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The “little c” chronicles, Part 17: [I will] remember the [23rd] night of September.

That’s right, y’all. The end of this here tunnel is coming into view.

If all goes as planned, I will emerge, squinting, from this (by that time) year-long underground adventure on September 23.

On that morning, I will take my last oral chemo pills—and at that point (again, crossing everything I have two of (yep—even those) that no surprises occur between now and then), my treatment will be complete.

So here’s the countdown breakdown:

  • Radiation — last treatment on May 22
  • Immunotherapy — last treatment on August 15
  • Oral chemo — last gulp on September 23

Now that surgery’s in the rearview and I have started all three of the above (the immunotherapy being the one PRE-surgery treatment that has continued post-surgery; the rest are new), and have more of an idea of how it’s going to work, I do have a few updates/corrections to make from my last post.

First of all, I originally thought I was going to be on the chemo pills for a year, because the letter my insurance company sent to let me know that the medication had been approved said that they’d approved twelve 30-day cycles (which is just a handful of days shy of a year). So I girded my loins for that . . .

. . . but happily, that’s not the case; when I met with Dr. Cool-and-Calm’s nurse practitioner to talk about dosage, side effects, etc., she let me know that I’d be taking the medication for EIGHT 21-day cycles (each cycle consisting of 14 days of twice-daily pill popping (three pills each pop) and 7 days of “rest”), which works out to about six months. I received the meds (which arrive by mail) on Friday, April 7, and started taking them that night, so my last dose will then happen on a beautiful (no matter WTF the weather’s like) Saturday morning in September.

As for the radiation, which I started on April 12, I was originally told I’d have 33 treatments. When I met with the radiologist today (after my first official week of radiation), however, I learned that I will actually only be having 28 treatments. Apparently, 33 is the maximum number of treatments, so they tell most patients they’ll be having (and schedule them for) that many—then adjust later if necessary, once they get the plan figured out based on each individual case. Weird, I know, but the nurse explained that it works a lot better THIS way than it does to give a patient an initial estimate that turns out to be LOWER than the amount of treatments they end up needing. This way, if there’s a surprise, it’s a good one.

But really, aside from the fact that it’s NOT ACTUALLY GOOD FOR YOU (although it’s useful if you have cancer), I gotta say I don’t mind radiation a-tall! I have a standing 8 a.m. appointment every week day, so I leave my house around 7:30 (without morning traffic, I could probably leave around 7:40, but it’s worth 10 extra minutes of car singing each way to get it done first thing). Once I get there, I check myself in by booping a little plastic card across a scanner. Then someone comes to fetch me and usher me into a private changing room, where I ditch my shirt and don a gown (keeping my pants and shoes on), lock up my belongings, and give some nice ladies my name and birthdate. At that point, I get escorted to a table in a lovely dark room (enhanced by back-lit ceiling art, which is lost on me because I close my eyes during the treatment), where I lie comfortably for ten minutes, covered in warm blankets and feeling nothing. Honestly, the worst part is that they drape a little square of brass mesh material (reminiscent—to me, anyway—of a disco halter top) over my exposed chest, and YOWZA! That sucker is COLD! (Since that first day, they’ve made a point of warming it up a little by draping it across my legs and placing the warm blanket on top of it for a minute or so before we get started . . . but it’s still mufuggin’ cold.) Otherwise, though, if not for periodic instructions to hold my breath, I could totally get a little snooze in during treatment.

And while I’m aware that the side effects from both the radiation and the chemo meds could increase over time, at this point I still feel pretty normal: no obvious side effects from the chemo pills (the ones I was told were most likely to occur are diarrhea and hand & foot syndrome—so I’ve been bracing for THAT potential ball-o-fun, but so far, nothing), and no skin burning from the radiation. I feel mild tingling maybe an hour or so after treatment some days—like a sunburn coming on—but all I do is slap some lotion on, and I’m good (I’ve yet to even use the prescription cream they gave me for the occasion—but the nurse told me today that I should go ahead and start using that sooner rather than later; I don’t have to wait for discomfort).

This may have something to do with the fact that, per post-op instructions from the plastic surgeon, I have been moisturizing my chestal area for a few weeks now. When I met with him to have my bandages removed, he said something to the effect of, “You can start using lotion in this area now, because that’s what your skin is used to.”

And I said nothing, but inside, I was thinking, “Uhhhh, WHUH . . . ? Are there people out there in them streets who are lotioning their tits?? Because I can assure you, mister, that these (former) ladies are NOT, in fact, ‘used to’ that.” Still, in anticipation of getting my expanders filled, I thought it might be of use to have more pliable skin in that area. Plus, a generous and swanky friend sent me some super-bougie oils for just that reason, so it seemed like the universe was telling me to grease up the girls. But I digress. Point is, maybe my religious moisturization of late is why the radiation has had little negative effect on my skin thus far. OR maybe it’s just too soon for me to get crispy. I suppose time will tell.

For the love of money

In other news, well . . . there’s NOT much other news. Life is (blessedly) pretty boring, aside from a few annoying insurance issues. Nothing major—I still feel really fortunate to have skated through thus far without the hairball of denials and appeals some folx go through—but basically the sea monkey (aka the hospital) has my money.

Because of the exhorbitant costs of both my last couple of chemo treatments (which occurred in January) and, of course, my surgery (in February), it took no time at all for me to reach my out-of-pocket maximum for 2023.

In fact, I thought I’d reached it after the first three bills came through. So imagine my surprise, after shelling out for those bills, to get a bill from one of my physicians (let’s call him Dr. Money Grabs) for roughly a thousand dollars! Thus began a close and personal phone relationship with my insurance company.

The first person I talked to said that the bill in question was eligible for reprocessing; she’d put it through the system again, and payment would be issued to Dr. Money Grabs within 10-15 business days.

The second person I talked to (the next day) happily agreed to phone Dr. MG’s office on my behalf and explain the situation, so it wouldn’t look like I was trying to skip out on my bill or anything. (Which was the whole reason for my call, so yay.)

The third person I talked to MANY days later, when I called back because I’d received an EOB showing “patient responsibilities” I didn’t understand (I thought I was done being a responsible patient for the year). She confused the living hell out of me, but one thing I got out of the conversation was that the claim for Dr. Money Grabs had ALREADY been reprocessed, and had, in fact, been billed correctly . . . so I still owed that money.

Because she was so confusing, and because our (40-minute!) conversation had run right up into school pick-up time for my littler dude, I thanked her politely, hung up, and whined to Love Tank, who kindly provided me with the receipts, as it were, to prove we’d already been billed for (and paid) the out-of-pocket maximum, so that I could call back armed.

The fourth person I talked to explained the situation A LOT more clearly (in the course of a roughly 12 minute call): What happened was that we got a HUGE bill from the hospital (eating up more than 90% of my out-of-pocket maximum), paid it (along with a couple of other piddly ones that sucked up the rest of the maximum) . . .

. . . and then, six days after we paid that big-ass bill, for reasons only God and The Shadow know, that claim got ADJUSTED, so that we actually owed $1000 LESS than what we’d already paid. Shortly thereafter, Dr. MG’s (hefty) claim came through—and because, according to the insurance company, I was now (thanks to that adjusted claim) still $1000 short of my out-of-pocket max, then I still owed a thousand bucks on Dr. MG’s bill.

So at this point, I have shelled out a thousand bucks MORE than my out-of-pocket maximum . . . and now get to begin the super-fun journey of getting the hospital to reimburse us for those extra thousand bucks we paid on that big-ass hospital bill. (Oh, and did I mention? The pluckers have now sent a SECOND BILL for the amount of the adjusted claim, like they ain’t already have too much of my money!)

So I guess the lesson in all of this is that it DOES NOT PAY to pay your bills on time!

And for real: how the fleck do people deal with this when they DO NOT have the good fortune of a decent savings account? I mean, there was a time in my own life where I most certainly did NOT have a thousand bucks to just fling around, and something like this would have sucked me under like a rip tide—so the fact that despite all this, my family has still been eating dinner is not lost on me.

And I suppose that’s the whole point of trussing myself up in a bejeweled leather number and traipsing down a runway for the Bra Couture fundraising event, which is in . . . holy shit . . . three days! I spent Sunday afternoon at a dress rehearsal, and that’s when I learned that each bra is auctioned off (which part I knew) WHILE THE PERSON MODELING THAT BRA IS STILL ON THE RUNWAY IN THAT BRA (which part was news to me).

“Don’t just stand there!” we were told; we’re supposed to be working the crowd, upping the bid!

This is going to be excruciating for me. But I guess it’s the least I can do, given that I’m not generating much money for the event through ticket sales—and given the fact that I understand even more accutely now why this money is necessary.

Wish me luck!

If you sing a song today, you will make a better way

I’m sorry, y’all; I just have to do something here to counteract the fact that the title of this blog post calls to mind the absolute worst song by one of the absolute best bands on the planet.

If you know me, you know that my constant complaint is that September is all the Earth, Wind, and Fire many people know. AND THERE ARE SO MANY BETTER SONGS (my knowledge of which is 100% owing to my sister; she gave me Earth, Wind & Fire, my brother gave me Boston, Steve Miller, and Kraftwerk, and my other sister gave me Marvin Gaye, The Dramatics, and The Isley Brothers . . . my childhood in my family was the musical gift that kept on givin’ . . . but I digress).

And I’ll say it—Boogie Wonderland ain’t it, either (although it’s better than September).

Allow me, then, to offer up nine of my favorite Earth, Wind & Fire songs (one for each member of the group) as penance for the title of this post. Listen to as many or as few as you’d like, but I hope you find at least one that makes you put dusty old September in a drawer.

For belting out in the car with the windows down (there will be waving of hands, but try to keep one on the wheel at all times):

Sing a Song
Sunshine (This one has a hella catchy refrain.)

For car-free (and carefree) occasions when you can wave both hands in the air with impunity:

Serpentine Fire
Devotion (This one has a special place in my heart—and, evidently, my psyche—because once, about 30 years ago, I had a dream in which I was sitting behind the pulpit in a church, and Earth, Wind & Fire came busting through the sanctuary doors in white spandex jumpsuits with colorful feathers down the sleeves, singing this song; I woke myself up laughing with delight.)

If your booty wants to join the party and wave itself around a little, too:

Happy Feelin’
On Your Face

For belting out in the shower (where good bathroom acoustics can take your game to the next level):

Fantasy (I mean, the opening instrumentals alone are worth the price of admission, but there is also the opportunity to SANG.)
I’ll Write a Song For You (WARNING: if you’re new at attempting to channel Philip Bailey, you could injure yourself with this one; it starts off slow and easy, but by the end, you’ll wish you’d stretched first.)

And finally, this one is good for whatever you need in the moment: you can belt it out, wave it out, or shake it out—it’s the whole potato.

In the Stone

Enjoy! And, as always, THANK YOU for hangin’ in. Y’all fill me with—ahem—Gratitude.

(Woops. Guess that makes TEN. But come on, how could I pass that one up in the face of so much love?)

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The “little c” chronicles, Part 16: So on we go . . .

Hey, y’all! Perhaps you’ve been wondering what’s been going on since we last spoke.

The answer is . . . not much (which has been splendid)—and at the same time, a bunch.

Overall, the past month or so has been a nice little respite from intensive treatment . . . and all the ick that goes with it.

My hair is growing back with gusto, my eyebrows are getting stronger every day, and—on the sadder side—I now need to shave my legs again. In addition, despite having a uniboob (more on that in a minute), I’ve felt mostly like a regular, functioning human again, physically (the extra sparkle on this leotard being that I can sleep on my side—and even my stomach—again!), which has been pretty damn nice.

In terms of treatment, it’s almost GO TIME again: I’ve been working with a wonderful occupational therapist (whom I secretly want to be my bestie, although I think she’d judge me if she knew how many Oreos I can put away in a sitting) on my range of motion, and although there is STILL a lot more stiffness on my left side (where the tumor was and the ten lymph nodes were removed), my flexibility on both sides is in the “normal” range—which means I’m cleared to start radiation.

In preparation for THAT, I’ve also been getting chummier with the plastic surgeon, who’s been filling the heck out of the expander on my left side—and actually REDUCING the amount of fluid in the expander on the right side.

So basically I have one boob right now.

Y’all know the symmetry stan in my soul is twitching a little bit about this—but I understand the reasoning: the right boob has been “deflated” so that the radiation “laser beams” can shoot across the right side of my chest and into the left side at an angle that will allow them to steer clear of my heart; meanwhile, the left boob HAS to be “inflated” NOW, while the skin is more pliable, because the radiation to the left side will make that skin resistant to stretching (for this reason, the left expander has now been filled to a greater capacity than what the size of that boob will ultimately be, in anticipation that it will shrink with radiation . . . but in the meantime, I’ve got some real va-va-va-VOOM going on with Lefty).

So tomorrow is when it all gets underway. I’ll visit the radiologist for a simulation/scan, whereby they’ll figure out how to position everything for radiation, which will start on April 12. I will also get my radiation schedule tomorrow, so at this point, all I know is that it will happen every weekday for 4-6 weeks, and that they’re going to try to get me morning appointments, per my request. And I’ll continue seeing the occupational therapist, to maintain range of motion when radiation starts to clench things up.

In terms of the other treatment, I just got a letter from my insurance company, stating that those meds have been approved, so I’m just awaiting a “chemo education” appointment with the oncologist, after which I’ll get started on the oral chemo (which I’ll take for a YEAR, it looks like) along with a hormone therapy treatment called a Goserelin acetate implant—about which I learned FROM THE INSURANCE LETTER (Dr. Cool-and-Calm has a great bedside manner, but he sometimes fails to mention stuff).

Still doing the “Dr. Google” research on that, but I’m going to need to talk to Dr. CaC to get clear about (a) why it’s happening, and (b) why NOW. The reason I’m curious is because:

(a) the drug that’s going to be implanted (also known as Zoladex) is a hormone treatment, and from what I can tell (with the VAST medical knowledge I’ve picked up from a cursory Google search) it’s often prescribed for hormone-positive breast cancer, which mine is NOT—and . . .

(b) about a month and a half into my first phase of chemo, I mentioned to Dr. CaC that (TMI WARNING: skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know about lady crotch stuff) since starting the chemo (which coincided with the start of my period that month), my period had NOT STOPPED. At that point, he suggested Zoladex (injections, not implants) as a remedy—but once I read up on the side effects, I decided that those would be more annoying to me than this mega-period. And besides, I felt like I had enough physical crap to deal with—who needed potential mood swings as well? So I declined the offer. Eventually, I stopped bleeding on my own (shortly after I told the doctor about it, in fact), and haven’t had a period since.

AND IT IS GLORIOUS. I get a few hot flashes now and then, but otherwise, I got no complaints! My skin is clearer, I don’t get cramps, and I don’t get that horrendous PMS boob pain (well . . . I mean, NOW I don’t, for SURE, but even before the mastectomy, the girls were just all chill, all the time ).

In short, things are pretty damn good, hormonally speaking—and while I will happily rock that boat if it will increase my chances of sticking around here, I feel like I need more clarity around why I’m rowing my dinghy into those waters.

As we yearn, so we learn

Since I saddled up for this, my first cancer rodeo, there has of course been no shortage of shit I’ve learned—and as you know, my hope is that this blog may be of some use to someone down the line, who’s just climbed aboard their own buckin’ bronco. The two bits of recent education I’m about to share, however, are mostly for entertainment value . . .

The first of these, I learned from the last cancer memoir I read—since which time, I’ve finally moved away from those and back to fiction (I’m currently enjoying the heck out of Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout) . . . but I digress. The point is, remember a few blog posts ago, when I was extolling the virtues of the Ursa Major skin care line? And talking about how pretty I felt?

(I mean, I really did feel pretty, which was kind of ironic given the fact that my eyebrows and eyelashes were gone; I chalked it up in part to the idea that maybe, with all auxiliary facial features stripped away, I was better able to appreciate the stuff I had left: the color and shape of my eyes, the beauty mark (read: mole) on my chin, my smile . . . and of course my skin, made smoother and dewier by, I believed, the constellation (*wink*) of skin care products I’d bought. I’d even started working out a chunk of blog post in my head to talk about it . . . but anyway . . .)

Well.

Thanks to that last cancer memoir, I learned that it was not the products contributing to my beauty . . .

It was the CHEMO.

I mean, sure, a little moisturizer never hurts, but in The Cancer Channel, the author talks about her own glowing skin, and how she learned from her dermatologist that because chemo drugs target fast-replicating cells—and skin cells are on that list—it often has similar effects on one’s appearance as a chemical peel or microdermabrasion! They call it the “chemo glow”—and although my rudimentary internet research didn’t turn up very much about it, I did find it mentioned in this blog—which I’m sharing less as definitive proof that chemo can make you pretty than as a “worth a read” discovery (I think it’s well-written, and now want to know more of her story).

Which, I guess, just goes to show that there are little gifts to be found in all of this. Not the least of which is that I can stop spending $85 on facial serum (which it seems I was going to have to do, anyway, since it hasn’t been in stock anywhere for months).

And speaking of entertainment value . . . the OTHER thing I’ve learned since the last time we spoke is that this whole situation has a connection to my childhood (a weird and tenuous connection, but still).

I’ve been getting my cancer treatments at Sarah Cannon Cancer Center—primarily at two specific hospitals, although there are Sarah Cannon Centers in hospitals across the Kansas City metro area. Up until now, I’ve been (a) focused on all the OTHER stuff surrounding this whole experience, and (b) just assuming the centers were founded by (or in the name of) some 80s-era socialite who had some sort of personal experience (either by way of her own, or a loved one’s diagnosis) with breast cancer, and access to some money (either her own, or a loved one’s). So, sad to say, I never really gave a ton of thought to who Sarah Cannon actually was.

Do YOU know . . . ?

I’ll give you a hint:

So there I was, awaiting an appointment with the radiologist, and I noticed a deck of Sarah Cannon Cancer Center pamphlets on a table next to me. I picked one up to pass a little time . . .

. . . and that is how I discovered that Sarah Cannon was none other than MINNIE PEARL.

While I was never a fan of hers in particular back in my baby years (tho’ I did have a little crush on Buck Owens), I did watch Hee Haw regularly, and got quite a little-kid kick out of it. (I was proud to know by heart the refrains to both “Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me,” and “Where Oh Where Are You Tonight.” I mean, that was heady stuff for a first grader . . . and apparently still is, as evidenced by the fact that MY first grader—who’s been keeping me company while I write this—is currently dancing around and singing, “Hee hee hee HAW HAW!” and looking up Hee Haw videos on my phone for his stuffed animals to watch. I’m pretty sure I already have some regrets.)

So there you have it: cancer has the power to make you pretty AND forge connections between you and 1970s prime time TV icons.

Like I said: little gifts. I mean, don’t get me wrong: given the choice, I’d return BOTH of these gifts, even if only for store credit—but look at me, finding nuggets of gold in the turd.

Le Freak! C’est chic!

. . . and one of the turdier parts of this whole business is that I have officially entered the Freaking Out About Everything phase.

I may have mentioned this previously, but I was surprised to learn that I will NOT be getting regularly scheduled scans to check for the return of the cancer once I’ve finished my treatments; instead, my oncologist will order them as he sees fit, based on my lab work and what I report to him during the regularly scheduled visits I’ll have with him.

While I’ve been assured by multiple people that this is (in most cases) protocol now, I’ve still already warned Dr. Cool-and-Calm to get ready for me to be paranoid about EVERYTHING from here on out.

And y’all, I’m here to tell you that “here on out” has officially begun.

First, it was a back ache. I got up from my office chair one afternoon, and my lower back seized in a way that had me shuffling around in that pelvis-first, old man kinda way. At first I thought little of it; I’ve had back issues on and off for years, often out of nowhere. (Once, during my first week at a new job, I swung my legs to the side to get out of my car upon arrival at work . . . and wound up getting pelvis-walked right back out to said truck and sent home, once my manager saw the state I was in. Another time, I was experiencing a mildly irritating twinge in my lower back BEFORE work (different job this time), so en route, I turned on my seat warmer, thinking that would help. BIG MISTAKE. By the time I arrived at work 40 minutes later, I couldn’t even swing my legs out. This time, I was escorted INTO the building by a coworker—possibly the same one who later wheeled me to the restroom in my office chair, having seen my slow and feeble attempt to shuffle my way there and taken pity on me. Or the one who informed the company owner of my woes, drawing her out of her office with her own personal Tens machine, which she attached to my lower back, getting full view of my tatty underwear AND my tramp stamp. Who knows? The more of that day I can wipe from my memory, the better. But I digress.)

