stupid legs

Treatment #4 came along and really really sucked. The usual nausea, blah blah blah but more of the heaviness in the legs. So much so it is just tiring to walk. I spent a week with the family in Pensacola the week after chemo and it was nice but would have been so much better if I hadn't felt like shit most of the time. I am beginning to suspect my legs will not be anywhere close to normal by the time #5 rolls around. If I weren't too busy typing this, I would be crying about that.

And of course. After the first few treatments I bounced back so well and when you're all whee! look at me! you do not sit around like grumbling like a negative nancy. Consequently, I decided for myself (because I am qualified to do so, what with my medical degree and all) that I did not need anti-depressants anymore. Who needs those! I can handle all of this JUST FINE. Bippity boppity. So I stopped taking them. Then after #3 when recovery wasn't so awesome I began to doubt my decision (really? but you were so sure!) Then my sister went to our family doctor and told him how I hadn't been taking my wellbutrin and he was so not on board with my just, you know, stopping my medication. And he might be right. Because, you see, when you don't bounce back quickly you begin crying! Everything makes you cry! When I look in the mirror, I want to cry. When I try to haul the two concrete blocks (formerly known as legs) around, I get weepy, weepy, weepy.

So I am back on the wellbutrin and it's a little bit stronger. I don't think it's really kicking in yet because it's only 11:04am and I've already cried twice today. I am major fun to be around.

I go in on Monday to get my blood counts checked because my red blood counts have been low and my platelets. I am going to ask a bazillion questions because I'm tired of asking google. I am hoping to go back to work on Monday too.

This post has been pure awful! Yay.

I went for chemo today just because. I mean, why not! No, I was scheduled to be there. Sometimes I wonder if my doctor thinks I'm a crazy person. I sometimes wave my hands wildly. But he just pats me gently on the back and really, that's a good idea... if you think you're dealing with a crazy person. ACT LIKE IT'S ALL OK.

I desperately craved a vegetable plate when I got home tonight so we went and got one because on Chemo Day, I am the Queen of Everything. What I really wanted was my grandmother's mashed potatoes, her very very buttery potatoes. Ingredients: Butter, Butter, MORE FREAKIN BUTTER, potatoes, milk, salt. But I'll never have my grandmother's mashed potatoes again.

I ordered butter on the side tonight and the mashed potatoes were pretty good but, of course, not the same as Memaw's.

Well, I am about over that three hour nap I took earlier so I guess I should go to bed.

Well I am on day 6 of the heaviest period ever since the beginning of time. This is so awful I cannot describe it. Going to call my doctor's nurse today because it's making me crazy.

The whole UTI/whatever it was because I doubt anyone really believes me just because the urinalysis showed no sign of infection and SO? So what? I believed I had one and that's what matters. The internet told me I had renal failure and I only believed that for, like, thirty minutes. My husband said I had a UTI in the brain. Oh, honey, that's not even possible. I was just going to say that the whole UTI seems better today.

Also, I had to wear a bandana out on Sunday and it sucked but not as much as I thought it would. Of course I only went ONE place. My sister came over later and messed with my wig and made it look somewhat presentable. And then we realized I'd put it on backwards. So probably I shouldn't wear a wig because I'm not smart enough to do so. You have to be pretty smart to wear a wig because they are mind-boggling. With the TAG and everything that GOES IN THE BACK as tags normally do. I once thought unicorns were real (and also, invisible cream. thanks loony tunes). So now you understand the kind of brain power I'm working with.

I'll still have to take the wig to the stylist because it needs a trim. I wonder if I'll actually be brave enough to wear it. What if there's a sudden gust of wind and it goes flying off? What then? I'll have to run after my fake hair. That will be so much worse than falling down every single step at the library when I was eleven.

I have myself a merry little panic attack

I got this urinary tract infection, of course. Because my body's such a shitty teenager these days and just wants to see what it can get away with. I called my family doctor over the weekend, or rather the doctor on call for my doctor, and whined about how big and slimy the cooties are at urgentcare and how I did not want to go there and wallow in those cooties what with my compromised immune system. So that nice doctor called me in a 3 day supply of antibiotics. Cool, right? Yeah except for I took all those and I am still not right. I'm better, don't get me wrong. But I'm pretty sure I'm not right.

Today I called my doctor's office and he sent me to get a urinalysis. I guess I ended up in a cootiefied place after all. I hear you laughing at me urgentcare, don't think I don't.

But back to the weekend. Well Saturday in particular when I went to the bathroom no less than 1200 times because I was trying to pee normally. And even though I never go to the bathroom 1200 times in a day, it all somehow made sense to me to do this. I ended up calling the oncology nurse at 11pm just freaking out all over the place. Because my brain switch had been flipped to GLARINGLY STUPID PANIC. That's my highest setting! It's always a treat when that's engaged. Glaringly stupid panic means I race walk all over the house like an insane person. And I think things like 'I am having multiple organ failure.' I wish I were kidding about that. I mean, here's this rational nurse on the phone saying "You've had one antibiotic, you need to give them time to work" and I'm all 'WE ARE WAY BEYOND ANTIBIOTICS NOW. We're talking total system shutdown.'

