Fatigue is a funny thing. You are going along feeling fairly normal and then, to borrow a phrase from NFL commentator John Madden, BOOM! It hits you. You feel like lead weights are attached to every part of your body.

Wednesday, I woke up feeling okay, so off I went. First, I had the doctor appointment of the week, then a bunch of errands. I came home for lunch and was on the computer when my friend, Valerie invited me over to meet with the inspirational J.T. Townsend. I could not turn that down.

For those of you who do not know, when J. T. was a senior in high school at Episcopal, 4 years ago, he was paralyzed from the neck down in a football accident. Since that time he has persevered through many different problems all with a smile on his face. His most recent accomplishment was standing up with the help of braces. It is a remarkable video and you can see it on the web. I had a wonderful time talking with him, his nurse, sister and cousin. He and I did commiserate about being tired of being called a “strong person”. I may be strong, but I don’t always want to be. Sometimes, I would just like to be a weak person. Maybe in my next life.

Anyway, after that lovely visit, I came back to the house and absolutely hit the wall. I was in bed at 6:30, feeling like I couldn’t even raise my arms. Twelve hours of sleep and I was still tired the next morning. I was taking a morning nap to try and revive. Pasta for dinner tonight, hopefully that will help with more energy - or is that just an old wives tale. Since I am an old wife, maybe it will work on me. Let’s hope.

Hurray, today I struck a blow for patients everywhere! Listen, I have wonderful friends in or associated with the medical profession. Thank goodness for my friends and their spouses who have advised me in this process. But we have all been jerked around by doctors who we feel don’t care about us and today I told that doctor all about it. I think it was a revelation to him.

I went in to see my gynecologist today for my annual exam. If you have been following my saga, you know this is the guy who had his office manager call me with the results of my biopsy. I never heard from him again. So, I wanted to ask him about this. No that’s not right, I wanted to tell him I believe this was incredibly disrespectful.

He came in to the exam and asked what I wanted to talk about. Well there I was sitting in a paper gown, not exactly my power suit. I told him I would rather talk after the exam, as I was in a less than comfortable position at that point. So, after the exam, I dressed and he came back in.

I started by asking him why he was not the one to tell me what some would consider to be the worse medical news a woman can get. His response was that he referred me to a radiologist who was to give me that news and answer questions. He did not want to confuse the issue. I had a hard time convincing him that just calling and telling me that yes, I have cancer but that is not a death sentence and I will be ok would not be interfering with another doctor’s care. I was not looking for all the answers as to what my care would be, just some reassurance and compassion from my referring doctor.

We went back and forth for quite a while about this. It is the standard protocol in his practice to act as he did and I was not questioning that he acted according to what his standards dictated, instead I asked him to think about whether that was the best way to treat the majority of people. Would it not be better to err on the side of compassion and caring. What patient is going to object to a doctor calling to make sure they did not have any questions or concerns.

Miracles of miracles! I got an apology out of him and the admission that he would at least think about changing his approach. I don’t really think he will, but maybe for 5 minutes he understood that a patient needs to hear reassurance at that dark hour of bad news.

As I left, he said he would call me if the pap smear came back with any irregularities. Apparently not, I responded.

Well, who said this would get easier? It isn’t. It is still all about the nausea and aches, mostly the nausea. Nothing tastes good and nothing smells good. Yes the phantom smells are back. Better with time I hope.

I have so many wonderful people doing wonderful things for me from bringing me food, walking the dog, sending emails and cards and even just thinking about me. I realize how very lucky I am. My friend in Massachusetts, Kathy Beard, has committed to walking in the Susan Komen 3 day walk in my honor!! Having done the Avon 2 day, I know what a commitment this is and I am very grateful that she wants to do this.

How can you help? If you feel you can, go to her web page and make a small contribution:

www.the3day.org/goto/Kathy.Beard

every little bit helps in this fight. Thank you all of you out there rooting me on!

Monday is chemo day again. :( It will be extremely hard for me to get out of the car and go in there. I know I seem upbeat on this blog, but I have to say I am really dreading this.

I don't have much energy during chemo week so my next blog entry probably won't be until the end of the week. Keep thinking about me. Thank you to everyone for all you do.

Well I got some good news this week. The tumor seems to be responding to the chemo and it is shrinking!! Yeah!! This is the point of going through all of this. Theoretically, it will shrink down to a very small mass that is removed in surgery. Though, they will still take a large mass of tissue and lymph nodes as well.

The new wrinkle in this whole thing is the doctor thinks it would be a good idea to take the other breast at the same time to reduce the risk of developing it there. My sister, Judie, found a funny saying on a t-shirt that I will have to get when this is over:

“Yes they are fake, the real ones tried to kill me.” That just cracks me up.

Now, I have to talk with the doctor about how the surgery works. What exactly will they do and will I need a plastic surgeon as well. If so, who? It does seem like there is always something new to figure out with this thing.

This has been a good week, because it is my third week in the cycle. Monday, starts chemo again. Yuk!! It will be really hard going into that office this time. I know I have to but it is hard to willingly put yourself in that chair and make yourself sick. Wish me luck!

Hair. You would not believe how important it is until you don’t have any. Before chemo I resented how fast my hair would grow because that just meant spending buckets of money to cover up my roots. (Not really girls, my hair is naturally that tortoise shell color.) Hair showed up parts of my body that I had no idea could sprout hair, at least not on a woman. And don’t get me started on shaving, ack!