THIS, however, was my first experience with back pain THAT COULD BE METASTASIS TO MY SPINE, HOLY SHIT. (I mean, technically, it could have been that at ANY point in the past—but in the past, the thought never would have occurred to me.)

Oh, it didn’t occur to me IMMEDIATELY—the fact that I’m sometimes slow on the uptake being an odd sort of mercy, here—but rather later that evening, at my mom’s house. I was still having a mild ache (which by then would disappear after three or four old man steps after standing up), and she asked about it when I rose from my chair and started crotch-shuffling to her bathroom. I blithely explained it away as I (figuratively) skipped to the loo, saying I had no idea what I’d done, but that it had started earlier that day . . .

. . . and then, as I peed, that slow-moving uptake sped up and hit me smack in the face.

And there I was, in my mom’s tiny little apartment bathroom, feeling all tingly and heart-beaty and twirly and melty all at once, but I COULD NOT start blubbering, because I had to go back out there to a 92-year-old lady and my two sweet-faced children, NONE of whom I wanted to drag into this particular moment of panic. So I took a few deep breaths and focused on the facts: the pain was already much better than it had been earlier in the day; even earlier in the day, I’d discovered that getting up from my desk and moving around made a huge difference; and I didn’t have any of the key symptoms of spine metastasis I found with a quick Google search (oh come on, don’t pretend you don’t take your phone into the john with you). After a few more deep breaths, I was able to return to the living room and act like a normal person.

Fortunately, an adjustment to my desk chair (one of the fancy ergonomic ones)—and to the way I sat in it—did the trick, and the back pain was gone entirely after a day.

Then came the vertigo.

Vertigo is yet another issue I’ve had in the past—and like in the past, it first hit me in the middle of the night. The first time (somewhere around 2013), I got up to use the restroom, and crashed straight into a wall. This time, I didn’t even get up; rather, I was rudely awakened by the sudden sensation that someone had managed to sneak me onto a carnival ride (which I already hate) while I slept. I opened my eyes to find the wall next to my bed rolling repeatedly towards my face. So I closed them again, but sat up and swung my legs off the bed (not sure where I thought I was going, except possibly straight into ANOTHER wall), then took deep breaths until the feeling passed.

In retrospect, the issues started earlier that evening, long before I went to sleep; I was lying in bed, on my right side, reading, and suddenly the pillow beneath my right ear started buzzing. I lifted my head, looked at the pillow, leaned closer . . . yep, that thing was definitely buzzing. Only . . . wait . . . it didn’t buzz when I lay the OTHER side of my head down on it . . .

As I struggled to make sense of what was happening, the buzzing noise turned into a whooshing sound, like someone had just flushed the toilet and it was still running. By now I knew better than to go and lay my head on the toilet; however, it became clear that the issue was neither the pillow NOR the toilet, but rather my ear. About the time I came to THAT conclusion, the noise stopped. I shrugged and continued reading.

Later, when I was awakened by the vertigo, I discovered that it had brought a friend: the familiar buzzing . . . which turned to whooshing as the spinning slowed . . . and then disappeared about the same time the whirling came to a halt.

All of this lasted fewer than two or three minutes.

But over the next several days, similar scenes would play out at random moments: sitting at my desk, working; sitting up in bed, reading; standing in the kitchen, making dinner; and once during a Zoom meeting WHICH I WAS LEADING (I tried to breathe through it and keep talking, but when I realized I was starting to repeat myself, with weird pauses in between, I finally ‘fessed up that I was experiencing my own personal Tilt-a-Whirl, handed the meeting off to a colleague, and went off camera to put my forehead down on my desk until the ride stopped).

After the first day of these episodes (which happened around three or four times a day in the beginning), I called Dr Cool-and-Calm’s office to report what was happening, hoping for some assurance that I did not have brain cancer. The nurse practitioner who called me back told me to hit up a Minute Clinic or an urgent care to have my ears checked for fluid, and called in a prescription for antihistamines. I chose to take that as, “it’s probably nothing,” and put some pants on to see someone about the spinning.

The urgent care visit turned up nothing in my ears; the nurse practitioner there shared with me that she’d been suffering from vertigo for FIVE YEARS, and nobody had yet figured out the cause. She sent me home with an instruction sheet for the Epley maneuver, and wished me luck in avoiding the five-year plan she was on.

Over the next few days, the paranoia gradually crept back into my soul—ironically, because the episodes were decreasing in frequency. Each time I racked up a considerable amount of time between spells, I’d allow myself to hope that I’d just had my last one—and by the time I’d gone more than 24 hours without one, I decided the whole ordeal was over . . .

. . . and then when the next one came, it reduced me to tears of frustration and panic.

Finally, I decided to try the antihistamines (which I’d picked up, but avoided taking because I didn’t want to be a walking zombie). Although the bottle said to take them “every 6 to 12 hours as needed,” I took them right after dinner for a few nights, and then crashed out as soon as my littler dude was in bed.

It seemed to help; the episodes became relatively mild—most of them, in fact, involved only the tinnitus, and NOT the vertigo, and when the vertigo DID happen, it was less intense, and lasted seconds rather than minutes.

Eventually, I made it THREE WHOLE DAYS without an episode of any kind, and last night, I ditched the antihistamines (warily but happily, as they’d begun causing some wicked restless leg). I’m happy to report that I’m still vertigo-free! I’d knock on wood for luck, but rapping myself in the head like that could cause a reoccurrence, so instead I’ll just eat a leprechaun or something.

The point of all of this, though, is just to say that for months, I counted the days until I was done with chemo—and then more days until the surgery was behind me—assuming THAT STUFF was the hard part . . . but HOO-WEE, the emotional sturm und drang of trying to hold your shit together (at work and at home) while you’re periodically panicking about metastasis every time you burp or find a bit of sock lint between your toes is NO JOKE.

Storytime: I have a friend (no, not a quote-unquote “friend,” but an actual person who’s NOT me) who once drove three-plus hours to a nearby city to give a client presentation for her job. When she got out of her car at the meeting site, she slammed her finger in the car door. She walked inside the building and went straight into the restroom to collect herself—but the pain was so intense that she PASSED OUT, knocking her head on the bathroom counter. She came to, arranged her hair to cover the new bruise blooming on the side of her face, walked into the conference room, and gave her presentation. Then, when the meeting was over, she drove the three-plus hours back home.

At the time, I thought she was OUT OF HER MIND—and OK, I still kinda do—but now I have a little more empathy, because I feel like that kind of energy is what I’m bringing to every day. Only instead of a probable concussion and a sausage finger, I’m presenting through a periodic sense of panic and a nagging sense of doom. Which may be how other people operate on the regular (journalists, for example, because how could they not?), but I’m not accustomed to it. So today, I looked up therapists who take my insurance, and contacted one for a consultation (I’m hoping that since I’ve already met my out-of-pocket deductible for the year, the therapy will be FREE—but I’m not entirely sure how that works, if it’s coded differently, or what). I figure it will be good to sturm-dump on someone other than Love Tank for a change.

Wish me luck!

I’m your vehicle, Babe . . .

And speaking of anxiety . . . I’m less than three weeks out from my runway debut! The Bra Couture KC event looms—and although the organizers now think I’m a total weirdo, they’re still letting me be a model.

It all started when I was on the phone one day with the Head Chick in Charge (HCIC) of the event; we were getting some other details squared away (including my music for the runway, for which I chose my official “batter up!” song), and I asked her about the deadline to purchase tickets with my model discount. She said she’d have the Ticket Queen (TQ) send me the information again.

TQ did send me an email—but shortly thereafter, she called me to ask if I had a ballpark idea of how many tickets I’d be needing.

“Two,” I said.

Silence.

“Have you . . . invited people?” she asked, haltingly.

I told her NO, I hadn’t, and tried to explain one of my many weirdnesses: whereas many people, when they’re giving a public performance of some sort, feel COMFORTED by having people they know and love in the audience (and, in fact, ASK people to come support them for that reason), I’m the opposite—I’m much less nervous in front of a crowd of total strangers.

After all, those are people I’ll likely never see again if I crash and burn before their eyes.

She laughed and told me I was funny . . . but then the whole thing turned into a (literal) game of telephone: next thing I knew, I was getting calls from HCIC—which I couldn’t pick up, because by then, I was in meetings at work. After two attempts to call me, HCIC then TEXTED me and said she’d spoken to TQ, who told her I was EMBARRASSED to be on the runway. She assured me that I DID NOT have to do this, and that she could find another model (by that time, in fact, she’d already given my designer (Galentino) a heads-up that there might be a pivot . . . so then Galentino was texting me . . . it was a whole thing).

When I was able to text back, I re-explained my weirdness, and assured her that I was not embarrassed by the idea of being on the runway; I could be reading poetry, giving a lecture on beluga whales, or playing the triangle in a Partridge Family cover band, and my feelings would be the same. However, I said, I understood that part of the point was to generate ticket sales, so if she had another person whom she thought would do a better job of that, I’d step down, no hard feelings. Whatever was best for the event, I was happy to do. Heck, I told her, I’d even buy a ticket and come to the event myself!

She wrote back and said her primary concern was that I was excited to be on the runway. So I did not get kicked off the island, and all was well. And I AM excited about my design! Galentino knocked it out of the park—and rest assured, I will share pictures!

In the meantime, as always, I’m so grateful to y’all for hanging in!

Great God in Heaven, you know I LOOOOOOOOVE youuuuuuuuuuu . . .

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The “little c” chronicles, Part 15: Carry on.

Hey, y’all, it’s my birthday! First one I’ve had without boobs in a few decades—and I gotta say, I don’t mind it. Who knew? I said in an earlier post that I wouldn’t go flat because it would throw off my boobs-to-belly balance, but I’m actually discovering that even with a little middle-aged “love” around my mid-section, I still kinda like being flat-chested.

Granted, these days, there’s still a little discomfort involved (not PAIN, exactly—at least not most of the time—but a weird numbness over the whole area between my clavicle and the bottom end of my breastbone, extending into my left armpit and down the back of my left arm to my elbow, all of which CAN get a little achy if I go all day without Tylenol) and, due to continued swelling in my left armpit (where lymph nodes were removed during surgery), I cannot successfully sleep on my left side for very long—but I gotta say, I don’t miss those suckers nearly as much as I thought I would.

Honestly, the physical “accoutrements” it’s been (emotionally) hardest to lose during this whole affair have been my eyebrows and eyelashes—which, along with my hair, are coming back, baby! (Interestingly, while I’m thrilled by the return of my eyebrows—watch out, kids, Mama’s facial expressions are back!—I’m so-so on the hair; I’m at that weird re-growth stage right now where it’s kind of unclear whether I’m intentionally trying out a Sinead O’Connor vibe, or growing my hair back after a health-related loss. It’s kind of like that stage of pregnancy where people don’t know whether you’ve just been hitting the Taco Bell drive-thru a little too often, or if you are, in fact, expecting. But I digress. Point is, the look I have going on now is slightly more confusing—and decidedly less interesting—than being bald.)

But before I go down another random rabbit hole, I do have a WEE bit of “next steps” information to share. I say a WEE bit because most of it is currently up in the air a bit, due to a bunch of moving parts. I’ll try to explain my understanding of this whole situation as well as I can, but it’s confusing as hell, so if you walk away dizzy, just know you’re not alone.

So a couple of weeks after my surgery, I had A LOT of appointments with A LOT of specialists to outline my treatment going forward—and here were my takeaways:

  • The lymphedema specialist needed my surgical drains removed (alas, I did not make my goal of getting them out a week post-surgery, so I still had them in when I met with her) before she could work with me on exercises to improve my range of motion.
  • The oncologist needed to know my radiation plan/schedule before deciding when and how to administer the oral chemo I’ll be taking for the foreseeable future (but he also said he’d be waiting until I’ve recovered a little more fully from surgery, so there was “no rush” to start the meds).
  • The plastic surgeon ALSO needed to know my radiation plan/schedule before deciding when and how to fill up my boob expanders (because my right boob, if filled, could get in the way of the beams trying to zap my left side, where the tumor was, BUT the left boob should be filled as much as possible BEFORE radiation starts, because the radiation would make the skin more resistant to stretching with the fills).
  • The radiologist—whom we thought was the linchpin in this whole operation, but apparently not—needed all kindsa stuff from the other specialists:
    • The plastic surgeon’s plan for filling up my boobs so that he can perform a radiation simulation in order to determine my radiation plan and schedule (which will take a couple of weeks after the simulation is done)
    • The lymphedema specialist to help me improve my range of motion so I’ll be able to get my left arm behind my head (which I can do, but it’s NOT comfortable) for the aforementioned simulation (and, of course, the radiation treatments themselves)
    • Precisely 32.7 ml of blood from an axolotl named Cleophus
    • And BTW, ALL of this needs to be done in time for me to start radiation treatments within three months post-surgery.

It’s all giving “Who’s on First?”

Nonetheless, so far I’ve made some—though minimal—progress towards achieving this goal:

  1. I got my drains out (HALLELUJAH—or, as my littler dude says, “Hoo-RAY! Pa-TOWW! Wa-ka-ka-kahhh!” . . . no idea where that came from, but I love it and it’s kind of my new thing) exactly two weeks after my surgery.
  2. I’m still working at home on the range of motion exercises they occupational therapist sent home from the hospital with me . . .
  3. . . . in the hope of being able to break dance when I see the lymphedema specialist in a few days, so she’ll be impressed with my progress.
  4. . . . and also (because why the hell not?) to be able to do pinup-girl poses when the plastic surgeon starts filling up my boobs (ALSO in a few days).

. . . and of course, I’m continuing the immunotherapy treatments every three weeks.

So that’s the news I have in terms of my continuing treatment plan.

Nothing equals the splendor

In other “Carry on” news, last weekend I attended another youth symphony concert for my elder dude. Y’all may recall that at the last concert, I waxed rhapsodic about their rendition of Rhapsody in Blue—but for THIS concert, they went in a whole different direction, and I was equally enraptured.

This time, the guest performer was Mark Wood (and the Mark Wood Experience), who joined them to bust out orchestral renditions of classic 70s and 80s rock hits.

And YOU KNOW this here Topeka girl belted out every word of this number! I mean, I repreSENT, you know’m sayin’?

. . . and, by the way, so does my son, who played most of this show IN PAIN, which of course twangs my guilt strings a little.

About a month previous, the kid went bowling with a friend and came away with a sore wrist. Like the good parent I am, I let his initial complaints float by, figuring it would eventually get better.

It didn’t.

A couple of weeks later, when he was still complaining of pain, I chalked it up to the P.E. class bowling unit they’d just finished, coupled with his participation in his brother’s bowling birthday party (obviously BOWLING is the problem here; I mean, it’s a well-known fact that BOWLING = PAIN, right?).

A week or so after THAT, however, when he was still complaining about the pain, I promised to make him an appointment with his doctor.

Which I of course forgot.

Then, in the middle of the Saturday afternoon rehearsal immediately preceding his Saturday night Tribute to Old Farts (like Yours Truly) concert, he texted: “Hey, did you ever make me a doctor’s appointment?”

Which was his way of saying, “MY. WRIST. STILL. HURTS. Why don’t you love me?” (That may be the guilt talking, but I mean, what was the point of asking me that, in that particular moment, other than to point out my failures as a parent?) And because of all the extra cello playing (a Friday evening rehearsal, and a Saturday morning private lesson happened previous to the Saturday afternoon rehearsal wherein he subtly questioned my fitness as a mother), he was starting to suffer from this particular nugget of neglect.

Love Tank, however, came to the rescue by whizzing to the nearest CVS to pick up a wrist brace, and running that—and some ibuprofen—up to the rehearsal venue. He spoke with both the kid and the conductor, and all agreed that if the pain got bad during the concert, the kid should stop playing, in order to avoid exacerbating a potential medical issue.

However, although he said his wrist started hurting really badly after the first song his group played (I saw him grab it a couple of times, when the musicians stood to bask in the applause), my boy decided the show must go on—plus, he was concerned about confusing the cellists around him by suddenly stopping his own show—so he dug in and kicked ass.

As a reward, I treated him to a FOUR-HOUR Urgent Care experience the next day. He got an x-ray (which showed no abnormalities), a splint, and instructions to rest the wrist for five days—which got him out of a week’s worth of P.E. and orchestra activities, so it was practically like a tropical vacation!

At any rate, I gotta say, I am consistently blown away by the collective talent of this group of baby musicians. And the fact that my dude is among them is pure magic to my soul.

Take a look, it’s in a book

The other magic for my soul (which, as you may recall, was in need of a little salve after the semi-crappy news that came out of my biopsy results) has been—of all things—reading cancer-related memoirs.

When last I left you, I was about to start (re)reading this book, thinking a little levity around the subject of cancer might be just what I needed.

And sure enough, it was.

While I recalled having enjoyed this book when I first read it, I suspected (correctly) that it would, as the kids say, “hit different” now that I’m going through this shit myself. I got some genuine LOL moments out of it this time—including a couple of . . . well, not ROFL moments, per se, but some definite UL (ugly laughing—I’m making it a thing if it isn’t already) moments. Sister was HILARIOUS. If you (as many of you claim) enjoy reading this blog, I think you’ll REALLY like Lopsided. Give it a try if you’re so inclined.

From there, I didn’t really INTEND to continue reading memoirs about cancer, but—thanks to the Amazon algorithm which, because I ordered Lopsided, was like, “Oh, so I see you’re into true stories about people who died of cancer! Gurl, we gotchu!”—I stumbled across this book, which sucked me all the way in with its crazy-ass premise:

A medical emergency forces a brilliant Harvard oncologist to reveal that she has been hiding her advanced breast cancer for a decade. Her husband—also an oncologist—must set aside his anger and feelings of betrayal so that he can care for her during her final year of life.

I mean, what in the entire fuck, right? So once I was done with Lopsided, I bought In Sickness and dove right in—to discover that the Amazon synopsis was only the first of many times I’d mutter, “What in the entire fuck?” in response to this book.

Here’s what I’ll say: The writing is good (engaging, descriptive, flows well), and I did find the story fascinating (for a lot of reasons). However, if you are a person who has a zero-tolerance policy for questionable decision-making (and many of the people I love most are such people—you know who you are), WALK AWAY. You will have no patience with this narrator, and will end up chucking this book across the room—or worse, you’ll hate it so much you’ll make your own questionable decisions, and end up setting your expensive new curtains on fire trying to incinerate this bad boy.

IF, however, you’re someone (like me) who delights in armchair psychology (but who does not actually STUDY psychology, in which case you’d probably find the narrator’s (and his wife’s) behavior utterly predictable from a DSM perspective), you might be fascinated by this book (as I was). You’ll walk away with more questions than answers—but the food for thought will keep you burping for days.

Now that my gas has subsided, I’ve picked up this book. (“Yo, wanna read about MORE cancer?” Amazon said. “OK,” I replied.) I’m not very far into it, but my impressions thus far are:

  • The author wrote this book (which grew out of a blog) because she felt like what was missing from a lot of cancer stories was humor; and OK, maybe expecting this book to rise to the level of Lopsided humor isn’t quite fair—but so far, I’m not getting a ton of chuckles.
  • Also, I’ve already come across a couple of instances where she kind of seems to contradict herself. It could be that she needed a better editor, or it could be that these contradictions are part of her particular brand of humor, and I’m missing some subtle tongue-in-cheekiness, but twice so far, I’ve been like, “Wait, but three pages ago, you said . . . “
  • ALL that said, I’ve already encountered a couple of passages in the book that make me feel like this person and I should be total best friends, because we appear to share a brain (or a right hemisphere, anyway). On the one hand, this tells me I’m not the thought unicorn I’d like to be, but on the other, so much “OMG, SAMESIES!” that I’m starting to wonder if it would be weird to reach out to this person and invite her to drinks (leaving aside the fact that she lives on the west coast).

