Klecan Blog

First day of Chemo treatment was fairly uneventful. After all, I pretty much sat in a chair tethered to a IV for most of the afternoon.

It was a long day, starting off with visiting with a Rehabilitation Specialist to take measurements of my arms. What does this have to do with cancer or Chemotheraphy? With the lymph node biopsy and the removal of lymph nodes from my right arm,  my body is now 7 lymph nodes short.

Lymph nodes are a small ball or an oval-shaped organ of the immune system, distributed widely throughout the body including the armpit and stomach/gut.  Lymph nodes act as filters or traps for foreign particles and are important in the proper functioning of the immune system.  They help “filter” the toxins in your body.

So, the rest of my lymph nodes have to work a little harder to remove toxins in my body. And if Mountain Dew, chocolate, cappuccino, and Jelly Belly jelly beans count as toxins, well, then they will be working extra hard.  Fluid, or “toxins” as I’m calling them, can build up in my arm where there aren’t any lymph nodes that would typically drain away.  Swelling can occur, and cause a build up of those toxins which, well , would create a problem…..a condition called  Lymphedema.

The measurements of my arms were to document the level of swelling in my arm. Although I still have nerve damage from the surgery in my right arm and it feels numb in the armpit area, it was, indeed, rather swollen. The specialist prescribed me with a compression sleeve, which is pretty self explanatory, but a tight fitting sleeve that puts pressure on that arm to push the fluid out of the area into other parts of the body so it can be removed.   This is something I have to monitor at least monthly with arm measurements, and should get used to the process as I will forever have a risk of getting Lymphedema, the condition of localized fluid retention and tissue swelling that I had mentioned above.

I will be losing my hair, and will start in approximately a couple weeks from now. My scalp will start tingling…my hair will  become a not so great texture, and it may start to come out in clumps. I am researching wigs, scarves, and hat options right now. There is a place in Aitkin, MN (north of Brainerd) that offers such things for free. I intend on making a trip up there to explore my options. I’ve heard wigs are hot and itchy, so I’m not sure what’s going to work best for me.  I’m not much of a hat person, but maybe I can find a nice fitting baseball cap.  There is a website with some lovely head scarves I wouldn’t mind looking into : www.4women.org.  This, by far will be the worse side effect of it all.  There is no hiding it, it is obvious of my “condition” when I’m out in public.  Not looking forward to the extreme level of self consciousness as I’ll be dealing with this all summer.  However, I could get used to 5 minute long showers since I won’t have to wash my hair and my blow dryer will go into hibernation for awhile. Heck, I may even get somewhere on time since I won’t have to waste so much time washing and blow drying my hair!

Now to the 5th floor of  St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Brainerd. Got “checked in” and waited  in the waited room. The Today show was on, the one where it has Hoda and Kathy Lee. Maybe it was the other show before they came on, but singer Nicky Minaj was performing.  If you don’t know who she is, she is a rap/hip hop star,  who, well, is very unique in her choice of dress I guess you could say. She’s no Lady Ga Ga when it comes to wardrobe, but let’s put it this way, her black fishnet with silver panties or whatever it was outfit was not a flattering look for her.  And the song choice was very…interesting. I couldn’t understand any of it as she was “rapping” away and then the song would slow to a crawl where the back up singers crooned the chorus as she chimed in with an occasional “ooooooh” and “yeah”.    Was this really catering to the demographic of people watching TV at this time in the morning?  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.  Not only that, but they discussed The Happiest Countries in the World (guess what, US wasn’t one of them) the winner was Sweden, but Kathy Lee tried to argue against that by saying “Oh c’mon, they have a high suicide rate, don’t they??”  WHAT?  What a strange thing to say on national television. And her claim was based on a brain fart she had or something, I don’t know, very very weird.  The show got better (I mean this sarcastically) when they had someone talk about the newest nail polish craze……textured nail polish. Smooth on clear nail polish, then dip them in these little tiny colored foam dots.  Again, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Apparently I am NOT part of their demographic, and that makes me feel rather old. But then again, how strange to see women old enough to be my mother acting like 20 somethings…sheesh.

