Monday, July 16 – One down, 29 to go…

Let’s start with Friday; had a date with one of the girls I know from Support Group.  She took me out to a restaurant I’d never been before in Los Alamitos called Shenandoah at the Arbor.  It is a cute little restaurant with a wonderfully peaceful patio situated under old growth trees.  I had a delicious salad and enjoyed a sumptuous dessert we shared of lightly braised berries and peaches in a brandy and butter sauce served over vanilla ice cream.  So decadent!  From there she introduced me to a cute little boutique over in Long Beach.  Once I am down to my ideal weight/size I will treat myself to an outfit from this boutique.

After that she took me to Crafted at the Port of Los Angeles.  An old warehouse down on 22nd street in San Pedro has been turned into an artisan marketplace.  It’s only open Friday – Sunday for limited hours.  The interior portion of the warehouse was very hot and quickly became too painful for me to tolerate due to the burning prickles that accompany sweat, so we called that portion of our date short.

After I got back home, Heather and Joseph came over for an art project and some dinner.  We painted and decorated bird houses with stickers.  While I was doing this I was inspired to use this as my intention & inspiration boards for the weekly lecture series that will end this month.  For our final class we’ve been tasked with bringing in our “boards” to share with the group.  I ended up picking up two more bird houses on Saturday to paint and apply pictures & stickers of my intentions and inspirations.  I think they are supposed to be separate boards  for each intention or inspiration, but I combined them all over the four bird houses.  I did treat Joseph to Panda Express.  He loves Orange Chicken and Chow Mein.

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday I went to the gym!  I swam, and swam, and swam some more.  I was in the pool and moved for over an hour.  I did remember to get myself some water shoes as I know walking barefoot is just not an option, and not touching the bottom of a 3 1/2′ to 4 1/2′ pool is just impossible.  When I wasn’t swimming, I was walking lightly on my feet in the water, moving my arms with the resistance “weights” in my hands, doing curls, side raises, etc.

I faced my body shame as well.  I showered and changed in the locker room.  I feel like my boobs are so ugly, and so different from each other that anyone would not be able to help but stare.  Last week I started super moisturizing my right breast, and after subjecting it to over chlorinated water, even though I showered I knew I needed to moisturize again.  There is no way to hide you are moisturizing your boob.  I noticed one lady constantly glancing my way as I took care of my drying off and moisturizing needs.  I wanted to cry, but I didn’t.  Instead in my head I rehearsed what I would say if anyone ever actually asked me about my scars and different boobs.

“This is what breast cancer can look like.  The result of lumpectomy and attempts to get the girls to match again.  There are still more changes to come.  After 6 weeks of radiation, my right breast will change some more.  This is breast cancer and I’m doing everything I can to beat it.”  This litany got me past the wanting to cry stage of having someone see me naked, in all my imperfection, scars, lumps and bumps.

Doing this, changing in the locker room, which never would have phased me before, was so hard to do.  I thought about taking all my dry clothes and packing them up, heading out to the car in my wet swimming outfit, and using the spare towel in the car to sit on, driving home and changing there.  But I didn’t.  I faced that fear and got through it.  Eventually this will get easier and I’ll like my body again.  One little step at a time.

Sunday the kids all came over for dinner.  Heather, Joseph and Maddie (because she likes coming here with her cousin Joe Joe), Jordon and Kelly.  We had pizza to celebrate Robert finishing cleaning out the back section of our yard so he and Joseph can build a BMX track back there.  He filled the 40 cu yd dumpster in 5 days.  He has hurt for days, but we celebrated his completion.  Heather had an exhausting weekend and fell asleep on the chaise minutes after they arrived.  I left her there for a while, then I just had to take a picture.

Kelly was so attentive to my need for validation and encouragement too.  Not that she doesn’t listen to me and provide great feedback, but Sunday night was extra special for some reason.  I really needed to hear what she was saying.  It really made me feel so much better about my decisions in the past weeks and helped me know I am on the right path for me.

I also announced to all of them that because I want to move to a more vegetarian diet so I don’t feed the cancer, they will probably start seeing more meatless dishes on our Sunday night dinners.  I basically wanted to let them know my decision so I could elicit their support in this endeavor.  Robert has also expressed interest in going back to a more vegetarian diet.  So this is both of us, looking to change our diets to a more plant based eating.  This works, and the kids were all for helping us.

Another fear I faced on Sunday was asking Robert to start moving back into our physical relationship.  We have not been “physical” since all this started last year.  Chemo is rough and they tell you no intimacy during chemo as the toxic drugs can be in your body fluids and be absorbed by your partner.   Then I had surgery, and the unhealing hole in my boob.  Now that I am starting to feel better physically, I want to work back into our intimacy.   Slowly, as I still feel physically broken, and not sure how I am going to handle getting naked with him yet.  Plus in 2 two 3 weeks the right breast will be “burned” and I will have 3 to 4 more weeks of treatment after that before it will be able to start healing again.  That can take another 2 to 4 weeks or more.

