I have said throughout this blog that I had an easy go of it comparitively speaking but the period after my second chemo is when things started getting interesting.
On my very first meeting with Dr. E (the loud guy), I had come straight from work meaning I was wearing steel toed boots. I am in a field that requires me to carry tools and frequently climb ladders and such. Over time I have discovered that cargo pants, in addition to being very geeky, are great ways to take a few tools up a ladder without taking the entire, heavy tool bag. In this case, I don't mind losing a very large number of style points for the convenience. I also discovered it was a great way to cheat on my weigh-ins. As I continued to lose weight and have greater difficulty getting calories down I was getting dangerously close to being forced into the stomach tube thing. I made sure I never weighed in without the steel toes and the cargo pants.
It started with leaving the cell phone (the biggest droid made), wallet, keys, and loose change in my pockets for weigh-in. As the last weeks passed I would make sure whatever I had in my hands found it's way into my cargo pants pocket. "Oh I forgot to leave this book in the truck. Guess I will just stick it in my pocket." I remember one day Deb let me know she was aware of what I was doing and while she wasn't going to stop me she also wasn't going to let me endanger myself. That means I needed to keep doing my absolute best to consume calories and not go below the "redline" of 30 lbs lost.
The next challenge was my voice. It had become at best a raspy, whisper thing and some days I had no voice at all. I don't remember being told about that. I don't remember asking about it either. I also wasn't surprised. Looking at my neck in it's present state made me cringe when I thought about what was going on in my throat. Yuck. Cindy, Robin's sister, was driving me to treatment often because I was on the fentenyl patches and couldn't drive myself. She wasn't very familiar with the area so I pointed and grunted her to the treatment center. Saint Beck and my mom received the same type of directions. It was only sort of funny.
Now for the what was certainly in the Top Five Worst Moments of the ordeal. When I had my original meeting with Dr. E and Dr. K, they had told me the treatment plan consisted of 7 weeks of radiation and 3 chemos. One Thursday after the second chemo, I mentioned how many radiation treatments I had left to Dr K. She flips through the file and says, "No, forty treatments takes you until May 11". Ok I was not in the best of shape by now but I quickly checked my math:
7 weeks * 5 days/week = 35 treatments
My math was correct so where did the number 40 come from? "Well, the seven weeks is broad spectrum radiation from the jaw line to the collar bone to include the lymph nodes. The eighth week is a "boost dose" targeted at the primary tumor site." This had never been mentioned to anyone until this day. Moving that circled day on the refrigerator calendar a week further away was one of the hardest things I had ever done. The next day I was having my blood draw for my labs and complained to T about the way the 7/8 week thing was handled. I was already in a bad mood so I thought I might as well go the distance. "No one ever told me what stage I was and I never asked. What stage am I?" T turned around and pulled up my file on the computer, read a few screens and then closed my file. "Why do you want to know, I mean what difference does it make?" I told her when people asked me I wanted to know what to tell them (it may have also been said with a smart-ass tone of voice). The tumor was 1.5 inches by 1 inch, had metastisized to the lymph system and involved 5 nodes on the left side of my neck and 3 on the right side. That made me Stage Four.
That little piece of info had absolutely no impact on me. At all. I didn't care for some reason. I knew in my heart I was winning and the cancer was losing no matter what stage it was.
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