So I go off to job interview #13 today. The Census Bureau. I really hope I get this job. I'll be even happier if they tell me they have openings in Baltimore or the NVA area. We gotta get out of this area soon, before I implode or something.

I want to thank everyone who sent comments, both on my LJ and in my email inbox. You guys don't know how much your words meant. The sweet comments, the funny comments, and yes Bowser, even the comment you sent about my nether regions, were all greatly appreciated. I was totally not looking at the big picture. I'd forgotten how many of you care about me. I'd stopped listening to the advice I give to everyone else all the time, and stopped seeing myself for what I am. Thank you all so much for caring about me!!! Hopefully someday I can repay you all somehow, and lift up your spirits when you're feeling at your worst.

I had the last of my current chemo treatments on Monday. The next day, I usually get Neulasta, but this time I got some other shot as well. With the holidays and all the traveling Steve and I have been doing, I haven't had time to look into it. I guess my next set of treatments isn't going to be just one drug like I had thought, either. Again, haven't had time to look into it. It's so frustrating, to be told one thing and then find out at the last minute that it's going to be worse than you thought it was going to be, that I just don't really care right now I guess. I was looking forward to only having to be hooked up to the pre-meds and then ONE bag of chemo drugs for the last four treatments. It seems like such a dumb thing to look forward to, doesn't it? I guess it was. I had even fooled myself into thinking that maybe it wouldn't bother me as much, physically, as it has so far. I mean, one drug instead of two? It has to be better, right? Right now, I feel like I'm just standing in this huge deep hole being buried in drugs, and there's nothing I can do about it. I have no control over my own life any more. I've never been the one that says "I can't", but it seems any more I can't do anything on my own without some kind of help. When I do, it takes so long to get anything done that I'm angry and frustrated by the time I'm done. Everything is so frustrating right now. I feel useless, and worse, I feel like a burden on the one person who's been taking the brunt of everything that's been going on lately. If it weren't for Steve, I'd give up.

I'm up so early even the cats are still asleep!

LOOK WHAT I GOT FOR CHRISTMAS!!!!! :
http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn50/esparksjr/Christmas%202009/img098.jpg

My friend Terry B called this morning to wish me a Merry Christmas!! It was nice to hear from him again, I plan to call him back as soon as I've had some caffeine and I sound somewhat human LOL!

The cats are liking it here at Steve's Mom's house in PA. They're not used to having so much ROOM to run around in, and they've terrified poor Spencer (the resident cat), but I'm sure he'll come around soon.

I hear other people waking up now, so I'm going to go downstairs and make some coffee and socialize :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!! I'll post the loot list for Steve and I soon!

New pictures of my jokester (Loki) and snarkster (Isis) cats up on my Photobucket album!  Please ignore the Olivia Newton-John pics in there.  No, I'm not going to explain them :P

http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn50/esparksjr/

My best friend Jim called me today.  It really was good to hear from him.  It's been too long!!!  I can't wait for him to meet Steve XD
Jim and I are both a little worried for our friend Terry B.  Terry, if you're reading this, you're loved very very much!!! Don't give up!  

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

So, I was in Beltway Plaza in Greenbelt today, and I experienced my first case of blatant discrimination.

I was in the Beauty Shop, trying to find a wig that wouldn't look positively ridiculous on me.  I asked the girl at the front desk if she could help me, and she pointed to the back of the store and said there was someone back there that would help me.  So, I went to the back of the store and stood amongst the several dozen wigs and weaves (of which I couldn't even tell the difference) and waited a few minutes.  Nobody came, so I started to wander back towards the front and came across another girl who looked almost identical to the girl at the front desk, except she was wearing a different colored shirt.

I ask the second girl if she can help me.  She looks at me sort of blankly, so I explain that I'm looking for a wig.  When I said the word "wig", she seemed to sort of brighten up, like you do when someone's speaking a foreign language to you and says a word you recognize at last.  She had Oriental features, so I assumed she maybe didn't know that much English yet.  She pointed at my hat, which was a present from Steve, and said "you need wig, you have mange there?"

I was a little bit shocked, but I thought "well, maybe she's just used to getting mange victims in here or has never seen a cancer patient or something..."

