So with the wallowing, it’s been easy to forget that I have some of the best friends on the face of the planet. Seriously.

First of all, there is the part where I’m lucky to be in love with my best friend. The sidekick has a cold right now, but he’s the best friend a ninja could ever hope to have. He actually has made it easier when live gets hard. And he holds me when I cry. And sometimes, that’s what I really need.

But this post is dedicated to the awesomeness of my friends. If your friends is true they’ll be there with you, through the thick and thin.

And although TLC may be without their L… I am not without my friends!

This week alone, I got a hat in the mail that was not only knitted by a Jeopardy! champion,  but says “Breast Cancer Ninja”

Best. Breast Cancer Ninja hat. EVER! (Says “BREAST CANCER” on other side)

And then that same day, when I asked friends about lipstick to make myself feel better, another friend, who lost her mom to cancer in the last couple of years and gained a brother/son who is about the age of my son gave me a gift of a Sephora gift card so that I can buy more lipstick to make me feel like a girl, even without the boobs and hair that I’m accustomed to seeing on myself.

I even have wonderful friends from college who are posting on my FB wall to let me know that they are thinking of me, even if we haven’t talked in person for 15+ years, or another friend whose sons play football with my 9-year-old and I just met after my diagnosis, but texts me almost every day to make sure I’m OK and the kid will get to practice or the next game on time.

At work, I have a whole TEAM of amazing colleagues who keep telling me that I do look like I have boobs, not just “spared tissue” as I think of them, or that my hair looks good, when I really, really hate it. They are the folks who gave me the boobloons, and the sign that I keep outside my bedroom so I see at least once a day:

You can’t read the writing, but it’s messages of encouragement and love from some of the most talented tech PR people on the planet. Seriously.

I work with people who could be focused on their job (they are kind of launching Windows 8 this month) but they make me feel loved. And I can never, ever make it clear to them all how much that means.

Today I even made a brand new friend, my Bright Pink, “Pink Pal,” another young mom who recently went through chemo, a bilateral mastectomy, and reconstruction. Even though I was yelling at her on my cell phone from the side of my son’s football practice field, it felt SO good to know I’m not alone. There are other young, healthy women who are dealing with the same shit.

As a matter of fact, my pal Tina was able to give me some great, and very timely advice. (Don’t use the tape lint roller on my head…)

See, today, my hair started falling out by the handful.

It started a tiny bit last night, but by the shower this AM, it felt like there was more hair than usual in the drain. And when I used a little bit of my “True Wax” (which smells AMAZEBALLS) in my hair, my hand came away covered in little strands. And if I pull on any little bit to style it, or because it ITCHES, I come away with, well, a handful of hair.

I’ve cried about it approximately 5 times today. Would have been more, but after I put the little monkey to bed, I broke out the Costco brand Golden Margarita.

For the first time ever, I’m officially blogging buzzed, and I don’t think the sidekick is going to appreciate how much margarita is missing when he wakes up from his NyQuil induced slumber on Friday AM.

Then again, since I was crying while working when he came home tonight, he will probably forgive me.

Did I mention that I’m lucky I’m in love with my best friend? For 20 years, and counting.

I know I’ve said it before, but I’m one lucky-ass ninja. Even WITH the breast cancer part.

Yeah- drunk blogging. But I REALLY do love you guys!

And isn’t this better than if I started drunk dialing?  🙂

Every year at Halloween, the sidekick takes our kid out to trick or treat, and I stay to pass out candy.  This works well, sometimes the sidekick even dresses up, and I like to plop on a witch hat or something, just to make it fun for the kids at the door.

This year I was considering being an Amazon… since they supposedly chopped off a breast to be better archers, and that seems pretty fierce, and my son thought I was going to be a Ninja like him… but I told him this morning, I’m already a ninja.

So I bought this shirt, and I’ll get a tiara, and since I won’t have hair, maybe a pink sassy wig…

Ninjas Rescue Princesses… even when they are the princess too.

Here’s the deal.  I’ve had a lot of people tell me I’m still beautiful and it comes from the inside, etcetera, etcetera, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah.

