Ok. i've been gone from here for a while. so my plan is to wrap up the cancer part of the journal by finishing the story of radiation. here it goes. Warning- the following is not for the faint of heart! So read with caution.
About a week before radiation was done my skin started to peel. It had been slowly turning a deep browny purple, and my pores all turned even darker which created this wierd speckly appearance. It started first in the fold under my breast, and my armpit- which is apparently because these areas are moist and they move alot. It also go really itchy. Then i would get these patches where it was kinda blistery looking. And then my skin started to come off in sheets. Imagine your worst sunburn ever and multiply it by ten. So because my skin was all peeling off i needed to cover up the open wounds that it left behind. Now if you've never tried to put a bandage on your armpit- and i doubt you have, it's not easy. especially if you can't use tape of anysort because there isn't enough healthy skin to tape it to. Now the lovely radiation nurses suggested that i not wear a bra for the 5 weeks that i was getting radiation. I suspect that none of them have ever belonged to d cup breasts or they wouldn't have made such a suggestion, as i didn't think that living bra-less for a month or so was really better than any possible chafing that could occur. plus, the sports bra was the only thing to hold the bandages in place. I did get these cool silicone based bandages that were very neat, effective and easy to use. And apparently ridiculously expensive.
If this had happened before chemo i'm sure i would have been rather traumatized. but in comparasin to chemo it was no biggie. it sucked sure, but much less than chemo sucked.
On Sept 12 i had a I'm done cancer treatment kegger in chris and kellee's back yard. there was a fire, and we just chilled, and visited, and drank beer, and laughed alot. Pat made me bacon wrapped steak,we laughed alot, and i burned a big stack of cancer related paraphenalia. It was a warm lovely night with not many mosquitos.
I've been back at work for a week today- although only 3 hours a day. It's going well so far, and i'm happy to be back. Even though everyone told me not to do it. luckily i've never really been good at following orders :)
and according to my calculations, i think next friday is the one year anniversary of finding my lump.
alright. bedtime

1.)Ensure that you spend plenty of time feeling your body so that you will notice any changes to it. Feel free to enlist others to inspect your body on a regular basis, especially for all those hard to reach places. If necessary try ingesting some Ecstasy to make your inspections more enjoyable.
2.) Don't worry if your doctor doesn't know anything about cancer- that's why we have google!
3.) Don't ever tell a technician in charge of radioactive anything that you may be pregnant.
4.) Don't try to have fun while trying on wigs. After all losing your femininity is a very serious matter.
5.) Don't expect to get a straight answer about anything.
6.) Remember doctors aren't doctors because they have fantastic communication skills.
7.) If possible travel with an army of nurses.
8.) Get an air miles card
9.) MacDonalds is a homeopathic remedy for chemo. no really it is
10.)Get cable
11.) Smoke alot of pot
12.) Have as much sex as possible, and don't underestimate how much is possible. Just because you've lost your hair doesn't mean you can't be sexy.
13.) Remember that you love your friends and family even if they: cry more than you do, buy you hideous cancer related paraphenalia, keep asking how you are feeling- when the answer has been "like crap" steady for many months, they give you bad lines from made for tv movies like "we're gonna fight this!"
14.) make a list of things you like about your body and yourself so you can read it when you feel like poo, have no eyebrows, you smell bad, and you taste bad, your body has a multitude of wierd and bad things happening to it.
15.) buy yourself lots of presents, and if you can't get other people to do it for you. seriously they want to anyway they just need a little direction.
16.) smoke some more pot

...to be continued

feeling a bit lost.
i'm in a wierd limbo state. feeling so much better than during chemo that i keep expecting life to be normal, but it's not. can't really do the things that i want to do because i have daily radiation apt's (like go to beach, or camping, or road trips)but still have most of everyday with nothing to do but feel lonely. i was hoping that working on a course would help me feel like i have a purpose, but it doesn't seem to be doing the trick. and i'm not really feeling good enough to start on some sort of ambitious project that would help me feel inspired about life.
i'm lacking in a steady supply of hugs that is normally provided by my work.
and so the sadness keeps creeping in.
... and i'm worried about next week cuz that's when i'm due to start having more serious side effects from radiation- my skin is starting to show signs of deteriation and i keep getting promised that i'll be fatigued(maybe that's what is causing this depression) and as a bizarre twist of fate it seems that radiation causes wasps to want to bite me. I guess it could be a coincidence but i've only been bit by a wasp once in my life as a child and now i've been bit 3 times in the last 4 days.
maybe i'll book a flight to go visit my bro in vancouver, or attempt to find something fun to do on the long weekend, and then i will have some happy thoughts to look forward too.
and i'll stop whining at you.