And my poor, poor husband saying things like "Try to calm down" or "you're making things worse than they are" and I'm just looking at him like he totally doesn't get it. No one cares about my bladder. My kidneys are a huge joke.

Eventually he got me to lie in bed where I pretended to be okay. Then after he went to sleep, I got up about eleventy hundred more times to squeeze every last drop of pee out of my body.

I'm out of lorazepam. I wonder if anyone's noticed?

hallelujah, it's raining hair

My hair is REALLY coming out now. It's depressing. So I thought I'd write about it. It helps when I can spread my misery around.

I cannot keep my fingers out of it. It's horrifying but I can't stop. So there are piles of my hair in all the trash cans. It looks like I've been busy building nests.

how i spent my summer vacation

Sometime near the end of April 2011 I reached up and felt a thickened area in my right breast. And a thickened ridge from my nipple to my armpit. For the next couple of weeks my brain (and everyone else) tried to decide that it was nothing but my guts said different (Oh guts, you rebels). My guts said THIS IS NOT GOOD.

So hilariously I made an appointment with my gynecologist for the week after my period because maybe this was just changes related to my menstrual cycle. Oh, but it wasn't. Not at all! It was changes related to cancer! The end. You can stop reading. Just kidding. Don't stop reading.

Anyway, back to my story. My gynecologist felt (and felt and felt and felt) my breast and then said it did indeed seem denser but that he did not feel a discernible nodule or mass. He decided I needed a mammogram and (if necessary) an ultrasound. Turns out, it was necessary. I remember thinking the ultrasound of my breast was the worst thing ever. Oh Wendy, just you wait! Staring at my breast tissue and watching the ultrasound tech measure stuff made me want to get up and run away. Or throw up. I also considered just passing out. I wanted to do whatever was most dramatic.

That afternoon my doctor's nurse called me and told me my doctor wanted to go over my mammogram report with me. I said "Is something wrong?" And because they never ever ever tell you anything, she just said "he just wants to make some recommendations." So, I felt very very nervous because my guts were saying "this is not okay" and my head was telling me 'he's just going to recommend you lay off the milkshakes.'

So I went in the next afternoon because for some reason when someone has something crappy they would like to tell you they should do it a full 24 hours later just in case you haven't had time to google every horrible thing you've ever known about anything.

My doctor said something about tissue changes and calcifications and the only words I could read upside down on his little report from the radiologists were "solid mass." So, he said I'd have to have a biopsy and that those were lots of fun and when it was over I would receive a new set of knives. I just made that up, the part about the knives. He did say I would have to have a biopsy and that I would have to go to a surgeon.

So, my husband and I stumbled out to the nurse's desk and listened to her to say "HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS" to people on the phone clearly just to see if she could make me faint right there on the spot. I DIDN'T. But I did sit down because all of the sudden my head felt like a washing machine. From that point on my husband did all the talking and scheduling of things because I was now officially mute. The nurse came around the counter and hugged me and that actually made me feel worse. Pretty sure that wasn't her intention though. But my mind was racing with one thought. Just one: Please let me see my children grow up.


tired of typing now. to be continued (but probably not. at least not soon. but someday maybe.)

this video

I want to crawl inside it.

No Joy from Mike Petty on Vimeo.

Do you ever get some kind of weird mental tourettes? Where you find yourself repeating phrases in your brain or wanting to end every sentence you say with some random phrase. No? Well, then we don't have much to talk about, you and me. Yo, MTV raps. THERE. I got it out.

Trust me, Yo MTV raps is better than the two weeks I wanted to say Ya mo Be There like all the time.

this moving romance

I pulled my hamstring! 2011 is going GREAT.

Everyone keeps asking me how I pulled my hamstring because it's usually the sort of thing that happens to athletes. No I was just walking around in the office at work. Just sorta turned my leg and it felt like my knee said "nah, I'll just stay over here" which the knee part shouldn't do. It should go with the leg. I seriously have the dumbest knees.

But thanks to my extensive, unnecessary research, I have surmised that this is a Grade 1 Pulled hamstring. This hamstring injury is just a child really. And honestly, it does feel better today... except when I try to go down steps because then I have to resist the urge to swing my leg straight out and down to go down the stairs or leg out and up to go up the stairs. I still swing my leg straight but I try to do it subtly and not in a way that says LOOK AT ME! I HAVE A PULLED HAMSTRING!

So my dad suggested that I exercise more and I laughed. And then my sister asked me to start going with her to the gym and I just got confused and said "What would I do at the gym?"

I do think I will start some new exercise though. I just don't know what kind of exercise I'll do. I'm pretty unmotivated right now. Other people are motivated though. That's what's great about other people! They're out there pretending everything is a-ok so I won't have to. God, I love them for that.

I guess I'll ride the stationary bike. I typed that with a shrug. When it gets warm again I will walk outside.

Enough about that.

I bought a new memoir. It's called The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. I can't wait to read it. I love me some memoirs.

I think I'll take the kids to the library on Friday just for the heck of it.

Oh crap. It's after 1. I was going to bed at 1. I guess I'll go to bed at 1:15. I just keep moving the goalposts, I don't want to fail over and over.