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Re: NEDenise Has Died
Today was christmas day.
As i put the turkey in the oven I started crying for denise, for ted.
cooking, cleaning, wrapping gifts, (planning a hawaiian holiday in Denise's case, probably), doing dishes or a load of wash....any housework or hassle, or preparation....denied denise for this day, this year. All the next years. All the next Christmases.
It was summertime sixteen months ago when she started a thread I reread tonight, announcing her brain mets. Sixteen short months ago.
Before she got home from the standard (for you americans, thankfully not us canadians) end of treatment base line brain mri , her oncologist phoned and said they found two tumors in her brain. She described her feelings, writing to us six hours later, on here, as "sad, not scared, or angry." "Just sad." Those were the words she wrote. She'd been crying for many of those six hours.
Tonight at my brother's place with my husband and my nephews and nieces I cried again for her. And I realized I am so identified, my stage and type of disease with Denise, that I am crying for me too. Like Denise I have no control over when or how soon this disease will take me. I can't predict. I just feel so damn sad.
I haven't had any testing other than a bone scan since my treatment ended at a time close to when her initial treatment ended. I've been childishly avoiding my oncologists' appointments, not showing up, dodging them. I finally, after being phone-spammed by the rads onc, saw him, had the bone scan, still no word from him on that, and am dodging the blood test and c.t.
Hospital sent a couple of appointment letters and I havent opened them yet and it's been a week.
I think the tears for Denise are also for me. I'm scared as hell by her death. Scared of dying.
I have "known" (whether time will prove me right or not nobody knows yet) deep inside me that I will not make the five year mark. I personally place zero weight by the five year mark thing. I just feel certain I too will die within the next three yrs. It's just a thing my body knows and my mind refuses to grow up and face it, get testing done etc.
I think the main reason, ( besides the obvious one...fear of dying...wanting to live out my natural lifespan)...is this one: I have decided not to get further treatment. If I go to stage four, I don't want further chemo, to be bald again, to be sick again. I just want to be treated for the symptoms that come from dying of the disease. If it gets too bad, I want to end things in Switzerland, I even know a place there, via a friend, where it is done.
Maybe I am just shaken by helping a friend have her dog put down on Saturday, at her house...the vet came to the house. I was there when life left the body and maybe it shook me and I lost both my dogs this year.
If anyone here is offended by my thoughts, bringing up my dogs at this time, please don't be as my dogs are/were my life, my only children, not having human ones, so please don't be offended by that.
But I just feel so damn sad.
So sorry Denise that you didn't make Christmas turkey this year. So sad for your family. But most of all for you.
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fall 2008: mammo of rt breast worrisome so am asked to redo mammo and have ultrasound of rt breast.I delay it til january 2009 and the results are "no cancer in rt breast. phew."
found plum sized lump in right breast the day before my dad died: April 17th 2011. saw it in mirror, while i was wearing a top, examining my figure after losing 10 lbs on dr. bernstein diet.
diagnosed may 10 2011
mast/lymphectomy: june 7 2011, 5/20 cancerous nodes. stage 3a before radiation oncologist during our first mtg on july 15th says he found cancer on the lymph node of my breast bone. Now stage 3b.
her2+++, EN-, PN-. Rt brst tumors:3 at onset, 4.5 cm was the big one
chemos: 3fec's followed by 3 taxotere, total of 18 wks chemo. sept: halfway thru chemo the mastectomy scar decides to open and ooze pus. (not healed before chemo) eventually with canasten powder sent by friend in ny (illegal in canada) it heals.
radiations:although scheduled to begin 25 january 2012, I am so terrified by it (rads cause other cancers) I don't start til february, miss a bunch, reschedule them all and finally finish 35 rads mid april. reason for 7 extra atop the 28 scheduled is that when i first met my rads oncologist he said he saw a tumor on the lymph node of my breastbone. extra 7 are special kind of beam used for that lymphnode. rads onc tells me nobody ever took so long to do rads so he cannot speak for effectiveness. trials had been done only on consecutive days so......we'll see.....
10 mos of herceptin started 6 wks into chemo. canadian onc says 10 mos is just as effective as the full yr recommended by dr. slamon......so we'll see..completed july 2012.
Sept 18 2012: reconstruction and 3 drains. fails. i wear antibiotic pouch on my job for two months and have 60 consecutive days visiting a nursing centre where they apply burn victims' silver paper and clean the oozing infection daily. silicone leaks out daily. plastic surgeon in caribbean. emergency dept wont remove "his" work. He finally appears and orders me in into an emergency removal of implant. I make him promise no drains and I get my way. No infection as a result. Chest looks like a map of Brazil. Had a perfectly good left breast on Sept 17th but surgeon wanted to "save another woman an operation" ? so he had crashed two operations together on my left breast, foregoing the intermediary operation where you install an expander. the first surgeon a year earlier had flat out refused to waste five hours on his feet taking both boobs. flat out refusal. between the canadian health system saving money and both these asses, I got screwed. who knows when i can next get enough time off work (i work for myself and have no substitute when my husband is on contract) to get boobs again. arrrgh.
I have a blog where I document this trip and vent.
www.nora'scancerblog.blogspot.com . I stopped the blog before radiation. I think the steroids made me more angry and depressed and i just hated reading it anymore
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