Yes, I'm still alive! :-)

Yeah, I sorta let my computer end up buried and just read for a year there... When I finally start adding these books to my book sites, it'll be a long day. Today has been long and all I've done was try to move my PDF files to my tablet, and I can't "see" the microSD card that I installed. It's making me nuts.

So, what's been going on. As I said, I'm reading obsessively. Sometimes as many as three or four books at a time. That is when I'm not sleeping or playing with the cats, of course. My energy is very low most of the time, and it doesn't take much at all to wear me out. I will sometimes sleep for days.

As I have mentioned on Facebook, my doctor has informed me that I will need to remain on chemotherapy for the rest of my life. I think it's because of the locations of the lesions on my liver. At any rate, that means there will be no surgery to remove the larger tumors in my abdomen, nor will there will be a reversal of the colostomy.

This year has been a rough one as far as the cats go. In late January, we were blessed by Bast with the arrival of Sif on our back step. She was a tiny thing, half-starved and covered in ringworm, so we had quite a spring mending her up. She's super smart, though; I mean seriously, I have never met a smarter cat. She had her name and where to poop down within two days, and the surprises just keep coming. She noticed where I keep the little rings she likes to play with and goes to grab them for herself if we're busy. She checks the depth of the water in the dish by slapping at it with her paw so she doesn't dunk her nose. She is not a cuddler, nor does she like to be held, but she will accept pettings sometimes. She also likes to be right in the middle of whatever is going on, coming out to greet us when we've been gone, and hanging out nearby when we're doing other things. It's hard to tell from the picture (best viewed in direct light), but she's a very dark brown color. She tends to wander around with her tongue sticking out a little; I think it's a bit overlarge for her mouth. It's adorable. Dmitry has some good pictures on his iPhone, but hasn't managed to transfer them to me.  So, Sif brought in ringworm and Erasmus needed to go through treatments, and Fluff had to take medications because they developed it, too.

But what about Tiger? some of you may ask. That's the rough bit. Bast gave, but Bast also took away. Our sweet, gorgeous Tiger's kidneys failed in February and we had to put him to sleep. It broke our hearts. He was a cuddler, a lover, and always such a happy boy and his absence is keenly felt in our household. I hit a pretty bad depression over it, which I didn't recover from until well into March. Sif helped a lot with her kitten silliness, but it's still hard. Tiger was the one I could always turn to when I needed a snuggle; none of the others will do that, except sometimes Erasmus. As you can see, Tiger was a handsome and loving fellow.

Other than that, just trying to take it day to day. I've been online way too long tonight and my neck and back hurt as a result. But I wanted to put up a post, since it's been so long. My thoughts are always with you and my thanks to you all for your continued support and encouragement.

Wasn't it just March? Time flies. #CancerJourney

So, yeah, I've been incommunicado via e-mail and Facebook and online generally since July. Prior to that I had been off about a month. And it really does feel like this year has gone by in an eyeblink without me even noticing...

So, what have I been doing (other than worrying people)? I have been obsessively reading if I wasn't sleeping. I read all the Honorverse novels, most of the Grimspace books, several Vine books, a couple old "medical curiosities" books, a few short story anthologies, a few random short stories... When it comes time to update all that, it'll be a long day for me on Goodreads. And Shelfari. And LibraryThing. I have taken extensive notes on most of the books I've read, but I still may or may not actually write reviews for all of them, because damn... that's a lot of reviews to write.

Each fortnight I trundle myself off to my oncologist and have poison medication put into my veins through the port in my arm, then go to the hospital to be hooked up to a home infusion unit for a couple more days of chemical fun. Thank goodness I don't have some of the sorts of side effects that are mentioned by characters in the short story anthology Let's Scare Cancer to Death, which I read a couple weeks ago. I have not had a lot of nausea and zero throwing up, about which I am most happy because I really do hate throwing up. Since coming off the oxaliplatin I don't have problems with cold things, nor do I have muscle spasms, which is wonderful. Mostly my digestive system is out of balance, and I tend to be very tired, and wear out very quickly when I do much of anything. However, the treatment is helping, the tumors and liver lesions are shrinking, so we'll be continuing this treatment until a) it stops working and needs to be changed or b) the liver lesions are gone, at which point we can do surgery to remove the big tumors in my abdomen. I've regained all the weight I lost, so am back to where I was in 2012. Which, as it turns out, is too much, because it is negatively affecting the fit of my colostomy wafer. So now I have to try to lose some of that weight again. I just can't win! But such minor annoyances are nothing compared to what others have gone through, and what others ARE going through.

