Oh the weather outside is frightful, but in here...

Hi Friends,

This week my friend Tanya Lewis told me that if she were going through radiation she might like a playlist that made her feel cooler. So I have added a few Christmas songs that might do the trick. On Thursday and Friday, the technicians were playing Eric Clapton's Unplugged cd. I really like that one, although "Tears in Heaven" always makes me sad and that was the song used on Friday during the minutes with the heaviest radiation. It's interesting to me that their playlist is adult contemporary, nothing offensive. With few exceptions, I am the youngest person in the wait room by about a decade, so I'm interested to see what the 20-something technicians think we might want to hear. Just as long as it's never Anne Murray again, I'm good (strong dislike there).
It has been a challenging week, although not for the reasons one might think. You all know that during the second half of my chemo treatment I experienced significant joint pain. This pain diminished in the month of December, but then new symptoms began: pain with stiffness and burning, and this has escalated significantly in the last few weeks. By last weekend, I managed to walk for 30 minutes only to suffer considerable knee discomfort for the rest of the day, and each morning I would wake up with acute hand and foot pain and stiffness that would take a while to work out. In short, I have been experiencing systemic pain that in many ways resembles rheumatoid arthritis. This past Thursday I managed to see Ruth my GP, and learned that my symptoms are not uncommon for someone who has undergone a chemically-induced menopause. Estrogen is an anti-inflammatory agent, and the sudden loss of that hormone has left my body in one big stiff and inflamed state. She put me on a drug that should give me some relief until my body balances out and learns how to deal with the new reality. Unfortunately, the drug also makes me sleepy, so I get tired more quickly, which will only increase with radiation. I'll see Ruth in another month to make sure we are on the right track. Chemo is once again the gift that keeps on giving.
I'm happy to have one week of radiation now behind me, and my arm is holding up well in the cuff. My left side is getting tighter and I now feel like I'm a walking Picasso painting with my left side of my chest higher than the right. You know when you get dental freezing, swell up like you have a Buick in your mouth, and wonder why everyone isn't looking at you? Something similar is happening here. It's hard to imagine not being able to see the distortion I feel.
This afternoon I also began some new nerve pain in the radiation area, particularly at the incision and under the left arm. I'm on Tylenol for that and we will see where it goes. If it doesn't settle down I'll ask to go back on the nerve pain medication to get me through the next four weeks.
But despite my discomfort, I was reminded this week to be grateful for my optimistic pathology report. On Friday I got a lift to the hospital with a volunteer driver named Opal from the Canadian Cancer Society. Opal and I picked up another patient for radiation whom I had met in September in the chemo wait room. Her name is Miss Rose, and she's a lovely soft-spoken African-Canadian woman in her early 70s. We met on my second round of chemo, which was her last round. The wait was long that day and she advised me to drink lots of fluids to plump up my veins and gave me advice around what the chemo treatment was like over weeks and months. As it turns out, Miss Rose told me on Friday, her cancer didn't respond well to the chemo, and her pathology was not so positive. She had to delay surgery until December because she lives alone and needed to recover from chemo, and then delayed radiation until this month because of her surgery. We walked to radiation together and chatted as we waited for our appointments, and I didn't have a good feeling about her prognosis. Seeing her again reminded me of how much support I have, how well my body is responding to everything we are throwing at it, and how much I appreciate looking to my future. I am very fortunate, indeed.
Love,
Kip