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Thursday, August 6, 2020

YELLOW DAHLIA, SPIDER TREATMENT, BREAST CANCER

         
The color for today is yellow. I love these dahlias that are shaped like a firework. I also have some in pink and white, but they haven’t bloomed yet. Supposedly it calls for rain today (Thursday) and I know my garden is hoping for a thorough soaking. For some reason, my watering just doesn’t do as good a job as Mother Nature.

Today (Wednesday) had been a busy hot day. I went to the Yakima Valley Fruit Market and bought cucumbers and dill so I can make dill pickles tomorrow, probably the least amount I’ve made in decades. Not many people to give them away to any longer.

          Following that, I went on line to search for something I can do to make whatever it is that’s biting me go away. That led to a search for essential lemon oil, or Eucalyptus oil…I prefer lemon. I had to drive to Lynnwood to get some and then stop for a new spray bottle. Back home, I took every single thing off the bed and ran the pad, sheets, duvet through the washer on HOT water and the dryer on HOT. I think the fitted sheet shrunk a bit because I could barely get it back on the mattress.

          While the washer/dryer were doing their business, I moved the mattress off the box springs and sprayed EVERYTHING with lemon oil water. I sprayed well, so I had to wait for the box spring to dry before I could put the mattress back, then wait for the mattress to dry before the cover, yada, yada, yada.

          When I wasn’t roasting and sweating, I began to dust everything in my room, every nook and cranny and ran my Swiffer vacuum over the floor. I moved the bed, moved the other furniture and cleaned every single place I could possibly reach. Did I see one spider??? NOPE!!! And did I see any evidence of spiders as in webs??? NOPE!!!

          This morning when I got up, my underarm not only itched, but it hurt as well. And, the red marks aren’t all shaped like round bites. Some of them are big and funny shaped, as if I’d scratched the area with my fingernails. I’m doing everything possible not to scratch and haven’t a single time today. Since the problem seems to be around my left breast and I’ve had breast cancer in the right one, I found myself wondering if this could be some form of cancer. But I’ve never heard of cancer appearing in this fashion. If I have more evidence tomorrow, then it cannot be my bed so I’ll call the doctor and see if I can go in.

          The very thought of having breast cancer again gives me chills; well, it actually scares the shit out of me. This time I wouldn’t have John here to hold my hand, take me to the appointments and chemotherapy and look after me when things got a little tough. He really was a good husband when it came to the “in sickness” part.

          I remember calling for my mammogram appointment only to find out I couldn’t be seen in March…it would have to be April. Okay, fine, no big deal. Got a call after the mammogram asking if I could come back for an ultrasound. Sure, no problem, it had happened before. At the ultrasound, they asked if I would mind if they did a biopsy…they just weren’t sure what they were seeing. Well, okay, now it’s a tiny bit scary, never done this before. So, they did the biopsy and would call me in a day or two with the results.

          Instead, I got the call the very next day…infiltrating ductal carcinoma. I barely heard another word the nurse said, but did understand I had an appointment with the surgeon for the next day and the surgery would be the following Tuesday. Whoa, this cannot be good, cannot be good at all.

          I left work early and cried all the way home. I sat in John’s lap, barely able to talk, scaring the crap out of him and Thor. I finally got the information out and John was very supportive. I would be fine. We’d get through this, not to worry.

          John went with me to the surgeon the next morning. He was there for the discussion and decision about what to do. He went back with me the following Tuesday and waited during the surgery. It wasn’t clear if they were going to take lymph nodes or not. I kept asking and was right outside the operating room when the surgeon finally arrived. No, no lymph nodes he said. Yes, I insisted, so instead of a local anesthetic, they had to put me out. Later I was glad I insisted.

          We were told the excised tissue had clean edges and the lymph nodes appeared clear, but the material would be sent to the University of Washington for further examination. Then, it was on to an appointment with the oncologist. At that meeting, we were told that the test results showed a very aggressive cancer with more than one-third of the cells replicating at any one time. If, somehow, they missed a single cell…well, I definitely wouldn’t want that.

          So, there would be six rounds of chemotherapy, each one three weeks apart, followed by 30+ radiation treatments and five years of the drug Tamoxifen. So, basically the journey I began in April with the mammogram wouldn’t be complete until the following January, or, five years from that January if I included the drug I’d have to take. Nothing like having your life changed in a very big way.

          I was very fortunate, however, because chemotherapy did not make me sick. In fact, I gained 20 pounds during that time and was told later by the oncologist that isn’t unusual…why wasn’t it mentioned before I indulged myself so much!!! I had chemo on Friday mornings. The first time I came home and got into bed with a bucket beside me. Two hours later, I was starving and that was it for being in bed. Subsequent trips, I would be awake until like 4:00 am Saturday morning, sleep for a few hours, get up have a normal Saturday and Saturday night, then at the crack of noon Sunday, I’d fade into sleep that would last until Tuesday morning when I got up to go to work. That was my routine until November of 2000. And, John went to every single appointment and chemo treatment on the schedule. Even when I told him he didn’t need to because I wasn’t getting sick, he said I wasn’t going to do it all by  myself.

          Once all the treatments were done, it was time to decide what we would do to celebrate. I came up with three options:  1) We could go on safari in Kenya in late March with a travel group from the zoo; 2) we could go to China with my zoo boss in April; or 3) we could rent a luxurious car and travel the United States for a month. We decided on Kenya.

          Still, the cancer process wasn’t done with me. The initial photos in Kenya, my face is normal, but by the end, I have a fat face. Back home, everyone has jet lag which is what I thought I had as well, but it didn’t end. Checked in with the doctor only to find out my thyroid died while I was in Kenya. The nurse who called me couldn’t believe I wasn’t in bed my reading was so low. That was followed by months of fooling around with the medication to get the dosage correct. During that time, I managed to injure myself which led to a month of going to work mornings and going to a health company for occupational and physical therapy in the afternoons.

          Every so often I would go on line to see if there was any information about the breast cancer drugs I was given. Were there any side-affects? It took a few years, but finally there were reports that Cytoxan can cause peripheral neuropathy. No wonder my feet burned and hurt and caused a lot of pain. Thankfully there was a drug that would help…Cymbalta. Later on, CBD cream also helped with this problem.

          Then, my skin began to do funny things as in I kept developing white patches. Welcome vitiligo, another auto-immune disease possibly caused by cancer treatment. The final (I sincerely hope) crappy result from that treatment came when my doctor told me after my annual physical that I was Type II diabetic. How could that be when I went to the gym every morning and didn’t eat a lot of junk? Well, now research is showing there may be a correlation between breast cancer treatment and diabetes. I know someone else that was diagnosed about eight years following treatment which was pretty much the same time for me.

          Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to be alive. I’m happy they had the necessary tools to eradicate the cancer and keep me alive. Even if I’d known what was coming, I would still have elected treatment. Still, I certainly don’t want to repeat the process for the left breast. So, I’m hoping really hot water, essential lemon oil and everything clean and dust free in my room keeps any new spots from appearing tomorrow (today), because if not, I’ll have to call the doctor and get checked out. And if she tells me it’s bug bites, will I be embarrassed…nope, just relieved and pondering my choice of bedrooms.


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