My Jalopy

That's what I feel like -- Archie's jalopy, lurching along with much duct tape and other jury-rigging. I mean, I have now officially been prescribed a drug to counteract the drug that's counteracting my chemo that's killing the boob cancer. Does anybody see the mindbending logic here?

So if you remember, I was originally prescribed Decadron to deal with the allergic reaction to the CMF flavor of chemo -- otherwise known as: itching as if I had rolled around in poison ivy. Please note the fun possibilities this particular drug generates, courtesy of MedicineNet.com :

SIDE EFFECTS: May cause dizziness, nausea, indigestion, increased appetite, weight gain, weakness or sleep disturbances. If these effects persist or worsen, contact your doctor. Notify your doctor if you experience: vomiting of blood, black or tarry stools, puffing of the face, swelling of the ankles or feet, unusual weight gain, prolonged sore throat or fever, muscle weakness, breathing difficulties, mental/mood changes

What do you mean "may"? I think I'm batting 1.000 on these. And so today I have been prescribed a daily dose of an antacid (or whatever you call those Prevacid-type thingies) to prevent: acid reflux, GI distress, bleeding of the GI tract, etc. etc.

My local Duane Reade is out of it at the moment, so I will have to pick it up tomorrow. If I tried to get it at another branch, I'd have to have my doctor's office call in the prescription separately... doncha love pharmacy benefit management companies?... or pay out of pocket. [Sidenote: while my health insurer has been FAB, my Rx company has been SUCKY, as may have mentioned before -- I mean when their own regulations bewilder THEIR OWN STAFF, well, then, it ain't just me kvetching.]

So thanks to perhaps a little too much caffeine today, and with many apologies to The Knack, here is my version of "My Sharona":

Ooh my little lumpy one, lumpy one.
When you gonna stop bein' sick, Jalopy?
Ooh you make my stomach cramp, my stomach cramp.
'Cos it's comin' off the drugs, Jalopy.
Never gonna stop, gonna stop.
Such a balding gal.
Always get it up for the hork
of the chemo drip.
My-my-my-i-yi-woo! M-M-M-My Jalopy...

So is it any wonder that the black humor of Despair.com is particularly appealing these days?

The ones I've stuck above my desk at work only SEEM cheery and corporate-esque. If you read the blurbs closely, what they really say is much more snarkitudinous:

• QUALITY - The race for quality has no finish line - so technically, it's more like a death march
  
• TEAMWORK - A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanch of destruction
  
• ACHIEVEMENT - You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor

Sadly, I cannot put up my favorite (CLUELESSNESS - There are no stupid questions, but there are A LOT of inquisitive idiots) as that would be a little TOO blatant.

And now, I leave to go meet someone who can also appreciate these sarcastic sayings -- my sweetie! -- as it is date night. Ciao!

Purple & green

So I've spent the last few days trying not to puke. I failed. (But I did feel better -- briefly -- afterward. Now I just feel green again.)

Part of my tactic for avoiding feeling so nauseated was to sleep. A lot. Like, 20 hours out of 24. If I'm asleep, I can't be queasy. Can't argue with that logic, can ya?

And then this afternoon one of those annoying Latino parades was rehearsing their marching for a few hours outside my window. (For the record - I find all parades annoying. It's just that there seem to be more Latino rehearsals near my building than other types.) So I closed all my windows and inaugurated the A/C for the first time this year.

Then, I proceeded to spend the afternoon lying on the couch watching Hellboy (again) and PGA Golf.

For some odd reason, even though I don't play golf -- with the exception of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 on the Nintendo Wii on my sweetie's best friend's Wii -- I can be midly entertained watching it on TV (especially when I'm feeling wretched).

And now, I leave you with photos of the pretty purple tulips my nephew sent me. I go back to thudding on the couch now.

P.S. Oddly enough, I feel more disoriented by Billy May's passing than Jacko, Farrah, or Ed McMahon, probably because Mr. Mays was apparently raucously healthy.

