Celebration Day - Last Chemo

I had a very nice final chemo. I got to try out one of the private infusion rooms that I hadn't tried out before. My friend, Stefanie came to visit. The chemo nurses all gave me a congratulations card when I left and told me to come back to show them my hair when it grows out.

The surgery date has been set and, G-d willing, I will have my surgery on April 23rd.

My surgery visualization cd has me visualize all the support people in my life along with magical beings and guardian angels filling up the entire surgery room. Their role is to surround the surgeon, anesthesiologist and assistants in order to keep their vibe caring, gentle and respectful toward me. I hear my surgeon and all his assistants excitedly saying to each other what a great job he's done and my body cooperates fully by slowing down my bleeding.

So in order to help me visualize all of your faces there with me, I have posted more photos of those of you who are on this site regularly but haven't sent me a photo of you. If you don't like the photo I posted, I will delete it - just let me know by email. Or you can send me a photo you'd like me to put up instead of the one I picked. You can check to see if I put your photo up by clicking on Photo Gallery at the top of the page and then click on your photo to see it larger. I was only able to post photos of those of you I could find photos of.

For the rest of you, I would love to get photos to post, if you don't mind. I know I said this before that you don't have to participate and I just ran right over any wishes by posting my own without asking you if it's ok first. I hope you can forgive me and know you are contributing to my healing by letting me peruse the photos whenever I need to remember how many there are of you supporting me.

And thanks to my brother, Larry, who was talking to one of my high school buddy's brothers about me, I was contacted by 4 of my friends from high school who are now participating on these caringpages. Hey, Christy, Katie, Debbie, and Judy, didn't any of us take photos when we met last at the reunion? If so, send me some and I'll post them too. I so appreciate that you are with me now.

So, I have all my relatives' photos up, and now I just need more of my friends and I'll be all set.

I'm still running high on the Decadron and I have to take it tomorrow too. I expect to start to crash tomorrow night or Friday for a few days and then go into a depression next week. So I've scheduled one of those free massages on Monday (she's coming to my house!) and acupuncture on Tuesday, and another free massage on Wednesday. That should see me through my worst days if I have any this time. The kids will be off from school for the break and that should keep me up. And we plan to take them to Point Lobos on Thursday morning (before the crowds get there) and then to Phil's Fish Market for lunch on the way back home.

Geoff and Aimee should be getting some good photos from that trip, so those of you on Geoff's email list for his blog should look forward to photos from our trip.

Hope you have a good rest of the week and weekend. I'll be in bed watching lots of TV. And I've got a DVD too.

Fighting Off a Cold

Wish me luck for fighting off a cold. I've had sneezing and tickling in my nose and low energy and some depression. I slept it off yesterday morning and missed my weekly get together with Bailly. I increased my Marrow Plus and found the symptoms going away. Today I go to Acupuncture to hopefully put this virus behind me. My nose has stopped tickling and my mental state is a bit better though I lost some sleep last night worrying about getting sick and not enjoying my 3rd week of usually feeling better and contemplating the looming surgery.

It was really hard for me to completely stay away from Aimee this time. She had a bad one with fever. It's in my nature to be the healer for this family and especially for my kids and it just kills me to hold myself back so I don't get sick. (I was cocky too since my white count's been normal.) Geoff's great about being the hard-nose to get her to drink fluids. He's good at the hard-edge style of parenting. But I'm the nurturer.

Which reminds me of seeing my clients this weekend. They did like my wig. (But of course, would they tell me if they didn't?) Still, the new client I saw didn't know it was a wig - so that tells you something. Aimee helped me decide which wig was the best for me out of the 4 free ones I've been hoarding. And truthfully, I did think she picked the best one. I felt like Bailly in it. (And that says a lot because she has a really good sheytle - not a free one.)

Anyway, back to the colds. I got a cold prior to my first chemo and so I'm thinking that could be one of the reasons I'm fighting one off now...the surgery looms. Stress from anticipation anxiety gets me many times. I have one more chemo and that only means I'm looking at surgery. And as much as I tell myself that I will lose 6-8 pounds once these are gone, and I will never have to wear bras again, and never have to have rashes during the summertime and am looking forward to getting to eat the hospital food that I couldn't touch last time, it's still my body and it's still surgery.

When in a depressive mood, I do go to thoughts like, the surgery is irreversible and what if they come up with a cure in the near future? Am I making the right decision? Am I going to one day regret not getting reconstruction? Will Geoff be repulsed by me? Will I be repulsed by myself? Are people going to be repulsed if I happen to go without falsies and look completely flat there? Will I handle the pain and the phantom limb feelings? Am I going to be able to handle the drains? Will I be able to do what it takes to get my arm motion and strength back? Will I get lympedema? (Sorry to be so honest about all of this because I know it's not so pleasant to read about this stuff.) And I don't need any advice on it unless you've gone through this yourself and can share your experience with it...after the next chemo (April 1st) I will be meeting with the surgeon to get my questions answered and I know I will eventually find my way through all of this stuff as I have everything else.

