Fun Friday

Last Friday my physical therapy appointment was rescheduled to occur THIS Friday, so I have nothing to report as far as that goes.

It turned out that it worked out perfectly, though, because as you know I have been hating my hair SO MUCH that I reached out to a friend who has super-cute-short hair and got her hairdresser's contact info.  And LUCKY ME: she had a cancellation Friday afternoon so I was able to jet over and cut these stupid chemo curls off.  The hairdresser said that she has had a dozen or so friends / clients have chemo curls over the years but she'd never seen anything quite like mine.  She had some fun poofing them out first, and then she chopped them all off so now I'm rocking a very short pixie cut and I love it.

G, who was hoping I'd grow out my hair, agrees that it looks much better.  My co-worker JC says that the cut has taken "years" off of my appearance.  I'm really happy.

I don't have a good picture of the haircut yet, but I do have a picture of the hair that was cut:

 

Yes, I know

After the hair appointment, I hustled off to OHSU for my first Zoladex injection.  G was not available to provide videographer services on this trip, but perhaps another time.

The first shot I received was a lidocaine shot.  That feels kind of like a bee sting, but I have no doubt it doesn't hurt as much as the injection would....

Then, out came the injection needle.  That thing is large.  BUT thanks to the lidocaine I didn't feel a thing!

Sorry it's blurry, but that's post injection what the needle looks like....

What I, of course, didn't think about but makes total sense is that there is a decent amount of bleeding after this injection.  Within about an hour I'd bled through the first bandage and was replacing it with gauze and another bandage.

And here is what the injection site looked like about 4 hours later:

Hot

And 24 hours later:

Also pretty Hot

ANYWAY, except for some minor site tenderness it really hasn't been that big of a deal.  I don't think I'm experiencing much else in the way of side effects.  YET.

In looking online I saw that there are 1 month and 3 month treatments you can get of Zoladex.  I asked the nurse who said that they do have the 3 month treatments at OHSU, but typically Dr. Chui likes to see how his patients do before transitioning to the higher dosage.  Sounds just like him!  So fingers crossed now that I do, in fact, tolerate the shots well enough to switch to a higher dosage so I only have to do this 4 times a year instead of 12!

Quick Update

Things are still rolling along.

I'm doing well enough on the Tamoxifen that we are going to start the "chemical menopause" in the form of monthly injections of ZOLADEX starting Friday. 

The general concept of this did not trouble me.  Between the fertility stuff I did at the start of my cancer adventures (giving myself up to 3 shots a day in the stomach...), the chemo, the Neulasta shots after chemo, and all the other pokes and blood draws this past year, I feel like I've become pretty accustomed to needles.  So much so, in fact, that I asked Dr. Chui if I could just get the shots and give them to myself at home.  No such luck, and not just because of insurance, but because this isn't just a simple shot!  Oh no, this involves being numbed FIRST (presumably with shots although we didn't get into that) and then the injection of an IMPLANT under my skin.

See A VIDEO HERE if you are interested.  I'm sure it won't be as bad as my imagination is making it out to be, but it's a bit more involved than I thought.  We'll see how I do Friday afternoon at 4:30.  Maybe G can be there to video tape me as I pass out!

The only arguable set back at this point is that I am showing signs of LYMPHEDEMA in my left arm.  So that's a bummer.  I have my first physical therapy appointment on Friday before my first injection.  Presumably I'll learn some stretches and also how to manually drain the lymphatic fluid from my arm.  The worst part about all of this is that, when I first started noticing these twinges G was insistent that I call/email Dr. Chui and I kept saying I had my appointment in June and I'd just see him then.  The first thing Dr. Chui said to me?  "You should have contacted me right away when this started."

Nothing is worse than G being right.

I do try to balance reaching out to Dr. Chui--I don't want to be a pest and email him every time I feel kind of funky.  But I guess I should have contacted him in this case.

G was right.  Just don't tell him that.

Long Time, No Write

So it's been a while.  Mostly I'm writing this post because I don't want people who come to my blog to have the first thing they read be an update about diarrhea.  (Which by the way, we finally figured out: it wasn't c-diff, it wasn't lactation intolerance, it was the study drug....I guess when the label says "TAKE WITH FOOD" you should really...you know...take with food?)

Anyway, lots has happened since my last post.  I turned 40.  O turned 3.  I've met with my radiation oncologist who just checked me out and said I was doing fine.  Got to see my radiation team again, which was nice.  You go from people being a daily part of your life for 6 weeks to nothing...it is weird. 

All in all I'm doing well.  I have stiffness in my left arm which I'm sure is the result of the lymph nodes being removed and scarring from that and the radiation.  I will probably need to go see a physical therapist eventually for that...but I haven't yet because: LIFE.  Life is happening now, people, and I don't want to be bothered with this dumb cancer thing!

This time last year I was contemplating what bald person to be for Halloween.

This year, with my chemo curls, I have some options, too!

Glee's Blaine at the no-hair-gel prom.  If only I could get away with slicking it back like he does on a day-to-day basis.



Napoleon Dynamite.  Just need to find the glasses.

This one is the latest idea: I just need to pull on the top part of my head and I can look like this!!!

 So, yeah, lots of options.  I keep thinking it's getting straighter at the root and am fighting the temptation to go cut all of the curls off but it's getting tougher!  I think I'd like it short if it were straight, but these curls are TOO, TOO much.

That's about it from here.  Tomorrow I meet with Dr. Chui to discuss my progress and, I'm sure, my soon-to-be menopause.  I'll try to write an update in the next few weeks to debrief that.

In the meantime: LIFE!