Edited 11/11/2012 for clarity and because I was really pissed off when I wrote this and it's just not very coherent. “Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.” ~ Someone in the Czech Republic via a newspaper   I’m disappointed. Yesterday the morning started out with such hope.  By the time I went to bed last night.  Crash and burn. Ohio results wer...

How many calories do you need a day? How many do you really burn? Do you know?  For sure? Are those generic calculators on line, the ones with weight, height, age input, accurate?  How can they be for everyone?  Doesn’t activity level count?  Muscle mass? I am 5’3.6” and weigh 115 pounds.  The on-line calculators say:   And yet when I ate 1422 calories, I was so weak I thought perhaps my cancer returned! ...

Jay is in jail again. County jail this time. Looks like he will be there awhile.  He doesn’t have any money to get out, and the docket is full. I’m disappointed, angry, and yes, even hurt. So what happened? Wasn’t Jay doing well? Yes. At least on the outside, working, second year of college, but still on parole and drinking. Drinking is a direct parole violation. I asked if he was drinking the last time we talked. He said, “Just a few sis. I&rsqu...

  Today was deportation day. Not in a crackdown on illegal aliens, but a crackdown of another sort. Since my heart has shown “no improvement” over the last 4 months, I am officially off chemo. Done with importing un-desirables who suck up all the resources (and nine times out of ten leave the area worse off than they found it), that little super highway is shut down, obliterated, gone.  A fence is constructed and baby, it’s live fire.  No priso...

Whew. A couple articles ago I mentioned being pooped, tired, tuckered out.  http://lifehappens.joeuser.com/article/411794/Ejection_Fraction It is soooo much worse now. Turns out there is a medical reason for it (as opposed to a vacation and running around too much reason). With only 3 breast cancer treatments left, I had to stop.  My heart is down around 49% and has enlarged in an attempt to compensate. Heart Failure. I have to see a cardio...

So I have a Nook Color.  (What?  You thought this was going to be about something else?) It’s fine as an e-reader.  However, I watched several youtube videos and discovered it could be so much more!!  Like an android tablet, minus the android price tag if I could just figure out what an android does and how to do something called “rooting.” I am woefully under-skilled and waaaaay behind in tech lingo.  Way.  I don’t own a smart pho...

Last night we toured my son’s high school.  It’s a big place, took over two hours.  It occurred to me as I heard yet another teacher explain why “we don’t teach that anymore” how much high school has changed.  I don’t just mean technology,  (that alone is a serious line of demarcation between then (before internet) and now), but the whole psychology of high school.  I went to high school in the 1980’s, back when the Breakf...

Once, when I was a child, I licked the end of a tv antenna while it was on. I don’t know why I did it, but I did. To this day I remember the way it tasted, the metallic bite on the back of the tongue, the acrid aftertaste. Radiation was like that. Acrid, metallic , exhausting . 33 treatments cooked my underarm and the last bit of energy I possessed. But, I’m done with it. D. O. N. E. Finished the cooking process the last week in June and then WHO...

April. Wow. The journey from September to April?  It’s been painful, onerous, toilsome, tough, taxing, burdensome, exhausting; pick your adjective.  It has also been educational .  That’s right, I said it! At the risk of becoming one of those people who only ever talks about their latest physical malady, hang tuff, it won’t last long. I started chemotherapy in December; just finished.  (Except for a single agent I get intravenously until ...

My youngest has the best work ethic.  

Warning:  This is a bit of a ramble…doing it very fast….but if you can make it through, would love your feedback! I went to get my wig today. It’s a nice wig, looks just like my old hair, except a little longer. Insurance covers 80% of a “cranial prosthesis,” but once in a lifetime. I went to a Network provider (NP). A NP is someone who signs a contract with my insurance company agreeing to accept payment for whatever amount my insurance company deems w...

Yesterday. In the Chemo Chair next to mine. A child. My son’s age. His mother’s face, oh my god, his mother’s face.  Creases deep enough for an an entire fingertip. Inside. I shattered.  I was strong and steady up until then.  But something died inside me yesterday, shriveled black and stinking in the presence of the child’s pain. And his mother’s. And for the first time I thanked God for my breast cancer.  Thanked God it is me an...

Today I went for the first big Chemo treatment of 6.  This regime involves a cocktail of three chemotherapies:  Taxotere, Carboplatin, and Herceptin (TCH) every three weeks, and I go in once a week for the Herceptin between the big cocktail.  After 18 weeks (barring problems) I go to Herceptin every 3 weeks up to 52 weeks, and start radiation, 7 weeks.  Then Tamoxifen for five years.  Most civilian cancer centers are a little fancier than the one at Wright Patters...

***Photos of Skin-Sparing Mastectomy Below Post-Surgery*** It is true.  I bruise easy, and they tend to last a long time.  In fact, it is fairly normal to keep a bruise for 4-5 weeks.  Remember the bruising from the gross 5-day post-op pictures?  (Visual reminder below…) When my plastic surgeon saw the bruising he told me about this wonderful herb called Arnica Montana (AM).  He encouraged me to take it.  Skeptical, I trudged to GNC, plopped down...

I went to get my boob filled today. Seriously. I bought a Venti Starbucks Skinny Vanilla Latte to fill my belly, then reclined on a table while the good doctor inserted a needle and pumped 100 ml of saline into the expander.  I made him stop at 100 because my pectoral muscle was tweaking.  But now I think he could have gone at least 50 more.  I have 200 ml to go yet, but several months to get there.  Can’t swap expander for gummy bear until I’m done wit...