Asymmetry rocks!

Good news: the radiologist says there's nothing in the digital mammo or ultrasound! Hooray! That is why I am starting off with cheery, cute photos of my friend Ellen's Birman cats, Katie and Gizmo.

Got my intramuscular Neulasta shot, paid a physician bill along the way, and am now back at the office.

I was a bit stressed I guess, resulting in a TWO doughnut morning (bad girl! BAD!) but (as is my motto these days) oh well. And I'm still a little unnerved by the testing.

On a lighter note, someone sent me flowers! I can't wait to go home and see who it's from! (Our building has an e-mail alert system for deliveries.) Wheee!

And I am appalled to realize that I have something in common with Katie Holmes besides an unfortunate teenage crush on Tom Cruise: our hairstyles! Except hers has much thicker bangs.

Here are good shots of what the back and layers look like, except once again, mine is lighter on the bangs. Scroll down to the bottom 2 photos shot somewhere in Europe. (The top one is kinda scary, actually!)

Okay, back to the salt mines! :) I leave you with a cute photo of 2 fabulous ladies with short hairstyles, my sweetie's mom (on the right) and my friend Jackie's mom (left).

Snip, snip

Okay, so I'm not at my mom's tonight. There's a reason for this, but I'll get to that depressing stuff later.

In the meantime, I will attempt to amuse you all with my amateurish efforts at image editing.

The photo on the left is the pile of hair that got cut off this morning. (Toldja I wanted a short hairstyle.) Stacy's foot is there for scale. Okay, okay. So really, I know that if she had THAT much to cut off, I wasn't in imminent danger of going bald, but I still wanted a short haircut.

Et, voila!

Me, with supershort hair. I like! I like! (We'll just ignore the increasing number of grey streaks and strands, shall we? Thank you.) The front as you can see ends just below my ears, and the back is even shorter. Wheeee! It'll be a great cut for hot, humid NYC summers (which are still not as brutal as Hong Kong summers, but sticky nonetheless). And the chemo-hair-shedding problem will be less visually disturbing. Plus, think of all the money I'll save on shampoo and hair accessories (*snort*) and the time I'll save dealing with my hair in the mornings.

So after I had my liberating haircut, I walked through Tompkins Square Park on my way to my next appointment. Hence, the floral photos above and below. Pretty, no?

Despite the misleading foreshortening in these shots, the park is really only 3 blocks, or 10.5 acres according to their site.

Anyway, onward to chemo round 6, which almost didn't happen because my white cell count was low. I just made it under the wire since it was 1.1 and the cutoff is 1.0, after which they don't treat you until it's higher again, since it can result in your body becoming dangerously defenseless and prone to infection. Chemo, after all, kills off all sorts of cells, including white blood cells.

Who knew my counts were so low? I mean, I felt okay, or at least I did before the treatment. (Right now I'm feeling exhausted. Oh well.)

So tomorrow morning I'm back off to the hospital for a booster shot: Neulasta, here I come! It is used to stimulate white blood cell production, specifically of neutrophils, which are part of the defense force against infections. (Remember Pac Man? Like that. Or maybe a cellular version of Spider-Man's webbing crossed with Batman's ruthless pragmatism. I am such a geek, I know.)

And as with many cancer-related drugs, the potential side effects range from uncomfortable (oh well -- my digestive tract is already unhappy with life) to downright unpleasant (bone pain -- your marrow is being forced to work at non-union, Made-In-China capacity after all). As I keep saying, oh well.

However, I have not mentioned the additional bonus rounds I will be picking up tomorrow: another mammogram (ouch!) and ultrasound... on my RIGHT boob!