I explain to her that no, I don't have mange, but I've lost my hair from chemotherapy treatments.  By this time, the first girl has wandered over and is standing nearby.  Both girls start giggling.  The second girl looks me over again and says "I sorry, we can't help you, we not have white girl wig here".

At this point, I'm nearly in tears.  Nobody's ever been quite THAT insensitive to me about my hair, and I know it doesn't look very nice, but there's nothing I can really do about it until I'm done with my treatments.  There was one other woman in the shop, an older woman who had been looking through some hair care products nearby and she had heard the conversation.  

She came over and kind of got between me and the two girls and said something about going to the store in Hyattsville to get what we needed, since our money wasn't any good there.  I don't even really remember what all she said to them now, my ears were kind of ringing and I think I was too shocked to listen to much of anything.  She and I both left without buying anything.

BUT!!!  This story has a happy ending!  Did you think I'd tell it to you if it didn't?  HA!

So, I left the mall in Greenbelt and drove to the mall in Hyattsville on East-West Highway.  They had a beauty shop (not the same chain of stores, I can't remember the name of the chain in Hyattsville right now).  I went inside and sort of skittered to the back of the store like a cockroach trying to escape the light.  A young girl came over to me and asked if she could help me, and I said I was "just looking at some wigs."  She helped me find the color and style that I wanted, and she also gave me a 10% discount.  She told me to let her know in advance if I came back and wanted another one, and she'd order in anything I wanted (color, style, etc).  She had swatches of hair that she said she could order a wig in any style, any of those colors for me.  She explained the difference between human-hair wigs and the plastic-hair ones.  She also threw in a bottle of detangling spray, without which you can barely comb a wig (we all know this from our experience with Halloween wigs!!).  

She was incredibly helpful and friendly.  If I hadn't been turned out of the store in Greenbelt, I never would have bothered to walk into the much smaller store in the Hyattsville mall.  It's a good thing I did!!  I came home with a very lovely blonde wig, which I can't wait to wear for Christmas!!!  It looks very realistic, even though it's not human-hair.  The lady at the store even took the extra time to show me how to comb it and care for it.  Oh, and I got a nice little foam wig stand there for a couple of dollars, also. 

So it started out kind of a yuck day, but it turned into solid awesome!!  See, this is why you can never give up when things look bad.  They'll always balance out in the end, if you just keep your head up and keep your eyes open for it!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a Happy Holiday this season.  And while you're out there and in a big hurry, please remember how it feels to be the other guy.  Be nice.  Let people in who are having trouble getting off the on-ramp when the traffic is heavy.  Let the guy with a single item go in front of you if you have a huge cart full of stuff.  Turn off your cell phone when you get to the register, and thank the person who rang you up.  Dim those horribly bright lights on the freeway!!!  LOL!

Above all, be careful and safe!

So it's almost Christmas!!  I can't spill the beans just yet, but I got some stuff for a few people, and I made some stuff for some other people  that I plan to bring them as soon as the weather breaks too.  All in all, considering that I haven't been able to get hired anywhere (despite over 12 job interviews in the past month!!!), I didn't do too shabby this year.  

I can't seem to really get into the spirit though.  I sorta did a couple of weeks ago, and I made a bunch of cookies and we got a tree and decorated it and whatnot, but now.... maybe I started too soon and burned myself out on it?  But then again I really didn't feel it all that much yet at all, and it's just sorta... gone.  Not there.  We leave again in three days to go back to Steve's Mom's house to celebrate Christmas.  I hope I can find it before then!  His whole family has really been just amazing.

I got sorta sick this morning.  I may have been awake too long yesterday/last night and probably ate too many cookies as well.  Possibly had a bit too much caffeine.  It's hard to say.  At any rate, I felt like slime mold when I woke up.  I scraped myself out of bed and kind of wandered around downstairs for a few minutes, and then I got dizzy and nauseous kind of really suddenly.  So, I went back upstairs and went back to bed for a little while.  Steve came up to check on me a couple of times.  Spencer curled up beside me and determined to heal me through the power of his tuna-breath.  Spencer won LOL.  The nausea and dizziness let up and I scraped myself back out of the bed and dumped myself into the shower.  After cleaning up I felt human again, and went downstairs and helped bake some cookies.  