But when you don’t have any hair, life is different. Your face looks different, deciding what to wear is different and I know people look at you differently. They can’t help it. You just don’t see many women without hair walking around. We are a rare breed.

In general, bald is not a good look. Until recently, I haven’t even been able to walk around the house bald, certainly not in front of Scott and Nick. Now, maybe because it is hotter out, I have been able to be in the house without a do rag, however I have one near by in case someone comes to the door.

Hats. In public, my head covering of choice has been a hat. This is easy but not perfect. You can easily see if you look closely that I have no hair around the edges. And hats have their down side as well. I was having lunch with Scott at Cheesecake Factory last week, had my halo hair on with a cute hat. Beautiful day, sunny, warm but not hot, kind of breezy, we ate out on the patio and it was just lovely. After lunch, I thought I would run over to Sephora, I crossed the street and all of a sudden, I wasn’t protected from the wind by the buildings. Whoosh, there goes the hat and I am on the sidewalk with the halo hair and a bald head. I moved pretty fast for an old woman with cancer. But what are you going to do. It probably looked pretty funny. You know how you laugh when you see someone fall on the ice. You can’t help it. I even laughed. So wind is a definite problem with hats.

Scarves. I just don’t have any that seem to be the right size and shape. They are hard to find without fringe, and even if I could tie it to have the fringe act like bangs, they just seem like they would get in the way. I twist them and tie them, but then the knot comes loose. I think the silky fabric I have just isn’t the right thing. I categorize my do rags in with the scarves. These are easy and cool, but make me look like Aunt Jemima.

Wigs. I am glad you all seem to like my wig. I do. But it still seems unnatural. It is hot, heavy, uncomfortable and always seems like it is slipping. It probably isn’t really slipping, I just have to pat it down to make sure. You will probably see me tugging on it at some point. I figure that is better than having a reenactment of the Sephora incident.

So there just seems to be no easy answer. I will mix and match and just see what comes up. But next time you see a woman with no hair, try not to stare. Just take notes on what kind of hat, scarf, do rag or wig she is wearing and call me!

Happy Good Friday and Happy Easter.

I know I should be writing about re-birth and new life. Don’t hate me, but that’s hard this year. My life right now is all about killing new cells. My chemo is attacking everything new in my system. It is even tearing down existing tissue. Mouth sores and bruises on my feet, all side effects of the treatment, not fun but not abnormal.

Funny thing is, I am happy about this attack. Along with all this tearing down is the tearing down of my cancer. The chemo is supposed to be breaking the mass up and reducing it in size. It doesn’t feel any different in size to me yet though. Supposedly, that is normal at this stage. The tumor is in the process of breaking apart, so hopefully by the next treatment it will be smaller.

I even have a couple of visuals of this. I could do the Star Trek analogy with the chemo space ships killing the alien invader. Or I have the knights on white horses fighting off the Vikings (ok, sorry history majors if I got this wrong, but I like the though of fighting back those crazy Viking guys from the credit card commercial). I could think of a million of them, but the important part is just picturing that lump getting smaller and smaller and keeping the lymph cells from leaking out somewhere else.

So this year at Easter I am all about the tearing down, not new life. Hopefully however this will lead to new life for me.

While cancer has been no picnic for me, I can honestly think of how it could be worse. It would be ever so much worse if one of my children had cancer. That’s why I feel sorry for my mother.

Mom lives near Atlanta with my dad, who is unable to get around. She was anxious to come down in March when this all started, however she had recently been diagnosed with shingles. Not only did she have shingles, but it was in her eye! Ouch! It took a while for that to clear up and she was again making plans to come down. But, shingles reared its ugly head again and showed up in her finger. She asked her doctor about the risk of passing it on to me and was advised against coming. Poor thing she calls me crying to tell me and I try to comfort her, but I don’t know what to say.

I’m sure she feels imprisoned up there and not able to get to her child. I know that is how I would feel. Hopefully she can relax a little and concentrate on getting rid of the shingles, so she can come to Nick’s graduation. Hey, Mom remember stress and shingles are correlated. Relax!

I am feeling better this week. A week out and I don’t think I am as tired this time as last cycle at this time. I am very tired by the end of the day, but during the day I’m not nearly as debilitated as before. I still am only able to handle one major activity a day though. So, when my sister, Judie was here, going out for lunch, an architectural review committee meeting and that was about enough for me for that day. I was a real laugh riot for her, not to mention my 10 year old nephew. Thank goodness he was able to go in the swimming pool or the poor little guy probably would have been the first person ever to die from boredom.

I have decided Cancer Sucks!! Profound huh? This round of chemo has been very tough. The nausea has been worse and the medicine to counteract it makes me sleepy. I have more aches and pains from the neulasta shot. I have more peaks and valleys of tiredness, “chemo head”, and just general malaise.

Weirdly, I can smell the chemo everywhere. Even though I am popping Altoid’s continuously, I still have a nasty taste in my mouth. The taste seems to permeate into my nose and I can smell it in every nook and cranny. I keep spraying all different kinds of air freshener, but they don’t seem to work. So, warning, when you come to my house, it smells like a combination of Chamomile and Lily, Azur Blue Rain and Clean Linen, in an attempt to eradicate this phantom smell. Candles burning everywhere, and I have cornered the market on Febreeze.

They say that homicide detectives carry Vick’s Vaporub with them to counteract the smells from their job. Maybe that’s what I need to do. I will have to fish out my hankie, spray it with perfume and just carry it around.