The Writer Girl

Easter and everything after April 6, 2008

I hadn’t seen Mom since Christmas, so it was nice to get back home for Easter, though it was too short, as always. It was surprisingly not as bad as I thought it might be to see Mom bald, and let me tell you, she has one shiny head. It was pretty evident that my niece and nephews aren’t real comfortable with that fact, but she has some stubble growing in (which I can only imagine has got to itch uncontrollably), so I would think she’d have maybe an inch or so of hair within the next month, depending upon how her treatments go.

Still, it was great seeing Mom, of course, and it’s obvious when you see her that she’s not letting this cancer get her down. I was paranoid about being sick around her, since her immune system is down with these treatments, so I kept spraying Lysol around the house any time I was there. It was fun playing with her wig, and she even had a friend she hadn’t seen since they played in a German polka band together in high school (true story) come visit her on a road trip from Sacramento. It was nice hearing her play her Hammond organ, too. I wish I had an inkling of her musical abilities.

While chemotherapy is officially over, her next round of treatments started up last week. She is currently going through radiation and herceptin treatments. Mom said she has to have 33 radiation treatments, and they don’t take long, but she’s had a little bit of a reaction with them. One reaction has been that despite the fact that she didn’t lose her eyebrows or eyelashes during chemo, she suddenly started losing them last week. She’s also been extremely tired, but I think that’s been pretty consistent during these treatments.

Mom’s Herceptin treatments have been interesting, too. I think that’s what she’s had the most reaction to. Unfortunately, they’ll last an entire year, but if that’s what it takes, I think we’re all comfortable having her keep up with those treatments. Herceptin fights against the HER2 protein, which is a non-genetic protein in a woman’s body that causes cancer cells to grow faster. Not all women have this protein, but for those who do, it’s important that they have this treatment so that the cancer doesn’t spread or come back.

Unfortunately, I don’t know when I’m going to be home again. But I’m anxious to see how Mom continues to progress. So far, so good. Now it’s my turn to slow down so I can get some more trains posted up on eBay. That’s a chore in itself, but Dad would be so proud of me.

Who needs hair when you’re this positive? March 11, 2008

Mom is officially over chemotherapy, and despite losing her hair, the weakness and endless amounts of nausea, she literally told me the other day, “I don’t think this has affected me any worse than a mosquito bite.” I always knew my mom was crazy.

Still, she’s staying positive, and that is, as they say, half the battle. I’ll see her at Easter for a couple of days, which will be the first time I’ve physically seen her without hair. She also starts on radiation here in a week or so, and she’s sure it won’t be that big of a deal. 

Of course we’ve had a lot of challenges dealing with her cancer, and considering I’m probably more disappointed with my hair being gone than mom is about anything she has gone through, I’d say we’re going through this with flying colors. Both of us will have hair again one of these days. And hopefully soon enough, this whole cancer thing will be history.

Two haircuts and a funeral. February 7, 2008

It’s been about three weeks now since my mom woke up with a full head of hair only for it to start coming out like pulling dead grass out of the ground. It was the weirdest thing, Mom and my brother Joe both said. Joe stopped by before church and her hair was there. He came by afterwards and she looked like a bald man. It’s unbelievable how that happens. 

That Monday, and the same day she started her second round of chemo, my brother Jeff stopped by to shave her head. He told me it was kind of hard at first, but consider how positive she is, they ended up having some fun with it. Mom said her head was pretty scraggly looking anyway, and rather than having a few patchy hairs sticking around everywhere, she preferred to just make it all go away. I guess it’s not often a woman has the chance to be like Sinead O’Connor. Sounds pretty liberating.

The following day, I made the decision to cut my hair shorter than I ever have in my life so I could donate it to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths campaign. It was a whole lot easier of a decision that cutting my hair has ever been, though it’s taking some getting used to. (My neck is getting extremely cold.) And considering two friends at work had also done the same thing the week prior for Locks of Love, I was proud to join the ranks in support of my mom. In fact, as I sat there staring at the puny ponytail that once seemed like massive amounts of hair, I realized why it takes six ponytails to make one wig. It’s wild to think that the three of us will only halfway help a woman like my mom. 

Mom seemed to be doing pretty well until last week. My aunt Harriet, one of her two older sisters, died unexpectedly from a cardiac embolism. Aunt Harriet and my uncle were living in Colorado at the time, so not only were none of us from my family able to go, but Mom’s brother, my uncle Richard, is currently in India. The news hit both of them extremely hard, not to mention that sometime after Aunt Harriet’s death, Uncle Richard’s wife had a mild stroke and my cousin Shana had a car accident on the way to the funeral and nobody could get word until later that it was just a fender bender.

Aunt Harriet’s funeral was yesterday, and when I talked to Mom, she said the day was particularly hard. Monday brought along her third  treatment of chemotherapy, and she said she can barely function this week. A friend came to stay with her during the time of Aunt Harriet’s funeral, which meant the world to her. It’s days like this that I hate being so far away. But that I’m also glad I’m no longer 17 hours away.

Bald is beautiful January 21, 2008

I guess Mom’s hair is now officially gone. Round two of chemotherapy is today, and we’ll see how it continues to wreak havoc on  her body.

Old man mom January 20, 2008

Mom started losing her hair today, and I swear she looks like an old man who is balding. I know it will get worse, because the doctor told her that she wouldn’t have eyebrows soon, either. Her next treatment of chemotherapy is tomorrow, which I’m sure will just escalate the loss of her hair. Fortunately, she has enough hats to keep her head warm this winter. But it’ll still be weird to see her this way.

