Warning: This diary is for mature people. Words like vagina, uterus, pap smear, hemorrhoids, and bleeding will be used casually.
This is a follow up on my previous diary, "Now it's me who is diagnosed with Cancer - Day 1".
So, the first reality that hit me was that I shouldn't have gotten cancer in the second place. "Second" meaning that it should not have come back. It was stage 1B endometrial, for god's sake. I did all the right things and followed my doctor's orders. I went faithfully for pap smears every six months. I answered their questions in the negative - no pain, no vaginal bleeding. I felt cured.
But, strike it did. I went from feeling like I was "totally cured" to "multiple masses throughout my abdomen" in a matter of two months. On the spleen, the liver, the vaginal apex, and several lymph nodes.
Bottom line: Trust your body.
I think that the most common response to hearing that you have cancer is the endless questioning you will have until it is resolved. How did this happen to me? What signs did I miss? Why didn't I catch this sooner? It's an obsession that is always at the back of your mind. You can never catch cancer soon enough. For me, since it was caught in 2007 with the resulting hysterectomy, there was a four year lag between the surgery and when the cancer resurfaced. So, it was growing, somewhere for four years. Over that four years, I did wonder about it now and then. Sometimes, I thought that there was something going on down there, kind of like pulling feelings in my abdomen. And, I did tell the physician's assisttant who did the PAP smears but she said it was nothing. So, for four years, the chosen method to catch a recurrence, PAP smears every six months and a few questions, was totally ineffectual. I could have just gone home and waited. The PAP smears were always negative.
Then, when I started getting very unusual heartburn after a life in which a Maalox never passed my lips, I told my PCP that heartburn might be a sign of certain kinds of cancer, she said no. When I started having severe sciatic pains and was sent by the same PCP to physical therapy, I wondered if I my warranty was expired. All these things concerned me and were signs of something serious but I trusted the docs. I think, maybe a corollary of the uncertainty principle that having more than one thing simultaneously wrong with you must mean SOMETHING. Point is … Trust your body and keep up with medical facts.
The current situation.
So, after catching the recurrence, I finally had my "big" visit at the doctor's office. My mother and a close friend were with me. The first thing I did when I was alone with my doctor was to say that I wasn't ready to hear terms like "percent chance" or "prognosis" or "stage". The doctor looked at me kind of blankly and said something that I don't remember right now. With everyone assembled in the room, we talked chemotherapy. I got a port and started my first of six rounds of taxol with carboplatin, one every three weeks. I will get blood tests at the nadir of the treatments to see what my white and red counts are. I have a script for a wig. I know not to get sick and to try to keep my strength up by eating food I do not want.
At this point, I am completely at the will of my treatments and whatever fate I have in store.
The drugs that are staring me in the face behind my computer are: blood thinner for possible clots that I have to inject, oxycodone for the pain in my leg caused by a tumor pressing against my sciatic nerve and large leg vessels, something called prochloroperazine for nausea, stool softeners for the inevitable constipation that is caused by chemo. And, this is the interesting one, dexamethasone (take 5 the night before and 5 in the morning of chemo). This is an anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant, which is basically so my body doesn't mount an immune response to the taxol. So, here I am, a person who barely takes anything more than an Advil for a headache, on more drugs than ever in my entire life. And, I don't like it.
Bottom line: Stay close to your friends and do what you can to help them too.
I don't have lots of friends but the ones I have are totally solid. I only hope that I get to repay them someday. The DK community - always there when I need to talk, whether it be at 3AM or 3PM. My colleagues - apparently I am not very good at asking for help. And, my friends from my community, who have done my taxes, weeded my garden, shared meals with me, held my hand at soccer games, and just kept me on task since the death of my husband in 2005. I can't say enough about all of these wonderful people and gosh, I will need them more than ever now.
So, this is my cancer update. OK for now and hopeful for the future. peregrine kate and I find that we have a shared experience and have started communicating on the topic of endometrial cancer. She, more than me, is very knowledgeable and is a few months ahead of me in treatment. As a geneticist and a teacher, I hope to educate myself and others as time goes on. For example, my mother asked me how chemotherapy targets cancer cells. I was surprised by the question and got to do a little teaching. No, mom, chemo doesn't target cancer cells; it hits all your cells. Chemotherapy drugs are poison and you are having poison injected into your body. Chemo targets cancer cells only in that it effects actively growing cells more than quiescent cells. For my type of chemo, taxol with carboplatin, the taxol blocks mitosis or cell division, obviously a property of cancer cells. The many side effects caused by chemo are because the drugs are damaging your noncancer cells. This may be a TMI moment for some, but I am glad I know these things.
UPDATE: Two weeks after my first chemo and not having too many problems. Right on schedule (2 weeks) my hair started falling out. Not much of a shock yet but the bare skin will be upsetting, not because of how it looks but because of what it means. But, I had my son give me a buzz today. We had a haircut party and stopped briefly at mullet (I'm in western PA, yinzers). Feeling a bit like a femi-nazi, I like my new do with the heat n' at.
6:37 AM PT: Update from DrLori. Great diary on recurrence of cancer from DrLori published back in February 2010.