ok. so here's your cancer update.
i started radiation last week. compared to chemo it's kinda underwhelming- not that i'm complaining. and by writing this i'm probably dooming myself to weeks of shitty-ness just for underestimating the power of radiation. but whatever. at this point i feel like even if the suckiness level of radiation kicks into high gear it will only be for two to three weeks. I can deal.
so basically i go in 5 days a week, sometime in the morning, and take off my upper level of clothes and put on two lovely gowns. One facing forward and one back, so that i am appropriately modest. put my stuff in a locker and sit in the waiting room. usually for not longer than 2 minutes but one day i waited for 1/2 and hour. they call me into the room with the radiation machine- mine is blue. i take off my outer gown, and lay down on the slab (if you've ever had a ct scan, bone or muga scan it's very much the same) take my second gown down so a new array of strangers can see my tits (not that they care), and put my right arm above my head and hold on to a handle. then the technicians come and adjust me so that i am laying in exactly the right position, and i try not to think about the fact that my nose is suddenly very itchy. Before i left to saskatchewan i got four mini-green tatoos on my torso that they use to landmark where the radiation goes.
Once i am adjusted they scurry out of the room to safety, and a loud buzzing noise indicates that i am being radiated. then they come back in the room and move the equipment to a new position and then scurry off again. I think this happens about 4 times but i don't really pay attention, because i think that it would be easy to be freaked out by all the loud buzzing sci fi like equipment if i thought about it too much. so instead i day dream about my plans for the day, think about whatever hijinx i got up to the day before, or moon over whoever i'm crushed out on at the moment. much nicer than thinking about a wierd machine putting toxic rays into my body in hopes of killing any tumours that may be trying to grow there. sometimes i look at myself in this wierd black glass panel that they have on the ceiling. if i were more ambitious i think i could make a great self portrait of my bald semi naked self laying amongst the machinery waiting patiently for the radiation. one of the reasons that i think it makes a cool image is that there are these red lasers that come out of various points of the room that they use for landmarking and in the reflection i can see these red lines all over my body. anyway, i've spent a considerable amount of time lately thinking about how i could do a really great painting of it on a piece of black glass. not to mention that the pink briggade would seriously eat that shit up and i could make shit loads of cash selling my breast cancer self portraits to rich bitches who like to support the arts and be philanthropic. gag. don't worry the likely hood of this happening is miniscule. but that's what i think of while i'm being radiated.
eventually, (about 15 mins in all) i am interrupted in my day dreaming and told that i can take my arm down. it usually hurts like a bitch from being held above my arm, frozen in place. then i cover up, get down from the slab, put on my other gown, go to the change room, change and go on with my day. I feel pretty tired right when radiation is over, and i can feel the effects of it more every day. but so far it's not really bad, i can just notice it. and mostly i forget about it. like i'll go to get up from my chair and feel like and old lady, and i'll be like "what the hell, why do i suddenly feel 85?" and then i remember. and it's getting harder to get out of bed every day, but other than that...
I think i only have one more fingernail that is going to fall off, and my hair is growing very quickly. hopefully it will get less grey as it grows- but i doubt it
alrighty. that's the update

interesting. just got a phone call from my ex. it hasn't even been a week since i saw him last. this is starting to remind me of dating. not sure what i think about it.
hmmm....

i should be sleeping. instead i'm feeling sorry for myself. likely i will feel even more sorry for myself in the morning when i am sleep deprived, and on my way to radiation. i seriously hate feeling this way.
i'm not sure what's wrong with me that i can have fucking cancer and basically deal with it, but the stupidest fucking shit throws me into a funk. life is weird. normally i would play my guitar as a way to create a sense of well being but i don't have the fingernails for it right now.
anyway, don't be alarmed likely i will feel better in the morning.
i hope

lets see if i can manage to post something without angering the gods of dial-up and furthermore enraging myself to the point of smashing the computer...
right now i feel wonderful. It finally stopped raining yesterday, and i went fishing with my uncles kim and jim and my cousin tammy- who is here visiting from denmark. I caught a very small jackfish, and i put it back so it can keep growing.



