I survived the first of five!

It's Saturday, and I am still recovering from the first internal radiation treatment. It took 10 hours and there were complications. I had a lot of bleeding post-op and my doc was very worried. I seem to be ok on that front, but I am having a lot of swelling in my legs and feet today. It was a painful procedure. And it turns out that there isn't a water thing in the other radiation room for patients, it's for the machines to keep them cool.

Thursday when I got to the hospital it was 7:15 am. I didn't leave until after 5 pm. I got all the pre-op questions and bloodwork out of the way and then they moved me to anesthesia, then to OR. I am only awake for a couple of mins in OR. It is during this time that they are putting the rod implants into me, 3 of them, around the tumor. Those three rods are also attached to a pivotal thing that is bolted to the bed under the matress. It's medieval looking. I had a problem with the rods shifting, so they had to reposition them, and I was awake for that, OUCH! Then I was taken into radiation room A and they loaded the rods with radioactive pellets and left the room for about 20 mins. Then they come back in and take the pellets out. Then I was put in the CT Scan, then in a room. In that room is where they took the rods out, and holy crap, it hurt so bad. First they took the packing out (around the rods) and it felt like my insides were being torn out. Then each rod came out one by one, and it was excruciating as well. Then the catheter, also not fun. Then the bleeding was bad. I was told that I was bleeding from the tumor and that I had lost a lot of blood that way, and then there was complication number two. And that was, the back wall of my vagina was perforated with one of the rods. I thought I was going to have to stay at the hospital, but luckily I started to clot and they let me go. I have been lightly bleeding since then and now my legs and feet are very swollen. Sooo....if I don't get better with the swelling by this evening, I will probably have to go back to the hospital. Damn it. I don't want to. So I hope it goes down.

My body has taken so much abuse in a short amount of time and I keep hoping that I can survive it. Some days I don't feel like I can. Other days I am more optimistic.

Some good news, I did find out that the tumor is shrinking, but I don't know by how much. Good news is good news nonetheless. I hope that they can eradicate it like they are hoping they can do. More surgeries is not what I want for my birthday! If I could have anything I wanted for my birthday I would ask for all of this to be done and to have my life back, to be able to do the things that I took for granted before. Small things like driving, getting up by myself, etc. Yep, that's what I want for my birthday.

Anxiety, Progress and a Positive Outlook

I had my 4th chemo yesterday and my 17th external radiation today. I am about 2/3rds done with those two treatments. I still have 5 internal radiation treatments, which are a 8 hour outpatient procedure. I won't be done with those until about a week before my birthday in July.

I had a real tough week last week with sickness. It's getting worse as I progress through the treatments because both the chemo and the radiation are building up in my system. I was horribly sick this morning. The day after chemo is about the worst. I took some extra nausea meds today and felt a bit better, but am tired as hell. All I did was put some tools up for Bret and unload and load the dishwasher, and straightened up the house a bit. I had woken up around 7am after going to bed around 3am. When I woke up, it was instant "I am going to throw up". And I did, and did and did. I got back to bed around 8am after settling the tummy down with nausea meds and then after holding those down, my other meds. One of which is $130/pill, wouldn't want to lose that one!

I have a lot of anxiety about tomorrow. The internal radiation is called brachytherapy. What they do is knock me out (thank god) and then they dialate my cervix to the size of childbirth, ouch! Then they insert 3 rods loaded with radioactive pellets and those rods will be right up against the tumor. Those rods will be in for 1.5 hours and then I will be moved to where I normally have radiation in the hospital. There they will do a CT Scan and then they will take me to radiation room A. I've not been in there yet, as I take radiation in room B currently. It sounds like there is water in room A. Like a big tub type thing with bubbles is what it sounds like. I think that they are going to take out the rods in there under water. Then there is recovery time after that.

I wonder how much pain I will be in. My last surgery hurt pretty bad those first few days after. But it was a different surgery. My mom will be with me for that one. Bret has to take care of his son for the day. Today was the last day at school and he graduated with A/B honor roll! I'm proud of him! But I can't be around kids for 3 days after tomorrow's surgery. I will be emitting radiation. It's in levels that adults can handle, but it is dangerous to be around kids because it will affect their growth or change their DNA. I'm going to put myself under a black light tomorrow night to see if I glow or anything!

I was pretty depressed over the weekend. I had a good morning on Saturday, but did too much too quick and ran out of steam around 1pm. I had spent the morning boiling eggs, making bacon, and making homemade cinnamon rolls complete with homemade icing. We sat down to eat my late brunch. It was great! But not 5 mins later I couldn't keep it down. After that I slept for 6 hours. Then slept more that night. But Sunday and Monday were very bleak for me. Sometimes I let the weight of all of this fall on me at once and I literally feel like I am being crushed. I am scared of this brachytherapy. I am scared that all this may not be enough the first time around and that I will have to do it all over again. Then there's money issues and moving issues. And just plain issues about pain, constant nausea, fatigue, and insomnia. It wears on you. And I just had a weekend where it wore on me a lot. I have a feeling after tomorrow, I will know what to expect and maybe that will help. I am just so ready to have my life back and my strength back. I want to go back to work and do the things I used to do that I can't do right now. I've had a lot of trouble with losing the whole independence part. Hell, I am only 32. Not 82.

