Recovery mode

Posted: August 29, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer, Surgery | Tags: , , , , , | 9 Comments

Ugh.

That’s about all I have to say.

Recovery is tough, and it’s not one of my favorite things. It’s nowhere to be found on the list of my favorite things. I’m a terrible patient — impatient, restless, and intolerant of my dependent state. However, I’m quite the pro at the recovery process now, after multiple surgeries, and don’t fight it as much as I did in the beginning. I’m not going to win patient of the year award in this lifetime, but I’m not gnashing my teeth over the process this time around. Baby steps.

In addition to the regular wear-n-tear on the old body that is anesthesia and surgery in general, I’m healing from a couple of very specific “injuries” from the procedure. Disclaimer: this picture is pretty gross, so if you have a weak stomach or get sicked out easily, scroll down now. 

That’s the bruise on the back of my leg as of Friday, two days post-surgery. I’ve got a matching one on the back of my other leg, but didn’t want to post two pics of such a gross site. The bruising has actually migrated downward in the last few days and is now approaching the back of my knees, so it’s even bigger than what’s shown above. Rather than incite a public riot (and because I feel like hell), I’m staying home and not subjecting anyone to seeing this as they’re out & about taking care of their business. It is triple-digit hot, though, so I’m wearing shorts. Yesterday the high in Houston was 107, that’s right 107, which is mighty hot even by Gulf Coast standards at the end of August. The bruising is still tender enough that even having clothes resting against my skin is painful, but I’d scare myself if I went sans clothes, so I’m sucking it up.  I am utterly amazed that people put themselves through the lipo process willingly and simply in pursuit of vanity. Not judging just saying “wow.”

The little red spot in the photo is the site of a couple of stitches, and they itch and pull a bit as they heal. There are 8 or so spots on my legs and chest; I haven’t counted all of them because frankly I haven’t been brave enough to look that closely. I also have 4 open “poke holes” that drained a bunch of yucky stuff the first two days but are healing up nicely now. I expect the stitches will come out sometime this week.

A slight complication arose yesterday: I didn’t feel good. A slight fever, sore throat, extreme fatigue, and overall malaise ruled. My doc asked me to call him over the weekend, especially if the fever didn’t go away. I appreciate how accessible he is to his patients, even on the weekends.  When my fever spiked yesterday afternoon and didn’t break, and when my skin at the original infection site became red, warm, and streaky, I knew I needed to call him but didn’t want to interrupt my weekend either. I stayed in my jammies and laid around all day yesterday, and when I didn’t feel a whole lot better this morning, I called.

We had a short, purposeful conversation that started with me saying, “I don’t think we need to panic” and ended with him saying, “I have surgery in an hour so come in right now. ” Amy and I appeared in his office post-haste. He said he thought about checking on me, but he knew that I would “start asking what about this? and what about that? and what are we going to do next? and when are we doing to do it?”

Really? Me?

That sounds so unlike me (ha!).

He knew that if I was in a bad way, I would call him, and I knew that it could wait until today. No need to go getting ahead of ourselves and risk getting myself admitted to the hospital on a Sunday night.

The fever was down this morning, and the red, warm, and streaky spot looked a little better. The pain is still there, but not as intense as yesterday. It feels like a hot, localized pinch. If I didn’t know that feeling so well from my multiple run-ins with post-surgery infection, I might think one of the stitches was pulling or it was just part of the healing process. But I know better.

After much poking and prodding of the hotspot, we decided to let it be and wait and see. I thought for sure he’d want to open it up and see if there was fluid to collect and culture, but he said nope, not at this stage, let’s give the newly rounded chest a chance to settle this on its own without us intervening. He extended my course of oral antibiotics just to be on the safe side, and as much as it pains me to admit this, I agree with him on both fronts. Really, we’ve done everything we can to prevent infection: a week of pre-surgery prophylactic antibiotics, 2 bags of 2 different IV antibiotics during the surgery, more oral antibiotics after surgery, the most thorough scrub-in process in the history of modern medicine, and over-the-top precautions to preserve a sterile field in the OR. At this point, if the infection can combat all of that, I will concede. But I will be a very sore loser.

The one thing we’ve got going for us in the anti-infection camp is the fact that this last surgery didn’t involve any foreign bodies. No tissue expanders and no implants, just good old-fashioned fat. It was sucked right out of my thighs (hence the super bruises) and injected right into my sunken chest. He carefully explained the fat-extraction process to Trevor and Amy while I was in the recovery room. 

photo reprinted with gracious permission from Dr S

from the personal photo library of Dr S

The plan is for me to lay low for the next 2 days, check in on Wednesday afternoon, and go from there. If I weren’t so tired and puny I’d be saying, “Come on with the healing already!”

No autographs, please

Posted: July 11, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: baseball, breast cancer, infection | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Today is a very good day, for 3 reasons, maybe more. #1: Macy started two weeks of Fine Arts camp, which she loves (and I’m rather fond of having a few hours to myself while she’s off doing fun projects that someone else cleans up, and by “someone else” I mean anyone but me). While she hasn’t gotten quite this messy in a while, she’s definitely still got it in ‘er. 

#2: I did push-ups at the gym this morning. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to do them, and there’s a bit of pride on the line since I was working out with my 12-year-old son. I wasn’t about to let him see me doing “girlie” push-ups with bent knees, so I tried the real thing, and while it didn’t feel great, I did it. Pre-cancer, pre-mastectomy, and pre-infection, I used to be able to do 50 push-ups like it was nothing, and while I’m not there yet, I’m getting closer.

