Treatment #3

Hi everyone,

After having my 3rd treatment I have realized that it never gets easier.  Some people say the first one is the hardest and some say the second one is the worst but I say they all have sucked equally :-)  After the second treatment a lot of my hair fell out all over my bed and in the shower which was a bit overwhelming to say the least but there was enough to style on my head and really you couldn’t tell all that much yet.  This time I have the vacuum out with the amount of hair that’s falling out.  Okay so here is how the treatment days go.  I pack the Chemo hats and take a ride with either my mom or my dad and we sit in the waiting room with everyone else that has their poison day on the same day and time as me.  The saddest part of it is that it’s always full when I go to the chemo room.  So many people needing to be treated and so many ports and so many IV's.  I hall all of my stuff to the back room where they give me my Lupron shot.  This shot is the one that is supposed to help me go into menopause so that the chemo doesn’t kill my eggs in a “fingers crossed” sort of way.  After taking the shot that makes me a crazy woman I get my port accessed.  Then I sit in the room with the other cancer patients while we all become loopy (ativan) and have funny conversations.  The pain doesn’t start right away.  It usually sets in with the feeling of the flu with being weak and my skin hurts and body just doesn’t feel right.  By the time I get home I feel like hell and from then on the pain and worst part of this whole process begins and that’s the chemo recovery.  I don’t eat much for 5 days and don’t remember much either.  I take the meds I need because my family is here to remind me but if it were up to me it wouldn’t be done correctly.  The days go by as a traumatic blur and the hardest decisions I have to make are whether to take this kind of med for stomach pain and not take the one for nausea or take the one that helps me calm down but then I can’t take the one that helps with severe stomach pain blah blah.  After the first 3 days of recovery my body tries to flush out the toxins buy sweating moving wastes through but this process is another major painful one that I wish didn’t come with chemo.  I feel like im passing glass and rocks in my stomach and i can hardly stand.  It gets so bad that it makes me sweat and shake until it passes or moves to a place that doesn’t hurt anymore. On or around the 5^th day my resting heart rate is over 100 and I can’t fill my stomach fast enough with food. I went back to work today and my brain is kind of there and kind of in the mind of an angry menopausal woman who keeps sweating.  Tomorrow will be better and from here is where I catch up from missing 5 days of normal life.  Once I get caught up then I have another treatment and it all starts over again.  I must say though I would love to be married and have kids and a great career with my husband by my side wondering what candles and furniture would enhance our house.  I can appreciate that amazing and blessed life.  I do myself have a blessed life with amazing people that surround me with love and support and a job that I love with many many blessings.  I do have a different respect for the life I saw myself living at age 31 though.  I did see myself married with kids and an established career but im here fighting for my life every other week balding, single, with breast cancer and unsure i can have children when all this is over.  All of the scars I ever had on my hands and feet have turned brown and my finger nails have turned dark.  My hair hasn’t fallen out in giant clumps but enough to cover my pillow every morning.  I think I’ll just shave it soon and bite the bullet.  My arm and leg hair hasn’t fallen out and my eyebrows and eye lashes are still there but not growing so I’m not waxing. When I eat I usually get hair in my food mouth or eyes and its gross.  I’m the least bit feminine and have become very human and flawed with no way to cover it up in the last few months.  In the whole superficial aspect of all of this I have had to chop my outer beauty completely and become my natural self with grey skin and no hair. Who would have thought? But after this I will appreciate and do appreciate all of my blessings.  I know everything happens for a reason. If i calculate it right I dont see the sun for 5 days after treatment and have treatment every other week for 4 months which makes it so ill miss 40 days of rain or shine for 120 days of chemo and if anything i appreciate every day I can go outside and feel the sun or cold on my face.

 overwhelming and not sugarcoated but REAL