Free In Idaho!

We had to go to that place again today… the place with the big pink ribbon on the side of the building.  It was time for my Sweetie’s latest mammogram and ultrasound appointments.  This marks the next round of her every-few-months checkups, first the imaging, then the bloodwork, then two different oncologists (one for the radiation followup, one for the drug therapy followup).  Tedious, and anxious.

It’s been nearly a full year since she first discovered that lump.  I’m glad that year is over.  Many more to go though.  Right now, there is no cancer.  But we’re learning that you don’t “fight cancer” so much as you make your way through a life that includes a lot of ‘not knowing’, seemingly endless medical stuff, not feeling good… and lots of praying and thinking.

While my wife was “in there”, I looked around the room at the guys waiting for their wives.  Many older than I, one younger.  Not all rich, or poor, or white.  I closed my eyes and thought about what they all must be thinking, and prayed for them and their wives.  No matter where you are on that road, it’s a hard one.  Everyone’s story, everyone’s road is different.  Yet the same in many ways. 

Random thoughts…

If the balloon goes up, what are we all going to do about breast cancer?  Or will it no longer be the most monsterous thing we deal with? 

I pray our girls don’t have to do this.

How much closer this has brought us in many ways.

I hope this summer isn’t as full of doctors and hospitals as last summer was.

This is probably the only place where I will ever sit in a room full of men, each with a purse beside him.

And then the love of my life came out and said that her images were all clear.  Thank you Lord for today’s many blessings.

Perhaps by now you’ve seen the larest “governmental health recommendations” for women concerning mammograms and breast health?

Most women don’t need a mammogram in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50, a government task force said Monday. It’s a major reversal that conflicts with the American Cancer Society’s long-standing position.

Also, the task force said breast self-exams do no good and women shouldn’t be taught to do them.

What kind of science irresponsible bullcrap is that?!

My wife found the lump in her breast early last spring by doing a self-exam. Her doctor didn’t expect it to amount to much, but referred her to the imaging clinic. They did the mammogram, and then an ultrasound. The doctor there suggested she “just watch it and come back in six months”. No. Bloody. Way. She asked for a biopsy. The results came back cancer. She had surgery a few weeks later and it turned out she had two tumors, but her surgery was a success. For now. And we know three other women, from age 20 to age 50-something, with the same basic story. The youngest ended up with a radical double mastectomy. She could be dead instead…

For the government to tell women that breast self-exams are “of no value” is one of the most shocking things I’ve heard in a long time. America has one of the best breast cancer survival rates in the world, if not the best. Part of that is due to the years of training women to do self-exams. Not every woman does. Everyone needs to make that decision for herself. But the government is way out of line telling women to quit doing it.  The cynic in me tells me this is simply political BS connected to the insurance/healthcare takeover, although at this point I confess that I don’t know how the government benefits from this.  But I’m sure American women come out the losers. 

Radical Women of America, UNITE! Tell the government “Hands OFF, I’ll do it MYSELF!” The same government that has botched two wars, the H1N1 thing, and what used to be a world economic powerhouse is now trying to tell you how to take care of yourself? No. Just No.

(about my wife… she has physically healed well from surgery and radiation.  The first anti-cancer drug she tried to take did NOT sit well with her, so part of the summer was awful for her.  She and her doctors finally switched to a different drug which so far she is doing much better with, although the cost per month  is five times what a 90 day supply of the other one was.  No matter, the first one was a disaster and I know she wouldn’t continue taking it even if they paid her!  Her first mammogram after surgery came out fine, and her next isn’t for a few more months.  Thank you all for your prayers and good wishes, we both appreciate it.  Oh yeah, she’s still doing self-exams.)

Thank you to those who have asked after my Sweetie’s health.  She finished radiation awhile back, she’s all healed up, and she’s taking her cancer drugs daily.  That is going to take a while to level out, since she isn’t doing well with something she is taking.  I don’t think they’ve figured out which one it is yet.  So she has good days and not-so-good days. 

One of the things we weren’t warned about ahead of time was the way she (we) would feel when she finished treatment and went into “the rest of your life” mode.  For the last six months we have had a daily and nightly relationship with cancer, doctors, hospitals… you get used to having doctors and nurses paying very close attention to you on a very frequent basis.  During the six weeks of her radiation she was seeing doctors and nurses every day.  But then you finish, your skin and tissues heal, you get on a drug program, and then it’s “we’ll see you in October”.  k bye.

