. It’s me who’s moving in “Tree Time”. This is ok. Nearly the only thing there is room for in my brain is music from my headphones. It’s a vacuum in there, really. I wonder if there is some unknown internal timer that will go off and wake me up when I’m done. But honestly, somehow I’m not impatient with this. Meanwhile my hair grows. Maybe that’s what I’m waiting for.
MUSIC YOU CAN USE
So back on a Sunday night in May, the day before I began radiation, Kyle and I went to see Radiohead at Nissan Pavilion. Little did we know since neither of us had been before, but that place is a hell hole of course. If it had been any other band, I would not even have considered it since I don’t really like big venues anyway, but it WAS Radiohead and I was excited about it. I had no idea what an epic journey we were about to take. The afternoon was clear and sunny but then from nowhere, a storm was now here. Just as we were leaving at 6pm, the first few drops fell. We drove and drove through harder and harder rain and got to within 2 miles of the place way out in VA after an hour and a half of driving. So we were quite close but Noah floated by and told us to baton down the hatches as we crept forward. We sat in the torrential rain and growing darkness for another hour and finally pulled up in a muddy stream they call a parking lot and got out with our pathetic umbrellas. It took another half hour of walking around the pavilion in drenching torrents before we finally arrived at our seats under the big top. Unbelievably there were thousands of fools or fans or something sitting behind us outside the pavilion in the pounding rain, if you can believe it. I don’t know how they could even hear the music. The show was great since Radiohead had massive video screens on stage behind them, but we were shivering. Even though I was extremely tired from chemo still, we stuck it out since we’d traveled so far to get there. We waited for our friend, Tom, who was coming from Baltimore to meet us, but he never showed up, poor guy. Turns out he had driven and gotten very close, but a road had been washed out and he had been turned back. He ended up driving for 6 hours and never hearing a note of music. Here’s “Fake Plastic Trees” from that show for Tom. Getting out of there was just as hard as getting in. I slept through some of it since we were just sitting in the parking lot watching wet, shoeless people search in vain for their cars in the pitch black night. Never again. Still now that it’s over, I’m glad we did it. What can I say? I love going to concerts.