One week and counting January 14, 2008

It’s been one week since Mom had her first treatment of chemotherapy, and from the sounds of it, she’s really starting to feel its effects. The first week weren’t so bad. Mom said she had felt slightly nauseated, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. She’s had doctors appointments after doctors appointments, but somewhere along the way, a friend of hers from Pekin talked her into heading over to her hair shop to get a wig. Since she’s a long-time friend, Mom agreed, and she and her friend Sandy headed over to try them on. What’s funny about the wig she picked is that it really looks like her hair did 10 years ago. I told her she’ll look 20 years younger. I’m just trying to stay optimistic.

Oddly enough, I was feeling pretty ill yesterday. I was stupid, really. I went running two days in a row and conveniently forgot to eat. So when I thought about it around 5 p.m. yesterday, my blood sugar was so low that I thought I might pass out. So as I was laying in bed feeling like I was going to throw up, I immediately started wondering how my mom was doing.

Sadly, she was feeling worse than me. One week into her treatments and nothing tastes good, she’s throwing up and she’s already lost weight. She should have her next round of chemo next week. If it all works out, we’re both cutting off our hair this week — Mom because she’ll lose it anyway, me because I’d like to show my support for her by donating mine. It’s hard to imagine that this is just the beginning.

A Family of Frankenstines January 8, 2008

I talked to Mom last night to find out how her first treatment of chemotherapy went. So far, so good. Of course, they also say that the effects of chemotherapy don’t really hit you until a few days after your first treatment.  

After her lumpectomy, Mom had to head back to the hospital to have a port put in her chest. She said it’s about the size of a quarter, only a little thicker, and it’s under the skin above her right breast. The purpose of a port is to help administer the chemo without having to poke around for veins, and then it enters the heart directly. Sounds all good and well, but honestly, seeing a little bump all stitched into her skin really kind of freaked me out. 

Unfortunately, major scars like that are basically commonplace in my family. I don’t remember a time when my dad didn’t have a railroad track pattern running down his chest and leg — constant reminders of the three different open heart surgeries that would ultimately turn me into the psychotic, overtly health-conscious individual that I am today. My grandma, her siblings, and even my uncle shared my dad’s heart issues. And then there is Mom, with her nasty little back surgery, fingers calloused from diabetes tests, and now these healthy little reminders all over her body that are evidence of her upcoming cancer treatments. We’re basically a family of Frankenstines, all pieced and stitched together — proudly showing battle scars from our struggle against genetics. Can you see why I’m fighting so hard?

Well, last night, she filled me in on her first treatment of chemo. I’m already learning so much. For instance, did you know that chemotherapy turns your urine red? That seems a little freaky to me, but so did the fact that you can’t even take blood pressure on the side that the cancer was on for fear that it’ll make her arm swell up so much that it won’t go down even after the treatments are over. She also told me that they give her a week before every bit of hair on her body is gone. Eyelashes. Eyebrows. Though I know she’ll be relieved that she won’t have to pluck for awhile.

The question of the day is this: should she shave her head? She said she’d rather just buzz it all off and be prepared that way, rather than lose a huge chunk of hair in the bathtub. The more I talk to my friends, the more I think I agree. I think shaving it would be a little easier to swallow. Although I still can’t imagine my mom not putting curlers in her hair. My job is to keep her head warm, so I’ve been knitting some hats for her since she doesn’t want a wig. 

So for now, she’s doing well. She’s prepared. Probably more so than I am, anyway. Of course, give it a week, and that may all change. Let’s hope it doesn’t too much. 

And so it begins… January 7, 2008

January 7, 2008. 8:15am. I’ll be running out the door, late for work as always. And my mom will be starting chemotherapy—the first of many cancer treatments that will make this, by far, the longest year of our lives.

Technically, this all began around Thanksgiving. We found out a week before Thanksgiving that Mom’s mammogram showed some abnormalities. A biopsy shortly after that showed that it was stage two breast cancer, and they next thing we knew, we were preparing for Mom to have a lumpectomy.

This was something I wasn’t expecting at all. Heart disease? My doctor already told me to calm down about my fear of heart disease or else I’ll give myself a heart attack. Diabetes? Oh yeah, that’s in the family too. Breast cancer? This one was new. My genetics are totally working against me.

Since I was going to be home for Thanksgiving, I made plans to take a few days off to help her recover from the lumpectomy. And I spent a few days freezing food for Mom, going through my dad’s trains to put on eBay, running errands for her, etc. Naturally, when we went in for her lumpectomy the Monday after Thanksgiving, we thought everything would go through normally.

Instead, we were told that her EKG was abnormal. That they thought she had had a heart attack. That her surgery was being put on hold so a cardiologist could clear her. That diabetics like Mom can often have silent heart attacks, so they never know they have them and they don’t experience the symptoms. Talk about frustrating and scary all at once. I honestly thought she’d have to have heart surgery on top of all of cancer treatments. Fortunately we were able to see the cardiologist two days later, and he not only cleared her for surgery, but after checking her echocardiogram, he said she was in great shape. As it turns out, this type of thing happens all the time. Great, huh?

Well, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, she had her lumpectomy, she’s been cleared to begin treatment, and it all begins at 8:15 am this morning.

This site used to house my resumé and portfolio. Since I’m stable (at least at work), my goal is now to use this site to document her treatment and the experience my family will be going through as she becomes cancer-free. Here’s to a long, weary 2008!