Friday, June 1 – I joined AARP

My cousin recently commented that it’s taking longer and longer to scroll through the years when you have to submit your age on something.  You know those online forms you fill out and they have a drop down to pick the year, yeah, those ones where it used to be a quick flick on the mouse and I was to my birth year.  Now it’s several rolls down to get to that year in the 60’s.  It seems like just yesterday that I was still being carded at 30-something, and no one believed my kids were mine.  Now I am old enough to join AARP.

Hubby always tries to joke that I am older than him.  It started years ago when I was still going through thyroid cancer testing.  I had annual testing for the first 7 years, than every other year through year 13.  My endocrinologist said I was cured at that point and didn’t need to be tested anymore.  I think I finally blew a sigh of relief and actually believed I would not have a recurrence of thyroid cancer at that point.

I dreaded the annual testing.  First there is the anxiety that something was going to show up on the scan.  That unfurling of the dragon in my gut, squeezing my lungs and heart, reminding me that cancer is bad.  The first year my scan was set up the week prior to Memorial Day.  It was a week long process.  The first two days I had to go to the doctor’s office to get a Thyrogen injection.  This tricked my body into thinking I had hypothyroidism (not enough thyroid hormone).  This is better and easier than those whose insurance would not cover the Thyrogen injections at $1200 each… (And this was 19 years ago; I can only imagine what the costs are now since all these drugs just keep going up).  Those who don’t get the Thyrogen injections have to stop taking their Synthroid, (replacement thyroid hormone) for about a month and put themselves into hypothyroidism so they can proceed with testing.  Anyway, Monday and Tuesday I had to get the injections in the morning at the doctor’s office.  Wednesday I had to go to the hospital to be given the uptake radioactive tracer, Friday I had to go to the doctor’s office in the morning to get a blood draw and I would be scheduled at the hospital for the scans, usually in the morning sometime.

The first few years the scans were scheduled through Little Company of Mary hospital in Torrance.  The first year, I did the shots Monday and Tuesday, went to LCM Hospital Wednesday morning and drank the radioactive isotope and went back to work.  They told me to stay away from pregnant women, other than that I was not more radioactive than an old computer monitor.  I started feeling nauseous within an hour, and then starting bringing back up the water I was drinking, so now we knew that I was sensitive to this little dose of radiation and I went home.  I quickly figured out if I took little sips of water rather than a normal drink of a few mouthfuls I could keep it down.  This was good as the best way to flush radiation from your system is to drink a lot of water and pee it out.

Friday finally came, and I knew I needed to get my car smogged, so planned to head to the hospital a little earlier than my appointment as there was a smog check place on the way.  I went to the doctor first thing for the blood draw and went back home to wait until it was time to leave for the smog and then scans at the hospital.  I want to say my appointment at the hospital was around noon.  I arrived about 15 minutes before my appointment time and checked in with the nuclear medicine department.  A nurse came out shortly after I arrived and kind of yelled at me that they had been trying to get a hold of me all morning, and I should have been by the phone to get the message that they had an emergency and needed to push back my appointment to 3pm.  I had a cell phone, they could have called that, I even asked the nurse if they had that number.  I could clearly see on the paperwork she had, they did.  She said they left me several messages.  Ok, no problem, I’ll come back at 3.  I got home, there were no messages.  I went back at three and waited until almost 6 before they brought me in for the scans.  There are four different scans they do and to do them all takes a total of about 2 hours.  I was there for almost three hours while they completed the scans, three of the scans require you to hyper-extend your neck (head back really far), and this gets uncomfortable.  The tech had left the room and I was stuck there under the machine for almost an hour on the third scan, which is the longest one with your neck hyper-extended.  The scan was complete, but the tech was not there to release me from the machine.  I finally left there at almost 9pm.  I was so glad that we hadn’t planned a vacation for that weekend with the kids.

