Thursday 11.20.2008

When the radio came on this morning, I was sleeping. I heard it, but through the sleep-fog I had a hard time realizing what it was. Oh. Time to get up...

0720. I got up and got ready for the day, and headed to Jackson for a meeting. I was surprised when, halfway there, my dashboard "dinged". Huh?? I looked down. Oh-oh. The gas gauge. Oh yeah, I was supposed to get gas last night on the way home. Hm. I think I've got enough to get to the gas station that was 10 miles away. Yes, I got there ok. The needle was just on the upside of the line pointing to the "E". I filled up with 14.1 gallons of gas--the most I've ever put in that car. I thought I had a 13 gallon tank. On to the meeting....

Over to the hospital, we had a good meeting, good turnout, productive. Afterwards, I browsed the cafeteria to see if I wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at home or something there. There was some stuff there that I liked, so I got my lunch and went back to the floor and ate with my friends. I headed home.

Daniel was home, we visited a bit. I had a couple of hours before going to therapy.

It had started snowing when I went over to the therapy place. Ike brought me back to room 2, and when she looked at my abdomen, she was disappointed that the cording was still there. She went out and got her co-worker, Heidi, who is the other breast/lymphedema specialist there.

Heidi came in and I showed her my abdomen. She was quite impressed. She asked if she could touch it--sure. She and Ike started touching and poking at my cords, moving me around to see what it did. It was kind of funny. I took my shirt and bra off so they could evaluate the underarm as well as the lumpy fluid pockets in my breast that developed after the mammogram. They were both somewhat concerned about the breast fluid, but Tuesday Ike was able to move that away. Their concern is about the cords that are on my arm, armpit, chest, and abdomen. Heidi found a couple of smaller ones that neither Ike or myself had discovered. They talked therapy-speak between them while they were exploring me.

Heidi thanked me for allowing her to see me, and left. Ike got to work with some deeper lymphatic drainage techniques. She did a good job, and the hour was up. She re-evaluated several times during the treatment, and when we were done, she was disappointed that she was only able to reduce the abdominal cording by about half. Then she told me she was going to fax a progress note to Dr. Bolmer for another prescription (because Blue Cross requires a new script every 30 days) and tell her that this cording is not improving and is, in fact, getting worse.

Huh??

That's the first time I've heard her say anything other than positive about this. I was quite surprised. I'm not sure what my opinion is, other than it's happening. I think it's a process of the combined cancer treatment processes, (surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation) and that as the radiated tissue continues to undergo the changes that radiation does to tissue, my body will adapt as it needs to. I don't know much about radiation damage, but we as health care professionals often tell our surgical patients that it may take a year or so to get back to "normal". So why are we surprised that my body is still changing?? I'm only 5 months out of radiation, having had the last treatment June 5. And I had that mammogram that aggravated the already altered tissues. I think that time and continued therapy as needed to keep the lymph fluid pockets drained will allow for optimal healing. I pray God will guide us in this.

She wanted to schedule more appointments, so I went out to the car to get my planner. Oh--it snowed!! A lot!! There was about a half inch on my car. I went back in, made appointments through mid-December, thanked her, and left. I didn't see anyone off the road or anything, I don't know why they were going so slow.

I finally got to College Road and turned south. A mile or so down, there's a car off the road. Another half mile, another car off the road. On the overpass over the highway, traffic was crawling, and off to the left, I could see blue flashing lights, one on the eastbound side, and looking to the right, one on the westbound side. Hm. Easy does it.

As I got up to Holt Road, there wasn't as much snow, and Holt Road was just wet, like it had been salted. No difficulty driving here. I turned into the complex, it was greasy, too. Shew, I'm home.

I told Daniel what the weather was doing a little north of here, and his reply was, oh, do you think we can still go out for dinner?? I said sure, if you want to drive in this stuff. And we don't go too far north...

So, we headed out. We ended up at Bob Evans, where we had a tasty meal. It had snowed a little more while we were in the restaurant, and the temperature is high 20's. The roads were ok until we got into the complex, and the roads here hadn't been salted or anything yet, and were shiny greasy from traffic on it. Daniel, being the driver that he is, had to step on the brakes to see how slippery it is. Yup, we slid. He did it again, we slid again. Ok, let's get home...

And here we are. Tomorrow is a workday for me. I'm going to go to bed soon, to try to sleep before going out on the hopefully fairly good condition roads tomorrow morning.

Thank you for reading. Hugs.