#3: The article for which Payton and I were interviewed was published in our community newspaper. Corey the reporter was nice, and I think he’s a good writer. He has covered the district All Star games for all the ages, and he’s made the games come alive in his stories. P really enjoyed being interviewed; I like the drama of the article, especially the part in which I’m portrayed as “fighting for my life” (cue the dramatic music here).

It’s a good reminder to be careful what you say, too, because I joked with Corey about P having gotten his mad baseball skills from my side of the family. While it’s true–my dad’s baseball career started with PeeWee ball in 1948 and ended with him playing for the University of Tulsa–I was being smart-aleky, and Corey not only took it seriously but also included that in the article! I certainly don’t want to sound like one of “those” baseball moms. I think my kid is a good player who happens to have some natural athletic ability and a body built for taking some hard knocks. However, I’m under no illusion that he’s going to play ball for a living when he grows up, and his *$#& most definitely stinks.

While I can take or leave the publicity, reading the latest article did make me realize that a whole lot has changed since this time last year. And most of that change has been good. Really good.

This time last year, Payton’s All Star team was preparing for the sectional tournament, which they totally dominated, BTW. But I was fighting another battle against that damned nosocomial infection and was back in the hospital. Again. So after P’s team swept the sectional tourney, they were preparing to go to the State Championship in the lovely Tyler, TX. I remember thinking on that Monday, the day I was admitted to the hospital–again–that we’d get the infection under control, pump in some more vancomycin and I’d be on my way to Tyler.

Yes, I was that delusional.

Instead of the scenario playing out the way I’d envisioned, it went something like this: I was admitted on a Monday and didn’t get out until Thursday. An area that started as a red, streaky site on the mastectomied right chest wall had to be opened up, drained, excised, and packed with gauze. Repeatedly. The packing part was particularly brutal. See, there was a bunch of fluid inside my chest wall from the infection. Dr S cut a track–sans anesthesia, I recall–to open and elongate the drain hole, to let the fluid out. Once the track was there, though, it had to be packed with gauze to soak up all the nasty fluid. It wasn’t a quick process, because the hole and the track were small but had to be completely filled with gauze, for maximum soaking. Thus, a lot of shoving in an already sore, infected, and aggravated area was required. As was a lot of xanax. At one point, after Dr S shoved the gauze into the open wound, my blood pressure was 212/65. That’s a little high for me.

I survived 4 days of intense wound-packing and hard-core IV antibiotics. But just barely. I missed the entire State Championship experience, then put my kids on a plane for summer vacation, that I didn’t get to attend. I did manage to stay out of the hospital for 2 and a half weeks, but had IV antibiotics at home and a home health care nurse packing that wound. I was hoping to have turned a corner after all that (and more than once wondered what it would take to finally kick that infection) but was back in the hospital again the week before school started.

It was not a good summer, to say the least. This one has been much, much better. While the bar wasn’t exactly set very high after last summer, this one is pretty sweet.

A whole new ball game

Posted: June 30, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: baseball, breast cancer | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

I’m as nervous as a cat. On a hot tin roof.

Payton’s All Star team was one game away from being district champions last night, and they went down in flames. We’d already beaten the West University team but they came back with a vengeance (and their best pitcher). As a seasoned baseball mom who’s used to watching a confident & uber-talented team, I can usually get a read on the game and have a sense of how it’s going to end. Last night I didn’t have my usual “sixth sense” before the game, and even when our boys launched 2 homers in their first at-bat to take a 3-0 lead, I didn’t settle in with my usual feel-good feeling about the outcome.

My kid got hit by a pitch during his first at-bat. Not a wimpy pitch, either, but a smokin’ fastball. That fastball thumped his thigh, just above the knee, quite audibly. My mama- bear instinct kicked in and I was on my feet, wondering if my boy would crumple in a heap on top of home plate. Then my rational brain kicked in and reminded me that my boy is tough as nails and meaner than a red hog on the field. He takes pain like it’s a cool summer breeze, as if it’s a “woonty” on the shore of Salisbury Beach. His pain tolerance is incredible, and yes, he gets that from me. He’s the ideal football player — a coach’s dream — because he’d rather take a beating than admit he’s hurt. Most kids take a “test jog” down the right-field line after being hit by a pitch, to make sure they can still run without a hitch in their giddy-up. Not my kid. After being pounded, my kid just casually tossed his bat and trotted to first base. Not a wince or a whimper from him.

Here’s the after-effect. I expect it to become much more colorful in the coming days. 

Payton’s teammate Gus responded to the bean-ball by hitting a homer off the pitcher who pegged my kid. Way to go, Gus!

Sadly, the First Colony bats weren’t as hot for the rest of the game, and we came up short. Errors in the field added insult to injury, and the boys in red got a long, stern talking-to from their coaches instead of a celebratory toast at the local pizza joint.

We face West U again tonight, and will likely bring a renewed vigor for victory. It’s winner take all tonight, so the stakes are high. Whichever team goes home tonight with a victory moves on to the sectional tournament, with hopes of progressing through that and onto the State Championship. Last year, that team was ours, and we’re all hoping for a repeat performance.

No one wants this more than me, since I missed every bit of it last summer. Thanks to a post-mastectomy infection, I was in the hospital instead of in the stands.  The team honored me by wearing pink sweatbands throughout the summer, and Payton still wears his. We had to get a new pair, though, because the original pair was filthy. The kind of filth that repeated washings and soakings and pre-treating can’t remove. Lots of sweat but no tears last summer.