Cast adrift would be one way to put it.  You’d think you would love to have your life back, and you’d be right.  For a time, right at first, it was quite nice.  But now, the feeling of being alone and not being cared for is coming up a lot.  She has pysical things going on but no ready medical staff to talk to, and mental things, thoughts and worries, that she would like to ask about, but we’re at a place now where we need to find those resources ourselves rather than having them at our fingertips on a daily basis (were we spoiled?).  So my Sweetie got to checking around and found a “Cancer Survivors’ Group Night” up at the hospital last night and signed us both up. 

I’m so glad we went.  One of the first things they talked about was that “withdrawal” feeling.  Oh good, we’re not crazy.  They had a presentation that included a couple who does outdoor adventure things with survivor groups.  There was a nutritionist, a stress management teacher, and an exercise specialist.  Oh yeah, dinner too.  All in all, it was just the kind of thing we needed, at just the right time.  We learned a few things we can add to what we are doing already.   We already walk 15 minutes or so twice a day thanks to the dinkydog, and we eat a pretty healthy diet as a rule.  No alcohol or meds.  We learned a few things we can tweak though, that will make for better long term health, and that will be good.  Both of us being on the same page has always helped in our marriage, and this is just one more place we can practice that.

Restarting after cancer is turning out to be about once again taking control of our emotions, our lives, and maybe even more important, putting dreams and plans back in place.  The first time you hear that word cancer, all the dreams you have seem to puff away.   You “pack them all away”.  I think one of the things Cathy and I are starting to learn, no, starting to DO, is that we have to put those dreams and plans back on the table.   And that’s a good thing.

Rob reminded me in comments that many folks are praying for my wife as she works on getting past breast cancer.  Thanks to you all.  Forgive me for not updating.

Last Thursday was her last radiation treatment.  We were pretty excited about that, but it doesn’t mean she’d done.  The effects of the treatments are primarily serious skin and tissue burning, and physical fatigue.  Have you ever had a really bad sunburn?  Remember how the first day was miserable, but the blisters and the real misery didn’t happen until the next day or two?  Radiation is like that.  Even though she had her last one, the effects continue to increase for days after the last burn.  Friday and Saturday she got out the bottle of meds they gave her after her surgery.  She’s in considerable pain and discomfort.  The kitchen counter looks like a mini burn unit, with multiple boxes of gauze and other dressings, burn gels, skin creams, and a jar of silver sulfa.  She’s sleeping OK, but not making it all night in bed… many mornings I find her out on the couch.

Aside from the physical effects though, the mental effects of being “finished with treatment” have been pretty good.  Going to the hospital every afternoon was getting very old.  We can now plan a couple small out of town trips.  Our days off together are once again truly our own.  Yesterday we had our first normal day off in weeks, and it was wonderful.  Long dog walk in the morning.  Breakfast and coffee on the deck.  Took the bicycles for a ride by the river and into town for a visit to a coffeeshop.  Saw the Harry Potter movie in the afternoon.  Except for the quick stop by the pharmacy on the way home, it was a pretty normal day.  What a blessing.

As of now my wife is what they consider a “breast cancer survivor”.  More correctly I think, would be ”breast cancer treatment survivor”, but that might be a little cynical, and as a joke it falls flat.  The doctors say she is cured.   We are very grateful that this bout will not be what ends her life.  And we’ll be reminded daily, when she takes her drugs, and every few months, when she goes in for exams and mammograms, that “cured” only means “of this one”.  It can come back.  So we will be grateful every day for every day.  We receive every day from the Lord, by and for His good pleasure, not our own.

And I will ask your prayers now for someone else.  On Thursday, while waiting in the small waiting room for my Sweetie to be called in to the treatment room, a couple came down the hall.  They were new folks we hadn’t seen before.  Over the course of two months of being at the hospital every day you get to see the same people, and you recognize when someone new starts their treatment.  They went up and down the hall, trying to determine if they were in the correct place, then decided they were and sat down.  You could tell they were very nervous.  It reminded me of our first time there, and of how far we had come.  And then we noticed that she was very thin, and her hair was very short, as it is on the women who are growing it back after chemo.  As far as we’d come, these folks had travelled much further.

