home alone

MonsterMustDie is going to Charlotte, NC today to deliver an item to someone who purchased something from him online. While he's there, he's planning to go to IKEA. Maybe he'll do some clothes shopping for himself as well because Charlotte probably has a nice Banana Republic store somewhere on his route. I'd go with him if I needed to shop for something and if I could visit Jennifer in Charlotte but I know she and Patricia are in Paris, France this week for sisterly birthday celebrations. Patricia wanted to see the Eiffel tower for her birthday and they decided to make the trip a combined birthday gift, belatedly celebrating Jennifer's birthday as well.

What I ate today:
1 cups coffee
Rosuvastatin 5mg
Ocuvite multivitamin
1 serving chicken pot pie

Fit app morning walk:
21 Heart Points
1.26 miles

I need to feed my head

Woke up with no headache this morning. I am slowly improving physically but I'm taking a big hit mentally and emotionally from lack of input and redundant days. I'm so glad I had several friends who were able to come here to help care for me during my first two weeks after surgery but now my days are very empty. My dreams have been like reruns from YouTube and Facebook. Very weird and disturbing.

We had an impromptu Zoom chat with Brian and Laura tonight. I let them know the status of my recovery. Laura shared her latest finds from the Scott Antiques market. MonsterMustDie showed them his latest assemblage art project.

What I ate today:
2 cups coffee
Rosuvastatin
Ocuvite multivitamin
Calcium 600mg supplement
D3 1000IU supplement
1 serving chicken pot pie
1 scoop vanilla Talenti gelato
1 frozen entree - Deep spinach paneer
1 Owyn 32 protein drink

Fit app morning walk:
36 Heart Points
1.94 miles

no headache this morning

I slept later than I wanted to, until 7:00AM. MonsterMustDie never wakes me up in the morning, although I would like him to. I woke up in time to see him before he headed out to work at 7:15AM. I was amazed there was not even a slight trace of a headache when I woke up this morning. I wonder if the chicken pot pie I had for dinner not long before sleep had restorative powers.
What I ate today:
cup of coffee with daily rosuvastatin 5mg
Ocuvite multivitamin
600mg Calcium supplement
Siggi's lower sugar skyr - 14g protein
1 oatmeal cookie
1 serving chicken pot pie
1 frozen entree - Love Butternut squash ravioli
1 scoop vanilla Talenti gelato

little headache

Monday, I had my follow-up appointment with thoracic surgery. Had a new chest x-ray and met with an intern afterwards, who removed the stitch from the drainage tube incision on my left side and took off the last bit of tape over my surgery site.
Lunch:
1 frozen blue corn tamale

Tuesday, I got together with Karen in Greensboro. She pointed out that I have not been mentally present or attentive to anyone since my surgery. I don't know why I am being that way now. Maybe I have drawn too far inside myself emotionally. Maybe there is some lingering neurologica issue. I tried to be more alert the rest of the day. I know I should be kinder and more attentive to MonsterMustDie now. I am trying. I appreciate the alert she and Bob gave for behaviour I am not self-aware of. We had lunch at Elizabeth's Pizza, where I ate half a spinach calzone. I brought the rest home and ate a bit more of it for dinner and took calcium and D3 supplements with it.
What I ate Tuesay:
cup of coffee with daily rosuvastatin 5mg
2/3 spinach calzone
1 bolthouse protein plus smoothie
1 Owyn chocolate protein drink
600mg Calcium supplement
1000 IU D3

Woke up this morning, Wednesday, with a slight headache this morning at 6:00AM. After a cup of coffee, the headache was mostly gone by 6:45AM. It bothers me that I have not completely left my morning headaches behind but this morning was nothing compared to how it had been.
Today:
cup of coffee with daily rosuvastatin 5mg
Ocuvite multivitamin
1 serving homemade chicken pot pie from neighbors
oatmeal cookie

Fit app morning walk:
16 Heart Points
1.33 miles

Ups and Downs

Nearly everyone at Duke goes out of their way to be as positive as possible around all patients. Every doctor, nurse, and secretary here has assumed the best outcome will happen for me. There are exceptions everywhere. Here, I found one person - a very tall older blonde with terrible posture - who, in her effort to be positive kinda said the opposite. Her comment to me was how lucky this didn't happen ten years ago because breast cancer and especially lung cancer used to be an automatic death sentence and now I could live several years with them. This is not what I want to hear. I do not plan to live with cancer several years. I want to live past the cancer recovery for many years. If I had to choose between living with cancer, just delaying the inevitable by a few very painful and expensive years, I would certainly choose not to.

stay hydrated

I had an MRI in Chapel Hill early Friday morning before my radiation treatment in Durham. All I had to eat or drink before leaving the house was a small cup of coffee. Big mistake. This made the process of the MRI difficult because 1. I was dehydrated so it was difficult to find an easy vein to use for the injection and 2. I was much more nervous, which made all the needles painful. I blame myself for that. 

I start the second tier o radiation this week, which is a higher dose in a more focussed area, while I am lying on my back. The first week week of radiation was delivered while I was on my belly, with a section of the table removed. This is an effort to avoid tissue damage near my lung before my thoracic surgery in two weeks. 