Anyway, I hate to sound so down all the time, but this is a hard thing to go through. From the time from diagnosis to start of aggressive treatment was short. There was a reason for that. I am in a bad place with this tumor. With it already at the size of a baseball and spreading to tissue outside the cervix I was very rapidly losing the battle I didn't even know I was fighting, though I had a sinking suspicion I was after looking up my symptoms online. But I was hoping for a curable STD or some other condition that was curable in some way or another in a fast manner. Curing cancer is not a fast thing. It takes a lot of time. At this rate I have been out of work for 2 months with at least another 3 before I will be able to return on a full time status.

I just wish I was already done with all the treatments and on the road to recovery and back to life. I don't want to sound all wishy washy but everything is different now. Life has a different meaning and so do the things that occur in it. It has given me a lot of time to take stock of my life and where I am going. That's one of the positives that has come out of this. Always look for the positive.

Off to Radiation #12

It's Wednesday and I'm feeling ok right at the moment. I was up all night with a very upset stomach. I got a few hours of sleep from about 7am til about 10:30am. Ever since then I have been up writing and working things around on my blogs. I have about an hour before I have to go to radiation. Darrah is taking me today. It's her first time taking me to that. At least it doesn't take long because I am starting to tucker out again. I did go outside and water a tomato plant I bought yesterday. I viewed it as an investment. I spent $10 on a well-established plant that already has a good looking tomato on it and lots more coming. It's a bush variety so I can leave it in a big pot and move it if I have to. And I get to eat tomatoes fresh from it. And it gives me something to care for and watch grow while my cells are being killed. I feel like I need to balance out the energy around me with the plant growth. I also got two hanging baskets with little purple and white flowers that I hung on either side of the porch cover. Now when I sit out on the porch trying to get some outside time in (I try not to rot inside the house), I have those to make it feel like a garden around the door. There are a few other flowers around the door like Iris and wild strawberries, and some other kind of pretty green leafy bushy thing. I always feel better when I am around the earth's energies.

Today is radiation #12. I go in and lay on a table that has a laser beam on the ceiling that they line me up with. Then they adjust my sides. Once all four points are lined up they leave the room. Then the machine that is anchored behind my head starts to move. The aperture moves out above me, it looks like an old school flat bed camera of sorts. It moves around to my back, which is below where I lay and zaps me for 10 seconds. Then the machine moves around to my left side and stops at the tattoo point and zaps me for 10 seconds. Then it moves to the right side, zaps, and then moves to the top and zaps. Then the big lead door opens and people come in again, move the table down and I'm out of there. Most days it's quick like that, and on Thursdays I meet with my doctor, so it takes a lot longer.

Well, off to see the big bad radiation machine for another dose of kill it rays. It will be percocet time shortly after that. It doesn't take long for the pain of being burned in the organs to start after that. But I just keep thinking that it means it's working.

The beginning of the journey

It's Tuesday, the day after my 3rd chemo and 10th external radiation. I feel like I'm barely alive. I started throwing up at 4am and spent an hour in the bathroom. I tried to get my stomach calmed enough to take the pill for nausea/vomiting. By the time I got that down and had it down long enough to take my regular morning meds (one of which is a $130 pill, don't want to throw that up accidentally), it was 7am. I slept until about 10am. I am barely here.

It gets rougher as the treatments progress. I take chemo once a week, external radiation five times a week, and I start internal radiation next week with about one a week for five sessions. The chemo is a very powerful mix of drugs that are designed to kill fast growing cells as cancer cells are fast growing. But it does not distinguish between cancer and non-cancer cells. That is why hair falls out, why your mouth feels like it is burned out, and that all the tissue between your mouth and your anus (internally) is all fast growing cells. Those cells are being killed at the same time. Which is why I feel so raw inside. My skin hurts a lot of the time too. Very sensitive to the touch. My hair is thinning out, but is not noticeable on a large scale yet. Hopefully it won't be.

The radiation doesn't hurt at the time of getting it, but about 2 hours after that is when the extra pain starts in the specific region of the tumor. Radiation burns the cells by going through my outer body, so I am burned from the inside out (looks like a sunburn). Both the chemo and the radiation make me very nauseated and which results in praying to the porcelain goddess 80% of the time, and the both give some hard core diarrhea.

I have very little appetite anymore. I eat a small something about once a day, or sometimes just a couple of small snacks, but I lose the food 50% of the time. I just have to make sure to keep hydrated with all losing of it, and the fact that the chemo I am taking is excessively hard on the kidneys, and I do feel it. They hurt and feel like they need to be purified. I feel very toxic right after chemo. It takes 6 hours on Mondays for chemo. The external radiation only takes about 10 mins every day. The internal radiation is a surgical outpatient procedure that will take a total of 8 hours a time. And I can't be around children for 3 days after that because I will be omitting radioactive waves that can damage the children's growth. Adults can handle it though.