My onco is not so happy with the lump she found during round 5 which is still hanging around. Now it could merely be my challengingly dense breast tissue (the reason my breast surgeon sent me off for an MRI to prep for surgery, instead of just, er, eyeballing it as he usually does) since my onco-doc acknowledges that she is not yet familiar with my boobs, as she has only seen me for 3 chemo rounds. While that adds up to 6 weeks in the real world (I am counting only the visits themselves, and not the related weeks following today) in terms of office visits, that is only 3 physical exams. (One of many reasons I like her: she is humble & not arrogant.)

On the one hand, I am trying to believe that really, I just have lumpy boobs and it would be really unfair if I had a tumor THERE too. On the other hand, who said life is fair? (We're just going to skip over another test that happened today -- one fire at a time. Plus, way too gross/embarrassing to post about. If something comes up, then I'll share with the class. If not, not need to subject everyone concerned to discomfort.)

Speaking of bumps on my boob, there is a mole on my left side which has been acting weird (the texture changes) but the doc says that chemo can have that effect on moles.

Basically MY BODY IS A WRECK. Sigh.

Which reminds me: time to take my anti-nausea medication, which I had left at home. That was one of the reasons I came home instead of visiting mom -- I would have missed 2 doses by tomorrow night and that would just be asking for trouble. I have enough already, thank you.

The other reason I came home is that I'd otherwise have to go back uptown to the hospital from my mom's, only to go all the way back downtown to work, and that would just be plain silly:

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So TOMORROW night I will go visit my mom like a good Chinese daughter. (Besides, my engineer is taking a class tomorrow night -- yes, I am actually a bad daughter, I know, but be honest: given a choice, would you rather spend Friday night with your mother or your sweetheart? I rest my case. Sorry mom.) Anyway, no updates till probably Saturday as I head off to a technology-free zone @ Chez Mom. (If there are any immediate results from tomorrow's tests, I will post them at lunch.)

Okay, time to go bond with my freshly laundered sheets. Nitey night!

Coming up: Round 6

Last night was another "oooh, lemme try to capture this skyline" experiment. Tonight was "how many washers and dryers can I take over at once?" Tomorrow will be "time to make like a human pincushion" day.


Sunday was "can we possibly eat everything we ordered?" day, also known as Father's Day. My sweetie and I and his parents killed off the appetizers before I remembered to take any photos (oops) but I did capture the entrees at Crown Palace before we attacked: pepper scallops w/ broccoli, mango shrimp (presented artfully inside the mango skins), garlic eggplant, (crispy) orange beef, and roast pork w/ battered chicken & mixed vegetables.

The fortune cookies were amusing, especially mine:
It's late and my mind is boggling (plus, I am tired from battling the mysterious blue stains which appeared post-washing machine, on several items of clothing tonight -- argh) so I will just say that tomorrow is round 6 of my chemo out of 8, and tomorrow night I will go stay at my mom's, so there will be no update until the weekend, as mom's place is a technology-free zone.

Oh, and I plan to get a supershort haircut in the morning, with Stacy Pitt, who did the hair for my friend Margaret's wedding. The giant piles of hair that fall every morning and night when I brush my hair (thank you, chemotherapy) have motivated me to finally try a short haircut, on the theory that it will look less scary to see smaller piles of hair (since they will be shorter strands) -- did I babble about this already? In any case, we'll see if Stacy thinks something like this will be a good idea. I've always wanted to give the pixie cut a whirl...

Food P*rn

So which is it? Is the 11:20 late or on time? Logically, it can't be both, right? Well, maybe in the universe of the MTA (specifically, the Metro North New Haven Line) it can. Welcome to life with the soon-to-be more expensive NYC Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Oh joy. And did I mention that the air-conditioning was broken in one of the cars?

But enough of the time honored tradition of kvetching about the MTA. Yesterday and today have been very pleasant.

Last night my engineer and I joined his best friend and his (the friend's) brothers and other pals for a belated 50th birthday dinner at Volare in the Village for said friend. (I was the only female in a group of 8 men. I was also the youngest person at the table for a change. Heh.) The owners at Volare are very fond of Jimmy (the birthday boy) and so they made a special cake just for him. Voila!