Speaking of Let's Scare Cancer to Death, it is a charity anthology. All monies raised will go to cancer research, so go ye forth and buy.

Meanwhile, know I am so grateful to my friends who have texted me on occasion to let me know they're thinking of me, and I found a lot of similar messages on Facebook as well. This means a lot to me. I am going to try to catch up with my e-mail, but likely I will be quiet for a long time while I'm doing that due to the volume of it. So, be patient with me! Meanwhile, know I love you all, and here's a big ol' hug for you!

#Cancer Journey - Mixed News from Latest Visit

So, my fifth chemotherapy appointment was yesterday.  Last Friday I had new scans done of my chest, abdomen and pelvis to see what was going on in there with the treatments, and yesterday was the day I was supposed to learn about it. However, the doctor who read the scans did a really piss-poor job of writing his report. He didn't say anything about my chest/lungs, no mention of the tumors in my abdomen, around my intestines/bowel/uterus, etc. Nothing! He did mention that my pancreas and spleen looked good. He also said there were three 7 cm, fluid-filled sacs in my abdomen. We aren't really sure what those are, but the doctor said as long as I'm not having any problems, we'll just leave them be for now. I have a small fatty tumor on my kidney, but it's benign; I actually have a couple of those here and there and have for a number of years, so it's nothing to worry about.

What he focused on was my liver, but even then he was unclear. He compared the new scans to the scans made in November when I first went to the ER with complaints and was told it was 'just colitis'. He said he saw the liver tumors in those scans (medical malpractice suit, anyone??) and that they were larger in the new scans, but he didn't say by how much. My doctor said if it was just a few mm then it was nothing to worry about, but if more, then we'd need to make changes. So, she went to call the guy, but couldn't reach him, so she compared the new scans to the MRI we did prior to the liver biopsy and found that between then and now the liver tumors have doubled. That sounds bad, but that is from 1 cm to 2 cm, give or take a few mm. So not a huge change, but enough that the doctor wanted to change one of my medicines to a second-line medicine to see if that will work better.

Now this was a good thing, because the medicine she took me off of was Oxaliplatin. This medication had the potential to cause permanent nerve damage. It caused my hands and feet to cramp and spasm, and also gave me pins and needles in my hands, feet and lower legs. It made me super sensitive to cold. I couldn't even reach into the refrigerator without gloves, and I could not drink anything that was too cold. If I tried, it felt like broken glass sliding down my throat. This kept me away from some of my favorite things: popsicles! So, I was very very happy to be rid of that particular medication. The one added is known as CPT-11. It does have side effects, but they are mostly just more of the same. In fact, if you are interested in learning some of the side effects that people undergo through chemotherapy, www.healthline.com just put up a great educational piece about the side effects of chemotherapy, and you can learn more about them by following this link. Obviously not everyone has every side effect, nor will people that are on the same therapies even have the same side effects, but it's a great article and I encourage you to check it out.

The only new side effect I've experienced was extreme hot flashes and sweating. I mean extreme! I had to take off my headscarf; I was just too hot to keep it on! And sweating - wow, I was sweating like a horse. I soaked through two paper towels trying to wipe down my face and head. Fortunately it cleared up during the night and I had a fairly restful sleep.

So, that's where I'm at right now. I'll call up my doctor, probably tomorrow, and see if she managed to talk to the guy who read my scans to find out more information. I think next time I'm in the vicinity of St. Mary's I'll go ask for copies of the scans on CD-ROM or the actual film, whatever they will provide, so I can take them with me when the topics might come up. My doctor gave me a copy of the report yesterday, not that it will be very helpful for anything but a medical malpractice suit for them not picking up the tumors in that scan back in November... I'm still trying to drink two to three quarts of fluids every day to avoid dehydration. All in all I feel okay this week; last week I was not feeling very well at all, so I"m happy to have a good week. Thanks again to everyone for their support, encouragement, and well-wishes, be they prayers, good vibrations, long-distance hugs, what have you. It is all appreciated and much love to you all!