The tech came out and called the woman’s name.   She stood up, squeezed her husband’s hand, and the tech said “I’ll only keep her for 15 or 20 minutes this time, and I’ll bring her right back”, and he led the gal back to the treatment room.  There was another man in the waiting room whom we recognized as having been there for a week or two.  After a couple weeks you get into a routine and it is sometimes easy to have days when you are rather nonchalant about where you are and what you’re there for.  Today it was this man’s day.  In the manner of guys everywhere, that macho banter, he said to the husband “you oughta see if he’ll keep her longer”.  The first man had his head down, and he was silent for a time.  Without looking up, he finally spoke.

“This crap has spread to her brain.  We’re just trying to keep her alive for six more months.”

No more words after that.  What can you say?  My heart breaks for them, and I pray they know the Lord.  Be praying for those folks, for surely they are in need and their road is much harder than ours.

Update:  Be praying for these folks as well.  Many of you already “know them”.

I’ll use this pic of my father-in-law eating melons as my placeholder while I take a little break from posting. 

This is probably 1925 or 1926, and he’s one of the little twins.  The house still stands, and is still in the family.

This’ll put a hitch in your giddyup.  We got this in the mail today.  It’s the bill for my Sweetie’s radiation treatments.  And no,  this isn’t the “grand” total for everything (I don’t believe it covers her radiation oncologist’s charges).  This puts us solidly over the $6oK billed mark, since March… and we’re not done yet.  So far, the insurance has been doing a fantastic job.  Praise God for American medicine and private insurance!

Got a spider bite on my leg over the holiday.  We went up to the mountains for a couple of days, to hide.  Well, some of it was good.  But this spider bite is about dime sized, weepy, with a little ring around it, and it’s making me ill.  And the leg itches like crazy. 

My Sweetie has 10 days of radiation treatments to go.  I take her to the hospital every day so she doesn’t have to worry about traffic and parking, and the dread of more doctor stuff, and then afterwards she has a little time to recover.  It’s getting pretty tedious for us all, and painful for her.  Along with her breast, and her underarm, they are also nuking her last nerve.  Just warning ya…

The blog has been “under attack” by spambots for the last 3 days.  This is probably the worst it’s been since I started doing this.  “Normal” spam comments are about 5-10 per day.  I woke up to over 100 spam comments overnight, so I turned off comments for the time being.  Morons.  Spambots are proof that human beings are not evolving.

There is going to be a gun show in Boise this weekend.  I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high, but I fear this will be the weakest show of the year.  Would love to find a new carry, and some reasonably priced .40, .45, and 5.56.  I won’t even mention LC .30-06 for the Garand.

Anyone else have the blahs right now?  And yes, I appreciate that with comments turned off that is essentially a rhetorical question…

…these too shall pass.

My last few days have been a little stressful.  Friday morning my Sweetie found another lump.  It made for a very nervous day; she was pretty frightened.  The new lump was large and felt just like the last one.  Other breast this time.  She called her doctor and they got her an appointment at the imaging center.  I drove her there and waited in the now familiar waiting room.  This time though, it turns out to be a cyst that they had already identified back in March.  For some reason it decided to get quite large.  So for now, we dodged a bullet.  Thank God.

While she was “on the table” her phone rang.  Of course she couldn’t answer it.  As we were driving away from the center my phone rang.  Our youngest was calling, but she hung up after only a couple rings.  So my Sweetie called her back.  She had been in a bicycle wreck… hit something in the street, lost control, over the handlebars.  Thank God she went onto the sidewalk and not the street.  Thank God she was wearing a helmet.  And that she only had 10 stitches and is feeling well enough to complain about it.

Friday night the Yorkie started acting punky.  He quit playing and eating.  By Saturday he was very sick.  I stayed with him and held him most of the morning and into the afternoon.  When he got all floppy and shivery I couldn’t stand it anymore so I took him to the emergency vet.  We were there almost two hours.  Poor little guy was so sick and I was so worried about him.  But thank God, the very nice vet seemed to have a handle on it and knew what shots to give him.  This morning he’s actually been able to get interested in some boiled chicken and to keep it down.  He’s got a long way to come back, but he seems to have turned a corner.

This dad stuff is hard duty sometimes.  Usually on Father’s Day it’s the dad who wants to stay in bed.  I think -my- Fathers’ Day wish is for all my family to stay in bed today, so I can take a day off from worrying about them.