Although I have indeed used the term "food p*rn" as one of my tags, this is the only time the photo truly qualifies, wouldn't you agree? (I use the asterisk since I don't want to wind up as a result on the wrong search string!) Note the helpful placement of the maraschino cherry -- you know what they say about attention to detail making the difference between a good and great dish. ;-P

Needless to say, the table was howling with laughter when the cake showed up (hmmm... I wonder if I should send it to Cake Wrecks?!) since these were all guys' Guys, if you know what I mean, and they thoroughly enjoyed watching the honoree refuse to pucker up to, er, blow out the cake. while sitting in the West Village. (He wound up waving his hand over the 2 candles to put them out. HA!) And yes, mine was not the only cellphone to promptly make an appearance to memorialize the cake. Sadly, I never found out how they made it, and what was inside since the traditional/ normal desserts were actually served for eating.

Maybe I will go back and ask Sal. He and Falco, the head waiter and co-owner, were both very warm and genuinely friendly. Not enough good can ever be said of career waiters vs. actors-in-training. No wonder the reviews are so warm. Plus the tasty vittles of course -- Jimmy's never seen a menu since food just magically appears in front of him. I understand now why my friend LQ likes that magic trick at dim sum, when my friend Margaret and I do all the ordering.

Today was a trip up to my sister's home in CT for early Father's Day (hence the MTA kvetching), since my brother-in-law is like a second dad to me. Unfortunately, he no longer understands that as a dad, the holiday is for HIM -- he thinks it is only for HIS father, who died during the war, so clearly there is no need to celebrate Father's Day any longer. Sigh.

Nonetheless HIS sister and brother-in-law and I came to visit. (My nephew is spending tomorrow with him, and my 2 nieces are out of the country and out of this time zone respectively.) I bought him a DVD of Winged Migration and a giant coffee table book (he seems to like those) -- OCEAN by Dorling Kindersley. He seemed very pleased by the giant book, but got distracted and didn't open his card or DVD. Oh well, he'll have something to open tomorrow. And besides the whole point was to find something he'd still be able to enjoy, and the book qualifies. Yay!

Yes, I have decided visual media is the way to go with my brother-in-law. Magazines are still okay, but books are now too difficult for him, sadly. This was a man who used to love reading history books, biographies, etc. -- you know, densely typeset books with no pictures. And yes, "was" is the correct term. Sigh.

On the bright side, they have adjusted some of his medication so that it both minimizes his delusions (the organic deterioration of the brain from Alzheimers results in vivid auditory and/or visual hallucinations, I understand) AND it helps him sleep through the night -- the disease has wrecked his sense of time, plus some of the other medication would keep him wound up so that he'd get up at 3am. So the new drug (whose name I forget, alas) is a godsend. Hooray! RTBT!

And now, I should toddle off to bed, since I have to get up at the crack of dawn, so that I can head off to Jersey City, after which my sweetie and I are going down to Toms River to visit HIS dad (and mom), where he will chauffeur and treat them to a meal at one of their favorite restaurants, Crown Palace in Middletown.

Afterward, I know his mom will be itching to hit the Chinese supermarket next door. However, I had to disabuse her of the notion that I would be able to help her shop amongst the various unlabelled groceries. First of all, I speak a (wee) little bit of conversational Mandarin, and NOT food Mandarin. (Example: I defy you to figure out what ingredients are in the Eight Treasures dish. And did I mention that more than one dish is named "Eight Treasures"? Heh.) Secondly, while I may know the names of items in Chinese (in Shanghainese / Ningbohua, and NOT Mandarin or Cantonese) this does NOT mean I know what's it's called in English, so I may not KNOW that I know something she's asking me for, if you see what I mean. Shall I go on? No, I didn't think so.

Ciao!