Thankfully I was rescued from the torture of morning TV and brought into my room. At this point in time, as long as I didn’t have to continue watching that show, Chemo would be just fine.  I got situated in a recliner type chair and got my IV put in. I was given two anti nausea medicines. They let those take effect and then began the treatment.

Again, nothing exciting about the whole Chemo  process. Not having cable television for years, my curiosity of day time cable television got the best of me as I channel surfed for most of the afternoon.   Those are 3 hours of my life I can’t get back, but I do know that the Maryland resident with the Sweet Pork Rinds hat “lost” her winning lottery ticket, a navy jet crashed into an apartment complex,  MASH is still an ok show, Jersey Shore IS NOT an ok show, and the rest of the “quality” programing is all a blur.  That experience has confirmed that I am not missing out on anything when it comes to cable television, or just television in general.  It had been a long day and I was just too tired to try to read a book or play a card game with Tim.

Luckily I didn’t have any bad reactions during the process. Some people get nauseous or have other side effects. Those  could come later though as about the 3rd day or so after treatment when the anti nausea medication wears off.  My “assistant” Missy said that by Sunday I may be feeling a little lethargic.  Unfortunately that is Easter Sunday, so we are planning a very low key celebration.

The kids will do an easter hunt in the back yard and we’ll bake a ham with some sweet potatoes and watch a family movie (not on cable TV,  mind you)

Week one after surgery was a little rough….the armpit area and under part of my arm was swollen, along with my breast and surrounding area. To think I thought I was going to go back to work that same week-ha yeah right!  By the second week I was doing much better and was able to move my arm around much more with less discomfort. I even was able to avoid the pain medication!

A follow up visit with surgeon Dr. Dehen was a quick check up….actually spent more time in the waiting area than the actual appointment (isn’t that the way most go these days?) Dr. Dehen did say the results from the lymph node biopsy came back with good results, showing no signs that the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes. That’s good news! He did say that he did have to take more lymph nodes than usual, because he had to pull all that had the radiation dye in them. Considering that my surgery time was pushed back approximately an hour, I am assuming that is one hour longer for the radiation to travel through my body.   Dr. Dehen said everything was healing fine….and if all goes well I will probably never see him again. The lumpectomy went really well and I have quite a bit of scar tissue, it’s hard as a rock and it will be for awhile as it slowly “dissolves” I guess you could say.  My armpit area and under my arm continues to be numb, the result of nerves being damaged from surgery.  My breast continues to be swollen and the swelling and numbness may last for months.  I occassionally  feel some tingling sensations or pins/needles but it’s short lived and I can tolerate it. Better than the pain the tumor was causing me!

My appointment with Dr. Harris (Oncologist) was not very fun, as we had to discuss treatment options.  Some good news is that the stage of cancer that I have is considered Stage 1B, which my understanding has to do with the size of the tumor, in my case it was .6 X .8 (smaller than a pea). Stage one is usually cured simply by removing the tumor, however in stage two, there’s small clusters of cancer cells that could remain, but not in the lymph nodes.

Which brings me to Chemotherapy. To kill of any remaining cancer cells, I must undergo a  21 day cycle for three months of IV type Chemotheraphy.  My first appointment will be on Friday, April 6th.  I will be hooked up to an IV, and pumped full of cancer killing chemicals basically.  This first appointment will most likely be an all day thing, as the first time around usually takes a little longer. My next appointment then is the end of April, and every three weeks until about the first week in June.  After that, maybe I can have the rest of the month “off” and start radiation treatment in July, which would most likely be every day, 5 days a week, for 5 weeks straight.  So, timeline wise, this is already looking into this fall.  A long running ordeal, that’s for sure!