The following year, I scheduled myself to be out Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  I again followed the same routine, and was scheduled for my scans again on the Friday of that week near noon time.  When I arrived and signed in they told me there had been a scheduling error.  I was scheduled into nuclear medicine at the same time they had a pregnant woman coming in for different testing and I could not be in the same waiting room as her.  They asked me to wait down the hall in cardiology and they would come get me when it was time for my scans.  No problem.  I went down the hall to the cardiology waiting room and sat down.  I had a book, so started to read.  The receptionist there opened her window and asked me if she should help me.  I explained the mix up in nuclear medicine and she understood and said oh, yeah, they told me they would be sending you down here.  No problem.  An hour later she notices I am still there, waiting and reading.  She asks me if I need anything.  Nope, I’m good.  She said they should be coming to get me any second.  Because I know this will be at least two hours I am trying not to drink too much, I don’t want to have to pee in the middle of all this when I can’t move.  Another hour goes by, and cardiology is leaving, they are done for the day there, but have other places they need to be in the hospital.  No problem, I’ll sit here until they are ready for me.  Another hour; and a fourth.  A cardiology nurse comes in and sees me still sitting there and goes back out.  I think she went down to nuclear medicine as not more than 5 minutes later a nurse from nuclear medicine comes down and admonishes me for allowing them to leave me there for 4 hours.  WTF?!  How is this my fault?  I realize they forgot me, and now they are trying to blame me for their error.  I get my scans and I manage to be home before the dinner hour is over.

The third year, back at the same hospital, the same anxiety of what will be found on the scans, and I am scheduled for 10am scans.  I arrive, trying to keep my anxiety in check, trying to keep my frustration of the last two years in check as I write my name down on the list of patients arriving for their appointments, when the reception nurse looks at my name and asks me for my records.  What?  What records?  She tells me she needs the copies of my records from my previous scans.  First I am hearing of this, and I tell her my previous scans were all done at this hospital.  I don’t understand, I’ve never had to bring records before and no one advised me that this was needed.  I would get those copies here…  She looks at me like I’m the idiot and says, we called your doctor’s office this morning and told them we needed a copy of what we sent them in previous years as the file cabinet that holds your records is broken and we can’t access them.  They should have called you and had you pick them up to bring in with you.  I explain to her that my doctor’s office is closed on Fridays except for the nurse who comes in to take my blood sample and then she leaves once it is processed for the doctor.  There is no one there to get that message….  Again, how is this my fault that your filing cabinet is broken and my records are locked up?  She then yelled at me to go sit and wait and she would see if they could do my scans that day or not.  Ummm, I’ve taken a radioactive isotope for this scan; I can’t do this again next week…

The fourth year I told my doctor I didn’t want to go back to LCM for the scans.  She sent me there anyway.  I don’t remember what happened that year, but it was similar to the first three year, something went wrong and they tried to blame me for their issues.  Year 5 I again asked if I could go somewhere else, but my endocrinologist still didn’t listen and sent me yet again to LCM.  That year, because Hubby knew how hard this was on me and how angry and frustrated I’d be by the time I got home on Fridays after my scan, with that anxiety dragon taking up all the space where my lungs should be, and wrapping its tail around my heart, constricting it, until it felt like it would pound out of my chest, and all this before I even have a nurse try to blame me for an issue they had in nuclear medicine, he decided he would go with me.  Hold my hand, crack jokes, and make me laugh while I went through the annual scan.

On year 5 my scan was scheduled for 9AM.  We arrived early, and I noticed the whole bottom floor and been remodeled.  There was an open airy waiting room shared by nuclear medicine and cardiology.  It was big, with a central station to check in, and another station off to the side to review your biometrics and intake information.  We signed in, and then we were called over to the other station to get my stats, etc.  The registration aid was reviewing my insurance, phone, address and when she came to my age she started to read out my birth date.  She transposed the numbers in the year I was born, and Hubby was the first to catch it before she could even stop herself to read it correctly.  He smacked his hand on the desk and said “Ah HA!  I knew you were lying to me about your age!”  The poor lady going over my registration was all over herself trying to apologize, and explain she had transposed the numbers, really, I was not that old, really my birth year was in the 60’s!  I was laughing; I knew what he was trying to do.   Two hours later we were still waiting for me to be called back for my scans.  You could hear a woman crying behind a door I needed to go through.  A nurse called my name and said we were early and they were trying to wedge me in to get us out early.  Ummm really?  My appointment was at 9am, it was after 10am when she did that.  Hubby just nodded and smiled then turned to me and said they have a different clock than we do.

This is why Hubby now tells everyone I am older than him, by a lot!  It makes us both laugh.   Even though he is older than me, by months.  The next year I explained to my endocrinologist yet again that I didn’t want to go to LCM for the scans.  This time she asked me why, I explained what had happened over the past 5 years and she agreed to that I shouldn’t have to deal with that again while going through cancer testing.  The rest of my thyroid cancer scans were done at Torrance Memorial, no muss, no fuss.  I was taken in at my scheduled times and was done within the two hour time frame.  That 6th year was also the year my endocrinologist broke her ankle skiing and had become a patient.  Her whole attitude and “bedside manner” changed.

