Treatment has really been kicking my ass... radiation BURNS literally you can smell your cells dying and burning and I can taste it. This is because they are radiation the entire half of my chest up to my collarbone so there is scattered radiation to my throat, and surprisingly to my back. I have completed 23 out of 33 treatments and have 10 more left. Because the hospital is closed for christmas I go this week Monday through Saturday so its six days in a row, and my skin is already HORRIBLE. I wish I could just stop now.. but the point is to do damage, so damage will be done. Imagine climbing into a tanning bed with a horrible sun burn already and continuing day after day after day knowing that you are only destroying a part of your body you usually not only try to protect, but a part that has been traumatized and rebuilt from nothing. Its just plain depressing...
And if the fatigue from the radiation wasn't hard enough these chemo pills which I am grateful to be on because I get to keep my hair - make me SO nauseous. I think this is partially because they are pills and dissolve in my stomach, but my anti nausea pills are barely cutting it.. and they are supposed to up my dose after radiation is over... which I'm going to discuss with my dr. on tuesday because if they up the dose I will be throwing up for sure.
If this combo of treatment wasn't hard enough two weeks ago today I woke up in the middle of the night with EXTREME abdominal pain - so bad to the point where I was screaming and crying and could barely move. I actually woke my mom up ( which i would NEVER do ) and we were about to go to the ER, but I remembered how my oncologist told me if i can at all avoid it to not go to the ER unless I absolutely had to... because as a cancer patient they usually make things worse then better.
GO FIGURE.
So instead I walked around for about an hour and took:
vicodin
motrin
muscle relaxor
ativan
I basically took everything I had on my dresser... a couple of which are not supposed to be combined but its the only way I could get through the night.
On monday fortunately my gynecologist was able to see me, and after an ultrasound it was determined I had a 2 inch diameter cyst on my right ovary, but we were not able to tell if it was the cyst causing the pain, or if I had appendicitis! So after no sleep and literally barely able to walk we drove to RUSH to get radiation ( because i refuse to miss one and delay the Dec. 31 finish date! ) and then had an abdominal and pelvic CT scan to try and rule out appendicitis. I hadn't eaten or drank anything all day because the CT you need to fast for so by the end of the day I was falling apart.. and still in extreme pain.
So the CT showed a normal appendix, and it was determined the cyst was causing me the pain, so we planned surgery for wednesday, which we then pushed off until friday because I didn't want to risk it disrupting radiation.
Friday Morning at 5:30 we drove to RUSH to get radiation at 7am and then drove back out to Good Shephard and checked in for surgery at 9:30. They were going to remove the cyst laproscopically which sounded great to me because it means minimal scarring! god knows I have enough of those by now.
My gynecologist being the wonderful man that he is and knowing how I have the need to know details about everything that is happening in my body was kind enough to take pictures of my insides which he shared with me when I woke up in recovery. GROSS but educational lol.
Once he got the scopes inside he found that the giant cyst which is called a hemmo-something cyst had torn through my ovary and was bleeding internally into my abdomen. (internal bleeding is usually very painful) makes sense now... oh and my appendix was dilated or enlarged on one side - so he called in another surgeon to remove that as well.
Now usually when you have internal bleeding and your appendix out they want you to stay in the hospital for at least a night :) but see that wasn't happening. Not because i'm irrational and don't care about my well being. BUT because when you've spent as much time in hospitals as I have you 1. just want to get the fuck out 2. know that there's nothing they can do for me there that my mom can't do for me at home as a nurse. 3. most importantly morphine makes me rip my skin off ( like literally) so if the only benefit of staying in the hospital is pain management I wouldn't be getting that anyways.
so I went home :)
Now although the scars are only about an inch they form a box on every side of my stomach - which after only relying on your abs for like a year... its pretty impossible to get up without them... haha. Oh and they inflate your abdomen with air- like a balloon... and they try and get as much out in the OR as possible but there is some that is inevitably left inside you and the only way to get it out is through breathing. Sounds insane but it's true. Oh and also it collects in your shoulders ( kind of like the air pressure your ears feel when you're on an airplane) and it lasts for over a week.
Thankfully that is mostly gone now, and I am no longer exploding from the inside out - AND if I can just get through this next week... the worst will be behind me.
And I'm seriously hoping things can only go up from here. The third time's the charm right?
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