This is the 40th blog about my breast cancer journey since I was diagnosed with it in early March this year. It has been the most trying one to write.
Every morning I wake up, look in the mirror, and see a body deformed by cancer. I can’t help it; cancer has been a life-changing experience in every aspect of my life.
Some days it’s easier to accept because I am still alive despite the diagnosis. Other days it’s discouraging, and makes me feel sad because my life is forever changed by cancer.
I didn’t ask for cancer, my own body delivered it to me. I still struggle daily with how to live with this disease.
There are times when it feels like it’s just a bad dream, but then I wake up and realize that it’s not a dream. All I need to do is look at the changes to my body, feel the effects of cancer treatments daily, and remember to attend an array of medical appointments every month.
I know that some of the cancer changes to my body are temporary, and that one day I will be fully restored to a “new normal”. Other changes are permanent. It’s the permanent changes that are hardest to live with.
Part of my body was removed to rid it of cancer. I now wear a breast prosthesis to look normal. My head is hairless. I now wear a cranial scalp prosthesis to look normal. My eyelashes and eyebrows are fading and are starting to fall out. Soon, I will wear artificial eyebrows and eyelashes so that I can look normal. Hopefully, I will be lucky and all of my hair will grow back once treatments end, as some cancer patients face permanent alopecia after treatment.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but when I’m in public, it feels like people stare at me and secretly wonder about my appearance. They likely know that I have cancer, as a hat on a woman’s baldhead is usually a dead giveaway that one is sick. “She must have cancer, poor thing,” I can almost hear them say to themselves. Others give me a smile knowing I’m not well.
Before cancer, I once owned a fit, slim body. With cancer, my abdomen is swollen from daily blood thinner injections and houses a tender band of bruises. Chemo fatigue has created a lack of energy to maintain my former several times weekly rigorous exercise routine. When these factors are married with steroids in the chemotherapy medication, the result is that my body shape is changing. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this is only a temporary condition.
I’ve lost the trademark “sparkle in my eyes” as the weariness in living with cancer is starting to show in my eyes. My positive spirit has become a resident on an emotional rollercoaster, as I go ride the ups and downs of dealing with this disease.
With this breadth of change going on in my body, I look and feel far from beautiful.
The Look Good Feel Better Program
Perhaps this is why cancer treatment organizations and the cosmetics industry throughout North America have banded together to create the “Look Good, Feel Better” (LGFB) program for female cancer patients. It’s a great program that I attended before our daughter’s wedding earlier this summer.
In the LGFB program, patients are taught techniques for skin care and make up application to look good and feel better, with emphasis on reducing the risk of infection when using cosmetics. The risk of infection arises for cancer patients when they use old contaminated make up. Thus, the LGFB program makes cancer patients discard all of their old make up to reduce their risk of infection with immune compromised bodies.
The cosmetics industry is aware of this hardship, and works with local volunteer cosmeticians and cancer treatment organizations to replace a patient’s old make up with a box full of free cosmetics and skin care creams. The LGFB “prize package” by my estimation is worth $200-300 per patient. It is a nice treat to leave the session with new make up and a new look.
The LGFB program orients patients to look good and feel better, but it’s only a temporary high. The reality of living with cancer sets in soon after the session ends, because you‘re never really free to not think about your illness. Cancer patients are reminded about the condition and how it affects their life every time they look in a mirror.
Cancer Brings Out the Humanity in a Person
Cancer has a way of bringing out the humanity in a person as they journey on the road to getting well. Admittedly, there are times when it is darn difficult to muster the strength I need to battle this dreadful disease.
There are times when I live with cancer that make me feel numb to the outside world, and to the inner world of my feelings. I have started to experience cancer overwhelm moments where I “zone out” and have a temporary memory lapse. For a few brief seconds, I don’t know where I am and shake my head to get back to reality. At these times, I feel at a loss in how to live with cancer. I want to hide in the safety and familiarity of my home.
Most days, I feel strong, confident, and know that I can conquer this disease. Then there are days when I feel weak, and am looking to wave a white surrender flag. Fortunately, the good days far outnumber the bad days. The loving support of those who care about me is critical in this cancer combat.
Somehow I’m getting through the tough times, but honestly I don’t know how. Getting through this cancer journey is no longer a day-by-day survival, many days it’s an hour-by-hour survival.