Boring is good

Boring is good. Boring is dull. Boring results in fewer blog posts.

Boring means I have no dramatic ER visits to report, no fevers, no infections, nothing major.

So okay, I am shedding a frightening amount of hair, resulting in (a) one of the cashiers at the office cafeteria asking me if I cut my hair [um, no...it just looks like I have a pixie cut... eek -- so I might as well get one!], (b) every shower resulting in the tub looking like Cousin Itt of The Addams Family had visited, and (c) my scalp is becoming faintly visible (!!!) ... although the billing statement (none of which I have to pay -- RTBT!) for my last ER visit was over $3,000 ! Aaaiiiee!! THAT'S dramatic certainly. Ergo, I am all for Obama's healthcare reform plans, and I am one of the lucky ones who like their insurance!

Granted, my digestive tract is permanently unhappy with me because all of the various medications have uncomfortable side effects.

But really, everything's going well, all things considered.

And since it finally stopped raining tonight, I walked to Chelsea from the office (2.7 miles according to Google Maps).
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After which I even had an impromptu tasty Thai dinner with my friend Sam tonight at a place in Chelsea named (what else?) Pad Thai (although the neon sign says "Pad Thai Eighth Avenue"). Note the photo of my tasty Thai "bento" box above, a godsend for the terminally indecisive (like moi). Sam had the pineapple pad thai special, which he said was very tasty and had 3 tiger shrimp in addition to the generous numbers of regular shrimp. The free amuse bouche was deadly (caloriewise) though: seasoned deep fried rice vermicelli sprinkled with diced scallions. Yum!

I have also been diligently knitting away on my Little Bubbles sweater for my great-niece, my very first top-down project ever. A peaceful visit with my sweetie's parents on Sunday provided a tranquil setting for a large portion of the knitting.

Right now, I've finished the yoke and and am about to split the body for sleeves. So far, I really like the actual knitting for this project (if you exclude the frustrating directions) -- enough variety to keep me interested, but not enough to drive me to distraction -- and am considering making it again in a different color scheme for other babies-to-be.

It may look like a demented jellyfish, but I kinda like the checkboard-esque pattern. And the inside (look towards the top) looks funky, no? Shockingly for me, I have even been weaving in the ends as I go, instead of dreading the morass of dangling loose threads at the end of the project.

Okay time to go beddie-bye. Ciao!

Beans, boats, bridges, and burgers

Tonight is dedicated to a lot of scenery backlog. For once, NO medical news! Hoorah!

We start off with a cellphone shot of the Brooklyn Bridge, taken a week ago Friday on date night with my sweetie. We had drinks and snacks as we ambled our way down Front Street, near the South Street Seaport, starting off at Nelson Blue which had all New Zealand wines and beers. The frat boy atmosphere indoors was ignorable when we sat outside in the cafe area with its lovely view of the Brooklyn Bridge, sipping wine and grazing on their small plates (nothing to write home about, but fine on a pleasant summer evening). Then we ambled over to Stella Maris for another drink.

And then from this past Thursday, a belated shot of the semi-peaceful garden seating area of the Jackson Hole Burger across the street from the boob hospital. I took this (cellphone) photo when I was out grabbing lunch, post-onco visit, pre-chemo drip. It was very soothing, if you ignore the jackhammers pounding away one block over. Heh.

Well, hey, all that infrastructure stimulus spending had to go somewhere, right?

And then yesterday, after I made my sweetie waffles for breakfast & he went to do further battle with his kitchen renovations, I spent hours maniacally cross-stitching and rotting my brain watching hardbody-superspy Sunday on USA: Dr. No -- which I had never seen before actually (it took me 15 minutes to figure out that some of the characters were supposed to be Chinese... since they were all portrayed by Caucasian actors!) -- followed by The Bourne Identity -- which I had seen, more than once, but still enjoyed -- and then the very beginning of Casino Royale.

