Anxiety & Me

Posted by: shessel on: November 5, 2016

• In: Breast cancer
• 9 Comments

We were in a huge auditorium, like a field house. Over the sound of the crowd, a tick, tick, tick could be heard. I realized, after seeing many movies where time bombs have to be stopped quickly, that there was a bomb in the field house.

“We have to get out of here! It’s a time bomb!” I shouted.

Maggie and the man who would become her husband were there – but more like the middle school age they were when they met, although we did not know him at the time. Michael was a young boy.

We all left with the crowd and moved into another huge room adjacent to where we were. Of course that made no sense, but it was a dream. The problem was Michael had left my side and was somewhere in a huge playground having a great time. He was not responding to my call to come to me. He was on top of a huge slide, like the old metal kind that we grew up on that are banned today. I had to get to him!

Then someone wheeling a cart with refreshments announced  it was just a drill. If this had been a real bomb, it would not have been in a dream.

****

When I woke up from this dream, I knew this was the way to start my cancer update. No cancer was not a dream or a nightmare. Well, maybe a nightmare.

Dr. Freud would have a great time with that one. I went back in that dream to a time when there was no cancer.

Alas there is cancer. I can be glib; I can be funny, and I can be terrified. On any given day, it’s a mixture of all three.

Going into the oncology appointment yesterday I was terrified. Behind it all is the fear that the oncologist would say, “There is nothing that can be done. Go home and get your affairs in order.” I’ve seen a lot of such scenes in movies and on TV.

What she said was the CT scan showed a couple of small spots in my liver, but we were not going to worry about them because the chemotherapy drugs will attack all of the cancer in my bones, lungs and those little specks in my liver.

And the pathology report indicates it is the original breast cancer in my lung and bones, which is better than having a new lung cancer. We may be able to treat those nasty cancer cells with a couple of oral medications for a time. The decision will be based on the final determination of the hormone receptors, which are proteins that tell the cancer to grow. The oral medications would work for a time depending on those receptors. Frankly, it is time to tell those receptors to shut the you know what up. Estrogen: no talking to the cells, please.

If the receptors don’t match whatever needs to be matched, I would then be started on some big gun chemotherapy on Tuesday. Yippee!!! My sense is that I will eventually get to the point where the big guns are needed, but hoping it’s a long time from now

I will also have monthly IV treatments to strengthen my bones as the cancer in them has zapped them.That means  I’m not supposed to fall because it would complicate my situation. So please no tripping me. And no banana peels on the floor. During the winter I’m supposed to be dropped off and picked up by the door so I don’t trip on snow and ice.

Monday I get a port put in surgically to make it easier to give these various treatments and draw blood. If you looked at my bruised left arm you would know I need that port.

And Tuesday is the brain MRI to see if cancer is there. The way I look at it, my head has already been empty and I’d like to keep it that way. If there is cancer there, the chemotherapy will not reach it so we would have to use other measures that are best not considered unless we need to. I prefer to consider myself empty headed.

All in all, the MRI and chemotherapy seem a great way to spend this Election Day. Please vote if you haven’t. An election is a terrible thing to lose this year.

P.S. I already voted.