But I was listing to my favorite Spotify list for when I’m feeling pissy , “Not to be effed with,” and Beautiful by Christina Aguilera came on and it occurred to me, if “your words won’t bring me down,” they really won’t bring me up either.

I have to get my OWN shit together. As we tell my son often, no one else can control how you react to things. I have to own my own reaction.

So yeah, I’ve gotten a little wallowy.

But in the words of today’s “poet” Katy Perry,  in her eff you break up song, Part of Me, “throw your bombs and your blows, but you’re not gonna break my soul!”

Fuck you cancer.

I will undoubtedly have more shitty days. And I didn’t have the best physical self image before this started, so I may still be fighting that bugaboo for months and likely years to come (38 years of habit are hard to break) but despite my wonderful friends and family, none of them can fight the cancer or self-image, or anything else for me.

This princess is going to have to put on her big girl panties and rescue herself!

Slightly sad song, but when it’s been 20 years since I’ve had bangs, and  25 years since clippers visited my head, being in a pixie cut has brought on a little case of the blues.

I may have, in fact, bawled my eyes out when I got home after cutting off all of my hair.

Holy shit, I did it!

This cancer thing has changed my life.  What I can’t decide is HOW it has changed my life.  I have a hard time focusing on the things that I want to, or need to when it just doesn’t seem IMPORTANT.

I don’t want to be one of those people who are all about this thing that has happened to them, which is part of the logic behind cutting my hair this weekend.  Cancer didn’t happen to my hair. I happened to my hair. Although as the sidekick mentioned, if this pixie haircut doesn’t fall out, I’m going to be PISSED that I cut off all of my hair for no good reason.  I don’t care who thinks it’s cute.  Between that and the boobs, it’s hard for me to feel like a girl.

So I’ve been buying things like pink stretchy bras, but I think what I really need to go find is some new lipstick. Perhaps that I’ll go find that soon.

And so it goes, and so it goes. And you’re the only one who knows.

And I by that I mean the hair stops growing, because as long as there is hair… I will shave.

I was also told today that I’m not supposed to be shaving under my arms with a razor since the nerves there are damaged from surgery (aka, I have NO feeling) so I guess I’m going to need a wet/dry electric thingy. Because I don’t not shave under my arms in the shower. Ever. Like, the times I was only allowed to lift my arms 45 degrees, in the shower was the one moment I totally violated it. Because it’s a big part of how I feel clean.

I’ve been having a pretty hard time emotionally this week. I think it starts with the fact that this has been the physically hardest week, but it also extends into how useful I feel in general.

I haven’t talked about my symptoms a ton because I don’t like to whine, and I don’t want anyone to worry, but I also promised when I became the Breast Cancer Ninja that I would be real. So I’m going whine really quick, and then I want to ask for some opinions.  Feel free to skip the bullets, which are the whiney part:

1. Mouth sores suck. It feels like the bottom of my feet when I’ve spent 12 hours in a chlorine pool, except for all inside my mouth, and it has all week.
2. No more TP? I called to ask about my bottom being sore, and they said, “We suggest that you don’t use toilet paper.” So now I have those clammy wipe things that are flushable, but you’d think that this should have been in the “chemo teach” last week.
3. WTF with the shaving thing? You’d think this is something they’d say early on, like they did with the never-get-BP-or-blood-draw-from-left-arm.
4. It only ever seems like I get partial info from the nurses. They told me to call and they’d give me prescriptions when I was @ chemo last week, then asked me if I’d done a bunch of OTC stuff before they write prescriptions. Uh, no, I have not been going rogue, trying random shit. I’ve already got a small pharmacy in my kitchen, so I’m not going to just TRY stuff when I don’t know how it interacts with the other stuff. I want to make this all EASIER on me, not harder by doing the wrong thing.
5. I’m having a hard time caring about work. I feel like I’m being left out of the loop, which drives me INSANE, and that I have no value since they’ve got someone in helping out while I’m “out.” But I don’t want to be out. And since I don’t know what it is that I’m being left out of, I don’t feel comfortable jumping in. So then I just get depressed and don’t do. Which does NO ONE any good. So then I get down on myself for that. I plan to fix this on Monday.

