The Big Day

Last weekend my friend got married in Vernon. She asked me to be her maid-of-honour and of course, I was delighted to accept – until I got sick. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to be the best MOH for her big day. I gave her the option that I could gracefully bow out, but she wouldn’t accept. So last week I tried to be a good MOH and threw her a stagette/shower and participate in her upcoming wedding.

Both days were amazing. The stagette/shower day was a lot of fun! Great old friends, lots of laughs and tonnes of old stories made for a terrific day. Most of all, my friend had a good time.

Then the wedding day came. We headed off to the salon to get our hair and make-up done. Of course, I was nervous as to what I was going to look like – how on earth were they going to make my wig look ‘normal’? Not only that, my dress was strapless and it would show off my scar from my port surgery.

Well I had absolutely no reason to worry. The stylists at the salon were great! My hair stylist had not ever done an up-do on a wig before, but she just asked me what I was looking for and said we’d make something happen. In the end, my hair looked awesome! Really natural, really nice, and very appropriate for a wedding. Not only that, the make-up artist was able to air-brush foundation on my scar and completely cover it up!! I was so impressed. I felt so pretty and I just could not stop smiling.

The day was a lot of fun and really amazing for my friend. I was so glad that I was able to be a part of such a great occasion.

Recovering from #5

Since my last post I have been doing a few things to keep me busy. The fun parts – going to SF to see my classmates graduate, throwing a staggette/shower for my dear friend, being the maid-of-honour at her wedding. The not-so-fun parts – lying on my couch as I can’t do much else, mouth sores, stomach pains, general aches and pains, and feeling pretty useless.

Bouncing back from treatment #5 took longer than I anticipated. I figured that since the nausea side effects are not associated with this drug, I’d bounce back really quickly. How wrong I was. Apparently muscle and joint aches, stomach pains, fatigue are all very common side-effects to this drug and take a lot longer to recover from.

The trip to SF was case in point. I spent a lot of time in our room lying down, resting and trying to feel better. Luckily, we were staying in Union Square so I was able to go out for an hour, come back in and lie down, go out for another hour, go back.

Graduation day came for my friends, and I was so worried I would not feel well. It took me forever to get moving and get ready. But once I got to the ceremonies, things started feeling really great! The staff at Hult had saved spots in the front row for Cayley and I! It was awesome because my classmates walked right by me after receiving their degree. I was so proud of my classmates and cheered as loud as I could and gave tonnes of hugs as people walked by.

The trip was really great to see everyone and get reconnected. I felt so proud to see everyone graduate. At the same time, I felt a tiny bit of sadness that I could not be with them. It’s hard to imagine how it will be when I graduate without all of them there. But to be honest, the pride and celebration I felt for my friends completely outweighed any sadness I felt…I was so excited for everyone!

After we returned home from SF I had a few more complications with side effects that left me lying on the couch for a few days. An uncommon, but not unheard of, side-effect of this drug is mouth sores…and boy did I get them. I couldn’t eat anything. Spicy, sour, hot, bitter, acidicy foods were all off the menu. Pretty much pudding and mashed yams were on the menu. I was miserable. I couldn’t eat because it hurt, I couldn’t move because everything else hurt. I was really weapy and was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to really participate in my friend’s stagette and wedding…I was the maid-of-honour and was going to be siting on the side-lines?? Yikes.

But after two days of rest, I magically started to feel better. Part of me thinks it’s because I had such great friends around me during the festivities…we laughed, we told fun stories from the past, we celebrated our friend. But more about that in the next post ;)

Photo-shoots

Weddings are a time for fun, celebration, family, friends, and of course, photos. While at a wedding this past weekend, there was all of those elements and it
was a really fun time. However, after the ceremony portion of the program, I looked at the photos of me – it was really hard to take.

For me, it seemed so obvious and awful. It looked like I was wearing a bad wig and just looking really terrible. My friends of course told me that I looked fine and that you couldn’t tell…but that’s what friends are supposed to do! I got into the car and told the group I was with that I didn’t want any more photos taken of me that night, please and thank you. They were all accommodating.

