Flash Away

Ok so it’s almost one week post chemo #2 and things have gone well. I didn’t have any nausea this time around so that was good. I also got my Nuprogen shot which helps keep my white blood count up. That means no major fatigue this time around. I was able to spend Saturday at my church carnival. I literally was out there for 8 hours with no major issue. Last chemo round, Saturday and Sunday weren’t my best days.

So today’s lesson is brought to you by the letter F (said in my best Sesame Street Voice). My biggest current complaint is HOT FLASHES. Every month I get this shot which is supposed to keep my lady bits protected from the chemo. One of the side effects of this is menopause symptoms...hence the hot flashes. These things are a pain in the butt to say the least. They don’t last super long but they happen multiple times per day. Unfortunately the pills I have to take for five years after I’m done with chemo could also cause hot flashes. I am not amused in the least. It’s causing me to have insomnia at night and be randomly uncomfortable during the day. It’s on my lovely list of things to talk to my doctor about even though I know she can’t do anything about it.

On a side note I’m back on my work-out game big time. I’m trying to hit the gym daily (Monday – Friday) either before I start working or during lunch. I feel great and my mood has definitely leveled out. I even bought a work-out mat so I can do full body exercises. I’m working out in my neighborhood gym since no-one really uses it and I have space to do everything. Of course I’m not going to overdo it and am taking baby steps. I’m 100% staying away from any chest exercises. I’m still cooking up a storm and did Roasted artichokes and a chicken meal. It was so awesome! I posted the picture below.

On the hair update I'm still enjoying the wigs but of course the hot flashes are now turning that into no fun. I told someone the other day that it's like playing dress up everyday. I get to decide who I want to be. I had a spurt of hair loss today when I went to take my shower after my work-out. It had already started growing back from when I cut it 2 weeks ago. I'm considering shaving it again but i'm not sure. Hopefully a bunch more will come out tomorrow and i'll be smooth by the end of the week. If not then it's razor time!

It's a Numbers Game

So it’s Wednesday and Chemo Day. My mom was coming with me this week so I had to switch my labwork appointment to Monday. See it’s a game when it comes to the chemo room. It’s like those college classes where you needed to come early to get the best spot. There are 12 cubby’s in the breast cancer center. Only one has to recliners. Seeing that my mom is in treatment as well I knew she couldn’t sit on one of those hard chairs for 3 hours. So with all that in mind we had an 8am appointment and came in two days early to do my labwork. As soon as we got here (8:13 am) there was another lady here with her husband. So I was like ohh Crap we needed to be so much more ontime. But God was looking out for me! The lady had to do Labs so I was called in first and was able to go on back.

On Monday I had two appointments. The first one was with the plastic surgeon to get fills and the second was with my Oncologist to get my White Blood Count (WBC). During my PS visit the nurse went over how many fills I had. At first she was counting incorrectly and said I had seven. By the time she recounted and looked closely I only had 5. So that was 300 cc’s of liquid not counting how much ever I got during surgery. She says for a fuller size they usually go to 480 or more. So that’s at least two more expansions but we’ll see how much my skin can take. Needless to say the FOOBs (fake boob expanders) are getting a little offensive. I told ppl at the end they would be really offensive in size so I’m interested to see what the next fill looks like.

So here’s your educational lesson for today. Your WBC’s fight off an infection. When ppl have chemo it kills all kinds of cells including WBC’s. That’s why my hair is falling out and my skin is SUPER smooth J. In any case a cold to a chemo patient could be death because of the body’s inability to fight it off. In any case before you can get chemo  they check your counts. If it’s too low then you have to get a shot. I wrote about this last week http://pandthebigc.blogspot.com/2012/05/ok-so-its-been-while-since-i-posted.html. So my doctor is like your counts dropped so low from the first chemo that you need to get a shot ever round. Instead of getting the less harsh drug she’s going to give me the more harsh one at a lower dose. So we’ll see how it goes this time around. I only have to do one dose the day after chemo instead of with the other drug I had to do two shots the week after. In any case I’m in chemoland today so I’m of to drink my fluids and get back to work. Yes I am working again today during chemo.. Why not. I have to keep it moving!

Hair Today Gone Tomorrow!

Ok so it’s been a while since I posted. Not because I’ve been ill but because I’ve been crazy busy with work. So now that my customer is Live… I can update everyone.

 So let’s start with my post chemo fun. For the most part I had no side effects. The trick is to drink TONS of water and keep food in my stomach. So I had to eat 6 meals a day. Unfortunately I’m not really thrilled with that. In any case I had 1 morning of nausea (like 10 min) and it was because I didn’t eat enough the night before.  I went in to see the doctor for a follow-up on Wednesday and they did some lab-work.  The doctor came in and said how my white blood count (WBC) was SUPER low. It’s supposed to be 1500 and it was 220. She’s like ohh are you tired? I was like umm not more than usual. So then she said I had to get a shot today and tomorrow to get my body to produce more WBC’s. The thing about this shot is it causes bone pain. Not like joint pain but BONE pain. I got the shot on Wednesday and had no issues. Then on Thursday about 2 hours after the shot I stated being in pain. Within an hour it was pretty bad. I remembered that ladies on the discussion board said Claritin helped. Nadia was out at church so she got some on her way home. I was a bit sore the next day but the pain went away.