OK, so here’s the cheese to go with my whine.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this hair thing. You know, the part where it’s all going to fall out.

And the one thing I know is that I’m going to donate what I have, not sure where, but I still need to decide what I want to do with my head for the next couple of weeks.  Here’s a pic of how my hair looks now:

Self Portrait of a Ninja, No Makeup, Little Sleep

As you can see, my hair is a couple of inches past shoulder length.  Shedding hair that length is both wasteful if I’m going to donate, and gross as it shows up around the house.  So now the question becomes- what next?  I’ve uploaded several visual aids to a new Pinterest board “Pre-Bald” but the basic options are:

1. The 2012 version of the Pixie cut- a la Ginnifer Goodwin
2. The old school Pixie– Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina
3. The boy cut– I’ve shown it on Natalie Portman since I didn’t want to put a pic of my son on Pinterest 🙂
4. Bald- Like Britney when she lost her shit

If you’ve got another option, I’m open- I’ve even thought about short, then a funky pink or something, but I think the texture would make me cry and the color would ruin my towels.  I’ll just buy a sassy pink wig & call that urge fulfilled.

Today was another fill day, and again, I was able to take 120 cc of water in the good ol’ balloons, so NOW I’m at 360 cc.

Evidently when you have a lot of skin to spare from a “skin sparing mastectomy” the “fill ‘er up!” part goes a lot quicker.  I won’t be able to type for long, as my pecks have just noticed this invasion as I’ve started to share it with you and are now protesting up into my shoulder, but in all, I feel pretty good.

Here are the two bits of news from today:

1. My dream of getting this all done by the end of  the year is dead.  I will not be getting new boobs for my 39th birthday (Dec 28 for those of you who want to then shop for something ELSE for me… :)) but there’s a good chance they will be a gift to the sidekick for his birthday in March, and if not, for our 16th wedding anniversary in June, the will not only be in, but likely able to be wrapped in pretty bras.
2. With this fill, my front is finally starting to look like it belongs to a girl again.  People have been telling me that if you forget about my former cartoon chest, I just look like a small busted woman. Since I don’t remember ever looking like that, it’s a major relief to start to see something that resembles a breast when I look down again. With clothes on, I almost feel like a real girl.

Tomorrow that part where I feel OK may change, as I will go meet my new physical therapist. Gulp.

But the GOOD part about that next step?

I’ll get to figure out how much I can do to start working on the six-pack I need to go along with the new smaller boobs!

I started doing a little looking to the whole wig thing, and first surprise, my insurance doesn’t have any wig allowance.  I know of places to get free ones and all, but since I have pretty good insurance, I just thought that I’d use my insurance to get a wig, and save the free stuff for people who NEED the assistance. Sigh.

The thing I originally thought that I would do is have a wig made of my own hair, so that I would just have it.  I have gotten complements on my hair kind of forever, at different times and other than the ill-fated Ogilvie home perm that was immortalized in my 6th grade school picture. I don’t know that it’s anything SPECIAL, but although my hair is fine, there’s a lot of it, kind of like tons and tons of baby hair. And it’s pretty healthy. It’s just part of who I am.

The “wig of your own hair” option?  $1600.

So, yeah, not doing that!

I actually had a really nice conversation with the guy at the wig place, and he made me feel pretty good about the process and maybe not needing his wigs. He said that the reason a lot of women do their wigs is because they have very unique hair or head shapes, or they are trying to keep their cancer status to themselves.

My hair is a long bob, not really anything UNIQUE, just mine. And I don’t think my head is oddly shaped, and in case you hadn’t noticed with this whole blog thing, I’m not exactly being shy, so I’m thinking at this time that I should learn to knit hats… since I can knit, but all I’ve ever learned to do is a scarf, and rock some sassy wigs.

Which all sounds well and good, but it feels like I’ve already given up a lot.

When you’ve had D+ boobs since 8th grade, at least for me, they become a major part of your identity.

Gone.

When I was in 7th grade, someone accidentally called me a boy, and my hair hasn’t been shorter than chin length since.

Until now.

(Am I the only one noticing a pattern here? Actually, if I could get my 1988 waistline & butt we just might be in BUSINESS Here!)

