Weeping and Healing

Happy snowy day all. I hope that most of you got to leave your jobs a little early and are now snugly cozied up in your homes with a mug of hot chocolate and your puppies. Everyone should have puppies. Here are mine. 

As for me, the snow doesn't make one iota of difference. I didn't drive today. I wasn't at work today. I haven't, in fact, been at work for over three weeks. I've just been sitting at home coating myself in a variety of ointments and swapping between three different lounge outfits, because everything I wear gets stained from the oil in the ointment. Actually, that's not entirely true. I mean the three outfits part is accurate, but the staying home part is somewhat misleading. It's not that I don't go ANYWHERE. Just yesterday I went out to two different doctor's offices. I have another appointment on Thursday, another on Friday, and one on Monday. It's my hobby. 

Last week, I had my 6 month check-up with the oncology surgeon who took out the tumor. (Not the 2010 tumor, mind you. I'm referring to the 2022 tumor. I've had cancer twice. My chromosomes are stupid). Anyway, at the surgeon's office, I learned that things are looking as good as can be expected for a person at this stage of treatment. I also learned that I have to go to physical therapy to deal with the muscle tightening and scar tissue created by the radiation. This is never going to end. 

Speaking of radiation, how are the burns, you might wonder? I don't care for them. To quote Homer Simpson "they're the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked." I mean, my radiation team is really nice, but boy are they a ever a dirty bunch of hoodwinkers. No one told me that it would be this bad. If they had, I may have just gotten to be better friends with the tumor and invited it to stay for a malignant freeloader vacation. 

To be fair, the burn in my armpit is much better. Almost all of the peeling has finished and in it's place is healthier, although still discolored, skin. The rest of me, though, is another matter. From the bottom of my ribs up to my collar bone is all affected. Some areas are bright red, some are splotchy, some are blistered, some are peeling. It's like a morose Dr. Seuss book. 1 Burn, 2 Burn, Red Burn, Weeping Burn. 

Oh, did I not mention the weeping? SO MUCH WEEPING. It's really quite gross. I thought that being constantly coated in petroleum was disgusting, but this is decidedly worse. It's a form of radiation dermatitis called moist desquamation and if that doesn't title make you want to hurl, the description will: "a consequence of radiation exposure in which the skin thins and then begins to weep because of a loss of integrity of the epithelial barrier. It is a painful result of destruction and sloughing of dermal layers." 

True. I can verify that my epithelial barrier is destroyed. There is almost no integrity to be found anywhere. It's embarrassing, really. Also, each blister is apparently filled with a yellowish goo that dries in crystalline form on my skin. So, along with the slimy part of the weeping, there are cancer crumbs all over me. It's like those parts of my chest have been replaced with unevenly coated, very fine sandpaper made for ruining shirts and self esteem.  

In good news, though, I got a new prescription for the blistering areas at one of my appointments yesterday. It's meant to help dry out the area and prevent bacterial growth, because ... eew. If I started harboring a new bacteria colony on top of everything else, I might really lose it. The new cream seems to be helping and I have hopes that I may actually feel well enough to attend work sometime before 2023. Keep your fingers crossed. 

And if you want to see new photos of how the burns are developing, they are below. If you are grossed out by such things, don't look. No one would blame you. I don't even want to look and it's my own skin. 

Chest burns and beautiful mesh tube tops to hold dressings in place.

Healing armpit.

Gross blisters.

Clavicle burn.

Idiot squirrel eating my birdseed this weekend. 

That last one was just for fun. Except for the birds. They find the squirrel to be disruptive and unseemly. Kind of like cancer. 

Okay, back to your cocoa. I'm going back to the couch and my puppies. 

I DID IT!

8 sessions of chemo and 30 radiation treatments all finished! 

And then there was cake. Obviously.

My suspicion is that for most of you, this sounds like phenomenal news. Treatment is done. Cancer is smushed. Yay Liz. 

Unfortunately, (well, fortunately for you) most of you do not have direct experience with radiation. My situation is markedly less cheery than the completion of daily trips to the oncology office would suggest. As I was warned, the side effects of killing cancer cells with a linear accelerator have been getting progressively worse each day. If my body responds like most, my tissues will continue to become more and more inflamed, blistered, and tender over the next week or two. 

This is suboptimal for me, as my daily routine already involves a lot of ointment applications, bandage changes, and sitting around with my left arm raised to avoid friction in my armpit. I'm not sure how much more I can adapt. A medically induced coma sounds like a suitable next step. 

To illustrate, I will show you some photos. If you're the type to be grossed out by things like rashes and extreme sunburns, please stop reading. Luckily for you, it's not as yucky as other things I have posted on this forum. I don't have any photos of surgery scars, draining bodily fluids, or necrotic tissue. You'll have to scurry back to the 2010 blog posts to see those. 

