No Man's Land

Tomorrow I start radiation.  When I went to meet with my radiologist for the first time, I received another reminder of how I'm still in the woods.  I had never met my radiologist, Dr. K, before.  He is so different from Dr. U., who is so loud, animated, funny, and so blunt.  Dr. K is quiet, calm, soothing, sweet, and also funny, but in a different way.  I felt like I had to lower my voice when speaking with him to match his demeanor.  He spent a lot of time with me explaining the process and what to expect.

He also told me I wasn't a slam dunk case, and he was still considering different things for me.  Most of those decisions had to do with which sets of lymph nodes he was going to go after: armpit, collar bone, and/or breast bone.  He said that there were different things he was weighing.  For example, if he does the breast bone lymph nodes, he could expose my heart to radiation, which would later lead to heart disease.  However, if he doesn't do my breast bone lymph nodes, then my chance of recurrence is then a little higher.  So there's not really a win situation with something like that, it's more of a, "What's the least damage we can do?" situation.

He also told me that the area we will be doing will essentially be a large rectangle over my left breast.  It will be from my collar bone, to my breast bone, to below my breast, to my armpit.  I was so disappointed when I heard this.  I thought, naively, that they would just be targeting where my lumpectomy was.  I thought, "Oh this will not be a big thing.  It will just be that little area that hurts."  WRONG!  Ugh, I hate that it's such a large area.  Perhaps what I'm most worried about is that when my hair grows back, I won't be able to shave my left armpit.  Gross.

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I will have to go for 6.5 weeks, Monday through Friday.  Each session is only 10-15 minutes long, but I'm more just irritated that I now have to throw this in to my schedule.  Cancer is so annoying.

A week later I then went in for my simulation, where they used this special tape to outline the area they would be radiating.  Dr. K decided the only set of lymph nodes he's going to do are my armpit lymph nodes.  Once the tape was in place, they put me through the CAT scan so that the radiologists and physicists could analyze my anatomy and come up with a plan.  They then marked one verticle line on my breast bone, and one cross about 5 inches below, and then covered them up with clear stickers.  Then they tattooed a dot on each side of my body.  These marks are so they can perfectly line me up each time I go in.  Then I met the techs and they showed me the room I would be going to each time.

That's the table I'll lay on, and that machine moves at all different angles and is calibrated differently for each person.

In the meantime, I've been busy with packing as much as I can into these last 2 weeks because I know the next marathon is about to start.  I am definitely feeling better than when I had chemo, but I'm still not 100 percent, which has been frustrating.  My legs for the past two weeks have been so achey, sore, and tight.  They feel like I ran a marathon, and whenever I get up after sitting for a long time it takes me a while to get up, and I feel like an old lady.  This has been especially frustrating because I wanted to work out more, but I'm just so tired and sore.  I really need to work out because I know I've gained at least 10 pounds since I started chemo, I think mainly because I've been laying around so much.  I mean, if you are literally just laying on a couch and eating for a week (4 times), that's bound to happen.

I also feel like I'm bruising quite easily.  On Saturday we went to St. Louis and went to one of (what I think) is the coolest places on Earth: The City Museum.  This place is made of recycled and repurposed material, and is like a giant playground.  There are so many floors, tunnels, slides, and crawl spaces to explore.  You start down one path and really have no idea where it will lead you.  Eric, Julia and I started by crawling through this hole in the wall.  We ended up under a train station, and then crawled up and over one of the hallways, and had to climb through what looked like a giant slinky in order to get down and out.  It was so neat!

However, my claustrophobia totally kicked in, so it ended up being mainly Eric and Julia exploring together while I took pictures.  Eric was like a kid in a candy store and could have spent the whole weekend there.  Julia also loved the climbing and exploring and those two were like bosom buddies.  I was so proud of her because at one point, we were outside and were at the highest point possible and she was leading the way!!  She did get scared and kind of froze, but Eric and I coached her to keep going.  I almost had a panic attack as we were up there, because I realized my fear of heights has definitely intensified as I've gotten older.  Eesh!

See that tunnel at the highest point where kids are crawling?  Yeah, we were there!

After all of that climbing, walking, and crawling I was beat.  The next day my legs felt awful and were bruised everywhere.  Yesterday I spent the day cleaning and cooking, and I had to keep taking breaks to lay down, stretch, and put my legs up.  As one can predict, this made me feel frustrated.  I hate that I'm still limited even when I feel like I should be 100 percent.  I just want to go back to how I was, power through, have fun, and get stuff done.  I feel like everything I do is tainted and not good enough.  As I was washing dishes and feeling myself get weaker, I started playing the Wonder Woman theme song in my head.  I'm telling you it worked!  I got a burst of energy and kept going!  I know it sounds lame and totally archaic to be all happy about powering through washing dishes, but when your daily activities that should just be rote, aren't, it's the little things that become victories.

Today I plan on trying to enjoy myself as much as possible.  We always do a bike and buggy parade in our neighborhood, and then we are barbecuing with our closest neighbors.  This year I may even let Julia stay up to watch the fireworks.  (Anyone who knows how strict I am about sleep knows that this is a big deal.)

I feel like I've been in no man's land once chemo ended and I've been waiting for radiation to start.  In the Wonder Woman movie, there was a scene where she shed her coat, climbed up a ladder, and walked right into no man's land.  She fought, inspired others to fight, and they gained ground.  It's time to shed the frustration and self-pity, put the armor back on, and fight.  Let's do this.