I may be physically feeling better today, but the news makes it easier to stayed holed up at home in hiding. I feel like I’m losing my physical identity piece by piece. And by January, I don’t even know who that person will be in the mirror any more.

I guess next up will be to get info on how to draw in eyebrows and use fake lashes, which I’ve never had to do before… since with the dark brown hair, I’ve had brows & lashes to match… and since those are likely to go too.

So far, I’ve been able to take most of this in stride, but if chemo takes this Brown-Eyed Girl, and makes my brown eyes blue, I’m going to be seriously, SERIOUSLY pissed!

Last week I mentioned that it had been 20 years since I gave the sidekick my phone number in what turns out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, sober or not.

Twenty years ago tonight, we went to Boston Common for our most important first date ever.

Today has been tough, my hardest day yet of this cancer crap.

My legs, hips, and knees hurt unless I’m on oxy. The rest of me feels odd. I’ve been fighting nausea, and slept much of the day.

But as I’ve mentioned, I’ve got plans for the rest of my life that don’t involve cancer.

And if David can put up with me for another 20 years, and maybe even another 30 more, it’s only fair that I fight on, even on the days that suck.

I wouldn’t have made it through the last 20 years or any if this crap with out him.

If I’m lucky I never will.

OK, I’m not sure that GROOVY is the work I want, but I definitely feel odd, funky, and not quite right, but not HORRIBLE.

I have been taking my anti-nausea meds, although the issue seems to be more with the other end (I know, NICE) but I haven’t lost my lunch yet at all. I’m also not hungry… but once I start to eat it’s like I’m ravenous.  My body needs the calories, but my mind is in no way interested in food.

I’ve also got some odd joint pain, knees, hips, spine, and not a joint, but my teeth feel strange.  Again, not HORRIBLE, but odd.

I did manage to get out while my boys were shuttling mom home to Oly and get my last Pedi until chemo is done… so I have sparkly hot pink toes for the forseeable future.  They didn’t have my usual “I’m Not Really a Waitress,” so I figured I’d go cliché.

I do feel a little bit like a cliché all in pink all of the time, but since shiny red and pink have been my favorite colors, and I’ve been told the most flattering on me, I just own a lot of pink. It has nothing to do with the cancer that has been in my boobies, I promise.

The other thing that happened today was in talking to the woman next to me at the nail salon about how she’d recently lost a friend to BC.  She was a 5 year survivor, but then it came back, and in two years she was gone.

Sometimes I feel like I’m over doing it with this chemo crap when all of the bad was cut out.  But if my Doc thinks I need it, I’m not going to argue.  I know I felt better before I started the treatment than I do today… but if I want to feel like that ever again, I still have to fight.

And if I want to dance at my 9 year old’s wedding, I’m going to need to stick around for at LEAST a good 15 years.  And to dance at a grandkid’s wedding… I’ll need another 30, right?  So we fight today for more and more tomorrow.

With hot pink toes inside kick ass boots. 🙂

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you make an appointment to get your hair cut, your hair looks awesome until the day of the appointment? Maybe that’s just me?

Well, this week, as I’ve worked towards chemo that I asked the nurse, “what are we talking about on losing the hair, like a 90% chance it will happen, or just, it will happen.” Nurse: “It will happen”  Asking other nurse, so when do people usually lose the hair, “Around day 20.” So yeah, before the next infusion thing, I’ll need to figure out the wig thing.  And I have some lovely friends who have offered to knit me hats, which is super helpful, because I can knit, but all I have ever had patience to figure out is a scarf. But these week I’ve had more compliments on my hair than I’d had in weeks… evidently it knows that it’s days are numbered.

So yesterday was an interesting day. Showed up, gave some blood, they had a hard time finding a vein.  And since I had lymph nodes removed on the left side, I’m not allowed to get my blood pressure checked or give blood (or get chemo) on my left arm… and righty was feeling a little shy, so things just took longer than they really should. And I’ve got a couple of REALLY pretty bruises.

Things then ran late for my “learning about your chemo” session, and THEN was 30 min late for the actual chemo.