Apparently I’m a bit nervous , as I was awake at 4:20 a.m. thinking about tonight’s game. Someone asked me at the gym the other day if I’m one of “those baseball moms.” I wasn’t sure what she meant — the kind of baseball mom who attends all the games and cheers for everyone on the team? Or the kind of baseball mom who gripes at the coach and yells at the umpire about being unfair toward her baby? I’ve seen both kinds. I like to think of myself as the former, but I have been known to yell at an ump a time or two over a particularly egregious call. I am the kind of baseball mom who wears my kid’s jersey to the games, proudly displaying #11 on my back just as my kid does. I am the kind of baseball mom who decorates the car windows, as is tradition around here, so that everyone on the road and in the parking lot know that there’s an All Star on board. 

I am the kind of baseball mom who feels deep pride at my kid being selected for All Stars. 20 players are chosen, then that group is whittled down to 11 or 12 for the traveling team. Lots of players — and lots of moms — would give their eye teeth to be a part of this team. Missing the games and the camaraderie last summer was hard. Really hard. I was able to follow along with the games via an iPad app that allows a user at the game to enter the pitch-by-pitch action so a user on the other end can follow the play-by-play. One of the moms asked me last night if it’s more nerve-wracking to follow along or to watch the game live. I said watching live is way more nerve-wracking. Sitting in a hospital bed staring at the iPad screen isn’t nearly as complete an experience as being in the stands, in the heat, with the roar of the crowd and the sounds of the game. I do have fond memories, though, of the nurses who were constantly in and out of my room getting involved and asking for updates on the game. And I distinctly remember forgoing pain medicine so I could be lucid enough to follow the game. This summer is a whole new ball game, for me.

girls’ trip

Posted: June 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments
Once upon a time, in a city far, far from Houston, there was a group of young-ish women. All had relocated from every corner of the country with young kids in tow to help fulfill their husbands’ dream of getting an MBA from a top-10 business school. None of the women knew anyone in the new city, and all were a long way from home. For two long years, without paychecks and luxuries like babysitters, the women bonded while the hubs crammed their brains with all things MBA-related. Once the menfolk had diplomas in hand, the group of women dispersed, to new homes in new corners of the country.One night before going separate ways, the women left the hubs and kids at home and went out for a nice dinner. There the plans were laid and a vow was made: let neither distance nor the rigors of child-rearing sever the bond created by hardship and the shared need for breaks from their preschoolers. The solution: come together for an annual girls’ trip, to reconnect and recharge. 

The first trip was to San Francisco, then Sanibel Island in Florida. Next came Captiva Island, then Scottsdale. Park City was next, followed by Lake Tahoe. Every year was a different locale, but the theme was the same: reconnecting.  

The women had gone their separate ways, and a few left the domestic scene to pursue careers in law and medicine. The others continued to toil on the homefront, trading preschool and playdates for elementary school and homework. The kids grew up, and a few new babies joined the fold. One thing remained the same, however: the women’s commitment to the annual trip.

The End

Well, not really the end. Just the end of my little story.

It’s the eve of the 7th annual Duke girls’ trip, and my suitcase is packed. My boarding pass is printed. My Kindle is full of new books to be read uninterrupted by young children. My house is stocked for my peeps to exist in relative ease in my absence. I’m going, I’m really going.

After 7 years, you’d think that preparations for the trip would be somewhat by rote. Decide on the locale, find lodging, book flights, pack a bag, kiss the fam good-bye, and vamoose.

But not for me. See, last year I was ready for Tahoe. That trip was to have taken place 4 weeks post-mastectomy. As I described it this time last year, the trip was “my goal, a partial finish-line, and my sanity-saver since my diagnosis.” One of the first things I asked my superstar breast surgeon, Dr Dempsey, upon diagnosis, was if I’d still be able to take my girls’ trip. Tahoe with my Duke girls gave me something concrete to work toward in  my recovery from surgery, from being diagnosed with cancer at age 40.

Instead of stocking the fridge and packing my bags this time last year, I was in the hospital, sick–really sick–with a nasty infection. I was admitted to the hospital unexpectedly when symptoms of the infection appeared out of nowhere. I literally had seen Dr S the day before the symptoms cropped up; fine one day, sick the next. The day I was hospitalized, I was still clinging to the hope that I’d be in & out of there quickly and still be able to go on my trip. Silly, silly girl. My mind was willing, but my body said “No can do.”

After countless IV bags full of different antibiotics, my fever kept spiking and I got worse instead of better. While the scarier bugs like anthrax were quickly ruled out, the specific infection remained elusive. My infectious disease doc told me that the cultures grow at their own pace, and the culturing is done old-school: in a Petrie dish in an incubator in the lab downstairs. I was confined to the hospital bed until the growth was complete, and no one knew when that would occur. The day before the Tahoe trip, I had to concede that I wasn’t going to make it. Rotten luck.

While it broke my heart and seriously injured my fighting spirit to tell my Duke girls I wouldn’t be joining them, untold hard times followed. Missing the trip was chump changed compared to what was to come. Looking back at my Caring Bridge journal entry for June 10th of last year yielded this:

“I should be on a plane right now, en route to Tahoe, but instead I’m in an ugly gown, sitting on scratchy sheets in an uncomfortable bed (most definitely not a Tempurpedic mattress). Looks like I’ll be here a while yet.”

I don’t recall this part, but it must have happened:

“They moved me across the hall last night to a new room. My new neighbor is an older Asian man who talks louder than anyone I know, and so do all of his relatives. In fact, I just got up my scratchy sheets & walked across the hall in my ugly gown to shut his door. Sheesh. This hospital has an entire floor for Asian patients, which is pretty cool and indicative of this huge city we live in, but I’m wondering why he’s not on that floor.”

