not really over

I slept straight through the weekend and woke this morning to shooting pain in my breast. Squeezing it tightly is the only thing that relieves it, but I went to work today and opportunities to do that were limited. So I'm still feeling sick from the treatment of something that didn't make me sick.

This NYT article on the difficulty of managing cancer care caught my eye right away. I can't imagine juggling appointments and bills and making decision while actually being sick. I was barely healthy enough to handle the relatively straightforward care for DCIS.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/health/29Cancer.html?ex=1343534400&en=96695688896a44eb&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

flowers

Tuberous begonias always look so tropical.

almost done

I've spent the week having radation twice a day and working on jigsaw puzzles in the waiting room. With my usual talent for dissociation and denial, I think more about the puzzles than what is happening. The experience of radation therapy is painless but oddly unpleasant - the moving table, the moving machines, the distictive three note buzz as the machine turns on.

In three hours it will all be over. I've been tired all week - napping after each treatment - but that's been the worst of it. My nipple is a bit tender and there is a deep, vague ache in my chest wall. Basically its all been tolerable and now it is almost done.

Harry Potter - no spoilers

I was young enough to line up at the bookstore before midnight to get my copy, but I fell asleep that night at chapter 3. With several distractions and a little sleep, I finished this morning at nine.

I liked the Sopranos ending better. I hate closure and explanations and all clues tied up.

But I was very pleased with my favorite character Snapes.

do not want

I spent most of the day (a summer day, lovely as only an Alaskan summer day can be) lying on a hard table in a windowless room. Head back. arms over my head, trying to hold still as my nose itched and my ear itched and my muscles twitched in protest. Lasars sited on my tattoes. Big panels swooping towards me. At one minute four people in the room looked at my breast and shouted coordinates to each other and scribbled on me with markers. Then everyone withdrew for ten or twenty minutes while the machines swooped and whirred again.

Every single person warm and courteous. Showing me the films, showing me how the radiation field will spare my lungs and my other vital organs.

I should have nothing to complain about. I will have a new technique, partial breast irradiation. The third person in Alaska to get it. Five days instead of six weeks. Fewer side effects. Lucky, lucky again. Monday to Friday next week and then this story is over.

This scares me. I hate it.

learning anything ?

I've been searching for anything I've learned from this experience as a patient after 27 years in nursing.

First of all, I've met very few nurses. And they have flitted through without making any impression.

The physicians, in general, have been wonderful. Now I chose them carefully, with access to inside information most people don't have. And I managed them carefully. Still, the surgeon, the radiation oncologist, and the medical oncologist have been heroes. They assessed my mood carefully, responded thoughtfully to questions, and gave me plenty of time. When I asked for their recommendations they gave them and their rationale (they all know more about this shit than I do).

But the two people who stand out in my mind are techs. Barb massaged my back as I laid face down on the table with an unseen someone inserting wires into my breast. I swear I would have pulled back and run without her help. And Scott who chatted softly as I was scanned and tried to hold still as the machine swooped over me.

I wonder if I have ever given anyone what they have given me.

feedsack nine patch

Doreen found this vintage quilt in a thrift shop in Oregon (I never find treasures like this!). It is all feedsack fabrics. It is not made well. The quilt is tied at odd intervals. It is double sided, and instead of binding it looks like it was folded and stitched. I though about leaving it intact, but I can't bear it. I feel greedy about this, but if I open it up and back and bind it I'll have a nice lap size antique.