I realized I haven't updated in a while. I think I'm not cut out to do a blog, but fortunately, there aren't huge numbers of people reading this and waiting for updates.

I went to the doctor last Monday, and everything's fine. My CA-125 is something less than 2, and so low they can't calculate the exact number. That's really good, since anything under 35 is considered normal. I go back in three months, so now I have a couple of months of not worrying. Hopefully. Although, I still get a little paranoid about any new little aches and pains.

I've really got to get back to Weight Watchers. My clothes are starting to not fit, and that's including even the largest in the range of sizes I have in the closet. It's really depressing, and I refuse to buy any bigger clothes. I'm just not going to. So I guess I either lose weight or I'm going to running around in a bathrobe all the time. I don't think that would go over real well at work.

Anyway, I guess that's all for now.

I just got home from work and thought I'd take a minute to post. I go back to the doctor in just over a week, on the 22nd, and I'm getting nervous. I don't know why. As far as I know, there's no reason to be. They'll do a CA-125 test, which hopefully will be normal, and then the dr will do my exam, and hopefully that will be normal. No big deal. No reason to think it won't be normal. And yet, I'm worried.

Other than that, life is good right now. I'm going to be doing something a little different at work, and while it will be more boring sometimes, it'll mean getting weekends off, and most of the time I'll be off work earlier than I am now.

Anyway, I don't really have a lot to say right now, so I guess that's it.

Well, I haven't written in a while, but there's not a lot going on in my life, really. I'm busy working most of the time, and wondering if I need to keep my job or look for something else. I love the people I work with, and I love my actual job, but some of the office politics involved just drive me nuts, and the way the folks in charge are handling some things just seems downright wrong, although they've been very good to me personally. I just can't decide whether it's bad enough to go to a different job. Plus I have to worry about stuff like insurance now that never seemed like that big a concern before. Anyway, I guess I'll figure it out.

What I'm not sure I'll figure out is the whole dating thing. I've never dated much, and I've never had any kind of serious relationship. I have a lot of trouble letting down my guard enough for people to really get to know me, I always have been like that, and now I think it may be even harder. So this guy I've gone out with a few times is nice. But people keep asking me about it like I'm supposed to know right now if he's Mr. Right, and I just don't know. He's a nice guy. Right now, as long as he's ok with taking it slow, we'll be okay. I feel like I need to tell him more about the cancer and how it's made me feel and how worried I still am sometimes, but I don't want that to be the whole focus of conversation for too long because it's overwhelming to think about for any length of time, even for me, and I've had most of a year to try to come to terms with it. And even though I told him I had cancer, I didn't go into any great detail, so I've still got at least one really, really major point to mention - that I can't have kids. When I told him about the cancer, that was really our first date (unless you count when I met him, but I don't, because I was chicken and dragged my sister along) and somehow a first date doesn't seem like the time to say, oh, hey, by the way, I can't have children. It just seems a little presumptuous somehow to mention it that early. I thought I'd mention it Saturday when we went out (3rd date, if you're wondering), but he started talking about kids and handing stuff down to his first born, and even though I guess that could have been a great opening, somehow it seemed like the wrong time to say anything.

Anyway, I work this coming weekend, so I won't see him until the weekend of 10/6, probably, if then, since apparently he's going camping with a bunch of people he knows. I was invited, but I'm not much of a camper, plus camping with a bunch of people I've never met before really doesn't sound all that appealing.

It's 2 am and I'm up because I can't sleep. Earlier I was thinking about a lot of stuff, and I was crying, and I hate that - and now I'm going to start again. I mean, there's nothing wrong with crying, we all do it sometimes, but I just feel like I spend way too much time on it right now. All week I've been emotional and grumpy and just not quite myself, almost like PMS, except I don't get that anymore, so I don't know what the deal is. I have a theory, one that I really hope is wrong, but I'll just have to wait and see. I think it has to do with going to the dr's office. I had to go back today to get my port flushed -- just to get my port flushed, no blood work, didn't actually see the dr, just the nurse, no big deal, right? I thought it was no big deal. I don't really mind it too much, it's just getting stuck with one more needle, shouldn't be a big deal. But I feel like all week I've gotten more and more agitated. I hope that's not it, because if it is, I'll be like this one week every month leading up to getting the port flushed, not to mention how bad it's going to get when I've actually got to go in for a checkup next month.