I decided that we should expand the playground area in the campground for the kids, and people have jumped on board and are getting excited about it. So yesterday we cut the top off a hundred year old tree (it was dead) and today we started construction on a tree house. Also we have two old tractor tires so i mounted one in the dirt vertically for climbing on, and put the other down horizontal and turned it into a sand box.

We also went swimming, and played some board games. Plus much visiting. oh and i learned to drive a quad.
Many more people came today so there were probably around 60 people today. mainly my dad's family, to visit with my cousin tammy.
I can finally taste food today so i had potato salad and moose sausage for supper- glory be it was amazing!
and then we sang around the campfire. the only possible blight on the day was the mosquitoes, but it was really the first time they were bad since i've been here and only for a couple of hours and then they calmed down again.
today was a very good day.

Haven't written here for a while so i'll try to remember what is important.
As of July 2nd i will be done chemo. thank goodness. chemo is terrible. I can't imagine how people do it who are old and infirm. i feel it kicks my ass good, and i think i've had it so much better than most people, despite going for a week at a time where i have to force feed myself, and generally feeling like ass. Most of the girls in group have ended up in the hospital almost every round of chemo,and i only had to spend one night there (knock on wood). This round i had nupogen shots to give myself, in hopes that they would keep my white blood cell count up. And i think it worked as i didn't end up getting a fever. It's creepy giving yourself a shot. I tried to make the nurses do it but then one day it seemed harder to go somewhere than it did to just suck it up and do it, so i did. it's wierd what you can learn to do when you need to.
After my treatment is done i'm leaving town the next day to go hang out at my parents place in saskatchewan. Carolyn got into law school in saskatoon, and needs to head there to find herself and apt. so Her and Gillian and i will be driving there thursday evening. Yah for road trips. Although between Gillian and Carolyn we are bound to have the tackiest road music imaginable (but don't i love them for it). I guess it can't be worse than the time that Kmac and i spent the last hour before saskatoon yodelling along with old country music and drinking espresso so we wouldn't fall asleep. Anyway, i'm looking forward to convalescing in a lawn chair in the shade rather than my hot stinky apt in the city.
I'm single again, so i've been amusing myself by internet dating, which is nothing if not entertaining. unfortunately it rarely seems to involve actual dateable individuals, but hey- keep that dream alive! atleast it is my dating speed right now as i don't really have the energy for anything that is in anyway serious, so i guess it works.
I was trepidatious about my dating and sex life during cancer treatment but oddly enough it doesn't seem to be hampering me that much, other than the whole being out of commission for weeks at a time. People seem to be fairly receptive to the "by the way i'm bald cuz chemo made my hair fall out" approach and i've only had one guy totally bail after that. I guess it just goes back to the old you are as sexy as you feel and present yourself approach. I mean i've had an understanding of that for a while but i just didn't know if it would apply under the harsh conditions of chemo. First off i wasn't sure i would be able to feel sexy, and sick at the same time. Turns out nothing much kills my sex drive, which i guess is good to know. In fact the way things are looking if i can figure out the scheduling difficulties i may actually be getting laid more during chemo than ever before. bizarre. isn't the world a wierd and wonderful place.
My cat is sick, and in fact i am currently using livejournal as a way to procrastinate the awful job of giving her a pill. i've had to shell out much of my disability check to finance her vet bills this week and last. I did a little call out and my lovely, wonderful, magnificent friends and family have been sending me donations to help cover costs via paypal, so i was able to send her for an ultrasound. The ultrasound didn't find anything terribly wrong, so although it is still a mystery as to why she stopped eating i still have hope that she can get better.
well that is pretty much the update for right now.