OK, who knew this blog post was going to turn into a BOOK CLUB? (I do think after I finish this book, though, I’m going back to thriller fiction or Amish romance or something; I’ve had enough cancer for now.)

At any rate, my boys (who are out fetching me a birthday cake—you know I’m the weirdo who, although I delight in making homemade birthday cakes for my offspring, LOVES LOVES LOVES storebought cake) will be back soon, and then there’ll be dinner (take-out of my choice—Hoo-RAY! Pa-TOWW! Wa-ka-ka-kahhh!), so I’m going to wrap this up now. But I’ll share more after the upcoming week’s doctor visits, and as always, thanks for hanging in!

Y’all are all the present a gal could ask for.

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The fucking asshole “c” chronicles, Part 14: Welp, shit.

So I’m sitting here in my sky-high bed, drinking a Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce latte left on my porch by an equally dolce friend (it is DELICIOUS; I didn’t think I liked Starbucks, but I am seriously considering Door Dashing eight more gallons of this stuff), and even though it’s only been a coupla days since my last update, I figure now is as good a time as any to give y’all the updates I have right now.

They’re not great. Not THE WORST, but not great.

So yesterday morning, I had back-to-back post-op follow-up (my, that was dash-tastic) appointments at the oncology surgeon’s office, and the plastic surgeon’s office.

The good news is that the surgical sites look good—no infection, not much bruising, healing nicely, etc.

The bad news is that my hope of little to no cancer in the primary tumor was stomped to a pulp. Not only was the tumor the same size it had been before I started the Red Devil treatments (you may recall that towards the end of the Taxol treatments, an ultrasound indicated the tumor had shrunk by about 30% . . . but damn if that piece of shit hasn’t stayed the same size since then) but also—and here’s the real smack to the face with a cast iron skillet—the biopsy showed that more than 75% of it was cancerous .(I mean, I was prepared for them to find a little cancer still mucking around in there—but more than 75%? Holy shit.)

There was some other good news, too: The first bit, of course, being that my margins were clear (meaning no cancer cells were found at the outer edge of the tissue removed—i.e., they “got it all” during surgery and I won’t have to go back for a second surgery to have more tissue removed, because GAH, that would suck ass). Also, I mentioned in the last post that 2 lymph nodes had shown malignancy during surgery, and that 10 had been removed altogether. So the other good news is that NONE of the other eight nodes removed showed any malignancy.

So technically, I’m now “cancer free”—and of course, I’ll be doing all the things (radiation, continued immunotherapy, and—I’m sure, although I haven’t met with my oncologist yet—more chemo) in order to try and stay that way, but this cancer means BUSINESS, y’all. It took the ubiquitous “B-E AGGRESSIVE” cheer a LITTLE too seriously in high school.

And although I KNOW I’m not an oncologist (or ANY kind of medical professional, despite the fact that I sometimes list myself as Dr. Blackwell just for kicks when we renew our membership to the local art museum), what this looks like to me is that MY cancer told THE RED DEVIL to go right on back to hell.

From where I’m sitting, it appears that the most powerful cancer treatment on the market right now DID NOT WORK for me, and those last 12 weeks of treatment were basically for nothing. OK, technically, I don’t KNOW that (because for all I know, the Red Devil kept the tumor from GROWING), but I mean, WHAT IN THE ENTIRE FUCK?

Plus, there were other things in the pathology report that I had to Google to understand (things like tumor necrosis)—but the understanding I came away with was basically, “You in danger, Girl.”

(Again: take all of this with the knowledge that nobody with an actual medical degree has said these things to me, but, I mean . . . in the absence (so far) of any official indication otherwise, what else is there to think?)

Entitlement is a bitch

So I spent most of yesterday bawling and eating Thin Mints.

I’d like to say that I woke up TODAY with a renewed determination to kick this sucker’s ass . . . but that’s not exactly true.

What I did wake up with was the realization (which is not exactly NEW—it’s just coming from a new angle) that I’m not exactly accustomed to shit not working out the way I want it to. This past week, I’ve been watching “Shrinking” on Apple TV (I know some critics don’t like it, but I love it so much I could kiss it, I mean my boyfriend Jason Segel AND Harrison Ford in the same show (which makes me wonder if Segel TOTALLY plotzed when he knew he’d be working with Han Solo, because he’s pretty much the EXACT demographic of someone who would)? SPECTACULAR). And (no spoilers here) there’s a character in it whose mantra is “Everything goes my way.”

And, well . . . I’m pretty much that person, too. I mean, not EVERYTHING goes my way:

Do I own a vacation home on the California coast? NO.

Do I have the same metabolism I did 30 years ago? NO.

Am I Sheila E.? NO.

But overall, things DO tend to work out the way I want them to, and I’ve had this rather amazing life, wherein I’ve been able to do and experience things a lot of gals from Topeka, KS, have not, and have the amazing luck to know and be loved by so many of THEEEEEE most spectacular people (I mean, not Sheila E., but otherwise . . . ). Plus, despite a relative lack of ambition and/or direction, I have somehow landed in a life replete with ease, comfort, and privilege (I don’t wonder how I’m going to pay my medical bills, keep my lights on, or feed my children—hell, I just registered my older kid for sleep-away camp in Minnesota this summer). And I can only attribute that to some kind of crazy, lifelong good fortune, which (perhaps UNfortunately) has nurtured a huge sense of entitlement in me.

So the fact that yesterday didn’t bring “Hooray! Everything’s working out great!” news threw me for a bit of a loop.

(That amazing attitude y’all keep praising me for throughout this mess? Yeah, that has pretty much come from the fact that I assumed things would work out better at this point than they have.)

So what now (personally, I mean, not medically)?

Well. I don’t know. But when I first got diagnosed, there were three things I wanted out of this experience (aside, of course, from SURVIVAL):

  1. A clearer sense of priority in my life
  2. A determination to spend more time doing things that make me happy
  3. Something to write about.

I feel like I’ve gotten pretty good at 2 and 3, but #1 still eludes me at times; like I still find myself telling my sweet-faced, beloved (and OK, sometimes annoying) children to go away when they pop into my office to ask me something while I’m trying to work (I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but the huge disadvantage of 100% remote work are snow days and professional days). I still find myself foisting off friends who offer to come bring me coffee or just hang out with me because I don’t feel like my house is clean enough (y’all know ’bout me and cleaning). Or I find myself reluctant to join Love Tank for an after-dinner movie date on the sofa, because if I do, I won’t get my laundry folded.

So maybe this is an opportunity to lean more into #1 and start telling my job, my vacuum cleaner, and my laundry to go fuck themselves. (Well, OK, we all know that’s not going to happen, because all three of them DO provide me a great deal of satisfaction in their own ways (plus my job provides me both subsidy for, and the means to pay, my medical bills, AND the fees for that summer camp) . . . but maybe they can be a little lower on the list than the people I love.)

In the meantime, I decided I could use a little irreverence, so last night I downloaded (for free, thanks to all the digital credits I’ve racked up on Amazon) a book I read years ago, by an amazing person I met once.

Here’s the unnecessarily long and winding story to go with that:

Many, many years ago, I lived in Oakland, CA. During part of that time, I dated a dude I’d known (but never dated) in high school, who happened to live in San Jose. Eventually, he dumped me (like a WEEK before my BIRTHDAY, for the love—although I gotta say I kinda deserved it (the dumping, not the timing thereof), because I wasn’t the best girlfriend . . . I mean, I didn’t cheat on him, or boil his bunny or anything, but remember, I’m the entitlement queen, so it wasn’t the most equitable relationship), but we remained friendly, and called or emailed one another periodically, just to say hello and for proof of life. We even had dinner, once, when he was in Oakland for work or somesuch.

And all was pretty OK.

One day, though, I called him to say hello, and he told me he couldn’t really talk to me anymore, because he had a girlfriend who wasn’t cool with it. Even emails were a no-go, he said, because she read his emails over his shoulder.

And I was DONE.

One thing to know about me is that I do NOT cotton to jealousy (of the romantic variety, I mean; I get plenty jealous of people who own vacation homes). And quite honestly, I’m flummoxed by people who (a) openly admit to operating according to a partner’s jealousy, and (b) expect me to understand and be OK with that.

I mean, OF COURSE I get that one’s partner is one’s top priority (unless there’s laundry to be folded). So sure, tell me you have to cancel drinks because your partner just scored surprise tickets to monster trucks. Bring me a t-shirt and I’ll reimburse you. If your partner’s mom broke a wrist and needs help around the house, by all means ditch our spa day and go give her dog a bath! Or if Friday night is your regular Pizza and PJs date night with your person, turn me ALL the way down for the movie premiere of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” I’m golden.

But miss me with anything smelling of “I’d LOVE to, but [INSERT NAME OF CONTROLLING PARTNER HERE] HATES it when I . . . ” (I mean, again, let’s be reasonable, here; if I invite you to play Russian Roulette, move permanently to Dubai, or have sex with me, I can see where your partner might have issues. But if it boils down to not wanting you to hang out with me (y’know, doing NORMAL stuff) because of jealousy? Or even TALK to me on the phone? Get TF outta here.)

And for my part, I am NOT the jealous type, either. (For one thing, I think I’m pretty damn awesome (see? entitlement), so if you’d REALLY rather be with someone else, knock yourself out; I think less of your taste now, so I’ll happily send you on your way. For another thing, while of course I DON’T want a partner to cheat on me, I want it to be because HE CHOOSES NOT TO—not because I’m monitoring his life in order to deprive him of any opportunity to do so. But I digress.) Which is a good thing, because a full 92.7% of Love Tank’s closest friends are women, so we’d never make it if I had jealousy issues. Or if HE did, because—as you may have guessed by now—that business is a non-starter for me. Anyway, where was I?

Oh, yes. So at this point, I’m DONE with the ex, because he is legit expecting me to understand that we can no longer stay in touch because his girlfriend won’t allow it.

Moving on.

Awhile later, another friend of mine from high school and his wife relocated to Oakland from the east coast. As one does when faced with the opportunity to have regular contact with good friends, I pretty much figured we had all the time in the world to hang out, so I think we saw each other ONE TIME, at a party in my apartment (at which EVERY straight man in attendance fell madly in love with my friend’s wife because she is da-bomb.com . . . but I digress), before I ended up deciding to leave Oakland and move to Philadelphia.

In preparation for my move, I had put some of my furniture up for sale on Craigslist (remember that?), and so was awaiting calls from futon seekers across the East Bay. If you know me, you know I feel very little obligation to answer the phone just because it rings, and am just as likely to let it go to voicemail if I’m in the middle of something, or heck, if I just don’t feel like talking. However, at that point in my life, I didn’t want to miss out on any potential buyers by failing to pick up the phone, so I was answering every call if I was at home . . .

. . . which is how one evening I picked up the phone and heard a feeble, “Hey . . . ” from my damn ex (whom YOU KNOW would otherwise have gone deep into the voicemail void and never returned, because I can hold a grudge like nobody’s business) on the other end of the line. Even though I was still mad that he’d ditched me, I talked to him long enough to tell him I was moving across the country in a couple of weeks (take THAT, you weak-ass, friendship-nuking bastard!). He asked if there was any sort of goodbye party planned, and I (truthfully) said no; I said that several friends had mentioned taking me out to a goodbye dinner, but so far nobody had gone as far as to suggest a date or time.

He suggested a date and time to take me out to dinner himself.

I caved and agreed (so much for that grudge)—and then another friend (who’d been pissed at this guy for dumping me in the first place) suggested we make that dinner my OFFICIAL good-bye gathering for EVERYONE, to thwart any potential plans Dude might have for some romantic moment with me before I left—which I doubted he had, but I went along with this plan, and started calling people to invite them to dinner on the date and time I’d set up with my ex (I did tell him about it, though—I mean I’m not THAT much of an asshole—and he didn’t seem to mind).

Among the people I invited were my east coast defector friend and his wife, who were disappointed to find out I was leaving. “We wanted to introduce you to our friend Meredith,” they said, “because we think you guys would love each other.”

I told ’em to bring Meredith along to the goodbye dinner—and, true to their prediction, I DID love her. She was so amazing and hilarious and fun . . . and she gifted me with one of the most satisfying moments of my life . . .

We were all at a long table in the restaurant, and she was sitting next to me, while my ex sat across from us. At one point, she leaned over and whispered in my ear (gesturing with her eyeballs toward my ex): “OK, is that dude your boyfriend?”

“No,” I whispered back, not bothering to explain the whole situation.

“Really?” she replied, “Because he is giving you THE MOST LOVING LOOKS—like he is REALLY going to miss you, if you know what I mean.”

OHHHHHHHHHHH, THE GLORY.

After that, I did explain to her that he was my ex, and she said, “Ahhhh, that explains it.”

But that moment cemented my love for her to a point that I almost didn’t want to move away from the opportunity to become besties with this spectacular person.

Sadly, I never kept in touch with her or anything—but because I kept in occasional touch with my friends who’d introduced me to her, I knew she’d developed cancer, and written a memoir about it, so I bought it and read it when it came out.

I also knew when she died.

I don’t remember a ton about the book (and I can’t even FIND my hard copy now), but I remember liking it quite a bit, and even though I had NO IDEA that a decade hence, I’d find myself in a similar situation, I remember appreciating the fact that it wasn’t some Chicken Soup for the Soul-type inspirational tome, but rather a funny, sarcastic, and irreverent take on what—let’s face it—is a shitty situation. I will be the first to admit that I’ve found some nuggets of gold in this pile of shit (all of you being one big shit-coated nugget, and I mean that in the best way), but I think what I maybe need now are not inspirational memes involving footprints or inner wolves, or—God forbid—the word “warrior,” but rather someone (even a dead someone) to sit in the shit with me, acknowledge that it is indeed shit, and make me laugh at the same time.

Yesterday and the day before, the weather here was great (upper 50s/low 60s), and on each of those mornings, I woke up thinking I’d get out of the house and take an afternoon walk. On the first of those days, I ended up hanging out in bed, talking on the phone to a friend for three hours instead, and on the second, I ended up again in bed, wallowing in self-pity because things didn’t exactly go my way at my doctor visits yesterday.

Today, it’s cold again, so I’m not even going to try to go outside. I think instead, I’ll hang out in bed, eat some more Girl Scout cookies, fire up my Kindle app, and start my new/old book.

Thanks, as always, for hangin’ in.

P.S. I initially titled this post “The asshole ‘c’ chronicles,” but it occurred to me that y’all could take that the wrong way and think the cancer had spread to my butthole or something—and that is NOT the case (small favors), so I added the ‘fucking’ for clarification.

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The (even) little(r) “c” chronicles, Part 13: The boobs have left the building.

GAH, sorry sorry sorry, y’all, for taking so long to post an update! (Believe me, I heard about it from more than one of ya.)

But most of you already know the big news: On February 15, I underwent a double mastectomy, with kinda-sorta reconstruction (after the oncology surgeon did her thang, the plastic surgeon came in and placed expanders where my breast tissue used to be; in a year or so, the expanders will be replaced with permanent implants).

The news I have to share from that (so far) is a mixed bag: while I was still way down deep in General Anesthesia Wonderland, the oncology surgeon told Love Tank that she hadn’t SEEN any remaining cancer in the primary tumor (but of course, she didn’t slice it up and put it under a microscope, so this is by no means official news—just official HOPE, because after all the chemo was done, I was still able to feel the tumor, so I just assumed that meant there was still cancer in it, and it turns out that’s not NECESSARILY the case).

So that’s the good news.

The bad news is that she did find malignancy in two lymph nodes. She said she yoinked (although she didn’t use that term, I think it fits) out about ten lymph nodes, and of course the hope is that the additional ones will NOT show any cancer . . .

. . . but I’m still not happy about those two. I knew at the start of chemo, of course, that there was cancer in ONE, and my assumption (although i didn’t have the wherewithal to confirm with her after the surgery—you know they give you some damn good drugs when you get parts of you removed) is that the one we already knew about is one of the two in question, and it somehow convinced a buddy to go rogue with it. But I’m not sure; maybe the chemo worked on that one, and two OTHERS went rogue—who knows?

At any rate, what this says to me is that this business is on the move, and trying to reach out and touch some shit, which is NOT COOL.

What does that mean in terms of treatment, though? Not sure at this point. We will know more, of course, once the biopsy results come back from the tissue removed during surgery.

What it MAY mean is more chemo. (Blecccch.)

Since the surgery has revealed that there wasn’t a complete response to the chemo treatments I’ve already done (i.e., the cancer was not 100% gone), it’s possible I could end up doing oral chemo treatments now. OR I could possibly just continue the immunotherapy treatments I’ve been doing every three weeks for the next several months (which was already the plan). One thing I know is that whatever happens will be in addition to radiation, which was ALSO already the plan.

At any rate, again, I won’t know anything for sure until my one-week post-surgery follow-up appointment on Wednesday.

So until then, that’s all the REAL medical news I have.

Should I stay or should I go now?

Other than that, what I can tell you is that I have discovered something about myself. I think there are two kinds of people: those who CANNOT WAIT to get TF out of the hospital (to the point of going AMA if they have to), and those who are like, “Nuh-uh, mofos, I’m staying here as long as I can!”

And I somehow appear to be a little of both.

I knew going in that I’d be staying a night, but not really knowing what to expect (having only experienced two outpatient surgeries in my life previous to this), I didn’t have feelings about it either way.

Before I went in, though, a couple of people encouraged me to make them keep me in the hospital as long as possible (one shared an anecdote about an acquaintance who’d insisted on staying a second night after her lumpectomy, because even after that surgery, which was significantly less invasive than what I was having done, she didn’t feel well enough to leave the hospital after one night). I took it under advisement, of course, but since I HAAAAAAAAATE having an IV hanging out in my body (when I gave birth to my second baby, they stuck it in my wrist (*shudder*), and I was so skeeved out by it that the nurse took pity on me, cut the toe end off a hospital-issue grippy sock, and slid it over my wrist to hide the IV from my tender eyeballs), I assumed I’d be one of the “Get me TF outta here” types.

That is, until I woke up from surgery.

I’m about to digress, here, but here’s a thing I find amusing: in my life, I’ve had three surgeries involving general anesthesia:

  1. A tubal ligation after my second kid (thanks to which I discovered that general anesthesia makes me nauseated, which was a HUGE disappointment to me, because as much as I LOVE to sleep, I thought general anesthesia would be nothing but hearts, unicorns, and puppy butts for me . . . but I digress even further);
  2. The surgery to place my port for chemo treatments, and
  3. The removal of my boobs.

. . . and the last thing I remember before two out of those three surgeries (the latter two—before each of which I had the good sense to ask for anti-nausea meds in conjunction with the general anesthesia, so I did get more of the puppy-butt experience) is saying something along the lines of, “Yeah, you’re right” to a medical professional.

When I got my port placed, the last thing I remember is being on a gurney, watching the ceiling whizz by as I was wheeled to the operating room, and the anesthesia nurse saying, “You should start to feel the meds kicking in . . . .” After a second or two, I replied, “Oh, yeah, I DO feel that!”

. . . and that was all she wrote. Next thing I knew, I was waking up, my chest hurt, and someone was offering me ice chips.

This time, I actually made it all the way INTO the OR (which was fascinating: first of all, it looked a lot more like an auto shop than I’d anticipated, with stuff hanging on walls, and multiple tables around, AND it was far more colorful than the ones they show on TV, which are always white white white; basically, the one thing my Imagination OR and my Reality OR had in common were the hella bright lights . . . but holy cow, I’m never going to get to my point at this rate). The nurses wheeled my gurney up against the operating table, and helped me scoot myself onto the table. One of the nurses placed my pillow back underneath my head, and as I reached up to adjust it, she said, “Go ahead and fix that however makes you comfortable; I know the operating table isn’t the most comfortable . . . ” I replied, “Yeah, you’re right about that . . . ”

. . . and the next thing I knew, I was waking up, my chest hurt, and someone was telling me it was time to take me up to my hospital room.

So what this all comes down to is that apparently I am extremely agreeable right before I pass out.

