Feeling Peaceful

The lows of chemo are SO low. I haven't ever experienced physical trials like this before. When I'm sick and miserable, I sometimes even begin to question whether or not it's worth it to keep pushing forward. However, there is something truly beautiful in being pushed to your limits and then feeling completely surrounded by love, grace, miracles, and peace. There have been more times than I can even count in these last few months when I have been surrounded by angels. Sometimes they are friends dropping by to visit or bring us dinner; sometimes they are nurses sitting down in my hospital room just to talk; sometimes it's nobody that I can see, just an overwhelming feeling that I am loved and never ever alone. And you know what? Cancer is hard, it's frustrating, and it's painful, but I don't think I would wish it away if I could. It's really hard to explain, but something tells me that for the rest of my life I will look back on these experiences and feelings with reverence and gratitude. Miracles are everywhere, every single day. If there's one thing cancer has taught me so far, it's that. And if there's one thing I wish everyone knew, it's that. God sees you, he knows you, he loves you, and there really are miracles everywhere. I knew that before I had a cancer, but now that there are way less distractions in my life and I am much more frequently brought to my knees, I feel it all the time. Some people can feel it all the time without needing to have crazy, life-threatening illnesses, but I'm stubborn so I needed the life-threatening illness.

That's really all I needed to say today. Other things definitely worth mention though are

1. My medicine is making me lose my mind. I called my aunt today to apologize for sleeping the whole time she was visiting me in the hospital, only to hear from her that I was awake the whole time, we talked, and really enjoyed each other's company. I wish that was the only experience I've had like that.
2. Surgery is coming up in a few weeks! I'm nervous, but excited! It will be so nice to find out what the necrosis is of the tumor in my leg and get a more definite prognosis.
3. I organized me and Michael's drawers. They're beautiful.
4. I cleaned the inside of my bathroom sink handles. If I've talked to you in the last week I have probably casually brought this up in our conversation because I'm so proud. I mean WHO unscrews their sink handles to clean inside of them. That right there is taking homemaking to the next level, my friends. And maybe that would earn me a couple more bragging points if I could walk across my bedroom without tripping on anything. Yikes. You win some, you lose some.
5. I am home from the hospital! Woo hoo!

Aaaaand some pictures.

Playing Set in the hospital with Amber

I can't remember for sure, but I'm guessing this picture was
not taken at the end of the game =]

Super Bowl party hospital-style

High-Dose Methotrexate

It's official: I survived the first round of chemo! I am 1/6 of the way done! Wow. Saying that actually makes the finish line seem really far away. So I am going to stop thinking about that ridiculously small fraction and focus on the fact that I made it through an entire round, the world hasn't ended, and I haven't felt ANY pain in my leg since I started chemo. Since I have finished a whole round, I now have some sort of idea what the next many months will look like for me (I know some of this is a repeat).

Day 1- Get chemo for 7-8 hours
Day 2- Get chemo for 7-8 hours
Day 3-9 Feel really sick
Day 9-20 Feel good, but get tired easily and sometimes a little queasy
Day 21-25 Check into the hospital and stay for 5 days while I get pumped full of poison/other fluids
Day 26-27 Feel okay, still a little sick and tired
Day 28-32 Check into the hospital and stay for 5 more days
Day 33-36- Feel okay
Start over

I know, I know. I didn't blog about my hospital stays. I guess I can catch you up. I had to stay in the hospital twice for high-dose methotrexate. These weren't emergency hospital visits, they were a planned part of my chemotherapy and will unfortunately be happening every round. Methotrexate is very effective in killing cancer cells, but could be devastating for many of my good cells if it wasn't followed up with a "rescue" 24 hours later. So they give me this other drug called leucovorin that rescues me from the poison they just pumped into me, give me lots of fluids to flush it all out of my system, and monitor me very closely until the methotrexate is out of me. That's the short version anyway.

I doubt you want a play-by-play of the 10 days I spent in the hospital (most of which consisted of sleeping, watching way too much TLC, and knitting) so here are just my most favorite and unfavorite things about staying in the hospital.

Favorites:
-The fun bed
-I could ask the nurse for a sack lunch any time I got hungry
-Walking around my floor while pushing around my IV stand
-Watching football games and movies with Michael
-Nurses from my first visit hearing I was back and coming to say hi
-Visits from family
-Having food brought to me for all three meals- this was an unfavorite for the first visit, but by the second visit I figured out what foods were safe to order
-Having lots of time to knit

Unfavorites:
-Nights--between having to use the bathroom every 2 hours and nurses coming in to give me meds and draw blood every 2ish hours, sleep was hard to come by
-Nurses coming in while I was sleeping in the middle of the night or morning, flipping on the light switch, and trying to hold a conversation with me
-Being tethered to an IV at all times
-Trying to change my shirt with tubes going from my chest to an IV stand. I had to get pretty creative sometimes.
-My face getting really chubby from all the fluids. At least I think it was the fluids. I'm going to say it was the fluids.

