That one was a doozy –

It’s not a good idea to be your own doctor . . .

As a doctor, there is a certain amount of analyzing that happens, even in the day to day. There is that inner scientist that wants to look for correlations and make conclusions from the ‘data’. So from my ‘n’ of one round of chemotherapy (in statistical terms ‘n’ is the sample size you are basing your evidence upon) I had determined that I didn’t like some of the side effects of steroids. After my first round of chemo, the chemotherapy medications or the mediations prescribed to help with their side effects caused me to sleep poorly, act/feel a bit more hyper than the norm, feel constipated, and have some fatigue that would last 4-5 days but then I would feel a bit more ‘normal’ for the rest of the cycle. So based on this less than robust scientific analysis, I decided to try taking less steroid the second time around to see if I could still combat the fatigue, but perhaps have less insomnia and other less desirable effects. Well, the answer seems to be no. Although there is the confounding factor of a phlebitis/cellulitis that has popped up from one of my scans, it has taken considerably longer for the fatigue to improve this time around. I am starting to feel the fatigue lifting, but much more slowly, so perhaps those steroids may have been more help than I was giving them credit for – so next time round, I will deal with intermittent spurts of energy, superhuman texting speeds, and cope with the insomnia if it means the fog lifts sooner.

Vanishing acts . . .

Although there has been perhaps MORE fatigue and issue with side effects with this second round, there is significantly less of other things. The most notable, of course will be the hair. That is sort of where we started, isn’t it? My post last Friday left off with my ‘pixie’ cut, but by Saturday I was finding these shorter hairs even a bit harder to contain as they fell out than the longer ones. They were EVERYWHERE! So Matt assisted me first of all with a ‘buzz’ cut which basically only served to highlight the patchiness with which I was losing hair so we went on to the full shave. I am not sure I was quite ready for that transition, but it just had to happen. So now I am trying to feel normal in my own skin (literally) without hair. Sometimes it feels too cold, others too hot, and I am still surprised to look at myself in the mirror – who IS that looking back at me?

Oddly, what I am calling ‘inconvenient hair’ is still holding on for dear life. I was holding out on shaving my legs as I thought I would give those leg hairs one last hurrah, but they are still going strong. I guess this is how men feel as they are losing hair on their head, but those from their ears/nose are becoming more prolific?

And, what else is vanishing besides hair? Well, that pesky lump that started this whole thing, that’s what! If I didn’t know it was there, I wouldn’t even notice it – I know that sounds obvious, but hopefully you will follow me on this. KNOWING it is there, it is hard to ‘un’feel it, but it really is basically – GONE. Having not grown up thinking metrically, (can I use that as an adverb?) my measure of centimeters has come mainly from my training in obstetrics. Those all important centimeters of cervical dilatation – closed, fingertip, 1-2cm all the way up to 10cm or fully dilated. I studied those models over and over as I didn’t want to be the resident crushing the hopes of a laboring mother who thought she had dilated to 6cm only to then be told when checked by someone more senior or experienced that she was only 4cm. My fellow residents will have had similar concerns and my fellow mothers, similar fears. All through my medical career, I have used my training in cervical dilatation to estimate sizes of moles, lacerations, and areas of erythema/bruising if the area didn’t lend itself to measure with a tape or there wasn’t one available. So on that Saturday when I was getting in the shower and ‘felt’ something, that training kicked it to tell me what what I felt was between 2 and 3 cm.

Although I was, of course, concerned with the imaging and pathology along the diagnostic process, finding out what this lump was and what must be done, I will confess that the resident inside me so desperately wanted to know how accurate I had been in my estimation of it’s size. I guess I am just weird that way, but as I used to say in my University of Oklahoma days – normal is boring. I would much rather be weird –

Only for a time . . .

I feel this post is a bit disjointed, but if I had to summarize it would be to say that all of this is a process and will only be for a time. It is something to go through, not dwell in. I am thankful for the hope of there being an end point to this treatment. I am not naive enough to believe that I am guaranteed this, but that is the plan at the moment and so far, there haven’t been any indications to the contrary. Having the privilege of working with the frail elderly, I know that even a long life will have it’s end. I thank God for the hope he has given me in this life, regardless of cancer or any other difficulty as he brings me through this season of it. I was thinking about the two pictures below and that there are likely more parallels than even I am aware of. I was struck by the thought that though the rape field on the left is beautiful, it isn’t in a form that can be as useful as the one on the right. Farmers, please correct me, but I think it is the seed that is used for oil and other purposes. So I hope to keep looking at this process as a ‘useful’ one in my life and I pray that God can help me see it that way –

Thank you for all your comments, thoughts, and prayers of support – keep them coming!