Anyway. Hmm. Transitions in writing were never my strong point, so let's go with --
And Now for Something Completely Different.

So I've gone out with this guy a couple of times, and he's nice, and I'm trying not to screw this up, because it's kind of nice to have someone to go out with, but it's really hard, because I'm not good at relationships anyway, and now I feel like I have all this extra emotional baggage -- like I didn't have enough anyway -- and it just seems completely unfair. Unfair to him, I mean. He seems like a nice guy, and here I am being all indecisive and moody and defensive, but I don't know what to do about it. We're communicating mostly by email, which is hard too, because even when I don't mean to, I sound terse and unhappy, and unfortunately, I don't usually realize how it sounds until I've sent it, and then it's too late to do anything about it. We had the "I have cancer" conversation already, although I didn't go into a lot of detail, but at least he knows, and he didn't run away. That's a start. I don't really want to dwell on that one thing, and I really hate talking about cancer if it sounds like I'm using it as an excuse, but I do feel like it's an important part of who I am at the moment, not so much by choice, but because it's just too recent and in many ways ongoing, even though I'm not in treatment now. As my next dr's appointment gets closer, I suspect I'm going to get more nervous and more irritable (and probably more irritating as well) and I want to be able to explain to him how I'm feeling and talk about it, but I don't want it to be the focus of every conversation.

Well, now that I've rambled on and on and on, I think I'm going to go take a bubble bath and try to sleep for a little while.

The future?

I don't know that I have a lot to say. I'm starting to feel almost normal again. I still get tired, but not all the time - it's just that it doesn't take much to make me tired. I'm just trying to be normal, but I feel like I should be doing more somehow. Like somehow this whole cancer thing should have made me want to run out and do something big - run a marathon, write a book, I don't know what exactly, but something.

If I don't make some kind of drastic change, does that mean that I missed something important, some lesson I was supposed to learn from this? That's what people seem to do after cancer, they quit their job to do something they always dreamed of or they decide it's time to climb Mt. Everest or something else major like that.

Is it wrong that my entire goal, to the extent I have any control over it, is just to live my life like a normal person and eventually forget that I ever had cancer? Not that I could actually forget that. And for now, I've got doctor's appointments every three months, I have to get the port flushed every month, and I don't know exactly how often we'll be doing follow up CT scans. Not to mention the hair that's there to remind me every time I look in a mirror. But at least there is hair now, that's a huge improvement over none at all.

Of course, it's hard to make big plans for the future anyway, when I'm still not sure I've completely accepted that for now, I don't have cancer. And my doctor seems pretty certain it's going to come back at some point. I would so love to prove him wrong about that, but he is the doctor, and presumably he knows what he's talking about. It is just a little bit scary that he would say that IF I make it to five years without a recurrence, we'd have champagne. I'm going to have to remember that, though. I wonder what they'd think if I showed up with a bottle of champagne at the doctor's office five years from now?

Good news!

I'm officially cancer free! I went to the doctor yesterday, nothing showed up on the CT scan, so for now at least, I have no more cancer. I go back to the doctor in three months for my next checkup. Now I just have to figure out how to live my life between checkups without worrying too much about the cancer. I think my doctor is convinced it's going to come back at some point, and obviously I'm worried about that, but I have to go on with my life as if it's definitely not, or I'm going to drive myself crazy with worry. I'm not quite sure how to do that though. Sometimes I can forget for a little while, but never for very long, and then it all comes back, and I start to worry again. I guess that will lessen some over time, assuming it doesn't come back.

The joys of waiting

I go back to the doctor on Monday. Hopefully everything will be okay. I'm trying to come up with my questions for him. I always feel like there's stuff I'm supposed to ask that for some reason I just don't come up with, or sometimes that I'm just scared to ask. I have my CT on Friday, so by the time I go Monday, he should have results. I know there shouldn't be anything that would show up on the CT, but I'm still worried. I suspect I'm going to be worried for a long time to come when it's time to go to the doctor.

On a more positive note, my sister had her baby last Friday, so I'm officially an Aunt! She had a little boy, Kasen, and they're both doing fine. He was 7 lbs 3 oz and 20 1/2 inches long, and that's even though he was three weeks early!

