Bustin' bricks...

Now to today. Today was brain fry #3. It has been exactly like they said. I walk in and about 7 minutes later, I'm walking out. The steroids are giving me a little boost in energy and I've found myself in overdrive at the house. I've figured out it's happening again. Just like when I was first starting chemo, whenever I felt good, I'd go into a cleaning & organizing frenzy. I've come to understand it's becuz of the total lack of control I feel I have over my body and I have to feel 'in control' somewhere. Oh well, the house is clean, the clothes are clean, the dishes are clean, and my closet is now organized.....guess it's all good for sumthin! LOL!

My first brain fry...

They girls at the office called me to tell me that my first appt would be a bit longer than the rest cuz they had to set up the measurements on the machine the first time. I went in and she put me on the table and put the mask on me. If you can't tell from the pic, the mask is actually locked down to the table so that my head cannot move. It sounded like a torture device but actually wasn't that confining. I couldn't move my head but the mesh was so open that it really didn't feel that confined. I can hear fine thru it and talk thru it so I was okay. She started doing the measurements & we chatted about what to expect...all the things I had talked about with my friend yesterday. It was nice to hear the exact same things from both of them. About 20 minutes later, she told me we were done with the measurement part and we were gonna do my first treatment. Be still and I'll be back in a minute. She walked out, flipped a switch, and a little hum came on for about 30 seconds. She came back in and switched the machine to the other side. She went back out, flip, hum, 30 seconds later, she was back. 'You're done!' She told me that was all it was gonna be from here on out with here. I could even bring my baby and the girls up front would push him around in his stroller for the total of 7 minutes it takes up to do this each day. Wow! Okay!

Radiation 101

First thing in the morning, I got a call from the radiologist office. It was a girl who happened to be the sister of my my Mother's best friend, the nurse at the doctor's office she worked at before she died. She had recognized my name on their appt book and decided to throw herself into action. She got my appt that day switched to the other office where we could get all the prep work done to start radiation ASAP, instead of having to spread it out over a couple of days. She also explained to me some of the facts of radiation. There are little to no side effects, with the exception that you hair falls out in the treated area. Yep, I was gonna lose my hair again. At least this time, I get to keep my eyebrows & lashes. There was some fatigue but with all the healing from the breast surgery, I'd prolly not notice that much & I was going back on the steroids to help that anyway. Oh joy, let's gain another 10 pounds! It was good to talk to a familiar voice though, and it did calm my nerves a bit.
Hubby took me to see the radiologist. This is the same woman I saw in the beginning who didn't want to do radiation cuz I had no tumors in my body. She's 6'5"...I'm not kidding....and just such a comforting soul. She explained to me first and foremost that I was NOT to look at this as 'here I go again' cuz that wasn't the case. Our brains have a saran wrap shield around them and these spots were prolly there before but the PET couldn't see them. Also, as far as chemo, the meds don't get to your brain becuz of that shield unless it is given directly into the spine for brain, which mine was not. My chemo worked beautifully just as it should and there was no reason to think that the radiation wouldn't do the exact same thing to these...gulp, tumors....in my head. She said she was very 'cautiously optimistic'. She also told me that we'd do about 3 weeks, every day but weekends, all over my head, then spend about a week concentrating on the one bigger one that was pressing against my brain that was surely causing this vision problem. She said if all went as planned, my vision would be just fine. Okey doke, then....
The nurse took me back and explained to me that we had to make a mask that would steady my head for my treatments. It was an eerie hot mesh that laid over my head and hardened. We finished that up in about 10 minutes and I was done for the day to report back to the closer office the next morning for my first radiation treatment.
I was numb. Brain cancer. Tumors. Radiation. It was hard not to feel like 'here we go again' but I had to keep thinking the same way as the first time....'Trust the doctors, trust the meds, trust God'

Another day the earth stood still...BRAIN CANCER

Finally the nurse came out and handed me this huge envelope with what looked like xrays in it. She told me my GP wanted me to bring these back over to his office....as I walked out & got in my car, I called my hubby. This can't be good. What would my doc need ME to bring these RIGHT over? Hubs tried to calm my nerves telling me not to over think it til I was over there. I went into the office & my 2 aunts that work there funneled me back to one of their offices in the very back cuz the doc was with his last patient. I sobbed. Then I bawled. I knew from their reactions something was wrong......very wrong.....again.....
Doc finally came in and wrapped his arm around me. He slowly explained to me that there were 'spots' on my MRI. These spots would need radiation. RADIATION?!? That means brain cancer!!! He tried to calm me down enuff so that I could understand that I needed to see the radiologist immediately and that the nurse was making me an appointment. He assured me that they were very small spots and he had every confidence in the radiation to take care of it.
I insisted on driving home alone. I needed time to clear my head. Unfortunately, clearing it didn't help...it just presented more questions. How did this get missed in the PET scans? Why didn't the chemo get it? Was it not there before and cancer grew in less than a month in my head? What's radiation treatment anyway?
I went home and fortunately, hubby was off and stuck by the kiddos and let me go to bed. It was almost as bad as a year ago when I was first diagnosed but this time I did fall asleep for quite awhile. Unfortunately for the hubs though, I woke up at 4am in terror!! Waking from a nightmare is a good thing....waking into one....not so good!

Screwy little eyeballs...

The last half of January I started getting a spot in my eyesight. It was like when you look up in the sun and it's a gray spot, but this didn't seem to be going away and it was always in the same spot. It made me nervous and I gave it a week to see if it'd subside. It didn't and I decided that, considering all my past experiences, that I wouldn't put off a visit to the doctor. I went to see my GP just for a visit & to show him the new pups, then off to the eye doctor...The eye doc took a look and said he thought I had a patch burned into my visual field from the optical migraines I get. Unfortunately, he thought it also would be a permanent spot. UGH! He still wanted me to go get an MRI to be sure all was good. I went that afternoon for that....I've never done an MRI and I gotta say...UCK! I'm not claustrophobic, I quite enjoy my PET scans where they strap me all warmly bundled to a table and shoot me into an open ended tube for a 30 minute nap...but this thing was different. I was on a table and they put ear buds in my ears (cuz it's loud), then they put my head in an open box & stuff it with cotton on both side. Lastly there's a plastic mask thing that goes over your face. The face thing I could handle but the sensory deprivation from everything being muffled almost made me come out of my skin and this thing last for 45 minutes!! I hated it!!! Not to mention the pressure that still comes down on my chest when I lay completely flat on my back for too long....oh well, it was done...finally....
The nurse told me to wait in the waiting room so the doctor could make sure it was done right. I sat there for about 10 minutes....I began to wonder what was taking so long....15 minutes, 20 minutes.....okay, my mind is just in overdrive now....

Been a while...

Well, I spent the better part of the last couple months healing from the reconstruction. It's been a bit rough cuz I'm just so sick of hurting all the time somewhere. Hubby keeps reminding me we are in the final stage and that it will all be over soon. I know he's right about the breast surgery but in December I had to get another PET scan and every time one of those roll around, I'm a bit nervous on what it's gonna say. No worries this time, though, cuz once again, it was clean!! We celebrated Christmas this year in grand fashion with a new outlook on the future!!