On tour with Toxic Diarrhea

              Here I was, at a chemo crossroads: Stay the course and continue beating the shit out of my body, or go a more paved road and extend my treatment by months. 

               I chose to take the beating, of course.

               Up till this point, I was doing pretty damn well, considering. I had managed to conquer the disgusting queasiness. I pushed fatigue aside and plowed ahead with work each day. My prescription mouthwash was doing its job, keeping the sores on my tongue, the sides of my mouth and in my throat to a minimum. The one thing that couldn’t be quelled was the ass o’ fire. Sorry, TMI, I know.

                The theory goes, since chemo can break down the lining of your esophagus, opening the door to sores and all kinds of goodness, the same could be said for the lining on, uh, the other end. And let me tell you, you really don’t miss that wonderful lining till it’s gone.  I’m sure you’re definitely not asking what that feels like, so let me tell you: Take a handful of wooden Lincoln Logs, smash them with a hammer a couple of times till they’re good and splintered, then light them on fire and shove them up your butt. Now try to poop them out. THAT’S what it feels like.

                Anyway, the sad state of affairs on the other end really worried my oncologist, Dr. Aijaz, because a breakdown is an infection waiting to happen for a chemo patient. Sitting in his office last week, he laid out the possible routes I could take. He also gave me this week off from chemo, to see how ass o’ fire would heal.

Yep, that's what it feels like (minus the onlookers).

                My options were:  A. Heal enough to keep going full steam ahead and finish treatment in April. Taxotere is heavy duty stuff and would require not only a white blood cell booster shot, like I’d been getting, but also require three days of steroids—12 pills—taken the day before, the day of and the day after treatment to minimize the risk of an allergic reaction. Without them, my lips would probably swell up and I’d look like Mick Jagger or Steven Tyler. Or B. Go low-dose, which apparently even 1,000-year-old women—such as Mick Jagger and Steven Tyler—can tolerate. I wouldn’t need steroid shots or white-blood-cell boosters, but treatment would entail a weekly infusion for three weeks, with the fourth week off. Thus, one month equals one treatment, effectively extending my final four treatments till July.

                I think I got all that right. I got a little distracted when Dr. Aijaz was describing how the full dose of chemo could trigger diarrhea, which would be highly uncomfortable for someone suffering the kind of side effects I was. He was describing the different types of loose stool and as soon as he said “toxic diarrhea,” I could feel the corners of my mouth twinging, trying to go skyward. Stop it, Heather, this is serious business, don’t smile or laugh. Shhh, he’s now moved on to chemo-induced diarrhea, pay attention! But I couldn’t. All I could think about was toxic diarrhea.

“That would make an awesome band name,” I blurted out. You could see the panic cross his face for a second, at first I thought because he was thinking about a band out there with that name, touring and corrupting today’s youth. Then he quickly explained that the full and formal name was toxin-induced diarrhea, not toxic diarrhea as he had stated. “I don’t want you quoting me on that!” he exclaimed. Too late! When I get my band Toxic Diarrhea together, I’m starting each and every show with, “And thank you to my oncologist, Dr. Aijaz, for coming up with the band name.” It’s about this point I realized I must drive my doctors nuts and leave them wondering, “Is she ever going to start taking this shit seriously?”
                So, the good news is that I think I healed enough to proceed on schedule, and that was my choice. Given how aggressive my tumors were, and the fact the paternal side of my family could claim no breast cancer survivors, I want to hit this full force. Show those rogue cancer cells no mercy. And I want to be done in April.  I mean, I have a family—and my band, Toxic Diarrhea—to think about.

Notes from a recliner...

I could say I’m not sure why it’s taken me this long to update my blog, but that would be a lie. I haven’t had the energy because chemo is kicking my ass and I didn’t want to admit it. That’s more truthful. And just to give you some perspective on that: The surgery in which they cut off my breasts, then sliced into my abdomen, from hip to hip, in search of fat to use to for stuffing in an 8.5-hour Build-A-Boob Workshop marathon—THAT was a cakewalk compared to chemo.  