The reception was held in this riding stable in Aggasiz, surrounded by big beautiful mountains and hay fields, and really great scenery. One of the girls at our table got the brilliant idea to go have a fun ‘photo-shoot’ in the hay after dinner and speeches. I didn’t want to go. I was nervous, uncomfortable, and really just did not want my picture taken – I felt that I looked so awful and I just did not want to remember that.

But it was my old basketball girls. They were laughing before we even started. They were excited. Did I want to miss out on this because of a little vanity? Nope.

Good thing I didn’t miss it. I have not laughed that hard in a long long time. We posed, we made up poses, we were the best (and the worst) models ever. It was so much fun and we had a blast.

And if I hadn’t done it, I would have gotten to be part of these hilarious photos. I won’t remember that my hair wasn’t exactly perfect or on straight, or whatever else I was worried about – I’ll remember that photo-shoot with my amazing friends and how we could not stop laughing and having a great time. Now that’s something to remember!

#5

Yesterday was treatment #5 – a new set of chemo drugs and the first round of Herceptin treatment. During treatment presented itself with a few challenges, but overall, I am fairing pretty well.

It started when my needle was put into my port-a-cath. It had never hurt, in fact, I’d barely ever felt it before. But this time was painful. Like really painful. Like close your eyes, squeeze your fists and try to bare it painful. It died down after a few minutes, but boy did that hurt – and it slowed down my first saline drip as the nurse wanted to monitor me.

Next up was the Herceptin. For the first time it needs to be put through the IV over 1.5 hours (as opposed to 1 hour next time), then I needed to sit there for 1 hour and just wait while they monitored me to see how well I would tolerate the drug.

After that, I received the next chemo drug – Docetaxal. I had to put cold gloves on my hands (picture oven mitts with little ice packs inside) to try and constrict the blood vessels to my fingers. This might help prevent my nails from failing off or having pain in my fingers. We switched out the gloves part way through the treatment to ensure they stayed cold.

Well the second set of gloves was freezing. Like unbearably freezing. My hands were so cold and it was so painful. I tried so hard to suck it up for as long as I could, but my hands just could not take it. I squeezed my eyes and tears slowly started to come out….and I still had around 40 minutes of glove time to go! I kept telling myself it was better than not having any finger nails, but man it was unbearable.

I was allowed to take my hands out for a few seconds to warm them up a tiny bit, but then back into the gloves. It got better as the gloves thawed out, but holy cow, talk about cold. My one pinky finger is still a little number – frostbite maybe? Anyways, it is better than not having nails, so I just need to prepare my body for that ‘insult’ next go around.

I also need to continue taking the injections to help stimulate white blood counts. This time I will start on Day 3 and have 4 days of injections. Good news is, I can do 2 at home from some of my favourite health professionals (aka FRIENDS!) Bad new - we will be in San Francisco for 2 of the treatments so I might just have to do it myself…eeks….maybe I can sweet talk Cayley into doing it for me ;)

Other than that, the side-effects from this treatment are a little more tolerable. I’m constantly hungry due to the steroids in the medication I need to take for this one. It also makes my stomach a little upset, but not really nauseous so that is good. And some small headaches and muscle aches but nothing too too bad.

5 down, 3 to go. Over the hump!

The Insult (post 3 of 3)

Tomorrow I head into the clinic for treatment #5. I will be receiving a new chemotherapy drug, along with the drug Herceptin. This will last for 4 treatments of the two drugs together, then every three weeks for around a year, I will be receiving only the Herceptin.

In order to prepare for tomorrow, I had to start taking medication today. The medication has steroids in it so I was hungry ALL day and a little wired. Well still kind of am and it’s nearly 1030pm. The side effects from this new chemo are going to be a little different than the last – less nausea, but more muscle and bone aches. Again, everyone tolerates these treatments differently, so who knows what will happen.

I saw the GPO last week and she was explaining a bit about the drugs to me. English is not her native language, but she is very clear in the things she explains to me. I always love listening to people who have learned English later in life, but still are great speakers. The words they choose to use are often more eloquent, formal, and a lot different than a lot of the slang that is typically heard.

Here is the great way she was explaining the ‘stacking’ effect that happens when your body receives multiple chemotherapy treatments. She told me that the side-effects are being stacked inside my body…it remembers and the effects are building up. Then she said the best line I have heard in a while: “The chemotherapy has insulted your body. While the chemo is gone out of your system for now, your body remembers the insult”.

