Feb 12
We’re on the plane and there’s turbulence. I hate turbulence so I’m squeezing his freckled, red-haired leg. Squeezing it hard. Getting my short, bitten-off fingernails in there, too. He doesn’t flinch. He just takes his big, beefy hand and covers mine with it.
Three years. And my first thought yesterday morning was that I feel so bad for that woman from three years ago. She has no fucking idea what’s going to happen to her.
A selection of pictures from my diagnosis in February 2016 to January 2018, when I really started feeling like myself again.
Six months after my first chemo, I was starting to feel like a sexual being again. But I quickly found out that my vagina was not the same as it used to be. After a few months of using Vagifem low estrogen vaginal suppositories, sex was not as painful. But that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted sex to be more comfortable.
The Sari Center offers integrative cancer care therapies for patients and there caregivers. Over my 14 months of treatment, I used many of their services. Every single week. Hypnotherapy, acupuncture and massage were my mainstays. But it’s not just the services that helped; as important were the people there.
We would not let a little thing like breast cancer and toxic chemotherapy drugs get in the way of hot 50 year-old sex. I used to write about Love and Sex. I reviewed sex toys. I had this.
I’m cancer free. Which is great. And I am definitely feeling better physically. My thyroid medication seems to have kicked in. (Thanks, newly diagnosed Hashimoto’s.) I have more energy. I really love my short hair and black and white color. I don’t have hemorrhoids anymore.
A mammogram. What was I thinking. I should have pushed for an MRI. I don’t trust mammograms. I found my own tumor. And it showed up on the mammogram. Of course it did. It was big enough for me to feel. Hard as a rock. The size of an edamame.
I pulled together a list of the tips for getting through chemo, and the side effects, that helped me the most.
Then came the circles under my eyes. And the rapid weight gain. The slightly puffy face. Well, I was thrown into menopause after my first chemo back in February so my metabolism is slowing down. What about the edema in my ankles? My ongoing Herceptin perhaps.