Side effects could be fatigue, nausea, low blood count, etc. as well as loss of appetite.  It is very important that someone going through Chemo has a well balanced diet and eats ALOT of healthy food to offset side effects, etc.  This is really going to be an interesting challenge for me because my food groups consist of: The Chocolate group, the Chip Group, the Mountain Dew Group, and the Fast Food Group.   I absolutely hate vegetables, just ask Tim (well, if you asked him he’d say I don’t like anything healthy) and I don’t really care for fruit. I don’t even like apples. Well, I’ll eat applesauce, but not an actual apple. A banana, maybe…..strawberries? Not by themselves but I’ll have them in a smoothie all chopped into oblivion.  My mom feels as if she has somehow failed as a mother for my food habit flaws. I’m convinced I have some kind of strange disorder.  It’s not so much the taste of the foods, but more so the texture of them. Some of them just make me want to gag.  And lettuce….I told my co-worker Cheryl that I could just as well eat a handful of grass clippings and it would taste the same to me.

So, this treatment session will prove to be a very good food experiment for me, and may prove that it isn’t a food disorder, but lack of will power.  And with loss of appetite will most likely cause some weight loss….FINALLY SOMETHING GOOD TO COME OUT OF THIS!!!  Some people have found a change in their taste buds- foods they loved before now taste horrible to them.  Maybe I’ll end up being a herbivore?  This shall be interesting indeed.

Ok, so besides the potential for some strange (but positive) change in  eating habits, loosing my hair is inevitable. My insurance doesn’t cover a wig (as it’s considered temporary) but there is a salon in Aitkin, MN that has a selection of wigs, hats, and scarves free of charge, so I may end up taking a road trip up there.  Wigs are hot and itchy, I’m told, but can’t help but think about the option of deciding if you want to be a redhead, brunette or blond that day.

Another option are the head scarves, which browsing online found a neat website www.4women.com where they have a large variety of head scarves of different fabrics and patterns. Not only that, but can be styled in a variety of ways.

I am back to work, and thankfully remembered how to do my job for the most part. I just hope Chemo won’t interfere with that much, as there is a long list of possible side effects.

I went in for surgery on Monday, the 12th for my lumpectomy (surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on my breast).  Step #1 was to go to radiology and get an injection of some radiation dye….this would help the surgeon find the lymph nodes that he would need to take a sample from to see if the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes.  Step #2 to check in at Pre-surgery.  Step #3, wait, and wait, and wait.  Step #4 actual surgery, Step #5, recovery, Step #6, go home. Sounds like a plan, right?

Well, off to a rough start in the morning when the alarm didn’t go off. I remember setting it, but must not have actually turned it on. Luckily I woke up only a half hour past when the alarm was supposed to go off, but none the less already off to a bad start.

On our way to the hospital in Brainerd on Hwy. 371 a 60 lb. brown dog came onto the freeway right in front of us. Tim slammed on the breaks and the poor dog just stood there frozen!! We were able to swerve around him, and then luckily he took off into the ditch. Poor thing! Maybe it was just the shock of it all, or the thought of how hitting that poor dog would have really ruined my day, but I couldn’t help but cry a bit. Emotions were high already, maybe that damn dog pushed me over the edge emotionally. “You stupid dog, what the hell are you doing in the road?” I said angrily.  Tim couldn’t help but talk about how remarkable the car handled screeching to a halt going 70 mph, typical guy, sheesh.

To add to our out of sorts morning, we had trouble getting to the right part of the building at the right time. I immediately went to radiology, where they told me I had to check in at the registration desk first. I’m sure they told me that on the phoneprior, but not a big deal, so went to the registration desk and got that taken care of. Then back to radiology…where I was met with more confusion. Apparently I was supposed to check in on the second floor in Pre-Surgery first???? But I was already down there so they made some adjustments to accommodate me. Talk about my brain being scrambled eggs that day.