Cayley and I smiled and told her that was the perfect way to explain it. We still talked about it over the weekend and every joke had something to do with being “insulted”.

So tomorrow my body will go get insulted again, but it’s just going to have to get over it…I have too many things to do and people to hang out with to be pouty because I was ‘insulted’.

Speaking of hanging out with people, I was really really lucky this week to be able to see a few groups of friends from back in the day. In one group, I was able to see friends from the Southern California area and meet their adorable new baby. In the same group my dear dear friends from China arrived with their little one in tow. On the basketball side of things, I was able to reconnect with an old teammate and roommate and meet her little girl. All these kids were freakin' cute and so adorable. And it was just awesome to see my friends and how their lives have grown and changed in the past year.

Finally, I got to hang out with a bunch of my old teammates at a fabulous wedding on the weekend. We laughed a lot and it felt great to just hang with the old crew and smile so so much.

I feel really lucky that I felt so great during all these great visits. For all of them, I had not laughed that hard or smiled so much in a long time. So thank you. :)

Inspiration (post 2 of 3)

I mentioned in the last post about this woman in my running clinic who is my new hero and is so inspiring. Well I also found another person to gain strength from. I have never met her, but my friend sent me a link to this girl’s story and I was very inspired.

Her name is Carling and she has been receiving treatment for brain cancer for the past 5 years. She was 19 when it all started. She started receiving treatments and stopped attending school and playing basketball for her college team. She decided part way through that she was done with just sitting around and went back to school and to her team.

She not only went back to school and re-joined her team, but she kicked some serious butt in the league in the coming years. She played for the Langara Falcons and was the lead scorer and lead rebounder, not only for her team, but for the whole BCCAA league!

I will leave the rest of Carling’s story for this link: http://contests.citytv.com​/icanachieve/story.aspx?si​d=688 but I do encourage everyone to read it – it’s a contest for ‘I Can Achieve’ and Carling’s mom entered her. I encourage everyone to please vote for Carling. You can vote once/day and you have until Sept 4^th.

When I read Carling’s story, it inspired me to try a little harder to get out there and stay active, to be more positive, and to really stay close with the people I love. I mean, if a Langara Falcon can do it, certainly an OUC Laker can ;) (just a little reminder who beat Langara in the provincial championships a few (okay a LOT) of years back…;) )

Turns out, Carling was at the wedding I attended this past weekend – I didn’t officially meet her, but someone pointed her out to me. She is rocking some hair now in a great style and had on a fabulous dress. From what I remember, she also wore a big smile the entire time too – so happy for her friend.

My inspiration list is growing and I really think it’s making this just a little bit easier. Now, don’t forget to vote for Carling!

Running (post 1 of 3)

Due to having about 12 days of feeling awesome, I haven’t written much on the blog. Seriously, who wants to be sitting here doing this when I feel great? In that time a few things have happened so I thought I would separate out the posts a little.

I started my running clinic on Aug 3. The clinic was specifically for Breast Cancer survivors, so while I was a bit nervous, I thought the people there could definitely relate so if I was running too slow or stopped to walk, they would get it.

There are about 10 women in the group, maybe 15. Our first session we learned how to buy the proper shoes and then headed out for a run. During the lesson portion of the evening, I was starting to get antsy…I just wanted to get outside and run. Part of it was because I like running, part of it is because I am impatient, and part of it was because I was nervous/anxious/scared and feeling like I wanted to cry – I didn’t, but I wanted to so I thought running would make those feelings go away.

A lot of the ladies in the group knew each other. Some had done the clinic before, some knew each other from treatment or other support-type groups around town. I was definitely the youngest, but there were a few women who were around the 4 or 5 year ‘past treatment’ and cancer-free mark, who looked to be mid-40s.

There was also this one woman there who is my new hero. She is around 60 or 65…I have a hard time guessing. She ran and talked with people the whole way. She was fun, nice, caring, and definitely was looking out for me. Her fun red glasses and funky hairstyle definitely make her look younger – but she told me she was going through treatment 23 years ago, so I am guessing she’s around age 60. What an inspiration!

I managed to get through the run and felt okay. I chatted with a few of the ladies and they all are really nice. Since then I have attended another lesson and run session and it went well. Cayley and I have been running as well and have gotten in 5 runs in addition to my group sessions. And I am up to 3 minutes of running and 1 of walking – only for about 23 minutes in total, but hey, it’s progress right?!

