survivor – Still Life, Beyond Cancer

Catching Up

June 20, 2021June 20, 2021Sandee McGlaun

I’m a few days behind my normal posting schedule this week. I got the second dose of my new treatment regimen on Wednesday, and while the side effects are milder than the previous infusion, I still spent a couple of days feeling less than awesome. But things keep rolling along, as they do. A few updates:

It’s been about six weeks since I got the injection of Restylane in my left vocal cord. It definitely strengthened my voice, which is nice. It also seems to have triggered a tickle that sometimes makes it hard to talk without coughing. That irritation comes and goes, but it is nice not to feel like I sound like a Muppet all the time.
I’m still undergoing swallowing therapy, and I had another endoscopy and dilation. The consensus is that lymphatic fluid build-up and fibrotic tissue in my chest and neck are contributing to both issues. My doctors are concerned that I’m not managing to squeeze enough nutrition through my restricted esophagus, and the gastroenterologist doesn’t want to keep dilating me only to have external pressure narrow things again. So on Tuesday they’re going to place an esophageal stent, to remain for four to six weeks. I’m a bit anxious about it, but I do need to eat more, so I hope it will help and not be too uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, my left arm is currently mummified, wrapped in a multi-layer compression wrap my lymphedema therapist recommended and showed me how to do. I’ll continue that for about two weeks. It seems to be helping, softening the fibrosis in my arm and moving some of the fluid. Hooray! Sadly, now I’ve got some additional fluid backup in my neck, so I’m trying to stay on top of that with manual lymphatic drainage massage. Some days it feels like I’m playing Whac-a-mole.
I seem to be growing some hair back! My oncologist thinks I may lose it again, but we’ll see; it didn’t fall out the first time I received the two chemo drugs I’m on now. I have a fuzzy old man’s head at present.

My new regimen consists of two chemo agents, carboplatin and gemcitabine, and an immunotherapy drug, pembrolizumab. I’ll receive four rounds total of that cocktail, each three weeks apart, and then undergo a scan, with hopes that we can then move to an immunotherapy-only infusion. Despite the side effects, my body does feel like it has an ally on board. It’s hard to explain, but the pain I was experiencing has lessened, so I’m hopeful the drugs are in there kicking some cancer butt.

I don’t really have any philosophical musings to offer today, for whatever they are worth. I’m going to sit on the porch, drink some tea, and call my dad. And at some point, with hubby Steve’s help, de-mummify and then re-mummify my arm. Wishing you a good wrap-up (hee-hee) to your weekend.

New Treatment on the Horizon

May 21, 2021May 21, 2021Sandee McGlaun

Steve and I are wrapping up our time on Ocracoke Island. It’s been a good visit, a nice change of pace and place. Sun, sand, sea, and shells are always healing. It’s been a challenging visit in some ways, too, but that’s another post for another day. Today, some other news is foremost on my mind.

We’ve known for several weeks now, based on changes happening in my body, that Sasquatch is no longer working as well as it needs to. They call it “breaking through” when the cancer stops responding to a drug, and unfortunately, the rogue cells have broken through. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that we got the results back from a test to explore the likely effectiveness of an immunotherapy drug, and it looks really promising. A score of 10 or higher is considered good, and I scored over 50. So I’ll be starting a new treatment protocol with a combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy next week. The original plan was to begin Monday at 8 am, but we’re still waiting on insurance authorization. Don’t ask me how I feel about insurance companies’ ability to interfere with treatment plans right now. The plan is to start as soon as we possibly can.

It’s a bit disconcerting to have Trodelvy stop working. But I keep thinking about, of all things, a caving trip I went on with my church youth group in the eighth grade. I was a little anxious that I’d experience claustrophobia, as I wasn’t fond of small spaces. But what I found was this: I was completely fine crawling, wriggling, and squeezing through the narrowest of passages, as long as I could see a way forward. The only time I panicked was when I came around a corner and the passageway appeared to dead-end in front of me. It was an optical illusion–the passage simply made a hard left, which I realized when I heard voices ahead and saw a brief flash of light from a headlamp. I made the turn, and I was back on track.

I realize there may come a time when we will have exhausted the alternatives, and I dread that possibility. But for now there is a way forward, so I’ll keep on pushing through the tight places. In the meantime, Steve and I are going to watch another sunset over the sound and look forward to cuddling our kitties again tomorrow evening. Onward!

Shell, Yeah!