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll be here waiting anxiously until I go to the doctor, even though I know the chances are that everything's fine.

Yippee!!

I'm done with radiation! I had the last one yesterday. Now I just wait until it's time to go back to the doctor, and hope that everything is okay. When I got to work today, my co-workers had gotten me a cake and a gift card to celebrate. I work with some really great people.

My sister is on bed rest right now because her blood pressure is too high when she gets up and moves around. They've already said she's not going to make it to July 22, so right now she's going to the doctor twice a week, but just barely passing the stuff that she'd need to fail for them to put her in the hospital and induce. I guess it's good she's doing well, but I know she'd like for this to be over with. She's pretty bored sitting at home all the time in bed watching TV. I'm ready for her to have the baby, now that she's at the point where it would be OK for her to have it and it shouldn't have any problems. I just want to be able to start spoiling my little niece or nephew rotten!

Anyway, considering how much is going on in my life right now, I really don't feel like there's a lot to say at the moment.

I recently read another post elsewhere in which someone talked about letting go of a lot of the dreams they had before being diagnosed with cancer and creating new dreams as, I guess, part of their process of grieving over what cancer had taken from them. I'm only just now starting to really think about the future much, at first I was overwhelmed, and then, despite the doctor being optimistic, there was (and still is) some part of me that's just not sure enough of what kind of future I can have to really make plans. It sounds silly, when, as I said, the doctor fully expects me to make it, to worry about the future, but I guess cancer is something I associate with death, and that is just hard to get past. I don't remember a lot about the day I found out I have cancer, as far as details, but I remember thinking that it meant I was going to die, and wondering if I needed to start making funeral plans, and trying to think about what I wanted to be sure to do for my parents and my sister to give them something to remember me by. I'm not quite that negative anymore, but I'm just not up to making plans for the long term.

You could argue that no one's life is certain. That's definitely true. My life even before the cancer certainly wasn't what I would have envisioned back when I graduated from college. But somehow, that's different, or at least it feels different now.

Some dreams and hopes are definitely not possible anymore. I'm not going to have kids. I don't know whether I would have or not, or whether I wanted to or not, but it's definitely not happening now. That one's easy. But what about getting married? In addition to the difficulties anyone has trying to find that special someone, now I get the added excitement of making sure that special someone is okay with the lack of certainty in my life that I'm afraid will always be there, because I don't know when or if I'll have a recurrence. I know that fear lessens over time, but I wonder whether it ever goes away? And I'd be afraid of how he'd react if I did have a recurrence. Everyone thinks they'd stick around and help in a situation like that, but some people just can't handle it, and while I understand that, understanding wouldn't make it any less traumatic.

My primary fear right now, though, is that after I'm done with radiation, when I go back for another CA-125, CT scan, and whatever else they decide I need, that there will be cancer there. The logical part of me thinks that's highly unlikely, because when they were checking the CA-125 levels throughout chemo, they were going down, and there's no reason to think the radiation isn't working. But that little nagging, negative voice in my head keeps nitpicking anything that seems even a little off. Back pain from sleeping wrong or just sitting at a computer all day at work? Sinus headache? Random freckle I never noticed before? The little voice says "Cancer." I know from talking to other cancer survivors and reading their blogs that this is normal, but that doesn't make it easier to deal with. I shouldn't be having to deal with this at all, and that pisses me off more than anything. I should be celebrating fully with my sister over her pregnancy, not hoping like hell I don't burst into tears at her baby shower looking at all the cute baby stuff she's getting, knowing that's not ever going to be me.

This post is a bit rambling, and maybe I should spend more time editing it, but I'm tired now, so it just is what it is.

I never would have believed that going through cancer treatment could be routine, but it is. I get up, go to radiation, go to work, go home, go to sleep, just like normal, except I'm starting to get more tired than usual. They warned me that I would, it's one effect of the radiation. I feel like I'm never home, though, and when I am home, I'm too tired to do all the stuff that needs to be done. Right now, I'm trying to get some laundry done, and I attempted to make a casserole to take to my sister's shower that her friend is giving her. Everyone was asked to bring some kind of food item for them to have in the first few weeks after she's had the baby, or I guess before she does, whenever she's too tired to cook much. Anyway, I had the whole thing put together, it's all cooked, I put it under the broiler to melt the cheese on top, and managed to burn it. And not just a little bit, either, I mean the whole top is completely black. Maybe I'll call mom and tell her she has to do the casserole.