What a difference a day makes

This past week has not been very fun. It has taken longer for me to feel ‘normal’ again. Typically it was around Day 5 when I would feel better – but not this time. Yesterday was Day 7 and I still felt like garbage.

The hardest part is dealing with the different “crappy-feeling” stages as they come. You can’t just do the same 'home remedies' for the whole time you feel ill – it just doesn’t work. First there is nausea, hot/cold flashes, headaches, tiredness. Then there comes just a feeling of being “off”. And until this last time, that was it. It would end around the middle of Day 5 and it was like something just snapped and all of a sudden, I felt more like myself.

This time, in addition to the symptoms above, I also had massive muscle aches and intense sinus pain. These were side-effects of the injections I have to take in order to stimulate my white cells to start growing. On Sunday evening (Day 5) I all of a sudden started to feel like I had gone to the gym 4 times that day and only worked out my upper body (not untypical of many Kelowna men ;) ). I was so sore and honestly, I had done nothing to cause the aches. By Monday (Day 6) they had disappeared but in their place was this intense pain/pressure/cold feeling deep inside my sinus. It was like someone was taking an ice-pick and jamming it through the bridge of my nose behind where the bones are.

It was awful. I was super hot due to the weather, but could not go near air conditioning as it made my head/nose want to explode. Nothing seemed to make the pain go away – Tylenol helped a bit, but it was still there. And it lasted two days.

You don’t really realize how much pain affects your mood and attitude until it’s gone. Yesterday I was tired, grumpy, bored, snappy, found it hard to concentrate, was freezing, then boiling, and really got irritated quickly. Then as if by overnight magic, the pain went away and today I woke up feeling terrific. No seriously, terrific. Let’s capitalize that T – Terrific!

I went to work and got down to business. I was so excited to be there and doing work. I smiled and said hello to everyone in the office and asked how they were doing. I had lunch with two great friends and couldn’t stop smiling. I decided to leave around 430pm and I did not once get mad at traffic! I walked in the door at home and was humming to myself...HUMMING! I was joking with myself as I got ready to go to my first session of the run clinic. The difference is outstanding.

I am about to head out the door for my run clinic. Yesterday I was worried, scared, nervous, not wanting to go. Today those feelings are still there a little bit, but at least I am smiling and actually kind of excited to see what this will bring. I am sure I will feel awful after the run, but that will only be because I am in such bad shape ;) And I still can’t stop smiling. Terrific :)

Did you know?

Yesterday I was at Paragon Pharmacy and started browsing the card section. Cayley was on a mission to find his Dad the perfect birthday card, so I had a bunch of time to take a look. I figured I’d start looking for wedding cards as mid-August starts a big run of wedding celebrations. Here is where we come to the “Did you know” portion of the program.

Did you know they make greeting cards for people going through cancer?

No joke! You know how behind the slot for the cards are little signs that say “Thank You” or “Happy Anniversary” or “Get Well” describing the type of card you are about to look at….well there is a section in the card store that says “Cancer”. More specifically, there was one titled “Mid-Treatment”.

I was baffled. Two thoughts ran through my mind:

1.) Dread

2.) Genius

Let me explain. I first had a horrible feeling of dread – can there be that many people that have to go through this that there is a greeting card business? But as I picked up one of the cards to take a look, I quickly realized what a genius idea it is. Whoever made these cards is amazing. And no, I am not just saying that because of my sometimes ‘businessy’ type mind. ;)

I picked up a card in the “Mid-Treatment” section - since I had just finished the mid-way point of my treatment, it seemed appropriate place to start. I will reiterate – genius. This card was funny, light, and so caring and thoughtful and pretty much captured exactly how I felt at that moment. I couldn’t believe it…it was maybe only 50 words, but they were such great words!

I picked up another one – again, amazing! I felt like buying all them just to have at my house to look at and read over and over. How is it that this greeting card seems to know exactly what to say? Better yet, how does it know what to say, when I am the one who has cancer and I don’t even know what to say most of the time?

So there is your “I learned something new” moment of today – there is a business making greeting cards for people going through cancer…and the writers are geniuses.