Positively Phoebe

**This post was transferred from the now defunct "The Long Ease" blog.** So much going on today.  Most exciting is that today is my first day working my newly negotiated schedule at my job.  Since I started there, I'd been working 7-4:30 M-Th and then in the beginning, just in the mornings on Friday.  But as we got busier, Fridays became til 3:30.  The overtime was nice, but the reality that working 9-1/2+ hour days was not easy for me became more and more apparent after my most recent bladder procedure.  By 2 or 3pm, I was ready to crawl under my desk and pass out.  My belief is that it had a lot to do with the fact that in order to be signed in at work by 7am, I was needing to get up by 4:30 or 5am.  Which, for someone who struggles as much with sleep as I do, SUCKS.  And no, I don't have a long commute, but my "post-cancer healthy lifestyle" is pretty time-consuming.  Every morning (when my bladder isn't being a jerk) I do a 20 minute wo...

Regarding most recently talked about issues, I am happy to report that: a) within DAYS of my butt doctor visit, and the subsequent cessation of baby-wipe usage and underpants sleeping, my backside seems to be back to it's normal self. b) on my last day of antibiotics, my UTI seems to be all gone - no more AZO and bright orange wee for me! So, where am I with lingering side effects you might wonder?  Or you might not, but I'm going to talk about it anyhow.  Because it is on my mind. 1. FATIGUE - I am pleasantly surprised to see that the fatigue I was warned about seems to be almost entirely gone.  Only on rare occasions now do I find myself confusedly tired for no reason before it dawns on me that this could be the reason.  Rare like less than once every week or two.  So that's awesome.  I have to imagine that my activity level helped tremendously with this.  From using the rebounder EVERY MORNING to working full days at my (very physical) job to...

Oh, well perhaps I should tell you the question first? Although it's the question EVERYONE has been asking ME lately, so maybe you already know it: "Are you feeling better, because you seem like you're feeling better??!" So.  As I said above, the answer is... I feel pretty good.  On the one hand, I honestly feel better/healthier than I have in years.  Eating good food, drinking filtered water and exercising regularly is pretty fantastic medicine. But as "normal" or "good" or whatever as I might appear to everyone, I still am struggling.  It's hard to know how to respond to THE QUESTION, though.  You want to agree with people when they tell you that you seem like you're doing so well.  You want them not to worry.  You want to not worry yourself . But the truth is, I do NOT feel normal.  Yeah, I feel healthier, more fit, more positive, and so on.  But I don't feel like the me I was before all of this.  (I'm pretty sure she...

I have not been able to put away laundry or deal with the pile of clothing mess in my closet since this began.  Now that I'm feeling more alive, I thought I might finally tackle my closet disaster today.  I literally managed to hang up three things and weed out 12 empty hangers before I was pouring sweat and had to give up.  Suck.

Putting new sheets on the bed and then going from the second floor down to the basement to throw the comforter in the washer, switch the old sheets to the dryer, and coming back up to the second floor... and I am utterly wiped out.  Like I feel like I just did an hour of yoga or rode my bike 5 miles.  This is some crap.

In more ways than one. Sorry about the lack of posts (from me - although Ryan's from a few days ago was just lovely!!)  It's been such a crazy week and now that so much time has gone by, I really have no idea where to begin. My last post was on December 20th, and that was pretty close to my lowest point through this entire process.  I was miserable Tuesday and Wednesday, and then Thursday was my second brachytherapy.  And it was a nightmare.  Ryan did a pretty decent job of describing how NOT ok I was in his last post.  It really was terrible.  I was already in so much pain from the external radiation that everything they were up to INSIDE was just unbelievably painful.  But as Ryan also mentioned, Dr. Flemming is awesome.  During all of this painful procedure, he was really fantastic about describing exactly what each pieces-part that they were sticking in there is going to feel like and how/where it would hurt/create pressure or cramping/etc...

