1st Anniversary

Today is exactly one year since my diagnosis. I have been thinking about this day for a while and I still can't work out how I feel. I am not sure if I feel happy, sad, nostalgic or just exhausted from the past 12 months. I am not sure whether I should celebrate or hold a memorial. It is just strange. When I think about what has happened in the past year, I am happy that the worst is behind me, but also sad because it is still not over. I am not ready to celebrate as my treatment has a few months to go and I am still dealing with side effects of treatment (ie. lymphoma and fatankles). I have been told that it can take up to twelve months for the chemo drugs to work out of your system. I find this strangely comforting, as I think if the cancer had the balls to come back, at least there is still something in my system to knock it out.

I am still seeing the physio for the lymphoma and am doing my daily exercises and stretches. I have been able to avoid having to wear a compression sleeve, which I am relieved about as it is starting to get steamy here; and a compression sleeve isn't the summer accessory I was hoping to purchase. I do have an array of stretchy tape going up my arm, across my back and around my boob. This is supposed to help create new pathways for the lymphatic fluid to drain, I am not sure how it works, but it appears to have helped. I also have to wear this bumpy pad thing (yes, that is the highly technical name for it), which is supposed to massage your boob. Think of it as a masseur sandal for your breast. One thing that I thought I would never have to do was pad my bra - but that is just added to the long list of 'things that I have had to do this year that I never thought I would'.

As I have said before, I don't feel like the old me and not sure how I feel about the new me. I know that I still hate my hair and don't really recognise myself when I look in the mirror. So many people have said to me how I suit short hair. The comments have ranged from 'it really brings out your eyes' to 'you are lucky you have such flat ears' to 'you have great high cheek bones to be able to carry it off'. Whilst that may be the case - it still doesn't make up for the fact that I had long hair until I got cancer, had chemo and became bald! Having high cheek bones and flat ears isn't much of a consolation. I know that people are being kind and trying to make me feel better about my post chemo fuzz, but nothing is going to make me feel better about it.

Over the past few weeks, I have been reflecting on the year that was. Whilst it was a tough year, I discovered I was tougher. I remember at the beginning, some friends didn't know what to say. One friend called me and could only swear to me on the phone. One friend told me to look to Belinda Emmett for inspiration (that didn't really give me much comfort since she passed away from breast cancer!), but I knew my friend was trying to be supportive. I have been speaking to family and friends about how they heard the news. The day I found out was such a haze, I can't remember who I called and who I texted and who found out through the grapevine. I was talking about that day with my mum and she still gets very emotional about it.

The year has both gone quickly and slow. Going through chemo I felt every minute of every hour of every day. Since I finished radiation, the year has gone very quickly. Getting back into the routine of work and immerse myself in a new challenge has made the past two months fly by. I can't believe that next week is December and more importantly the week after that is my birthday! Birthday plans are in full swing and it should be a fun night. I am having my check-up and scans before my birthday, just like last year, although unlike last year - this year the results will be something to celebrate!

2010 has hopefully been the worst year of my life, but luckily I have had the best of friends and family to help me get through. I am looking forward to seeing the back end of 2010 in a few weeks...bring on 2011!!!!!

Almost a year has passed

Almost a year has passed since my world imploded, it was November 25th 2009 when I found out I had breast cancer. Coming up to the one year mark, I feel a bit weird. As I reflect on the past 12 months, I realise just how much has happened and what I have gone through. I have spoken to some friends who have also just passed the 12 month mark and they have the same mixed emotions. On the one hand, I am happy that it is almost over, but on the other hand I feel exhausted from having to fight against it. It is unusual for me not to be able to convey how I am feeling, but the best way I can describe it is - weird. Things just feel weird. It is like I don't fit into my old life, but am not quite ready for my new life. I am not worried about going for my 12 month scans and mammogram; it may be naive of me, but I am not worried about the cancer coming back. There is nothing I can do to stop it returning, but I kicked its ass once, I will do it again if I have to (which I am really hoping I don't!).