Tonight, on the eve of the 7th annual Duke girls’ trip, there are no scratchy sheets and there is no ugly gown. There’s a not-so-youngish-anymore woman who’s had one helluva year, who’s ready to get on that plane and make up for lost time. SPI, here I come. Now that’s a happy ending!

 



At the ballpark, again

Posted: June 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: baseball, breast cancer | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Last summer was pretty bad for me and my family. It started innocently enough, with a bilateral mastectomy at age 40 on May 13th, and while I healed quickly and nicely from that, it all went downhill fast.

Just after my 41st birthday, I got a nasty post-surgery infection. No one saw it coming, and to say it took us all by surprise would be a gross understatement. The odds of contracting a nosocomial infection are not small, but my infection is somewhat rare, quite wily, and super slow to treat. In the scope of inconvenient infections, I won the lottery.

Last night was the first game of the All Star tournament for Payton’s team–something I missed entirely last summer. Being present last night to watch my boy do what he does best with his team of like-minded and uber-talented buddies was one of the simplest yet deepest thrills of all time. We take a lot of things for granted in this life of ours, and being able to sit on metal bleachers in the Texas heat in June to watch youth baseball is one of those things. I’ve sat through thousands of games for my little ball player, and hardly thought twice about it beyond the random, mundane thoughts associated with this endeavor: who are we “versing” (as our catcher, #10 Carl says)? Where is Payton in the line-up? Are we on the shady side of the field? Did I remember my stadium seat? How many times will Macy hit the concession stand? How many pieces of bubble gum does Pay have in his mouth at once?

Those are the thoughts that traverse my brain during a game, along with the usual baseball stuff: What’s the run rule in this tournament?; How did we fare against this team last time we met? If the ball hits the bat then hits the batter, he’s out, right? Rules and regulations course through my head as I follow the many games my boy has played.

Last night was different, though. As I was ready to walk out the door, our bestie Ed reminded me that I’ve come a long way since this time last year. Several of the parents on our team remarked at the park that it’s nice to have me there this year. A couple of the coaches said something about having missed me and my big mouth last summer; once a cheerleader, always a cheerleader.

I have come a long way since last summer, and watching my kid play ball is something to be savored, something to most definitely not take for granted. The metal bleachers, the roar of the crowd, the (gross) smell of hot dogs, the infield dirt blowing in my eyes…every bit of it is special to me on a whole ‘nother level.

Last night also marked the first time a newspaper reporter has covered the game, and seeing my boy’s name in print in association with his rock-star team’s blowout and his personal success is something I’ll be savoring for a while. Before cancer came into my life, I would have enjoyed reading the article, and likely would have forwarded it to our nearest & dearest, but this time, I’m carrying the feeling of that article along with me, inside my heart, in that little space where the gratitude lies.

I was flipping through my old Caring Bridge blog, and happened upon this entry, which seems even more prescient a year later. I wrote this on the morning of my mastectomy, before leaving for the hospital. No doubt I was antsy, preoccupied, and ready to get the show on the road that morning. It seems appropriate to reprint it today, in light of the theme of today’s blog.

I realize that when cancer comes into one’s life it disrupts everything and changes “the normal” forever. Dr Dempsey, my superstar breast surgeon, told me you  no longer schedule cancer around your life, you schedule your life around your cancer. Life takes a backseat to war. 

 With cancer, I join a club that I never signed up for and for which I never wanted to become a member. 

No matter, I now have a new normal. The new normal is all about taking care of what’s most important. We hear this all the time, but when you really put it into play in your own life, you know exactly what it means. For me, it means facing this beast head on and telling the bastard repeatedly that it doesn’t stand a chance. It means never once, not even once, considering that this cancer will win. It’s not even in the game. 

It also  means all the pithy stuff you hear about, like savor every day, make the most our of whatever you’ve got. That’s also true. For me it means truly embracing and enjoying my kids and my family, and letting my friends into my life — warts & all — on a whole new level. Y’all may well see my house a mess, which doesn’t happen much. You may see me in a grumpy mood (ok, you’ve seen that, esp on the tennis court!). You  may see me just a teensy bit vulnerable, but only for a short time so don’t expect a repeat performance. No matter what, there is a new normal, and I’m all over it.

It’s that time of year again

Posted: June 16, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: baseball, breast cancer | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Summer in Texas means a few things: happy kids, hot & humid days, and baseball All Stars.

Texas is a baseball powerhouse in general, and our neck of the woods is no different. We’re right down the highway from Pearland, whose Boys of Summer blazed a trail from Texas to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, last summer to go nearly all the way in the prestigious Little League World Series.

houston.culturemap.com

This truckload of Pearland boys could be from any Little League in Texas; hopefully in a couple of years it will be my kid’s First Colony team. We watched every game last summer, cheering for those boys in blue and hoping they would prevail. We laughed at the way the media zeroed in on the Pearland moms and their blinged-out team shirts. I guess not everyone “does” baseball that way, but around here, it’s de rigueur for baseball moms to have glitzy shirts, often with their kid’s number emblazoned in rhinestones. Writer Ken Hoffman said the Pearland team “tore through Texas tournaments and blew into Williamsport with tape-measure home runs, speeding- ticket-worthy fastballs and bedazzling mothers that the Little League World Series won’t forget.”

chron.com

All Stars is an exciting time. Grueling, too, with practice 7 days a week until the games start. We plan our vacations around the All Stars schedule, and schedule our daily activities around practice. The first tournament begins Tuesday, and I sure hope the Big Red Machine blows through District and Sectionals the way they did last summer, blazing a trail straight for the State Championship in Tyler, TX.