...then hell is in me.  In my ass, to be precise.  At least, that would explain the fire going on back there. Yeah.  Remember when I was bitching up a storm about my "legpits"?  Well that was an effing cakewalk compared to this.  Somehow I guess I thought that once external radiation was done, things would start getting better down below.  Oh, Stupid Phoebe.  How you could not have been more wrong.  Since that much anticipated day a week ago, things in the side-effect area have gotten nothing but a bazillion times worse.  The raw red skin and weeping gray blisters that once tormented me up front have now taken up residence in the crack of my ass.  And, uncomfortable as it may have been in the front, I could at least make some effort to cool off/dry out the legpit blister-thon by laying like a starfish, limbs splayed as wide as possible in every direction with various and sundry pillows propping up this or that.  But you know what?...

Sorry for the lack of updates since radiation finished. The pain, discomfort and fatigue make doing ANYTHING a far more monumental task than it should be. Including just sitting up. I promise to back more normally once I have even a little more energy. Love love, Phoebe

It's getting harder and harder to keep up to date over here.  But I promise not to give up.  Just might need a little extra time in between posts from here on out, and when they come, they will probably be LONGER.  Bear with me.  :) Now, let's rewind to Thursday... I started out the morning talking about how tired I have become.  And then I headed off to work.  Where I had a panic attack over the fact that there was a client up in the gallery sniffling and coughing.  See, I totally cannot get sick right now.  Not only would that end up delaying my treatments, but because my white blood cell count is so low, the flu at this point could literally kill me.  That's more than a little scary, no?  In the midst of worrying about that, I sort of realized that this whole putting on a brave face and working through this whole thing is just not in the cards for me, no matter how much I had hoped it would be. That afternoon, after my radiation...

Good grief, Charlie Brown!  I am friggin' EXHAUSTED!  Through this whole process, I have definitely felt more fatigued, more worn down, whatever.  But yesterday - it REALLY hit me.  I woke up at 7am, after a good night's sleep, and I felt pretty decent.  Jumped in the shower.  Cleaned myself up a bit.  Came back upstairs.  Started checking in on the world via my computer... and then BLAM!  I was exhausted.  I'd been awake for approximately 45 minutes, and I could not function.  I had to take an almost 2 hour snooze before I could get it together to go in to work!! Once I got there, I had the worst time focusing.  The minute anyone in the room was talking, my brain seemed to short-circuit.  I spent 4 hours, mostly sitting down, trying to get all of the paperwork from the past week-plus back in order.  I didn't even do any real framing, and I was ready to fall asleep. Somehow, I made it across town to radiation, and t...

Before I get to the gratitude... yesterday was a little rough, I'm not going to lie. I spent most of the morning wishing I could un-hear the "worst case scenario" as described by the doctor on Tuesday.  But despite the fact that in my heart I KNOW that is not where we are headed, hearing it did change something in me.  And after thinking a lot about it, I sort of "got" that what it changed was that it made the cancer REAL for me.  Up to that point, I knew I had it.  I knew we were treating it and I knew it was going to go away.  Life wasn't REALLY going to change in a permanent way - just temporarily.  You know.  Til we're done curing me.  But hearing that there was even a teeny tiny outside chance of  "much more than a radical hysterectomy" made the reality of the situation just explode in my face.  I don't want this to make my life change in such a horrific way.  I wasn't ready to accept that and it definitely messed with my hea...

Through all of this, I had actually only seen Dr. Kebria, my gynecologic oncologist, on day one of this whole thing when he performed the emergency biopsy and sent me to the hospital for tests.  He did call me in the hospital to discuss the treatment once I'd been diagnosed, but up until this afternoon, I had not seen him again. Needless to say, then, that everyone was looking forward to our meeting with him today.  Lots of questions were asked and answered, more by Ryan and my mum than by me, as I continue to be in some sort of indescribable fog surrounding this entire experience. First off, I'm glad to say that I still like him and feel very comfortable with him.  He is warm and nice and I trust him.  Which is good. Questions answered (that I remember): - The "normal" PAP results letter is generated automatically.  Not that they don't look at the results, but with all of my bleeding, there was really no way to get a CORRECT reading ...