The Chemo Diaries. Today Was Round 4.

Well the past two days were fun.  I had energy.  I felt normal.  I wasn't crying.  I moved furniture.  I cleaned a toilet.  I had a glimpse of who I really am and it felt promising.  But now I am back in bed.  Round 4 just started.

We are in the country.  There is fresh air here and lots of green grass and bunnies and turkeys and deer and other naturey things that I can't name because I've been living in New York City too long.  I have a garden here.  There are strawberries growing in it and we are eating them, even though I had to Google "What to Do with Fresh Picked Strawberries."  Did I mention that maybe I've been living in New York City too long?  We went down to our neighbors' house for dinner and I talked and laughed and I was me again.  With a scarf on my head and only one boob.  But still essentially me.

You know what else is here?  No honking.  And no drunk tourists outside my window.  The roads here are not being ripped up as part of a city-wide water-main-pipe installation that never ends.  There are a lot of birds and they are loud and sometimes I want to shoot them at 4 in the morning.  At all other times of the day I love the birds and I love their beautiful songs.  And I don't own a gun so don't worry, Rachel, the birds are safe.  There are 87 nests around the yard and soon we will have 87 x 5 baby birds.  

Shit.  That's going to be a lot of chirping.

Michael drove me into the city this morning for my last round of treatment and Mom met me there.  She did a great job of distracting me from the nightmare going into my arm.  I don't know how, but somehow we passed three hours together quickly and painlessly.  My chemo pal was a young Romanian woman I had met in chemo last month and we chatted for a while.  We talked about where we are in our treatment and shook our heads at how we got here.  She is 33.  No history of breast cancer in her family.  At the end of last year, she went to see her doctor about shooting pains in her chest.  The doctor did all kinds of tests to try figure out what it was, including a breast exam.  But since she doesn't have breast cancer in her family, the exam was one of those general quickies, feeling around for a Moon Pie rather than a Tic Tac.  The doctor couldn't determine what was causing her shooting pains so she thought it might just be a pulled muscle.  But over the next four months the pains did not go away so this gal started wondering if she had breast cancer, as you do when you have unexplained shooting pains around your boobs.  And she found a lump.  Good thing she did, too, because her cancer is HER2 positive which means it spreads very, very quickly and if you don't catch it in time, the odds are not in your favor.  Doctor now thinks the lump could have been sitting on or hitting a nerve and causing the shooting pains, because now that the lump is gone, the pains are gone.  And the whole breast is gone, too.

So why am I telling you all about the young Romanian woman?  To scare you, of course, into taking your breasts into your own hands, girls.  Here is my quick, unsolicited advice, young ladies: give yourself thorough exams every time you sit down to watch Mad Men.  Once a week, why the hell not, you have an hour with Don Draper, why wouldn't you do this?  And when you finish the season, quickly find another show with Jon Hamm in it that allows you ample time to get cozy with your breasts.  Don't rely solely on mammograms or solely on your doctor giving you a quick rub once a year at your annual.  Remember it's not safe to assume you won't get breast cancer just because there is no history in your family, or because you are only in your thirties, or because you eat well.  Cancer cares about that a little bit, but sometimes not at all.  

Oh, one last thing.  Almost every woman I talk to around my age who was diagnosed with breast cancer says that she found her lump after a particularly stressful period in her life.  I am OBVIOUSLY not a scientist or a doctor, but I ask questions and I am a listener and this is what I'm hearing.  And I wanted to just pass that onto you.  And OBVIOUSLY not everyone who goes through stress gets cancer, just like not everyone who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day for 40 years gets cancer which is a true story I just heard tonight and no, life is not fair.  But I still thought I would put it out there in case some of you reading this might be going through a particularly stressful period and you are not smoking enough weed or doing enough yoga or seeing a therapist.  I am JUST putting it out there.

There.  It's 9pm now.  I can take my pills and turn off the light.  I'm glad we had this talk.  I wasn't feeling so hot but you made me feel better.  The hit of weed and the second helping of Baked Ziti helped, 

Want to talk again tomorrow when the drugs kick in and I am feeling suicidal?  Great!  Talk to you tomorrow!!