Week 1: The Adventure Begins!

April 15, 2010 - Well, here I am, sitting in the "Chemo Recliner" at Teton Oncology, in Rexburg Idaho, getting my very first dose of nasty toxic chemicals, a laptop computer perched on my - what else? - lap. I have to stop typing frequently so I can set my palms on ice packs, because the nurse explained that one of the drugs can cause burns on the palms, and the ice packs help minimize that. WHAT!!?? What on earth are these guys pumping into me!? Weird! So, anyway, I have been intending to Blog about the whole experience from the get-go, but I have discovered that our fingers are very closely tied to the pectoral muscle, and my mastectomy was very nasty to my pec, and writing, typing, clicking mouses, remotes, etc. has been very "uncomfortable!" The soreness has finally waned enough to start using these fingers, so thus starts the Blog!

I have had so many people ask me about how it all started, so I guess I'll sort of start at the beginning:

WEEK 1: WHAT A CRAPPY WEEK!

On Sunday morning, February 7th, I took a shower to get ready for church. Occasionally I try to follow my doctor's advice, so I went to the big mirror to do a quick visual breast check - you girls know what I mean - the one where we're suppose to look for unusual puckers, dimples, changes in shape and appearance, etc. And there it was: a very distinct "dimple" (or a concave spot, as I would hope my Geometry students would describe it) right there on the side of my right breast. So, yes, my first thought was, "Oh, crap!" I think I pretty well knew right then that I was in trouble.

On Monday, February 8th, I started teaching a new block class, Number Theory. I must admit, I may have been a little distracted after the previous day's discovery! Right after class I went to my office and called the hospital to make a Mammogram appointment. I told her about my "dimple". She made an appointment for me to come in early that afternoon. Thankfully my long time Mammo Tech, Leslie, was there to do it. I really wanted her to be the one there. After Leslie was done, she told me there was a mass, and she was pretty sure they would want to biopsy it, so she went ahead and made an appointment for after class the next day (Apparently Leslie also called my doctor - cause Dr. Weed called me the next day.). Rich had left early in the morning for four days for a job in Bozeman, so it would be four days before I could even tell him the news. After my mammogram, I had to take off for Butte because I have been teaching a full semester Monday night Geometry class at Montana Tech. It's a 4 hour class from 4:30 - 8:30, with 10 pm the earliest I make it back home. Makes my Mondays very long days - especially this one!

Tuesday, February 9th: I taught my Math class all morning, then graded some papers, worked with a few students, then - off to my biopsy! Uh huh - you guessed it - loads of fun! Actually, it wasn't that horrible, and my sweet "mammo tech," Leslie, was there to lend moral support. The Radiologist stuck a needle in several spots of my breast to numb it, so that really was the worst part. Good thing, cause he used this big, very fat, very long, mega-needle, which he inserted into my breast, and using Ultra-sound to guide it, inserted it into the tumor. His needle (more like a sharp metallic tube) was able to snip off several worm shaped pieces of the tumor, which he put in a jar of fluid. (Do you think he might have this creepy room in the basement of his home, with shelves full of groady specimens of body tissue, that he goes down and talks to every night?) Then the Radiologist (sadly, I don't even remember his name) patted me on the arm, and told me that it looked like I had a cancer, and he was very sorry. Even though I wasn't really all that shocked, I can honestly say that a lot more of me was numb than my right breast.

Then I went next door to an appointment that had been made with Dr. Weed, where she got to have her first "Cancer" visit with me. She told me that the official lab results would be back at the end of the week, but she also believed that it looked like cancer. I told her that I had just started teaching a Math class that I wanted to see through to the end. She told me I shouldn't be worrying about my class - I had better things to concentrate on. But with classes only being 3 1/2 weeks long, I asked her if realistically - would anything happen before then? and she conceded "probably not." So my plan from the start was to stay to the end with my Dillon class, but sadly, I knew I would have to give up my little Butte group. It's funny how, as a teacher you can get rather attached to a group of students. The Dillon class was a little unusual, because I have had half of them before in other classes, so I started from the first day kind of attached to this bunch. The Butte classes are always a pretty exceptional group - a little older, more mature and serious, and all Elementary Majors - which always makes them such a fun group to work with. I was very sad at the thought of having to abandon them midway through the class.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010: While all of this fun cancer stuff was going on for me, my sweet 13 year-old dog Zebbie (a golden retriever/lab cross) seemed to be dying. She has really been declining the last year or two with arthritis. She finally hit a point where she could hardly get up and walk around, and rather than sleep in her favorite spots, on the porch, or under the tree with her sister Keita (our other 13-year old dog) she would lay out in the one snow patch we had next to the shop. She was losing so much weight, and she wouldn't eat any dog food I brought out to where she way laying. Early in the week I ran to the store and bought canned dog food which Zebbie, thankfully, ate. Every day after I'd get home from school I'd go out to check on her, feed her, and give her a drink. When I went out to check on her on Wednesday I thought at first she was dead, but when I looked closer, I saw that her sides were moving. I thought there was no way she would survive the night.

Thursday, February 11, 2010: I spent the whole day at the college teaching my class, grading papers, and working with students. When I got home early in the evening, I went to check on Zebbie with great trepidation, cause I dreaded finding her dead. Even worse, she was awake, with her head up, and she was crying. I was absolutely devastated. Here I was, home alone, and with a bad back that I tweeked earlier in the week. Even though she had lost a lot of weight, she is a big enough dog that there is no way I could pick her up and try to run her to the vet past hours to have her put down. All I could do was pet her and cry, til she went back to sleep. When Rich got home that night, I got to tell him my cancer news (I wasn't about to tell him that one over the phone). And I asked him to please check on Zebbie first thing in the morning, and if she was still alive, to please take her to the vet. I just couldn't deal with one more day of seeing her cry.

Friday, February 12, 2010: Spent the whole day at school again, and when I got home, Rich told me that Zebbie was dead when he checked on her, so he buried her behind the shop. I was sad yet relieved. Poor Keita has spent her entire life with Zebbie by her side, so she is wandering around so lost and confused. Even though she has been a lot more healthy than Zeb, I'm sure she will start to decline quickly just out of loneliness. I never got a call from my doctor's office on my biopsy results. I found out Dr. Weed was out of town til Tuesday, and no one there would tell me the results. That was so frustrating, cause I intended to call my family over the weekend. Even though we knew with 95% certainty that is was cancer, I didn't want to call anyone until it was 100%, with more details. Aaaarrrggghhhh! Yeah, I'd say this week will go down in history as one of the worst!