So, I did eventually get radiology out of the way and got checked in to pre-surgery.  Now the bad thing about pre-surgery is the waiting. My surgeon had an emergency that morning (maybe someone got into an accident from swerving to avoid a dog in the road) so my surgery time had been pushed back to about 2pm (originally 1-1:15pm) This was a form of torture, considering I couldn’t have anything to eat since midnight the night before. So, no breakfast, no morning cappuccino, no lunch,  no wonders I couldn’t think straight! I was so hungry I was starting to feel nauseous and just wanted to take a nap.

They had me put on this massive purple paper gown. I would have been better off in a kid size one. The adult ones were made for 6 ft. tall men over 275 lbs. or something. It had pockets in it that I could put a little hose into it that blew warm air into it to keep me warm. So, I tucked my tarp/gown around me and sat down in the recliner type chair with a blanket and challenged Tim to a game of golf, a card game involving 9 cards in which you try to get matches and the lowest amount of points. There are 9 rounds, and in the end, Tim won, but not by much. I was too tired and hungry to really put much strategy into the game, so that’s my reason for losing.  So, that helped pass the time.

Now the big gurney gets rolled in, and I get situated. They put the nice little cap on my head and now reality is staring to sink in. They wheel me down the hallway into the OR. Not having ever been in surgery before, I have to say it looked just like they show on TV….the big lights, etc. etc. Then it got a little scary. They shifted me onto the operating table, and got me started with the anathesia. Again, not having been in surgery before didn’t know what to expect. I started feeling groggy and I don’t know how else to explain but my ears started feeling warm and slowly lost my hearing as I drifted off to la la land.

Fast forward a couple hours later, I’m in the recovery room. I drift in a out of sleep for most of the night. I don’t remember actually waking up. I asked Tim about it and he said that I was sitting up while the nurses were putting me into the other bed and asking me all sorts of questions. Apparently I was quite the smart ass. “Have you lost a significant amount of weight in the past couple months?” I was asked. “Unfortunately, no,” Tim says I replied.  “Do you have any history of eating disorders?” I was asked. “No,” I said. ” Hence the weight gain.”  I can kinda remember saying that! Ha ha.

Nurses were in and out most of the night, and as I came back to reality I tried to drink some water.  I had some nausea, which was frustrating because I was still very very hungry, but when you feel that way you really aren’t feeling up to trying to eat a whole lot either. I was able to keep down some spoonfuls of chocolate pudding so I guess that was progress.  The morphine helped my pain and I stayed on that most of the night. They decided to keep me over night, which was a very good thing as I was still out of sorts and in pain.  My whole right arm hurt, and had a large incision in the arm pit area. That hurt more than the breast incision. My arm was swollen most of the time and had to keep an ice pack on it.  And here I thought I was going to go back to work this week, ha ha ha boy was I wrong!!

They put these cuffs on my legs that squeeze my legs kind of like the blood pressure cuffs  so I didn’t get blood clots in my legs since I wasn’t moving around much.

Tim spent the night sleeping in the recliner in the room. Like I predicted, he snored off and on the whole night.  Poor me, going through all of this and now to have to listen to him snore all night? Cut me some slack!  And it wasn’t like I could just grab something and chuck it across the room at him. “Tim,  Tim!!” I would hiss, but he couldn’t hear me. He was too far away for me to event attempt to nudge him or kick him much to my disappointment. Luckily I had enough bathroom breaks during the night that nurses were in and out and the moving around and that was enough to get him to at least shift in the chair some.

I was able to go home yesterday afternoon. The surgeon stopped in to say the quick lymph node test seemed to indicate that the cancer has not spread so that is very good news, but they are sending it off to be analyzed more thoroughly.  I tried to negotiate his original doctors note that said I couldn’t go back to work until March 28th but he didn’t seem to want to budge on that.

So, I will be in a healing phase for the next couple weeks, with some follow up doctor appointments. Our next step then will be some radiation therapy no doubt, but I’ll know more about the details of that in the future.