Unlike the port placement surgery, though, waking up this time was much more of an ordeal. I can remember snippets of waking up and interacting with people:

  • I remember a nice man waking me up to let me know he was wheeling me up to my room, and warning me about the bumps I’d feel as he rolled me across the elevator threshold.
  • I remember the nice man announcing we’d made it to my room, and that at that point I struggled to open my eyes long enough to see if I had a private room, or if I was stuck with a roommate (the latter of which would certainly have influenced my desire to get out of the hospital—y’all know mama loves her alone time—but hallelujah, I had a private room).
  • I remember expressing, eyes closed, to the nurse who’d be in charge of my in-room care that I needed to pee (whether she asked, or I volunteered that information, I can’t tell ya)—but when she asked if I felt able to stand up and walk to the restroom, I very distinctly replied, “NUH-UH.”
  • She then asked if I was ready for pain medication, and I replied (eyes still closed), “UH-HUH.”
  • I remember seeing Love Tank sitting on the sofa next to my hospital bed, and trying SO HARD to wake up and talk to him, but my eyes kept drifting shut again and I’d tumble back down to the bottom of Knocked Out Mountain.

A full THREE HOURS later, I woke up to Love Tank smiling and very sweetly saying “Hi, Baby . . . ” in greeting. And also to a KILLER urge to pee, since once I’d told the nurse I wasn’t walking to the bathroom, she went on ahead and let me roll back down the mountain with my full bladder.

Love Tank called her in, and she helped me sit upright, stand up, and walk to the bathroom and HOLY MUTHA, I am here to tell y’all that I have never been so stunned by pain as I was in those moments. When I leaned forward slightly to lower my tush onto the toilet, the pain smacked so hard, I swear I hallucinated a little bit, got hit with a wave of nausea, and called out something like, “HOH-SHHYAGRHHHHHHT” through gritted teeth.

Once I was back in bed, I was thirsty as hell, but swore off liquids for the rest of my life, because I never wanted to have to use the restroom again.

The nurses were great about keeping me on top of my pain meds, though, and I discovered that if I lay supine and mostly still, the pain wasn’t so bad. If I had to sit up, though, CRAP ON A CRACKER IN THE MOONLIGHT, that shit hurt.

So once Love Tank had left to head home and see about our kids—and more importantly to take care of our poor, old-ass dog, who is having trouble walking these days (making it an act of Congress to get him outside to do his business, and Love Tank seems to be the most influential Representative in this household)—I lay comfortably on my back and called/texted people who’d asked to be kept in the loop.

It was during some of those conversations that I told people I didn’t think there was any way I’d be ready to return home the next day, because of the crazy pain. Besides, being in the hospital wasn’t so bad (except for the peeing); I had a bunch of TV channels at my disposal, a bed that would do a good deal of the work of sitting up FOR me, AND I’d been able to order a tasty dinner (and a fancy one—my mashed potatoes came with a flower on top!).

(I later realized I’d fallen victim to that phenomenon wherein that first hospital meal you have after not having eaten for almost an entire day is AMAAAAAZING . . . but then once you’re not starving anymore, the food’s not so great; happened to me when I had my first kid, too. But I digress.)

Later, thanks to the glorious combination of Percocet and Valium, I drifted off into a blissful slumber. SO blissful, in fact, that my ass forgot all about my current circumstances, and I instinctively tried to roll onto my side (which is how I normally sleep) . . . and LORD, hammercy, the HOH-SHHYAGRHHHHHHT pain yanked me right on up out of that bliss.

Once I was awake, I discovered I was STARVING (despite the glorious dinner), so I fished around in a balloon-adorned bag of goodies sent by a friend who for some reason loves me more than I can fathom (I mean, I’m not saying I’m not lovable, but this woman consistently shows me pure, unadulterated adoration, and I am not sure what I’ve done to earn it), and fished out a Twix bar, which I schlurped down at lightning speed. A few minutes later, the nurse came in to check my vitals, and I confessed I’d just finished a (literal) midnight snack fulla sugar. She offered me a list of other snacks she could bring me. 10 minutes later, I was eating the most delicious dry turkey sandwich I’d ever had (see what I mean about starvation and hospital food?), and chasing it with a Peppermint Patty from my goody bag.

The next morning, however, the hospital food magic ended (thanks to that midnight snack). When it came time for breakfast (I chose a cheese omelette, sausage, and breakfast potatoes), I discovered everything was kind of blecchy (the sausage was OK, and the coffee didn’t taste good, but it was HOT, which was pleasant, but otherwise . . . ). Same thing happened at lunch. But by that time, although I was still in some pain, I was able to sit up, walk, and make it to the restroom without assistance from the nurse, and without speaking in tongues. Plus, they’d removed my IPC devices, which I’d actually found oddly comforting—like a perpetual leg massage.

So it was time to go.

Technically, we had until midnight to vacate the premises, but once I’d received visits from both surgeons, a couple of surgical residents, and the occupational therapist, there wasn’t really much of a reason to hang around, other than the opportunity to spend time with Love Tank away from our children. (Hey, don’t knock it; it’s quiet, you can wear comfortable clothes (by then I’d changed out of the hospital gown and into my own attire under the supervision of the occupational therapist), you can watch movies, and if you’re on a high enough floor, you get a decent view.) So at around 2 p.m. (once the movie ended), I told the nurse I was ready to blow that popsicle stand.

By 3:30 or so, I was at home in my own bed. None of the people I’d talked to the night before could believe it, based on how much pain I’d been in when we’d spoken, and I think they thought I was trying to be a damn hero, but really, I’d just started wanting to be in a place where I wouldn’t have to think about getting up and going anywhere in the near future.

There’s no place like home

So here I am, four days post-surgery, and not doing too badly. Still spending a shit ton of time in bed, but I’m reaching a point where that’s at least 52% just because I wanna.

(Side note: five days before my surgery, we FINALLY received delivery of the new bedroom furniture we ordered in NOVEMBER . . .

. . . and y’all. The bed is SO DAMN HIGH UP IN THE AIR that we’ve put step stools on either side of that bad boy—partially to make it easier for our little one to climb up (the top of the bed comes up to his shoulder), but I’m not gonna lie: those stools also make it a lot easier for US to climb into bed ourselves (and we’re no Shorty McShort-shorts; I’m 5’7″ and Love tank is 6’1″)!

So while getting in and out of bed is a little extra challenging due to current circumstances, I am managing pretty well up here.)

Since arriving home from the hospital, I’ve been managing the pain pretty well with Tylenol, Gabapentin (for nerve pain), and Valium (to help relax the pectoral muscles that are probably still wondering WTF just happened). In fact, today I made it 12 hours without taking anything at all! (That’s actually a problem, because I’m supposed to be taking antibiotics 4 times a day, but I still consider it good news that I was able to forget about my pain meds all day.)

Still, this experience is not without its share of drama.

First of all, there’s the weirdness of, well . . . having no boobs (the expanders are in, but not really filled). Yesterday, I was finally allowed to shower (although really, after the two Silkwood showers I was required to take the night before and the morning of surgery, I didn’t feel too gross), and I was not sure if I’d be able to look in the mirror once I got all the dressings removed. I braved it, though, and while it was certainly a bit of a shock to look at my chest, the bigger shock (perhaps because I’ve only really had boobs for the past 20 years or so; before that, I was pretty flat-chested—and while I no longer have the nipples I had back then, a flat-chested me was not a wholly unfamiliar sight) was my ARMPITS. Unlike my flat-chested days of yore, these days I’m graced with that wonderful armpit fat that comes with middle-aged weight gain. And without boobs to balance that out, I basically have bigger tits in my armpits now than I do on my chest. But the weirdest part is that THEY ARE LARGELY NUMB. The right one has a little feeling, but the left one (also the side where the tumor and nodes were removed) has zip. Zilch. Nada. Putting deodorant on after that shower was a TRIP, y’all.

I’m not sure how long the numbness will continue, but I’m hoping to get some answers at my follow-ups this coming week.

Second of all, GAHHHH, the DRAINS. SO GROSS. I’ll spare you the details, but I have four of them (cradled snugly in one of three shirts I now own with drain pockets), and my most fervent wish right now is to be able to get them removed when I go back to the plastic surgeon for my one-week follow-up—but at this point, I’m not holding out much hope, because there are certain milestones I have to meet for that to happen, and it ain’t lookin’ good (at least not for two of them). So wish me luck on that.

Otherwise, though, I think all the thoughts, positive vibes, and magic love dust y’all have sent my way have worked spectacularly, because I feel better than I ever thought possible right now. And as a bonus, my blood pressure is normal again! Since this whole ball of wax began, my blood pressure—which was always perfect—has been practically in outer space! I used to actually LIKE getting my blood pressure taken (much like I liked the IPC devices; I guess being squeezed makes me happy), but since all the cancer-related doctor visits began, I’ve HATED it, because even when the cuff doesn’t hurt my arm (which it usually does now), the reading hurts my soul. Sometimes it’s so high that the nurse will take it again until s/he gets a lower reading; and if it’s a nurse unfamiliar with me, s/he’ll ask if I’m on blood pressure meds.

In short, it sucks.

So I’ve basically learned to not even look at the machine when my blood pressure’s being taken—and I stuck with that strategy while I was in the hospital after my surgery. But for some reason, when she took my blood pressure the final time before my release, the nurse announced it aloud . . .

. . . and it was NORMAL.

I actually SAT UP, TWISTED AROUND TO SEE THE MACHINE (YEEEEEOWCH!) and said, “WHAT??? REALLY???”

I wanted to kiss her right in the face. But I realized that that would probably hurt worse than the sitting up and twisting (especially if she was into it and chose to embrace me in response), so I kept my cool.

But it felt like winning the lottery.

So thank you, all, for all the good vibes. They’ve worked in ways I didn’t expect!

Bye Bye, Boobies

So the only thing left to share at this point are the things that prevented me from updating this blog before now—or, in other words, How My Boobs and I Spent Our Last Days Together.

Basically, January thru early March of EVERY year are kind of nuts (because EVERYONE in my household has a birthday during that time), but this year in particular, there was a lot going on.

Sadly, Love Tank’s birthday was kind of a bust this year, because it occurred three days after my last chemo treatment. And while—thanks to my friend Dr. Awesome Pants, who gave me a better strategy for managing my nausea meds—I had an easier time of it after that last treatment (even managing to eat regular food during the days following the treatment), I still wasn’t feeling like a par-TAY, so basically he got a handful of dumb gifts —the most amusing of which were custom Lego figurines I ordered of the two of us; I chose bald head attachments for both of us (because wouldn’t that be cute), but that didn’t actually turn out as expected . . . .

Ring Toss, anyone?

. . . but I digress. The point is that while Love Tank had a low-key birthday, we pulled out a few stops for the littler dude’s birthday. On his ACTUAL birthday, school was closed for a snow day, but we still had an engagement at the high school to see the older kid’s orchestra concert. But when the weekend came, it was party time!

Unlike his older brother, this kid has never really had any big birthday parties. When he was wee, we decided NOT to set the big-party precedent we’d set for our first child (who had TWO first birthday parties (one for friends and one for family), because we couldn’t fit everyone into our house at once), so his first few birthday parties were just two or three kids at our house. When he turned 4, we invited a few more kids to a party at the library, but we made all the choices: whom to invite, the party venue, and the party activities. Then the pandemic hit, and there were no parties to speak of (other than our immediate family, inside our house) for a couple of years.

But this year, he had his first “real” party, where he chose the venue/activity (bowling), and the guest list (which was far shorter than the number of kids the party package allowed, so we ended up with a whole free lane for our older kid and his girlfriend to have to themselves). I wasn’t generous enough to share control of the SWAG bags, because COME ON I AM SO GOOD AT THEM, and he’d just ruin it. But he didn’t seem to mind—largely because he didn’t even know there were any SWAG bags until the day of the party. But I digress.

Point is, we hosted our first “real” kid birthday party in YEARS—and then the next day we hosted a Super Bowl party for the older kid and a handful of his friends, and YOU KNOW your girl had the menu planned like two weeks in advance, right? I even brought my dad’s beautiful (and, I recently learned, STOLEN) chafing dish out of retirement for the occasion!

Then, a mere couple of days later, your girl had to show up in the kid’s classroom to be the ACTIVITY parent for the class Valentine’s Day party!

I mean. Y’all know me. I am ALWAYS about the food. So when the older kid was in elementary school, I’d make a beeline for every class party sign-up sheet to get dibs on bringing the snacks. (A couple of times, someone beat me to it, and I had to settle for the drinks, but still—refreshments have ALWAYS been my jam.) Although things are different now that the younger one is in school (unlike the previous sign-up lists, which were LONG and included items like plates, napkins, and other auxiliary supplies, the sign-ups now include only three opportunities—snacks, drinks, or an activity—and ONLY the parents who sign up to provide one of those three things are allowed to come to the party), I’m still the snack-tastic person I’ve always been.

So imagine the GLORY when I got to the littler dude’s classroom sign-up list in time to call dibs on the snacks . . . and the HORROR when I asked him if he had any ideas about what snacks I could bring, and he took one look at the sign-up list (which I still stupidly had up on my computer) and declared he’d like me to do the ACTIVITY instead.

“Oh, babe, that’s not really Mommy’s thing,” I tried feebly. But he just kept repeating, “CRAAAAFT” over and over again (under the part where it says “Activity,” the parenthetical suggestion is a craft or game, and curse that little bastard’s ability to read).

So by golly, for love of a little boy, I signed up for the craft.

(Later that day, Love Tank took a look at the sign up list, and found it curious enough to see my name listed under “Activity” that he CALLED me from work, thinking there had been a mistake, especially since the food slot was still wide open.)

So basically, for the last week in January, and the first two weeks of February, I was busy planning, researching, purchasing, sorting, preparing, and packaging items for a birthday party, a Super Bowl party, Valentine’s Day craft kits, AND a Valentine’s Day game (because once I figured out the craft, I got concerned that we’d have time leftover after it was done, and I don’t have the improv skills to fill dead air with a bunch of first graders).

And y’all, it all actually WORKED OUT. Four of the five kids invited to the birthday party were able to make it, and although TWO HOURS of bowling is a long time for first graders (so we had some issues with boredom and kids running amok), nobody got lost, and there were no injuries.

Because of how the past three years have gone, we’re a little out of practice at the hosting game, so not all the Super Bowl food turned out exactly as planned: the BBQ meatballs were a little dry, the sandwich trays I ordered were sub-par, and the Jell-O cookies I tried to make in red and yellow to represent KC Chiefs colors turned out more MAUVE and yellow, and they came out WAYYYYYY too sweet—but overall, I managed to pull off a decent spread without too much stress, I think the kids had fun, and the Chiefs won, which is what counts.

The best part, though, was that the Valentine’s Day activities (about which I was the MOST nervous) actually went FINE! Most of the kids seemed to really like the love bugs we made!

Plus, despite the fact that the craft involved sharp cocktail picks, there were no casualties— and we even had time leftover after the craft to play the BINGO games I created! Unfortunately, I learned too late that the BINGO prizes I distributed to the kids who won—boxes of old-school candy hearts—did not taste good at all (at least according to MY kid, who scored a leftover box) . . . so there MAY have been tears about THAT, but by that time, the kids were at home, where their parents could deal with their disappointment.

I’m chalking all of this up as a WIN.

On Valentine’s Day evening, we returned to the school for an uneventful parent-teacher conference (which, again, if you know this kid, is ALSO a win), then had a late Valentine’s Day take-out dinner . . .

. . . and then the next day, I had my boobs cut off.

But I’d like to think they got a good send-off.

And speaking of send-offs, if you’re curious about the rat drama, four out of the ten babies have found new homes, and we’re keeping two more of them ourselves. But we’re still in search of homes for the remaining four. So now that I’m through surgery, maybe y’all could direct some of those powerful vibes towards ridding our home of some rodents.

Then you can shoot those vibes right back in my direction for the next steps to come, because we’re not finished yet! But I’ll tell you what—having this part done is an INCREDIBLE relief (which may have something to do with my back-to-normal blood pressure), and I couldn’t have made it this far without y’all. So as always, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

(Thank-you rats are available upon request.)

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The “little c” chronicles, Part 12: One mo ‘gin.

Note: I know that when I started this business, I promised to include health-related info first, so as not to make you dig for any REAL updates about my situation before I start endlessly rambling about all the other things; but as I write this, I’ve already written several paragraphs of rambling, and I’m in the FLOW, yo, so I’m taking a moment to append this message to the top of the post, just to say that although I’ll be sharing a few slightly personal and wholly unnecessary physical weirdnesses with you in this blog post, things are pretty much the same: I have 15 treatments done, and ONE TO GO. As I write this (6 days past treatment), I’m still feeling somewhat puny—still largely in the applesauce and rice phase, although I’m planning chicken enchiladas for dinner tonight—but have gotten past the part where I hate everyone. That’s it. Carry on.

So, I’m down to ONE chemo treatment left.

The most recent one happened two days after Christmas, and hit me a little harder than usual, because of the cumulative effects of these drugs over time, I’m sure—but also because I’m a ding dong and forgot to take my nausea meds.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So on the Tuesday after Christmas, I went in for not only my penultimate chemo treatment, but also the lab work that I typically do on the Monday prior to each Tuesday treatment (but couldn’t on the Monday following Christmas, as it was a holiday). That meant a two-hour wait between my arrival for my appointment and my actual visit with Dr. Cool-and-Calm, because ain’t NOTHIN’ happening until the lab work comes back.

Following the blood draw, I was ushered back to the chemo treatment area to wait for the lab results. I was delighted to find that my favorite treatment “pod” (as you may recall, there are three treatment areas, each with anywhere from 3-5 recliners—and my favorite one is the one nearest the bathrooms) was sparsely populated (only one other guy, accompanied by, presumably, his wife) AND that the “good” recliner (one of two close to the windows, but NOT the one folx call “the catapult” due to it’s rather violent foot rest spring action) was free!

I happily settled in to await my doctor consult—and to nap because, in anticipation of the coming week plus of “chemo blues,” I decided to do ALLLLLLL THE THINGS on the Monday before treatment: coffee with a new friend; a day of post-Christmas shopping with Love Tank in cusstastically frigid weather (you couldn’t walk a block with out spitting an f-bomb through clenched teeth, but it was WORTH IT, because I got new Trina Turk PJs, and Love Tank got a leather jacket, both on super-sale); and dinner (plus baby-squeezing!) with my Mother in Law and other beloved family people I haven’t seen in far too long.

And you know how this exhaustion is doing me lately, so Mama was WIPED TF OUUUUUUUT, people.

Yet and still, the nap didn’t come. The nurse brought me a heated blanket (they don’t even have to ask me anymore if I want one), and I snugged down into the recliner with my pillow . . .

. . . but as I swirled down into dreamland, my brain began to process noises coming from the television in the pod, and be like, “WTF is this fresh RV shitter full of bad burrito aftermath?”

I opened one eye.

The other occupant of the pod had turned on Fox News.

And I tried to live with it; I screwed my eyes shut again, breathed deeply, and willed sleep to set me free from this bullshit. Failing that, I sat back up and tried to occupy myself on my phone (mostly by sending “FML” texts to Love Tank and my friends to complain about my current situation). Still the swill infiltrated.

So I got up, stretched, and took an ever-so-casual stroll past the other two treatment pods—you know, just to stretch the old gams—and found, to my dismay, that they were all FULL.

I trudged back to the Fox hole (which was STILLLLL 50% empty) and sat back down.

I considered asking the couple (who otherwise seemed lovely; upbeat, friendly, and genuinely fond of one another) if we could change channels (thinking maybe they just had it on for company, or to coax the dude getting treatment to sleep), but alas, they were actively watching—and at some points, discussing—the broadcast. To their immense credit, they did NOT discuss any of the typical fuckery that comes out of Fox News faces; rather, they only discussed the one or two unbiased, fact-based aspects of the broadcast—for example, they discussed how horrible it was that so many people had died in the winter storm that hit Buffalo (which I, too, found horrible—who wouldn’t?), and refrained from discussing any of the subsequent Fux Nooz Vyooz about how this was somehow all the fault of the Democrats.

But I still couldn’t take it.