One of the things that I’ve obsessed about has been my hair. Not because I was sad about losing my hair….But because I’m literally just sitting and waiting for it to fall out. So on Monday May 7^th I asked my sister to cut it off. I HATED waiting every day for it to fall out. I can be a control freak at times so I wanted to do it on my timetable. We left about a half inch all around. This Monday the hair that was left started falling out. Not a lot, but enough. So I called up my friend, who I already drafted to shave my head, and said it’s time let’s do this! There were no tears and it was smooth sailing. I do have some wigs from when Nadia had to shave her had after her surgery. So I wore them last week to get used to it. Below are some pictures.

After the clippers made it's first pass:

Clean shave! No hair...

Wig #1

Wig #2



Three Days of non-Stop Fun!

WARNING: This is a long post but it's so worth it!

Ok so my week has been crazy busy. On Monday I had my Tissue expanders filled. They are looking quite nice right now. They’re like a small C big B. I picked my mom up from her house so she could see the process. Of course now that I’m getting larger the lady is asking me what size I want to be and then when I respond she’s amends her previous number of fills left (1 or 2). To say we’ll fill you until your skin can’t take it. Maybe 3 or 4 more fills. I’m not sure if there’s that much room in there but we’ll see. I’ve had weight issues all my life and if I gain weight again; which I hope won’t happen; I’m going to want my boobs not to be too small for my frame. You may say but if you get smaller then your boobs will be too big for your frame. That’s when I say ummm what’s the problem with that. LOL. I’m young and by the time I have to replace them (15 yrs) I would get smaller ones.

Next on the cancer train was my port placement. For some reason I was more nervous for this than my original mastectomy surgery. After talking with my oncologist (cancer doctor) we decided to get the port placed in my arm, a little above my inside elbow.  The port is a small catheter which goes under you skin and connects to a major vein. It has an special section where the nurses connect a needle to. This allows for easy delivery of medication. Also the nurses don’t have to look for a vein every time you need something.  Even though I’m only having 4 treatments I didn’t want to have to deal with getting stuck and dealing with the bruises. Especially since surgery I’ve had issues with my veins.

In any case the night before surgery the nurse form the hospital calls (while I’m doing my nails, b\c that’s what is important), and is asking me all these lovely questions. Then we start talking about blood pressure and IV placement. The thing is when you have a mastectomy you’re not supposed to have your blood pressure (BP) taken on your arm. Seeing that I had a double mastectomy I’m supposed to have the BP taken on my foot. The problem is that my foot BP is like 30+ points higher when it’s only supposed to be like 10 or 15. I’m also not supposed to get blood taken or IV’s placed in the arms. This is all due to lymphedema (where your arm swells up b\c the lymph fluid has no place to go). I didn’t have that many lymph nodes taken so I’m at a lower risk. However seeing that I got cancer at 26 I’m not trying to chance it. In any case he’s like we can discuss it in the AM. My nurse first asks me about the BP and I was like if it’s a one time BP then pls take it on my arm b\c my leg is SUPER high. She’s like ohh it’s one time and u won have to do it again. Next thing I know the anesthesiologist is asking me about taking my BP. I AGAIN re-explain the situation and he’s like ohh well take it on you leg it’s fine. After he tries to get the first reading he looks up to me and is like ohhh I need to take it on your arm so I can get a baseline..SMH. The nurse then says if she can get the IV in one stick I’m fine. I’m just like it’s 7am and I’m not in the mood. She sees a “Good Vein” and proceeds to put the IV in and guess what happens…NOTHING! So I have to get stuck in the top of my hand. After all that I get wheeled into the room. Slip over to the bed then they put me out. I wake up in recovery feeling good. My mom takes me home and I continue working (I worked in pre-op and post op) … No Judgment!

My Loveley IV (Check out them nails):

It Looked nice and neat when I woke up:

The Chemo train comes to town on Wednesday 5/2/2012 at 8am. Of course like everything else in my list it’s not on time! So I get there late by about 15 min. I wait another 20 and finally get called into the back. Nadia and I end up at this nice back corner with 2 recliners (the other rooms have a recliner and a chair). We wait another 20 min while all the ppl who got seated before us are now getting weighed and their ports accessed.  It’s not a quick process and we literally had like 7 women before us. My doctor works for the Memorial System in the breast cancer center at the regional hospital. It’s in a separate building across the street, and EVERYONE is super sweet. So because I had my port placed yesterday the nurse was extra gentle pulling off the wound dressing. We took it off and I nearly fell out my chair. I had the biggest ugliest bruise I ever had in my life. The actual incision doesn’t look bad but everything around it is awful. In any case the nurse begins to say she shouldn’t spray the area to numb it b\c I could damage the skin since it’s bruised. She says it just feels like a pin prick and I’m like ok. Her access the port was like 2 seconds and it 100% didn’t hurt.

So then I wait another 20 min or so for pharmacy to get my meds together. We get started at sometime after 10 and are done at 1:30 ish. The whole process goes a little something like this. You get a pre-treatment cocktail of preventative drugs for 20 min. It has anti-nausea, steroids and other stuff. Then I get my first drug for and hour and 15 and my second for an hour. They do each drug rather slowly so they can determine if you have any issues. On the second drug I had to ask her to slow it down b\c I was having sinus issues. That is one of the possible side effects so it wasn’t a biggie. After all of that we were done! I feel fine but a little tired. They say in order to keep the nausea away you must eat 5-6 meals a day and drink plenty of water. So I’m working on all of that. I’ll post before the end of the weekend explaining if I have any issues. Thanks for reading I know it was long. Below are the last two pictures which includes my SUPER bruised arm.

Nadia and I in our Super Comfy corner:

My ugly arm: