I made some new friends last night. My first survivor event. They gave me a pin. I had to wear it. It said survivor. You know how I feel about that word. Apparently the ice breaker at this kind of event is to ask how many years you’ve been a survivor. So not only am I a bit uncomfortable about that moniker to begin with, but I have no idea how to answer that. In my mind, I guess I mark survivor status from the date of my surgery, which puts me at almost five months. One woman thought I should mark it from date of diagnosis, because I’ve been surviving since I heard the surgeon tell me that I had cancer. So that would be ten months. It must be easier when it’s something like five years. At any rate, I suppose it’s official, I’ve got the pin and everything. I’m a survivor now, and I guess I’m going to have to get used to saying it.
That’s sort of the point I am at now. And I guess I’m thankful for that, it’s better than just after I was diagnosed with cancer, when I would fall asleep fine from sheer exhaustion, but then wake around 1:30 am, unable to fall back asleep. (I became rather familiar with the television schedule, I watched Closer reruns at 3am, and Vegas at 4. I don’t ever remember that even being on in primetime…) Now, I struggle to fall asleep, and feel like I’m waking up all the time. Despite the four pillows that I’m now up to, I just can’t get comfortable. It’s really all because of the tissue expanders, and once those are out, I anticipate that I’ll sleep like a baby. One of my babies, who slept through the night almost immediately, not one of those colicky, up-every-hour kind of babies. If they’re the measure, then I guess I sleep like a baby now.
Having just been to the doctor’s office this week, surgery’s back on my mind. Immediately after the mastectomy, of course some pain and weakness are totally expected. Since I’d spent time with the physical therapist before the surgery, I knew that my range of motion would be limited at first. I could raise my arms to shoulder level as soon as possible, and by the end of six weeks I should be able to raise my arms straight up over my head. She cautioned me that I should take things slowly, but that I needed to work to get back a full range of motion. Being overprotective would actually work against me, she said she’d worked with women who couldn’t raise their arms higher than their shoulders years after their mastectomy. Determined not to have that problem, I worked on her exercises to have a full range of motion as soon as it was allowed. At this point, I think my shoulders are as flexible as they ever were. The pectoral muscles are still an issue. They’re always a little tight, when the physician’s assistant described it as my body’s “white noise,” I think she got it just right. There’s always a tightness, but I don’t always notice it. Then there are times when those muscles are definitely spasm-ing (is that a word?) and while it’s not painful, it’s really uncomfortable. Those muscle issues should lessen after my final surgery, though they could continue long after I’m “back to normal.” In chatting with my doctor, I asked if exercise would lessen or exacerbate the muscle tightness. He assured me that stretching is good, but strength building of those muscles might cause more harm than good. So no push ups for me! Can’t say I’m too sad about that! (Though I do miss the plank and push up heavy neighborhood boot camp…) Still, I can work on my arm muscles, and he encouraged me to strengthen my back. Apparently, the way the muscles are pulled causes the shoulders to want to slump forward, so strengthening my back will help naturally pull my shoulders back into place. Right now, I think I’m focusing on getting my groove back on the trails, but after I get the post-surgery green light, I’ll be adding some weights into my running routine to keep my arms and back strong.
Hopefully just one last IV for me for a very long time
I was back at the plastic surgeon’s office today, for my second pre-op appointment. My surgery isn’t scheduled until after school starts, but he likes to do the pre-op appointments early to be sure I’ve had time to ask any questions and get everything I need. I came away with two more scripts– heavy duty antibiotics to prevent infection after the surgery and more lovely percocet (which I probably won’t need). He explained to me that this surgery is much less invasive and all the trauma has already been done, so it should be a pretty easy recovery. The mastectomy involved cutting, moving, and stretching of muscle, and that hurts. But this surgery will literally be a swap out, so no new cutting or stretching. I also got a pamphlet for medical grade compression gear, we’re talking gear so tight it requires multiple sets of hooks and eyes just so you can zip it up. So if your spanx just aren’t cutting it and you want something even stronger, I can totally hook you up.
This weekend an article on the transforming power of lipstick popped up on twitter, and of course, I had to read it immediately! The author was in a rush out the door, but stopped to quickly apply some lipstick and was amazed at how much better she felt about how she looked. She polled some of her blogger friends, including my friend Maria Jose, the Very Busy Mama, on their favorite transforming lipstick. It’s been pretty important to how I feel about how I look, so I wanted to add my own homage to the transforming power of lipstick.
As I read, I had a hard time thinking of a single favorite lipstick. I re-read the post, and the word transforming sort of jumped off the page, and then I knew. Of course, my mainstay through chemo, the lipstick that went on after I tied a scarf around my bald head to announce to the world that I was the healthiest cancer patient they’d ever seen: Dubonnet by MAC. Now that’s a transforming lipstick.