So when my nurse came to tell me my lab results were in (NORMAL ranges across the board, baby, EVEN for my once-tanking hemoglobin and potassium!), and asked if I’d like the doctor to come to me where I was, or if I’d like a private room for the consult, I asked for the private room and, once she’d ushered me inside, nearly yanked her off her feet to get her inside the room with me so that I could ask to be relocated. I told her I couldn’t take one more minute of Fox News.

She responded, with a meaningful “tone” (if you catch my drift) that she respected that, and seemed to be pickin’ up what I was layin’ down . . .

. . . but then she launched into something about how things were depressing enough without having to watch the news, so now I’m not sure if she caught my ball at all. But she did find me a vacancy in the pod furthest away from the bathroom, which may well have saved my blood pressure.

Insurance can kiss my ass.

What nearly wrecked my blood pressure all over again, however, was meeting another patient in the second treatment pod. Lovely woman, accompanied by her son, who was equally friendly. I don’t recall how we started talking, but once I’d settled into my new treatment digs to start the poison drip, we shared some stories.

And hers broke my heart, y’all.

In a nutshell: she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021. Although her cancer was at Stage 3 (whereas mine was Stage 2), her treatment plan was otherwise pretty much lock-step with mine: chemo, then surgery, then radiation.

HOWEVER.

Remember the echocardiogram I had back at the beginning of this ride, to ensure that my heart was going to be able to withstand treatment? Well, my new friend was unable to get hers, because INSURANCE DENIED IT. She fought, the doctors fought . . . and eventually, she said, she “just got tired.”

And as a result, she went A YEAR without treatment.

Of her STAGE THREE breast cancer.

Finally, her son (the one who was with her for treatment, although she has other kids) found her SEIZING one day, and got her to the ER—and lo and behold! She was finally deemed sick enough by her insurance company to do ALL the things necessary to start chemo treatments for her cancer.

Now, though, the plan has changed. The cancer has spread to her spine (although she can stand for brief periods, she now relies heavily on a wheelchair) and brain (hence the seizures), and though she says radiation took care of the brain lesions, surgery is now off the table, and she has been told she’ll never be cancer-free.

There are so many things to say, here, but y’all know. Y’ALL KNOW. So I’ll refrain.

Instead, I’ll wrap this up by saying that at one point, when the woman and her son had wheeled away so that she could visit the restroom, my kind nurse (having witnessed chunks of the lengthy conversation between me and my new friends as she came back and forth to change out meds for both of us) lightly joked, “So much for your nap, huh?”

But I told her I’d rather stay up for THREE DAYS STRAIGHT talking to that woman and her son (as enraging and sad as it was) than watch three more minutes of Fox News.

Ding dong, the bitch forgot her meds

So on the Thursday following treatment, I woke up my sleepy head, rubbed my eyes . . . and TRIED to get out of bed, but was knocked right back down by worse nausea than I’ve become accustomed to. There was no THOUGHT of eating or drinking; rather, I just burrowed and hoped it would subside.

By the early afternoon, when things didn’t seem to be getting better, it hit me: I hadn’t taken any of my anti-nausea pills since leaving treatment.

Merde.

(Sorry; I’ve been watching Emily in Paris—mainly for the clothes and the scenery, because the story line is getting way too Three’s Company for me.)

Of course I took some immediately, stayed up later than usual that evening just to take the next dose (which couldn’t be taken until 8 hours later), and from then on, popped those bad boys like like (kinda literal) clockwork . . .

. . . but now I get why from the beginning, the nurses have always said, “Don’t wait until you feel sick to take your nausea meds—stay ahead of it!” because once I got behind, I never quite caught up; I continued to feel worse than usual for the rest of the week.

For example, by the Sunday following treatment, while food still does not taste good, I’m typically able to participate in our weekly Breakfast with Grandma (wherein the boys and I pop over to her place on Sunday morning, bearing something brekky (usually pastries of some sort) and fancy coffee shop drinks), because the mere idea of food no longer grosses me out. This past Sunday, Grandma requested McDonald’s for breakfast, and I happily obliged, because even though I felt a little punier than usual, I’m accustomed to Sunday being the day I’m able to move beyond the rice and applesauce diet (not TOO far beyond, as I don’t eat much—and sometimes applesauce is included—but I can usually do a croissant or something).

However, I took one bite of my sausage, egg & cheese biscuit, and everything in me said, “Aw, HELLLLLLLLLL naw; we not doin’ this today.”

Not one to shy away from a challenge, I took another bite, and then everything in me said, “Oh, you think we’re here to PLAY? Well, let me tell you something—”

So I decided to try a bite of the hashbrowns instead.

“WHAT. DID. I. SAYYYYYYYY, MUHFUGGAH???” my body replied.

So I gave up on my breakfast, apologized to my body, and eventually it forgave me enough to let me drink the orange juice that came with my meal. (“You eat that sandwich! You NEED food!” my mother chastised, when she saw me gingerly wrapping the biscuit back up, because my body had told me not to even LOOK at it. But I kept wrapping. I’m no fool.) But I digress.

The point is, this time it was a FULLLLLLL week before my body stopped carrying nunchucks around in case of any more encounters with *actual* food.

Therefore I will depart unkissed.

Here’s the thing about the nausea, though: I described it at length in a previous blog post, in terms of all the things my gut does. But I haven’t told y’all how my mouth participates in this party. And truly, I shouldn’t because it is DISGUSTING—perhaps most of all to me, because you know I have a thing about mouths, right?

I mean, first of all, I can’t handle excess saliva. Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you that seeing someone drool sends me straight to Gag City. (Y’all remember all the drama I had surrounding the idea of doing a spit test to see if I had the BRCA gene mutation, right?)

Second of all, I can’t handle the sight of someone puking. Or the thought of someone puking. With a great deal of intestinal fortitude, a buttload of love, and the help of Jesus, I have been able, on most occasions, to deal with puking children (ONLY my own; NOBODY else’s) without contributing to the barf-o-rama myself, but anyone else’s puke is OUT OF THE QUESTION (and quite frankly, I haven’t had to deal with the older one’s puke in years, so it may be that I’m only equipped to deal with my kids’ puke when the face it comes out of is little and cute, and not when it’s hairy and manly).

Needless to say, I can’t even WATCH that scene in The Big Easy when Ellen Barkin kisses Dennis Quaid (a) with a mouthful of toothpaste, and (b) AFTER SHE JUST BARFED. (But if you’re feeling brave, be my guest. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Anyway. You get the idea.

So imagine my revulsion to discover that this second line of chemo treatments does horrible things to my mouth. (Warning: this is WAYYYY TMI, y’all.)

During the first few days following treatment (the days when food is disgusting), the inside of my mouth becomes irrevocably slimy. In addition to having a horrible, metallic taste in my mouth, I get this gag-worthy, thick, slick coating over my tongue. I guzzle blistering hot tea in an effort to melt it away . . . chew strong, minty gum in the hope of generating enough saliva to wash it away . . . scrub the shit out of my tongue with my toothbrush . . . and still the slime prevails.

But what’s even worse is that during Slime Time, the inside of my mouth LOOKS different, which I accidentally discovered on a Facetime call with my sister; every time I caught a glimpse of myself talking, I noticed that the inside of my mouth looked weirdly . . . white.

Once we hung up, I went to the bathroom mirror to get a better look . . . and—hand to God—my tongue looked like a flokati rug, y’all. It wasn’t just white, it was covered in this thick, furry-looking grossness that shocked and horrified me.

Meanwhile, my gums had their OWN party going on: whereas my tongue was slimy, white, and furry, my gums were dark and sandpaper-y.

I mean, WTF is going ON??? SO GROSS.

Fortunately, it goes away after about a week (and THEN, for another week, food is completely flavorless, but it’s not entirely disgusting), but when it’s happening, I have the absolute grossest maw on the planet. And in MY book, that’s saying something.

And if thy right shoe offend thee

The other weird thing that’s been happening with the Red Devil treatments is that I’ve developed this sort of . . . associative nausea. When I visualize the treatment area in the hospital, for example (which I do naturally, as I’m sharing treatment stories here and in other conversations with friends), I start to feel nauseated.

Similarly, there is one particular pair of shoes, and one particular pair of yoga pants I no longer wear—and don’t like to look at—because they’re part of my “treatment outfit.” When I first got diagnosed, I’d been eyeing this cute pair of bootleg Adidas yoga pants that I couldn’t justify buying because they were, like, 70 bucks, and who needs to spend 70 bucks for yoga pants?

Once I got diagnosed, however, I started justifying ALL THE THINGS, so I bought the yoga pants. Then I rationalized that I couldn’t wear my Asics sneakers with very obviously Adidas pants, so I bought a pair of Adidas sneakers to go with them, and determined that I’d wear this little get-up to treatment, thinking they’d give me a little boost of happy in the midst of all the shit.

So I did—and THEY did—for awhile. But now, I find I can’t even look at the pants or the shoes—let alone WEAR them—without feeling mildly nauseated and squicky.

The good news is that the awesome bag Love Tank got for me to take to my treatments has NOT lost its charm—largely, I’d imagine, because I stopped using it VERY early on, once I realized I was just going to sleep through my treatments, and therefore didn’t need to bring a bunch of stuff to keep me entertained.

But needless to say, I’m being kind of careful about what I do (and by “do,” I mean wear, eat, cook, watch, read, love, etc.) these days, lest it become something I start to associate with chemo (and the concomitant sickness), and therefore start to hate.

At what price beauty?

One of the things I’m ever-so-cautiously growing to love, however, makes NO kinda sense at all, because it is—of all things—a friggin’ BEAUTY product.

First of all, I’m not much of a beauty products gal; I mean, sure, I like to try stuff here and there (fun masks and stuff), but unlike some other women, I don’t have a set beauty regimen I started honing at age 13, or invest in a lot of different products. Heck, I don’t even wear makeup, so my skincare routine doesn’t go much beyond washing, exfoliating, moisturizing, and cussing about the fact that I still get pimples at my age.

Second of all, I HAVE NO EYELASHES OR EYEBROWS (hell, there’s more hair on my TONGUE than on my face these days), so why I’d choose NOW to start buying fancy face products is anyone’s guess.

Well, OK. ONE reason I chose now was because, after months of spending the $80 monthly “wellness” stipend I get from my employer on (automatic) membership payments to Hotworx—even though I stopped going in the middle of last summer—I finally canceled my membership . . . which meant I had to find something else to do with that 80 bucks in December. And it’s a “use it or lose it” situation, so I had to spend it IN December, giving me little time to waffle about what to buy. Plus, with two treatments in December, and all the Christmas fruffle in between, I was afraid I’d forget to buy something if I didn’t just do it while I was thinking about it.

Now, if you know me, you KNOW that I am a marketer’s DREAM. I’d say fully 73.78% of the items I buy for myself or others are items that I discovered via Facebook ads.

Thazz right. I’m the “OooooOOOOOooooh” Girl. No joke; I literally HEAR myself saying, “OooooOOOOOoooooh!” when I scroll past an ad for something intriguing I’ve never seen before. But I digress.

The point is, I got sucked into checking out Ursa Major products by a Facebook ad. However, while I stand by the aforementioned 73.78% statistic, my ratio of “stuff I check out because of an ad” vs. “stuff I actually buy because of an ad” is like 94:1. (These are extremely accurate numbers.) So I didn’t actually have any intention of BUYING anything from Ursa Major, due to all the reasons listed above—and also because the product I found most intriguing was the Mountain Glow serum, which cost $84. (Just for comparison, the serum I typically use costs $12.)

But of course, the ads kept coming. And I kept “window shopping.”

And finally, one day, with my $80 bucks of “use it or lose it” funds burning a hole in my pocket, I thought, “What the heck?” and bought the serum.

Which actually came with a “first-time buyer” discount (so I didn’t even have to spend the whole 80 bucks, let alone the extra four + tax I thought I’d spend), AND a free sample of another product of my choosing (I picked the Golden Hour Recovery cream).

Been using the serum and the sample for two weeks, and Y’ALL. My skin is SO SOFT. I’m kind of obsessed with it, and I can’t stop touching my face (although with the Triple-demic raging, and a weakened immune system, I should probably stop that shit). I don’t know that I LOOK any different—but I will say that (a) it’s the middle of winter and my shit is all glow, zero flake, and (b) I may have already spent my January stipend on the Golden Hour Recovery cream (with a free sample of the Forest Alchemy eye cream this time).

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME???

I know this sounds like a paid testimonial (or one done in exchange for free product), but I assure you it’s not; that’s not how I roll (and if I did, I would pick a different free product, because I can’t tell you how long I’ll be obsessed with my face, but I can promise you I will ALWAYS be obsessed with FOOD . . . except when I have slimy flokati mouth). I do not care about your skin care routine. I do not urge you to try Ursa Major anything. I think you’re fine the way you are.

I will say, though, that for a gal with no eyebrows, I sure feel pretty.

And that perhaps the reason I was drawn to this particular product line (and the reason I’m less afraid I’ll start associating it with chemo sickness) was that I once had a rat named Ursa Major—and I tend to associate rats with cuteness and love.

Anyone want to adopt a rat?

And speaking of rats and love . . .

Y’all. It happened. Hot Jack is knocked up.

Philly Roll’s surprise balls were, in fact, balls (after such a long time with no evidence of pregnancy, we had begun to think maybe they weren’t b’doobies after all)—and working ones at that.

We made the discovery this evening, when my elder dude managed to catch Hot Jack by grabbing the entire structure in which she was snuggled (sister is FAST; he’s had a hard time socializing her, because all you have to do is glance in the direction of the cage, and no matter where she is (even if it’s in one of the little hidey cubbies where you can’t even reach her) she darts away like she grew a rocket launcher out of her ass, and wedges herself behind the litter box on the bottom level of the cage). He brought her, structure and all, over to me to say hello (weirdly, once she’s caught, she’s totally chill about being handled), and commented about how easy it had been to catch her this time. I said I’d noticed, as I cleaned the cage out the last couple of times, that she seemed less determined to dart away—and slower when she did.

There was a moment of silent reflection for both of us, and then, suddenly, we both had the same thought.

The boy reached into the structure to try to pull her out—and he didn’t succeed (once she was in his hand, he couldn’t get it back through the entrance), but he thrust the structure at me with raised eyebrows and said, “Mom . . . reach in there and wrap your hand around her body.”

“Oh, shit,” I said, once my hand made contact with her.

Love Tank, who’d been in the living room listening to this conversation (which took place in my dining-room-turned-office, where the rats live) requested that Hot Jack be brought to him to check out. He managed to coax her out of the little house (he’s her favorite), and when we SAW her, we were all like, “OHHHHHHHH.”

My girl was PLUMP-a-DUMP.

Now, keep in mind that I clean the cage EVERY OTHER DAY (really, I should do it DAILY, but since the previous rats did not poop NEARLY as much, and only required alternate-day cleanings, the habit’s been hard to break), and I lay eyes on her EVERY TIME . . . but not until TODAY did she become the chunk of cheese she is now.

Thing is, although I know rat gestation periods are about a month, I have NO idea when she started gestating; my guess, based on the looks of her, is that we finna have babies SOOOOOOON (like TOMORROW, even), but maybe I still have time to plan a shower . . . ?

Help, y’all.

And HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Posted on

 Jingle Bells. You know, deck them halls and all that stuff.

Welp! ‘Tis the season, y’all, and boy has it flown by in a hurry! We went from Turkey Lurkey to Jingle Bells in about 72 seconds flat! And during that time, there’s been—as usual—nothing and everything to report.

Health-wise, things are pretty much the same; I got my second Red Devil treatment on December 6, and my body’s reaction to it followed a pattern similar to the first time. The primary difference was that the whole ball o’ fun started a day earlier; whereas last time, Thursday was when the adventure began in earnest, this time the strict, days-long diet of applesauce and rice (and avocado rolls from a nearby sushi joint—a specific sushi joint, I discovered the hard way (by trying rolls from a different, closer place, and being turned ALL the way off by their flawed rice-to-avocado ratio)—which I would have eaten for eight meals straight if I could have) started on Wednesday.

The other difference, this time, was that it was December, which meant that during my gastrointestinal sturm und drang, my children were popping into my bedroom to ask me questions like, “When are we going Christmas shopping?” and “Are we decorating gingerbread houses this year?” (My responses: “Not sure, but not THIS week, Baby Cheese,” and “Maybe—we’ll see, Cookie Butt.” The answers in my heart: “Fuck if I know, Baby Cheese,” and “Fuck that shit, Cookie Butt.” Too harsh? Y’all know I love those boys more than all my favorite socks combined, but their timing sucks.)

I have also noticed that I seem to be losing hair in earnest, now; I may have mentioned my surprise, once I shaved my head early on in this process, that my hair kept growing. And while that’s still the case, it’s a LOT sparser, and my eyebrows and eyelashes have LEFT THE BUILDING, earning me both a new nickname around these parts, and a too-late Halloween costume idea:

My family now takes great delight in making fun of me, because along with my eyebrows went 92% of my facial expressions. I now apparently have a sort of vacant RBF going on all the time, which has resulted in a lot of smart-ass “Why are you giving me that look?” comments from my loved ones, anytime I look in one of their directions. Even the little one (who has been my staunchest ally throughout this process, staying in bed with me for hours on end during the days following my Red Devil treatments, and eating white-rice dinners alongside me in solidarity) has turned on me and joined in on the ribbing; “Hey, Mom, make a mad face—I want to see if it works!” he’ll say. Then, when I give him my best mad-Mom frown, he’ll say something like, “Nope! You just look disappointed and sleepy.”

Story of my life, kid. Story of my life.

But I digress.

The point is, I now have two Red Devil treatments down, and two to go—the next one happening two days after Christmas—and although they certainly aren’t FUN, they seem to be relatively predictable so far: about a week of rice and applesauce, followed by a few more days of eating regular food, but not getting much enjoyment out of most of it (which did have a negative effect on Thanksgiving dinner; all I could really taste was the stuffing, which leads me to believe it was probably WAY too salty for everyone else), and then about a week of feeling “normal” before the next treatment begins.

Even “normal,” these days, though, sometimes involves bone pain (mostly in my ribs, and it’s nothing debilitating, but I find sitting in the same position (at work, or in the car) for too long can make me achy) from the bone marrow stimulant they jab me with on the day after each treatment—and has, for awhile now, involved blackening nail beds on five of my fingers (two on the left hand, three on the right):

Those have become a little achy, too, giving me to know just how much I use my fingernails as tools, because I find I can’t do that anymore, without a little pain (and a little fear that one of those suckers is going to pop right off the next time I try to pick a stubborn label sticker or glue booger off of something).

And finally, I’ve noticed that fatigue can jump on me suddenly and HARD, like a baby grand falling from a 4th story window onto my head. Case in point: one of this month’s Advent calendar surprises for my dudes was an afternoon at the movie theater, which we’d rented out for a private screening of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (yeah, we don’t do the traditional 24 days of Advent chocolate; we go HAM, baby). Boy the Elder invited his girlfriend and a couple of other friends, and afterwards, we schlepped the girlfriend along with us to dinner and then to a low-budget holiday lights tour (i.e., just us, in our car, looking up neighborhood displays on our phones and then driving to check them out).

And MAAAAAAN, I was WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPED afterwards! In fact, I cut the tour short, because I was so exhausted by . . . just . . . SITTING all afternoon and evening—first in the movie theater, then in the restaurant, and then in the car through three measly neighborhood displays—that I was struggling to stay awake by 8 p.m., in bed by 9, and conked out by 9:15. I slept for 10 hours straight (GLORY!), but I still felt like I’d been felled by a freight train for the entirety of the next day, and had to beg off work early to squeeze in a SECOND nap before dinner. And this without even the fun of egg nog overindulgence!

Otherwise, though, I’m doing pretty well for an old gal who’s being poisoned.

It’s the next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways . . .

So now that I’m almost through chemo, I’ve begun the process of planning my surgery. Throughout this whole ordeal, I’ve managed to maintain a one-step-at-a-time focus, so when I was doing the weekly chemo treatments, I only thought as far ahead as the Red Devil. And now that the Red Devil is halfway over, I’ve begun thinking about giving up the girls.