#Cancer journey: "It's a lot of food for a little person."

Taken 4/27/2014

You know, I've never, ever thought of myself as a “little” person. It's true that I'm not terribly tall at 5' 3”, but my build has always been—shall we say—stocky. In my hometown, the “attractive” girls were either zaftig or willowy, neither of which has ever described me—I was always somewhere in the middle. I spent years on the diet wagon, fighting to maintain a certain weight (mostly based on my mother's urgings and society's standards; that weight was about 10 pounds less than I weigh now, give or take five or six) and miserable about myself. I was constantly receiving mixed signals from my mother: “You need to lose weight. You need to clean your plate. You're a little heavy, dear. Here, have some more pancakes.” You know the type. Fans of the TV show Absolutely Fabulous might remember one of the “flashback” episodes of Eddie and Pats in school. Patsy has come over and Eddie's mother feeds her a huge plate of food, saying, “You don't want to be a skinny balliny long legs, big banana feet,” and then hands Eddie some oatmeal or something and says, “Or a roly poly pudding that no one wants to meet.” This is just so typical of how women are taught in our society. We are never okay the way we are, we always need to change something. And it's a bunch of bullshit.

What brought this on? This morning I went for CT scans of my pelvis, abdomen and chest to check on how well the chemotherapy is working, to see if the tumors infesting my abdomen—intestines and uterus and ovaries and liver—have been affected at all, slowed down, shrunken. And to see if any have made their way into my chest. I'd had a rough week between one thing and another. Colon cancer causes one to walk a fine line with their digestive system, trying to maintain a balance, and I was out of balance most of the week.  One medication will cause this side effect, another will cause the opposite and you pray that they will just cancel each other out, but of course it never works that way.  I was nauseated when I tried to eat because things weren't moving through the way they should, and just generally miserable, and I lost in the vicinity of eight of my carefully regained pounds. Today, for the first time in almost a week, I was actually hungry. So, after the scans, we stopped off at IHOP. I ordered a bacon and cheese omelet with sourdough toast and ate about half of it. Those omelets are big, and my stomach was shrunk, but I thought I did fairly well eating that much, and I know I felt a lot better for the nutrition. As the server cleared the dishes and brought me a box, she said, “It's a lot of food for a little person, isn't it?”

Taken 7/5/2013

A little person. Me. I'm now a little person, because due to the problems I've faced between the original blockage and now the chemotherapy side effects, I've lost a lot of weight and am actually almost down to what society thinks I should weigh (which means I think I'm dangerously close to too thin). In the past year, give or take, I've lost 50 pounds, mostly since September. I am continually complimented on how great I look, how pretty I am (even with a shaved head). And it worries me.

Don't misunderstand me: it is definitely nice to receive the compliments. However, not everyone who comments knows why I'm suddenly so much thinner. Will they think I'm actually concerned about that sort of thing? Will they think they need to lose weight to fit into societal standards? I hope not. Because let's be honest: fashion designers are designing clothes that would look good on a willowy boy's body. And then trying to force women to look like that. That's not how we're supposed to look, my friends. We are the bearers of the future of the Earth in our broad hips. We nurture the ongoing growth through our bountiful breasts, and we bring forth new life from our wombs (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively), and we should never, ever be ashamed or unhappy about how we look, whether it is because we think we need to “just lose five more pounds” or just gain a couple pounds” or “just have my breasts increased by one cup size”...

Well, of course, even if I hadn't already decided to not have children long ago, it would be impossible now. Once the tumors are shrunken enough for a surgery, my uterus and at least one ovary are coming out. But you catch the gist of it, right? Women are life and bounty, but we're being forced to try to make ourselves disappear. Don't stand for it. Take up that space! Spread out, be comfortable.  And know that you are beautiful.

So, that's where my head has been all day, thinking these sorts of thoughts while I go through my e-mails and follow along to see what my friends are up to.  Happily, most of the women I know are comfortable with themselves (which is probably why we're friends) and don't worry overly much about society and its standards.  So, let's all go out and try to infect at least one girl each with our "bad attitudes," shall we?