Since I missed pretty much all of it last summer, I didn’t realize that our district, Texas East Little League, “stretches from the Sabine River in the East to I-20 in the North to I-35 on the West to San Antonio and from there to the Gulf of Mexico and back to the Sabine River,” according to the Texas East website. 

We’re that little strip of green in the middle, District 16. Texas is a big state, the second-biggest in the country in both population and area, and baseball is serious business around here. I don’t know how many Little Leagues there are in Texas, but considering that this great state is 773 miles wide and 790 miles long and populated by some 25 million people (thank you, Wikipedia), I’d say there are a bunch.

I’ve written a lot about having missed so many of Payton’s games last summer. Don’t worry, I’m not going to re-hash it today. Suffice to say that if it had just been the bilateral mastectomy in mid-May, I would have been in fine shape for the All Star summer schedule. But no, the post-mastectomy infection had to surface, and the resulting hospital stays and surgeries meant there would be no trip to Tyler for me. From the moment that infection reared its ugly head, my life became one complication after another, and I began to live the famous Winston Churchill quote of “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Just do it without being able to watch your kid play the best baseball of his life. From mastectomy to infection, to nearly 30 days in the hospital, to multiple tissue excisions, to saying good-bye to the tissue expanders, to a shaky recovery involving all manner of antibiotics and home health, to slowly very slowly getting a semblance of a normal life back to finally getting around to reconstruction, to the long recovery process after The Big Dig. Quite a circuitous route I took, with very little baseball.

So this summer, I’m going to soak it all up. Every scorching minute of it. Since Texas is in a major, seemingly unending drought, we probably won’t have to worry about getting rained out, like we did a few times last summer. I’ll be in my blinged-out shirt, cheering hard for the boys in red, and reflecting back on how much I missed last summer at the ballpark.

As if the tornado wasn’t bad enough…

Posted: June 14, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer, infection | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

I feel a weird dichotomy of emotion when a friend hears about a rare and hard-to-treat infection and thinks of me. On one hand, it’s nice that my friends are the sort of people who know what’s going on in my life (I guess being a blabbermouth and having a blog help). On the other hand, it’s a weird feeling to be the one associated with the rare and hard-to-treat infection.

No matter, the horse is out of the barn, and the fact of the matter is that I did indeed have a rare and hard-to-treat infection, I am a blabbermouth, I do have a blog, and my friends rock.

So when the news broke that several people in the wake of last month’s giant killer tornado in Joplin, Missouri, have contracted a rare and hard-to-treat infection, my name came to mind. Perhaps this provides a bit of perspective for me. On many levels. It reminds me that while I’ve been through a lot, I also have a lot for which to be grateful. Namely things like this: #1, I wasn’t involved in the devastation of that giant killer tornado. #2, my rare infection was hard to diagnose but not especially hard to treat; just a giant pain in the ass. #3, my rare infection wasn’t deadly, as the one in Joplin is. #4, my rare infection is gone, baby gone. And, because I like odd numbers in lists, #5, I’m done with the 267-day course of oral antibiotics needed to treat my rare, pain-in-the-ass infection. Oh, if only I got paid extra for using hyphens in my modifiers.

cbsnews.com

The giant tornado last month in Joplin stirred up a lot of soil in its destructive path, and it uncovered mucormycosis, a deadly fungus among us. Like most bacteria and fungus, mucormycosis is all around us but only affects people who are already limping along with weakened immunity. The proverbial kicking a man who’s already down. It seems to prey upon people with diabetes, leukemia, lymphoma, and AIDS as well as those who have had an organ transplant and those who engage in chronic steroid use (Alex Rodriguez, you better be careful).

I must digress here for a moment about the mighty A-Rod. We don’t like him much in our house (understatement of the year, right there). Not just because we are die-hard, hard-core Red Sox fans and he’s on that other AL East team. You know, the one that wears those gawd-awful pinstripes. Ick. Well, A-Rod, in our opinion, typifies everything that’s wrong with pro sports: the drugs, the attitude, the disdain for the very fans who provide him job security. Imagine our surprise and delight when we found this yesterday:

An A-Rod baseball card, chewed to bits by our little dog Pedey. I love it! It’s even funnier because that little dog is named for Payton’s favorite Red Sox player, Dustin Pedroia. The idea of Pedey going after A-Rod fills my heart with pride. I’ve said before that Pedey is not much like his namesake: he’s lazy and clumsy with a ball, but in this case, Pedroia would be proud of this little dog for pouncing on A-Rod and tearing him to bits!

As long as we’re digressing for baseball-related ramblings, I might as well post a pic of my boy-crush, Jacoby Ellsbury. It’s been a while, and I know my loyal readers have missed him. Here ya go.

You’re welcome.

Ok, back to the Joplin tornado and its unwelcome sidekick. The tornado was a big one. An EF-5 to be precise. The EF scale refers to the Enhanced Fujita scale, which was developed at the Wind Science and Engineering Research Center at Texas Tech University. Yay Red Raiders. I don’t know much about the tornado scale, being a bit more familiar in this neck of the woods with the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale, but a quick peek on Wikipedia tells me that an EF-5 tornado means the storm has winds in excess of 200 mph. A bad-ass, scary storm, to be precise.

The May 22nd tornado cut the city of Joplin roughly in half with an estimated 7-mile-long by 1-mile-wide swath. It moved slowly and stayed on the ground rather than touching down and moving back up. All of these factors combined equal untold destruction, a death toll of 151 people, and the unleashing of a nasty fungus.

