Another update...

I can't believe it's been over two weeks since my last update! No news is good news though! The last few weeks have been awesome - I have felt great! I finally reached a point where the pity parties were no longer! I had to do something - crying every other day because I was feeling sorry for myself was unproductive to say the least! It changed nothing. Finally, the day after Mother's Day, I'd had it and I said no more!!! Seriously, it was ridiculous. What a difference it made - it was so nice to wake up every morning and say (probably 50 times before I even got in the shower) "today is going to be a great day!" I would repeat it to myself several times throughout the day, too - whatever it took, I wasn't going to allow myself to go back to that unhappy place. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge advocate for pity parties, but there just comes a point where you have to accept it and move on or it will literally consume your life and the lives of everyone around you. I wasn't about to let cancer do that!

On Monday, I chopped off all my hair and went into hat wearing mode. I figure cutting my own hair was one of the few things I still had control over. Plus, when it does start to fall out, it will fall out in smaller chunks. I think it will be easier to see small bits of hair on my pillow every morning, instead of chunks that are 5 inches long. I have a wig, but I'm not ready for that yet. I sorta feel like it makes me look a little stripper-esque. I'm actually not sure if I'll ever wear it, but it's there if I need it. Yesterday (Wednesday), I had the port catheter put in. Damn, that was a much more invasive procedure that any of us thought it was going to be. No one prepared me! I had to have a driver, so I knew they'd sedate me a little bit. I figured I'd be there for an hour at the most. My appointment was at 7:30 and I thought we'd be home by 9:00. Ya, right! We got home at 1:30!!! It wasn't a pleasant experience, BUT the sedation they gave me knocked my socks off, so that was nice. I mean, come on, if you're gonna do it, may as well make sure they give you the good stuff, right?! :) And seriously, what is it with me and doctors that are 12 years old?!! My radiologist that put the port in yesterday was so young! I was going to jokingly call him Doogie Houser, but I figured since he would be holding a scalpel to my neck within the next 30 minutes, I probably shouldn't. What happened to the good ol' days when doctors were old and gray? Then for the grand finale of my week, tomorrow is my first chemo treatment. Here's hoping all goes well and the side effects are minimal. All fingers and toes crossed!!!! Wish me luck!

Ethel and Alice have been very bad girls....

I'm quickly learning that cancer could care less about MY plans. Last week seemed like a month. I was sick all week. I saw two dr's on Monday that said I must have just had a virus because I had absolutely no other symptoms, besides the fever. On Wednesday, that all changed. I still had a fever on Wednesday, so I texted my plastic surgeon and asked if I should be worried. She asked if Ethel or Alice had any swelling or redness. I noticed that Ethel had a little redness, but I wasn't sure if it was anything to worried about. So what does one do? I told Alice to say cheese and I took of picture of her and texted it to my doctor. Once she saw the text, she told me to come into the office. Sure enough, Ethel hadn't done what she was told and she had a minor infection. It was nothing that antibiotics shouldn't clear up. Alice, she was still being a good girl and healing nicely. Thursday came and went -- I don't remember much because I was super sick. I felt horrible. I couldn't figure out why I felt so bad. Here we were post surgery by two weeks -- I should be feeling better by now! So on Friday, I was still feeling pretty shitty, so I texted my doctor again, but this time I noticed Alice was getting a little red. And, of course, I was still running a pretty high fever. So, back to the office I go - my appt. was at 3:15. Bobby took me this time, so I didn't take my wallet or anything with me. I honestly thought we'd be home and hour later. When Dr. Chan saw it, she said "I don't like this, I don't like this at all." Great, just what I wanted to hear. So, she did a needle aspiration with one of my favorite 60cc syringes. Thank goodness I couldn't feel it because she filled up the entire thing. She said she would send it off to the lab to find out what kind of infection it was and start me on some different antibiotics. She left the rooom. A few minutes later she came back and said I think we need to change course a bit, we need to go to the operating room tomorrow. I was speechless. However, it quickly became apparent that getting a room on Saturday was going to be difficult because the schedule was full, so we opted for 10:30 Friday night. Then it changed to 10:00 and finally 6:00. When we decided to do it at 6:00, it was already 4:30. We had no time to process anything, we just went. Now that it's all over with, I think not having time to process anything was a good thing. It was a very fast growing infection and we needed to get it taken care of - pronto. If I had waited until after the weekend, it would have gotten much worse and the tissue expanders would have been removed. That would have sucked. As it is now, I'm stuck with 2 drains again. They are such a pain in the butt. I'm amazed at how much better I feel, though. All week last week, my body was fighting the infection instead of healing me from my surgery. No wonder it seemed like I was progressing so slowly. So, since all of this happened, I'm pretty sure chemo won't start this Friday. I'm kind of glad because that means I get to have a nice Mother's Day....so I'm keeping my fingers crossed chemo gets delayed a week or two.