1. cancer
2. chemo
3. having thrush
4. losing weight so that my clothes don't fit
5. everything tastes like sawdust
6. i got dumped for no reason
7. my accountant wants money but i have none
8. i can't/don't want to get drunk or high because mostly i just want to feel normal and healthy
9. i will have no one to cuddle with for the rest of chemo not to mention how do you get laid when you are busy having cancer treatment, and you don't have hair and one boob is smaller than the the other.
10. lukas is leaving tomorrow

feeling oddly perky i think it's from the steriods. lukas arrived late last night and it is lovely having him here. were going to rent a yurt tomorrow near carberry, by the spirit sands in spruce something park. allowing that i don't feel too much like ass in the am, since i've taken all the steriods already. won't know till the morning though. went for a walk to chris and kellee's today and visited yukon. it was a nice day and it was nice to go for a walk. well i think it is time to go to bed now and be a bit sad that my bf is not in it. c'est la vie- n'est-ce pas?
bon nuit mon amies. c

1.) found out this week that i no longer have to get a mastectomy in august. which is great for a variety of reasons, above and beyond the fact that i won't be reduced to life as a person with one giant boob. it means that i don't have to have the removal surgery, but also that i won't need the 1-3 other surgeries involved with reconstruction. and i won't have to decide if i want reconstruction, what kind i want, do i want a reduction on the other side, do i want a fake nipple, or just a tatoo, etc. etc. also it makes it easier to plan taking off from winnipeg for the bulk of july.and further more it means that i will be done radiation by sept. and can probably go back to work then!
2.) went and played catch with chris g today, and used my new ball glove. my arms aren't used to that much new activity, but it was very fun.
3.) i have two stitches sticking out of my chest where my port-o-cath(wierd fake vein thing that means they don't have to fight trying to find a vein everytime i need a blood test and that protects my small veins from the nasty chemo chemicals) was inserted i don't think it's supposed to be that way, but they told me about the stitches when i was fucked up on chemo, and morphine related drugs so i don't remember. i'll ask tomorrow when i go for my blood test. in the meantime i keep touching them cuz they feel cool, despite kellee giving me a nursley lecture about how i will cause infection. it's kinda like those wierd hairs that grow out of your chin sometimes i can't stop touching them and kinda just want to take the tweezers to them.
4.) my sweet sweet brother sent me the second season of battlestar gallactica in the mail today. yah for presents in the mail
5.) my sweet sweet vancouver friends had a madonna movie fundraiser for me the other night. which i think is a bit bazaar but oh so vancouver.
6.) i'm going with lena to see the snakes on sat. i'm super excited.
7.) i'm going to go sing karoake tonight for kathleen's stagette. should be interesting
ok i think thats all. ciao