I just realized a couple of days ago my hair is really starting to grow back. What I first noticed was my eyebrows. They're not pretty, but there's definitely hair there, so I'm excited. There's still not really enough hair to know for sure exactly what color or texture it's going to be, although it looks dark, so I'm assuming it'll just be brown like it was before. My big fear (other than that it wouldn't come back at all) was that it would come back in gray. I'm sure I'd get over it if it did, but the thought of gray hair kind of bothers me.

Anyway, so far radiation is going well. I got an extra day off because they were closed for the Memorial Day holiday. One week down, four to go. And they made my work schedule earlier so I don't have a huge gap between the time I have radiation and the time I have to be at work. That's really good. Gas prices would be enough to keep me from driving home and then back to work every day, and I can only spend so much time at the mall before I go completely nuts, so I wasn't sure what I was going to do if I had a bunch of free time in the middle of the day.

Well, that's really all that's going on right now.

I've done two days of radiation now. It's not bad. I'm tired, but I think it's an emotional thing as much as physical. They assured me I won't notice any effects for about two weeks, so I have to assume what I'm feeling is not really an actual effect of the radiation, and I think it makes sense to think of it as an emotional response to all of this. I spent so much time worrying about what would happen and getting worked up over it, just the fact that I'd actually done the first one was a relief in a way, even though I'm still worried about it.

I'm just ready for all of this to be over, although I know I'll still worry about a recurrence, and I'll probably be nervous before every test. I don't know how you could not be nervous, especially at first. I just really hope that everything has worked and the cancer isn't growing right now. I know the CA-125 numbers were going down while I was on chemo, which is good, but they're not checking them now, I guess until I'm done with radiation. It sucks that I wouldn't even know if it was growing, so I just have to trust that it's not. I'm not good at trusting what I can't see. I know the doctor said it's likely to come back at some point because it's aggressive, but I hope it waits a while. I don't think I could handle it if it came back immediately after I stopped treatment. I know I don't really get a choice, and that's how it works for some people, but it's definitely not what I'd choose.

I'm getting a little nervous about starting radiation tomorrow. I know there's no reason to be nervous, but I am anyway. Friday I went for final markings and they used a simulator machine, and the tech or whatever he was said that's about what the actual radiation will be like, just a big machine, it won't take but a few minutes. He also said that for the first couple of weeks or so, I shouldn't feel any difference. It will take that long for the radiation to build up enough to start to affect me. But by the end of it, they've already warned me I may be tired, and they've warned me about other side effects I may have, but said they shouldn't be too bad.

Yesterday was Helen's baby shower. It went well. We had about 12 people there. I'm glad because I always worry that no one will show up when I do parties like that. I think everyone enjoyed it, and I got several compliments on how well it went. She got lots of presents, and we got to see the nursery now that it's painted. It looks nice, although if it were me, I'd have put more color in it. She's opted for a very neutral color scheme, which is understandable since they don't know the gender, but I'd have still found something more colorful than shades of brown. But now that they've gotten a bunch of stuff that is colorful, toys and stuffed animals and everything, it will make a big difference. I can't wait until the baby gets here! I'm sure she's more ready than anyone else, though.

Little bit of a scare at work - I checked my email before I left the house, and found a message about a mandatory meeting (obviously, only for people who were in the office, which is good since I didn't even see it until the meeting was over). Once I saw it, all sorts of stuff kept going through my mind - the company's bankrupt, they're going out of business or closing the Dallas office. They're laying off a bunch of people. Everything bad that could possibly have happened, I thought of. It turns out, they let two people go, which is bad for them, but at least it wasn't me. But I was worried there for a while. I can't afford to lose my job. What would I do at this point if I didn't have insurance? And who would hire me while I'm still going through treatment? The feeling that I have no control over my life right now really sucks. It's bad enough that I can't really do anything about the cancer, except show up and let the doctors and nurses do what they do, but I can't even really do anything about stuff in the rest of my life. Whatever happens as far as work, I'm not going anywhere. Fortunately, I like my job, and I don't want to go anywhere else, but if something happened and I felt like it would be better for me to find something else, I still can't.