Last weekend I went to the Relay For Life, which is organised by the Queensland Cancer Council at the RNA. It was amazing to see the amount of people who where there to support people who have been lost to cancer and are still fighting against it. They had a candle light ceremony which ended in a video montage of images of the people that have been lost to cancer. I am not sure if it was the photos or the Sarah McLauchlan song that went with it, but it hit me like a smack in the head - why me? I don't mean 'why me' as in why did I get cancer, but why did I survive it and they didn't. There was one lady who was diagnosed and passed away four weeks later. How can you be happy in your life and then be gone in a month? How can you fight against something in a month? It makes no sense to me. It has really compounded the feeling that I want to give something back to the people that have helped me through the past year and also to the people who are going through this battle. I know a lot of people refer to it as a journey, but I am not a fan of that term. Journey brings up images of driving along a country road with the wind in your hair and a cool soundtrack blasting through the car stereo. Cancer has no cool soundtrack and the only wind that you have is caused by chemo and has the toxic power to knock out a small child.

My treatment continues and I continue to battle with fatankles. Although my fatankles now have a friend - fataboob. I have lymphodema in my left boob. I had the humiliating experience of having to have my breasts weighed. It was all very technical and done using a Tupperware kitchen scale. I was surprised to know that the affected boob weighs one and a half times the unaffected boob. So you can imagine the difficulties of buying a bra that makes both boobs comfortable and happy. I am seeing a physio who specialises in lymphodema and cancer rehabilitation therapy. She is amazing and has taught me a lot of things that I can do to ensure that the condition doesn't get worse. I am required to sleep in a compression bra, which not nearly as sexy as it sounds. I am also required to do special massage to get the fluid moving; which resembles feeling yourself up, but I am told it has a medicinal purpose!

Overall, life is pretty good. Work is going great and I am loving it. I am also busy planning my birthday celebrations. Hopefully, this year they won't be highjacked by cancer! It is almost Barney's first birthday too. He continues to grow and is now the size of a small horse, pretty soon I will be able to put a saddle on him and charge kids for a pony ride. My focus for the next few weeks, coming up to the anniversary, is to remember how far I have come and not to dwell on the bad stuff. Treatment was horrific, but I got through it. It is the getting through that I will focus on.

The fatankle drama!

I am entering my third week of my new job. I am working four days a week and I am not sure how I managed to work five days in a row!!!! This working thing is exhausting, but I am loving it. I will never love the public transport part of working, but I love having to get up in the morning, get dressed and have a purpose that doesn't involve doctor's appointments and hospital trips. Although, these last two will be a part of my regular life for some time to come, at the moment they are not my focus. It is great to be part of a team again and I am learning a whole new industry. Who would have thought that the energy, oil and gas industry would be so full of acronyms! My post-chemo brain is getting used to them all.....slowly.

I started my new job the day after my Herceptin treatment and at treatment was advised by the doctor that I 'may experience some slight swelling' in my ankles and feet. Wednesday was the first day that I noticed any change in my lower extremities. By the time I hobbled home on Friday night (and the hobbling was not due to espresso martinis), my feet and ankles were enormous. I measured my left ankle and at its peak it was 49cm in circumference. This was roughly the same size as my nephew's head when he was born. I wasn't too worried, and since I wasn't experiencing any heart issues (which can also be caused by Herceptin) I didn't go to the hospital on Friday night. I was slightly worried that my feet may explode at some point during the night, so slept with them elevated (may be too elevated as I was the shape of a V during sleep) and when I woke up they were not quite at grotesque. The oncologist advised that I should get some Lasix tablets to help reduce the swelling which would allow me to be able to bend my ankles and walk normally again, as opposed the the ice-skating inspired glide I had mastered over the previous 12 hours. My dad very kindly arranged for the script to be filled from Canberra and all I had to do was pick up the tablets from the local chemist. I diligently took two tablets every morning, but didn't see much change. At the end of each day I would have to resort to the ice-skate glide to move around and my feet would have the indent of what ever shoes I was wearing that day. After five days of taking the tablets, Dad discovered that the chemist had given me Losec, not Lasix, and whilst Losec is very helpful for the irradication of stomach ulcers, it turns out it is not so good at helping with fatankles. Anyway, I have started on the right tablets and the excess fluid is now escaping from my body at a rate that Phar Lap would be proud of.

I have continued going to the young women's group, which has been great. Speaking with the other women has made me realise that I am well on the way to mental and physical recovery. I am not the type of person to worry, so I do not worry about recurrance rates, fertility and life expectancy. If I was going to live by statistics, then I shouldn't have gotten breast cancer at 34. The group did make me start thinking about the possibility of early menopause. None of my doctor's have mentioned this word to me, but I knew that infertility was a possibility, I just didn't make the connection that it was due to early menopause. I was not looking forward to the hot flushes, mood swings, dry skin and excessive body hair. After losing all my body hair, I was going to be really annoyed if I came back looking like a Wookie. I was advised that if my period could take up to two years to return, if at all. Anyway, in true super fertile form (just like having 20 eggs harvested after ten days of hormone treatment) my ovaries have kicked in and have started working just three months after chemo finished! I never thought I would be so happy to require the regular use of sanitary products.

