Had my oncology appointment today. We were talking about my new side effects that have shown up this month. My nails feel like sandpaper and are cracking and splitting, I had liquid diarrhea for 4 days at the end of my Ibrance cycle, I’m falling asleep just sitting on the couch.

My neutrophils are still at .8(bad), my tumor markers are still rising, now 96(bad). The CT doesn’t register any change with the current tumors, so in his words, “still stable”(good). Gotta love the good news/bad news. He says he goes more by the CT than anything else, but we both know that the Ibrance is starting to lose the fight against the cancer. He’s lowered my dosage of Ibrance to 100mg to see if my my neutrophils increase and the side effects lesson. It’s the next step in the protocol apparently, but it’s also the next step toward the last step. I have 8 weeks of freedom until I see him again.

I’ve started seeing a counsellor. It was really hard to find one that had an understanding of what I’m going through, but I found her. And she’s helping me deal with this roller coaster ride. She’s unconventional and an out of the box thinker and perfect for me. She’s offered to come to my place when/if I need her to instead of going to her office.

Goodbye 2019.

Here’s to a stable 2020.

2 years ago yesterday my oncologist confirmed I had MBC. Because I already knew, by the bone scan and a visit to my GP, it wasn’t news.

I remember one of the first things I did when I suspected I had cancer again was to look up bone cancer because it was my hip that was the problem. I also remember after my first couple of internet searches, that I decided to hold off until my official diagnosis to see what it was all about. I so wanted to be wrong.

Knowledge is power, right? Not so much. Researching MBC didn’t help much. All the stuff I found talked around the fact that it’s terminal. Most of the stuff I found talks about quality of life, and treatment being for the rest of my life. Very rarely do you find an article that out and out tells you that it’s terminal. And the stats? They’re scary.

I get that people don’t want to talk about it. Who wants to be reminded of their own mortality? What that does is isolate those of us that are terminal. When we start losing our normal and we have to find a new normal, we also lose friends, family, work, in that process. We mourn our so called normal lives and try to add life to our new normal. It’s not an easy thing, learning to live this new life while trying to ignore that it’s going to end sooner than anticipated.

“Living while dying is the strangest thing.” (to quote a comment posted to my blog). And it is.

Here’s to hoping I’m here in another 2 years.

They got the catheter in first try again this time. That’s a good thing. The bad thing is I’d already worked myself into a state before they even tried to put the needle in. I can handle everything else, the noise of the machine, the hot feeling in my head and the feeling of needing to pee from the contrast dye, I just can’t handle the needles, especially when they can’t get it into my vein on the first try.

Today I had the thought that I was probably lucky I’m still getting CT’s. When they stop, I’ll be in trouble. I’ll try to remember this at my next CT.