On a psychological level, a part of me struggles with all of this because I was declared “cancer-free” after surgery. My chemo is preventative treatment. No big, bad boogey man tumor to target and destroy. Though my lymph nodes were negative, my biopsy and subsequent surgery showed evidence that the barrier to my blood vessels had been breached by the cancer, so we’re shooting in the dark at any rogue cancer cells that may have escaped into my bloodstream. I keep telling myself I’m doing all I can to ensure I’m here for my family as long as I can be, and that’s what keeps me going across the Bear Mountain Bridge every two weeks to continue the vicious cycle.

But let me back up a bit…

It's easy to be super smiley BEFORE treatment.

My first chemo treatment was on New Year’s Eve. Though the anti-nausea meds were supposed to carry me through the typical three-day rough patch, I was sick to my stomach within three HOURS of getting the infusion. This triggered a lot of medicine tweaking. So, the first couple of treatments were really kinda torturous.  Right now, I’m recovering from my third infusion.  I’ve developed sores in my throat, which make swallowing trickier but are eased by a prescription mouthwash. The nausea wasn’t nearly as bad (special shout-out to the drug Emend!) but the fatigue and bone aches related to my white-blood-cell booster shot, which my husband gives me the day after each treatment, were worse this time around. In fact, I have yet to get out of my La-Z-Boy recliner today.

By now you may be wondering, “YES, but what about the HAIR?!!” In between treatments two and three is when les follicles started to unburden themselves. I’d run a wide-tooth comb through, in a vain attempt to detangle the matting, and that’s when I’d feel the sickening release of not only the knots, but the rest of the hair, too. In huge clumps. Till the bathroom sink looked like a small sea of brown waves. It physically nauseated me, and that’s when I shipped the kids off to my in-laws and told my husband that we had a date with the shaver.

If you ever want an intimate bonding experience with your spouse, I highly suggest letting that person shave your head. I sat hunched over in the bathtub, listening to the snip-snip of the scissors and watching lock after lock fall into the stark white tub. To be honest, I didn’t even know I had THAT much hair still attached to my head. And did I really let it get that gray?  Then came the buzz and Sal gently keeping me updated as he changed the guards on the shaver to get closer and closer to the scalp.

Me and my wonderful husband-barber, Sal

Pretty soon there was just stubble.

After 37 years of trying to cover what I presumed to be a massively deformed Irish head—‘tis true, it’s why Irish people are typically “blessed” with full heads of hair—I was now confronted with my very bald noggin. And it was actually normal shaped.  Thank the lord! My fontanels had gotten their shit together!  I got teary-eyed, but I didn’t all-out cry. It actually wasn’t as traumatic as I thought it would be. My hair was crappy anyway.

I have two wigs on hand to cover up the cue ball, and I only wear them occasionally. Wigs just aren’t my thing. I’ve spent my life with flat hair, and to suddenly have volume? Freaky. Mostly I wear them because Mother Nature, bitch that she is, decided to make this the most friggin’ freezing winter ever.

Anyway, I’m holding out hope for treatments five through eight, which will contain only one drug, supposedly less brutal than the duo I’m taking now. In the meantime, I think I’ll get up from this recliner and get my smoothie from the fridge. You want anything while I’m up?

 

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 I'll be participating in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life on June 7 in Pine Bush, NY. Will you consider supporting me?
For more information, click here to visit my Relay page.

Here are your New Year's resolutions. You're welcome.

This year, my New Year’s resolution is to live. It’s a deceptively simple concept, one that is not easily accomplished. For me, living means cutting out the bullshit and focusing on what’s important: actually enjoying every day I am able to get out of bed and be with my family.

                Lately, I’ve also been feeling very generous, which is why I have taken it upon myself to make some New Year’s resolutions for you. You can thank me later, because I’m sure whatever your resolutions were, they were complete rubbish. So without further ado…

Heather’s top 5 resolutions for YOU

1.       Don’t say “next year.”

Epcot France is EXACTLY like France (EXACTLY!),
without the pesky euro.

As in, “Well, maybe we’ll do that next year.” Quite simply, because there may not be a next year.  Life is fleeting.

My husband, Sal, has always teased me about my desire to cram an insane amount of activities into an insanely small window of time. It’s just the way I’ve always been and happens to be a good fit for someone who has faced mortality at a young age.
            And don’t let money be a hindrance.  Can’t afford that dream vacation to France right now? Go to Quebec. Go to Epcot. Go to the local library’s “Amelie” movie night, for fuck’s sake. But don’t put off exploring new places and making new memories. Don’t put off living.