So you will understand why I desperately needed to go out and DO something: I ran out the door during the parkour sequence of Casino Royale, before I got sucked in by the sight of Daniel Craig reprising the Honey Rider rising-from-the-sea beach scene.

It being another beautifully cool (if slightly humid) summer day, I took off for a 2.8 mile semi-brisk jaunt down Riverside Park to drop off a book at my cousin's apartment in Lincoln Towers. Et voila! Yet another cellphone photo of scenery which caight my eye. Alas, the phone couldn't capture the clarity of the view over NJ (!) -- I mean, can you even tell there's a boat in the foreground? -- but I think you get the idea.

And that brings us up to date with tonight's insanity: I accidentally made a gigantic 4 bean salad: black, garbanzo, kidney, habicheulas, all because I am in love with my new Williams-Sonoma veggie chopper. (This is in addition to the tuna salad with bell pepper, scallions, and cilantro I made for lunch tomorrow.)

I blame/credit my sweetie's mom for this infatuation, since it was her chopper which I used for the bean salad I made for the pool party last month.

Tonight's extravaganza also had: cilantro, green bell pepper, cucumber, scallions, corn, and tomato. The dressing consisted of black pepper, dijon mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, and vinegars (balsamic, red wine, apple cider, and white). You can see why with all of these ingredients, I wound up with a giant VAT of salad. I mean, the big blue bowl you see here is the Tupperware bowl I use for mixing cake batter! Ponder the endless portions.

Ergo, it will be the de facto side dish at this week's knitting night with the ladies. HA!

And I will desperately need the knitting night tutorial, since the instructions for the Knitpicks pattern for their adorable looking Little Bubbles sweater is infuriatingly obtuse. I mean, who the hell writes instructions like this?! "Rows 1 and 3, do this... Rows 2 and 4, do that... Row 5, see the instructions for the other thing we want you to do... Rows 6 and 8, do something else entirely, but then on Rows 7 and 9..." PAH! I've been itching to try making this sweater 'cos it looks so cute, but I knew the pattern / directions would suck massive wind, and I was right. (At least the machine washable yarn, Comfy Sport, is supersoft. Even my engineer agrees on the baby-worthy softness quotient of this yarn.)

So I will be re-writing the instructions in a more helpful format from start to finish (I had planned to do that tonight, but well, I got sucked into the kitchen by the veggie chopper). While this will be a royal pain in the a**, it will have the side effect of helping me understand what the hell the directions are supposed to be. At least I will have until the beginning of August to finish the sweater for my greatniece's 1st birthday. Wish me luck!

Party Time

Well today wasn't exactly party time -- I stayed home sick from work because of violent nausea resulting in some dashes to the loo and subsequent multi-hour naps -- but I did promise to share some fund party time news.

Last weekend was my younger great-nephew Nicky's 1st birthday. See the nifty cake?

I converted some hanks of Blue Sky Cotton into a sweater vest for him. Or rather, I used half of the hanks, it turns out. Bonus! Another project for the remainder lies in the future.

Happily, my niece (mom of the cute munchkin) seems to like the resulting vest. See?

We had a fun, mellow birthday party at my sister's house last weekend, with 16 adults and 4 babies (!!!) all of whom were extremely well behaved. Amazing: 4 kids 3 years or younger and ZERO tempter tantrums over the course of an entire afternoon. As my sweetie the engineer quipped, "It's called good parenting."

One of my favorite photos from the day was this one with my nephew's daughter Lillian, and my mom. Soooo cute! It's like a matching image to the one of her and Nicky at her 80th birthday dinner. It's the mutual fascination society of the senior citizen and pre-toddler.

Lately, I've taken up cross stitch thanks to watching my sweetie's mom at the hospital last summer, when his dad was in for surgery.

Mine is very large stitch (I'm not overly ambitious/crazy -- can you see which portions have already been sewn? The only downside is that it's not exactly portable) but I'm finding it soothing and thinking of giving the finished pillow as a present to my mom later this year. What else to get for the cranky parent except some you personally made?

