Pins and Needles

I was laying there in the exam room with a doctor sticking needles into me, preparing to send pluses of electricity through my body and I thought “what else can be done to my poor body.” No, this wasn’t another biopsy looking for more cancer cells, nor an infusion aimed at killing them, or even an emergency life-saving procedure. It was an acupuncture treatment aimed at my immune and endocrine system hoping to aid my body in the fight against my cancer cells and other maladies my body is dealing with. You see, several years ago, my daughter and I went to a doctor at a local “doc-in-a-box.” Instead of rushing us through, she actually sat down and listened to us. We followed when she eventually left and started her own practice. Recently she became certified in acupuncture, and as sort of an internship, offers it free to her patients. Though I can be skeptical, I am also open to thinking outside of the box and decided to give it a try. The first treatment was OK, but I didn’t get the mind relaxing benefit I had expected and actually felt no different during or after. Since I learned that my cancer had returned, I have been waking up every morning feeling drained, nauseous and overall, yucky. Yesterday was no exception. In fact, I had been feeling especially bad. I was more depressed than usual, I needed to return to work but really did not want to, and felt like my GI system was planning an all out attack on me. All I wanted to do was crawl in bed and take a nap. I managed to get through the day, even spending a few hours at work. By the time I got to my doctor’s office, I figured if nothing else, a few minutes to just lie on a table with nothing to do on my part would be nice.

The room was filled with the soulful sound of flutes and a steady drum beat, candles flickered, and as I lay on the table I could feel myself relaxing a bit. The insertion of the needles isn’t too bad. You sometimes feel a slight pinch and if she got it in just the right spot, you can feel sort of a mild ache. Needles were placed at specific points on my feet, legs, hands and elbows. This time she added a few on my abdomen. Those didn’t hurt (fat can be useful for something!) but as I have always been really ticklish, I tended to jump each time she placed one in. After all of the needles were in (I purposely didn’t count how many there were, I figured I didn’t need to think about being a porcupine), she lite a sacred Egyptian aromatic herb, called moxa, and held it by each needle to bring heat to that point. It actually felt pretty good. Then she hooked some of the needles to a small electrical stimulator and turned it up as far as I could tolerate it. I could take it where it made the needles pulse slightly; I didn’t like it when they tingled more intensely! After placing one of those space-age silver blankets over me (yes, that didn’t fit into the zen like feel of the procedure, but it did keep me toasty warm) I was left to relax and let the energy, or chi, of my body converge through the selected spots and adjust and alter my body's energy flow into healthier patterns. Though she could have used a better choice of words, she left saying she would leave me to “cook” for a while and then be back in. I can’t say I zoned out into a mind clearing meditative state, however I did find I could relax and let the music flow through my mind instead of all the thoughts that had been running amuck around in there. By the time she returned and removed all the needles, I was feeling more relaxed than I had in a while.

As luck would have it, her husband, who is a licensed massage therapist and also doing a type of internship, was there and she offered me a free massage after my treatment. Since I am still a little worried about my bones being weakened by the cancer, I opted just to have my feet and hands massaged. If all the pain and suffering I had been dealing with these past few months were necessary just in order to get to that few moments of having my feet and hands massaged, I would happily do it all over again! It was, literally, just what the doctor ordered. When I left her office my body felt like rubber: relaxed and mushy.

Now, here is the thing, I woke up this morning and felt something was wrong. I didn’t feel quite right. When I sat for a moment to observe what my body was experiencing, I realized what was wrong….I felt good! I didn’t have that familiar nauseous, mildly uncomfortable feeling I was so used to. I felt energetic and was looking forward to getting up and starting the day, an unfamiliar sensation in recent weeks! Whether it was the acupuncture, the massage or just my body finally shaking off some virus or medicine side effect, I’ll never know. I do know that I am going to continue the acupuncture treatments and hope that the massage continues to be available also! You know, I could learn to like this new feeling of well being!

TIME AND WISDOM

Perspective comes with time and, paired with wisdom, can do a lot for a person. Here I am, five months beyond experiencing the scariest moment of my life, watching my husband suffering a stroke, six weeks past learning that, not only has my cancer returned, but has metastasized and six days into a voluntary quarantine for swine flu, and I’m OK. In fact I’m better than OK, I’m feeling normal and am looking towards the future with normal optimism and fear, not unrealistic optimism or agonizing fear.

Yes, our lives and plans for our future have had to be adjusted, but don’t we always have to continually change course as we navigate along in life? Sure, more uncomfortable tests and treatments are now a certainty and will be a constant in my life. Yes, my husband has to constantly check his blood thinner level and adjust it accordingly in order to prevent another, possibly catastrophic, stroke from occurring, and yes, our lives will certainly be shortened, but when we do get to that end is as much a mystery today as it was before and as it is for most beings. So, sitting months, weeks and days from the initial acknowledgment of our situation, perspective has eased the initial panic that is a given for such instances. Wisdom, which has come to me not from having done well in the past, but from where I have really sucked and have had to learn to do better, is what is fueling my acceptance of our situation and my determination to continue to keep my life one worth living. In other words, ain’t much I can do about it, so I might as well find something nice about it!

Here is another thing I have learned: it is nice when you like your partner as well as love him. Doug and I have had LOTS of togetherness lately. I stayed home to take care of him after his stroke, we have spent lots of time together driving back and forth to Chapel Hill and in waiting rooms, and we have been in voluntary quarantine for the last 6 days due to swine flu. Luckily our house is large enough for us to find alone space, our pets are silly enough to keep us entertained, cable has On Demand movies, and we’ve learned to not take the other’s crankiness personally! The only down side to all this time spent together is we’ve used up almost all of our paid time off and still need to take off at least once a month for my treatments from now on. So, my determination to actually take a real vacation together, our first, may be put back on hold. Heck, what really is the difference between hanging together, let’s say, at the Grand Canyon, and hanging out together at home like we’ve been doing? I mean really, we’ve seen pictures of the canyon, how much better could it really be in person? And, gee, a few nights in the mountains at a cozy little cabin, dinning at a romantic lakeside bistro, and hikes along trails full of natural beauty, breathing in fresh mountain air? Really, what fun would that be? And of course, if we don’t get health reform passed, we’ll need all that money we don’t spend on a trip to pay for all the medical bills insurance won’t cover because it doesn’t have to, if we still have health insurance at all once they figure out all the trouble we cause by having strokes and getting cancer…

So, stroke, cancer and swine flu, what could be next?

the daredevil lizard and me

I was up early to take the big dog back to the groomers as everyone, dog included, were too tired to finish at the last grooming appointment. Just as I take a left turn out of my neighborhood, I see a bright green anole (lizard) crawl up from the windshield wiper onto my windshield. Holding on for dear life, he gives me a look like “what the heck are you doing?” So I pull over into a shopping center parking lot and get out. Now, my daughter would have caught the little critter in her hand and safely removed him to a nice tree or bush. I want to spare his life but I’m not brave enough to actually catch him in my bare hand. Now, it is not that I am afraid he will bite me; I just don’t do well with things that move really fast and wiggle! So I shooed him off the car, and of course, he made a b-line for what he thought was the safety of the shade under my car. I tried to get him to skedaddle over to the grass, but he wasn’t moving. So I ascertained his was right in the middle between my tires, and I carefully and slowly backed up and left him sitting in the middle of the parking lot.

I delivered Trooper to the groomers and on my way back home stopped to see if Mr. Daredevil Anole had found a nice shady spot to call his own. Well, he is still sitting in the middle of the parking lot. He’s not squished, so I didn’t run over him, he just looked stunned to be left in that strange and barren spot. So I stop my car and get a small container with the hopes of catching him and transporting him back home to return to familiar places. He was having no part of me and immediately ran to the shade, which unfortunately, was under my car. Not being 25 any longer getting down to look under my car was no easy feat, but I did it anyway. I tried to shoo him out hoping to be able to catch him in my little plastic shoe box (hum, shoe box became a shoo box as I waved it under the carriage of my car, how funny). Well, he was having none of it. When I went around to the other side and looked under the car he was gone. Now, I looked around and saw no sign that he had actually moved from under the car, so my only guess is that he had found a place to jump to ON the car. The choices were somewhere on the under carriage, or, onto one of the tires. Gees, I was trying to save his life and now he may have gone to the one place that affords him no safety at all. What was I suppose to do? So I got back in my car hoping that the engine would scare him out and away from the car. Now, you have learned that I am an animal lover and might have guessed that I am an environmentalist, so of course I drive a Prius, a hybrid electric car. There is no engine noise when I am running on the battery as I was at that moment. So all I could do was very slowly back up hoping that he would find the rolling tire a little too unsteady for his taste and jump to safety. Well, I didn’t see him running madly from the moving car, and fortunately I didn’t see a squishes lizard on the pavement in front of me, so I guess he found a nice place to hitch a ride back home on, or so I hope!

In the mean time I am having some unusual symptoms and I called the oncology nurse practitioner this morning. Seems that being medically induced into menopause by chemotherapy is not really menopause…. so I might be going through menopause, AGAIN. I get to not only experience some not so wonderful things in my life, but I get to do them more than once. What next, puberty and all the fun social experiences I had with that one more time?

New Cancer Hospital

Check out the new cancer hospital opening at UNC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7UoC0ey6Bc&feature=channel

Wow, what a great time to have cancer…ok, no time is a great time, but believe me this is a great improvement over the old space where I was treated the first time! I used to imagine how to design a state of the art infusion center (where the chemotherapy is given) and then I’d donate it to UNC if I ever won the lottery! Well, I didn’t win the lottery, but UNC cancer patients all did! The hospital opens August 17th and my next appointment is September 3rd so I get to use the new facility right away!!

Some interesting side effects of either the Zometa or the Aromisine is that I’m hot and cold all at the same time. Not hot in part of my body and cold in another, I’ve been like that for years (kick cover off feet, pull tight around shoulders, back on to the feet, off shoulders, repeat every few minutes….) but I was trying to isolate the cold and hot and couldn’t, it was both at the same time in all parts of my body. Really, really odd. Also my hands and feet hurt. You know when your hands or feet are really cold and it hurts right down to the bones? Well it’s like that but without the cold, so warming them up doesn’t do anything. And forget sleeping! I’m tired and think I am ready to close my eyes and drift off, but as soon as I close my eyes, my mind starts in on me. Man, am I a nag! Either I’m thinking of all I need to do, of an idea I want to do, or, understandably, I think about the cancer. So I pick up a book, which if it is a good book, I don’t realize how long I’ve been reading until I look at the clock and it is already 4 AM. Or I surf the web from my iThingy, reading news, surfing for new free apps or playing solitaire. I’ve mastered one game so I actually don’t like it when I win because it takes all the fun out of it to keep having the cards stack so nicely! Then I think I am ready to fall asleep but decided to check my email and news just one last time, and bam, I’m wide awake again! The last time I had cancer I took sleeping pills. However, taking them for the 6 or so months that I needed them took me over 3 years to get off them, so I’d really like to avoid them. Probably getting up and moving during the day might be a good solution, if only I weren’t so tired from not sleeping. Can you say “vicious circle?”

Did I tell you about the ducks? We live on a wonderful little creek where I can walk down to our dock and feed the fish and turtles in the evening. Most of my turtles have moved on since a wild gang of mullet have taken over. These guys are like sharks, swarming and circling and having a feeding frenzy. Well, the fact that they are madly attaching cheerios takes away some of the adventure, but it is interesting nonetheless! Anyway, several months ago a pair of the Muscovy ducks came down stream and discovered the free snacks we were giving out. Muscovy ducks come from Brazil and are the size of geese. They are also ugly as sin with large bumpy red skin covering most of their face and head. A large group of them live on our creek, mostly up stream away from our alligator. Muskovys are also very assertive and used to come up the hill to our drive way looking for handouts. We have tried to avoid feeding them because of this and the dogs have helped kept them distrustful of us for most of the time we’ve been here. However, our cheerios and pond food must have been just too good to pass up.