K, I'm just going to apologize for how wordy this post is. I can't think of a single blog I like to look at that isn't 75% pictures, at least. I will make a conscious effort in the future to take pictures of everything. And just so your click over here to my blog isn't totally in vain, here are two random pictures I just took of myself on the webcam so you could have pictures. Be grateful because it was super awkward to sit here in the infusion clinic and take pictures of myself.

Finishing knitting my second scarf

Me pretending to be smiling at something on my computer
screen. What? Me taking a picture of myself on my laptop?
No no no, there's just something funny I'm reading online.

Bald

That's what I am now. From the time I was diagnosed with cancer, I never really thought I would care about losing my hair. That might sound dumb or untruthful, but there were much more significant things I was worried about than losing my hair. You might remember it was one of the things I joked about with my students to lighten the mood when I first told them I had cancer. We laughed about my baldness and joked about what color my hair would be when it came back.

"MRS. CHRISTENSEN, WHAT IF IT COMES BACK GREEEEEEN?"
"Then I will look awesome."
"AND YOUR EYEBROWS COME BACK PINK!"
"AND YOUR EYELASHES COME BACK RED!"
"That would be so cool. I will definitely come show you guys if that happens."

And since I'm going off on a tangent about funny student comments, I HAVE to throw this one in. The whole class was telling me I need to visit, they were making supportive comments, etc. etc., when one of my students said, "Um, Mrs. Christensen, if you do come visit will you PLEASE wear a wig. Bald people, like, really freak me out. Especially bald women." I had to suppress my laughter. "Yes, I think maybe I could wear a wig." "WHEW. Ok good." One thing I love about 5th graders is the wide range in social development. But that is totally a topic for a different day. This was supposed to be one of those DEEP posts where I, you know, talk about emotions and stuff.

My doctor told me I would probably start to lose my hair around Day 14 of treatment and by Day 17 it would be gone. We left to go to my in-laws' house for the holidays around Day 14, so we were sure to bring all my hats, scarves, and my wig with us. I was lucky because my hair didn't even START falling out until around Day 17. Let me tell you though, I had no idea the emotional toll it was going to take on me. My poor husband. Often at night I would just go to bed and cry. And really, it wasn't about the hair. It was about saying my final goodbye to the life that I had wanted for myself. I can't run, I feel sick a lot and tired most of the time, I'm unable to teach, Michael and I can't have children right now . . . it seemed like nothing about my life was normal and cancer-free except for how I looked on the outside. I truly felt like my appearance was the last normal thing I was clinging to, and now even that was leaving me. Michael was so good though. I would be sad and he would just tell me how much he loves me and how beautiful I am and how he was excited for me to shave my head. I look back and am still impressed by him. There were so many wrong things he could have said to me, but he didn't say any of them. I love him.

Anyway, as I ran my fingers through my hair, strands started to come out. It started just a few hairs at a time, but by Day 20 it was a mess. We're talking almost handfuls of hair coming out. It was weird. I was losing so much hair, but because I had so much hair to start with you couldn't tell that my hair was thinning. Despite continuing to look normal, I decided to shave my head just because of the mess my hair was starting to make. My sweet mother in-law first shaved my hair into a mohawk, then just left a nasty little patch on the front of my head, and finally finished shaving it all. I feel pretty proud that I kept it together the whole time she was shaving my head and made it all the way up to the shower before giving in to a good cry.

Then you know what? An amazing thing happened. I got out of the shower, spent an extra long time putting my makeup on, put on the new J.Crew cardigan I got for Christmas, and felt good. I didn't feel hideous, I just felt bald. I then went and put on my wig. It turns out the wig looks better than my natural hair. Amazing. I still totally covet people with hair attached to their heads, and Michael was making fun of me as I frantically wrote down the phone number on the infomercial promising "a full head of hair" to middle-aged men with receding hair lines (Just kidding. Sort of). But I really am surprised that women shaving their heads isn't more popular.

Ladies, let me tell you the benefits of shaving your head:
-Amount of shampoo used to wash hair: I use a bean sized dollop of 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner
-Time to dry hair: 3 seconds to pat it dry with a towel
-Time to fix hair: 0 seconds
-Time spent throughout the day worrying if your hair is in place: 0 seconds
-Points for being "edgy": At least 6

Love this man.