The expressed love of others in daily phone calls, emails, cards, prayers, and visits sustain me in living with cancer and the treatments I am undergoing. Daily, I look forward to the various forms of contact from people who show that they care. These simple gestures mean the most to me as I battle this disease.
Many days my “wellness” well is dry. These gestures add water to my life-giving well. They lift my spirits and assure me that although I am away from others—be it family, friends, colleagues, and co-workers, they have not forgotten to walk alongside me in this difficult journey.
I draw strength from this wellness well each day as I am challenged daily to find ways to replenish the life-giving water that is so needed to fight this disease. With the love of others, I am committed to refreshing my life and spirit day after day with Strength, Courage, and Determination.
I thought that after two rounds of chemo, I’d pretty much know all the side effects. I was wrong.
The third chemo cycle has whacked with a whammy.
Each chemo treatment has presented slightly different side effects from the previous one. With chemo #3, it’s been more than a slight difference on this seventh day of my treatment cycle. I now understand what other cancer patients say about getting through chemo and how it gets tougher as you advance through more treatments.
With the first and second chemo infusions, I would feel rough on day three. By the eve of day four, I was bouncing back to better energy levels and stronger emotional and physical health. By day five, I could feel that I was slowly starting to get better.
It came as quite a surprise that this third chemo session has hit as hard as it has these past few days. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, as medical professionals treating cancer patients tell them that chemo side effects are cumulative as more of the medicine stays in their system after each infusion.
Yesterday, I was one-third through this current chemo cycle. I have yet to bounce back to better energy levels and stronger emotional and physical health. I am now getting familiar with chemo fatigue.
As a cancer patient, you are well educated about chemo fatigue, but you really don’t know what it’s like until you start to experience it. I am now experiencing it.
Chemo fatigue makes you feel more than just tired. There is lethargy with chemo fatigue - a mental, emotional, and physical tiredness. There are times when you literally struggle to move your body, even if its just a few steps or climbing a set of stairs. Your memory tends to fail you with all of the chemo drugs in your body.
This third chemo cycle has redefined sleep deprivation in my life. I have never been a good sleeper, but it’s gotten much worse while living with cancer and chemo.
With the lack of sleep, a side effect of the chemo that has arisen is clogged sinuses. With this chemo cycle, my head has been stuffing up at the end of each day as if I had a bad cold. Overnight, I will reach points where I can’t breathe because I am so stuffed up. It forces me to wake up several times a night to hydrate my mouth. The ongoing “chemo dry mouth,” is now further compounded because of mouth breathing with clogged sinuses. The head cold symptoms do pass once I get up and move around.
Presently, a “good” night’s rest will have me sleep three solid, uninterrupted hours. Any sleep time after that is a bonus. The bad part of all of this is that I have never been a napper, so catching up on sleep during the day seldom happens. Maybe it will with advancing chemo fatigue.
Throughout my cancer journey, I have been emotionally strong until these past few days of chemo cycle #3. There is now an emotional frailty that has unexpectedly crept in with this third chemo cycle. The littlest day-to-day things can set off a river of tears that rise up in me from nowhere.
I’m also acquiring new fears because of the many treatment related complications that have beset me. I have to be selective in where I go in public places due to cleanliness concerns that can pose an infection with my chemo-lowered immunity. I also have to watch my contact with people who may be sick as they too are an infection risk, so my social life is affected. These concerns, when combined with the various chemo complications make me want to stay close to home, rather than be out for any extended period of time. Consequently, I am becoming more selective on where I go, and with whom I spend time.
However, one of the biggest whammies with this chemo cycle is the loss of appetite, which has really shaken me. Until now, I’d been feeling well enough to eat and enjoy most foods while undergoing treatment. This is a perplexing phenomenon for me. For a foodie, this loss of appetite is disconcerting. It comes with a reduced sense of smell and taste, accompanied by a constant acidy-metallic dry taste in my mouth. Many foods now disagree with me.
From when I rise to when I turn in at the end of the day, I have no desire to eat anything. I don’t have the smallest scrap of an appetite. My stomach hurts because it’s empty, but food is unappetizing—especially raw fruits and vegetables, acidy foods, and any kind of meat. I literally have to force myself to eat. For anyone, food is fuel, but its even more critical for cancer patients to repair chemo damaged cells with proper nutrition.
It’s a new chapter of struggle in this cancer journey. Each day, I make a vow to renew this cancer fight with Strength, Courage, and Determination.