Not a Rainbow Fart

I mentioned earlier today that I didn't want to update my blog when I was feeling depressed, because I didn't want to bring down the world around me. A friend reminded me that this blog is to document how I feel and I'm not here to entertain people with "rainbow farts and unicorns." I laughed my head off and then I thought yeah, she's right. Maybe this will be therapeutic for me.

For the most part, things have been going well lately. Chemo has been uneventful, which is the best you can hope for. Sure I'm tired, have a few aches and pains, and a bald head, but I feel like I'm living a pretty normal life. My counts have been decent and my infusions have all gone as scheduled which is what I want.

I'll go along feeling OK, feeling optimistic, and then I'll read a story. I have been following a bunch of stories on Facebook in recent months about young people with cancer. One was the infamous Talia, a girl whose story touched the entire country. Another was a local guy, a ultra marathon runner who had stage 4 brain cancer. Another was a guy in one of my online cancer support groups-30 years old, a non-smoker, with stage 4 lung cancer. Those are just a few of the stories. Well lately everyone has lost their battle. These are young people who fought for so long and had thousands of people rallying behind them, yet cancer still took them. I find myself sobbing, my heart broken for the family and children they had to leave, the life they missed out on. When you are healthy, you read these stories and you sympathize with the family members. When you have been diagnosed with cancer you read these stories and you empathize with the dying patient. These people, the ones who have passed, were amazing people, people who changed the world and did great things with their lives, far better people than me. Why would I be spared if they weren't? It's a stupid question, but one that creeps into my mind anyway.  I know that none of these stories were mine, in fact, none of these people even had my kind of cancer. But cancer is cancer and it kills people and I have been reminded of it too often lately.

So that's what has been weighing me down. That said, there is always a story of hope to pick me back up. Recently my husband has been traveling to Indiana for work. He always tries to make it back home to come to my Friday chemo appointments with me. While at the factory he was working at he mentioned going home for chemo and a woman stopped him and asked him what type of cancer his wife had. Here, she too had breast cancer at age 32 and went through chemotherapy. She was now 39 years old and cancer free. These are the stories I cling to. One of my favorites that I have saved on my phone is a woman who was diagnosed when her son was a few months old. She went through extensive treatments and was told that the cancer would probably come back. To this day she is cancer free, and her "baby" is now 32 years old. I have no reason to believe that I won't be telling the same story!

Oh another thing that really burns me up-literally-is chemopause. Chemotherapy puts a woman into menopause, hence the term chemopause. It's actually a really good thing. If my ovaries aren't working, then they aren't producing estrogen aka cancer juice. I want this chemopause, in fact once it's over, I will probably seek out menopause through shots that shut down the ovaries or by getting my ovaries removed. While I think my oncologist thinks that this is extreme at my age, I personally feel that it is essential to beating this disease.  So menopause is something I need to get used to, and it takes a whole lot of getting used to. Hot flashes are no joke! My friend Margo calls them a "personal summer". My least favorite season. I keep the fan on full blast at night so I can kick off the covers, covered in sweat, only to have to bundle up minutes later when it passes. Luckily (or unluckily?) they mostly happen at night, so while I don't ever have a restful sleep, I don't have to worry about being a huge sweaty pig in front of many people.

Speaking of pigs, I am so bummed out about this constant weight gain. I knew this was a threat, that most women gain weight on chemotherapy for breast cancer, but it doesn't make looking at the constantly moving scale any easier. It reminds me so much of when I was pregnant, although I could blame some of the increase on the growing baby and I knew that I could breast feed to lose the weight. Now I don't even have breasts! What the hell?! Is this really my life?

That's something I've said a lot lately. You really do adapt to shitty situations but then all of a sudden, the reality of it all hits you and it's just too much to think on. Cigna informed me yesterday that they have approved me for Long Term Disability. I need to fill out a lot of paperwork and my employer also requires that I file for Social Security if I'm going out on LTD. Social Security? I didn't know I was 70. Excuse me while I have a hot flash. Is this really my life?

Tissue expanders. I am now rocking about 500 cc's of saline in my rock hard chest. I really worry that I'm going to knock the wind out of people when I hug them. It's actually kind of comical, as my new "foobs" are a couple inches higher than my old set. So a bunch of shirts that used to be low cut and cleavage baring, now fully expose a foob. My implant exchange is a year away so I better get used to it. Until then, I dream of soft squishy implants at night, in between hot flashes.

I'll end on a good note. My hair is growing! Everywhere. I actually have to shave my legs on the regular again! That sucks but it's nice to do something normal. The hair on my head increases every day and I'm hopeful that by the end of chemo, I actually look like I have hair, even if it's just the G.I. Jane look. It's strange to me that my hair is growing on chemo (what happened to destroying rapidly dividing cells?) but I heard that this happens often with Taxol so I'll take it!