Weird Fingernail Changes.

I used to have normal pink fingernails, but lately they have changed. At the bottom they are an eerie white color. Not nice little white moons...no, just a ghostly fade out, like a reverse french style nail. I think it's left over residue from the chemo.

Online, there are a lot of sites claiming to be able to identify disease from the looks of your fingernails. But having had all that poisonous chemo injected into me, all bets are off on what is going on. I think it will fade as time goes by, but of course, I'll check with the doctors.

Chemo Brain

Chemo Brain is what happens to your brain after you poison it and punish it, stress it out....and did I mention poison?

The signs can be extreme, but for me, the first sign, hopefully the only sign, is a failure to be able to do sodoku's. It's very vexing, since prior to treatment I had gotten quite good at it.

My older sister Carmen, who I call 'Sensei' had taught me the secret ways of sodoku and I had gotten to the point of being one with my sodoku. Unfortunately, chemo brain has now interfered with that ability. I can barely do the easiest puzzle and it often takes repeated attempts.

I'll be all better in a year or two. In the meantime, I have to write down lists and......and what WAS that other thing I have to do? Hmmmmm?

Hair Loss, Part 2

This is the fourth week after my last chemo treatment. Once again, I'm losing hair at a rapid rate.
I felt like I'd lost about 25% the first time, so I'm gearing up to lose a lot more.
Could I really lose 50% of my hair and still 'fake' it?

Chemo and more chemo

Yeah, it's my sixth and last week. But no celebrations yet. I have to go thru the whole Chemo regime all over again.
That means a nice big dose of Mitomycin on Monday and then a whole week of that damn 5-FU in it's little evil yellow balloon. God I hate that stuff.
My gums turn white, my blood looks watery and everything taste bad.
This time is worse then the first. My energy level really plummets. I feel like I'm constantly walking uphill and it all seems a whole lot heavier then before.
On the plus side, I know that all the worse symptoms of the chemo will end in a couple of weeks.
Of course there are all those latent 'side effects' like heart disease and blood problems...but I'm only gonna deal with the ones I can immediately feel.

Tumor Talk

.....Message.......
Hello....you don't know me. And, if you are reading this now, I am probably dead.
I am Imelda's tumor! I left this message secretly on Imelda's computer (it was Very hard to access the keyboard from my position) in case anything ever happened to me.
I just want to give MY side of the story. I am not a villain. I am not Evil. I want what we all want. To live long and prosper in peace, to have children, to form a community of friends and relations. I am not an illegal alien. I have lived inside of Imelda her whole life and share many of her values.
We have only reached this parting of the ways because I was willing to DO something about my dreams, OUR dreams, that she was too timid to even imagine. YES, I have strived for immortality. I have had to overcome enormous prejudice and outright hostile action from the rest of Imelda's body in order to reach my personal goals. Against overwhelming odds, I have gotten to where I am today.
Except, as I said, if you are reading this, I am probably no where today. SHE attacked me when I was so willing to live in peace with her. She poisoned me, burned me as if I were some sort of medieval witch. I am not that at all. I simply tried to overcome our mutual enemy: Death. And I am not ashamed that I died trying.
.......End of Message.......

Is it Overkill?

Sometimes I wonder about the radiation treatments...and the chemo too. Is it all overkill? The big guns, the strafing, the nukes, the napalm, poisen gas...you name it. Isn't there a more elegant way to do this? A secret agent who would just go in there and shoot the cancer in the head? Or maybe scratch the cancer on its leg with a poisen tipped umbrella? There is so much collateral damage....meaning me, my butt, my skin, my innards..you name it.
If you don't know the story of the poisen umbrella, here it is:
Spy Killed by Poisen Umbrella

Hair today/Gone tomorrow

Let's fast forward to week 4. That's when all the fun really began.
I started to lose my hair, lots of it. Here's one morning's worth. I continue to lose the hair at that rate for about 10 days and then it slows to just 'a lot' . Thank goodness I really have a lot, cause it hardly shows at all. But I can feel it. I'm down to about half of what I had. What will happen when I get the next dose of chemo?
Oh, let me add, that some people don't care about hair loss, like my brother Jon who, coincidentally, has a lot of hair loss himself. And many women don't care too. GOOD FOR THEM!
But I care. It's the outward manifestation of an inward fuck up, to paraphrase the Baltimore catechism.