On the way home I started to feel a bit crummy again.  Now, things that go in solids are all coming out liquids.  Very yuck.  Will call Dr Anan in the morning and see if there's anything that can be done about this.  I don't have a fever or anything.  Maybe it's some sort of virus or something.  Lovely timing :-P

So, I'm battling the wonderful insomnia present that my treatments always give me tonight.  I've literally been lying in bed upstairs since 11:45pm trying to keep my eyes closed long enough to sleep.  It's the steroids that they give me to offset the effects of the chemo, I think.  It usually only lasts one night (or at least it has in the past), so I'm not overly concerned about it. 

Yay for treatment #3 out of 4 of the double-dose done!  Next treatment is RIGHT after Christmas.  Speaking of which, I baked more cookies today, since we took all of the last batch to a Decemberween party at a friend's house.  We had a pretty awesome time there.  Got to rock out on Rock Band for the Wii (which was the only system I'd never played digital guitar on yet!), and found out that I'm not the only one who can't carry a tune in a dumpster!!  I got the coolest friends EVAR.  They baked a turkey that was melt-in-you-mouth yummy, and even I loved it (even though I've been screaming for weeks that if I see one more ounce of bird meat I'll kill the person trying to feed it to me LOL). 

This holiday season has been kind of odd all around for me.  For starters, I'm not used to eating turkey.  My family served ham, chicken, candied yams, cranberries (the jelly kind that come out in the shape of the can), corn, mashed potatoes... sometimes green beans too... salad... but we never had turkey at the holidays.  This year, I've partaken of at least 4 different gobblers, all of which have been excellent, none of which have been dry at all.  Well, mine was a little bit dry, but it was still better than I expected it to turn out.  Nobody did candied yams except for me (but mine disappeared pretty quick, so I assume they were yummy).  I saw cranberries once, but they were the real kind, and they weren't shaped like the can, so I avoided them due to the seeds LOL. 

I found out the other day that, between Mom's work schedule, extremely tight money issues on my side, and not really being up to traveling all the way to Ohio and back in one weekend right now... I won't get to see my son this Christmas.  I'm not going to say anything more on this, except that it sucks more than a lot.

Other than that, looking forward (sarcasm) to the next two days.  Today will be exhaustion and a Neulasta shot.  Tomorrow will be better, but I'll be dazed and confused most of the day.  Thursday is always heavy nausea day.  Last time, I tried to take these pills Dr Anan had prescribed for the nausea.  They cost $50 for THREE days' supply.  I'm not sure whether to be thankful that they didn't work or not.  At any rate, the reason they didn't work is because they gave me a migraine, which in turn made me nauseous all over again.  He also prescribed a cheaper anti-nausea drug ($10 a bottle).  I took a couple of them after the headache wore off on Friday after my last treatment, and they seemed to work much better.  I'll start taking them tomorrow, and we'll see if they can handle it.

Not having much luck finding a job, even a part-time one, despite it being Christmas and looking for work in the retail sector.  Nobody wants to hire someone who is guaranteed to miss two days of work every two weeks due to chemotherapy and its aftereffects.  That, and work is just hard to come by around here if you're not truly fluent in Spanish. 

Off I go now to make frosting for the gingerbread and sugar cookies I baked last night.

So, I've finished up with treatment #2.  I was apparently confused about how the treatments were supposed to go, but Cynthia (the nurse at the chemo lab) straightened me out.  I'll be getting 4 treatments in a row of the Adriamycin and the Cytoxin, and once those are done then I'll get 4 treatments of the Taxotere.  Seems much less confusing this way LOL!

So I was tired after the treatment yesterday, but Steve bought a Christmas tree and I didn't feel like going home (the apartment was kind of depressing me lately, what with being there all the time).  So, we went to Target and I picked out some decorations and "stuff" to sprinkle around the house and our tree.  Pictures are uploaded to my gallery here on LiveJournal, which can be reached here:
http://pics.livejournal.com/melissa_hendrix/

It all looked so nice, I had to take pictures of it today.  I think we did pretty well for our first time decorating together.  We didn't even argue about where to hang any of the ornaments!  Of course, it helped tremendously that Steve did all the lights and garlands on the tree.  I never have had the patience to do that properly. 

