Vanishing Vanity vs Va Voom Victory

You may be mistaken for thinking that this hand belongs to a very elderly lady.

I was, until it occured to me that it was attached to the end of my arm.

What the??? Are you serious??? Eegads!!!

Just a tad unnerving to realise that chemo can age your skin by 50 years in the space of one week. No jolly amount of moisturising improves it so I will just have to hope that once my body has recovered from treatment the skin cells will start to regenerate and plump up a bit. Another hit to my vanity...and again...I tell myself that isn't a bad thing. Losing a breast and all my hair has only managed to downsize it by half, still a ways to go!

My nails have not escaped a chemo beating either. All of my toe and finger nails have been agonisingly sore for the past few days. It's not uncommon for nails to fall out after chemo and that upsets me a hell of a lot more than having wrinkly skin. On a practical level its already making basic everyday tasks difficult, let alone running a household and caring for two kidlets when they do come out. But mostly it concerns me because it will expose me to infection and in turn Lymphodema which is a BIG NO NO!!!

No nasty painful sausage arms here thank you very much!!!

So...my request to the Nail Fairy...please, PLEASE you clever little sprite, do your magic and spare my nails?

Ever so grateful.

 

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Back in the saddle again

So, one chemo down...five to go.

The first one may have wiped the floor with me but I've managed to stand back up again. That's a good thing right! I knew that this journey would be fraught with challenges and there are times like today that feel like those challenges are popping up like rabbits and I'm madly trying to knock each one on the head.

The nausea and bone pain have eased immensely since the weekend but a few new nasties have appeared with the dawn of a new week.

On Sunday I noticed a rash on my 'new' breast. With a low white cell count a rash is very much a concern so I went to my local ER that night. Thankfully they ruled out neutropenia but put me on a broad spectrum anti-biotic and advised calling my surgeon. Two days of anti-biotics later and a very red, angry rash had spread to 3/4 of my breast. My surgeon is away for two weeks and his clinic didn't get back to me so I decided to see what my Radiation Oncologist said. I had my first appointment with her today. She was quite concerned, took swabs and called Infectious Diseases for advice. Looks like I've contracted a staph infection that is resistant to certain antibiotics. Likely that its from my hospital room mate who had a staph infection in her port. Completely not her fault but why we were allowed to share a room is beyond me. Go figure! So, a new antibiotic for the next four days and if there's no improvement I'll be having an ultrasound to determine if there is an infection deeper than the skin. Either way...its not good.

Second little nasty - reflux. Holy burning oesophagus Batman!!! A joyful leftover from chemo which has kept me from sleep for several nights in a row. Now managed with medication and Mylanta. Chalky cocktail anyone?

The third...going bald. It was a nasty that I was expecting and now that its here I'm having an odd job of dealing with it. Yesterday my hair started coming away in tiny clumps. I had noticed that my hair had stopped growing and its been very brittle for the last week. On Monday I had the most insane headache which stayed with me for 24hrs and left my scalp quite tender. Today its been coming out in handfuls. I haven't had a chance to stock up on headscarves so I haven't attempted to pull it all out yet. Tomorrow I am going to buy a couple of scarves and on Saturday I will see how much hair I lose. Kind of hoping it all goes in one hit. I had an 'oh my god is this really happening to me' moment this afternoon. Its so easy to be brave about an event before it happens. In between hyperventilating at the thought of no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes...a voice of reason kicked in and told me to harden the fuck up. Its just hair, it WILL grow back and god dammit I am going to rock the headscarf look so Dry The Eyes Princess! There are other more important issues at play. Still, I'm sure I'll have a good cry on the weekend. I'll get Hubby to photograph me as I'm plucking away at my scalp like I'm de-feathering a chicken. My vanity will be seriously re-sized by Sunday.

Today was my first day back on my own two feet, taking care of my boys by myself. My wonderful Mum flew home this morning and I can't tell you how grateful we are for her support. We honestly wouldn't have survived the last ten days without her. I wish to heaven that my family lived in the same town...anyhoo, they don't and I have to jump back into the saddle pronto. It was an exhausting day but I'm learning to pace myself. A lot of the time I'm teetering on the edge of exhaustion, my body feels fragile now, but a few well timed rests on the couch managed to get me through today. I'm just going to have to be sensible and pay attention to what my body is telling me. We have managed to snavel one day a week of emergency childcare for Jack for the next few months. Luck would have it that its a Friday so Harry will be at Preschool and Jack in childcare, leaving me home by myself to either rest or go to appointments. The centre is going to try and give us a Thursday for Jack too which would be great, particularly on the weeks that I have chemo which is a Wednesday...giving me two days to recover without the worry of how to care for my boys.