My sweet wife went back to work a few days ago.  Yesterday we saw the surgeon again for AAR follow-up.  And now we’re dealing with some of those unforeseen things.  The breast cancer road began two months ago, when she first found the lump.  It is amazing to look back on all of the mental and physical things we’ve been through, just in these “short” weeks.  It seems we have seen at least a dozen different doctors and been in most of the major medical buildings here in the valley, and some of the smaller ones as well.  And that will continue now for many weeks yet.

The surgeon took out what I consider more than a “lump”, which surprised both of us.  I guess we didn’t realize beforehand how much he had to remove in order to get what turned out to be two cancers.  2 1/2 x 1 1/2 x 1 inches  is serious.  Plus removing some tissue under her arm.  After her surgery she didn’t look at her breast for a couple days.  She was afraid to because it “felt like he did more than I was expecting”.  The first morning she took the wrap off in order to shower, she nearly passed out.  Of course, with all the swelling, that first look was pretty traumatic, and the inches long incision under her arm surprised her as well.  White faced, she had to sit in the shower for awhile before she felt able to make it back to bed, and once I had her bandaged up again she didn’t dare another look for a couple more days.  The swelling has since subsided and it doesn’t look at all as bad as it did that first look; I doubt anyone will notice anything different about her.  The health result was excellent though, and the doctor proclaimed her “cured” which we are very thankful for.

So, cured and back to work, eh?  End of story, right?  Not hardly.  We’ve both been through a tremendous roller coaster of thoughts and emotions over these weeks.  We had both, in our own ways, tried to ready ourselves for “the worst”, which thankfully, we won’t have to do.  And we still have weeks of radiation to go through, with probably years of daily drug therapy.  Now we’re finding that decompressing is almost as serious as the build-up to the surgery.  It is difficult trying to find the new normal, and we’re both dealing with our own forms of leftover stress.  Physically, my arthritis is working overtime, as is the tremor in my hands.  Mentally, there is some depression and deep fatigue.  For her, along with the pains of healing from two surgery sites, she has the same increase in physical complaints, along with being more emotional and occassionally depressed.  Unforeseen, that.  We’re told it will pass.  It’s just part of the hard road.

And the medical bills are beginning to come in again.  We’re now over the $17K mark (before insurance).  My honey made a wisecrack last night about her “golden boob”.  We’re both grateful that her outcome was so positive, and that our lifestyle over the years has given us enough of a pad that we won’t be swamped by the bills.  There are some house repairs I’d like to get done, but they’ll wait until later in summer (once we know what the actual budget damage is).  I think our plans for a fall trip are out for now.  It sure puts a crimp on the guns and ammo budget for the rest of the year… and there’s a gun show next weekend too.  Pity.

I haven’t been shooting in weeks.  Seems like forever.  I think I’ll have to take a couple rifles out to the desert later today after it warms up (it’s 32 degrees this morning).  It might be good to lie down on the shooting blanket and concentrate on sight picture, breathing, and getting that perfect breaking-glass trigger pull.   Anything but breast cancer.  My wife likes hot baths to relax.  For me, a couple dozen rounds of .308 might serve the same purpose (I’ve got a bunch of Boomershoot loads I never got to use).  The desert is always beautiful this time of year too.  There’s even range cows.

Many thanks to all of you for your prayers and well wishes for my wife on her surgery day.  The surgery went very well, and unless the lab results come back with a surprise, it appears that her cancer was caught early enough and it hadn’t spread.  If the lab results confirm that initial result then she will be done with the surgery things and moves on to radiation.  No chemo.  We are very relieved.  Yesterday was a very long and stressful day, but our friends were wonderful, and the folks at St Luke’s in Meridian Idaho were great.

(as an aside, I saw no face masks at the hospital, nor did anyone at the hospital say anything about the flu… so, it appears to me that the swine flu is currently only a problem in Mexico and the news media)

Instead of waking up at Boomershoot this morning, I’m sitting at my kitchen table going through a growing stack of medical bills and trying to get other “business” things wrapped up.  I’d like to think I can spend the next week paying attention only to my Sweetie, and serving whatever her needs are after her surgery on Monday.

It is surprising how many folks we’ve met who have been down this road before, either because of breast cancer or another form of the disease.  We should take some comfort in how many there are who have told us, almost nonchalantly, “we went through that 6 years ago”, or 8 or 10 or 20… but we’re here today, and we haven’t gone all the way through it yet, so it is still a bit daunting.  We know that the Lord wasn’t surprised by this, nor is it some random thing.  We’ll “take what is on our plate”, and learn and grow as we go.