So yesterday I was just a little bit tired.  Today, I have the sunburn-like rash going on again like I had last time.  It doesn't hurt too much though. 

My laptop keeps beeping, and it's really annoying, and I have no idea why it's beeping.  Hopefully, Steve will be able to fix whatever's wrong with it.  If not, I might not be online for a while.  It's not a Windows beep, because I have the speakers turned off.  There's something wrong with the system itself. 

Okay, now that LiveJournal is finally back up again, and I've got my impromptu "sunburn" under control, here are the details on yesterday's fun:

I went back to Dr Anan's office for my first chemotherapy treatment yesterday at 9:45am.  The treatment was given through the porta-cath that was just surgically installed in my artery on my chest.  It's like a permanent IV that stays just under my skin.  The treatment was given in three separate IV bags.  Here's what was in each bag and what each one did:
Bag #1 included Zofran (32 mg) for nausea and Decadron (10 mg), which is a steroid that helps counteract many of my other side effects.
Bag #2 was 110mg of Adriamycin.  See my first post for details about that one.  It's red, and it turns your urine orange for the first day or so after you've gotten it.
Bag #3 was 1,110mg of Cytoxin.  See my first post for details about this one too.
Between each IV bag, my IV was flushed using a saline solution given into the IV line using a syringe.
After the last of the three bags was empty, they removed the IV from my porta-cath.  Normally, I would have gone home then, but there had been a breakdown in communications and I wasn't aware beforehand that I was supposed to come back in the next day to get a Neulasta shot.  After some consultation and a promise from me that I'd make sure to have transportation arrangements made for the next treatment (which will be 12/1/08) and the Neulasta shot to be given the day after (12/2/08), they allowed me to take the Neulasta shot (1,000 mg) on the same day instead of having to have someone miss work in order to bring me back the next day for it.

When I first left the Doctor's office, I felt fairly light-headed and dizzy.  I imagine this is what causes the nausea.  I've been nauseous off and on until this morning, when I started feeling much better as far as the nausea goes.  I burped often, so that might have contributed to the nausea as well.  The light-headedness lasted most of yesterday evening, and only tapered off while I was asleep last night.  This morning, I woke up with a sunburn all over my face, which slowly spread to my chest and the insides of my elbows.  It's not quite as painful as a real sunburn, but it has a lot of the same characteristics.  Slight burning, redness, it actually kind of makes me look less sick than I feel LOL!  This afternoon, I developed a headache.  I'm not sure if it's contributable to the chemotherapy or not, but it's starting to really annoy me.  It's kind of like a toothache, where it just keeps thumping along with my pulse and it just won't stop.  I'm going to go ahead and take some Tylenol Extra Strength (they gave me some at Dr Anan's office, and that might be why I didn't have one yesterday) and hopefully I won't have to take any tonight or tomorrow.  I don't like taking any medication for too long, because of the damage it could do to my liver or kidneys, so I tend to maybe let the pain bother me a lot longer than I should, just because I'm paranoid about damaging a major organ with them. 

FYI, I still have my hair :-P
I knew a lot of people would be wondering about that, and it seems to be the thing most people who know me seem to be focusing on, and I'm not sure why.  Honestly, it'll be nice not to have to mess around with 20 pounds of frizzy Italian hair for a few months.  Besides, it will grow back, and I've been warned already that it will grow back even THICKER than it was to begin with, which I'm REALLY not looking forward to.  Here's hoping for nice straight hair!!

So Steve told me I was supposed to take it easy today, and I did, for the most part.  I did start a little project though, because my closet is driving me out of my mind.  So, I took most of what's in there (which has been in there for months and all smells like smoke) out and put some of my clean clothes in there.  At least the clean clothes smell nice, and I can get to them now too LOL!

I also found my cross-stitch basket last night with the denim jacket still waiting for me to finish the eagle I was stitching on the back of it.  I wonder who might get that for Christmas?  I'm thinking my father might appreciate it the most, but then again it might not be big enough to fit him.  Most of the people I know are going to get something home-made from me for Christmas, because I just don't have any money at all right now.  I'm fairly certain most of them will be understanding about it.  I know my son will, Joe's the awesome sauce :-D  I think Mom will really like the present I'm making for her. 

