Joining the World

I finished radiation August 10! I'm still fussing with a persistent skin reaction from it, but it should be healed in a couple of weeks.

Thursday I saw my oncologist, who was pleased with my most recent labwork. His first words to me were, "You do realize this is never coming back, right?" You can imagine how sweet that sounds after 8 months of surgery, chemo, and radiation.

I grinned and replied, "I guess we beat that dead horse enough."

He nodded, "Or as we say in the medical profession, we beat that dead horse into the ground." Of course we both know there's still a slight statistical chance it could come back, but the point is that we've hit the cancer hard and it's not likely to return.

I started taking Tamoxifen last week, a daily anti-estrogen medication. In my conversation with my doctor we discussed a couple reasons why it might not make a huge difference, but now I can't recall exactly why we decided to go ahead with it anyway. Maybe just because we can. I've left a message with his nurse and I'll hopefully understand this better when he calls back. I've learned that for women, estrogen is the fountain of youth, and when it runs dry you age instantly.

The loss of ovarian function during chemo left me with a couple new problems, and I'm waiting to see if Tamoxifen makes things worse. The first problem I noticed was that I've been having trouble speaking sometimes. Estrogen is related to "verbal word fluency", and so in my case I'm having trouble recalling names and certain words while I'm speaking, but I know them just fine otherwise. The act of speaking (or sometimes the anticipation of speaking) causes the names and words to flee, and at its worst I'll start to say something but I speak haltingly, since suddenly I don't know how to phrase it. It's an awful feeling when you've got someone's attention and they're waiting for you to spit it out. The other problem I'm having is joint pain, the culprit also being loss of estrogen. So far it's my fingers and hips, but working out helps my hips and soon I'll get back to yoga, which should make a huge difference. My fingers get a workout at my computer and with origami.

I'm back to attending my weight loss class weekly, and am working toward regaining my physical fitness. I still poop out from daily activities by early afternoon, but the treatment for fatigue is exercise, so exercise I do. Also, weight loss will help stave off recurrence.

It's strange, trying to find my place in the world now, especially since I'm still "marked" as a cancer survivor by my short hair. I'm not who I used to be, physically or in some other ways. The experience has taught me a lot, and I think I'll be more respectful toward myself in my future choices. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I still have the wicked urge to be goofy and inappropriate socially.

Wow, I started to say cancer patient just above, but I'm not that anymore. Now I can call myself a cancer survivor. It's trite, but it's still huge.