Boy am I ever tired of this one-thing-after-the-other mild illness. When I was feeling slow and punky this morning, I assumed that it was due to having a bit too much fun last night with friends who came for dinner, giving me the chance I've missed for so long now to cook for friends. We drank 2 bottles of Spanish Cava between the two of us girls, the guys sticking to beer, and I don't think I drank a whole bottle myself, but maybe, and that would certainly hang me over after not drinking that much in a long time. I did notice my belly actually hurting a couple of times yesterday, feeling a bit "knotted up" and tight, not nauseous but not as hungry as I had expected to be for the Paella I made. This morning, after my workout which I had to really work at in an unusual way, I found myself feeling woozy and during my first patient, I was genuinely afraid that I was going to have to excuse myself to vomit. Had that hyper-salivation, starting-to-heave feeling that usually preceeds hurling in my experience. Somehow, I managed to fight it down. I focused on drinking hot strong Irish Breakfast tea in between patients and skipped lunch save a white roll that the guy at Dunkin' Donuts gave me for free when I looked a bit green at the prospect of a "cheezy bagel twist" upon the news that they were out of plain bagels. Tonight, a piece of cold chicken breast and some cold plain pasta made dinner. I was hungry while still nauseous. Go figure. My belly is making some pretty odd noises. We'll see how the night goes.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the news that a friend from my days as a singing waitress, a woman who was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer about a year or two before me, passed away yesterday. C didn't do chemo at first, when she was originally diagnosed, and tried some experimental treatments. I called her the night before I was to start chemo and her stories of her experiences freaked me out. I was happy that she reached out to me but unable to bravely stand up and woman up and continue talking with her. Can't even remember now what exactly she said that was so upsetting to me. And when she had her recurrance I couldn't bear to follow her journey as it was a bit too close. I think she was stage 3 at original diagnosis, I was stage 2, I did chemo asap, she didn't, so there are differences. I'm holding on to that and sending good thoughts and heartfelt wishes out into the world for support to her family and loved ones, and for my own continued survival.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
All's well
The survivorship struggle includes a lot of features, some beautiful, some very bleak. Among the beauties are the deep appreciation of small treats, like the taste and texture of a fine chocolate or the dazzle of a full moon, greatly enhanced over the pre-diagnosis experience, and the relishing of sensory delights including hot baths, tempting aromas, the soft warm sensation of my dog's head resting on my leg. The less lovely aspects that one carries are the fears that can be elicited by every little bump, or new skin growth, or a series of minor health such as I've gone through over the last 3 months, challenges that might be interpretted as a recurrance, a metastisis, or a new cancer. Well, this afternoon the docs agreed that the bump on the right breast, palpable by all but undetectible on ultrasound, is just a feature of the implant. Nothing, nothing at all, to worry about. And with that news, my energy rises like the response to a blast of an illegal drug. It's Thursday night, tomorrow TGIF. My cold is waning, my friends are coming for dinner on Sunday, all is right with the world. In my home, anyway.
Long hard day at work
Written 2/15/12
It didn't look like a hard day just by glancing at the schedule. We even had a break for MBSR training and had a chance to relax, do some Qi Gong, and I got to eat lunch at the Indian Buffett, which was a treat. But the afternoon just basically fell apart, with a no-show, a conference call that at least went as planned, and then lastly a patient who had not been in for a month who was agitated and responded very poorly to my attempts to elicit some plans for improvement in her condition. I tried to employ some of the techniques that we've worked on in Health Coaching and it really backfired on me, with the patient getting off the table before treatment began and walking out stating that she's not sure if she will come back.
I could go on and on about the details of the visit and examine every question I posed to the patient and every response on either side, and I've certainly done that in my mind all night and with no satisfactory revelations, so there is no point in focusing on that here. But I'm going to have to figure out how to respond to this-who is to contact the patient, what are we to offer her, how do I handle the documentation-and I must sythesize the lessons there for me to learn from this, unclear as they are at the moment.
The most difficult factor for me in the situation is that I REALLY LIKE this patient and had hoped that we would become friends. I feel quite fond of her and sympathetic to what it must be like to go through the cancer expereience as she has while raising 3 kids. I guess I'll figure out the lessons soon, but I'm mourning the experience today.
I have also found a small bump on the medial aspect of my right reconstructed breast and have to go in to have it looked at today. Although I'm mostly very calm about that and am quite sure that it is benign, whatever it is, I'm going to feel a lot better about that this evening, and can't help anticipating a long day at the breast center. And the beat goes on....
It didn't look like a hard day just by glancing at the schedule. We even had a break for MBSR training and had a chance to relax, do some Qi Gong, and I got to eat lunch at the Indian Buffett, which was a treat. But the afternoon just basically fell apart, with a no-show, a conference call that at least went as planned, and then lastly a patient who had not been in for a month who was agitated and responded very poorly to my attempts to elicit some plans for improvement in her condition. I tried to employ some of the techniques that we've worked on in Health Coaching and it really backfired on me, with the patient getting off the table before treatment began and walking out stating that she's not sure if she will come back.
I could go on and on about the details of the visit and examine every question I posed to the patient and every response on either side, and I've certainly done that in my mind all night and with no satisfactory revelations, so there is no point in focusing on that here. But I'm going to have to figure out how to respond to this-who is to contact the patient, what are we to offer her, how do I handle the documentation-and I must sythesize the lessons there for me to learn from this, unclear as they are at the moment.
The most difficult factor for me in the situation is that I REALLY LIKE this patient and had hoped that we would become friends. I feel quite fond of her and sympathetic to what it must be like to go through the cancer expereience as she has while raising 3 kids. I guess I'll figure out the lessons soon, but I'm mourning the experience today.
I have also found a small bump on the medial aspect of my right reconstructed breast and have to go in to have it looked at today. Although I'm mostly very calm about that and am quite sure that it is benign, whatever it is, I'm going to feel a lot better about that this evening, and can't help anticipating a long day at the breast center. And the beat goes on....
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