This all happened so fast. Well, I had problems for a while that were apparent to me, but I had no health insurance. I finally got some good insurance through my job, and it came in to effect Jan 1 this year. That first week I went to a general practitioner (not knowing where to start the ball) and told them of all my problems. Extreme abdominal and lower abdominal pain, pain during sex, bleeding during sex, bleeding between periods often accompanied by extreme pain. Periods getting worse every month with pain. Fatigue, back pain, inability to sleep due to pain. This is what I told them. They did a pap saying I probably had an STD. Embarrassing, yes, but not the end of the world. Unless it was the really bad one. Pap came back abnormal but the test results for Syphilis, Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, and HIV all came back NEGATIVE. Blood work was done and an ultrasound. The doctor decided that even though I had an abnormal pap that happens all the time, we'll wait and see in 3 or 6 more months. In the meantime, my blood work showed elevated white cell count indicating that I was fighting an "acute infection" somewhere in my body, or so I was told. Blood work also indicated that my blood sugar was kinda high and my cholesterol was really high. Odd since I am a healthy eater. Very healthy. But I was still drinking a lot on a daily basis, so that may be why those levels were so high. Well, the doctor never asked me about alcohol or diet, just put my on a 1800 cal ADA diet, proclaimed me borderline diabetic (diabetes does NOT run in my family, however cancer does), prescribed me diabetic drugs and diagnosed me with Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome.

Nowhere in that were my complaints even listened to. Diabetic? Wait and See? No followup on an abnormal pap? Then the day I went there asking for pain medication because I could no longer sleep and taking Advil all day was not doing it. Every time I went to the doc for followups or whatever she kept trying to stick me with an STD even though they already tested me for it and I was negative. Anyway, the pain meds, she gave them to me, but not after having a discussion with someone outside the exam room door about how I was there to get them to sell them on the street. Yes, it's true. You see, the doc didn't believe I was in pain. Because the disease she diagnosed me with wouldn't cause me pain. Well, hello, when I first came to you what symptoms did I tell you I had? Anyway, at that point when she came back with a script for Vicodin, I said to her "You don't believe I am in pain, even though it's been a symptom from the get-go when I first came to see you 3 months ago. You put me on diabetic drugs that made me violently sick and told me to keep taking them when I told you this was happening. I am not a diabetic. And I am really thinking that I don't have PCOS either. Admit that you are out of your league." She stood there looking at me and finally said, "I don't know what I am dealing with here." I said "Thanks for admitting it. Have a good day." And left.

Then I went over the list of doctors that are in network and took the advice of my mom and chose one out of a list of about 5. I called them myself about 1 week after the last episode at the general practice. When I told the girl on the phone what had happened she kinda freaked out and said "You have to get in here right away, I can get you in on Friday." It was Tuesday when I called, and I didn't have a referral, so I was kinda surprised at how fast they got me in. That was on April 10. I had an exam on that day and the doctor saw what kind of pain I was in. He was completely sympathetic with how long I had been having the pain, how I couldn't sleep and was missing work, so he gave me some more pain meds and scheduled me for another ultrasound for the following Thursday. Then the Tuesday after that I had a culposcopy, which he saw what he thought was a polyp. He scheduled surgery for the following Thursday to remove it and to do a laproposcopy and a hysteroscopy to see if there were any problems around the outsides of my organs. He took biopsies when he did the culposcopy but we didn't have the results yet. So I went into surgery expecting to have a polyp removed and be back at work in 4 days. I came out of surgery with nothing removed and the news that he was 99.9% sure I had cervical cancer. The polyp turned out to be a tumor with a diameter of 6 cm in my cervix and had started to spread to the tissues outside the cervix. A few days later it was confirmed by pathology, squamous cell carcinoma stage 2b. That was on May 5. Between the 5th and the 18th I had every test imaginable done so that my oncologist could be totally sure that I had it nowhere else in my body, because it had gone unchecked for so long. They believe that early detection would have occurred 4-5 years ago. So I had CT Scans, MRI's, PET Scans. I had leg molds made and dots tattooed on me so that they can line up the radiation on the exact same points every time, and the leg mold holds you in the same position for every treatment. I had teaching sessions of what these treatments were going to do to me and the best things I can do to ease the discomfort, pain, rawness, etc. Skincare, mouth care, rump care, diet, exercise, etc.

All the nurses I see on a regular basis are really nice. And one of my radiation nurses was also one of my dad's oncology nurses 20 years ago when he was dying of melanoma. How is that for strange? She remembers my mom and my dad and me, except for now it's 20 years later and it's just me and my mom, and she is trying to heal me. It brings tears when I think about it.

Well, I think I am going to take a shower before I have to go to radiation, even though I feel like just laying down. Ugh.