Something to Look Forward To

L has said that if my cancer metastasizes--if I get "the mets"--we can get a dog. (He said this in response to a question, not as an offering. He claims we're both allergic to dogs.) And yesterday I heard on the radio about a woman with Stage 4 ovarian cancer who was helped in her end-of-life anxiety by psilocybin, which you may recognize as the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms"--which, by the way, the Future Farmers of America in my high school were said to have grown and harvested and ingested. I've never tried mushrooms and don't intend to.

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my last chemo treatment. I kept thinking yesterday that it was still the 29th, so that today would be the anniversary. So in a way I missed it.

Click here and scroll down for excellent photos of dachshund puppies. (Of course, all puppies are cute, even Rottweilers and pit bulls.) I am convinced I will be reincarnated as a brown (technically, "red") dachshund. (More on this here.)

To adopt a dachshund, check in with Almost Home.

For beautiful beagle puppies, click here. This is not an endorsement of the kennels.

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Scanning

People say, are you in remission? Are you OK now? They check you, right? They scan you x-ray look for cancer in your blood... right?

People are anxious. They don't want to hear that my cancer could come back. They want to know that someone is watching it, that as soon as an errant cancer cell jumps into existence, some medical exterminator will be there to wipe it out.

I'm anxious. I want that, too.

There's a blood test you can take that indicates ovarian cancer, but there's not one for breast cancer. You can take scans but the oncologist say, listen to your body, see how you feel, if you have deep bone pain, call us.

I have sore vertebrae from falling on my back in aerobics (as reported below), and that soreness is thankfully, going away.

So we sit tight. Exercise, eat well and hope for the best. And take Tamoxifen, which gobbles up the estrogen that the tumor fed on.

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Worry & Not Worry

I fell on my back about a month ago in step aerobics. This may seem impossible, but I did. We were sitting on our risers or whatever you call those long flat boards, holding those colored stretchy bands. I think mine was green, with handles. It was around my feet, but then slipped up and off my feet and I fell back. I wasn't hurt much. This is only important because I still have some pain (mostly when I push at the sites) around one vertebra and on my coccycx. And the pain wouldn't be important except that when cancer metastasizes it goes to the bones and shows itself as pain. I'm worried/not worried about it. I had a check-up appointment today with the surgeon. Her physician's assistant pushed on the places, hard, and said that if it was cancer, most likely it would have hurt more than it did. They both said that if the pain doesn't go away in a month, to call and get an x-ray. Deep down, I think it's nothing. After all, my sentinel node was clear. But I'm still afraid. I won't obsess, but I'll wonder.

I suppose the surgeon must like routine check-up appointments--they're a break from talking to scared women about how you're going to cut their skin and take some insides out. On the other hand, she may like talking to the frightened women and calming them down by giving them concrete information.

The surgeon has moved since I was last there, in the summer. Now she's in a nearby Fancy Hospital building. There used to be one large Breast Corral, with women of all ages waiting for mammograms and ultrasounds and surgeons. On the free phone you could hear people making traumatized personal calls. Now the "imaging" is separate from the surgery. I just followed the sign to a silent and empty waiting room. I saw the nurse there and she recognized me, and said I wouldn't have to wait long. She was right.

People ask me if there are scans to see if the cancer has come back, and there are, but the booklet the oncologist gave me (and which I can't find at the moment) says that there's no reason to do scans all the time, that mostly women report pain or other symptoms that turn out to be cancer. If I had the pain and I hadn't fallen in aerobics, I would be really worried. It does seem rather fast for metastasis. Chemo ended only five months ago, and the chances of cancer coming back without chemo was only 30 percent. I know someone who has "mets" and she did not have chemo. So based on one person I draw my conclusion.

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