G-d sent me a Law and Order that was about breast cancer. I watched it last night. McCoy wanted to nail a healer who was giving women hope that they wouldn't have to have mastectomies. Instead they just died. I realized that was my answer to a prayer about helping me get the right perspective for the surgery.

So I'm looking forward to getting my new guided visualization cd from my acupuncturist today and taking a nap on her acupuncture table and talking to her about our kids Jason and Jake. Belleruth Naparstek also has a cd for surgery (among her many other fabulous cancer support guided visualization cds). They are really wonderful with such positive affirmations on them.

The birds are still singing and I can hear a wood-pecker and it's another beautiful day in Santa Cruz. My mom's coming to visit on Friday all by herself and I'm looking forward to some one on one. It should be good, warm weather for her and I should be feeling healthy and strong and up for all those restaurant meals. I'm also scheduling lots of free massage and did I tell you that they also offer free massage to family members? So I've got to get one for Geoff too.

Depression Sucks

Last night I began to recognize that my mental state was traveling in a southerly direction. It had been heading that way without my knowing it for the past few days...probably since late Tuesday. When I listened to my visualization CD last night, I was awake during the affirmation part and heard her say,

"I know there are times when I become worried, fearful, despairing, sad or angry and I acknowledge and accept what I feel as my inner truth of the moment. I know that the more that I can acknowledge and accept what I truly feel, without criticism or blame, the more I assist my body's natural tendency to be well. More and more, I can soften and release unwanted emotions once they are acknowledged..." (From Guided Imagery Chemotherapy by Belleruth Naparstek)

That's when it hit me that I might be depressed. I was not wanting to acknowledge and accept my feelings because I was ashamed of being so negative. And truly, when I am happy, I get lots of praise in this carepages and in the outside world. And I get unwanted advice when I share the negativity... Being depressed makes me not only feel awful and think negatively, but believe I am a bad person and a failure and everyone else thinks badly about me too.

Being a therapist doesn't make it any easier to understand what a "chemical imbalance" means. Maybe if I was an MD, I'd understand how the chemicals in the brain work and then maybe the idea of depression could be less demeaning since it's not my fault that my brain chemicals are so off. Going through this chemo though brings home the concept of chemicals causing depression. I keep getting reminded of the decadron.

This time wasn't as bad as last time in that after the last chemo/decadron chemical imbalance, I was truly wacko. I could see how irrational my thoughts were and I was literally crying a few times about somewhat bizarre issues. This time, with less decadron, it was more subtle, so it caught me by surprise. But when it was a gorgeous day, and I wasn't able to notice it and wasn't able to make a simple decision like where to go out for breakfast next week with friends and found myself thinking how awful it will be to go through another round of chemo and then to have to have surgery and then noticing I was picking on Geoff in my mind for the littlest thing, and worrying about Aimee having the flu and possibly breast cancer one day and migraines now, and looking at myself in the mirror and only seeing no eyebrows, no eyelashes and...and...and...I knew for sure what was going on.

So I decided to make an appointment with the Katz Center to try on wigs. It was the best thing I could think of to do for myself: Personalized attention that I didn't get when I was too rushed last time. The nurse asked me how I was doing...and I told her...and she reminded me of the decadron. And told me that next chemo, I can prepare myself by scheduling to do something those days that will help me. So I felt proud of myself to have figured that out today. And I came away with another blond wig but a younger style cut that's really cute. (I guess without eyebrows, and such pale skin, blond is the only color that's going to work right now.)

I also went out to Trader Joes with my dad's gift card before Katz. There's no better healing remedy like browsing through a store feeling like you can buy whatever you want. I got macadamia nuts, frozen vegetable samosas, eggplant humous dip, unsweetened Belgian chocolate, frozen broccoli quiches, and a chicken salad that I doctored up and fed to Aimee in a sandwich when I got home. (She's feeling better BTW and her fever is gone.) I also bumped into Doris in the frozen food aisle which was great because I have missed her. She's been busy taking care of her mom.

So I'm sitting here in my new, blond wig, listening to the birds again and loving the warm weather, happy to have recognized a downward spiral and feeling better for having done what I needed to do to help myself through it. I know this was totally chemically induced but of course, even if it wasn't, it's understandable for a cancer patient to feel depressed every once in a while, if not all the freaking time! I am feeling like myself again (T.G.) but know that if those thoughts creep back in, I can always hit Trader Joe's again or the woods or something else. Hey! next time I'll schedule one of those free massages! (I have one scheduled for Saturday...)