Round 5

So it occurs to me that (a) I haven't posted in a week, (b) it seems I only watch my favorite movies like The Matrix [really, the first one is the most fun -- has it truly been 10 years since it came out?!] or The Lord of the Rings when I surf across them on TNT [and apparently, it's Hugo Weaving night on TNT], and (c) those dystopian machines-rule-the-world movies like Terminator Salvation [wait for video... or a bargain matinee, I say] have really illogical premises -- why keep people as batteries? is it really that effective/cheaper, really? and WHY does Skynet want to wipe out all humans?! -- but I suppose (b) and (c) are unanswerable, at least if you're not an unhealthily obsessed fan-geek.

Coincidentally, Neo just barfed onscreen right now, as if he had just endured a bad round of chemo. (Has Morpheus always been this pompous, by the way?!)

Thus, I will address that which I can at least claim has some more interest to you, dear reader, than my midnight ramblings -- i.e., my medical update.

Today was round 5 of 8 in chemo-land. Generally speaking, it was fine and dandy. Mostly. (We'll get to the caveat in a minute.) The oncologist and I were both pretty pleased by the lack of fever this round, so YAY! We're both hoping this means that my body has become used to the constant round of insults and attacks, and that going forward, this means each round will be endurable -- or at least without a trip to the ER.

The only problem is that (sorry, guy friends, icky girl stuff coming up) the chemo seems to have totally screwed up my, um, "biological clock" -- to put it euphemistically. So now, instead of one week of messiness, and 3 weeks of rest, it seems I generally have THREE weeks of yuck, and ONE week of rest -- I feel like I am ALWAYS having my period! Argh! This includes the attendant mood swings, food cravings, and bloating, etc. Fun, fun, fun. Of course, the oncologist also pointed out that it could just merely be early perimenopause [at 41?!], and not just because of the drugs -- although the drugs apparently DO sometimes have this effect. Feh.

This weird cycle stuff could also possible explain the follicles (psuedo-cystlike formations) they found in my left ovary at last week's ultrasound, (ordered by my new onco) since it is not unusual for menstruating women to have them at some point in each cycle (ah, the bliss of ignorance). Follow up ultrasound of the uterine area to be done in 6 weeks, thereby continuing my odd mirroring of my pregnant pals.

( Okay, important stuff coming up ) It could also explain why the new onco found a big lumpy area in my RIGHT boob. What is this? The bonus round?! We're hoping that it is just my boob being it's usual dense and lumpy self (apparently, density is so confusing that the other nurses were amazed that my surgeon had to send me for an MRI before the lumpectomy in order to locate the tumor since he normally NEVER needs the visual aid) and that the endless periods are just causing temporary unhappiness in the breast tissue. If the lump is still there at my next chemo round, then more mammos, ultrasounds, and biopsies lie in my future.

I choose to believe that the big lumpy area is just period-related, and not cancerous (although I honestly can't remember if they took a mammo of my right boob in December... wouldn't they have seen it then?! So I'm guessing no, or it would be in my file... Either that, or my onco will go find it in my file after today's visit -- maybe I should call her office tomorrow to check). In any case, (a) I won't worry about it unless it's still there in 3 weeks, and (b) life wouldn't be THAT cruel... would it?

Really, I'm not too worried about it (one road bump at a time, people -- chemo round 5 is staring me in the face right now), but it makes me not too eager to go get the BRCA gene test approved by my health insurer so that I can take the test. (See: bliss of ignorance, above.)

Okay, I'm going to go watch a hot, buff, young Keanu Reeves on TV now. We were both a decade younger then. Funky.

Since you don't have that, and may actually find him an unappealing mouthbreather (hi, Margaret!) I leave you with these beautiful flowers from my sister's yard instead. Fun family news in my next posting. Promise.