Side Effects

So much of my anxiety in having cancer and starting chemo was just not knowing how I was going to respond to treatments. I didn't know what my life was actually going to look like. Would I be flat on my back and throwing up for the next 7-8 months straight? Would I just be a little bit tired? I didn't know. My doctor did tell me that my particular regimen of drugs is very hard on the body. With some chemotherapies, people can still lead normal lives. My doctor told me that while everyone reacts differently, keeping my job and living life normally was not how this was going to pan out for me. Now I feel like I'm starting to piece together what life will be like, and you know, it's bearable.

I mentioned before that I am doing 6 36-day rounds of chemotherapy. On days 1 and 2 of every round I go to the cancer center for 7-8 hours while they fill me up with anti-nausea meds, Adriamycin, and Cisplatin. On days 21 and 28 I will be hospitalized for 2-3 days while they give me high dose Methotrexate. I haven't had the Methotrexate yet, but I have successfully made it through the other 2 drugs for this round.

My life days 1-7. Michael did a great job of hooking my port
up to the fluids they sent me home with.

This is how days 1-7 looked for me:
-Constant nausea (but little actual throwing up)
-Extreme fatigue (like sleeping almost all day)
-Little desire for food and/or water

However, Day 7 I had just a little more energy. Talking to people didn't leave me out of breath and exhausted. Since Day 7 I have gained more strength and energy everyday. Today is Day 12 and I can honestly say that I feel better than ever. Guess what. My leg doesn't hurt! Not even a little bit! Michael says he can still see some swelling but seriously, there is no pain, no tenderness to the touch, it feels great. It feels NORMAL. Ladies and gentlemen, the poison these doctors are pumping into my body might actually be healing me. =]

Having energy these last few days has been unbelievably awesome. Michael finished finals last week and since I'm not teaching right now, we have been able to just enjoy each other's company. We stay up way too late watching movies, eating midnight snacks, sleeping in, taking care of things around the house at a leisurely pace, and hanging out with friends. If every week of horribleness is followed by a week of pure enjoyment and fun with my husband, I can do this cancer thing.

Eating homemade spinach dip at 2am
while watching Taken

French toast for breakfast at noon

The Beginning of Healing

Thursday and Friday I went in for my chemo treatments. They were 7-8 hours each. Since partway through Thursday I have been battling nausea and poppin' pills like crazy. Nothing sounds good to eat. Today I have eaten plain white rice with salt and half of an otter pop. I want to eat more because I know I should, it's just hard when you feel like you're barely able to keep down what's already in you. I just keep feeling my left leg (no pain there today!) and imagining the chemo already going in and killing the tumor.

It's weird how something so painful is actually killing the bad in my body and healing me. I guess that's how life is though, isn't it? It's not usually the awesome, fun experiences that mold us into better, stronger people. It's the hard stuff. Persevering through pain and trials we would have thought to destroy us actually help us become the strong, healthy, Christlike people we are meant to become.

I just know that these dark times are going to help me see the light, the good, and the happy forever. It's worth it. Even this horrible, earth-shattering trial is a part of God's plan for me to reach a currently unfathomable happiness in the future.

PS My head feels really cloudy right now. Please excuse grammatical errors/generally not making sense.

Port Placement

I wasn't going to blog today, but then I realized that if I don't blog today, I'm just going to have to make a really ridiculously long blog post later to include everything. So here it goes. The first thing I wanted to mention is that the other day I got a package in the mail from Livestrong. I realize this is horrible to admit, but when I opened up what looked like two big packets of paper, I was kind of disappointed. I was like, where's the free hat? The t-shirt? Those are the kinds of things that should come in big packages. When I started looking through the packets, however, I felt so grateful for them. I haven't looked through everything yet, but what I have read was inspiring. Here are two quotes from the packets that I love:

"We believe in life. Your life. We believe in living every minute of it with every ounce of your being. And that you must not let cancer take control of it. We believe in energy: channeled and fierce. We believe in focus: getting smart and living strong. Unity is strength. Knowledge is power. Attitude is everything."

"You can look at it one of two ways: You have cancer, or cancer has you."

So good. Some days I want to roll over and give up. Sometimes I want to run away to a tropical beach and pretend like I don't have cancer (and I haven't even started treatment yet. Ha!). But I feel like those quotes are really empowering. They make me want to fight cancer and live my life to its fullest, not just stumble through life until treatment is over.