Eight tornado victims have contracted the mucormycosis, although public health officials won’t make an official link between the fungus and the tornado. Four of the people who tested positive for mucormycosis have died. It’s a nasty bug that spreads fast and can invade the blood supply of its victims, who typically have injuries and secondary wound infections. Sound familiar? Ugh. The rush of feelings and memories this topic evokes roars in my head much like a tornado. I think my PTSD is showing.

The mycormycosis fungus is usually found in soil and wood and enters the body either through a puncture wound or when a person breathes in mold spores. The dirt or vegetation becomes embedded under the skin, and mold is actually found in the wounds of people who have this bug. In some cases, wounds that had been stitched up after the tornado had to be reopened to clean out the contamination. Again, sound familiar? The incubation period is a little shorter on the fungus compared to the mycobacterium, and hopefully the fungus presents itself faster than the myco; both times I’ve been tested for that damn myco it took 6 weeks to present itself.

People with weakened immune systems who come into contact with this fungus have a mortality rate as high as 90 percent. Yes, you read that right: 90 percent.

wikipedia.com

It’s strange how the spores of this fungus look almost artistic under the microscope, yet can wreak unimaginable havoc on the human body. Compare that to my bacteria’s photo and you can see how vastly different these bugs appear under the microscope and why I have enormous respect for my sweet infectious disease doc. You rock, Dr Grimes! 

Because the mucormycosis fungus is so rare, medical research is limited, and treatment is simple but fraught with complications. Treating it sounds eerily familiar to me: confirm the bug, excise the affected tissue via surgery, and administer long-term and powerful antibiotics. Same plan I followed for the mycobacterium.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that it is conducting tests to help investigate the infections, which are so uncommon that even the nation’s largest hospitals might see only one or two cases a year. In fact, Dr Ewe Schmidt, infectious disease specialist at Joplin’s Freeman Hospital, said that in 30 years of practice, he’s seen 2 cases of mucormycosis, both of which occurred in patients who had untreated diabetes.

“To my knowledge, a cluster like this [several cases of the fungus] has not been reported before,” said Dr. Benjamin Park, head of the CDC team that investigates fungal diseases. “This is a very rare fungus. And for people who do get the disease, it can be extremely severe.”

I’m so glad my rare infection wasn’t this deadly fungus. I’m even more glad that my rare infection is gone. And I’m so glad this guy and his dog survived the storm and the deadly fungus.

cbsnews.com

The battle of the K tape

Posted: June 10, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer, tennis | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

In addition to battling cancer and a nosocomial infection, I’ve also been busy battling plantar fasciitis.

mayoclinic.com

The PF preceded the BC, and while not as nasty–and certainly not life-threatening in any way–it’s a major drag. My feet hurt all the time. All. The. Time.  Maintaining my busy-body active lifestyle is pretty tricky with feet that hurt All. The. Time. It also severely limits my footwear. Cute shoes are pretty much out, as is going barefoot. I haven’t resorted to orthopedic shoes, but I’m not out of the woods yet, either. I have custom orthotics that go in my tennis shoes (don’t be jealous), and if I’m not wearing my tennies, I’m in my very dear Cole Haan flip flops or my not-s0-cute but cushy crocs flip flops. Thank goodness I don’t work in an office that requires closed-toe, pinchy shoes. I’d have to quit or get fired. Probably option #2.

I’ve seen a foot doctor, I’ve tried herbal remedies, I’ve taken copious amounts of RX anti-inflammatories, I’ve iced and elevated and slept in a splint. I had high hopes that while recovering from The Big Dig and taking several months off from tennis and most of my daily activities beyond laying in bed bemoaning my pitiful state would provide some respite from the foot problems that plague me. Alas, it did not. In fact, having foot pain while lying in bed doing none of the active things I want to do gave me more about which to bemoan. 

My tennis buddy and dog-spoiler extraordinaire Christy had the answer to my problems. Dr Scott Kelly of the Airrosti Clinic. I need another doctor in my life about as much as Lindsey Lohan needs another bad-influence friend. The thought of adding yet another doctor my circle of docs did not appeal to me one little bit, but desperate times….

The Airrosti Clinic uses an intense treatment model that involves some serious hands-on time with the doc. And when I say hands-on, I mean he’s gonna put his hands on your tenderest injured spot and mangle the hell out of it. For real.

airrosti.com

See, fascia is connective tissue that covers most of our body. It covers the different muscles, blood vessels and nerves “much like plastic wrap holds the contents of a sandwich together,” as it was explained to me. Problem with fascia is it’s everywhere, so your chance of injuring it is great, and it has little or no blood supply, so your chance of healing said injury is not great.

That’s where the laying of hands comes in. Dr Kelly gets his long, strong, mean hands into the damaged fascia and starts kneading it like bread. Then stretching it like taffy. Then punching it like a speed bag. All the while laughing maniacally at the moans, cries, screams and curse words coming from the patient. (Ok, he doesn’t really laugh maniacally but he does seem to enjoy his work very much, and when I showed him the line of bruises on my calf after his first hands-on treatment he smiled with obvious pride and said that’s his signature, and if he could sign his name in bruises, he would. That’s one autograph I don’t really need but apparently am gonna get. Repeatedly.)

When I met him last week, he grabbed ahold of my foot and said he could diagnose me in 30 seconds. I said I didn’t realize this was like speed-dating. He rolled his eyes, then told me that he could cure my PF in 3 treatments. I asked if he could also name that tune in one note. Why oh why don’t any of these doctors get my humor??

As skeptical as I was, I have to say that after the mangling, kneading, stretching, punching, and cussing, I could tell a difference. It took a while for the shock and trauma to subside, but once it did, I could tell that we were getting somewhere. The day after my first treatment, I got out of bed and walked barefoot on the tile without pain — something I hadn’t done in at least a year.

