Up and down week, mostly down

Tell me to go take my meds. I haven't done it in nearly a week and I can really tell a difference. It was a hard week emotionally and then I forgot to take meds and I'm just having the hardest time. I'm sick of taking medicine all the time. Take my vitamins, my tamoxifen, Lexapro, spiro-something, and then in the evening, take some more tamoxifen. This is nothing compared to when I was in chemo. At any one time I was taking Emend(3 day round of pills costing $50), Benedryl, Vicodin, Percoset, Neulasta, Lexapro or Prozac, Tylenol, phenegren, AC, Taxol, Gemzar, muscle relaxers, and Ativan. Something to calm you down when you have anxiety. They would give it to me in my IV when having chemo. At one time they were even going to give me Ambien too because I got insomnia so bad. So up to 8-9 meds at one time. Half of them were killing me and making me so weak I could barely get up and the other half was supposed to keep me sane and not puking my brains out. Right now I'd give anything for my bed with fresh clean sheets and a percoset. Just go to sleep for awhile and ignore the world.

Updates on me

It seems like I haven't been updating like I should. I've been in a weird funk so either I forget to update or I don't feel like I have anything good to say.
This past week has been extremely emotional for me. A year ago at this time, I was thinking constantly about my upcoming surgery. Every moment of everyday was consumed by it. My thoughts, my dreams, everything I touched, or felt, or heard was all SURGERY, or YOUR BREAST IS BEING CUT OFF, or YOU HAVE CANCER. So trying to make this year better than last year was hard and I don't know if I was trying to escape my memories of last year or improve on them. I kept telling my dh that I wanted to have a really good birthday because last year sucked so bad. But I didn't know how to make it better. I don't know still what I was looking for. So I was trying to make new happy memories on my birthday while still remembering what happened last year. The same with April 13th when I had my mastectomy. I don't want to forget, but I don't want that date to always bring me bad memories either. So my emotions have been on one giant roller coaster lately.

We have discovered a new hobby called geo caching. You get a GPS handheld system and using the longitude and latitude, you search out little caches that people have left all over the world. We did one at the beach with friends while staying in a beach house that a member of the stake presidency helped build.

Clues are left behind along with the coordinates and you search for it in different areas. We went to www.geocaching.com and searched in our zip code for different easy caches and found a ton of them. So far we are up to 18 caches found. At the beach this past week, I think we found at least 10 of them. It was great! The picture to the right shows what one of them looks like. You can use almost any type of container, but this person used an old ammo can painted with camoflauge colors and hidden in the base of a tree covered with foliage. We had dh, dd, my fil, and nephew together so it wasn't too terribly difficult to find it. Still, it was great fun and filled the time while we were there.

We decided while dh was on vacation that we would go to the beach and go yurt camping. For some unknown reason, we thought it would be fun to invite Jason's parents. An update, I haven't been to my inlaws house for anything since the day I got back from my trip to DC to pick up Lindsey. So it was a big deal for me to want to do anything with them. We stayed away from their home for about a month because I was so sick and tired of how they treated me or didn't treat me. We stopped hanging around so much and let them be the ones to call and want to talk to the girls. They finally did after a month so things have improved. No apologies, but then, I'd fall over dead of shock if that happened. But I digress.

Generally, we enjoy their company when we camp, we've done it together before. We used to play cards together every week until I started chemo and had fun. So why not mend some fences and invite them along. It would make the girls happy and it's always nice to have company. Since Anthony(dh's nephew) is living there, he came along too. My girls adore their cousin Anthony. We finally nailed down that we were staying at Fort Stevens after having our Beverly Beach reservations changed. Too much construction at the park so we were given the option to change. I'm glad we did. Unfortunately, we had the yurts the furthest away from the bathrooms. Thank heavens for Home Depot selling cheap bright orange 5 gallon buckets. That became my bathroom at night. Those dang diuretics I have to take make me have to pee at least twice a night no matter what I drink or don't drink.


The weather cooperated for the most part with piddly rain off an on, mostly off. Our first adventure was going to the Astoria Column. That was a virtual geo cache and all we had to do was enjoy the view to count it as a cache. It also meant that we had to climb the dang thing too. I'm really out of shape and I was wheezing by the first landing. There were 161 steps and that was only step #25. I thought I would die by the time I got to the top. But Chloe did great! She got tired, but she did better than myself and Anthony. Harlo took it slow, Jason did okay, and Chloe was right up there at the top of the pack. It was hard pelting rain with all the wind but I had to take a picture of my brave strong girl up there. Isn't she beautiful?