- On 11-5-08, he wants a CT scan done
I went to have this done at the Greenbelt office of Community Radiology.  For those who have never had a CT scan done, here's basically what happened...
I showed up at 10:00am and was given two bottles of chalky, fruit-flavored disgustingness to drink.  This was a medium for the dye that they would be giving me later on.  I had to wait for an hour after choking them both down so that the stuff would be all through my system.  An hour later, I was called back into the CT scan area.  They gave me an IV (by now, I've become so used to these things that I can even tell them which veins will bruise and which ones won't).  The IV was hooked up to a little machine, so that the Radiologist could control exactly when the solution would switch from saline to dye.  The CT scan machine is a sort of donut-shaped thing (of course, I'd compare it to a yummy food item...I gotta keep my spirits up somehow!).  It makes a low humming sound, but nothing loud or migraine-inducing.  The Radiologist goes behind a screen after making sure your IV won't move, and you lay on your back with your arms up over your head while he moves the table by remote control through the donut-shaped machine.  After you go through the machine and back once, he comes over the speaker in the room to let you know that he's switching the IV over to dye.  You wait a few minutes (4 minutes, I think he said), and then he sends you through the machine again.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to see the images he took.  I'll ask Dr Anan for a copy of the report on Monday, though.

- On 11-7-08 he wants a portable IV surgically installed on my left side
When Steve and I showed up to get this done, the parking lot was an absolute circus.  They don't have a parking garage, it's just a huge lot, so it's always kind of hard to find a spot.  This time, we couldn't find one no matter what we tried.  So, I had him drop me off at the door and go home.  He wasn't happy about that, but we really didn't have any choice.
They've gotten so used to seeing us together at the hospital, that they automatically asked where he was when I walked in alone.  I explained that their parking lot was completely full, and they commiserated, telling me that all the wacky-looking construction going on was supposedly for a new wing to the hospital and also a parking garage, and that hopefully the parking situation would be fixed soon.  As it is, the nurses who work there have to park down the street at the church, and ride a shuttle bus in to work. 
The routine was the same as it always is, for the most part.  They took me back to the pre-op room and got the IV started, put all the nifty little plastic bracelets on me, and had me pee in a cup so they could make sure I wasn't pregnant.  The difference this time, was that they wheeled me back to the operating room BEFORE they gave me any anesthetic.  Needless to say, that is NOT a fun experience.  I mean, the operating room is squeaky clean, and everyone's smiling, and friendly... but the scalpels and forceps and etc are all RIGHT THERE.  I'd really rather never see that stuff.  Really.  There's such a thing as too much education.
I woke up later on in the recovery room, and shocked the nurse by wanting crackers.  Well heck, I was hungry, what can I say?  I ate my graham crackers and drank my ginger ale and used the facilities, and then they called Steve to come pick me up. 