I have treatment again next week. The three weeks seems to come around more slowly and I think it is because it doesn't take me two weeks to recover, like chemo used to. I now have more time where I am feeling like myself and am not curled up in the foetal position on the couch. I just hope that the fatankle drama doesn't happen every treatment, it really was painful and grotesque. I sent a few friends the picture and it took them a while to work out that the horrid, hobbit like foot was actually human and belonged to me! Although, one good thing about having such fat ankles - it makes your thighs look skinny in comparison!

My first hair cut!

I am continuing to feel better and better. My hair is sprouting at a rapid rate, which I hope is due to the very expensive shampoo I bought to encourage hair growth. I went to the hairdresser last week to get my hair coloured and cut! At least now I no longer look like a koala with hairy grey ears and it looks like a hair cut that I had done intentionally. I do miss my long hair and get a little cranky when I see people with long hair who do not appreciate it. I saw a girl at West End yesterday who had very long blonde hair which was matted, dreadlocked and had different things sticking out of it. I thought to myself that she didn't deserve such long hair and it looked like it needed a good wash.

I spent last weekend in Sydney - which was awesome. Great friends, great food and great rugby (apart from the fact that Giteau can't kick and the Wallabies lost by one point) - it was the perfect weekend for me. My friends took me to degustation at Quay, which was the most amazing food experience of my life. I would recommend to anyone to ignore the price and just do it! Between my trip to Tasmania and the Sydney getaway, I am starting to feel like myself again more and more. The Sydney trip had been planned during my treatment and it was great to have something to look forward to after radiation. For me, it has been a great way to mark the end of the horrid part of the treatment and the start of new beginnings. I would recommend to anyone who is going through treatment to plan something to look forward to, it doesn't have to be a decadent weekend away (although mine was fantastic!), even a nice dinner somewhere or a night away, just something that you can say after this - is the rest of my healthy new life.

Whilst in Sydney I caught up with a very close friend of mine who is currently going through dialysis. This is for six hours, three times a week. I had lunch with her and then went to the hospital for her treatment. I miss the days when we had lunch and then went shopping. I felt fine walking into the hospital with her, we were just chatting and laughing as we always do. She was shown to her chair and asked me to get some blankets for her. When I returned the nurse was there with the tray of needles and tubes. I stopped in my tracks and realised just how my mother would have felt on that first day of my chemo and every treatment after that. It hit me like a punch in the face and I burst out crying. It is a horrible feeling being on the other side and watching someone that you love so much having to go through that, and you feeling so helpless to do anything for them. I feel fine with how I coped with the treatment and how I feel at the moment, but now I have started to think about how it was for the people who are closest to me. I am beginning to understand the different reactions people had to my treatment.

The young women's group continues to go well. Yesterday there was much discussion about fertility. I didn't find this topic as confronting or draining as the last group, as I feel that fertility isn't an issue for me at the moment. Having children is so far in the future for me, it isn't even in my realm of thinking. At this point in my life, I am aiming at a first date! As for kids, I am an Aunty to nine great kids and the best thing about them - is I get to give them back to their parents at the end of the day!

Spring has sprung....and so has my hair!

I am not sure whether it was my time away, the time of year or that I am feeling better, but something has definitely changed. I am starting to feel more and more like myself, which is great. I have more energy and best of all - I have more hair! I am now able to put mascara on my own eyelashes and have had to start using hair product to control my unruly hair! My hair is just long enough to be messy (in small parts) in the morning. Who would have thought that I would be excited over having bed hair????? It is still very short, and my sister says that I look a bit like a koala because it is hairy over ears, but I am not inclined to get it cut yet as I want to avoid looking like Dr Spok. There is quite a bit of natural highlights in it (ie. grey), and it was pointed out that there is a bit of silver fox - but I like to call it silver foxiness. I will do some hair grooming before commencing my new awesome job in a few weeks.

