Excuse me...EXCUSE ME!

I'm finally starting to rebound and I realized that this is the last time that I'll feel chemo-shitty again. YEAHHH!

I miss my Doc Martens. I CAN'T BELIEVE I GOT RID OF THEM! Those shoes have been with me since high school and now I feel like an idiot for donating them. They were taking in water when it rained and it had some seriously worn down soles...nothing that a cobbler couldn't fix though, right? (lol I laughed at the word, 'cobbler'. Do they even exist anymore?)

I remember when wore them to the airport when I was leaving Massachusetts for winter break and took them off for security screening. Some dumbass guy behind me said with a smirk, "Whose ass are going to kick with THOSE?" I set them on the X-ray machine and whipped around and said, "Yours if you don't leave me alone."

His look was priceless.

On another note...my hair is growing really fast in back and is super thin and wispy in front. I'm starting to worry that my hair will look a little like Macgyver. So, I need help deciding what to do; should I keep the boycut or should I grow it out and face the inevitable Macgyver stage? If I choose the latter, I'm going to have to buy some regular-people hats and not the chemo turbans I've been wearing for the past several months. Or maybe I should embrace it whole-heartedly, like Kristin Stewart's poor decision to go from long flowing locks to choppy, greasy black mullet?

Tomorrow: Last Chemo FOREVERRRR

Tomorrow is my last chemotherapy treatment. I felt like this day would never come and frankly, I am dumbfounded that it only took this long. I was expecting it to be so much longer! I am not really sure how to feel about all of this. It almost feels premature in a way or surreal. How could it be gone so quickly? In November, Ah there it is...the little bastards invading my mediastinum (fancy doctor word for 'chest')and a few months later suddenly, POOF! nothing to be seen on the PET scan.

Ahh the miracles of modern medicine..

David and I were talking in the car one afternoon and he said, "You know, one day chemotherapy is going to seem like a barbaric treatment option for cancer patients". I sure hope so, because it really, REALLY sucks! I wouldn't wish chemo even on my worst enemy. I hate my port; it hurts, it itches, it rubs against my seatbelt when I drive, it hurts to access it, sometimes it doesn't like to work. I hate having anyone even get a glimpse of it, so I'm always aware of it's presence. I have to wear scarves or high necked t-shirts to cover it up. I really hate it and I am on the edge of my seat, wondering when they're going to remove the damned thing from me. I don't like how it shows through the skin on my neck when I turn my head. It makes me look like my jugular is popping out... I know I have to keep it for a while, but I hope that I don't have to keep it TOO long.

I have my radiation appointment on the 3rd of March. This is just to talk to the doctor about their plans and to map out my body for the radiation machine. I get to have a fancy mold of my body made just for ME! I wonder if they'll let me take it home later as some sort of postmodern art piece. Sometimes they give patients a bunch of little dot tattoos that help guide the machine... I wonder if they're going to give one to me? I guess I'll have to learn to love them, right? Talk about tattoo regret.

A (Un)Love Letter to my Cancer

Dear Cancer,

Before all of this, I had everything. I was going places and doing things before you showed up. I had a wonderful college experience, I got married, I had pets and I got into grad school. Just around when you decided to pop your little fucking head, offers started rolling in; going to conferences, working on research teams, teaching courses... Yeah, things were really looking up until I started to feel tired. All the time. But like a bad feeling just can't shake, I was always hounded by fatigue. Even if I slept 14 hours, there was a feeling that I was just unwell. I attributed all of this to my long work hours but then I noticed a lump over my collarbone which really distressed me. I had a cold the week before I was diagnosed and thought perhaps my lymph nodes were swollen. I ignored the signs for five whole weeks until I finally succumbed and went to see a doctor.
They figured out that YOU were the reason I was sick all the time. I've had to put up with all sorts of shit on account of you. I had surgery, biopsies, chemo and now radiation. I've lost my hair and tossed my cookies more times than I would like to recall. You thought you could get away with it, did you?
If I could, I would kick your ass so hard that you'd digress back to your mitotic stage and forget about even messing with me in the first place. If you ever come back I swear I will kill you.

NO LOVE,
Susan

F* you cancer!!!

I HAVE POST CANCER PLANS!