Right now we’re not looking much past Monday, surgery day.  I would love for it to turn out to be mostly a long, boring day for me, and a scary but quickly over day for my Sweetie.  Best case, that is how it will go.  Do you know how this breast cancer thing works (it’s a “takealumpouttame”)?  According to a friend of ours who is a doctor, this is what Monday looks like

Just a little education regarding Cathy’s upcoming surgery.  Soooo, I thought I would give my two cents of education for your benefit.  Cathy is supposed to go to the hospital @ 0730 for preliminary stuff and then scheduled for placement of a wire that localizes the tumor around 9-10 o’clock.  This is done in radiology (X-ray for you oldies).  Then someone, I am not sure who, injects radioactive material into the area where the tumor is located.  This radioactivity drains the area of the tumor and goes to the particular first lymph node that drains the area of concern.  It takes a while (hours) for the radioactivity to drain to the lymph node, so the planned surgery where the surgeon does the lumpectomy and then lymph node biopsy is around 2pm.  Any additional and subsequent surgery/chemo etc. will generally be based on the findings of the tumor and the lymph node.  Normally, Cathy will be out of the hospital in the later afternoon and home recovering for the evening. 

The surgeon told us he’ll have to remove at least one lymph node, and about a golf ball sized piece of breast tissue with and around the tumor. If those pieces come up clean, he’ll do a little “booboplasty” (my word again) and she’ll be finished. Then it will be a few days recovery, few being anything from two days to a week until she can “resume normal routine”. If the tumor is worse than they think, the plan adjusts. Later on she will receive radiation treatments five days a week for about five weeks. And if the tumor is worse, or it has spread, she’ll then need chemotherapy. That’s a fork in the road we don’t want to go down though.

While I was at the hospital the other day paying bills, I remarked to one of the billing gals I had started a separate file just for the bills and records for this one thing. She told me that’s good because it could be an inch or so thick before we’re done. Every single medical person, and every single treatment will have its own record and bill. We’ve been doing this now for about two months, and the billed prices add up to just over the MSRP of a Barrett .50 with a Nightforce scope on it, and a couple hundred rounds of ammo for it. Not that I’d ever want one of those mind you (he said, turning his head so no one could see his nose grow an inch). And she hasn’t even gone to the real surgery yet… whew! Thank goodness for a decent insurance plan. We have a very serviceable plan through her work that really helps out on this big stuff. It’s not one of those everything-every dime plans, but for major medical it is great to have. Once all this is over and the paper storm has subsided, I’ll total it all up and let you know how it comes out.

One of the side effects of all this is the mental strain it is putting on both of us.  We would have loved to have had the surgery done as soon as it was found, but that isn’t how things work, so there has been way too much time to “sit on hold” as it were, waiting for each step.  Boomershoot is not the only thing we’ve had to cancel because of this, and making plans for the rest of the summer has been difficult.  And day to day, many of the things that might normally seem important just don’t carry the weight.  In case you haven’t noticed, writing here lately has not been easy.  I’m a bit afraid of my mood and my preoccupation with my wife’s situation to trust myself and how I see things right now, so I have avoided posting the last couple of days.   I’ll put up a Sunday Music post tomorrow, but that might be it until Tuesday.  If things go real smoothly, and my wife isn’t in too much discomfort or need, I may get an update posted on Monday evening.  Otherwise, I ask your indulgence, and your prayers, as we get ready for the next step.  You’re all great, thanks.

Boise is currently enjoying three days of mid-80 temperatures.  It is marvelous!  Yesterday was the last day off for my lady before her surgery next Monday, so we took it together.  Oh yeah, we had a few hours of hospital in the morning, getting all those CYA tests out of the way so the hospital feels sufficiently covered to actually do a surgery (so they can say “we did everything we could”).  But after that, it was our time.

We got the bikes out and rode down to town on the greenbelt by the Boise River.  Glorious day.  Stopped at a coffee shop downtown for iced coffees.  Read the funny papers.  Then leisurely ride back out.  It might be weeks before we get another chance to do this, depending on how surgery comes out.  And for the rest of this week it’s going to be work hard every day, trying to get ahead of everything, because we just don’t know what next week will bring.  But so far, this week has been gorgeous.