Tapering

I took a nap at 1:30pm today when a dear, dear friend came over for a visit and told me to go lie down.  She stayed with the girls (Michael is in India) and I slept pretty hard for an hour.  Then I cleaned my kitchen.  Then we went to a Star Wars birthday party.  Then I came home and ordered sushi and took a shower with the kids and read them books and put them to bed and fell asleep with Willa at 9pm.  It's now 11pm.  Obviously I am not asleep.
The latest is that I am tapering off of Ativan.  I can't believe that that is the state of things, but nonetheless, here I am.  My nurse was on vacation last week which is when I started to connect the dots that maybe these hot flashes at night were more than just the crazy heat or faulty combinations of my blankets and nightgowns.  So I haven't officially received word from a trained professional that this early menopause experience might be the result of the pills.  But when I Googled "hot flashes" plus "cancer" plus "Ativan" plus "what the hell," I was able to self-diagnose.  Thankfully, a couple of weeks ago my GP mentioned to me that I should wean myself slowly and not go cold turkey.  So I cut my 1mg pill in half for two weeks and now I am taking half a pill every other night.  Hopefully in another two weeks, that will be the end of Ativan.

In addition to a raging fever every hour while I sleep, followed by a serious chill after I throw the covers and strip my clothes off, I have an engorged left breast.  These things in combination make getting a full night's sleep more or less impossible, so I don't even bother wishing for it anymore.  I consider it a victory when the covers can go off and on with very little drama, and when I only have to pee once.  But the breast is just a big pain in the ass now.  It is expanded to a decent size, nothing too ridiculous, but the expander is hard and bulky and completely immobile and sleeping with it feels like I'm snuggling up to a rock.  It comes out this Friday and will be replaced with a saline implant.  My right side will also get an implant, not to mention the shock of its life.

But what is all that compared to cancer, now really?