To be honest, the reality of that—of the fact that the boobs I have had for 40-some years now are on their way out—has not really hit me yet. And it may, like the loss of so many other things (mostly of the filamental variety) throughout this bullshit, leave me surprisingly unfazed . . . but I’m prepared for a mild freak-out to jump on me at some point. In the meantime, Nurse Navigator Peppy (remember her?) has booked me an early-January consult with a plastic surgeon, so shit is definitely getting real.

I’ve already decided a few things with 97.4% certainty:

  • I’m going for a double mastectomy, as opposed to a lumpectomy or a single mastectomy, both because I want to be able to say I did EVERYTHING I could to prevent this motherfucker from taking me down, AND because I have a weird affinity for symmetry.
  • I will have reconstructive surgery. We have the technology. We can make them better than they were. Better, stronger, faster. (I’ve been asked if I’ve considered going flat—after all, I resisted wearing a bra for the first 15 or so years of my adult life, and aside from perhaps a couple, at most, of misguided pre-adolescent longings, have never really wished for bigger boobs—and honestly, if I were still 25, I WOULD consider it, but at this point in my life, the “flat” part would end at my sternum, and then the un-flatness of everything below that would be especially, er . . . pronounced. So in an effort to maintain some sort of chest/belly balance, I’m gonna go ahead and get new boobs.)
  • I’m going to get implants. This decision was more recent; I was originally leaning toward the DIEP flap method of reconstruction, because how awesome is the idea of taking fat away from your belly to make you new boobs? However, the more I read about the recovery process, the more it sounded like pure hell—because you’re basically recovering from breast and abdominal surgery simultaneously. So although I was initially hesitant about implants (another personal weirdness: although I know implant sickness is a thing, I was more just squicked about having a foreign object—or, well, TWO—inside my body, which made little sense, because if I broke a hip and had to have it pinned, or needed a pacemaker, I wouldn’t hesitate . . . but I digress), I am now looking at implants as the way to go. If nothing else, they’ll make it easier to achieve the symmetry I crave. But it’s my hope that I’ll also have an easier time, er . . . bouncing back (pun intended) after surgery.

Nothing, of course, is set in stone at the moment, and the consult with the plastic surgeon could reveal some new intel that changes things, but for now, I feel relatively clear about what I want to do, so assuming nothing changes, all that will remain is to set a surgery date (likely sometime in February, about a month from my last chemo treatment on January 17).

Waxin’ Rhapsodic

On the heels of my little dude’s star turn as a duck in his school play came my elder dude’s opportunity to flaunt his own mad showmanship skills, in concert with the city-wide youth symphony in which he’s played cello for three years. When he first joined, COVID prevented in-person rehearsals, so he participated in a 45-minute virtual rehearsal once a week (and a virtual concert at the end of each semester). For the past couple of years, though, he’s been rehearsing in-person for two hours every Monday night, and this season (which began in September), he earned a spot in the more advanced-level ensemble—a difference which was obvious from the first rehearsal.

“How was it?” I asked, as usual, when I picked him up that night—only instead of giving me the usual answer—a shrug and a cursory “Good” (which most parents know could mean anything from “I got to play with an entire litter of puppies today and then scored a free donut” to “I flunked three tests, then accidentally dropped my lunch into the sewer, and I had to fight a rat to retrieve it, so I may have rabies”)—he replied with an exasperated, “Humbling.”

He went on to talk about this horrendously long, complicated, and difficult piece they’d started working on, and how there was NO WAY they were ever going to be able to learn it by the December concert.

As time went on, and I asked how the piece was going, he was still doubtful they’d pull it together in time. At one point, he mentioned that they were flying a pianist in from Germany to play the piece with them, and was stressed about the fact that they wouldn’t have the opportunity to rehearse with her until the day before the show, which was going to make it hard for the cello section to hit their cues.

On the weekend of the concert, they rehearsed for three hours the day before the show, and three MORE hours on the day OF the show, perfecting this beast of a piece.

The funny thing was that I never asked him the name of the piece; because I’m not well-versed in the classical music canon (aside from the Nachtmusik/Für Elise basics), I just assumed it would be some esoteric piece I didn’t know, perhaps by a composer I’d never even heard of.

Imagine my surprise and utter delight, then, when Song Long and Impossible turned out to be Rhapsody in Blue! (I guess this is a testament to my ability to tune the boy ALL the way out when he’s practicing at home.)

Y’all, they KILLED IT. Earned themselves a standing ovation (granted, 99% of the audience were likely their parents and grandparents (not the harshest critics), but still—we didn’t stand our asses up for any of the other songs they played). And all I kept thinking, as I hooted wildly from the second row, was, “THIS was it. THIS was the song that’s been making him grumbly every Monday night for three months!”

Rubbing it here, and scrubbing it there

The other lovely thing that FINALLY happened in December is that I got a CLEAN HOUSE. After weeks of texting back and forth, apologizing to one another for one unexpected turn of events or another (viral illness in my house, school obligations for her), the house cleaner commissioned and funded by my wonderful (bossy) friend was finally able to enter my house and face the nightmare. She brought reinforcements (i.e., another person to help her and likely lend emotional support), and together they spent three hours getting my business sparkling.

Well, most of it, anyway; I gave them a list, in priority order, of what I needed done (first and foremost: scrubbing all the Great Dane head-shake-flung flotsam from the walls), and excluded all four bedrooms, thinking that there was no way they’d even get through all of my list. But damn if they didn’t get every last thing on my list done before dashing out to their next appointment.

And me? I hung out in my bedroom with the flotsam-flinging Dane (the other dog staunchly refused to come upstairs with me, even with the lure of treats, so the ladies graciously offered to work with him downstairs, which likely means they had to mop around his old grumpy ass, as I often do), eating, reading, sleeping, and folding laundry while the magic was happening. It was like a Christmas miracle, yo.

I’d rather have it 30, 20, 10, 5 and let it freeeee-eeeeze . . .

So it seems only fitting, after the small homage to Heat Miser in my last post, that Snow Miser would demand HIS day in the sun cold. Which he did in the form of the winter storm that’s knocking temps below zero across the U.S.—and in the concomitant discovery (by Boy the Elder) yesterday that the pipes in our hall bathroom were frozen solid.

Which was odd, because our other full bathroom—with pipes on an outside wall—still had running water, as did our washing machine and kitchen sink (also along outside walls). Meanwhile, this ONE bathroom, fed (we suspected) at least partially by inside pipes, had no running water. But without cutting, perhaps fruitlessly, into the drywall, we weren’t quite sure where exactly to find the frozen pipes to wrap them or blow-dry them or whatever people do. So Love Tank just busted out the space heaters, and placed one directly in the defunct bathroom, one in boy the Elder’s room (which shares a wall with the bathroom) and one in the pantry/laundry room located directly below the bathroom, to warm that sucker up from as many directions as possible. Then he cranked the taps and closed the door, and we prayed to both Santa and Krampus that nothing would burst.

And lo and behold, as I walked up the stairs to bed last night, I heard water running from behind the closed bathroom door. At first, I thought nothing of it, except, “Why is the elder dude taking a shower at THIS time of night?” but then my brain cloud cleared, and I threw open the bathroom door. Sure enough, both the sink faucet and the shower faucet were running full blast, and I started shouting, “Water! WE HAVE WATER!” until my family came running from all directions to witness the second Christmas miracle of the season.

And to all, a good night

So this brings us to Christmas Eve morning, with a still-relatively-clean house, and all of us nestled snug in our beds—Love Tank and me by choice, the boys because they started fighting at breakfast (after I went out in single-digit temperatures to get their asses Panera) and got sent to their rooms.

But don’t pity them too much, as their final Advent goodies were stacks of books in honor of Jolabokaflod, which we started celebrating last year, because HOW AWESOME are books and chocolate on Christmas Eve?

But I digress.

The point is, since the boys like to open each day’s Advent goody first thing in the morning, they have brand new books and brand new candy to keep them occupied, not to mention a slow cooker full of hot chocolate, which I whipped up before they started fighting, so they could enjoy it with their books—all of which seems to be working, because although it’s edging up on lunchtime, the house is still blissfully quiet.

And that may be the greatest miracle of all.

God bless us, everyone.

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The “little c” chronicles, Part 10: Let’s just call this the TMI Train.

HOOOOOO, y’all.

The Red Devil is no joke.

Before I go on, I will wholeheartedly acknowledge that, thanks to a Facebook support group I joined after I got diagnosed, I KNOW this little demonic fucker has been much harder on other folx, and that I’ve had it rather easy in comparison to some.

But compared to my experience on the weekly Taxol treatments, OY. This shit sucks butts.

I will also acknowledge that some of my Red Devil suffering has been made worse by my own unrealistic expectations. I mean, I anticipated that I’d get hit a little harder with the Red Devil, of course—but I didn’t think I’d get hit so much . . . LONGER.

So I got my treatment on Tuesday, as usual, and despite the fact that the Benadryl is no longer part of the pre-med cocktail, I took a guh-LORIOUS nap during the first part of the treatment (and as a bonus, it wasn’t all restless and twitchy like it often is with the Benadryl). I woke up, however, for the infusion of the Red Devil; rather than slinging a pouch up onto my IV pole, hooking my port up to it, booping some buttons and walking away until something starts beeping, the nurse sat across from me (draping a pad across our laps, to ensure that none of the fluid leaked onto either one of us) with two GIANT syringes of red poison, which she pushed slowly into my port over the course of about 10 minutes.

Aside from development of a sudden headache—which made her pause the push for a couple of minutes until it faded—there really wasn’t much to it. But if you want to completely freak yourself out, Google “extravasation injury” (if you want to freak yourself out MORE and you’re not in the middle of dinner, do the image search)—which, my friends, is what happens when the drugs leak out of the blood vessel into the surrounding tissue. So while my supah-star nurse was pushing Satan into my soul, she frequently checked for blood return through my port, to ensure the port needle was in the right place and not poking a hole somewhere to let Lucifer leak free.

As soon as she was done, I excused myself to the restroom (I get a saline flush after each medication goes in, so there are a lot of loo visits during my treatments) . . . and my urine was already pink from the medication! (Luckily, I’d been warned about this, but was surprised by the immediacy of the rosé pee—which only lasted through the evening, but in order to avoid exposing my family to my still-toxic tinkle, I relegated myself to using only my en-suite bathroom, and flushed twice with the lid down after each use, for the next 48 hours.)

Because the Red Devil infusion only took 10 minutes, the entire visit went by pretty quickly, and I was back at home before I knew it. And because this was a new set of drugs, Love Tank had arranged not only to stay at home with me for the rest of the afternoon (which he always does on treatment days), but to work from home for the rest of the week, so he could be nearby (and pick up our little dude from school), since we weren’t sure exactly how the effects of these meds would roll out.

Tuesday afternoon, I secretly figured that probably wasn’t necessary; I did spend the rest of the afternoon (after lunch) in bed, but mostly because (a) I could, and (b) I wanted to see if I could relive that amazing infusion nap. I had another decent conk-out, but still managed to sleep through Tuesday night (which was ALSO a gift, because as you may recall, I typically stay awake all night on Tuesdays, contemplating all the mysteries of the universe, thanks to the steroids).

The TMI train is leaving the station.

By the end of Wednesday, though, I began to suspect that Love Tank had been right about working from home. I woke up Wednesday morning feeling kind of blecchy, but I leaned into the fact that I’d taken my anti-nausea drugs (even upgraded myself from the Zofran to the Compazine) and logged on for work as usual. I didn’t eat much during the day, because nothing sounded particularly good—but still, when my mom, with whom the boys and I usually have dinner (she treats us to takeout at her apartment) on Wednesdays, called mid-afternoon to see how I was feeling, and if I thought we’d make it, I assured her that we’d be there. By the end of the workday, however, I was pretty wiped, and decided a quick nap was in order before Grandma dinner . . .

. . . and I woke up an hour later feeling . . . not HORRIBLE, but several scoots closer to Hell. I called my mom and cancelled dinner, and stayed in bed for the rest of the evening (prompting Love Tank to skip his Wednesday night teaching gig—which made me feel bad, but by that point, I was beginning to trust his stay-at-home wisdom more and more).

Thursday morning, I again tried to start work (I generally start at 6 a.m., and take short breaks to shepherd my littler dude through his morning routine), but by the time I’d waved Love Tank and the wee dude off for their walk to school, I was ready to crawl back into bed. I made my excuses at work, and burrowed. My initial intention was to see what a couple of hours of rest would do for me, and maybe rejoin the Land of the Living after lunch . . .

. . . but that was not in the cards. I felt gross, food was gross, air was gross, life was gross. I’d made a couple of attempts to eat, but not only was food gross, it um . . . made a rather hasty retreat right back out of my body pretty much as soon as I put it IN there. (At the risk of going WAY overboard with this particular bit of TMI, I will say that I never puked . . . )

Running a-fowl

The thing was, that night was my young one’s premiere (and ultimate) performance as a duck in his school’s production of Turkey Lurkey—and I was NOT trying to miss it! I reasoned that if this kid could manage to stand on a stage and say/sing his lines even though HE was feeling crappy, I could sure as hell sit on a chair and watch him do it while I was feeling crappy.

(Oh, didn’t I mention? The boy is sick. The previous Saturday evening, Love Tank made some off-hand and apparently ABJECTLY CALLOUS remark to him, like, “We need to teach you to ride a bike when the weather warms up again, Buddy!” before blithely heading upstairs to get ready for our planned grown-up dinner out with friends. When I came DOWNstairs—ready to go myself—and encountered my little dude, he was bawling on the sofa about it. (That should have been my first clue that something was up with him, but I chalked it up to his personal brand of weirdness.) He requested a hug for comfort . . . and when I pulled him close, it was like snuggling Heat Miser. Took his temperature, and sure enough, he was Mister 101.4. The fever roller-coastered through Sunday; it broke early Monday morning and stayed gone (so he was able to return to school on Tuesday), but he continued to sound gravelly. When he arrived home from school on Thursday, he came up to my bed, crawled in next to me, and conked out almost immediately (and unlike his mama, this kid NEVUHHHH naps; hasn’t for half his life now, and he’s only six). An hour or so later, Love Tank woke him to ask what he, as the star of the evening, wanted for dinner (Sonic—always Sonic), and when Love Tank left the house to go pick it up, the poor kid passed back out! When the food arrived, I woke him again and sent him down for dinner, but stayed in bed myself (as part of my plan to conserve every ounce of energy I had for the play), until it was time to leave for the school—although as soon as I set foot on the first floor of our home and got a whiff of all the corn dogs, tater tots, and chicken fingers that had gone on down there, I damn near RE-lost the lunch I’d already given up hours before, so I had to head back upstairs and wait until everyone was shoes-and-coat ready to walk out the door, and then make a run for it, holding my breath. But I digress.)

So I rode through the gastrointestinal drama (skipping dinner—which wasn’t appealing, anyway—to avoid more of it), took myself to the school, and crossed my fingers I wasn’t in for The Mousetrap (which I doubted, what with a cast full of first graders with bedtimes).

Y’all, he did GREAT—and Sir was WEARING THAT DUCK HAT like a bawss:

Pork chopsPlain rice and applesauce

Friday played out much like Thursday—except I’d learned a few things from Thursday, and therefore didn’t really make any valiant attempts to eat like a normal person. (Luckily, I’d already seen the Friday hell forthcoming, and so I’d told my team as soon as I officially bailed on Thursday that I’d be out on Friday, too, and would see them after Thanksgiving, as I’d previously arranged to take the whole Thanksgiving week off.) Yet and still, my gut was a constant pendulum of cramp: when my stomach was empty, I’d have the kind of cramps you get when you’re damn near starving, to the point where it feels like your insides are gnawing away at themselves and the backstage side of your belly button is straining to kiss your spine after years of estrangement; but if I ate anything at all, the cramps would turn into the kind you get when you’re about to throw up, and your gut muscles clench up like a line of football players grunting and hurling themselves full force against a five-man blocking sled. Rinse. Repeat.

I will reiterate, though: I never threw up. Small favors.

Saturday, I felt a bit better, and made some attempts at normalcy, like accompanying Love Tank on an errand that would not require me to get out of the car—but I still felt pretty puny, so I continued eating very little and very carefully, sticking for a second day to just unsweetened applesauce, plain rice, chicken noodle soup, and water.

And y’all, my sweet little duck, in a grand show of solidarity, ate only plain white rice himself for dinner Saturday night.

I mean.

(In reality, he probably just didn’t want whatever Love Tank and my elder dude were having, but I’m sticking with the solidarity story.)

But I digress. The point is, by Sunday, this business was really starting to get to me. On Thursday and Friday, I kept saying, “If this is as bad as it gets, I can handle it.” But I didn’t anticipate having to handle it for so LONG. I mean, by Sunday, I did feel better overall compared to Thursday and Friday, but rather than the post-treatment pattern I was used to—a steady, inchy progression towards normal once I hit my “Friday low”—this recovery was more of a “two steps forward, one step back” kinda deal, where each morning I’d wake up thinking that day was going to be the day I would start to get back to normal . . . and then I’d end up circling the drain again. In addition, whereas the weekend used to bring an end to the ick (leaving me a day or two of glory before the cycle started over again on Tuesday), my body was still on the struggle bus come Sunday night—and it took my mood straight into the ditch.

I was TIRED of fuggin’ RICE. SICK of friggin’ “chicken” (because come on, I’m supposed to buy that those gelatinous pink cubes actually come from a bird?) noodle soup. OVER applesauce. And most of all, I was FED UP WITH FEELING LIKE CRAP. It had been almost FIVE DAYS of this shit.

I hated everything.

But then . . .

Monday morning, when I woke up, the clouds let a little sunshine peek through. Oh, I didn’t fully trust it, because I’d already experienced a couple of “Oh, this is better!” mornings already, and that Sealy Posturepedic feeling didn’t last. But I did notice that my hunger felt “normal” (rather than the navel-to-spine thing I had going on before) and the cramping was gone—so, after a couple of hours of careful consideration (read: FEAR), I decided to try venturing beyond the rice diet.

For breakfast, I made myself some Cream of Wheat (in addition to prunes, cottage cheese, and candy corn, this is one of my lifelong Old Lady proclivities).

And it was kinda gross. And I felt kinda gross after. But I managed to (a) eat it all, and (b) move past the icky aftermath with the help of several sticks of peppermint gum (and by laying low and lunchless for the day), and by dinner, I was ready to try the black beans I’d simmered on Sunday in the hope that one day soon I’d be able to pair my rice with something a little more colorful.

It is ridiculous how excited I was for this dinner.

AND IT WAS GOOD, y’all! The black beans and rice tasted good. I felt good.

Well. OK.

The black beans and rice tasted SO good that I gobbled down WAYYYY too much of it (third helping, anyone?), way too fast, and then I did NOT feel particularly good; but once again, the peppermint gum came to the rescue, and by bedtime, when all of those beans and their rice brethren were still inside my body, I chalked it up as a triumph.

My saucy/starchy little saviors, topped with sour cream (oh, yeah, I got BOLD, baby).
After I took this photo, I remembered I’d planned to add chopped tomato on top, but I didn’t want to wait one more second (let alone the eon it would take to chop up a tomato) to eat this glory, so I told myself the tomato would have been too acidic for my delicate constitutional state, anyway, and went on wit ma bad self.

(As a completely unnecessary aside, I was reminded, when I began inhaling my dinner on Monday night (fully aware that I could end up, er . . . exhaling it), of my 25th birthday party: Bobby, a kind veteran bartender at the restaurant where I worked, threw a joint party at his townhouse in honor of me and Mike, a fellow server with whom I share(d) a birthday. As if that weren’t enough, he gifted each of us a bottle of liquor—not like a cutesy little pint just for show, either, but like a fifth.

I got Rumplemintz.

Which I have not drunk since, and shall never drink again.

But a part of my psyche shall be forever grateful to Bobby, who was still my friend even after I lost my dinner in his guest room—and to Mike, who laughed with such kindness as he gingerly plucked bits of that dinner out of my long, curly hair while I sat, slumped and regretful, on Bobby’s staircase watching Bobby scrub black beans, rice, and cranberry juice out of his carpet.

Wherever you both are, I still love you—and unlike that night all those years ago, I’m saying that totally sober. But I digress.)

