Not sure if the title makes any sense to anyone right
now. To be a little clearer, I could say that I feel like I have lost so much
time, waiting for approvals, answers, recovery time, next treatment, results. I got caught up in everything, or lost
in it all, forgetting about the importance of “living” the journey, not just
anticipating the destination. Reminder to brain… Live while I live!
Goodness, I don’t know where to begin, it has been
almost a month and a half since I have written here. I’ll start small … my
self-portrait made a lot of progress for a couple weeks, but has been on the
back burner since. J
Although it is far enough along that I get the gist of what I want to feel when
I see it. I will get back to it soon.
Also, not sure I even brought it up before, but I am
moving in with a roommate. My friend here in the apartments where I live, that
has my fuzzy friend and with whom I attend my new church is going to be my
roommate. I made her promise to tell me at any itme if she bit off more than
she can chew (me) J. We move into the new apartment in a
couple weeks. So I suppose much of my time, I have been trying to clean up this
apartment and pack what few things I have kept around. Fortunately I cleared
out my material things a few years ago.
The results of the tissue testing from chemo did not
turn out too great. Basically the only chemotherapies that may work are the
“harsh” ones, with lifetime limits or potential difficult side effects, so for
now I am staying with hormonal type treatments (not hormones), anti hormonal in
a way. I should have another scan session the end of the month and know if they
are working at all or at least stabilizing the bone mets. I found myself
thinking, “why wasn’t this tissue testing done before, I probably wasted a year
and much pain with chemos that had little hope of helping” but looking back
doesn’t help the future. These tests are not done right away because of their
costs, although compared to the costs of the chemos that didn’t work, it would
have been small potatoes. So ????
On the liver front (yep it’s a war in many ways). I
had the initial “mapping”, which was fairly tolerable with some pain accessing
and closing the artery in the groin. The actual procedures (left and right
lobes separately) were approved and I had the right lobe treated almost 4 weeks
ago, with the left scheduled for the 8th of August. Briefly the
first procedure had a glitch… my body had created a new branch off the liver
artery that went to my intestines?? Sine the mapping 3 weeks prior and since it
was late in the day, the procedure could not be completed that day and I had to
return the next. First the pain was excruciating compared to that of the
mapping. The Dr thought it was because I had developed scar tissue in the groin
where the artery had been accessed before (during the mapping). So the actual
day of the procedure, they used the left leg artery instead and the pain was
much less. The first few weeks weren’t bad, I didn’t have the usual side
effects of anorexia (don’t think my mind can comprehend that) J. Although after two
weeks I had some difficult issues a day long of vomiting followed by intense
pains (probably from all the vomiting) then I could not eat much without
discomfort. Sooooo, now my Dr. says I am atypical (no kidding – I try to tell
all my Drs that up front). Anyway he believes I may have developed an ulcer, as
some of the radiation can “ooze”? in to adjoining organs. Not huge amounts of
radiation, as the mapping procedure assured that. But I suppose it doesn’t take
much these days to throw my body out of whack. Anyway, I go in Monday to have
blood work and a CT to assure all is ok for Wednesday’s procedure. I can tell you that medicine is not
black and white, by far; There isn’t any sure-fire med for anything or anyone.
This whole experience has given me new insight into
the “pain meter” (gauging your pain from 1 to 10). Thank God, literally, that
we cannot relive physical pain the way we can relive emotional pain. I realized
that I can compare the levels of pain, not by recall of the actual pain, but
what I prayed for while enduring it. I won’t share the specific prayers. But think about your own pain
experiences… It isn’t just childbirth that you cannot recall the pain (because
of the miraculous birth of a baby) but all pain, we can not relive it, only what
we were thinking or what our bodies were doing while we were in pain. Thank you
God, for that enormous blessing.