- On 11-10-08 he wants and MRI and Bone Scan done
For this, Steve had to take me to the Clinton, MD office of Community Radiology Associates.  We didn't have any trouble finding the place, the building it's in kind of sits by itself. 
We check in upstairs and I tell them I'm there for an MRI and a Bone Scan.  They had me do some paperwork, and then they sent me downstairs to the MRI office (the actual radiology office is on the 2nd floor, but their MRI facility is on the ground floor).  So, we go downstairs and the lady at the desk looks at me funny and says "You're not supposed to be here until 2:20pm."  I nod and tell her that I'd already been upstairs and that they had sent me down there.  I assumed their Bone Scan machine was down here with the MRI machine.  She tried to call upstairs, but no one answered, so Steve and I went back upstairs.  I waited at the counter for almost ten minutes before someone finally came over to find out why I was back.  I explained that the MRI people sent me back up and that I needed to have a shot so that I could get a bone scan done in two hours.  The Radiologist came out then looking for me, since I had an appointment, and took me back a few minutes later.
He gave me a shot through an IV.  Like I said, I've gotten so used to IV's that I can even tell the doctors which veins not to use.  He used one of the veins that bruises, but it was kind of my fault because I forgot.  The shot hurt.  I'm used to needles, they don't really hurt.  This wasn't anything special as far as giving someone a shot goes, but the stuff in the syringe made my hand feel like I'd slammed it in a car door.
Steve and I left and went to IHOP to eat.  We spent a little time wandering around in a local Wal-Mart.  When it was time, we went back to the office.
The Radiologist took me back for the Bone Scan not long after we got back.  Getting a Bone Scan doesn't hurt at all.  You lay on a table with your arms at your sides, and they tell you to sit very very still.  Then, they bring an X-Ray panel right down next to your body (a centimeter or two from your nose, or at least it seemed that close), and it slowly goes up and down your body, taking pictures as it goes.  Kind of like a super-charged X-Ray.  When it's done, you have a complete picture of your whole skeleton. 
I got to see the images.  There were darkened spots around my shoulder blades, so I asked the Radiologist what that meant.  He looked at it and said it was just arthritis.  I didn't even know I had arthritis in my shoulders.
We had an hour or so before it was time to get the MRI done, so we went down the street to Toys R Us and wandered around for a while in there.  We got back and they took me in for the MRI almost right away.
For the MRI, you can't have anything metal whatsoever on you.  There's a little bit of metal even in the hair ties that don't have metal clamps on them, so I had to take mine out.  My hair frizzed out LOL!  They hook you up to an IV (this time they put it in my elbow, I haven't had one there in a long time!).  The MRI machine is like a really big version of the donut they run you through for the CT Scan.  I had to put my arms up over my head again for this.  The Radiologist goes into the other room and runs you through the MRI machine.  It makes HORRIBLY loud noises.  It makes snapping noises, like the arcing from a static electricity ball except much louder.  It makes loud beeping noises too, like your computer makes when you've completely crashed it and all it will do is beep and shut back down when you try to turn it on.  Again, the beeping is also a LOT louder than the sounds your computer makes.  They give you earplugs before they start the machine up.
After they ran me through the machine once, the Radiologist came over the speaker to let me know that he was switching the IV and injecting the dye.  I felt a little bit of warmth and a tiny bit of tingling, but it went away right away.  Then, he ran me through the MRI machine again. 
The Radiologist at the MRI facility had a little bit of trouble with my IV.  The IV that he put in me was apparently defective and didn't have a check valve, so the minute he unhooked anything from it I bled all over the place.  I wasn't too worried, I've heard that you have to lose at least three or four pints of blood before you need to really start worrying, and I wasn't in any danger of losing that much.  What did impress me though, was that the guy went and got out a Blood Borne Pathogens kit right away and cleaned up ALL the blood.  He didn't just let it sit there.  He even cleaned off my arm where I'd bled on myself a little bit.  Overall, it gave me a good feeling about the cleanliness of the place and the thoroughness of the personnel.

Well, that's about enough for now, don't you think?  :-) 

For those who've been trying to email me and for some reason or another don't have my email address, it's mhendrix007@gmail.com. 

Or, you could always leave a comment here on the blog! 

For those of you who were redirected here from the BBS boards, go ahead and skip the next paragraph or two :-)

For the rest of you...

Okay, first off, if I get one stupid "oh my gosh I'm so sorry sweetie here have a cyberhug" email from you I'll hunt you down after I recover from this and take a sledgehammer to your most prized possession, whatever that might be (animals/fish/birds not included).

With that out of the way, I wanted to let you all know that I have cancer.

I AM NOT DYING!!! Not even close.

But, I thought it would be an interesting educational experience, for anyone who might be curious (no, being curious about what happens to a person that's been diagnosed with cancer is NOT morbid. It's natural, and commendable, and I kinda wish I'd spoken up sooner so I'd know what to expect now. It would have saved me lots of panic!).

So in the interest of education, here is what has happened so far:

10-7-08 - Woke up with right breast in pretty terrible pain, swollen. Tried making Dr appointments all day, gave up and went into the emergency room at Prince George's Hospital at 7:30pm. They ordered sonographic images, of which 158 were taken. Discharged at 2:30am after being prescribed Percocet and given a Percocet at the hospital (this despite their having been told I was allergic to Percocet when I walked in).

