conversations with my son

My son Rich called me last night. We had a really great long chat about life and relationships. He asked me a very basic question. "Mom, if you only had 6 months to live what would you do with those 6 months?" It didn't take me very long to answer. Number 1, I would stop all chemotherapy & radiation. I would go out to the barn and ride my horses and hang out with the great horse people I have come to love, I would walk my dogs in the mountains and take them to dog beach. I would see my friends and go out to lunch. I would have all my family come visit me and I would cook large delicious meals and they would eat my food. We would sit at the table after dessert and we would laugh and pick at the remainder of the dessert until it was all gone.
I realized those were exactly the same things I was doing before I got sick. In other words, I was living my life exactly as if I had only a 6 months to live. Of course I had to work and work does take up a significant amount of time but my life was joyful and fulfilling. When I would hike with my dogs each morning, I would watch the sun rise over the eastern mountains. The beautiful sunrises always reminded me of the song "Morning has broken like the first morning" (by Cat Stevens) and I would remember to thank God that I am alive, healthy and blessed. Some how I have got the idea that I need to change myself in order for the cancer to go away. Because somehow I believe that my actions or my life style has caused my cancer. Last night after talking with my son, I realized that I don't have to change myself at all. I am going to continue to live the way I have always lived, with passion, with energy, with anger and with love.

Friday

I was able to go out today to run a couple of errands. I think this is the first time I have driven in a couple of weeks. I had to pick up some new eye glasses and had to sit at a large mirror to make sure they fit. It was very hard to look at myself in the mirror. I saw an old woman looking back at me. I can't believe how bad I looked. My skin is so pale, my hair is pale and my face looks very drawn. The port they put in my chest for the chemotherapy is HUGE!!. It bulges under my skin and is so tight when I move my arm or turn my head. I don't remember the former port being so uncomfortable. So far I still have my hair. It is very dry and brittle but it still remains on my head.

I am going to cook some clam chowder for dinner tonight. For some reason, I am very sensitive to salt. All prepared foods taste so salty to me that I can hardly eat them. I thought if I cooked my own clam chowder I could control the amount of salt. I guess it says a lot that I am able and wanting to cook. For me, cooking is a life affirming process. As soon as I feel better, I go into the kitchen and cook or bake something.

Now that I am feeling better physically you would think I would feel better emotionally but it is not the case. I know I am very depressed. My sense is that in order to get through this I need to feel the feelings of sadness, grief and anger and what ever other crap comes up. Maybe I have to loose hope in order to find it again.....I have no idea???? I am at a complete loss as to what the outcome of all this will be.

Feeling Better on Thursday

Today I woke up feeling better. The Body pain seems to have disappeared. I notice myself thinking about future events and being interested in more than just getting through the next hour. I don't have another chemo treatment until June 9th. I think that gives me almost a week and a 1/2 to get better before the next round.

Amy called me last night and is trying to plan a date for her wedding. She is looking at an October wedding date. She asked me if I thought I will be well enough to attend and more important enjoy her wedding day. I said I had no idea..... but hope/pray to be well enough to not only attend but to help her plan the wedding as well. Thinking about a wedding and the celebrations associated with it make me feel optimistic and happy. Amy has some really good ideas about putting together a personal and meaningful celebration of their committment to each other. I think Ray and Amy are going to come up with a wonderful celebration and I can't wait to be a part of it.

Day After Memorial Day

My Dad and Barbara left this afternoon. They were very helpful and took great care of me. I went to the oncologist today and he said he was sorry that I was having such a tough time of it. Apparently even though I feel like sh*^t, my main organs: heart, lungs, kidneys, liver appear to holding strong. At least that is what Dr. Banerjee says (Although he was saying that last year right before I went into ICU). They always try and make jokes about me at the oncologist's office "Well if something weird is going to happen to a patient it will be to Margaret!". For some reason today that makes me angry. I don't want to be the patient with the weird stuff happening, the patient that knows all the doctors when being wheeled down the corridor in my wheel chair, the patient that has been before "tumor Board" not once but TWICE!!

Chemo is just as unpleasant the third time as the first or second time. There is no Good Cancer and there is no Good Chemo. It all sucks beyond what a person should have to go through to get well.

5 days post chemo

Still feeling very sick. I spend most of the day in bed sleeping. Although I did get up this afternoon and watched a movie. This is the first time I have been able to concentrate on a movie. I am having trouble even focusing on this email. Must be all the drugs I am on to handle the chemo effects. If it doesn't get any worse than this, then I think I can handle the next 3 times of chemo. However it always seem the effects get greater with each treatment.

Thursday

I was able to get a good night sleep last night and slept until 10:30 this morning. My Dad and Barbara have been taking good care of me. I am feeling the effects of the chemo but it could be a lot worse. I am trying to stay hydrated so avoid what happened last year (Kidney failure). I went into the doctors to have a shot to increase my white blood count. My next Doctor's appointment is not until next Tue. So I have a lot of time to rest and recover. So far the nausea has not been bad. Just feel very out of it and like I have the flue.

Chemo followed by hospital admitt

Just a quick update today. I just got out of the hospital a few hours ago. I had my first round of chemo yesterday. The Taxotere went in really easy. When they did the Cytoxin, they had to stop because I was getting a lot of pain in my belly. After taking a 15 minute break we decided to continue.

2 hours later I started to have a full blown bowel obstruction. I didn't want to go through this at home on the first day of chemo so I called my surgeon and they admitted me. Took away all liquids and filled me with pain and antinausea drugs to make me comfortable. Finally the blockage worked its way through. I was released at 5:00 PM this evening feeling the effects of not only a bowel obstruction but the first two days of chemo. My Dad and Barbara are here to keep the home fires burning while Derek squires me back and forth to the doctor and hospital. I am going to try and get some sleep tonight and hopefully I will feel better in the morning.