I told him I needed to talk to him about something important, and he was ready to listen, but then I couldn’t get my words out.  The tears started to gather.  I could not believe how hard it was to express to my husband, my partner of over 23 years, my best friend, and previous lover (it’s been over 9 months, that makes it previous!) that I wanted to start our sexual relationship over.  Like a teenager, take time to work back into this part of our life.  I couldn’t get the words out, and I’m sure he thought I had something horrible to say, because all I could say was I didn’t think this would be so hard and I know the timing is terrible.  The timing is terrible because starting radiation this week and how sore he is from all the work he’s done over the past week loading up that huge dumpster.

We finally moved to the sofa, and I collected myself.  Once I was able to articulate what it is I want, and how I know the timing is terrible as once he is not so sore, my boob will be red and tender, AND it’s been 9 months, AND I’m still not so sure about my left boob or actually being naked yet.  So I want to just take it slow, move back into this like teenagers, slowly starting to explore.  Start with our “clothes” on, necking, maybe then go to second base after a while….  53 years old and I am terrified to have intimate relations with my husband.  I think he was relieved that this was what I was having trouble getting out, and it wasn’t something else.  We discussed how to go about this, and agreed to start with just cuddling in bed, with our PJ’s on.  Last night we laid in each others arms for two hours just talking.   It felt so good to just have him hold me like that for so long.  And both of us fully attentive to the other, no distractions.  Like when we go on road trips.

I am still adding herbs to my water.  I can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner.  It makes water taste so good!

Today I went back to the gym to swim.  I didn’t pay attention to the class schedule and when I got to the Torrance location they had a huge water aerobics class in progress.  I didn’t want to join that late and the whole pool was dedicated to the class, so I got back in the car and drove back to the Rancho Palos Verdes location.  The pool was wide open.  This time I wore my “street” clothes into the gym and changed into my swimming gear in the locker room.  A little over halfway through the time I allotted to swim, our neighbor came in to use the pool as well.  We chatted briefly then both got on with our workouts.  Because I drove over to Torrance and then back the other direction I cut my time down by 15 minutes so I had enough time to eat a bit before we had to leave for the hospital’s nuclear medicine facility.

Yup, today was day number 1 of radiation therapy.  Nate was the tech who came and got me from the lobby waiting room and took me back to the changing area/waiting room.  He also set up my schedule for the next six weeks.  I stripped from the waist up and donned the gown.  I also went armed with my “protection”, which elicited not only a chuckle from Jen, who I ran into in the hallway heading to the treatment room, but both the techs who were handling the recheck and imaging of all my measurements to make sure the treatment plan outlines would work, had a good laugh.  Because this is the first day, and they had to double check that everything matched up, I got some more lines drawn on me.  Art, one of the techs, worked around one of my tattoos as he was drawing the lines around my breast that would encompass the area of the highest concentration of radiation.  My Radiation Oncologist is on vacation for two weeks, so I have one of her colleagues overseeing my treatment plan while she is out.  Dr. Simko is who I will see this week and next.  He came in to validate that the positioning was accurate and the treatment plan as input by Dr. Endicott was a go.  He too saw my “protection” and loved them. Actual treatment took all of 2 minut

es.

Two rounds of exposure at a couple seconds each from the left side, the machine moves around and sends two more beams of radiation through the breast tissue from the right side.

 

 

When Dr. Endicott returns she will get me copies of my scans and pictures that set up my treatment plan and will explain all the angels.  Once I have copies of all these pictures I will share more in depth with everyone.  I see Dr. Simko again on Wednesday.  Once I was done getting zapped I was taken to an exam room so we could meet with one of the nurses to go over managing the side effects and which of my supplements I have to stop taking during treatment – Vitamin C and CoQ10.  No anti-oxidents.  My multivitamin is OK, unlike when I was on chemo and I had to stop that one too.  I can continue to swim unless I develop an open sore.  And yes, I can have a glass of wine at night.  I am to apply my lotions at least three times a day to try and keep the “burn” effects to a minimum, and I can use any deodorant I choose.  They have found that the aluminum found in many deodorants does not have any effect on the radiation beam, unlike when you have a mammogram where it can look like calcifications.

I also had a Crystal Bowl Sound Guided Mediation today offered at CSC.  It was not what I expected and yet more than I expected.   It was relaxing and helped reduce the stress I was feeling.  It helped me remove the weight of grief I have felt over my breasts.  It soothed me and helped me cement in my heart that once all this is done; radiation has worked it’s evil magic on my right boob and wrought the changes it is going to make, then next year if I still really do not like the way they look, we can try again.  The very same thing Robert and Deda have been trying to get through my thick skull.  Guess I just needed that spiritual umph to get it to sink into my heart from my brain.  My sadness is not completely gone, but it is better.  I feel a little bit lighter.

As of this moment I only have 29 treatments left to complete.  Monday through Friday at 3:10 pm.  (Except one day where there is a conflict, I have been scheduled for 3:20 pm).  The final week will be like today, because that final week is a more directed radiation to the area where the tumor had been, I have to go through a recheck on the angles and exposure area like I did today.  That final week I will once again go in earlier that Monday (1 pm) and then back to my 3:10 pm time for the rest of that week.

Life is using all the tools to lighten the grief