May 14, 2021May 15, 2021Sandee McGlaun

Steve and I are on Ocracoke Island this week, one of the most beautiful beaches in the Outer Banks. It’s been a bit chilly, with stiff shore winds, so we’ve mostly been visiting the beach in short stints, clothed in long pants and jackets, walking rather than parking our chairs and hanging out for the day. I hope we’ll get some warmer temps soon, so we can lounge and linger.

The weather hasn’t really slowed my efforts at shell collecting. Despite the reservoirs of shells I have at home, gathered on previous beach trips, I am always on the hunt for the next treasure. When we were last here in September, it seemed like there were fewer whole shells to be found than in previous years, and some once common finds, like olives, were absent. I’d hoped that was a factor of fall ocean currents, but I’ve yet to see even a fragment of an olive on this trip. And once again, broken shells are abundant, intact finds fewer and farther between.

It’s tempting to see it as some kind of metaphor–my body, too, has felt a bit more broken with each visit. But I hope my ego isn’t so encompassing that I can only see the world as a reflection of my own state of being! The whole world has been muddling along this year, not just me. If there’s a metaphorical resonance in the limited numbers of good shell finds, perhaps it’s in the ways all of our experiential spheres have shrunk in the course of the pandemic.

It is interesting to think about how my approach to shelling has shifted over the years. When I was young, I was less discerning; I was also more impressed by ostentatious beauty. As I’ve grown older, I’ve gained a broader knowledge base. I know what I’m looking for; I appreciate novelty, but I also take pleasure in seeing and naming the familiar. I have greater appreciation for small beauties and subtle, intricate patterns, even as my eyes aren’t as sharp as they once were.

Baby’s ears and buttercup lucines are etched with delicate markings

My mother recently made me a beautiful journal that declares “My birthstone is a seashell.” Sometimes it certainly feels that way. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of wandering the shoreline in search of treasure. There’s always beauty to be found, if we only look for it.

Growing Old With/In/Dignity

November 27, 2020Sandee McGlaun

So, today is my birthday. Yay!

Last year, I celebrated a “milestone” birthday–the big 5-0, as they say–so I have a lot of friends who’ve also recently or will soon celebrate their own mid-century milestones. There’s something about milestone birthdays that brings out the denial and lamentations. “Me? I’ll be 29 again this year!” Or “I’m 39 and holding!” Or “I can’t believe I’m getting so old! Look at my chin/neck/knees/crow’s feet.” I’ve said it, too.

The older I get, the more often I hear, “Yeah, I don’t celebrate birthdays anymore. I just try to forget that I’m having one!”

I betcha know where I’m going with this.

That last one, especially, has come to stick in my craw. We’ve all heard the axiom, “Growing old is a privilege denied to many.” The thing is, it’s true. There’s not a one of us, cancer survivor or no, who can take another birthday for granted.

Aging is a gift, and it is humbling. Your body seems to begin conspiring against you: you can’t eat or drink what you used to, not without surprising consequences. You can go as hard as you did in the previous decade, but it will take twice as long to recover. And everything seems to drift down, crinkle up, or both.

Aging with cancer is especially humbling. Ever since my first round of chemo, I belch like a seventh grade boy. It happens without warning. I almost look forward to the day one erupts in class or a faculty meeting. It’s a side of me so few have seen. Or, rather, heard. And then there’s what I’ve come to call the “sudden snot.” Something in my current treatment makes my nose drip, and it happens so quickly that I end up with a long string before I even know it’s begun. I don’t have enough stamina for running with my legs at present, so my nose is making up for it.

TMI? Well, that’s one of the good things that comes with growing older–you no longer give a fig what others think about you anymore.

And then there are the memory issues. I haven’t forgotten what I wanted to say about that…though that could happen. I’m just saving that subject for another day. Really.

Beautiful birthday journal made by my mother. Have to write it down if I want to remember it, these days.

When I turned 40, I didn’t tell anyone it was a “big” birthday, because a lot of people I knew thought I was several years younger than I was, and I thought preserving that fiction was important. Now I wish I’d kicked up my heels and had a big bash. By the time I turned 50, I understood just what an incredible privilege growing older really is, and I owned it. And I plan to own it for every birthday I’m lucky enough to have for the rest of my life. And I urge you to own your years, too.

Aging is humbling. It’s not for the faint of heart, as they say. I say, embrace all its indignities and laugh all the louder for it. You’re still here. That’s the best gift any of us could wish for.