1. Travel (Europe? SMITH?!)
2. Eat organic. I'm not allowed to eat vegan/vegetarian anymore since I'm now anemic after my disease. :(
3. Jessica Simpson hair-you-can-wear/Extensions/Grow out my boy-cut
4. Shopping!! Now that I'm not going to feel like a water-filled zepplin..
5. Make home-made pasta
6. Half-sleeve tattoo
7. Ridiculous earrings and extra-long beaded necklaces
8. Low stress! I will not be over-worked anymore.
9. Vegan shoes and clothes
10. Gardening
11. Scar-reduction treatments. Stupid port...
12. Get a dog and play frisbee
13. Eat Mimo's pizza
14. Practice my cello
15. Find a new TV series that I like
16. Learn to do "smokey eyes"
17. New dansko shoes
18. Finish my M.A.!

I MADE CANCER MY BITCH (If I had confetti, I'd throw it!!)

So, just in case you didn't know, PET scans detect the metabolic activity of cancern cells. Cancer cells metabolize the sugar tracer used in a PET scan much more quickly than normal, health cells. My before PET showed the areas where I had cancer, just being a bunch of gluttonous bastards and now, NOW, NOOOOWWWW, those little fuckers are dead. They didn't metabolize it at all. There was absolutely no suspicious activity.
YEAHHHHH!

So, my oncologists want to make this cycle my last (ONLY ONE MORE CHEMO TREATMENT LEFT) and then talk to the radiologists and see if they feel comfortable with that decision. They might be jerks and want me to finish up some more chemo just to be safe, but in all, everything seems to point to a finishing line. After chemo, 5-6 weeks of daily radiation.

Joy.

Harry Potter is the Ultimate Escapism

Since my last infusion, I've been re-watching the Harry Potter movies, simply because I have nothing better to do. Harry Potter is the ultimate escapism for me. For some it is the Goonies, but for me it's Harry.
It occurred to me that in the wizarding world that Rowling has created, there are all sorts of strange creatures, plants, evil wizards that can kill you, curse you or whatever but they never talk about regular illnesses that real people have. I mean, what would they do if they got a standard disease that human-bodied people get? What would they do? Or do magical people even get real sicknesses in their world? Does being a Muggle pre-dispose you to mortal diseases or something?
Wouldn't it be awesome if you could just, I dunno...cut some tentacular leaves, stew up a nasty looking potion and could cure whatever it is that you had. Even if you couldn't cure what you had, you could at least wave your wand and have all the chores get done automatically, right? (Apparently, in the magical world, being clean is considered strange, so maybe not.) Afterall, you can just say "ACCIO______!!" and whatever you're looking for just comes to you. That would be nice when I can't remember where the hell I put my car keys.

*sigh*
Still waiting on my Hogwarts letter...

I've Been Avoiding Posting.

Last infusion was suck-tastic. Like...really suck-tastic.
Apparently, I have developed a horrible chemotherapy-related association. The smell of those awful alcohol swabs they used to disinfect the ends of my port catheter make me so sick that even thinking about the smell makes me want to vomit. They had to use extremely strong drugs this time in order to curb my queasiness. Let's just say that I awoke 4 or 5 hours later; at home, in bed... Now anything with alcohol in it just makes me want to ralph. *sigh*

Bills are finally beginning to roll in and I'm stressing about being able to pay for everything so, I applied for disability benefits. Apparently, because I am young, I have not worked enough years to collect benefits. (You can thank Mom and Dad for not letting me work in high school!) Now I have to drag my sick ass down to the disability/social security office and meet with them in person and try to cajole them into helping me out financially. Let me tell you that applying for disability services and financial support is no walk in the park. Everything, EVERYTHING must be documented and no mistakes can be made about the specifics of your condition, when you became unable to work and how "sick" you are. They even ask if you if you're going to die eventually from your condition as if they were asking what you ate for lunch. How morbid, right? Also, they're very suspicious of people who were born outside of the United States, even if you're on paper an American citizen. (As many of you know, I was born as an American in Germany)It was like the disability benefits rep didn't believe I was a citizen; giving me the freaking 20 questions... Uhm, hello? Birth certificate. Just look. Anyone who thinks that non-citizen residents can "easily get" these benefits is wrong. It is not easy, even for someone with a legitimate reason to need benefits and the citizenship to qualify.

On top of all of this is the fact that my memory has gone to shit. I forget things really easily, like if you tell me a couple of numbers or tell me to go get something from the store, I can't recall what it is you told me. It drives me nuts! I've basically resorted to writing everything down.