What I did wrong: Did not research the reputation of the hospital before going in, for a non-life-threatening emergency. Prince George's Hospital has several malpractice and negligence cases pending currently. There is another hospital which is an equal distance from my home which has a stellar reputation and is the leading hospital in the area for women's health concerns. I also did not ask what the nurse was giving me when she came in with the pill "for pain." Granted, it was 2:00am and I had been up all night and in pain for over 24 hours, but the fact that they wrote my allergy on my chart but did not indicate anything on my little plastic bracelet should have sounded warning bells. Steve picked me up at 2:30am and realized something was wrong almost right away. He took me home and managed to get me to purge the Percocet, so I didn't go into a coma. I did, however, have to remain awake for an additional 12 hours (and so did Steve), to make sure it was out of my system enough before I fell asleep. Very scary stuff that could have been prevented had I ignored the crummy attitudes at that hospital and insisted on asking the questions I had anyway, or done my research in the first place and gone to the better hospital.

The results of the sonographic images suggested several "structures" had formed within the dermis (the layer beneath the epidermis in your skin). This made the prospect of the swelling being the result of an infection or an abscess slim. Follow-up with a surgeon was suggested.

Needless to say, after the fiasco with the Percocet, Steve and I weren't keen on going to just any surgeon that hospital recommended, so this time we did a little bit of research, and found out about Dr Vijayan Charles, who is a very well-reputed surgeon in our area and is associated with both hospitals. I called and explained my situation to them, and they made an appointment to see me on 10-13-08.

10-13-08 - Dr Charles checked the breast, and immediately ordered a mammogram (despite signing a release with Prince George's Hospital, they refused to send Dr Charles the sonographic images that were taken of it) to be followed by a biopsy.

10-17-08 - Mammogram (holy shit that hurt, lemme tell ya)

10-20-08 - Removal of Tumors and Biopsy. I arrived at Doctors Community Hospital at 10:45am. In no time at all, they had me in pre-op and explained the anasthesia process to me. I was placed under anasthetic and I don't remember anything until I woke up an hour or so later in the recovery room. I was already stapled and bandaged up. It didn't hurt any more or less than it did before the biopsy. There was a nurse sitting at my bedside, waiting for me to wake up so she could take me out to see Steve if I wanted to (he'd decided to wait rather than go home for a couple of hours). They took me to a room on a floor in an area of the hospital that was set aside JUST for women who had "female" health issues. I shared a room with a 23 year old who had just had to have an emergency hysterectomy. Dr Charles had installed two drains during the surgery, which had included a radical mastectomy (they removed the entire right breast) plus a partial lymphectomy (they removed 20 of the 27 lymph nodes in that arm as well). One drain was in the area where the breast used to be, and the other was in an extremely uncomfortable area of my armpit. The one on my chest seemed to drain at less than half the rate of the other one, and I was checked thoroughly and then told it was all right. I stayed overnight for observation, and in the morning I was taught how to empty the drains properly and to chart how much each drain collected, three times daily. They had to be charted separately, so that Dr Charles would know when to remove each one, and not to remove either of them too soon (which would lead to fluid buildup and would result in infection and/or another surgery).

Diagnosis: Inflammatory Breast Cancer, Stage IIIA.

Inflammatory Breast Cancer is a pretty rare form of cancer. What I had was actually a form of skin cancer, concentrated in the secondary layer of the skin on my breast. Because it was an inflammatory carcinoma, it caused a great deal of pain and it's a very aggressive cancer that tends to try to come back and/or spread to other areas. Because we caught it relatively early, and we're treating it very aggressively, it's not going to get the chance to do that. I tested negative for the gene that leads to recurring breast cancer also, which gives me another boost in that category.

10-21-08 - Released from Doctor's Community Hospital and told to be at Dr Charles's office in two days to have one of the two drains removed.

10-23-08 - Dr Charles checked the staples and declared that I was healing very well. Then he snipped the tiny stitch that I hadn't noticed before, which was holding the tube for my drain in place through the small hole in my chest beneath where the surgery had been done, and yanked the drain out by the tube. Due to the nerve damage that I'd suffered from the surgery, I didn't really feel that too much. It was uncomfortable, but not intolerable. He placed a small gauze bandage with antibiotic ointment over the tiny hole that was left behind, and taped it in place. He instructed me to continue charting the other drain until Monday, when he would remove it as well.