In other news, I got my port today and I had a little scare. I got checked in, changed into my cute little backless gown and fuzzy socks, and was ready to go when they asked me to collect a urine sample for a pregnancy test. (Yeah, I know. TMI. Welcome to my life.) I told them there is NO way I'm pregnant. They just took all the mature eggs out of me on Sunday. But they insisted. I gave them the sample, the nurse tested it, and we continued with preparations for the port placement. A second nurse walked in and was like, "Um, did you see this test? Did you notice that second line there?" I'm sure my heart skipped a beat and all the blood must have drained out of my face. Pregnant? It's funny how something that would have made me cry tears of joy a month ago would now make me feel fear like I never have. (I was told when I first found out about my cancer that if I was pregnant I would have to postpone treatment for 9 months or terminate the pregnancy.) They did another test. It came back positive again. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized it really, REALLY was not possible that I was pregnant. Turns out, it was all the fertility meds they gave me last week that made the test come out positive. Whew. It's OKAY, guys. I'm not pregnant. I can continue with chemo tomorrow. That was just probably one of the scariest moments of my life.

K, yeah, more port stuff. They gave me meds that made it so I didn't feel anything, but unfortunately they made me feel very sick and tired for the rest of the day. A feeling I'm afraid I'm going to have to get used to. I also want to let you guys know that I was totally freaked out about getting the port and it was totally not that bad. The worst part was the sedative, not the actual operation. So if you need to get a port sometime soon, you can find comfort in the fact that getting a port will make you look awesome and brave and win you sympathy points, but really won't be too terribly painful to put in. Here are the pics:

 Can you see under my skin where the tube goes up? So nasty.
 I was happy they put it as low as they did, though. It's the
kind of thing that might show with certain shirts, but
 not all of them.

This picture, I realize, is not the most flattering
 of me or my haircut, but it gives you more
 perspective as to where the port is at.

This is just a drawing of a port so
 you can see what is inside of me.

 K, time for sleep. I have my first chemo treatment tomorrow morning. Wish me luck and keep the prayers coming! I can feel them already working wonders.

Egg Retrieval

I know I've mentioned this before, but when I first found out I had cancer, I also found out that this particular set of drugs would leave me with a 50% chance of infertility. That's not a horrible percentage, but I've daydreamed about Michael and I having kids together since we started seriously dating 4.5 years ago. We want to do everything we can to raise our chances, so we have been going through fertility treatments the last few weeks with an end goal of freezing embryos to use after treatment is over. This has involved a few things:

1. Tons of uncomfortable ultrasounds for me
2. Injecting myself in the stomach with medications 1-2 times a day for the last week
3. Michael taking a pill twice a day
4. Last night injecting myself with a medication in my LEG with a needle that was an inch and a half long
5. Egg Retrieval (today)

1.5 inches and it had to go ALL the way in
my leg. Yeah. Pure love for my future
children right there.

Injecting myself in the leg was literally the bravest thing I've ever done. It took me a whole hour of sitting on the ground watching the tutorial video, me counting to 3 and chickening out about 15 times, Michael freaking out, hyperventilating, leaving the room, crying (just kidding, but almost), and okay, fine, me crying too, before finally doing it. Before you judge, look at the SIZE of this needle.

Anyway, egg retrieval was today. They were able to retrieve 14 eggs! We will know within the next few days how many embryos they are able to successfully create with those eggs. I was pretty nervous about the procedure, but it turns out it was actually quite enjoyable. They injected me full of some drug that the doctor described as being like "morphine and valium combined." The last thing I remember was the nurse giving me the medication and telling me to close my eyes and go to my happy place. A few hours later I woke up with no recollection of anything that had happened. The nurse told me the doctor had asked me a few questions during the procedure and I answered them; it's just hard to believe because I don't remember anything. I slept for most of the way home, then stumbled into bed with my winter coat and scarf still on and I slept until almost 4 pm. Fun fact: I had no idea I was wearing an oxygen mask until I posted this picture. Ha ha. *Michael also wants me to add that this picture was taken with his new Nexus 7 

I just want to take a second to talk about one of the blessings of having cancer. I have a unique opportunity to see just how good people are. Since I first found out I have cancer, I have received phone calls, texts, Facebook messages, e-mails, gifts, dinners, random acts of kindness, and many prayers on my behalf from friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers. Things have been a little bit crazy (to say the least) so I haven't gotten a chance to thank everyone individually, but I just feel so blessed and so grateful to have such a great support system. You guys inspire me not only to get through this current trial, but to be a better person for the rest of my life. 

My schedule for this week:

Monday, Dec 3 : Mom comes!

Wednesday, Dec 5: Getting my port in; chemo class

Thursday, Dec 6: First day of chemo (should take 4-5 hours)

Friday, Dec 7: Second day of chemo (another 4-5 hours)

I will, of course, keep all of you updated!