Chemo today

Brief message today. Had port installed yesterday and it really hurt all day and all night last night. Today is better. Went for round 1 of chemo at 10:30 AM. The taxatere (sp?) went in OK the first hour. Then when they switched to Cytoxin, I got a really bad pain in the middle of my body. They stopped for a few minutes and debated what to do and then we decided to continue. Not sure why I am in pain. Feels like it could be a bowel obstruction and may be unrelated to the chemo. It is so hard to tell what is going on when they are pumping these toxins into your body. I guess I need to reframe to think of them as tumor killers not Margaret killers.

I hate this and it brings back all the bad memories of the last two times.

DEEP BREATH and try to find my happy place.

M

Surgery tomorrow

Dr. Hyde my surgeon (and new best friend) is going to do surgery tomorrow morning to install what is called a metaport into my body. For the uninitiated, chemotherapy drugs are so toxic that they have to make sure none of the drugs touch your skin. These drugs also destroy small veins so they can't do a regular IV. So they thread a catheter from my chest into the juglar vein and down into my superior or is it inferior venacava (main vein in the body). They install a port that is accessed by chemo nurses that is under the skin. They are doing this on the left side since I already have a scar from the one they installed 18 months ago on the right side.

Normally I would have this done by a radiaologist but Dr. Hyde volunteered to do it. He is all about NO PAIN which I love. He is going to give me a general anesthetic. Last time I was awake but sedated and it wasn't pleasant. There is something about Dr. Hyde which makes me feel to confident and relaxed. I remember that this thing hurt a lot the first week until things stretch out. It feels like you have a big hose in your neck and you can see the outline of the catheter.....GROSS!!!!

My Wig

Yesterday my dear friend Debbie took me to look at wigs. She and the sales clerk brought me all sorts of different styles and colors. I was reluctantly trying on wigs and was trying to have a positive attitude. The wigs were all short styles and to my eyes looked a lot like my new hair cut. Suddenly in occurred to me.....why do I have to have a short wig? If I am going to get a wig, I am going to get a long one. The second long wig I tried on was perfect. I loved the color and the cut. I know it is a little crazy for someone my age to have hair half way down her back but it feels right. Deb and the sales clerk said I looked good ( I not sure if they were just saying that to be nice).

I have attached a picture for everyone to see.

P.S. Derek said I looked "nice" and he liked it. He said the color made me look younger (That was the right answer!!)

Lesbian or Grandma???

Per the instructions of my chemo nurse, I cut my hair very short in anticipation of it falling out in a few weeks. I can't decide if I look like a lesbian or a Grandma. I keep looking in the mirror with disbelief to realize that I look just like Grandma D (my Mom) with red hair. You ladies know that as much as we love our Moms and think they are beautiful, we don't really want to look like them. I think "hot" lesbian is preferable.

Farah Fawcett

I heard that Farah Fawcett has created a 2 hour documentary on her cancer and it will be aired on NBC. It is amazing that Farah and I have so much in common with respect to our cancer. We were both diagnosed in 2004 with Anal cancer. We both had a recurrance of our anal cancer in 2007. Both of us were told the cancer was inoperable. In my case, there was a single tumor in my pelvic cavity. In her case, I believe it had spread to her liver. I was able to have a repeat of the original chemotherapy/radiation that I had the first time. She went to Germany where they did some sort of ablation of her liver and did some expirimental chemotherapy. Now we are both in 2009 and I am guessing that she is dying of her cancer. I appear to be cancer free from the 2007 cancer but am now battling breast cancer. I had thought about trying to contact her but she seems like she might be a bit of a nut. I am unsure if I should watch this documentary. Derek says what is the point....it will just be depressing. As if I don't need any more ammunition to be depressed. However I am curious about this.

Catching up

My dear friends and family you have all faithfully followed my previous blog that documented my battle with round two of cancer. Unfortunately I am once again dealing with this crappy disease. After being on disability for a over a year, I had gone back to work at Accelrys in Jan of this year. I was offered a great job managing a group of great people. I loved my new job and was really happy to be back at work and trying to regain a "normal" life.

I had my 6 month PET scan and they found a mass in my breast. It turned out to be cancer and I had a partial mastectomy in April. They had caught it early and were hoping that they would only have to do surgery followed by radiation. Well as my luck would have it, it ended up to be an aggressive form of cancer and I had to make the decision to do Chemotherapy or not. If I didn't do chemo my odds of a recurrence are 30%. If I did do chemotherapy, my odds of a recurrence are 8%. Well that is pretty easy math to do.......Bring on the Chemo.

But if that weren't enough, I had two major bowel obstructions right after my mastectomy. It was decided to do exploratory surgery to see why this was happening before I started chemo. Long story short and minus a gall bladder plus some other tweaks of my existing ostomy, I am 1 week post op and trying to get better quick before chemo starts next Tue.

For those of you that are not caught up on the latest.....this must seem unbelievable!!!! I am really struggling emotionally. I do a lot of crying. But I also do a lot of laughing. I am trying to be positive but I have been really shaken by this turn of events. I will do my best to faithfully write in my blog so all of you can root for me, cry with me and laugh with me as I take care of this Son of a Bitch once and for all.

P.S. This picture was taken 2 weeks after my partial mastectomy and 2 days before my gall bladder removal. My friend Kim dressed my horse Monique up in pink for breast cancer awareness. I think the photo is great...don't you????