That weekend, some of the nerves that had been damaged by the surgery started to heal/reconnect/whatever, and I was in some pretty horrible pain. It was mostly restricted to my armpit area, where the other drain remained. Until then, I had been taking Tylenol 3, which has codeine in it, which Dr Charles had prescribed. I called and was instructed to try Extra Strength Tylenol (over the counter) instead. Steve bought an enormous bottle of this stuff, which works BEAUTIFULLY. Not to mention, it's a lot easier to swallow because it's in caplet form rather than pill form.

10-26-08 - Dr Charles removed the drain in my armpit. I'm not going to try to describe how exceedinly painful this was. Suffice it to say I'd rather have another baby, even though that takes a lot longer. He allowed me to sit in his exam room and recover for a few minutes, and offered me something non-narcotic for pain if I wanted it. The pain started to fade as soon as the drain was out, though, so I declined any further medication.

10-30-08 - Dr Charles removed the staples today, and sent me across the street to the Oncologist that he regularly works with (who is also the director at the hospital, I'm told). The staple removal process wasn't painful at all. They have a neat little tool that opens the staples as it takes them out, so there's less pain from that then there used to be from removing stitches. It's no wonder doctors all seem to prefer using them over stitches any more. He checked the area thoroughly after removing the staples, and said that everything looked really great.

10-30-08 - Went across the street to the oncologist that Dr Charles referred me to, with an envelope containing all my test results for him. Dr Sajeev Anand read the test results, looked at the area, and then prescribed an aggressive treatment regimen:
- On 11-5-08, he wants a CT scan done
- On 11-7-08 he wants a portable IV surgically installed on my left side
- On 11-10-08 he wants and MRI and Bone Scan done
- On 11-17-08 he will administer my first chemotherapy treatment
I raced through that list pretty quickly, but that's because there's one explaination that covers most of it. The MRI, CT, and bone scans are to show him whether or not all of the cancer was removed during the surgery. Whether or not it was all removed, however, considering the type of cancer that I had he still wants to go ahead with the extremely aggressive chemotherapy. Inflammatory cancer has a tendancy to metastacize and to return in those who don't have it treated aggressively.

The chemotherapy will consist of:
Taxotere (docetaxel)
Cytoxan (cyclophosphamide)
Adriamycin (doxorubicin)

I'll take my first treatment as soon as the portable IV surgery has healed, on 11-17-08. I'll have to go to Dr Anand's office every two weeks to receive another chemotherapy treatment, until I've undergone 8 cycles of treatment.

Side effect that I'll likely have from these three medications:
Nausea
Vomiting
Loss of appetite
Diarrhea
Difficulty swallowing
Thinned or brittle hair
Skin irritation (sunburn-like)
Darkening of fingernails and toenails
Swelling, pain, redness, or peeling on palms and soles
Constipation
Changes in taste
Extreme tiredness
Muscle, joint, or bone pain
Hair loss
Increased eye tearing
Sores in mouth and throat
Darkened and thickened skin
Blistering skin or acne

Now, these sound like some very nasty side effects, but I've been assured that they have medications to help counteract most of them. Especially the nausea and pain.

After the chemotherapy treatments are complete, I'll have to go through radiation treatments as well. If I remember correctly, there will be approximately 4 months' worth of radiation treatments. These aren't as bad as they sound. They're kind of like getting an X-ray every week or so, and they don't hurt. My hair will probably start to regrow while I'm taking the radiation therapy, because the radiation is going to be very localized and not near enough to my head to prevent hair growth there.

After the radiation therapy, I'll have to take a pill to prevent the production of certain hormones that feed cancer for 5 years. While I'm taking these pills, which I haven't really gotten any information on just yet, I'm told I won't be able to get pregnant.

So that's all that's happened, and all that I know about it for now. I have several tons of dead trees to sift through (pamphlets and brochures that have been given to me over the past couple of weeks), and maybe after reading all of that I'll have more interesting information to post.

Until then... if I'm not answering my phone, it's because everyone's used up all my minutes and/or I'm saving my minutes to use talking to my family and my doctors. Please don't take it personally if you call and I don't answer, or if I don't call you back. It's always best to email me, I get back to you eventually if you do!!