Googling (wigs, not medical info!) while at my first chemo treatment
I know it seems strange, me being here on the internet and all, telling you to stay off the internet. The internet is a wonderful place– I can quickly find information, do some shopping, converse with old friends. But there is a danger, too. Anyone can put anything they want on the internet. So when it comes to important things, health information, say, I’d steer clear of the internet. Granted, there will be times when you have a question and can’t ask the doctor, or don’t want to trouble her, or you think it’s not important. First of all, bother your doctor! Making sure you are healthy, that you understand what you need to do, what you need to look for– that’s her job. But if you’re tempted to look online before the office opens, there are a few thing you should consider.
Consider the source: If I’m Googling for something medical, I’m not even clicking on the link if the address isn’t from a reputable source. I’m talking something like Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson, or NIH. Since I have a science background, I’ll sometimes read an article from a scientific publication, but those can be a little heavy for people who aren’t accustomed to reading such literature. Plus, any treatments they are studying are likely to be years away from use in the clinical setting, so they’re not all that applicable to someone looking for timely information.
Consider the publication date: Even if it looks like a super reputable source, if it’s five years old, the information isn’t really going to be helpful. Treatments have changed so much in the past few years, and so have the support meds. Times change, treatments change, experiences change.
Stay off the chat groups and blogs: Yep, I’ll say it again. When you’ve heard one person’s story, you’ve heard one person’s story. So many people who are compelled to share their stories online have had a bad experience. They seem angry, they seem bitter. I’m not going to tell someone how to feel, but I don’t think that feeling angry makes the situation any better, and if you’re trying to keep a positive attitude, you don’t want to hang out with bitter people. Garbage in, garbage out.
Just this week I was thinking about something that I’d “looked up” right away after hearing about it, but realized that it was in the pre-internet days, and I wondered how I did it. It’s hard to imagine needing to find information and not being able to find it almost immediately with a few taps of your fingers. But when it comes to really important health information, think before you Google. Check the source, the date, and the attitude. If any of the three seem hinky, move on. There are plenty of other places to get your information. Like your doctor.
Starting a new habit is hard. Breaking a habit? Not so hard. I hated the idea of not running for six weeks after my mastectomy, mostly because I knew it knocked out my chances for the spring half marathon I’d been looking forward to. But once I knew that race was out of the question, I got used to the sleeping in. When my six week mandatory stint as a couch potato was over, I was really enjoying that extra time in bed. I went for a run when I could still sleep in, when it was fun, when it was convenient. Once school let out, though, there aren’t many convenient times to run that don’t involve getting moving early. I keep rationalizing the sleeping in part– sleeping is still pretty uncomfortable, so isn’t every bit of sleep super valuable? Knowing that I have another surgery coming up– another mandatory break from running– makes lacing up even harder. I’ve had the best intentions the last couple of weeks, but busy mornings with camps for the kiddos was just the added excuse I needed. And so this weekend, I decided the excuses, the rationalizations, the good intentions were all over. It may be hard to get up and out the door, and I’ll probably just really have my groove back when I head back in to surgery, but I’m just going to have to get over it. So Sunday, my favorite morning for a run, I took the hardest step. That first one, out the door. And I’ll just have to keep taking that step over and over, until I’ve really got my groove back.
Since I managed to score a haircut appointment at the very last minute, I didn’t want to worry with finding childcare for the kiddos. Plus, I was going to pick up Turner from camp early as it was, taking him back home would mean he’d need to miss even more camp. So after I picked him up, we headed to Georgetown, and we made it there so quickly! Not only that, I found a parking spot right away. I figured we might walk past this super fun water feature and they could run through once. But we ended up with almost twenty minutes to kill, so they didn’t stay as dry as I’d hoped. Not dry at all, really. But they were about to sit through an hour long haircut, and they needed to have their fun too.
They were soaked by the time we found our way to the salon. Thankfully, Heather quickly grabbed them a stack of towels, so they dried off a bit and took a seat on a few towels to read their new library books while Dragan worked his magic on my little locks.
I know you were all waiting with bated breath for a picture of the hair… I asked for short, and I got it! He also gave me some tips– apparently I will need to use the blow dryer a bit and some of my long hair product to help fight those pesky chemo curls. (He said they will probably calm down within a year or so.) Hopefully it’s short enough that I won’t be going crazy dying for a cut in five weeks, when I’ll apparently need to have it cut again. This short hair thing is not as easy as I’d always thought!
They were soaked by the time we found our way to the salon. Thankfully, Heather quickly grabbed them a stack of towels, so they dried off a bit and took a seat on a few towels to read their new library books while Dragan worked his magic on my little locks.
Run Lipstick Chemo 