Anyway, enough with the whining already. Back to work.

Some days I feel like yelling at God or whoever it is who did this to me, who gave me cancer or let me get it, whichever way it works. It's not fair. I didn't do anything to deserve this. No one who gets cancer has done anything to deserve it. I just want my life back, my normal life, boring as it was. I don't want to wonder if the chemo really worked, if the radiation is going to help, what the side effects are going to be like. I definitely don't want to wonder if the cancer is going to come back or when or what that's going to be like, or if I'm going to be around to get to know my little niece or nephew as he or she gets older. I'm 31. I should be wondering if that cute guy at work is dating anyone, not wondering if I'll ever find anyone who's willing to date someone with cancer.

Mostly, I'm as positive about this as any person can be. I know that I'm very lucky in so many ways. I've got a great job where they've been so good about letting me take time off when I need to. I've got great insurance that's made it possible for me to not go into huge amounts of debt through all this. I've got family and friends who love me and are doing everything they can to help me through this, and I've got people I've never even met, who are just friends of friends of friends, who are praying for me. I've got a doctor who I trust and who takes the time to answer all my questions, even my really paranoid ones. However, none of this makes up for the fear and the anger. No one deserves to have to deal with this.

I apologize if I sound a bit whiny. I'm still trying to sort out how I feel about all this. It's kind of weird, for several months I didn't really feel much of anything most of the time, and when I did feel something, it was fear. I still feel fear, but I'm branching out some, into anger and occasional bouts of self pity. I think it's an improvement, maybe, although neither emotion is one I'd choose to have if I could find a way to avoid it.

Not a lot going on right now. I don't start radiation until May 21st, so right now I'm enjoying a couple of weeks of no dr's appts, no blood tests, no chemo, nothing until May 18, when I go for the final markings for my radiation. I had expected a quicker process, but apparently it takes a while for them to calculate how much radiation they're giving me and how they're aiming it and stuff.

I am busy getting ready for my sister's baby shower. She's due on July 22, and I'm doing a shower for her on May 19. She's going to have one really spoiled kid. First grandkid for both sets of grandparents, and of course as the kid's only aunt, I'm going to do my part to spoil it rotten. (They're not finding out the baby's sex, hence my use of "the kid" and "it" - it would be nice if we had a way to refer to an unborn baby of unknown gender that was a little more personal than "it.")

Anyway, I'm off to work in a little while, so I should go get ready, I guess.

About me

Just a little bit about myself and why I'm starting this blog. I'm 31 years old, and in November of 2006, right after Thanksgiving, I found out I have endometrial cancer, which is cancer in the lining of the uterus. It's stage III, I can't remember now if it was A or B. It was in both ovaries and outside the uterus, but it hadn't spread to the lymph nodes. I had a hysterectomy and six rounds of chemo (Taxol & Carboplatin) and will be starting radiation in a couple of weeks.

I'm not sure how I feel about sharing all of this, and may decide I'm just not willing to, but I thought I'd give it a try, because I've stumbled across blogs written by other cancer survivors and I know how much they've helped me, just in terms of seeing how other people are dealing with everything and knowing that I'm not the only one out there going through this. If I can help someone else, maybe this will be worth it.

Yesterday, I met a lady who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is going to be starting chemo soon. She had questions about everything, and she reminded me of me just a few months ago. I still have a lot of questions and fears, but I don't feel as anxious now, and I wish there was a way I could tell her and anyone else going through that part of it that you really do start to relax, and as weird as it sounds, a lot of the cancer treatment process becomes routine. One of the nurses at my oncologist's office told me that, back when they first told me I was going to have to do chemo, and I thought she was nuts -- how can having potentially toxic substances put in your blood stream on a regular basis ever be routine? But after the first couple of times, it was, and I'm sure the same will be true with the radiation when I start it. I know that no one probably believes that when they're told it the first time, but it's true. As human beings, we have the ability to cope with and even accept as normal things that we never would have imagined we'd have the strength to deal with. I'm sure every cancer survivor has learned this, and for people who have just been diagnosed and are so afraid of the possible side effects of treatment that they would rather not have any treatment, I would just say, you're stronger and more resilient than you think you are. I'm not saying it's easy to deal with this stuff, only that you can. You may not like it, but you don't have to like it for it to work.