Have you ever watched ducks mating? It is very violent. The male chases the female and then grabs the back of her neck in his beak. Then, he holds her head under water, only bringing it up occasionally so she can breathe. The first time we saw this we tried to ‘rescue’ the female by yelling at the male thinking he was trying to kill her! This time I had my camera, so we just watched and videotaped (is there is a market for duck porn?). Now the interesting part is that, well, male ducks have corkscrew penises. I mean like curly cue pasta, and I have tape to prove it! Wow, what they didn’t teach me in biology class! Anyway, the female duck started waiting at the dock for us in the evening when we’d go out to feed the fish and turtles. Figuring she was pregnant, I made sure she got her fair share before the fish pushed her out the way. Last week, she was there as usual, but this time she was accompanied by eight, itzy bitsy little balls of fluff! They were so cute, trailing behind mama swimming as fast as they little web feet could go. She guided them along the shore so they could nibble up whatever goodies little ducks nibble on, while she waited patiently swimming off to the side. Sometimes she’d move on and the little ones would scamper to catch up to her, the littlest one bringing up the rear! After a while she brought them over to the dock. She let them gobble up the cheerios for a moment before moving them on to a spit of alligator weed along the shore, I guess so could eat their vegetables and not fill up on treats! Such a sensible mama duck! Of course my dogs just couldn’t believe all those wonderfully chase-able little creatures coming right up to the dock and no way to run after them. And yes, just in case, both little dogs wear life jackets! So far none of them have tried to jump in, but Mattie has run off the dock onto the creek bank trying to get them. Now she gets her own cheerio if she sits still and just watches them. I love our creek!

Treatment Has Started

OK, here is the deal. Once cancer has spread to the bones, it is incurable. But it can be controlled so that it will either shrink or just stop where it is. The idea of regular chemo is to kill fast growing cells to try and cure the cancer. Most of my cancer cells are considered to be dormant, so chemo won’t do anything except cause problems with my normally growing cells. Radiation also is considered a tool to cure and can only affect cells in the path of the radiation. The assumption is that there are dormant cell everywhere and they can’t do full body radiation without making me really sick and causing more cancer, so radiation is not in the running, unless it is needed to shrink any specific tumors in my bone that are causing pain or breaks in the bone.

So the treatment is a once monthly infusion of Zometa (http://www.chemocare.com/bio/zometa.asp), which I had my first dose yesterday after my doctor's appointment, and a daily Aromasin tablet (http://www.chemocare.com/bio/aromasin.asp). Not as bad as I expected. We’ll leave my little chest lump alone as it can be a good indicator if the treatment is shrinking the tumors.

Just in case you are wondering, this is the same situation that Elizabeth Edwards is in (except her’s came back sooner than mine and thus is more aggressive) and according to People Magazine, she is being treated by my very same oncologist! So that is my six degrees of separation with President Obama! Of course I volunteered at the local Obama campaign office with the woman who introduced Mrs. Obama when she spoke here in Jacksonville so it is even closer there!

It is too quiet here today as all three dogs are at the groomer’s getting beautified. The kitten is locked up and Tipper is asleep in our bed. This afternoon I am going to have an acupuncture treatment (you’d think I’ve had enough of needles and getting pocked in the back….) by my family doctor. So, after many, many trips on my out of control roller coaster, I think I’m either at the station, or at least on a nice calm piece of track.

Sad Movie

We rented The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons last night and I cried! Of course I cried when I watched Mama Mia! Friday afternoon also!

I've been doing a lot of nothing and I can feel my energy being sapped by ever growing depression. A constant feeling of nausea, difficulty sleeping, craving of comfort foods (I can justify that, I need the extra weight to withstand the chemotherapy!), and just not feeling like doing anything. I'm hoping that once I know the treatment plan I can get started on a routine that will include exercise and returning to work. Right now I am becoming an expert at video solitaire and a midnight news junkie!

Our foster kitten got sent home from the adoption fair early, again! She is really a sweet cat, just gets freaked out by crowds. She is learning to play with the dogs, it is just our 17 year old cat HATES her and we just can't continue to keep them separated. Right now we only let them out in shifts. I've made an elaborate gate system so the kitten can't run into where Tipper is locked up when we open the door to the back of the house. I had put a screen door on the laundry room where Jessie, the Basement Cat, stays when tipper is out, but she managed to bust through that! Anyone want a really pretty orange tabby female cat with dark amber eyes? Unfortunately the longer we foster her the more attached we get, but we just can't put Tipper through the stress... If our lives aren't complicated enough!