6 December 2011

A Nice Long Newsy Post

As you may have noticed, my posts are becoming scarce.  Chemo is much harder than I had anticipated.  For me.  I have to put that caveat in there because it is different for everyone.  Some people sail through it with little change to their lifestyle, just a little more fatigue, or a diet modification, or additional drugs to address side effects like nausea.  It kicks my ass.  Everything about my body feels weird, wrong and broken.  Every day brings new and different maladies that throw me off my game.  Imagine waking up one morning to purple grass and a green sky.  You get up out of the stream you are resting in and blow your nose to pee.  You roll in feathers to get dressed and then head up into a tree to eat your breakfast by stuffing rocks in your armpits. Then you go to your job of swinging a dog by its tail inside a tunnel filled with macaroon furniture.  That would throw you off, right?  Right???

So my body does strange things.  And I'm constantly adjusting behavior, diet, medications and activities to try to feel more normal.  It is a full time job.

I had what I think is my last expansion with Two-Drain yesterday.  At least I think I'm the size I want to be... it's hard to tell because I am carrying extra weight, and you have to remember that if I gain or lose, the new foobs stay the same size.  I must admit I'm not going to miss the weekly trek to his office, the back strain, (from the muscles being pulled forward,) or the discomfort of stretching muscles and tissue.  I'm intrigued that I did not develop stretch marks on the skin over top of the expanders.  There must be some magic plastic surgeon formula for how-big-divided-by-how-fast one can 'grow'.


He would like to switch out the expanders for permanent implants in January but I'm not cool with that.  I'd really like to lose a few pounds of cancer weight before I have another surgery/recovery period.  Also, I'm planning on going to California in February and I don't like the idea of having a trip planned so soon after surgery.  Especially an important trip that involves a lifecycle event.  So instead we will meet in January and talk about a surgery date then.  If it were a perfect world, I'd opt for a surgery date in May, lose 2 pounds a week for four months and get a tummy tuck at the same time.  However, at this point, getting back to my walking-diet-gym routine seems impossible.  I'm just going to slog ahead through the next four or five weeks and try to manage to not alienate every human on the planet.   Chemo makes me cranky.

My last chemo is in two weeks - Dec. 20.  I am dreading it, but I know that it will only get better from that point forward.  I hope to be back to the gym, and walking, by my birthday.  By the end of January I should have some hair re-growing.   All in all, not a long, nor unmanageable timeline.