There’s homework, of course, that involves standing on a golf ball and rolling the ball all over the bottom of my feet, paying special attention to and lingering on the really tender spots. There are also a couple of exercises involving a 36-inch by 6-inch foam roller.

And then there’s the K tape. 

Kinesio tape. In every color of the rainbow, according to the image on ktape.com. The website is pretty glowing about this product:

“It’s designed for Professional athletes, Olympians, and active people world-wide who take health & fitness seriously and who refuse to stop training, playing, or living life active and free. The design is minimalist, the results are magic.”

That’s me: I refuse to stop training playing, or living life active and free. Bring on the magic!

I’d had K tape before, when I was treating my PF myself, and again when I started seeing my lovely lymphedema specialist, Tammy. She’s a certified K tape master. She’s been using K tape on my post-mastectomy chest and now on my post-reconstruction belly. I’m a believer in the magic of K tape. As part of the scar-tissue-management on my 17-inch-long incision on my belly, Tammy puts a couple of strips of K tape and we wait for the magic happen.

So when Dr Kelly wanted to tape my feet after my first treatment and asked if I’d ever heard of it, I said as a matter of fact, I have some on my belly right now. We hadn’t been through the whole song & dance about the BC business; I was hoping to keep the BC beast out of the sports medicine arena. Well, the elephant was certainly in the room when I mentioned I had K tape on my belly. In for a penny, in for a pound, and I had to explain. 

Yes, those are bruises just above the shorter piece of tape. If you’re fluent in the language of torture, you can probably tell that that’s how Dr K signs his name.

Dr Kelly seems to be a bit competitive, and wanted to tape me up real nice so that Tammy, the other K tape master, would approve. She did. And then she took it a step further. I guess she’s a bit competitive, too.

Instead of just using a couple of strips on the scar tissue on my belly, Tammy used a new technique she’d just learned at a K tape workshop. Could this be Turf Wars part deux? 

I can’t wait to show this to Dr Kelly. The battle of the K tape is on!

I hope neither he nor Tammy sees this K tape image and gets any big ideas:

googleimages.com

I’m ok with the crazy blue racing stripes on my legs & feet, and with the Frankenstein pink on my belly and over my new belly button, but I’m drawing the line at a pink ribbon made from K tape. No thanks!

Summertime

Posted: June 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Summertime, and the living is easy. Sam Cooke said it, well, sang it actually, a long time ago. The fish were jumpin’ and the cotton was high. The girl he was singing to had a daddy who was rich and a mama who was good-looking. All was right in Sam’s world.

Well, the living is easy all right. No alarms waking me up before I’m ready, no lunches to pack. Payton’s lunch is easy: sandwich, bag of baked chips, string cheese, Rice Krispie treat, and a drink. No lunch box, no ice pack — he’s too cool for that. Macy, on the other hand, is quite particular about her lunch, requiring 5 different things, some of which must be washed & chopped and placed into small tupperware. She does at least take the same thing every single day, much like her mama did as a schoolgirl. I had a homemade egg salad sandwich on wheat bread every day of my schoolgirl life, and didn’t care one lick that the other kids thought the egg salad looked gross and the brown bread looked weird. They could have their stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth Wonder bread PB&J any day. I was perfectly happy with my gross-looking egg salad on weird-looking bread.

So no lunches to pack, yea. No mountain of school paperwork to wade through, only to find that other than glancing at the grades at the top of the completed work, there’s not a single thing in that mountain that really matters. No racing the clock to get out of bed, gobble down breakfast, get dressed, and get out the door. No meanie mom enforcing a highly unpopular bedtime so the little darlings don’t act like feral hogs in the a.m. Last but not least, no school projects. Oh, how I despise the projects. After 18 years of living with the original slacker student, who did minimal work and gasp! even skipped school projects altogether yet made good grades and somehow managed to become a contributing & successful member of society, my opinion on school projects has definitely changed. Changed to hatred, that is. They’re messy, time-consuming, inane, and require ME to go to Hobby Lobby AND help with said project when I could be playing tennis.

Ok, rant is over.

I certainly hope I didn’t offend any teachers out there. If I did, please direct your hate mail to my husband, the original slacker student. It may take him a few days to reply, because he’s busy running a software company. I’m not sure he could have risen to such heights and attained 2 graduate degrees without that pivotal diorama he made in 3rd grade at Jenks Elementary.

Ok, now my rant is over.

So we are blessedly free of the strict schedule imposed by the Fort Bend Independent School District, and most thankfully free of the blasted school projects. We can go where we want to go when we want to go there, stay up late, and eat lunch when we please. All that sounds great, right?

Except for one tiny detail: I don’t do well with unstructured time. Remember me, the busy-body? I don’t blossom with a lot of downtime. It’s day 3 of summer, and I’m already feeling a little itchy, a little twitchy. As much as I dislike the hustle & bustle of the imposed school schedule, it does keep us on track. And I like that. I need that. I would have been great in the army.

Lots of people enjoy their downtime and get into being lazy. For me, laziness makes me feel icky. I really like having a to-do list every day and relish the feeling of being productive. Some people were laughing at me that on the first day of summer, I cleaned out the garage, did 4 loads of laundry, vacuumed the entire downstairs, and bagged up discarded clothes for donation. Before lunchtime.

Now that my kids are a little older and a bit more independent, summer isn’t as stressful because I can still get my stuff done without having to watch them every second. The ever-present possibility of a toddler finger in a light switch cramps my style and interferes with me crossing things off my to-do list. With the luxury of semi-independent children, I’m trying to relax more this summer. That, and the burning desire to suck every drop of summer this year, since last summer was such a bust.