So here it is, Tuesday again, and although I woke up feeling a bit shaky (I felt good enough to drive the progeny (at the elder one’s request) to a bakery 20 minutes away for breakfast pastries, but stopped short of buying one for myself), I’ve decided I’m gonna live. And now, if nothing else, I have more of an indication of how I’ll need to adjust my work schedule going forward: I’m thinking maybe I just plan on taking off treatment days AND the week following each. Because truly, with last Tuesday’s treatment, it took until Monday for me to stop hating everything, and until TODAY for me to feel OK enough to try to behave like a human being (which I did today, by meeting a friend for a (no-raw-stuff) sushi lunch that would have been a lot cheaper had I realized that the only part of it I’d find enjoyable would be the avocado roll . . . but look at me, digressing).

Another plus, I suppose, is that now I have two more weeks until I start this business over again, which I think I’ll appreciate a little more deeply now.

The biggest silver lining in what I’ve experienced this past week, however, is that it’s given me an excuse to do very little except binge-watch ALLLLLLLLL the HEARTLAND. I mean days and days replete with Heartland! I’m still only on season 6, because although I’ve been watching it for years, I don’t watch it regularly—but I have made quite a bit of Heartland progress (which they call “PRO-gress” in Canada) this past week. It’s been immensely comforting. Heartland is like the mashed potatoes and gravy of television. The homemade mac and cheese of the small screen. Horses make everything better. (Nevermind that I’m afraid of them in real life.)

Slide some oil to me

In other news, since my last post, I’ve met with the amazing, adorable woman (at my age, it’s tempting to call her a girl, because she’s young enough to be my daughter—and I don’t mean in a “teenage pregnancy” way, either, I mean in an “I chose to establish my career and enjoy my 20s before having kids” way, so it kinda blows my mind that she’s a full-fledged adult) who’s going to be designing my outfit for the Bra Couture KC event in April of 2023. We can call her Galentino (although in real life, she has the same first name as one of my former bosses, which means when it came time to text her my measurements for my runway couture, guess who I accidentally sent them to instead? But anyway . . . ).

Galentino is a pure delight! And so, it seems, is her family: apparently her grandfather restores old motorcycles, and since I’m going with a motorcycle theme for my runway look (I tried for skulls, but that idea was kind of a bust for a CANCER-related event, so I offered up that my motorcycle is my happy place), she is a perfect match for me. Y’all, I’ma be wearing motorcycle parts ON MY HEAD. When Galentino first mentioned the idea, I was game, but a bit wary, because I didn’t want to wind up looking like Nipsey Russell in The Wiz. But then she sent a photo of the design elements she’d mined from her grandpa’s shop for my headpiece (which I like to think of as a crown) . . .


. . . and I was sold. The reflectors are EVERYTHING.

Aside from the headpiece, however, I will refrain from sharing any more spoilers about my runway design. I’ll just say that I’m really excited to see how everything turns out! My sister, who happened to be in town visiting, and so went with me to meet my designer for the first time, seems to think—based on eavesdropping on some of the conversations between the other models in the room and their designers—that my design is gonna be the best game in town, but there was A LOT of immense talent in that room. And to be fair, my sister’s a little biased; I mean, her idea of fun was shooting straight from the airport to the roller rink on the evening of her arrival in town, just to hang out with me and my kids at the smaller one’s school skate night and eat shitty rink pizza . . . which makes it obvious that she loves me and mine more than the average bear (hence the bias). So although I DO think my design is going to be FIRE, I think the rest of them will probably be equally spectacular. You know. Minus reflectors.

Gonads and strife

And speaking of fire—particularly as it relates to the flames of love . . .

Remember how I mentioned we’d gotten sweet new baby rats after the sad demise of our pandemic rats? Well, what I may NOT have mentioned was that when we get rats, we always get two girls. I always figured (based on my 1970s-era conventional dog owner wisdom) that two boys would constantly be fighting for dominance (although since the 70s, I’ve read that once a bunch of male dogs establishes a pack order, they pretty much stick with it, whereas it’s the GIRLS who are always fighting for dominance . . . but I digress)—and I had ZERO interest in what would happen if we got a girl AND a boy.

So when we went to the pet shop to get our new fuzzballs, we fished around in the tank of little baby rats, and came up with three girls. (It’s pretty easy to tell which are which, because male rats—even baby ones—tend to have VERY (indeed, disproportionately) obvious . . . boyness.) My children, of course, wanted to get all three, but we narrowed the field to two based on the fact that (a) two of them were almost identical (which means one of them would have to go, in order to avoid confusion), and (b) one of said “twins” was demonstrably less skittish than the other.

Off we rolled with two new rats, for whom we worked out names on the drive home (a conversation to which our children contributed the vast majority of suggestions), finally landing on Philly Roll for the gray one, and Hot Jack for the brown one.

When we got them home, we gave them a couple of days to stop freaking out about what I imagine they viewed as an alien abduction, and then my elder son started working his magic to socialize them (he’s really dedicated, and good at it). As part of that effort, if we were sitting around doing nothing, he would often bring one rat to me to play with while he played with the other one.

So there I was, chilling in my bed one evening, watching Philly Roll wander around on the bedspread (and watching diligently for droppings or drips), when I suddenly got a good, clear look at her backside and thought, “Why does it look like she’s growing . . . boyness???” (It wasn’t as obvious as the boys in the pet store, but . . . boyish nonetheless.)

I pointed this out to my son (only later imagining him at age 27, sitting on a therapist’s couch and saying, “I think it all started when I was 14 years old and my mom made me check out rat genitalia . . . “), and his eyebrows raised. “OH . . . !” he exclaimed, before handing Hot Jack over to me and taking Philly Roll downstairs to show Love Tank—who is apparently the official Arbiter of Rat Boyness (I was going to say “Rat Sex,” but there was a possible interpretation there that wasn’t quite working) in this household.

He came back with the news that Love Tank, too, suspected Philly Roll was packin’ balls.

I looked down into my hands at sweet little Hot Jack.

Since then, SO FARRRRR, there have been no midnight Barry White parties in the corner of my office (where the rat cage lives) that I know of . . . but it’s only a matter of time, I’m guessing. Although, maybe, with the comparatively small jewels Philly Roll is packin’, there may be some fertility issues? At any rate, I’m now wondering about the cost and logistics of neutering a rat. I mean, what do you say to the vet? “We thought we were getting a girl, so please cut those off”???

Thanks, Universe!

The nut smuggler.

Gritty, grimy gratitude

I will say that aside from the surprise cojones, the Universe has actually been delivering quality gifts to me—most recently in the form of good-ass friends.

After my last post, SO many of you reached out with offers to clean my house that I honestly felt a little guilty; I hadn’t made the post to compel anyone to help, but rather just to vent about the fact that my pathetic little “vacation” plans had been thwarted (although, after this past week, I’m glad things happened the way they did, because if I had gotten treatment TODAY as I’d originally planned, Thanksgiving would be RUINED). So of course I politely declined the numerous offers to spic and span my stuff . . .

. . . until one particularly bossy friend (who started out texting me about it, but then actually CALLED to give me a good talking to when I kept foisting her off) came at me with the offer of professional housecleaning services. She and a group of mutual friends, who’d been looking for ways to help, had come together and decided that this was a good way to do it. She was recruiting her OWN housekeeper, and the group would split the cost for her to get my shit shining.

I explained that, although my house was (and still is) currently kind of a disaster, what I really needed was not so much someone to dust, vacuum and mop, but rather someone to go deep: to scrub my walls (that’s the big one); to scrape the scritch from baseboards and corners; to wipe down cabinet doors; to clean the OUTSIDE of the fridge (and beneath and behind it)—that kind of stuff.

“She can do that,” my friend said.

So by golly I’m gonna let ‘er. I’ve made a list. Turns out the hardest part is working out a time, because between the housecleaner’s work and school schedule, and my treatment and other drama (like kids with fevers), we haven’t been able to land on a good day/time for her to come. But I’m hopeful that by my next treatment, I’ll be able to lick the wall behind my refrigerator.

And I sincerely thank the hell out of all of you who offered to help. You are amazing. You’re just, apparently, not bossy enough. 😂

The countdown begins

Other than all of the above, the only other news I have is that my plan for the boys’ countdown-to-Christmas calendars is set, the stuff is purchased/arranged, and now, once this week (during which they are both at home all day errday) is over, I can start filling those suckers up. If you know me, you know that this is HUGE, as typically I’m scrambling on November 30 to get my shit together (because as you also know, I can get kind of elaborate with these bad boys, so I often make the plan way in advance, but then falter when it comes to the timing of the execution). And I suppose I could still end up scrambling with execution on November 30, but at least I won’t still be buying stuff halfway through the month for the days toward the end of the month, and praying Amazon pulls through. AND, knowing I have another treatment (read: another Hell Week) coming the first week in December, I’ve even worked out the plan so that none of the calendar goodies for the 8 days following my treatment require any effort or participation on my part. Look at me go!

Now, I just have to get my mom’s countdown calendar arranged (I started that tradition during the 2020 holiday season, what with so much time to engage in projects at home), but I have a plan for that, too: tomorrow, I’m giving each of the boys a budget, and setting them loose to find 24 Grandma-tastic items to stuff her Advent drawers.

Let the season begin!

Lots of gratitude, love, and merry to you all, as always.

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The “little c” chronicles, Part 9: Feelings . . . whoa, whoa, whoa . . .

Look at me, throwing another post up so soon after the last one! Part of this is because I have a little bit of kinda-sorta news. The other, of course, is just because I feel like talkin’.

The News

The news—or, more like an updatey clarification—is that I talked to Dr. Cool-and-Calm at last week’s visit about the ultrasound results. While I took the 30% reduction in tumor size to be good news, technically I didn’t know how it stacked up against the results most people get in my situation. Should I expect closer to a 50% reduction in tumor size, based on the fact that I was nearly halfway through treatment when the ultrasound was performed? Or is the expectation that the next round of treatment, being more powerful, will result in faster, more significant zapping of the little bastard?

Dr. CaC described my progress (i.e., the degree of shrinkage) as “moderate.” He seemed satisfied with it, but I guess I was right about it not being Jesus-toast miraculous. He also seems to have a lot of faith in the next phase of chemo drugs, though; I asked him what the goal was for that phase in terms of tumor reduction, and he said, “Gone.” I asked if that was even a possibility, and he said it was, in fact, possible (HOW possible, I dunno), and mentioned that these were the strongest chemo drugs on the market for breast cancer.

Which has the effect of being both hope-ifyng and horrifying.

Another interesting tidbit that came out of this discussion, however, was that I’m no longer QUITE as worried about how the second-phase chemo drugs will affect my heart. As many of you know, three members of my family of origin (my dad, my brother, and one of my two sisters) died of heart attacks (in 1996, 1999, and 2005, respectively). So when I started reading up about the possibility of cardiotoxicity from these particular drugs, I became more than a little nervous—and I shared those concerns with Dr. CaC. He asked some questions about the health of the aforementioned family members (dad: healthy weight, unhealthy habits, died at age 68; brother: healthy weight, (mostly) healthy habits, died at age 41; sister: unhealthy weight, (mostly) unhealthy habits, died at age 51), and calmly explained that the chemo drugs don’t affect the arteries, but rather the heart muscle itself—and reminded me that the echocardiogram had shown my heart function to be good. If the same is not true of my arteries, well, that’s on me (and Taco Bell), but if that’s the case, the chemo drugs aren’t likely to make that part worse.

So that was a bit of a relief. The new pain in my ass is that I can’t seem to get a handle on my potassium levels. When I first started seeing Dr. CaC, he advised me that my potassium was low, and that I should start eating bananas. I like bananas, but feared I wouldn’t if I had to eat them every day, so in addition to the bananas (which I scarfed down occasionally), I got potassium supplements, and started taking them daily, along with all the other things. Still, every week, he’d tell me my potassium was low, and ask if I was eating bananas. I’d say not DAILY, but that I was taking potassium supplements in lieu of that. Finally, he told me I should double up on the supplements. So I did. STILL LOW. Now he’s advised me to triple them. Which makes me glad I opted for the supplements, because if I’d put all my faith in the consumption of bananas, I’d be up to like 12 a day now.

In other news, I have started receiving Neupogen shots, to boost my white blood cell count. My count had been dancing around on both sides of the “low” threshold for a few weeks, but finally started to show a steady decline, so now, on the day following my chemo treatment, I get jabbed with some juice to give my bone marrow a little zhuzh. I was told I might experience bone pain as a side effect—and that starting Claritin ASAP would help—but since I’m still working (and it’s hard enough staying on top of my to-dos as it is, what with a 2.5 to 3-day work week), I was hesitant to take anything that was gonna make me sleepy (and EVERYTHING makes me sleepy—always has (even the “non-drowsy” versions of certain medications); hell, I use ibuprofen as a sleep aid) unless I REALLY needed it. I’m happy to report that so far I haven’t; I’m not experiencing any pain at all. Cross your fingers this continues, because if I have to start popping Claritin on the regular, I’ma be REALLY interesting in Zoom meetings.

Other than these small updates, though—and the fact that I just had my LAAAAST Phase 1 treatment, woo-hoo!—things are the same. I’m feeling the cumulative effects of the chemo a little more these past couple of weeks—tiring out more easily, and having fewer days per week (like one and a half, as opposed to two or three) when I feel mostly normal—but I’m still largely able to function like something resembling a regular human most days.

You can’t always get whatcha want . . .

The WORST news, really, to come out of the past week is that I DON’T GET MY BLACKLIGHT CLEANING WEEK.

When I first met with the nurse practitioner in Dr. CaC’s office for my “chemo education” prior to starting treatment, I was given the information that if all went according to plan (i.e., assuming I didn’t have to delay or switch treatments because of some other health issue), my second phase of treatment would begin two days before Thanksgiving. Because Thanksgiving is (as many of you know) my favorite holiday (I mean, all you do is hang out with people you love, EAT, and take naps (and, OK, watch or play football if you want, but I’m all about the naps); how is that not the best holiday ever?), I was pretty bummed about that, but the NP said that I’d probably still be feeling OK a couple of days after treatment, and quipped that I’d also be full of steroids, so I’d be hungry for that gravy-coated stuffing!

(These days, however, most things to eat kinda gross me out—nothing tastes right, to a point where nearly everything is off-putting—so even when I AM hungry, I often don’t want to eat . . . or, conversely, ALL I want to eat is the ONE thing that I don’t find disgusting in that moment, so I’ll wind up eating, like, three fried eggs, or a thing of fries, or a bunch of fun-sized Almond Joys as an entire meal. About those arteries . . . )

But I digress. Point is, imagine my surprise, upon leaving last week’s chemo appointment—and stopping, as usual, by the desk on my way out to pick up the schedule for my next round of treatment-related appointments (consisting of the day-before blood draw, the oncologist visit, the chemo infusion, and now the day-after marrow zhuzh)—to see that my first Phase 2 appointments were already booked . . .

. . . for the week BEFORE Thanksgiving—AKA the week I’d planned (and already arranged!) to take off work so that I could scrub the shit out of all the goddamn things in my house.

I expressed my surprise to the kind scheduler, and she asked me if I’d like her to push that treatment back a week, so I wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of rearranging my time off work—but that seemed a little ridiculous even for ME, I mean, who prioritizes a houseful of sparkling commodes over their own health? And besides, if this whole venture took a turn for the worse, I didn’t want to have to wonder if sticking with the scheduled treatment plan (instead of delaying it a week in the name of achieving lickable baseboards) would have made a difference.

Still, not gonna lie, I was pretty upset.

In fact, when Love Tank came to pick me up from that treatment, he took one look at me and asked what was wrong.

And—hand to Tupac, y’all—when I started telling him about it, I legit started bawling.

In the three-plus months of living in this whole ordeal, I have not cried about ANY(related)THING at ANY POINT (aside, of course, from the initial diagnosis, and the week that followed, wherein I had NO information whatsoever, and so went full-on doom-and-gloom and started thinking about which Earth, Wind & Fire songs I wanted played at my funeral) . . . until THIS.

Love Tank, in typical fashion, tried to come up with a way to help: “Make a list of what you want done,” he said [ed. note: NOT because he doesn’t know how to clean, but to make sure he knew which cleaning projects I cared about most], “and [Elder Boy] and I can do them.”

And I suppose that’s not a bad idea . . . but y’all don’t know how GENUINELY excited I was about Clean Freak Week. It wasn’t just about the resulting clean house (which LAWD knows would be nice, because I have been letting A LOT of my routine chores slide with the idea that I’d get to catch up on ALL of it in a couple of weeks), but also (maybe even moreso) about the cleaning itself.

I like to clean! I had a daily schedule all written up (wherein I was planning to devote 4-5 hours per day to this project) for that week! I already had a bunch of anticipatory cleaning supplies chilling in my Amazon cart!

I HAD A BLACKLIGHT READY, people.

I was looking forward to this like it was a week in Aruba . . . and now I’m going to have to trade my (figurative) snorkel for a pleather recliner and an IV pole.

This shit is SO not fair.

I make no apologies for being this ridic . . . but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that I am.

(In my defense, though, I will also say that in addition to making me feel happier and more relaxed, having a clean house also gives me the ability to be the kind of parent I want to be: the kind who mostly says YES to last-minute sleepover requests.

I DID NOT have those kind of parents (Lord, a sleepover request in my house either involved my birthday or a three-week lead time; all I wanted, just once, was to come home from school on a Friday and be like, “Can Lisa spend the night tonight?” and have some hope of a YES)—and while becoming a parent myself has given me FAR more empathy for my own “no sleepover” parents (I mean, nothing ruins the bliss of a Friday night plan for pantsless drinking and a Freaks & Geeks binge on the couch like a boy begging to have [insert Bestie of the Week here] spend the night), I still take great pleasure in being able to (frequently, but admittedly not as often as I’d like) be the parent I wish I’d had.

And it REALLLLY helps me to be that kind of parent when saying YES doesn’t involve a last-minute scramble to scrub bathrooms/clean the floors/rid the fridge of any unintentional science experiments/de-crust the dog bowls/etc.

Here’s a thing about me: my ultimate goal in life—pathetic as it may be—is to have my house in such a state that if someone dropped by unexpectedly, I wouldn’t feel the need to apologize for anything or strategically place myself in a position to hide something gross (like, say, awkwardly leaning against a wall to hide the five-inch, oddly-brown, dried rivulet of Great Dane spit flung onto it weeks ago during a vigorous head shake).

So back in January of this year, thanks to remote work, I started cleaning during my lunch hour every day (I’ve always eaten at my desk, anyway, and having unfettered access to my own kitchen all day makes that even easier). I started with a single DEEEEEP cleaning task every day, and eventually was able to move on to daily maintenance, so that by a couple of months in, I was ready for surprise visitors. And I didn’t really get any—but what I DID get was the glory of being able to say YES to more sleepovers, because I didn’t have to worry about some sweet kid getting buried under a dog-hair tumbleweed if he slept on the living room floor, or getting his feet stuck to the kitchen floor, or being rushed to the ER with E. coli because he needed to use the bathroom. I Swiffered the hardwoods daily, vacuumed daily, and cleaned the fridge, bathrooms and other areas weekly, so the most I’d have to do to be sleepover-ready would be to maybe load the dishwasher or scoop up the littler dude’s Magnatile mansion or most recent art happening from the living room floor. And buy snacks, of course. There must always be snacks.

So there were a couple of glorious months in there when I was a happy, relaxed, “YES” mom.

And now they’re over. A HUUUUUUUUGE summer project at work, coupled with the mid-summer whirl of doctor appointments and the late-summer chemo kick-off (i.e., shorter work weeks) means that I fell further and further behind—and then kind of gave up entirely—on my daily lunchtime cleaning regimen. Which I was able to let go with the idea that I’d get caught up between now and the start of the next chemo phase . . .

But now that’s all gone to shit.

So last Sunday, when my older son asked if he could invite his girlfriend—whom I like quite a bit for someone I’ve only met twice—to carve pumpkins with us on Sunday evening, I damn near plotzed, thinking about how gross our house was; not gonna lie, I was relieved when she couldn’t come.)

Deep Thoughts . . . by Auntie Fester
(I’m going a little dark, here, people.)