New set up for radiation 

Original set up for radiation treatment 

so... I have lung cancer

The pulmonologist phoned to tell me the news. She only diagnoses the cancer. I still need a Thoracic team and surgeon. I need a brain MRI to find out if it has spread there, which is a common direction for lung cancer. She does not know if it is treatable. She said she will reach out to my radiologist and chemo oncologist. She said she would try to put them in touch with a Thorasic team. My new 3D CT scan is tomorrow at 12:30 pm but my Radiologist wants me to phone her mobile number before I head out tomorrow for my appointment. They think my treatment can go through without affecting any lung surgery or treatment. My Radiologist has already started reaching out to the Thoracic team on my behalf. My radiation treatments take place June 12 - June 26. I will have to drive myself to the treatments, which is fine - it’s just a long commute at 75 to 90 minutes. I am told a lot of people drive themselves to radiation treatments - I just hate to do it alone when my mind is in a bad place. MonsterMustDie doesn’t want me to stay at the Duke Cancer house during my daily radiation treatments but he will not take any time off work so he can only help me when they can schedule my treatments late in the day. He works weekdays 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM and he will only available if appointments and procedures are after 2:00 pm. I really need more people caring for me and driving me when I can't do it myself. I think I still need to look into staying at the Cancer House in Durham during my radiation treatments despite his objections. That would at least cover that part of my tests and treatments if I stay there. I don’t know who I can get to help here while I am going through all this. Karen and Bob will help all they can but they have a life to maintain too and a trip to Charleston they’ve been planning for over a year on June 20-26, in the middle of my radiation treatments.

note to self

Maybe my left lung will hurt a bit tomorrow. It's a bit hurty at the moment because I started coughing after, quite typically, some coffee going down the wrong way. It's very common for me to be doing nothing and syliva going down the wrong way and making me cough but it is an especially unwelcome event this week after my lung biopsy last Friday. So far, I've been very fortunate to not have to cough or clear my throat excessively while everything is healing from the procedure. This habit of things going down the wrong way is apparently, according to Jennifer, something I inherited from our biological mother, Gwen.

waiting

The final piece of tape fell off my incision yesterday. 

Today, I had lunch with Karen at San Luis restaurant. 

The new humidifier I bought from Amazon arrived broken in the box. Some parts was completely smashed, as if someone packed a previously broken appliance. I tried to return it for a refund but Amazon sent back an email later that a new one was on its way instead of refunding my purchase. The whole process was too messed up to try to make Amazon just keep the broken appliance and refund my money, so we decided to wait and see if the replacement is okay when it arrives. 

I have a telemed Zoom interview early tomorrow morning in preparation for my lung biopsy on Friday. Then we wait for results and new plans. 

more bad news

Just when I started thinking everything will be ok, I got more bad news. Got a very nervous call from the radiologist who ordered the CT scan for post-surgery radiation treatments. They found something at the top of my lungs now. She scheduled me ASAP for a diagnostic 3D CT scan the next morning at Duke Cancer Center. Seems I can't win for losing these days. I'm now having to do triage on my medical appointments, rescheduling the diagnostic well-care and checkups for my new cancer screening and treatments. Just as we got home, I was pulling into the driveway trying to listen to MonsterMustDie when the Radiologist phoned. Once they saw the CT image, they scheduled a PET scan on Friday. Karen came with me for the PET scan. We got there just in time near the end of the day. Everyone at the desk was gone for the day by the time I was finished. Now, we wait. Everyone has told me not to look at my test results until I speak with my doctor. She is supposed to phone me Monday, hopefully early so things can be scheduled and rescheduled now. I was supposed to start radiation treatments on Tuesday but I am certain radiation will have to be postponed now because I will now need surgery to remove cancer in my left lung. I hope it is treatable and curable. I hope it has been found at a very early stage. I hope there is no more cancer in my body to find and that it never shows up again. So far, they have found three different types of cancer in my body.

dreaming

Last night I dreamed I was in NYC with my parents, going to Broadway plays, shopping, staying in a very nice hotel, etc. We met Alton Brown and his wife, actually my pal Nicki in the dream, and he invited us to join them for dinner at a very posh restaurant. The color pink, dark wood, and crystal glass figured into the dream a lot. Everything looked perfect. Everyone was friendly and happy.

more to come

I had an appointment this morning with my chemo oncologist at Duke. My OncotypeDX labs came back very good and I will not have to go through full-on Chemotherapy. However, I will still have to take estrogen-suppression drugs (a daily pill). I also will have to have a IV infusion of Zometa to combat osteoporosis from the hormone-suppression every six months. The next thing I have to do is a course of Radiation therapy that will probably just be two weeks rather than four. I have my 3D CT Scan for that series next week.

still waiting on test results

My post-op checkups with the surgeon and radiologist this week went ok. The only bad surprise is that, during surgery, they found a much smaller 4mm cancerous tumor beside the original on of a different type - lobular. The surgeon was confident they got all of it at that time and there should be no more surprises of that sort. My cancer is phase 1A. They are still waiting for the OncotypeDX test results to determine whether I need full-on Chemo. So far, they are hopeful that I only need the 5-year hormone suppression therapy. On a better note, my radiologist said, according to recent studies, there is only a 1% better outcome doing half as much radiation treatments and she strongly prefers doing less radiation on me. The radiologist, assuming it will be a good result by then, set me up for my pre-radiation CT scan the first week of May.

recovery

Someone from thedentist office called me before they opened at 7:30AM and asked if I could be there by 8:00AM. I threw myself together and they let me in immediately. They replaced the broken crown with what they said was a much stronger material and I was out before 10:00AM. 

I decided to finally get my hair cut at a nearby salon, a tiny little one-woman shop, that I found online. She did a great job and was a joy to talk to. I'll be back to that salon next time I need a haircut. 

I also made a call get the ball rolling for a post-pollen dump roof and gutters cleaning next month, depending on my medical schedule and how soon the oak pollen finishes it's dump.