And to finish off this rather jumbled post...my Radiation Oncology consult. I honestly didn't think that I was going to have to have radiation. My surgeon didn't seem to think so and my Medical Oncologist wasn't sure. But as ever...my pathology put me right on the fence and my Radiation Oncologist seems to think that five weeks of radiation therapy will reduce the risk of the cancer returning from 20% down to 5%. Thats quite a significant reduction. I felt a bit upset after my appointment. Like I'd been plonked on a runaway train and didn't have the option of jumping off when it got too much. Emotionally its a bit like having a gun put to your head...you could refuse the treatment but if that cancer comes back its likely to come back in an untreatable and terminal form...no second chances. I don't want to go through radiation...chemo has been so horrific already, isn't that enough? And yet...I could never forgive myself if I didn't follow my doctor's advice and as a result that stray little cancer cell returns in five years time as bone cancer or blood cancer and I'm finished. My poor judgement could rob my boys of their mother and my husband of his wife. I can't do that. So...a month after chemo finishes I'll be having radiation therapy for 15 minutes a day, five days a week for five weeks.

Ok...it's late, time to sleep. xx

 

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On the road to recovery - at home.

The first week at home was spent drugged to the eyeballs with painkillers and sleeping approximately twenty hours each day. I was able to keep upright long enough to do my physio, take a shower, have a small bite to eat and say hi to the kids before falling back into bed. Every second day I had to go up to our local hospital and have my drain changed and my dressing checked by the community health nurses.

It took a week to eventually get my pain under control. A quick trip to the GP and a new type of painkiller helped me to cope better. There are several types of pain that I've been dealing with. The first is the tenderness of the breast itself and the site of the drain, which is a constant dull ache. The second is the burning, throbbing pain around the ribs, like someone is trying to pry them apart with a crowbar. The third is the sharp hot pain in the armpit whenever the arm moves and the fourth is the feeling of stinging nettles being swiped across the arm, shoulder and upper back at random intervals as the nerves start coming back to life. I naturally have a fairly high pain threshold so I was able to adjust to the discomfort but the aim as I later found out is to manage the pain so as to NOT feel it at all. One of the community health nurses finally explained to me what I needed to be doing in order to achieve that. If only the hospital had given me that advice upon being discharged. It is the one thing I've found frustrating...the lack of continuity. So many different health professionals and so much conflicting advice or gaps in helpful information.

I finally managed to snavel a home visit from a great Community Health nurse last Friday. Jane is a fabulously funny, no nonsense woman with a surgical background and 40 years of experience. I am lucky to now have her look after me for the duration of my treatment, including weekly contact during chemo and radiotherapy. It was great timing too. My nipple began bleeding on Thursday so it gave me peace of mind to have it looked at. She changed my dressing, adjusted my drain so that it didn't pull and said that it looked like a small infection was forming and I should go to the hospital if it got worse.

On Saturday I woke up feeling like I'd been hit with the flu. I went into town with Mum and stocked up at the chemist while she did the grocery shopping and by the time we got home an hour later I was feeling very average. Before long I was throwing up and unable to keep painkillers or fluids down. Hubby took me to our local ER and they popped me on a drip of antibiotics and gave me a wafer of Zofran which was enough to calm the nausea and get me back on track. The infection and the cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics were knocking my body around and I needed an anti-nausea drug. For anyone who hasn't started treatment yet...ask for a script for anti-nausea drugs just in case you need it. I burst into tears in the ER, it was just too much to cope with. I felt broken and weak and exhausted and just wanted it all to ease up. The staff were great and very understanding. The doctor sent me home with another script for more antibiotics to clear up the infection in my breast and a stash of maxalon and zofran to ward off further nausea. My body has settled down and I've slept the rest of the weekend away.

I decided when I started this blog that it would be a no holds barred account of my journey and as such I've started taking photos of my body so that others can get a better idea of what it is like to go through this type of treatment.

This is me, eleven days after surgery, with the drain still in and the dressings still on.

Above is the drain that collects the fluid (blood etc) that naturally occurs at the site of the wound after surgery. It gradually reduces from about 100ml a day to about 15mls a day. After a couple of weeks the drain can be removed and the body re-absorbs the small amount of fluid left. I carry the drain in a little cotton bag that I'd whipped up on the sewing machine before I went in for surgery. It has to be worn 24/7 so a good tip is to make two or three if you can. Another good tip...REMEMBER that you're wearing it! I can't tell you how many times I've hung my bag over the back of a chair and then gotten up and walked off only to be snagged by the line. Entertaining for any onlookers, somewhat embarrassing to the snagee!

I have my post surgical check up on Tuesday. Hopefully the drain will come out and the news will be good reguarding the pathology report. I'm also hoping against hope that the infection in my breast will be under control by then and I won't have to face losing the implant. It's a possibility and if it does happen it will only be a setback. I will get there in the end!

To finish off this post I wanted to share this incredibly inspiring clip. A dear friend shared it with me and I wanted to inspire others. No matter what our bodies look like during and after breast cancer treatment...we are beautiful!!!

'The Light That Shines' a story for all from InBedWithSue.com on Vimeo.

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