A New Year and A new Life

The week following Christmas was a time of R&R (rest and relaxation).  A dear friend, Larry Tobin, sent me a card that said it best:  "When you're not feeling well, your life stops.  There's no juggling work and home.  You don't take any phone calls and answer a million e-mails, you don't cook, clean house, or do any grocery shopping.  MILK IT FOR ALL IT'S WORTH."  (and I did).

I saw the plastic surgeon, Dr. Agarwal, on December 30th, and he did pull one of the drains that was sticking out of me.  That was nice, but I still had one in.  That's okay, I'd much rather have a drain sticking out of me than be filled with fluid or infection.

New Year's Eve was a very quiet affair, needless to say.  We did buy some king crab legs, potato salad and coleslaw for our traditional dinner.  My daughter, Amy, joined us with her baby daughter, Callie to see in the New Year.  Her husband, Aaron, was out of town on business.   We watched 'Mama Mia', which was a fun chick flick (Pat loved it).  Then watched the ball drop in Times Square and were in bed by 1am.

The beginning of the new year was pretty quiet.  We celebrated our son Mark's 25th birthday on January 3rd.  We took him to see 'Yes Man' with Jim Carey (I about lost it a couple of times), and we had sushi together, before he was off to celebrate with his friends.  We took our adult family to dinner for our son-in-law Aaron's birthday (Dec. 26th) and Mark's (again), and Pat and I enjoyed the Utah Symphony performing Mozart's Piano Cocerto. I don't believe in sitting home and pining away.  

Then the rounds of appointments in preparation for the chemotherapy treatments began.  I saw a Rehab Therapist to show me massage techniques to help prevent lymph-edema in my right arm.  I was so happy to learn these, because I have a step-grandmother that had had a mastectomy back in the 1960's who suffered from lymph-edema, and it was an ugly condition. Her arm would swell up to twice it's normal size.  It would become inflammed and she would have fevers and chills, just like she had a case of the flu.  If there is anything I can do to avoid that, I will.    

 Another thing I learned from the Rehab Therapist was that if I travel by plane I need to wear a compression sleeve on my right arm to prevent it from swelling, etc., since the air pressure at 35 thousand feet is less than ground level (even with cabin pressurization).  For crying-out-loud, there's too much stuff that I took for granted for so long, that now I have to be aware of and take care of.  This really if going to be a new life. 

I decided that if I was going to be doing chemotherapy, I needed to have my teeth checked and cleaned before I started, so that was next.  I also knew that I would most likely lose my hair, so I went wig shopping.  I found a really cute wig that looked almost exactly like my own, so of course, I bought it along with some hats and caps to cover my eventual baldness when I didn't want to wear a wig.  

I had a CTScan of my chest and abdominal areas to make sure there was no cancer any place else.  This was done because they had found some cancer in two of  sentinel nodes at the time of my surgery.  They had taken out the other sentinel node and six of the axillary nodes, but no other cancer was found.  I don't know if any of you have had  a CTScan, but it's no big deal.  The worst part is drinking the half-gallon of contrast liquid before the test.  They try to give it a nice sounding name "Berry  Punch", but it still tastes lousy.  

I met with Dr. Agarwal's nurse, Vicki Rosser, a couple of times and began the expansion of the cadaver expander they put in at the time of my mastectomy.  That was another interesting experience.  This expander has a small metal disc on the top part of it that has a tiny hole in it (kind of like a tire where you pump air into it).  Vicki finds the hole with a magnet and marks it, then sticks a tiny needle in and pumps in a saline solution.  It doesn't hurt, but I do get some wierd sensations of hardness and fullness on that side.  They tell me that's normal, whatever normal is. 

After this busy week, Pat and I took our three grandsons to see 'Walking With Dinosaurs'.  This was a live presentation using life-size animatronic dinosaurs.  It was not only entertaining, but educational.  They had a running dialogue by an actor playing a paleontologist that explained the different periods of the dinosaurs and the types that existed during those periods.  It was fascinating and our grandsons were mesmerized.  It was definitely worth the time and money, and it was a nice break after a crazy week.