Last summer, I was not only recovering from a bilateral mastectomy but also playing hostess with the mostess to a nasty, long-staying bacteria that exploded into a messy, hard-t0-diagnose-and-even-harder-to-eradicate infection. I spent some extra time in the hospital, multiple times and multiple hospitals, and had a few extra surgeries. I weathered the ups & downs of being an impatient patient, and learned the hard, hard lesson that no matter how nicely I treat my body, it can and will betray me. As my sweet mama would have said, “That is rude, crude, and socially unacceptable.”

Last summer I missed out on a lot, thanks to Mr. Mycobacterium. This summer is going to be different. I’m going to spend some idle time, and hopefully learn to like it. I’m going to float in the pool with my kids and my crazy dog, and not worry about the laundry piling up or the dishwasher needing to be emptied. I’m going to teach my kids to cook, and not stress over the messy kitchen. I’m going to drag them away from the TV and computer games and into the museum district, and not get discouraged when they complain about how boring it is.

This summer, I’m going to relish being home instead of in a hospital, staring at this: 

I’m going to delight in the fact that I don’t have any of these attached to me:

I’m going to do a little dance about the fact that my sling bag isn’t carrying any of those icky things that are no longer attached to me:

and that I no longer need a collection of these to catch the collection of gunk that accumulates in those things to which I’m not longer tethered:

I’m going to breathe a sigh of relief that I don’t have any of these stuck to me:

I’m going to offer up a special nod to the fates that I won’t be going here:

to get more of this:

However unstructured this summer is, it’s gonna be great. Summertime and the living is easy.

Tennis time

Posted: May 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer, drugs, infection, tennis, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Today’s the day, people.

I’m paying a call on my true love. Nope, this isn’t a tell-all expose a la Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It’s tennis.

Finally.

I’ve been cleared by my favorite doc to start playing again. To ease back into it and with specific instructions to stop in my tracks if I feel even a tiny pull in my 17-inch-long belly incision. That super-long, super-bad incision is healing up quite nicely, and it’s my job to guard it and baby it.

When I got the green light from my favorite surgeon, I asked his nurse  to please put a note in my file and have him sign it to that effect. A permission slip of sorts, so that when I see him again in a couple of weeks and mention tennis, he doesn’t forget he’d given me the go-ahead. The last thing that man and I need is another argument. Although, it has been a while since we had one….

With the tennis ban being lifted, I realized that I haven’t so much as picked up a racquet since The Big Dig, nearly 3 months ago. In fact, I had to dig around in the garage for my tennis bag. Sadly, it had been consigned to the garage instead of riding shotgun like normal, and it hung on a hook, quite forlornly, I might add, all this time. Over the course of almost 3 months, things like stadium seats and insulated cooler bags were hung in front of my beloved bag, and it took on the role of wallflower instead of constant companion. I had to take my racquet out, just for a sec, and hold it in my hand. Just like old times. 

Today’s return isn’t full of the fanfare the met my return to the court last fall, after finally triumphing over the God-awful post-mastectomy infection and all its myriad complications. You loyal readers know the story so I won’t bore you with the details yet again, but suffice to say that the bilateral mastectomy would have been enough, but the nosocomial infection that required 3 more surgeries, nearly a month in the hospital, and endless antibiotics was really enough.

No fanfare, because while returning to tennis after the mastectomy and infection mess was a lot, but it’s easy compared to recovering from the DIEP surgery. Good thing today is just a 1-hour drill, which is the perfect venue for me to see if I remember how to swing that racquet. I’m not giddy with excitement like I was last fall, because the cautious side of me is bracing for disappointment. For this return to not quite work out for me. Although I’ve been cleared, there’s no guarantee that my body is on the same schedule as my heart & mind, and I may well be met with resistance from the battle-weary bod.

See, this is one of the unseen side effects of a cancer diagnosis. Even after getting through all the hard stuff–comprehending the devastating news of diagnosis, all the gut-wrenching decisions, the surgeries & hospitalizations, the never-ending antibiotics & their grueling side effects, the cornucopia of doctors’ appointments, the worry & fear & fatigue–I’m still shell-shocked enough to automatically look for disaster. Although the 267 days of oral antibiotics worked and my infection is cured, there’s still a little part of me that assumes the worst. I can’t even remember the last time my skin opened up to let infected fluid escape, yet I still think I feel it a couple of times a week. It’s PTSD for patients.

So my job today is to say screw the PTSD. Can the shell-shocked tendencies. Bust right through the doubt. Ignore the niggling little voice that asks if I’m sure I want to do this.

Hell yes, I want to do this. More than anything else, tennis to mean means I’ve healed. More than being able to go about my busy little life, more than getting back into the gym, more than being able to lift my arms enough and twist my core enough to dress myself. Tennis means I did it. It’s over.

My friend who also battled the breast cancer beast has dusted off her racquet and returned to the game we both love. While I’m unhappy with the unfinished parts of my reconstruction and she’s unhappy with her not-yet-grown-back-in hair, we’re getting back in the game.

I’m going to take the advice of tennis legend Billie Jean King in my post-cancer tennis strategy:

“Ladies, here’s a hint.  If you’re up against a girl with big boobs, bring her to the net and make her hit backhand volleys.  That’s the hardest shot for the well-endowed.”

My friend and I are both differently-endowed than we were before breast cancer came to call, but we survived that unwelcome visit and are ready to tear it up on the court. Even if we both get our asses handed to us in match play, I suspect we’ll both be smiling. Happy to be there, happy to have a racquet in hand, happy to be alive.

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