My insurance has approved genetic testing to see if I have a BRCA gene that causes different forms of cancer. That is basic blood work that gets analyzed. Let’s hope I don’t have that bad gene. If so, that means the chances of cancer of coming back are very high as well as ovarian cancer. Enough of you, cancer!!

So, this concludes this chapter of the cancer chronicles. If you made it through this whole e-mail in one sitting, I’m impressed. Obviously I’m not doing too bad if I can sit down and write a novel, right? I’m on vicodin right now, and it’s doing a pretty good job with the pain, and forces me to take lots of naps!

I don’t remember the exact date, as everything has been a blur lately….but let’s say I was having some general pain and discomfort in my right breast on a Monday. Didn’t think much of it…slept funny, bra too tight, whichever. The pain would come and go and varied in levels of pain. But wasn’t going to rush to Dr. just yet, only to  have them tell me “yeah, as you get older sometimes that happens.”

So towards the end of the week was still having the discomfort, and started feeling around. “What the heck is going on?” I wondered. Then I felt a small lump, like the size of a pea. It seemed to move around a bit though, and I asked Tim if he felt it just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. He noticed it too. Assuming that’s what was causing the pain, I made an appointment for Monday (a week after the pain started).

The Dr. comfirmed, that yes, indeed there was a lump. At that point in time they asked me if I had been consuming large amounts of caffeine or had any major increase in stress lately (that can cause non cancerous, fiber like lumps I guess.)  I had said no.

So, the following day had an ultrasound, where they just looked at the lump and took some pictures, etc. etc. They then had to do a biopsy a few days later, where they gave me a small incision and took a sample of the lump to be analyzed.  That was not a pleasant experience. Imagine having dental work done, except on your breast!! The needle for the novocaine , the pressure as someone digs around there for a while and pulls some stuff out.  It was awful!!  The samples had to be sent for analyzing, and at that point in time wasn’t concerned much. The ultrasound tech said it had characteristics similar to fiber cystic lumps……harmless lumps but ones that need to be removed nonetheless. So I knew I was going to have to have some kind of surgery to remove the lump, cancerous or not.

By the end of that week, my doctor had gotten the results, and called to ask me if I could come in…..she also asked if Tim could be there. That’s when I knew something was wrong. I had Tim stay home with the kids (wasn’t going to try and manage them at the dr. office) and the Dr. confirmed what I had feared: Cancer, specifically invasive ductal carcinoma.

Below is  a link about what that is specifically:

http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/types/idc/

It is a very common form of cancer and treatable/curable.   My next step was to talk to a surgeon, oncologist (they handle the chemo, etc.) So, timeline was, this puts me at early March now.  My doctor called the next day with an appointment in St. Cloud for March 13th…..a WEEK from then. All the surgeons were apparently out that entire week….. considering I was just told I had cancer and paranoid as hell that it’s  spreading agressively throughout my body and the thought of having to just sit and ponder for a week was not acceptable to me. So I called the Dr. office back and asked them if they could find another area clinic I could get into. I wanted to get this over and done with as soon as possible.

They were able to set me up at the hospital in Brainerd, and appointment with a surgeon, oncologist, etc. etc. THE VERY NEXT DAY!!!  So on Tuesday, March 6th, Tim and I went to Brainerd and met with a surgeon who did a consult, an oncologist which talked a bit about the “aftermath” of it all, and even a genetic specialist that said I may have a cancer causing gene which would explain why I got it at such a young age.

The surgeon did a consult and suggested a lumpectomy would be suitable, considering the size of the tumor (about  6mm, the size of a pea) and where it’s located at (at the very bottom, underneath) so, no worries about mastectomy or any of that. And for the most part said my breast would look fairly normal cosmetic wise, but there would be a large part of tissue missing on the bottom.

I also did a mammogram to try and get more info about the tumor. It wasn’t very helpful so a couple days later went to St. Cloud and had a MRI done. Once the results came back, the Dr. was able to confirm to change our surgery path.  He was able to say that we can continue with the lumpectomy and was able to schedule surgery for Monday, March 12th.