the night before chemo. i'm trying to think of what to compare it too, maybe the sick feeling of dread you have the night before an exam you aren't ready for, or the night before a paper you won't have finished is due, combined with the night after a big fight with your lover that you didn't get resolved before you need to go to sleep. sorta like that but probably worse because there's always hope that when you wake up in the morning that there will be a solution to your problems but chemo is the solution to the problem.
that's what is hard to grasp the notion that i am poisoning myself in the name of health. that and there is no way to make it better. (except briefly with copious amounts of marijuana). it is only to be endured. and to make it worse it is unpredictable. each person responds differently and it is different everytime, which means you can't really prepare for it. that's the control freak in me trying to deal with shit by planning, alas... i prepared for not having hair- that's no biggie, although bits of fuzz and other detritus keep attaching themselves to the stubble on my head which is distressing. and the lack of body hair is a small bonus.
i'm not enjoying how it fucks with my enjoyment of food, as i really enjoy food normally. Not only is there nausea, but chemo slows down you digestion so there is a feeling like a large continuous lump in my stomache, your body secretes the chemicals through your bodily fluids including saliva so that my mouth has a continous bad taste that is also eating away at my enamel, and the flesh in my mouth causing sores. My sense of smell is fucked up so that things that usually smell good smell bad, and somethings that i normally don't like the smell of smell good, and everything smells wierd. To top this all off there seems to be a disconnect between my mouth and my brain so that the signals it normally sends to my brain when i eat are different. This results in wierd pregnancy like cravings, and sometimes thinking that i want to eat something right up until it goes in my mouth, and then discovering that it tastes disgusting. It makes it a bit challenging to decide what to eat. AND THE MOST FUCKED UP PART is that despite all this it usually feels better to be eating than not eating it's just hard to convince myself to try and eat.
amongst the many charming side affects of chemo is that it does something to your brain. no one knows exactly what because no one actually studies it, but the assumption is that it is related to the fact that the goal of chemo is to kill off quickly reproducing cells, and i guess some of those must be brain cells. so i am forgetful, as in halfway through a sentence i forget what i was talking about, or today i went down to the laundry room only to discover that i'd forgotten to bring my laundry with me. some days its like there is a fog sitting on top of my brain, and i can't seem to get rid of it. and once again it is unpredictable, and therefor hard to plan for. right now i'm telling myself that this will be temporary as the idea that chemo is making me stupid is probably the most terrifying part of all of this.it also inhibits seratonin production so it fucks with my moods. so that i stop caring about anything and just want to sleep all the time. this result in feeling like i am a zombie the week i have chemo, or that i've ceased to exist for whole weeks at a time.
anyway, i need to stop thinking about this all right now and try to sleep. on that happy note...

spent most of today outside, have a mild sunburn on my head, from reading the paper and drinking coffee on carolyn's front step. some bike riding, went to the batting cages with my lovely lovely friends, campfire, singing and good food at kathryns and now i smell of smoke, and have the whole king-size bed to myself. life is good.

Despite the fact that i never been that skilled at sharing my feelings, i'm not opposed to therapy, i just never felt like it was really necessary. Then when i started this whole trip i felt like i was managing fairly well, but then someone mentioned that it is better to go when you don't really need it and try to avert a crisis than to wait until you are in crisis. so point taken i went to see a counsellor. she's alright. i don't really have any feelings about her either way, which is okay i guess. the only downside is that her office is at st.b and THAT HOSPITAL IS FILTHY seriously don't go there if you don't need to.
on wed. i went to a support group for young women with breast cancer. first of all you should know that when you see that term it means women 55 and younger. in fact they say young women but what they really mean is women who are pre-menopausal. they make this distinction because the therapies are different. and because they've determined that "young" women have different psyco/social concerns than older women (news flash!!) such as cancer interupts their careers, their families, their reproductive concerns, etc. etc. anywho. the support group actually consist of young women(well still in a cancer context) but the age range is 28-42, so most everyone is in roughly the same boat. I was a bit sceptical about it before i went because i was worried it would be a) filled with crazy women that i would hate b)that it would be more pink brigade type bullshit c) that i would be building relationships with women who may die from cancer. Okay that last point may be harsh, but it's not that i don't think that i'll never have anyone in my life who will die but that is a bit different than consciously entering into that space. but hey if nothing else i'm sure i will learn much. so the group was good. i was actually a bit suprised. not just okay but good. on tuesday i learned that my chemo starts on the 18th. it was weird but i felt happy about it because it's been so long that i've been waiting to hear about when i would start and now at least i know what i'll be doing for the next 5 months. and i'll be getting a pic line in my arm ( basically a tube they shove in my vein almost to the heart so that when i get chemo i won't have to get bruises all over my arms, and have lower chance of infection and other complications). At the group i got to see peoples pic lines and ports so i know what they look like and heard what people think of them. if you would have told me about pics and ports 6 months ago i would have been disgusted and said no way. but now i'm looking forward to not having bruises anymore.
so i think i'll go back next week.

