Today as I was leaving the house to go to work, at 5:30pm, my oncologist called to tell me that the port surgery was being postponed until next week and chemo is postponed until the following week so that the surgeon can do a sentinel node biopsy at the same time as the port surgery.
I'd had a very rough and anxious day with a migraine, running around, getting everything I would need to start chemo next week. All the veggies to make the mineral broth, the cleaning supplies to clean the house, the medications I needed to take before getting the chemo... Stopping at the hospital to register for tomorrow's surgery...getting poked again twice when they couldn't find a vein to get a blood sample...glad that I'll soon have a port...not sure whether to take exedrin for my headache and ending up taking valium that made me feel depressed and awfully tired and finally taking the imitrex for the migraine and finally feeling better...writing a list of questions for Geoff to ask the anesthesiologist because he was going to call while I was working and I wasn't sure yet if I could eat something for breakfast and what I could eat since my surgery wasn't until 3pm...worried, scared and feeling very vulnerable all day about what is going to happen to my body and how I will handle it all...
And then all of a sudden at the end of the day, at 5:30 as I'm about to leave the house to go see a couple of clients, nothing's happening until the following week!
The oncologist has a good idea though: she wants a sentinel node biopsy before I start chemo so she knows what's going on with the lymph nodes. After chemo, they maybe all cleaned out and then she won't know. Somehow that effects what kind of chemo she decides to give me and whether they take nodes when I finally get the surgery (which she's thinking is going to be a double mastectomy now that they found something on the other side too). If the nodes are negative, then that's good because they won't need to take out lymph nodes during surgery which gives me a chance to avoid lymphodema in the future.
Anyway, it's all such a roller-coaster on my emotions. I took off Thursday next week for the chemo. Now it's not until the following week. And it's very anxiety producing having this thing sitting inside my breast. I do work on visualization every night and every morning. I have a cd that my acupuncturist gave me that's very helpful with really great affirmations which I'll share with you sometime. And still, I have days where I get very nervous about what's going on in there and now I can't wait to get the chemo to stop whatever's going on in there.
So what I tend to do with all this stuff that I can't control (and believe me I would like to ring the oncologist's neck for not thinking of this earlier because I could have had all this done tomorrow had she thought of it this morning), but what I do to help myself through all these disappointments and setbacks is that I tend to believe that everything happens for a good reason and if I don't know what that reason is, then I just need to wait until the reason becomes more clear to me. Maybe it's a good thing because I get an earlier appointment at the hospital and won't have to fast all day. Maybe it's a good thing because it gives me more weeks to take all the immune-building herbs and supplements that I'm taking to shrink this thing and halt it's growth and spread. Maybe it's a good thing because now I won't be nauseous when my parents come to visit and we can go out for dinner. Maybe it's a good thing because now Geoff won't be busy doing something else while I'm needing him. Maybe it's a good thing because now I can go to that class that Dominican has on Monday where they give out free wigs. Maybe it's a good thing because I can go to their nutrition class on Tuesday. Maybe it's a good thing because it gives me more time to use this shampoo that my dentist told me about before the chemo strikes. Maybe it's a good thing because the timing now allows me to possibly go to the desert for winter break if I'm doing alright on the chemo...
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