Cheers, y’all! Beer and chocolate are pretty awesome gifts, too 🙂

The Lay of the Land, Autumn 2020

November 4, 2020November 5, 2020Sandee McGlaun

Hello, friends! It’s been a while. There’s much to tell you, so I’ll jump right in. Lots of wonderful things have happened since I last posted in 2017, but I am sorry to report I’ve had not one but two recurrences since then. We discovered the first one in December of 2018, in lymph nodes just under my upper port scar by my right collar bone. I’d actually found a bump in July of that year and thought (hoped) it scar tissue, then asked my GP about it in September. She ordered an x-ray (what I needed was an ultrasound, but I didn’t know that) and said all was fine. It wasn’t until my December oncology check-in that I had an ultrasound and surgical biopsy, and I re-entered treatment from January to May 2019.

At Stirling Castle in Scotland, July 2019

My husband Steve and I took a wonderful trip to Ocracoke Island in late May 2019 and had an amazing adventure in Scotland in July. In late October 2019 a small rash appeared just above the crease in my left armpit, and I started having issues with lymphedema again. A biopsy in late November confirmed that the cancer had metastasized to the lymphatics of my skin, and I re-entered treatment the day after Christmas, December 2019.

I wrote about the first recurrence on a Caring Bridge site; I was teaching and working through daily radiation, and I wanted to be able to give updates without feeling like I had to be “writerly.” If you are interested in the details of that time, please look me up there. When the cancer returned again late last year, I was so overwhelmed and sad that all I could muster was writing in my journal, for myself. Honestly, I think I was tired of this being the story I had to tell. To complicate matters, a couple of months into treatment (a combo of immunotherapy and Abraxane, a new form of Taxol), along came the coronavirus. There’s been a lot to process, and it’s only been in the past few weeks I’ve felt able and desirous of opening that process back up to others. I hope sharing my story is helpful, especially now that so many are faced with health challenges and the deep uncertainties they bring. So, here we are.

A recap of this latest round: as the coronavirus pandemic intensified in the spring, we discovered through a CT scan on April 15^th that the immunotherapy I’d been on since late December wasn’t working as well as it needed to; the cancer had spread to a few additional lymph nodes. That was a big blow. I received no treatment for several weeks while we waited on some test results that could give us insight into other treatment options. One of the hardest parts about the current recurrence is that, as my oncologist says, we have a front-row seat: with the cancer being in my skin, I could see it, while we waited, as it progressed across my chest and down my abdomen. I began to experience increasing pain and swelling and began having problems swallowing, leading to several endoscopic dilations. It was all terrifying.

I had a consult with my oncologist the first week of May to discuss the test results and next steps. Because of the coronavirus, only patients were allowed in the cancer care facility, so Steve could not accompany me. I shook with anxiety. I can always tell if the news will be good or bad by my oncologist’s demeanor when he enters the exam room. That day he entered smiling and appearing almost…chipper? Steve was on speakerphone. “You seem cheerful,” I said to Dr. K. “Why are you so cheerful?” “I am,” he replied. The FDA, he said, had just granted expedited approval to a targeted-chemotherapy drug that had been in clinical trials for the treatment of advanced triple negative breast cancer. The approval had been given on April 22^nd, little more than a week prior. It was particularly miraculous news given that the test results we’d been waiting on hadn’t turned up any good options. But I could start the targeted chemo drug sacituzumab govitecan-hziy, which they’d come to call “Sasquatch” acround the office, within the next two weeks.

My first dose was on May 20^th, coincidentally the day Steve and I adopted two black-and-white kittens who we named Herzchen (German for “little heart,” as he has a heart-shaped spot on his back) and Finn (after Huckleberry, as Finn is a bit of a rogue). Herry and Finn have been good medicine, too. I’m still receiving Sasquatch, which has a two-week on, one-week off dosage schedule. It can be a beast, as it impacts three out of four weeks every month, but the side effects are fairly predictable, so I’m slowly learning to work with the uneven patterns of my days. Treatment day is always rough; I’m at the cancer center at least 4 hours and receive 7 drugs alongside Sasquatch to help with side effects. I usually feel pretty crummy that evening as my body processes the influx, then I’m powered by steroids the day after, have two down days, and then start to feel good again.

It’s a lot to manage, and I’ve lost all my hair again, including my eyebrows, which I really miss. But Sasquatch seems to be working, and every day it gives me is a gift. Conventionally, metastatic breast cancer cannot be cured, only treated into remission or no evidence of disease (NED). While that is technically still true, new targeted treatments like Sasquatch and the ongoing development of various immunotherapies are changing the game so quickly and dramatically that we simply don’t know what the future holds. Cancer, like HIV, is becoming something many people live with long-term, managing it rather than eradicating it.