#Cancer Journey - short update

Hopefully some of you noticed I was gone and wondered why... Long story short, I became very ill over the weekend - my body was purging or something - and since I was also extremely fatigued I was not awake enough to drink enough Gatorade to keep me hydrated, so I ended up in the hospital from Sunday night until today. I'm home now, more and more hopelessly behind. Plus my cats are seriously hacked off at me, since Dmitry does not understand his proper place in the household and kowtow to and spoil them properly... So, lots to do to fix this. As always, your support and encouragement are appreciated.

Updating you #Cancer journey

Poor Prometheus. I'm starting to know how he felt...

But I'm starting at the end. For those of you who have been following along, I had a liver biopsy a few weeks ago. You can follow that link if you want to refresh your memory. Anyway, the following Tuesday (April 1) I went in for my second chemotherapy treatment and learned that yes, there is cancer in my liver, too. And I'm anemic. I'm taking daily iron supplements, I eat lots of broccoli, and I'm still anemic. So, they added two new drugs to my treatment - one was just an iron supplement, but the other was specifically for the liver cancer. It apparently constricts the blood vessels, which will hopefully starve the tumors. Of course that means I'm ending up with a lot of headaches. The doctor recommends caffeine, since I can't have anything with aspirin or ibuprofen in it. Apparently the caffeine will dilate the blood vessels again and help stop the headache.

Anyway, this last chemo treatment was tough. Once again my hands started to cramp, and then my feet started to cramp. It was so bad, and it lasted three days this time. It was late on Friday before I could walk with any sort of a normal gait. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning I could only walk very slowly, taking very small steps, and sort of waddling. Which was actually kind of funny to see, I imagine... But hey, my legs HURT, and so did my arms.

My next chemo treatment is coming up on Tuesday, which is tax day. That seems strangely ominous, doesn't it? I have my nice, warm Huf socks that someone was kind enough to buy for me from my wishlist (they came without any paperwork, so I have no idea who sent them), and some nice fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm and still let me use my computer if I wish, plus my healing blanket sent by Schledia Benefield from Mississippi and my plush Cthulhu (which another kind person sent to me), so I'm all set to keep warm, since the weather is supposed to cool off dramatically that day. And also my doctor said that the chemo treatment itself might make me feel cold, which increases the likelihood of more cramps.

I continue to receive so much support and encouragement from folks on-line, and I really appreciate it. I appreciate those who have sent me things off my wishlist, and I appreciate those who are thinking of me, praying for me, and/or sending me healing energy and positive vibes. I do want to mention that a number of items show as purchased on my wishlist but have not arrived. I try to thank people publicly when I receive a gift, so if you sent something and haven't heard from me, please check on the status of your order.

I generally update much more regularly on Facebook, but I'm still very far behind on posts there. So, if you want to keep better track of me, friend me on Facebook!

Why liver biopsies suck

For those of you following along at home, last week was my first chemotherapy. The week before that I'd had an MRI of my abdomen and the doctor spotted some lesions on my liver, so I needed to have a biopsy done. My oncologist hoped to have it done right away so I had all the right chemo meds from the start, but alas it was not to be; the biopsy was finally scheduled for today.

Now, last week I had a port implanted, and while they numbed me up very well, they didn't manage to sedate me. I was alert through the whole procedure, so today when I went in I made a lot of noise about not wanting to do that again. Well, they gave me some fluids and then started doping me up and voila, I was out. Until the doctor stuck the needle into my liver. That woke me right up... screaming. They put me under again and tried again with the same results. Apparently they did finally manage to do the trick, because I was finished and taken to recovery and finally back upstairs, where I waited for 4 hours just in case it started bleeding or something.

They said the needle they used to punch through to my liver was smaller than a toothpick. They said that the lesion was close to the surface. They said I shouldn't feel anything because they would numb up the area before they did the procedure.

THEY LIED!!

This was almost as bad as a barium enema. The only difference being with the barium enema there was absolutely NO attempt to sedate me or reduce my pain, so it still remains the most painful procedure I've dealt with.

Next week is my next chemo treatment. I have them every two weeks. I want to thank all of my wonderful friends for their support, encouragement, and gifts over the past few weeks. It has meant the world to me.