I told Hubby I signed us up for AARP.  If I am old enough to join, he definitely is old enough.

Part of the reason I finally pulled the trigger on signing up is they offered this new online physical fitness tracking with ability to enter a sweepstakes for prizes every week.  You complete their fitness video daily, walk for at least 30 minutes and voilà, you have entries in the drawings.

1. I discovered that it’s not the hot flashes that cause the painful prickly feeling in my arms, hands and upper torso (and sometimes my legs), it’s sweating.  I sweat from the hot flashes, but walking at a brisk pace also makes me sweat.  The times I have walked up to Starbucks, I thought it was a hot flash, nope, it’s sweating from exercise or a hot flash that brings on the painful prickles.
2. Walking for more than 10 minutes at a time is painful.  I’ve been sitting her typing for a while and my feet still bother me.   Not as bad as they did when I finally got off the treadmill, but they are still irritated.
3. We won’t talk about how my fingers feel right now.
4. My sports tank shows how my right breast sags compared to my left breast.  In the picture it makes my right breast look bigger, but that is an illusion from the sagging down.  In person you can see the right breast is really smaller than the left breast.  (And what you see here is pretty much what they look like without anything on… except the left one is more flat on the bottom, triangular shaped.)

So yes, I still hate my breasts, and really hate when Hubby has to change the gauze in my boob every day.  I hate having him look at my breasts now.  And I am still having a hard time believing I will ever let him look at them again once all this is done.  I have a hard time imagining there will be a day when I won’t feel so self conscience about my breasts and how ugly they are now.   They are uncomfortable to sleep with too. My breasts have never been this naturally high on my chest, they don’t move as much and when I lay on my side, I have to move my arm up more to make room for this “thing” on my chest that doesn’t move out of the way anymore.  I find myself waking up more often during the night because my arm is cramped and I need to move.  Between that and hot flashes I am amazed I sleep at all!

I go days without thinking about my boobs, and then wham, there it is, staring me in the face, my ugly boobs.  And I think to myself, why can’t I get over this?  Why am I so fixated on my damn boobs?  Ok yeah, I had great boobs.  Perfect boobs for me.  Now, so they are not perfect, but I still have my own boobs!

I sarcastically laugh to myself every time I hear the phrase breast conserving surgery.  How is having half my breast surgically removed breast conserving? (This is rhetorical, don’t answer… I know the answer, I just don’t like it right now.)  The boob was trying to kill me though…  And then I voluntarily allowed another surgeon to remove half the other one.  So why am I having so much grief over this?  Why am I so hurt over losing my pretty boobs?  I get to live!  I didn’t have my whole breast removed to be replaced with silicon later.  I wasn’t left with non-feeling fake boobs as so many other women.  They don’t seem to mind that they have completely fake boobs and no sensation.  (I know this as we have talked about it in group.  Right now there is only one other woman who is having self image issues, and hers is more that she thinks the surgical scar and having a port along with being bald make her look sick.  She doesn’t want to look sick.)  I still get to have sensation in my real breasts.  Why all the regret, the sadness, the ache?  Why am I having so much difficulty with this?  Hubby says he doesn’t care, so why do I care so much?  And then I think, what happens to them as I lose this damn weight I want to get rid of?  Will they be even smaller and will this still leave me feeling out of balance?  Will I still hate my body?  And why now do I hate my body?  Why now do I have such body issues?  I still have no answer to any of these questions.

My hair is starting to curl.  The sides are twice as long as the top of my hair and it’s the sides starting to curl.  I wonder if I should call my hairdressers and ask them if we should trim up the sides?  My hair is still baby soft, and I worry that trimming it will change the texture.  It will no longer be that baby soft feeling when I run my hands over it.  It’s soothing to touch my hair right now.  With the curls starting it looks like little frizzies on the sides of my head.

Today is National Doughnut Day.  To celebrate we went to King’s Hawaiian in Torrance for lunch.  So far we’re not all that impressed with the lunch foods, but their pastries are divine!   We picked up two pieces of Paradise cake to go for our dessert tonight along with coconut bars.  (Had to get a type of doughnut, it is National Doughnut day!)

Life is wondering if I will ever love my body again