2.       Allow photos.

Crimped hair be damned!
Let the picture be taken!

No, you do not look a Victoria’s Secret model. 99.9999 percent of the population doesn’t. But don’t approach every picture as if it’s going to be posted on Facebook and viewed by your sworn enemies from high school.  Oh no, I can’t be in the picture. I haven’t lost the baby weight. Oh no, I didn’t have time to do my hair and make-up.
            Whatever. Just get in the God damn picture so your family has some photographic evidence that you existed. If you look like crap, TAKE THE PICTURE ANYWAY, just don’t post it on Facebook if you’re that sensitive. But if you have kids, I’m guaranteeing they don’t think you look like crap. No, you look like the lady who kisses their boo-boos, reads them their favorite bedtime story and watches “The Polar Express” with them for the 8,000^th time.  
            I tend to be the picture-taker in my family, so I’m absent from a lot of shots. This probably also describes a lot of moms. Let go of your OCD about getting the perfect shot and hand the camera to your significant other or a technologically competent relative, if available (NOT Drunk Uncle).

3.       Lose weight for yourself and your health. No one else.

Don't you just love clip art of athletic women
measuring themselves?

And for the sake of everything that is good and holy, don’t fixate on a number. Yes, you were a size 4 through your 20s, but guess what? You got older, maybe created some humans, and your body changed.

 I remember this past spring fixating on losing those last few postpartum pounds. Obsessing over it, actually. Now I feel like an asshole; I just want to live, damn it! I was striving for some number I had determined I needed to get to, even though I was already a healthy weight.  Oh, but it wasn’t the same weight I was in high school and college. Back then, I was probably 110 pounds soaking wet, with about 10 pounds of that being the Rave hairspray holding up my bangs. Whatever. That is not a healthy weight for me now.

By the way, this is not a phenomenon reserved for women. I recall my days working at Dick’s Sporting Goods, where some guy would ask me if I had these Levi's in a 30 waist. He’d be wearing his current pants belted somewhere down around his upper thigh, the waistband forced into a U shape by his belly. It couldn’t be comfortable, trying to wear what appeared to be the same jeans he did back in 1987. I wanted to yell at these guys, “Fuck it! You’re older and you don’t wear the same size! It’s OK. You’ll actually look trimmer if you wear the size that fits you. Wear pants that haven’t seen all the original members of warrant on tour!” 

Yes, obesity is not good for your health. Yes, it’s been tied to a host of cancers, including breast cancer. But exercise and eat right for your betterment, not a lame attempt to squeeze your ass into your friggin’ high school pants.

4.       Schedule regular exams or doctor’s appointments for the year in January.  

Schedule regular checkups with your physician from the '80s.

You know there are certain annual appointments you have to make: the hoo-ha doctor, maybe a physical with your primary care doctor or eye exam with your ophthalmologist. Ahem, YOUR MAMMOGRAM. Schedule them. I am living proof that a regular ‘ol doctor’s visit can save your life.

And don’t say you’ll get around to it. You often won’t because life gets in the way and before you know it, everyone is singing all that "fa la la la la” crap again and Bam! It’s the end of the year, and you’re left scratching your head and your ass, wondering where the time went. Some doctors also have schedules that are booked far out, so get in there while the getting is good.
                Take care of yourself, please. Or I’ll come find you and beat the shit out of you. Then you really will need a doctor.

5.       Re-evaluate.

Just smile, a-hole.

Figure out what sucks in your life and find a way to make it better. Life is too short.

Call a truce with that co-worker you want to kill (rather than leaving a dead squirrel on his/her desk with a note that reads “This is you” stapled to its head), find a way to do more of the stuff you enjoy. Don’t be afraid to ask for assistance from friends and relatives to help you accomplish the goal of getting more “me” time. Whatever the hell it is, you can make it work.

You know how I know? Because I had a dream last night and Oprah told me so. She also gave me a recipe for beef stroganoff then rode off into the sunset on an ostrich.  But getting back to my point, you can do it. Trust me.