one of my earliest memories is running in circles around the record player in the sunken living room in my parents newly built house. it was before the green shag carpet was installed and i was supposed to be wearing socks so that i wouldn't get a sliver from the plywood sub-floor. i was also likely not supposed to be running so near the record player (respect for the record player was one of the first things i learned as well). i remember that i was listening to the soundtrack from Hair! i've never actually seen the musical or the movie but i will always remember the exilarating feeling of running as fast as i could in a circle, while listening to that song.
when i was five i begged my mom to let me grow my hair long because my favorite cousin tammy had beautiful long blonde hair, and she played the guitar and sang beautifully and i so wanted to be like her. it stayed long until i was twenty five. even through grade three when i had lice my mom spent hours combing my long long hair with a nit comb so i wouldn't have to cut it. she used to braid it into tight little pig tails so that it curved out a la pippy longstocking. but that's okay it went well with my blue courduroy knickers, and my plaid shirt.
my long hair survived being backcombed into wings and permed in the eighties. it survived the nineties when we layered it, and dyed it with kool-aid, jello, blueing, and finally a deep witchy green with punky colours. when i was in university i had to show an extra six pieces of id. to get into the gay bar, and was called the token straight girl because of that hair (i'm certain the fact that i was a bit of a prude had nothing to do with it).
Finally when i turned 25, i made my friends cut my hair off one night while drinking jaggermeister. i still have the braids somewhere in my parents house. it was either that or take to wearing a rainbow flag 24/7 in order to get laid. for a few years it got progressively shorter and i experimented with a wide variety of colours. most of them applied by someone equally as drunk as i was, in a less than delicate fashion. the motto was always- hey it can alway grow back!
so although it's been getting progressively more conservative over the years i'm not too concerned about my hair falling out. i don't however think it is necessary to wait for it to fall out in depressing clumps so. on the 12th i went with chris and jess to the wig library (otherwise known as the gaurdian angel caring room at ccmb) The woman there was very earnest and somber about the whole affair. so much so that i feel that she gets her job satisfaction out of "giving women back their femininity" which is the most fucked up part about the whole breast cancer industry. i understand that there is the terrible reality that most women who have breast cancer have to experience living in a world that defines femininity as being directly associated to having breasts and giving birth, and i think they should have help working through this. it just pisses me off because i think that some of this stuff buys into that notion rather than challenging it. anywho, here are some of the best wig photos:

school marm

the hair version of twirling in a skirt

school marm II

indie rocker

words do not do justice

rod stuart watch out!



when i came home piper told me that i received a delivery of wild blueberries from neechee foods from lisa. how sweet of her to remember that they are my favorite food, and to go to the trouble of ordering them all the way from montreal! so for the last soup night i made a kick ass corn chowder, and blueberry ice cream.
then carolyn shaved my hair into mohawk.

was supposed to have a liver ultrasound at 12:30 today. which includes fasting for 4 hours in advance so i got up early (6:30) so i could eat a bowl of cereal and drink some water because we all know how i get when i don't eat (if you don't know count yourself lucky). at 10:00 they phoned to tell me that i don't have to go after all because they can't figure out why i was scheduled for one and who scheduled me for it in the first place. activities such as this make it hard for me to have faith in my health care professionals, and it is kinda important that i have faith. it also unfortunately adds to my list of things to complain about and i really don't want to become one of those people who complains and is negative all the time. cancer or no cancer.
of course in a fit of premenstral insanity i stayed up late the night before writing a ridiculously philisophical email to rob that will mean who-knows-what once it hits the straight-man filter and comes back to me. luckily he generally just ignores me when i get that way which is -trust me on this one- a good thing. so as a result of this late night correspondance combined with an early morning breakfast call i am pretty much useless for the rest of the day.

last weekend i was making apple pancakes and when we cut into the organic apples i had the seeds were sprouting. its crazy how i found this exciting. i've never seen sprouted apple seeds before! so i planted them in a pot on my window sill, and the green is starting to break through. I know that it's kinda a crap shoot as to what kind of a tree will actually grow from these seeds as most apples are grafted, but it is still entertaining me. i guess as long as i'm still amused by the little things in life i don't have to worry.