It’s not easy to adjust to the idea of chronic illness, or to live in a space of such deep uncertainty, and the mental and emotional work it requires is one reason it’s taken me so long to write publicly about my experiences. I remind myself that we all live with that uncertainty every day, even if most don’t have constant reminders of it. And COVID-19 has now shifted mortality to the forefront of many people’s experiences. The pandemic has added a whole other layer to my own processing, but that’s another essay for another day.

Celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary on Ocracoke

I have several things going for me—the cancer, though it’s metastasized, is still pretty much contained in the lymphatic system. The science keeps staying just one step (one week!) ahead of me, and new treatments keep emerging. I have an incredible support system and one heckuva smart medical oncologist heading up my health-care team. All things considered, I feel good. I’m cuddling kittens, making art, and writing again. Steve and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary in September with a trip to the beach, and I’m on sabbatical currently and finally getting rolling on some creative projects. It’s not always easy, but it’s a beautiful life.

I haven’t, at this point, decided on a regular blog schedule, and I’m cutting myself some slack on that “writerly” thing. I hope to post again soon. Until then, be well, wear your mask, and safe travels through this unpredictable world.

The Impossible Pleasure of Scrubbing a Tub

October 18, 2017November 4, 2020Sandee McGlaun

According to The Facebook, four of my friends have recently toured Italy, another France, still another Ireland, and one is currently posting from the Scottish Isles. At least three more just returned from or remain at the beach, and others have sojourned recently to Chicago, New Orleans, and New York. I’m loving the opportunity to travel vicariously to such beautiful and varied places, and I’m thrilled for the joy evident in their journeys.

I am equally thrilled to be cleaning out my closet.

I’m not being sarcastic. Okay, maybe just the tiniest, tiniest bit sarcastic.

But not very.

Back in 2015, hubby Steve and I moved into a new house, combined our two households into one, got married, and started a new school year—all within two months. I was one week into the 2016 summer break, Steve one week into a new job, when I was diagnosed with cancer. The Summer of Settling In we’d planned was replaced by two Summers of Treatment and Recovery. We still have unpacked cardboard boxes in more rooms of our house than not.

Having the energy to get back to tackling those boxes and cleaning the house is a profound comfort and surprising thrill. Before this past year, I’d never thought it would feel like such a massive accomplishment to be able to scrub my bathtub. Before this past year, I’d never thought about how much physical effort actually goes into scrubbing a bathtub: getting down to and up from the floor, kneeling for an extended period, bending and reaching and applying pressure. You don’t realize how many ways you use your pec muscles in everyday living until they’ve been scraped and radiated and permanently stretched over silicone implants. While I would much rather breathe in the aromas of fresh French pastries or a salty sea-breeze than Mrs. Meyer’s Lavender Counter Spray, I now understand just what a gift it is to have sufficient strength and mobility to wield a scrub-brush and push a mop.

And home projects—actual projects! the same ones I’ve been staring at for months, the ones I occasionally managed to purchase supplies for before my energy petered out somewhere in the aisles of Lowe’s—they are a source of deep satisfaction. Months ago I picked up a few cans of spray paint to refresh a couple of plant stands and a rocking chair. It felt great to finally haul (with Steve’s help) the items out into the yard a week or so ago and give them a few coats.

Chair in progree

On the porch

Rehabbed plantstand

While I worked on the porch furniture, Steve took the design for some shelf bases he’d drawn back in the spring and put his carpentry skills to work. We still have to get at some more of those unpacked boxes to fill the shelves, but just having them in position on their handsome living room bases is a beautiful thing.

Painting the bases

Installation

Mission accomplished!

We lived in survival mode for so long, the patient and the caregiver, it’s exhilarating to return to being partners in the care and crafting of our abode. Someday in the not too distant future, I hope, we’ll travel abroad and taste fresh pasta in Italy, or sip a glass of single malt after a trek across the Scottish moors. For now, it feels pretty darn good to chop tomatoes together for a pot of chili in our kitchen, bumping elbows as we rinse the dishes, smiling at these, the simple joys of health and home

Hair’s an Update

September 11, 2017Sandee McGlaun

Hello, friends. It’s been a while. 🙂

I’m glad to say my hiatus is mostly a result of lots of good things going on, combined with an awareness that I still need to apportion my energy. My June reconstructive surgery went well; I’m overjoyed to have soft-ish implants in place of those bricks they call tissue expanders. My hubby Steve and I had a nice beach week at Emerald Isle, and I returned to work at the beginning of August, where my colleagues have been welcoming and supportive. There’ve been some hard things, too. We lost our sweet dog Imoh suddenly and unexpectedly to kidney failure in July. I have one more minor surgery to go yet, chemo brain is real, and I still have to do some combination of physical therapy, yoga, and/or self-massage daily to address range-of-motion limitations and prevent lymphedema.

