BC Becky

Never thought I'd want to be a breast cancer survivor

Tag: caregivers

  • More time together

    More time together

    I recall someone mentioning that one of the things they enjoyed during treatment was all the extra time they spent with their spouse. This is something that had not really occurred to me.

    My hubby and I spent every waking moment (pretty much) together for 16-months while on our bike trip. Then we spent 1 year living on opposite sides of the country when he moved to SF and I stayed in Ottawa to work on my PhD. So, we’ve see-sawed on this. We’ve spent a lot of time together and we’ve spend not enough time together. One of the reasons I chose to moved to SF when I did (rather than stick around longer in Ottawa) was that I didn’t like living apart. I remember telling myself that we would not intentionally do that again.

    When I was diagnosed, it caused a re-set on many things. It also caused us to spend more time together – and not just more time in the infusion chair – we really spent more time with each other. Looking back over my blog posts (part of my research), I notice that I mention conversations we had while walking together in the early morning (chemo mucks with sleep patterns). It also brought me back to when we were first dating. We would often go on long walks and chat about this or that.

    Reading about the walks made me realize that I’m missing them. With re-emergence life is starting to get busy again. We are starting to fall into old patterns. Not that we were not happy before, just that there was a new level of intimacy and connection that happened when we spent that intense time together. I didn’t realize I was missing it until I read about it on my blog. And so, with that, we shall try harder to make sure we have time in our week to walk – time to chat about anything and nothing all at once. We know that self-care is important, but couple-care is import too.

    Feature image (c) Rebecca J. Hogue

  • So I bit the head off of the repair guy

    It has been one of those kind of days. Actually, I managed to get some real work done this morning, so it hasn’t been a total write off. But I’m tired. Every little errand tires me out. My body aches and I’m nauseated. So when the repair guy called saying that he was at the front gate and wouldn’t come find my apartment, but rather required me to walk out to the front parking entrance to get him, I already was not impressed. Then mid-way through repairing the microwave he sniffles and coughs. OMG. I pretty much freaked out (internally). I texted Scott who suggested that I just ask him to leave.

    You see, my immune system is compromised – not really badly – but enough that I was pretty clear when the repair guy came last week that no one was to come if they had a cold. I do not need that right now.

    I did not kick him out, but when he started to ask about the co-pay, which my landlord needed to pay, I couldn’t process. My brain was not functioning. I snapped. I said, if you are sick I need to you to leave because I’m having chemo and cannot be exposed. He clearly felt bad and explained that it was just allergies because the people at the last call had a cat. But I still could not manage the mental processing of the co-pay issue. I called Scott on my cell and handed it to the guy. He was able to get the number for the property manager and deal with the co-pay issue. He politely went outside to deal with the issue and just knocked on the door to give me the receipt when it was all done.

    I feel kind of bad for snapping – but I just couldn’t manage it. It is frustrating that I can handle some mental tasks really well, but others are beyond my abilities. I’m pretty sure I had the number for the property management folks someplace, but I did not have the capacity to figure out where that might be. I spent all morning working on getting my ethics submitted for my thesis project – so clearly  I had some form of mental capacity – but this was just too much. Any capacity for multitasking it pretty much gone!

    Ugh, chemo brain!

  • Cycle three

    So I’m officially 1/2 way through the AC chemo. The AC is supposed to be the harder part – the T chemo, which is done weekly is a much lower dose. With the AC chemo, I take a cocktail of pre-chemo meds to counteract the side-effects – mostly to fight off the nausea. In theory, when I switch to T chemo I won’t need any pre-meds or anything to fight nausea. Here is hoping.

    Did not have my expert photographer (Scott) with me when I visited my tree for the requisite selfie – so the shots aren’t as well composed, but fun none-the-less. I really noticed that the tree smelled like eucalyptus, so I wonder if it is pollen season?

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    Scott was by my side during at least part of the chemo treatment and took this excellent artistic shot. I was next to the window in treatment today (my preferred location), so I can look out at the tops of a few trees. I like the natural light and having a sense of how the day is passing by.

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    So far, so good.

     

  • Picturing a morning sail

    This morning we headed off to San Francisco for a morning sail on USA 76 with ACSailingSF. We almost missed the boat, arriving just as they were about to cast off. Fortunately, we got there just in time, and they nicely sent someone up to fetch us at the gate.

    Hopping on the boat, I was immediately happy. After a little bone pain yesterday, I wasn’t sure I’d have the energy to get out sailing – but rather than it tiring me, sailing refreshed me. It was nice and windy (at least at first) so we had an excellent, and thrilling up wind leg.

    We brought the new GoPro, which I spent some time playing with. Unfortunately, most of my pictures involve either my fingers or the string tether in the corner of the camera. Since you cannot see what you are taking a picture of, I didn’t quite realize it. So, I’ve chosen a few pictures that turned out pretty well.

    Scott resting after having been one of the grinders raising the main.

    DCIM\100GOPRO
    Under sail!

    DCIM\100GOPRO

    Playing with selfies on the Go Pro.

    DCIM\100GOPRO

    Some video of Scott grinding as we tack on the up wind leg.

    I enjoyed some time right up at the front being reminded regularly with mist that we were on a body of salt water!

    At one point I even took off my hat and buff to feel the wind on my bare skull and of course get a bald head picture 🙂

    DCIM\100GOPRO

    After our sail, we had lunch with some friends on Pier 39. Overall, a great way to spend a Sunday.

  • Picturing a walk

    Yesterday we went for a 6km walk along the Guadeloupe trail which runs just behind our condo complex.

    For the first part of the walk, I took the lower path hoping to get better pictures of the birds.

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    Unfortunately, the grasses along the river grow so tall that I couldn’t actually see the river through the grass in most places. What I did notice was that sounds were more isolated, so I could hear the song birds a lot more. It was low tide, so the ‘river’ which is rather brackish at this point was mostly mud flats.

    I did catch a glimpse of the egret who appears to be rather timid. As I got close, he decided to fly up into a tree.

    While Scott and I were both on the lower path, he stayed up in the tree, posing for us.

    We did manage to catch him a little later down in the water.

    On the way back we walked along the upper path.

    And thought this sign was particularly well designed.

    The end 🙂

     

  • Recommended reading

    Kelley Doyle Philbin writes an elegant post entitled “EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW IN LIFE I LEARNED WHEN I WAS DIAGNOSED WITH BREAST CANCER!” that I highly recommend. I found a lot of her words resonated – both with my experience and with the experiences that others have shared with me during various support groups that I attend. Her words so elegantly reflect the reality for many women.

    I am sad whenever I hear of men leaving when their partner has breast cancer. I find myself wishing for these women that they find a real man (or women) – one who truly loves them for who they are – as I have been so lucky to find my true life partner. Any man (or women) who is so shallow doesn’t deserve the love of the strong women who are cancer warriors.

    I also worry, not about my husbands love for me, but about his health – and what he needs to be doing to take care of himself, because it is a lot to take care of me and I cannot adequately take care of him. At least not right now, not in this moment, when I’m too focused – sometimes feeling selfishly focused – on me. But knowing also, that part of being a warrior is being selfish when I need to be – cause right now, I need strength to mentally (more so than physically) get through two more rounds of AC chemo and 12 rounds of T chemo!

    Soon, this shall trump both RAGBRAI and Africa as the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do!

     

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