Much ado about nothing

The week-end was a bit too much for me. I didn’t get to bed until 3am on Friday night after the Christmas party and then late again on Saturday night after a holiday dinner at a friends. By Sunday I was done and spent the day on the couch not really being able to sleep much.

Sunday night a mild headache started in the front right of my head and stayed with me until the morning. I talked to Mum about it early Monday morning because I was worried it might be a blood clot. Last week the vein in my neck (on the right) above my permacath had swollen and a smaller vein on my shoulder had gone bright blue. The area was tense indicating a pull or a pinch to the nerve. I’ve had blue veining across my chest before when my heart was not getting very much oxygen, so I knew this was something, but not sure what. Then it went away after a few days so I thought it might have been a pull from my lifting decoration boxes last week.

I got up and got ready for the day anyways, but I had a feeling it might not work out. The homecare nurse came to clean my line and it wasn’t working very well, sluggish, and so I decided to give the hospital a call. I put all these things together and she said I should come in and get them checked out. She also asked me if my right arm was swollen and when I looked at it I could have sworn it was, but sometime we see what we want to see. About 20 minutes later I couldn’t tell the difference and wondered if I was crying wolf as we drove to the hospital.

I wonder sometimes if my health continues to be well for a period of time do I make more ado about the usual aches and pains because I'm afraid of being well. Like my mind makes up something so that I can go get checked out and assured that I'm okay? Because after a day at the hospital I slept just fine that night and have felt fine since. No bloodclots!

L.B.D

On Friday a friend asked me to go with him to his corporate Christmas party on the following Friday at the Brookstreet hotel… yes sir! Pulling a party dress out of my closet last minute was not going to be a problem until I realized “Oh shit the boob tube!”

So I headed to the mall with my mother to find a dress. Mum needed shoes for her party so we alternated stores. I wasn’t having any luck in the dress shops and my big feet were starting to turn green with envy watching my mother’s perfect size 8’s slip into anything she wanted in the shoe shops. After a couple of hours of no luck I thought I wasn't going to find anything and was getting a little run down, as I do. Id wear a nun’s habit if it came in my size and hid my permacath… its holy season!

Then I found it, the perfect little black dress - LBD! And that’s when I started to cry. I actually started to cry, and not just the misty eyes; an all out face crumple snort & sniff kinda cry. I think I was just so emotionally done by then, was subconsciously worried about what’s going on with my hair, and had resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to wear something ho-hum just to cover up my oddities. And maybe a wig too!

I had resolved myself to just being “clothed” that when I was presented with looking my very best it was so beyond my expectations that I started crying. I guess it’s been awhile since I felt I looked and felt fabulous in anything.

So I started crying and then Mum started crying, and then I saw the price and cried a little more, and then Mum started saying “I’m going to buy it for you, you deserve to look & feel great, I'm going to buy it for you” and that’s when the sobbing became an all out scene and the poor sales lady was just so confused.

Friday morning I knew the hair was done and headed for the salon. I thought Id be going out that night in a wig, but my stylist cut it down and it seemed to look thicker. There are some noticeable thin spots on the sides of my head and at the crown where my scalp gleams through, but nothing a little bit of brown eye-shadow on the scalp can’t hide!

For me having cancer is often a daily lesson in humility, but every now and then I need a break from it. I need to pretend that nothings wrong, get dressed up go out and get noticed for my L.B.D and not my C.A.N.C.E.R

Big Fat Hairy Lie

DHAP will not make your hair fall out. “LIAR LIAR my hair is jump’n scalp like its on fire!”

Everyone (doctors, nurses, websites) told me that DHAP would not make my hair fall out. There is a list of unusual side effects that say your hair may “thin”; they need to replace that word with flee, run away, escape, take flight, leave, depart, quit, make tracks…. ‘head’ off, ‘head’ out… I'm sure you get it.

About two weeks after chemo I made a hair appointment because I actually felt like my hair was getting too long. Sixty-five dollars later I went home to show off my new do later that evening and ran my hand through my bangs and the hair came with it!

Since then it’s come out every day in clumps. My bathroom looks like I have been shaving a baboon, the cat and I have switched rolls in that he is now covered in Tam hair and needs to lint roller his ass every time he stands up, and I look like I’ve let a four year old cut chunks out of my hair with craft scissors.

I don’t know what I'm going to do? Will it stop, will it all fall out, should I shave it, should I cut it???

Who keeps ringing that bell… I can’t concentrate?

You know that ringing sound in your ears that comes soon after a rock concert and stays with you into the next day? How about two weeks? Apparently one of the less common, but very serious side effects of DHAP is ringing in the ears and hearing loss… what?... “I SAID HEARING LOSS”... yikes!

All day every day my sound in my head alters from a ringing noise (like just after a concert) which makes me talk loud to others because I feel I have to yell over the sound in my head, or white noise that sounds like static when the TV channel cuts out. The white noise bouts are worse on everyone else because I have to crank the TV, but the ringing is hard too because no one can talk at the same time or during TV because I get overwhelmed by too much sound and then can’t really hear anything well… and then I get pissed about missing what Mc Steamy said during Grey’s.

My hearing also cuts in and out like someone has a remote for my head and is messing with the volume. After two weeks the ringing and white noise has subsided, and this is the more common problem that I continue to struggle with. If the volume goes down in my head I can’t hear what people are saying to me in a coffee shop with background music and have to strain and lip read to hear what my friends are saying. And if multiple people talk at once I can’t hear either. I can’t even chose to focus on one or the other, they just cancel each other out and I hear jumble.

When the volume is turned up its hell! I tried going to the mall the other day and was overwhelmed by the sound of the crowd. Peoples cell phones would make me jump, little kids whining sounded like they were screaming, doors shutting sounded like slams and the overhead announcements had me covering my ears in pain… on top of the regular crowd conversation and holiday music.

We finally had to stop and find a pharmacy to get some ear plugs. They are perfect!!! They cut out all the external noise and allow you to comfortably focus on what the person in front of you is saying. Once I popped those bad boys in everything transformed, it was like floating through chaos blissfully unaware. I keep a set in my purse now all the time, because I still can’t handle how loud a theater movie is, but I have to say this is the way to get your Christmas shopping done in a mall, hearing impaired or not!