I suppose you could argue that my blubbering over the loss of my cleaning week goes a little deeper than bathroom grout grime . . . and you’d probably be right.

In fact, I’ve heard from a couple of friends this week, who’ve expressed something along the lines of, “You seem to be handling this well, and staying really positive, which is GREAT—but if you’re ever NOT doing those things, that’s OK, too.”

And of course, if there were ever a time for a mofo to fall apart emotionally, this would be, conceivably, one of the best ones. So I’ve been getting a lot of “Yeah, but how are you REALLY?” vibes from more than a few people, who stand ready to throw down an inflatable mattress to break my fall if I start to topple . . .

. . . but so far, I’m still upright . . .

. . . which has gotten me thinking about how I have always been this person—the person who handles BIG, AWFUL THINGS (to reiterate: dad, brother, sister) with stoicism and grace. The thing is, it’s the little things—things that other people pretty much move past after a glass of wine and an evening of self-pity—that knock me on my ass emotionally.

The death of someone I love? Oh, it sucks, don’t get me wrong, but as corny as it is, I kind of buy into the cliché about how grief is a prime indicator of having loved well—so I can lean into that and somehow feel a nugget of good fortune in the midst of it, because ultimately, it means I got to have some amazing people in my life.

A BREAKUP, on the other hand? I mean, I haven’t experienced one in decades now, but those suckers (well, some of them, anyway—you know, the ones that weren’t MY idea) were sheer and utter TORTURE for me, even in cases where I knew it would happen eventually. I mean, was I really going to spend the rest of my life with the under-toothed stoner dude who scavenged clothes from garbage bins and whose wardrobe included a single, flowered footy sock (because the bin in which he’d found it hadn’t included its mate) that he wore regularly with a sock that didn’t match?

NO; however, when he and his footy merrily staggered off in another direction, I called in sick to work and curled up in my bed for DAYYYYYS, forcing friends to come and knock on my door to check on me, since I wasn’t answering my phone.

And then I wallowed in misery (I worked, but I wallowed) for a few more months (prompting both casual acquaintances AND MY EX to be like, “hey, have you lost weight?”), until I fled town (yes, permanently) to escape it.

(On a related note, know who I think are the most bad-ass people in the world?

Teenagers.

More specifically, teenagers who fall all the way down deep into love, and then—after the breakup—are forced to see their exes EVERY DAMN DAY at school. Forced (if, God forbid, there’s a set seating chart) to stare at the bear-shaped birthmark behind their ex’s left ear all through Biology. Forced to see their ex laughing with friends at lunch like everything is fine. Forced to find out from that snarky bitch Brianna in gym class that their ex has asked someone else to Homecoming.

How do they do that shit?

I mean, I know this happens to adults as well; some adults have to continue seeing their exes at work, or church, or backstage at the community theater production of The Crucible, and still others have to co-parent in difficult situations.

But they’re adults, not kids with whirling hormones and fragile first-love baby hearts!

Plus, adults have some modicum of control over their lives, so if it gets unbearable they can find new jobs, or churches, or seek out a new group of thespians. (Doesn’t work as well with the co-parenting issue, but at the very least they can avoid co-parenting with John Proctor.) Or in some cases, they can even—ahem—skip town. Teenagers, on the other hand, typically have nothing but (a) new love, or (b) graduation to save them from the torture of everyday ex sightings.)

But as usual, I digress. The point is, I’ve always been the person who can handle an impaling far better than I can handle a paper cut. And while a psychologist could probably come up with a bucket full of reasons for that, here’s what I think:

For me, when the worst, most shitty thing happens, well . . . the worst, most shitty thing has happened. And I’m sitting right in the middle of it. And there’s nothing to do but survive it. But when SEMI-shitty things happen, there’s always a way they can get worse—which gives my brain plenty of fodder to torment me with the possibilities—and therein lies the misery.

The death of someone I love means I’ll never see that person again, which is horrible, yes—but it’s OVER; a breakup, on the other hand, means I MIGHT have to see that person again, WITH SOMEONE ELSE, even, and then I’ll fall apart all over again.

A bad day at work (bearing in mind that MY bad work days don’t involve lives lost or anything, so again, I’m aware I’m being slightly unreasonable) keeps me up all night, because what if I get fired?

A stupid fight with Love Tank clenches my gut all day because what if we end up divorced (see breakup notes above)?

Accidentally saying something that offends someone at a party wrecks my soul, because what if I’m actually a total loser who never even deserved friends in the first place, and everyone has been waiting for this moment for years so they’d have an excuse to cut me out of their lives entirely?

You get the idea. And of course, any one of these situations could result in me living in a van by the river, surviving on Slim Jims (which I don’t even like) and ramen, and cuddling an empty KFC bucket outfitted with a Sharpie-drawn face and paper-towel-roll limbs as my only friend.

And there’s no statute of limitations on this, yo; my brain hangs on to these things FOREVER, so with every SEMI-shitty thing that happens, I remain convinced that at any moment, I could suffer some sort of KFC-bucket consequences, even if it happened 17 years ago.

Having cancer, though, basically plants me smack dab in the middle of my “worst case” scenario. It is HARD, don’t get me wrong, and I’m not always Little Mary Sunshine about it—and yes, it could certainly get worse in SOME ways (the Red Devil looms). But at the risk of being macabre, the WORST possible outcome (which, for the record, I DO NOT expect to happen) is going to be much harder for those people who love me a lot than it is for ME, isn’t it? (Unless they’re people like me, who prefer the impaling, I guess . . . ) If it DOES happen, I won’t be the one suffering. (Of course the mere thought of leaving my babies motherless and sad breaks my heart into 54.5 million pieces, and . . . I can’t really stay in that head space for too long, or I WILL topple over emotionally. But ultimately, again, I’m not the one who’s going to have to LIVE for days/weeks/months/years with that pain. They are.) So in essence, I am, once again, sitting in the middle of what, for ME, is the worst thing that could happen. And this is kinda my comfort zone.

It may be whack. But here we are. Now. Let’s lighten this bitch up a little, shall we?

That was Halloween, that was Halloween . . .

So in lighter news, we just wrapped up a damn good Halloween! For those of you who don’t know, Love Tank goes a little cray decorating our front yard and garage for Trick or Treaters.

This year’s masterpiece.

We don’t get Trick-or-Treaters in droves—like what you see in movies, where the whole neighborhood is deeply invested in Halloween, and hordes of kids are traipsing up and down the street amongst the swirling leaves, collecting candy from every house—rather, we mostly get them in moderate trickles; however, this year, Love Tank launched a brilliant marketing strategy: he put a sign down at the end of our street, pointing the way to our home haunt, like people do when they’re having garage sales.

It worked! Still no hordes, but we got quite a bit more business!

My Halloween thing is to make homemade cinnamon rolls. It started years ago, before we had kids, on a particularly frigid Hallows Eve. I thought it would be nice to be able to invite grown-ups we knew (neighbors, and friends of ours who were driving over to see Love Tank’s masterpiece) inside to warm up with the rolls and some hot cider while their kids traipsed around outside, checking out the scene.

And somehow it turned into a thing. (A thing which has morphed over the years, as our kids have come along: I used to wait around inside the house for Love Tank (who hung outside with the candy) to send people in for treats, but once it became necessary for Love Tank and me to tag-team Trick-or-Treating duties of our own, I started distributing my goodies outside, either before the ToT-ing began, or afterwards, when it was my turn to sit outside and man the candy bucket while Love Tank prowled the streets, towing a kid in search of full-sized Milky Ways.)

I have skipped the cinnamon roll tradition ONCE in the 17 years we’ve lived here: the year I totaled my car at the outset of October, and then went down with the flu shortly before Halloween, which meant I had used too much PTO to be able to afford my usual day off work to make my rolls (each batch of 18 takes me 2+ hours, and back in those days, I made two or three batches). Since then, however, I’ve held strong—and heck if I was going to be brought down by little c THIS Halloween!

So although my best customers (now basically down to my favorite neighbors and my kids) didn’t expect them this year, I did crank out a batch. (There was no hot cider, though; since (a) I never drank it, (b) I never got as many takers on it as I did for the rolls, (c) my husband and elder son prefer it cold, anyway, and (d) temps were in the 60s on Halloween night, I just bought a gallon of cider (for TEN BUCKS—WTF???) and left it in the fridge for my dudes—no heating or spicing.) I distributed some of the rolls to neighbors, and sent a bunch away with my older kid, who spent the evening hanging out with friends at one of their houses . . .

. . . which left just enough for me to eat one and, what with my taste buds being wonky, find it unenjoyable, and therefore let my kids eat the remaining four (which I’d normally hoard for myself).

I did do a little Trick or Treating—about one and a half hours’ worth—with my little guy and another family and it was lovely, but HOO-WEE, it wiped me the EFF out, and afterwards, I felt like I’d been hit by a truck.

Still, I was beyond grateful that Halloween fell on a Monday this year; usually, I’d hate that (it means the festivities tend to shut down early, since kids have school), but with my Tuesday treatment schedule, Mondays are my best days, so this year’s timing worked out marvelously.

Oh! And if you’re wondering, I didn’t end up going with any of the costume ideas I considered; after having gone with the family to the elementary school Trunk or Treat the week before, and then showing up at the school on my “bad” day (Friday) for BOTH the costume parade in the morning, and the class party in the afternoon (for which I’d signed up to be the Snack Mom), and then carving pumpkins on Sunday, knowing that cinnamon rolls and Trick or Treating (PLUS my weekly blood draw) were still to come on Monday, I decided I’d get plenty of Halloween this year without a costume.

Now I can start planning Countdown-to-Christmas calendars for the boys—which is the pain in the ass we choose in lieu of Elf on a Shelf.

I got a brand new pair o’ ro-odents, they brought some brand new pee . . .

Apologies to Melanie for the lyrical liberties, but in other good news, we got new cute baby rats over the weekend! (We considered a couple of degus for a change, but ended up going with the tried and true once again, with the plan of researching degu care for next time.) Names (which we have) and photos (which we don’t, because they are some hidey little muhfuggers, and we’re giving them time to adjust) to come in the next blog post.

In the meantime, THANK YOU as always for stickin’ in. As we roll into the season of gratitude and love, my good fortune in knowing y’all is not lost on me.

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The “little c” Chronicles, Part 8: That’s about the size of it.

If, after reading the title of this post, you immediately started singing this song in your head, you are my people.

But look at me, already digressing, when I have BIG—er, actually, SMALLER—news:

My tumor has shrunk by 30%. Yeah, BABY!

While I myself could see and feel the tumor getting smaller (i.e., the dent in my boob that started this whole chain of events was less noticeable, and I had to dig around a little to feel the lump, which had previously been detectable with a much lighter touch), MY anecdotal assessment seemed—as Love Tank put it—rather “unscientific.”

Mama wanted PROOF.

And last Wednesday, I got my wish; I went in for an ultrasound to measure progress, and both the breast mass and the rogue lymph node measured smaller than they were at the outset of this fun adventure (the lymph node was not as much of an achiever, having only shrunk by about 9%, but it was smaller to begin with—so small that the first radiologist missed it, as you’ll recall—and hey, smaller is smaller, so I’ll take it). Like most things that have come up during this experience, it’s hard to know EXACTLY how worked up I should get about it, because I haven’t talked to Dr. Cool-and-Calm (my oncologist) about it yet—but I’m counting it as good news! Not MIRACULOUS news, like the liquefaction of ancient saint blood or the appearance of Jesus on a piece of toast—or even like Ric Ocasek’s freaky-looking ass somehow landing the likes Paulina Porizkova as a wife and mother to his children—but good.

I mean, not to speak ill of the deceased, but COME ON.

In other medical news, I’ve stopped taking the Gabapentin. After I discovered, thanks to my friend Dr. Awesome Pants, that the Gabapentin does nothing to stop or reverse chemo-related nerve damage (which I didn’t understand when it was prescribed), but rather only masks the symptoms thereof, I wanted to get a clear idea of just how bad the neuropathy in my hands and feet actually WAS.

The good news THERE is that so far, it’s not bad; it’s still what I’d call mild, and mostly in my feet rather than my fingers, so I haven’t been required to ask Love Tank to button my clothing for me.

(Which is good, because just thinking about that gives me traumatic flashbacks to my freshman year in high school, when I played clarinet in the marching band. After a particularly frigid halftime show—during which it was so cold I couldn’t move my fingers on my clarinet keys and didn’t even bother to blow into it (both because my lips were frozen and because, due to the finger issue, I wouldn’t have hit the correct notes anyway)—I found myself unable to get out of my band uniform, as there was no way I could manage the fasteners with my frozen digits.

Enter my sweet dad, who attended every game (I’d like to say it was to cheer me on—and to some extent it was—but I’m betting the football part held more appeal for him than the part where I and a bunch of my fellow nerds marched in the shape of a (likely lopsided and only marginally identifiable) rotating sunflower while tooting out an ersatz version of Sussudio). As I stood in the band section of the bleachers, shivering and humiliated, rendered helpless as I was by my utter popsiclization, he extracted me from my band uniform (beneath which I was FULLY dressed, I mean it wasn’t butt-in-the-wind humiliating or anything) and wrapped me in his parka until I thawed out enough for my cheeks to be reddened by mortification rather than windburn. By that time, thankfully, the second half of the game was about over, and I could go home and burrow under the covers, mentally replaying the shame of reliving my toddlerhood in front of my peers, until I fell asleep. But I digress.)

I will say, though, that I now understand why some folx refer to the neuropathy as “painful.” When I first started experiencing it, I wouldn’t have described it that way at all, and I found it odd that other people did. “I feel numbness,” I told Love Tank, “but there’s no PAIN.”

Last night, however, I felt . . . STILL not PAIN, per se, but a mild ACHE in my toes that wasn’t there before. Luckily, I’m two treatments away from the end of the Taxol treatments, and Dr. Cool-and-Calm tells us that the next combination of meds—while it offers a whole host of other potential atrocities—does not cause neuropathy, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to ride to the end of Phase 1 with little to no permanent damage.

I used to say . . . she and she . . . now it’s I . . . now it’s me . . .

(Again, if you’re channeling Baby Michael Jackson right now, we are soulmates.)

So in sadder news, over the past few weeks (and couple of blog posts), both of my sweet rats have died.

We got them during the pandemic. After a couple of rounds of less-than-stellar luck with a couple of other pairs of rats who didn’t live very long at all—although one of them, Lawd hammercy, spent TWOOO LONG DAYYYYYS dying; I actually created a little rat sling (similar to the kind parents use to tote around their newborns) to keep her close to me, because eventually I needed my hands back so I could work—we got these girls, who’d been with us a couple of years. (Actually, it wasn’t so much less-than-stellar LUCK that caused us to cycle through the previous rat pairs so quickly, but rather less-than-stellar education; we’d been choosing rats from pet store enclosures labeled “jumbo,” thinking that “jumbo” indicated a breed of rat, when actually it indicated age of rat—so once we realized that the smallest rats were not, in fact, destined to be tiny forever, but were literally just BABIES (and that we’d essentially been buying rats that were kinda long in the tooth by choosing the jumbos), we chose these two little guys (or gals, I should say), and had much better “luck” keeping them alive.)

Rickets went first, on the day our littler human split his head open on the playground at school. I think maybe I didn’t have the energy to hit y’all with ALL of that during the last blog post, but yep. That was a day of more dramas than one. I’d started watching her closely that morning, because she seemed a little lethargic, and was sticking to one area of the cage. I’d managed to get her to nibble some snacks with a decent degree of enthusiasm, but still, she wasn’t really interested in moving around much. So I figured I’d keep an eye on her, and if she didn’t pep up soon, I’d get my rat sling back out.

My initial fear was that she’d been hurt worse than I thought on a day, maybe a week or so prior, when her ding-dong ass FELL OUT of the cage onto the floor. Unlike her sister, Pleurisy, Rickets has always been more of an introverted homebody type; whereas Pleurisy popped to the front of the cage whenever anyone approached, and would crawl out onto your hand if you opened the door, Rickets always hung back (and made you pluck her out of the cage yourself if you wanted to hold her). You could leave the cage door open for six years and she’d never venture out, whereas Pleurisy would be out and crawling around on top of the cage within six seconds. So one day, when I had taken Pleurisy out and put her on the floor of my office to let her explore a little, leaving the cage door open, I was surprised to hear a soft THUD and see Rickets on the floor! Although she seemed to have landed on all fours, she was standing stock still, looking rather shocked by this turn of events.

I rushed over and picked her up to see if she was OK, and she emitted a loud SQUEAK, which startled me enough that I dropped her back onto the floor, and the drama started all over again. While I fussed over her and got her back into the cage (which took no more than like FOUR MINUTES tops), Pleurisy saw an opportunity to fuggin’ DISAPPEAR and WENT FOR IT. That little whozit managed to get her ass ALL THE WAY to the second floor of my house and into my bedroom (where I unwittingly trapped her, because the first thing I did when I realized she was on the lam was to run around the house and close all the doors so I wouldn’t have to look in EVVVVVERY nook and cranny for her), resulting in half a day of panic searching for THAT damn rat after panicking that the OTHER damn rat had given herself a concussion. In the end, though, Pleurisy was found, and Rickets seemed to be OK . . .

. . . but then, a week or so later, she didn’t seem to be so OK. Instead of carrying HER around in a miniature sling, however, I spent the day in the ER with a blood-crisped child, and by the time we got back home, Rickets had gone to meet her maker. (I was pleased to find that Pleurisy had kept a respectful distance; decades ago, one of my rats died while I was at work, and by the time I got home, the other rat had EATEN HER HEAD. That was perhaps the moment I knew Love Tank was a keeper, because although he had no matrimonial obligations to me back then, he took care of the situation while I fled to Pier 1. But I digress.)

Once Rickets was gone, we started talking about whether or not to get Pleurisy (who seemed a little depressed after the loss) a new sister. In the meantime, we tried to give her extra attention and play with her as much as we could in the absence of her old sister . . .

. . . but then this past Friday, my elder son (who always goes into my office to greet the rats before he leaves for school) brought Pleurisy to me on the couch (where I’d stationed myself to spend my day of rest, since I wasn’t working) and suggested I keep an eye on her, because she was making a wheezing noise as she breathed, hadn’t come out of her hammock to greet him when he opened the cage and started talking to her.

So I hung out with her on my chest, and within the hour, she had gone to join her sister in the big sewer in the sky—as confirmed by Love Tank who, since that long-ago horrible rat head-eating incident, seems to have established himself as the Rodent Death Handler in our household.

Now my children won’t stop asking when we’re getting new rats, as if it’s a given, like when we run out of dog food or strawberry jam: “Hey, we’re out of rats.”

Pretty Pleurisy (Rickets never wanted her picture taken.)

Giftin’ and Upliftin’

So that’s about the size of it: the tumor is shrinking, as (temporarily) has our number of pets (we’re down to two dogs and a snake; practically an empty nest)—but my appreciation for y’all just keeps swellin’, as you continue to send notes I can’t keep up with, gifts I’m remiss in thanking you for, and so much love.

The big, gorgeous earrings are still rolling in (although the full-on alopecia has yet to arrive; it’s making its way in slowly, so although I’m still shaving my head occasionally, I’ve noticed I’m unintentionally rockin’ my ’90s eyebrows again (my Gen X ladies remember what I mean), and have finally achieved the “occasional-shave” legs I wished for in the ’80s as opposed to the “daily-shave” ones I actually had), and I’d be horribly remiss if I didn’t mention THEEEE PERFECT gift from Love Tank in honor of my new blog domain:

No words required.

Other than that, I’m gearing up for treatment 11 today; one more after that, and then a BREEEEEEAK before I start the next treatment phase.

I think I mentioned I’m taking a week off work during that break to clean the schnizz out of my house during that time . . . but did I mention I have a BLACK LIGHT for the occasion?

Mama didn’t come to play.

(Although, knowing Mama, she will actually play (read: sleep and Netflix binge) more than she means to, and only manage to get half the cleaning done that she has planned. But right now, I’m looking at my schedule for Cleaning Week, and making a list of supplies I’ll need to order within the next couple of weeks. Whoever invented Mr. Clean Magic Erasers can go ahead and start shopping for that second yacht now.)

All the love, thanks, Xes and Os!