All your hairs are belong to us.

I don't feel sick. Aside from an altercation with a rogue body part of mine, I feel perfectly normal. To look at me, you'd never know that I had cancer. You can't see the toxic chemicals coursing through my veins. You can't see the invasive tumor in my breast.

Until now...

My hair has been falling out in full-force. This has been quite traumatic, although I don't think people understand why. It's not a vanity issue. I don't need hair to feel pretty. This is the first physical mark of my cancer. From now on, when people look at me they'll see a "cancer patient" and associate me with the stereotypes that go along with it. And I don't feel like one, not at all.

To prepare myself for the eventual hair loss, I first dyed my hair pink. The next step was a short pixie cut and another round with pink hair dye. I'm glad I took that route. Seeing the short pink hairs fall out in the shower makes me feel like it's not actually my hair. My family keeps pressuring me to shave my head, but I just don't want to do it. Not until I have to.

A lot of people have suggested wigs, but I don't see a point in them. Are they supposed to make me less self-conscious? Because I will constantly be worried about people noticing that it's fake or off-centered or sticking up in the back. They're itchy and uncomfortable. I'm going to prefer hats and scarves.

I guess I just have to sigh and remember that I am more than my cancer. That sounds like a cliche, but it's still true.

Sugar Feeds Cancer

Every time I eat sugar-free candy, I hate the world just a little bit more.

I've been cutting back on my simple sugars (candies and alcohol have been the main problems for me) in order to starve this sucker inside of me. I've been working hard to say "no" to the free chocolates in the break room. I try to have visions of blueberries instead of sugar plums dancing in my head. It's already working, he's wasting away to practically nothing. He's getting as skinny as an Ethiopian, I can tell. Other than reducing sugar, I haven't had much of a restriction on my diet. Generally, I'm supposed to eat more protein and more vegetables/fruits. I'm still allowed my heavenly Diet Coke (in moderation, of course).

Now, for the hard part..... a life of sobriety. A study that was recently released says that drinking alcohol more than 3 drinks a week is linked to the recurrence of cancer (and an increase in the d-word of breast cancer). Since I was diagnosed, I have had a grand total of one whole beer. You can imagine how dramatic a difference this is for a single 28 year old. *sigh* This completely changes my life. Kickball games? Tailgates? Concerts? I can look forward to being the permanent designated driver, and forever the sober one trying to instill reason into a bunch of drunk imbeciles. Oh how I'll miss being one of those imbeciles.

Pour one out for me, my friends.

Cancer Threat Levels

I had my first blip on the worry radar. I came home from work with chills and a fever of 101.5 oF. My oncology nurse told me when that happens, to call the doctor on-call and go to the hospital. Why is a silly fever such a concern? My immune system is being torn down by these chemo drugs (an unfortunate side effect) so fighting infections is like Delaware declaring war against the U.S. Sorry, little friend, it's not going to end well.

We called the doctor and he said to take Tylenol and go to bed, and if I still had a fever in the morning (I didn't) to go to the hospital. *phew* Got through that one. Then I noticed how much it had worried my friends (they were ready to drive to my house in the middle of the night and take me to the hospital themselves), which got me thinking about how to manage other people's worry.

Thus was born... the "Cancer Threat Levels".

Cancer Threat Pink: All is good
Cancer Threat Yellow: Slightly elevated worry (i.e. fever), no hospital visit, being monitored
Cancer Threat Orange: Elevated worry, going to the hospital
Cancer Threat Red: Hospital admittance, get your butts over to my bedside and take care of me



"Worrying is like a rocking chair. It'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere. Write that down."

Chemo Sabe Cristal, the Cancer Warrior

Chemotherapy wasn't nearly what I was expecting. I took this picture to show my worried friends that it isn't as scary as it sounds. I spent four hours with an IV in my arm just reading, watching a bit of Food Network, and listening to music.

First, they start me with an IV bag of anti-nausea medication. Then they flush it through with saline. Next was a plunger full of Adriamycin (which is bright red), and more saline to flush it through. Then an IV bag of Cytoxan, and yet again more saline to flush it through. By the end I had to pee SO BAD (which, fun fact for ya, came out red from the Adriamycin). My cheeks were puffy from all that extra fluid.

On the way home from the hospital the first of the nausea started to hit me. I had to ask my father not to accelerate or break very quickly or I wasn't going to make it the five miles back to my house without getting sick in my car. For the rest of the night I was feeling pretty miserable from the nausea. But, being me and completely insane, instead of resting that night I had a few friends over for a hair dyeing party. What color did I dye my hair? Pink. To handle the shock of losing all my hair, I decided that my first shock was going to be a fun one.

A woman with a plan

After seeing my oncologist my head was spinning. They sat me down for hours and explained EVERYthing. I'm doing neoadjuvant chemotherapy, which for the rest of us means chemotherapy before surgery. Then I will have surgery, and then radiation. Why chemo first, you ask? Since I am young, my cells are dividing pretty quickly which means that the chemo will be more effective. The chemotherapy works by stopping quickly dividing cells, which is why hair loss ends up being a side effect. Speaking of side effects, the oncology nurses explained the many many side effects that I will be dealing with as I go through this. They also gave me a fistful of prescriptions to get filled to manage the nausea.

The next steps are to get a PET Scan to see if the cancer has metastasized, and to get an Echocardiogram to see if my heart can handle the treatments

My chemotherapy drugs of choice:
Adriamycin and Cytoxen (for four treatments, two weeks apart)
Taxotere (for four treatments, two weeks apart)

My anti-nausea drugs of choice:
Emend, Phenergan, Zofran, Decadron, Ativan (optional)

Baby got background info

I've had a lump for awhile (August is as far back as I remember because I had it on my 28th birthday) but when I went to see my OB/GYN about it he said "Oh, I don't feel it now. It's probably because you drink too much caffeine. You know that new tea place opened up in the mall? Girls drink tea and they don't realize it has a lot of caffeine in it." I thought to myself "You know what? I do drink an insanely large amount of Diet Coke" so I gave up my BELOVED Diet Coke for two grueling weeks. In those two horribly terrible Diet Coke free weeks I started getting some pain. I went back to my OB/GYN and I said to him "No sir, something is wrong". He thought it was an inflammation and an abscess (which is extrememly rare in women who aren't breast feeding) so he put me on antibiotics and sent me for an ultrasound (where they ended up doing a mammogram as well).

The report from the mammogram and ultrasound seemed to agree with him that it was an inflammation and abscess, so the OB/GYN went on vacation and referred me to a surgeon to have the abscess drained. I saw the surgeon on friday 11/20 and when he reviewed the films and the symptoms he told me that it didn't look like an abscess. He tried to get me in for an MRI friday afternoon but the radiologist said "Pssshaw, my weekend has already started" so Monday morning bright and early at 7AM I had an MRI and that's when they found my swollen lymph node (but it still wasn't entirely clear what was going on).

Monday at noon my surgeon did a biopsy and Tuesday 11/24/09 at 4pm he called with the results. I was positive in both my lymph node and my breast for "Poorly Differentiated Ductal Carcinoma".