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Hi, ya'll.
Just finished treatment number four (and my last treatment with taxotere---the drug made from the pine needles of the European Yew tree) and three weeks from today (or, actually, from yesterday) I start four treatments with this stuff called Adriamycin--a different sort of chemo drug made from--well, I'm not sure. I still get the neulasta shot after the chemo and that is the thing that causes the pain. the chemo just makes me tired but as the weeks have gone on the symptoms have become less severe. The worst thing now is the menopause symptoms. Menopause can make you nuts and I am pretty close to nuts anyway. It has the strang effect of making me cry everyday for very little--or no--reason. I look at the street or the houses or the christmas lights and i think how sad they are and i start to cry. I have spoken to other women and they have said similar things about meno symptoms---one woman said she would just go into her room every day for an hour and just cry and then try to get on with her day. Sometimes it comes out of nowhere and is very embarrassing to start crying in line at the market.
This is the first year I have no decorated for christmas---i see no point. The boys never cared anyway--never said, "oh, nice tree, mom" or helped with any of it so I don't feel too bad about that except that it points to some real lack of spirit on my part. I never really cared if the boys wanted the tree and all the trimings, I did it for me. Now, I don't even care.
I am trying to pay my shoebox full of medical bills, and to be honest, most billing agencies really are bending over backwards to help me and I am grateful for that. Very grateful.
Things that concern me are the little things: I've stopped wearing earrings, painting on my eyebrows, cleaning the house, cooking. sounds stupid about the earrings but I've worn them all my life, everydday, even if i was just hanging about the house or running to Mcdonalds or watching Oprah. Now i'm thinking of giving them all away. And,no, this is no pathetic cry for help, pre-suicide planning, etc. it's just how this has effected me. I have never been strong---well, i USED to be a strong person, back until I was about 30. Now I'm a slow train wreck.
I don't want sympathy (so, if you don't want sympathy, why write this, right?) I don't know. I just want SOMEONE to know what I'm feeling. and yes, i've been to my psych three times in the past three months with three med adjustments, I've been to my primary, my surgeon, my oncol and talked to the cancer research nurse. I'm doing everything they are telling me to do. mostly, I look out my living room window, I miss school, I miss the work. I miss you guys--a LOT. I'm usually too tired to fight this damn computer to even write (though I'm certainly long winded tonight, eh?) I don't feel, look or think like myself (something called 'chemo brain').
get your mammograms, get your tests, go see your doctor. NO inconvenience is worth the total clusterf_ck of cancer---even the 'easy' cancer that I have. I would be willing to have a worse cancer if I had a better brain---- one that wasn't so committed to being my enemy, one that didn't hate me quite so much.
god bless you for listening to what must sound like the worst kind of self-pitying treacle this side of Danielle Steele.
kiss to you-----claudette
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