I'll ease you in.

This is my body. The periwinkle oval near the bottom of the screen is where the tumor was. The green outline is the area of radiation treatment. You'll notice that it goes all the way from my collar bone down past the tumor site and from the middle of my torso around to my back. It's a big area for a 5mm already excised tumor, but they have to target all suspicious cells and lymph nodes and whatnot.

You can also see the tube from my port (Viper) snaking (see what I did there?) down into my heart. That Viper is a real interloper.

This is me in the prepping area.

There is lotion in all of the radiation rooms, because the treatment makes skin become dry and peel. One nurse told me "make sure you are putting lotion on 4-5 times a day. You can't over-hydrate. It's your new job now."

This me on the day that I went into the changing room and realized that I got undressed without bringing in a hospital gown. Oops. 

This is me waiting for radiation. I'm a bat. 

This is me in the radiation room. The black thing on my stomach monitors my breathing, as the radiation is dosed to hit my body only when I'm holding in a shallow breath. If I release the air, cough, sneeze, or wiggle, the machine shuts off. The thing on my chest is the bolus, which I have previously referred to as a giant jello jiggler. You' see that it is covered with a thin fabric and is lined up with the green beams for precision each day. 

This photo shows the radiated half of me versus the healthy half.

Internally, I have some muscle tightening and scar tissue forming, which I can feel (but they assure me is not new tumors). Externally, there are basically two areas showing the strongest side effect, my chest and under my arm. Both areas are getting worse by the day. This photo is my chest on November 9. There are a few small, but infuriatingly itchy lesions.  

The same area a day later

And four days after that

Here you can see that a patch of burn (technically called radiation dermatitis) is developing under my arm. This photo was taken on November 11. The early days of the burn made me so uncomfortable that I walked around like Mary Catherine Gallagher all day, in an effort to prevent my arm from repeatedly adhering to and then peeling off the tender skin. It was a cute look, I like to think.

Two days later it had grown larger and developed some blisters and peeling.

Three days after that, it was much bigger, and more layers of skin began sloughing.

So, this is me now. I'm in a lot of pain and there are very few ways to alleviate it. As luck would have it, however, the radiation technicians tell me that it looks "pretty good. It hasn't even split open yet." So there's that.

Time for more cake, I deem.

November 10

It's Thursday morning of Week 5, which means that I have 2 more radiation sessions in the regular schedule and then 5 after that in the boost week. What is a boost week, you ask? Super question. It's a terrifically exciting award that I have earned. The prize is extra energy rays aimed at my already damaged body. Yay! Although I would rather have had a trophy ... or a cake. I think oncology offices should hand out more cake. 

Yesterday, at radiation, the technician asked me what I had planned to celebrate the completion of my treatment. I couldn't think of anything. She suggested that I at least engage in some pampering, get a massage or something while I'm considering what else to do to mark the wonderful cessation of  horrendous events. Yes, perhaps. The thing is though, just like at the end of chemo, it isn't really the end. The side effects of radiation will continue to develop for two more weeks after I'm done. What kind of jubilation does that incite? 

In truth, I will be really pleased to stop going to the oncology office every day. It's hard to feel happy or at all normal with a daily reminder that I've been playing the role of cancer assassin since April Fool's Day. That's seven months. It's long enough for me to have seen the landscaping at the Maplewood Cancer Center go from spring bulbs to summer blooms to mums and pumpkins to spruce tips and birch sticks. That's a lot of flora turnover. Logically, I know that there will be some point in the future at which this will all feel like that year that was, a bygone era of incessant crappiness, but right now I'm still feeling square in the middle of it. 

Finally giving in to something I probably should have done months ago, I've taken a leave from work. Partially, it's the result of lingering chemo brain, fatigue, and my radiation schedule. Also, it's in response to the fact that I am really uncomfortable. My muscles feel like I've done entirely too many one-armed push-ups, when in reality I've done zero push-ups of any sort.* My skin is various shades of pink from the bottom of my ribs up to my clavicle and from my sternum around to my back. I have a very itchy rash on my chest and another in my arm pit that causes pain each time I move my arm. 

But, not all is lost. I have some very good news and that is that my hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes have started to come back. It will certainly be a long time before I have flowing locks, but it's definitely cause for celebration. And maybe cake. 

*Footnote: I once did 52 push-ups in a minute, earning me a prize at my Tae Kwon Do class. That was a long time ago, though. It was before I had muscles moved from my back to my front and before I learned that my body was working against me at a chromosomal level. Also, I used both my arms. I think the correct number of one-armed push-ups is probably none.