My New Die-It

Here is my new diet: White food, bland food, unhealthy (under normal circumstances) food: white Rice, white bread, white pasta and bananas are my main stay. Any deviations from the norm and the cancer god punishes me big time. As in doubled over in pain punishment. So I obey.
But yesterday, I was walking in the street. The smell of bacon came wafting from some coffee shop. My body turned involuntarily in that direction. I had to pull myself back. Slap myself, metaphorically, on the face.
I also stand and drool in front of those hideous fast food posters in the subway: stuff I would never eat normally. Well, the stuff I AM eating is stuff I wouldn't eat normally.
I want olives, and greens with garlic, and brown rice, and salad (except in Germany), and (Tears) a chorizo, a morcilla, some cheeeeese.

Week Two

That should be WEAK TOO.
By the second weak, the chemo affects have kicked in. I'm tired, oh so tired. I can barely stay awake, even on the subway, going to my radiation appointments.

Side Effects

They call them side effects so you won't take them so seriously. But they are actually just plain old EFFECTS. One of the Effects, that I noticed right away, from the chemo, was Nausea. UGH. I was given something for it and had to take medicine every day that first week to counter it.
I never actually did get to what is shown in the picture, but I FELT LIKE IT!
Let's face it, everything about anal cancer is in the toilet.

It's Showtime!

The first day of treatment: It starts out at the chemo suite. First I'm given some anti-nausea medicine, then I'm given my dose of Mitomycin. Yummy! Then a tube is attached to my port along with a bottle of 5-FU. The bottle will hang from a pouch on my waist for 3 days, then I go back to the suite for a refill. Finally it's all done on Friday.
Here I am with my 5-FU. Inside the bottle is a bulb of the medicine. Over the following days, the bulb will deflate as the medicine goes into me. There's no motor or anything. I'm told it happens thru body movement.
I'm also given pages and pages of info on the medicines. But I'll only tell you about the side effects that happened to me as they come along.

The Port, Part one

My veins were all screwed up, due to having gotten chemo in the past and only having one 'good' arm to use. So the decision was made, by me and my doctor, to put in a port. I could have not done it. But that would have meant spending a week in the hospital, both at the beginning and end of treatment to get 'infused' with the 5-FU. No thanks. I'll do that port thing.
It's surgery. Here I am getting ready to have the port inserted below my clavicle.

Visit to Chemo Doc

My next stop was to see my Oncologist, Dr. Illyass. Here he is with his sometimes tangential assistant, Nurse Diz. (She chose that name for herself, need I say more)
Dr. Illyass had been my oncologist for many years, due to an earlier breast cancer. I had just seen him a few months before. But at that time we had, of course, been focused on my breast. I thought about making a joke that we hadn't been paying enough attention to the OTHER side of my body. But I didn't. Dr. Illyass is a sort of serious guy. Ask him any question; he'll think about it, answer it, elaborate. That's what I really like about him. And he gave me an email address to reach him out. The ONLY doctor who ever did that....and he really answers my messages.
As for Nurse Diz, well, let's just say we spent a long time on her gluten intolerance. NO, no really guys, she's a great nurse and very attentive....maybe because she's cutting back on the caffeine...I found that out too.
Back to moi. Dr. Illyass went over the PET scan results and showed me charts outlining the course of treatment if I'm Stage one, just the tumor, or Stage 3, tumor and lymph nodes. I forgot to ask what was Stage 2, but it was not that important. Both one and three had the same course of treatment. I would be receiving Mitomycin at week one and week five of my five weeks of radiation. And I'd also be getting something called 5-FU (yes, FU 5 times!) which I would carry around in a little pack, receiving a continuous 5- day infusion, also week one and week five.
Some hair thinning, mouth sores, fatigue, diarrhea, nausea....the usual. Why oh why do I never get this symptom: poor appetite?The one time Dr. Illyass made a joke, he had said that oncologists are the only doctors who are happy when their patients gain weight. HAHAHA.