Whilst I have been thinking about the future and making plans in the past week, today I started thinking about the past and how far I have come since the beginning of the year. I remember those days when it was an effort to get out of bed and get off the couch. I will never take my health for granted again. I hated that feeling of helplessness and having to rely on another person to help feed me, wash me and dress me. However, I am very fortunate to have had people who were there to help feed me, wash me and dress me. Well actually, the unhappy task of having to wash and dress me was taken up by my mother. She has been there every step of the way and I think she has felt it more than I have. She is one of the most amazing people I know and I will never take her for granted again.

Although I have been feeling optimistic about the future, I still have my poo-poo moments. I had one of these on Saturday. I was attending the wedding of a friend on Saturday afternoon and I was thinking about how I was going to another wedding alone. I knew the bride, had met the groom once and had met only one other wedding guest once. In the past, this wouldn't have been an issue for me, but I didn't feel I had the energy to make small talk with strangers for hours. I have started venturing out without anything on my head and was feeling self conscious about my hair (even though I am super excited to have it return), I still don't feel quite like I used to. I was feeling flat and sorry for myself; and I watched a documentary about people with dwarfism. They had a story about a woman who had a particularly rare form of dwarfism where she was less than 3ft tall and her joints were fused together. She was very independant, lived by herself, drove a car and was a teacher. I thought if she can do all this alone - then I can go to a wedding alone. It was then that they showed her celebrating her 28th birthday at her mother's house - where her boyfriend proposed to her!!!! I felt that this was the universe slapping me in the face and telling me to stop being such an idiot.

On the subject of being single, my six year old niece asked me why I didn't have a boyfriend. I told her that I didn't know the answer to that question. It was at this point that my four year old nephew raced in and said 'I know why you don't have a boyfriend Aunty Karen, it's because you use all your love on me'. He is very insightful for a four year old.

The great escape!

I have spent the past five days in Tasmania. I hadn't been there before, but I was looking forward to having a break. Friends did ask me why I was going there, but I had never been there before and was looking for something new to do. I have to say I was very impressed. Tasmania is beautiful. I spent Friday by myself with a map and a hire car. The good thing about having no destination is that you can't get lost. I worked my way up from Hobart to Wine Glass Bay, which was stunning. It was the first day I had to myself and had no plans for a very long time. I felt like I had been let out of jail and was making my escape! I spent the new few days with a friend who took me around the southern tip of Tassie, driving through the wine areas and even went up Mt Wellington for a snow fight! It was the first time in a very long time that I felt like me again (albeit with short hair!). Sadly, the return to reality was tough, as I had to make my way from the airport straight to the hospital for treatment. However, I have woken up today feeling well and refreshed. Only ten more treatments of Herceptin to go!

The only downfall about the Tasmanian trip was that I did miss the young women's group on Monday. The group last week was good. There is a mix of stories and personalities, which always makes for interesting discussion. It still amazes me that so many young women are afflicted with this disease. I heard that the average age of women who get breast cancer is over 60, yet I am hearing about more and more women who are half that age! I met one girl who was 28 when she was diagnosed. I can't even imagine getting that news when you are so young. It freaked me out enough when I was 34.

In other news, my hair is rapidly making a comeback and I bought some shampoo that is supposed to help it grow faster. I am not sure if it will work, but at least it makes me feel like I am doing something helpful. I am hoping to be able to get a hair cut before I start my new job in three weeks! I feel like new beginnings are starting, just in time for spring.

Returning to normal

It has been just over a week since my radiation finished and I am surprised at how quickly my skin has recovered. It is not back to its usual winter pastiness, but it no longer has the texture of an old leather boot. The cracking has healed and the blisters are but a distant painful memory. I will need to be careful about sun exposure, but so far things are looking good. I am starting to get more energy and haven't had my daily nanna naps for a few weeks.

Since the article came out in City News last week, I have received some wonderful messages from current friends, old friends, family and strangers. The support through this has been amazing and continues nine months after my diagnosis. Life is getting back to normal and it is a relief to not have to think about going to the hospital every day or how sick I will be after my next chemo treatment. I relish the mundane things in life - like shaving my legs which I finally did this morning. I am happy to report that my armpit hair has failed to report for duty, and I am not actively going in search of it.

The support group at the Mater for young women starts today and I am looking forward to it very much. I have been reading a blog of another incredible woman who has just started chemo and it makes me realise just how far I have come. When you are bogged down in treatment you can't see the end, then the end comes and your body bounces back very quickly. A friend of mind told me that the most amazing thing about chemo is that your body actually survives it. For those who are reading this and are bogged down in chemo - there is light at the end of the tunnel. Even on the days you can't see it - know that it is there waiting for you.