On the 7th i went with my parents and gillian to the CCMB to meet Dr.Lau, and my Nurse Michelle Morton. I had looked up Dr.Lau on rate your md ahead of time and the people that wrote about him on there all loved him.so i'll take that as a good sign. unfortunately my radiation oncologist does not have the same good reviews.
Dr.Lau was delightful though. He started out talking to me as though he needed to convince me that i needed to have chemo, so he showed me all these stats about my survival rates with and with out chemo. once i convinced him that i was ready to hop aboard the chemo train i found out what kind i will be getting- FEC (chemical names) for 3- 21 day cycles and then i will get 3 more 21 day cycles of taxotere. I will get to take two different kinds of anti-nausea meds while i do that . apparently one of them costs roughly 20$ a pill and i will need five of them so that is 100$ each cycle. once my work coverage runs out (there's likely a annual maximum of a couple hundred bucks)i will get to apply for pharmacare, and once i pay a 5 hundred dollar deductible then i will be covered for everything. unfortunately i haven't paid my taxes for a bit (don't tell revenue canada please) so now- just for shits and giggles i am getting my taxes up to date so i won't have to apply for amnesty from jail so that i can get my cancer treatment! fun and games. i really must have been bad in my past lives. i tell you i will have enough character after all this for about 6 other people.
but i digress. - oh and i will get to take a steriod at one point too so that my body doesn't react to the second kind of chemo. and likely after chemo i will have surgery. on the 18th i will meet the rad. onc. and find out what will happen at radiation.
i keep thinking that at one point i will meet a doctor who will tell me all the answers, so that i know what to expect from the next year of my life. but the more time goes on the more i learn that i will likely never have all the answers. at best each time i will get one more piece of the puzzle. so even though dr.L tells me about chemo i still don't know when i will start. and the day before my apt. the receptionist at the BHC phoned me to tell me that i have liver ultrasound scheduled for march 11th. well dr.l doesn't know why so him and michelle spent 15 minutes trying to figure out why. the good news is because of this he tells me that the ct scan looks clear, which is why he doesn't know why i would need to get a liver ultra-sound. this makes me happy that the ct scan didn't show any thing bad, but concerned because it seems like no one knows what the fuck is going on.
afterwards i had to go to hematology to get some blood tests done so know i have another bruise on my hand, to go with the ones on my arms.

on friday my brother tim came. my parents were still here and we went straight from the airport to carolyn's house for a little bday party. it was mom and dad, tim, carolyn, jess, rob and me. We made pizzas with lots of gourmet supplies from delucas- yum and had chocolate cake that my mom made. Then we had some rye and played dutch blitz. everyone was pretty tired though so we went to bed kinda early.
we got up the next morning and made breakfast and my folks got packed up to go. I was stressed from the pathology report/ not sleeping properly because my parents were staying at my house, and because i hadn't had personal space for a week, so when i woke up hung-over, and cramping to discover it was freezing rain outside i was ready to jump off a bridge, because i thought that my parents might have to stay for another day. and i do so love them but man was i ready for them to leave! luckily after researching the weather forecast and road conditions they decided to go for it. i think my dad could tell that i was about to snap. unfortunately they ended up staying in a small town hotel just outside of melfort cuz the roads were too bad, so i felt a bit of guilt but really i think they were facing imminent death if they would have stayed at my house.
most of tims visit was spent drinking, lounging and playing dutch blitz. It was stupid cold out and tim was a bit sick so we stayed in as much as possible.
On monday tim came with me to st.b for the bone scan. It all went well although i have an entire rant about the state of hygeine in the st.b if you ever want to hear it! Both the bone scan and the mugga scan(heart function test) are roughly the same deal...1)you get injected with radioactive dye 2) you wait for the dye to circulate through the appropriate body parts 3)you lay on a slab and a large tube like camera adjusts around you, while you assume various poses and try to be still. pretty boring on the whole. i napped through a good portion of the mugga scan. most of the tests that i am having right now are to establish a base line to enable them to monitor my bodily functions once they start to poison me. also- i believe the information that they glean from these tests will be used to decide the scope of the chemo.
on friday feb 29th i had a ct scan. i had to abstain from food for 4 hours. mel and i were running behind schedule cuz i couldn't find the building that i wanted, and i ended up leaving her to deal with the parking hassle while i ran in so as to not be late. once again i got to wear a lovely gown. the nurse put an iv in my left arm. apparently my veins are difficult and she fucked it up (i have a lovely bruise now). while this was happening i got to drink some more radioactive business that "looks and tastes just like water", well that would have been great but it didn't feel like water. it was oily and coated my teeth and it was filling but not quenching. i had to drink about 32 ounces of it. fun times. the gown i had was too small and it came above my knees so i was cold and worried about pulling a basic instinct moment. eventually i went in to lay on another slab (these slabs are not created with fat people in mind -btw), with my arms above my head. They start injecting things into my iv, and it burned like hell fire! because- by this time, i hadn't eaten for about 5 1/2 hours i started to worry that the needle wasn't in my vein and that the stuff they were injecting was going place tht it shouldn't be. luckily the (nurse?) came and checked on me and told me that my arm wasnt' about to explde so would be okay. the actual scan didn't last long- which was good because i had to be veery still and keep holding my breath. that and what ever they injected not only made me feel as thoght i had to go pee, it actually made it feel as though i had peed myself. fun and games.
next week is the liver ultra sound! woot woot

