FCKuCANCER.

hey y’all i have some updates for ya. let’s talk cancer…

one. do you know what today is/was? it’s my cancerversary. five years ago today, i was diagnosed with breast cancer. i found out my staging a few days afterwards — spoiler alert: it’s stage iv.

anywho, today was bittersweet, for many reasons, but i know i am blessed. i know science has improved so much, but i still did not expect to still be alive 5 years later and i know it is nothing but GOD and the prayer circle that you guys have me covered in. thank you just doesn’t seem sufficient, but it’s all i got.

two. this weekend, my cousins came over and surprised me with a lovely book filled with letters from some of you, my village. the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. the book was amazing, and though i am surely going to forget to thank each of you individually, i am seriously appreciative of every word. i have no idea how the word got out to so many of you, but it’s amazing. i also know it’s virtually impossible to include all of you, so if you didn’t know about it, or didn’t get your submission done in time — please know i know how you feel, and how much you got me!

this is a picture of the cover. ain’t she cute? the short story is my paternal grandfather gave all of his grandchildren animal nicknames, and i was the pig. i am also the youngest grand and he raised hogs so i tend to think that means i am the most special!! let me have this fellow browns!

three. today was not only my cancerversary, it was also round three of six treatments for my new breast cancer. today, momma, aunt marian and micha switched off. so far so good. we were there from about 7am to 1pm.

it wouldn’t be me without a hiccup. they had difficulty yesterday for pre-chemo labs with accessing my port. apparently it has shifted. not common, but also not so uncommon. because of this, today, i had to lie down and one nurse had to hold the port a certain way (kinda adjusting it with her fingers a bit) while another used a larger needle to actually hook into it. well, they were successful and got it on the first try so that was good. and i only had to lie down for that part. that was the only hiccup, well, except for the real hiccups that i am still experiencing apparently after chemo infusions, just not as frequent as the first round.

not enough time has passed to really list out the side effects from this round yet. hiccups is all i got at the time of this post. stay tuned.

WAIT: I LIED. i spilled ice chips down my shirt whilst doing cold therapy and micha basically had to dig in to get the ice out. so I got felt up twice today. first by the nurses and then by micha.

i guess i need to start bringing ones to the infusion center!!

four. last week i had my mda plastic surgeon and radiation oncologist consultations. i also let mda put a savi marker in the original lymph node that tested positive for cancer. if you are keeping track, that now makes 2 savi markers, one for each lymph node that has tested positive. i equate it to being tagged like i dunno microbiologists to do whales to track migrations and whatnot. (i very much do not know what microbiologists do, so that is a big assumption — and i am not asking uncle google, but i figure y’all know what i mean). really what it does is during surgery, they place a device over my arm pit and it beeps when it gets over the markers so they take the right ones.

i will have my hm plastics consult next week so i will probably dedicate a post to plastics similar to this one i did about mastectomies a few weeks back.

it’s been a long day. i’m going to bed.

fin.