The chemo itself wasn’t SO bad.  I hung out in a hospital bed, complete with my kick-ass boots, and floral dress with coordinating red cardigan from Old Navy… because I’m cheap and it’s stretchy.  My BEST accessory was the “ice gloves” that I got to wear for the Taxotere infusion, since it will evidently help me avoid peripheral neuropathy, which is still my mom’s bugaboo from her colon cancer chemo that she finished almost 2 years ago.

Ice Gloves Baby

The only real complication I had while in the hospital was a little bit of an allergic reaction to the Taxotere infusion, so we had to stop down, give me an injection of Benadryl, which then made me feel kind of twitchy, like I needed to move around a lot, and then delayed the time of the chemo even more…

Since coming home, I’ve been OK.  I do have a couple of anti-nausea drugs, and some Zantac because I started to have a little bit of reflux at SCCA, and it’s been helping with the nausea since I got home. One of the anti-nausea things is also anti-anxiety, so it helped me sleep last night.

Probably the best night of sleep I’ve had in at least a couple of weeks- I even managed to get my arm under my head some… so I was sleeping in a position I’m used to.  Not more than 1-2 hours at a time, but I felt more refreshed than I have in a while.

Today, I’m tired, but not sleepy, if that makes any sense.  I had to take a LOT of pills this morning, which feels odd, but whatever. I’ve decided to figure out how to create my own Windows Phone/ Windows 8 app to track medications so that I don’t have to keep a paper log of everything I’m putting in my body all of the dang time right now.  If anyone wants to do the coding part for me let me know… I’ve got some specifications that would make it useful including color coding to let me know if I can take a pain pill again, and alarms for things I NEED to take at certain times.

So in general, I’ve got this.  One down, three to go.  And as of today, I see no reason I can’t get through this and get past it.

Breast Cancer Ninja style!

I am also neither a teenager, nor a turtle, but I was guessing you already knew that.

So the GOOD news is that in the standard tests that they give, I don’t have the BRCA 1 or 2 genetic mutations that could have caused my cancer.  Are these the ONLY genes linked to breast cancer? Not entirely, but they are the main ones so far, and if I’d been positive, then the indication would have been that I should get my ovaries out. Considering the last surgery I had is still pretty fresh, I was not feeling that idea, so it’s good news.  I have signed up for a research study that will help them find MORE genes that can be linked to the cancer… hoping to help the future generations and all of that, but I won’t know anything for like 6 months.  Heck, I’m planning to get the blood taken for it tomorrow.

Tomorrow when I get my blood drawn before I start my chemo.

I’m still pretty sore today, meaning I over did by driving in to work the last 3 days. But if I don’t push myself, I’ll never get past the spot where I am… which is in my husband’s Lazy Boy. I’m still not looking to be FAST, but I am going to be back in triathlon form.  If not in 2013, than 2014. This is not a plan, but a promise to myself.

I’m kind of freaking out a little bit about the whole chemo thing tomorrow. And by freaking out, I’m eating candy corn and having a hard time concentrating on work.  There is no gnashing of teeth, wailing or tearing of hair.  That would freak the hell out of the dog.

But I am tempted to curl up and hide in my shell.

I am putting off anything I can think of to put off, like what I’m going to do with my child in the 60 min before school tomorrow when I have to leave for Seattle & the bus will not have come yet. Because I don’t want to think about tomorrow.  It is not just another day.  But the only way to GET to the days that are just another day will be to get through these next few. One day at a time.

The steroids I am on so far have not had any major impact.  I took them. Whatev’s. We’ll see if I still feel that way tomorrow and Friday.  I’m sure I’ll update you all when I’m feeling up to it… maybe even from the chemo chair.  I know there will be boredom, even though I’ve got both mom & hubby coming with me this 1st time.

The one other thing- Hubby is hoping I never need to shave my head & all (there WILL be shaving if I start to look like I have mange), but when I do, I’m not thinking I’ll want to take anyone’s human hair that I know other than my own.  It’s sweet that some of you have offered (other than my dad… pretty sure he’s just being a smartass) but it just kind of skeeves me out.  The wig thing will likely wig me out enough as it is.  Although I will have good timing to hit the Halloween clearance sales if I lose the hair after my next treatment on 10/12, right?