Alright, here's is the update after my last post.
So my parents showed up on tuesday night so that they could come for the post-op apt. with the Dr.Z. Wed morning i woke up and told my folks that i had an apt with a social worker who would help me figure out what to do about my disability claim. Really i was on my way to the manitoba clinic to get a blood test and see if i was preggers. Then i went home and had breakfast with my folks. Didn't have much sleep so i already felt a bit like vomitting.
We picked up Kellee at 12:30 and headed off to the BHC. It is of course stupid cold. Kellee and i went in to the tiny exam room by ourselves where i got to wear the most lovely garment- a rose coloured, polyester, wrap-around blouse. It was lovely. While we were waiting for Dr.Z to arrive we harrassed the nurse about the fact that i couldn't have a bone scan cuz i might be pregnant. Even though she was toeing the company line, she was helpful in the way that she told me that the whole bone scan debacle wouldn't delay my treatment any. which made me feel better.
When Dr.Z finally came i was disappointed that he wasn't wearing his bowtie but i guess he was held up at the OR so he didn't have time for frills.
He didn't have the greatest news. What i was hoping for was that he would say that he had taken out an unneccessary amount of lymphnodes and that the margins of the tumour he took out were clear. What he said was that 10 out of 12 lymphnodes had cancers in them and that one was situated in such a way that it was blocking the blood stream in a way that puts me at a higher risk of cancer cells moving to another part of my body. Also the margins of what they took out of my breast were not clear. The section closest to my chest wall had only a mm of clearance between the cancer and the margin of what they removed. If the cancer had been this close to anywhere else i would have been scheduled for more surgery to remove more tissue. However, you can't remove the chest wall. In this scenario, more surgery would have been good news as surgery is the easiest and best way to get rid of the cancer. What this means is that i will likely have a mastectomy at some point either before or after the chemo. and that is i think in order to allow the radiation treatment to access the area next to my chest wall. I will have the option to have reconstructive surgery but not until after my treatment is over. I will worry about that when the time comes.
so that was a bit of a blow, and we didn't really know what to do after that. the only things i could think of were praying or drinking, and well we are not a religious family. Chris and Kellee and Malachy came over, and Carolyn came over later. We had some baby therapy, and a few drinks and made the necessary phone calls and then i declared a phone ban. Later after a few drinks and some crying we were in a ridiculous state of mind and somehow thought it would be a great idea to prank people. As a result we asked Jess to buy me some gooseberries (get it- a wild gooseberry chase), and cam to procure a box set of the television show Doogie Howser MD. We thought that they were bizarre enough suggestions that they would immediately know that it was a joke until Jess being the wonderful person that she is called back asking if i wanted green or red gooseberries. Would you believe that you can buy gooseberries at two different places in winnipeg in february- who knew. I'm sorry that Jess fell for it but it gave me such joy at the time and was a lovely distraction from feeling sorry for myself.
Of course in all this i had forgotten to stop and find out my blood test results so we had to create an elaborate ruse the next day where i had to go and help chris pick out a valentines day gift for kellee. finally some good news! i'm not pregnant! woo hoo.