My memory is gone; my new surgeon

I don't remember if I wrote about this or not, so I'm doing it again. I can't remember anything anymore. I will be going to do something and when I get there, I can't remember why I was going there. I'll remember that I want to email someone and when I get to the computer, the thought is gone and I'll go do something else. Or I'll be talking and I want to say a certain word, but it escapes me. It gets very frustrating and irritating in conversations. I feel like an idiot most of the time. I'm not stupid, but it sure seems like it when you talk to me. I know it's the chemo that did it. That's one of the side effects but I didn't really believe in it till this year. It's a term known as chemobrain. Not a lot of people believe it's true, but until you've gotten it, you don't really understand it. You literally feel like you'r losing your mind.

I need to talk about my appointment before I forget. I found out that my reconstructive surgeon dropped my insurance last year. So I no longer can use Dr. Gray for my big surgery this year and I had to go searching for a new one. I like OHSU and I looked up the surgeons there. The head of the department is Dr. Juliana Hansen and her clinical interests include breast reconstruction after breast cancer. So I chose her since she seemed to specialize in what I was looking for. I made the appointment for April 4th and all of a sudden, the paperwork started pouring in. I had so many forms that I wasn't sure which end was up.

She had her offices in the new building for OHSU by the waterfront. I was hoping to ride the tram, but no such luck. Stinking medical assistant checked me out and then said she's be right in. Uh, an HOUR later she strolls in, apologizing for being late. She checked me out and asked lots of questions. She seemed really knowledgable and answered all of my questions. I wanted to get familiar with a surgeon before I HAD to have one for surgery. She told me that I would be ideal for a TRAM flap procedure, a free tram flap one to be specific. The more I hear about any flap surgery is scaring me. I want it done, but heck! This surgery is going to easily be 10-12 hours long!!!! I'll be in the hospital for a week. One lady on my bc support group online said that her doctor put her in ICU so she would have constant care. YIKES!!! This is not fun. I'm happy I'll get the bonus tummy tuck, but at what price?

Happy cancerversary!!

So it was a year ago yesterday that I sat in a surgeon's office on a Friday afternoon and was told that that I had breast cancer. My dh was next to me crying and I was in SHOCK. I remember trying to joke with Jason and reassure him so that he could calm down. I put my thoughts and feelings aside because it was too much to deal with. By the time I left the office, I was pretty certain I would have a mastectomy over a lumpectomy. I'm glad I decided that then because when they did surgery, the tumor was pretty deep and close to the chest wall and they would've ended up doing the mastectomy anyways.

I wasn't sure how to approach my big day. I didn't know if I wanted to really have a party or go all out and celebrate or even acknowledge it. I was joking for weeks about making a boobie cake or going to buy one. A friend on the internet knew I wanted to do something, so she made me some lovely boobie cookies. You know you have a friend when they are willing to bake you boobie cookies and send them from California. So thank you very much Melissa!! I haven't giggled so much over a package in years!!

What I was able to do was have Lindsey visit the P's home and play with some of her little friends she used to have in nursery. I had lunch with Jason and then I was going to go to the rose garden. But then I thought better of it and went to the zoo. I've never gone by myself and it was a blast! I saw what I wanted to and spent as much time as I wanted at whatever exhibit I wanted to. I didn't have a lot of time, so I went to the polar bears, the lorikeets, and the big kitty places. The polar bears were on display and really very active. The big kitty kept going back and forth and finally got his blanket and flopped down on his big rock. The birdies were my favorite. They are so colorful and LOUD and beautiful. I bought some juice and the birds came and ate it out of my hand. At one time I had like 4 birds on me at once. It was hard to take pictures but the ones I got turned out great.

I enjoyed the time I had alone. Maybe each year on this date I'll have a date with just me and do something fun. Something to celebrate making it to another year. I very rarely do anything by myself that doesn't include staying at home alone. Usually everyone else leaves while I stay. But this time I was able to do what I want and not feel guilty about it. Here's to 50 more years of being a breast cancer warrior!!!!