That last is the other reason I’ve been writing less: now that I’m back at the office, spending a lot of work hours at the computer, my neck and shoulder lock up within a few hours. I have to ration my desk time, a frustrating scenario for a writer. I like to think my tales here do some good, that they offer a kind of window into a world that too many of us have (or will have) a need to understand. And I fear that because I stopped posting, I may have reinforced the idea that the cancer story ends when treatment is done and the rogue cells are vanquished. I (along with every other survivor) probably wish more fervently than anyone that that were true. I would love to “get back to normal.” But I’m still trying to figure out what “normal” looks like.

Consider: at the last check-up with my medical oncologist, I teared up talking about some trifling symptom—a headache, a knee that kept popping—that had worried me briefly. He nodded, and said “After what you’ve been through, for a while, everything that happens to and with your body, you’ll think— ‘It’s cancer.’ That’s normal.”

Process that for a minute. That’s normal.

It’s hard, then, to know what to say when you get an email that includes a genuine, well-intentioned “hope you’re feeling 100%.” It feels cranky and self-pitying to reply, “Well, actually, my doctors keep reminding me that it takes 18 to 24 months after the last major treatment or surgery to get back to baseline.” Or what to think when a colleague asks “How are you? Really, how are you?” and when you begin to answer honestly—you’re good, but still have another surgery ahead and some big decisions to make—she interrupts and says, “But you’re here, you’re good, you look great, you’re healthy.” More than once I’ve felt chastised, like I’m supposed to be so grateful to be alive and cancer-free, I’m not allowed to have any other feelings about the losses I’ve endured. Or if I do, I’m not supposed to talk about them.

The messy truth is that oftentimes people don’t really want to know the messy truth.

I think these kinds of responses are motivated by the same basic impulse: people want a happily ever after story. They want it for the person who’s been ill, because they sincerely care about that person and wish them health and happiness. But they also want it for themselves, because it’s reassuring. If my mortality no longer seems to be under immediate threat, they aren’t reminded of their own when they see me. None of us has to think about just how close we stand, every day, to the brink.

Maybe that’s why my still-short hair confuses and unsettles people. After chemo finished last October, my hair began to grow back by late December, but remained somewhere just shy of peach fuzz until February. As it filled in, people commented, “Your hair’s really coming back!” My returning hair was seen as a proxy for restored health. When I finally had enough for a haircut, I opted to keep it pixie short. With my range of motion issues, and more surgery on the horizon, spending half an hour with my arms lifted above my head every day to style it would be painful if not impossible. It was much easier to manage it short. Besides, I thought it looked kinda cute.

But friends and colleagues, especially those I haven’t seen in a while, continue to comment on my hair growth, often with puzzlement or concern. Most know that treatment ended some months ago. There’s an unspoken question under their words: if everything’s okay, shouldn’t I have more hair by now?

I’ve come to wonder if there’s yet another reason I’ve kept my pixie. Since I don’t, nor do I want to, go around flashing my scars, it’s the primary way I have to telegraph to people that things have changed for me, permanently. That I am still processing through this experience physically, mentally, and emotionally, and I will be for a while. That there really isn’t any “getting back” to normal; “normal” is different than before, something I’m still negotiating, still learning to navigate.

I didn’t plan it that way, but I recognize now that my pixie cut is a kind of signifier. Maybe for myself, as much as anyone. It’s a reminder to be kind and gentle, with myself, and others. It’s a cue to take care of myself, to be patient with this long and often circuitous healing process.

Last year around this time, Steve, my father and I visited the first annual Sunflower Festival at Beaver Dam Farm in nearby Fincastle. It was a chemo weekend, but usually after a Friday infusion I’d have a reasonably good Saturday afternoon before the side-effects would hit hard. Sunflowers make me happy, and we had a good, but short, visit. This year Steve and I returned, and though the flowers themselves were a bit droopy due to lack of rain, it was sheer joy to stroll leisurely through the fields of their sunny faces, goofing around, sharing ice cream. Steve and I will celebrate our second wedding anniversary in a few days. For our first anniversary, we squeezed a trip back to the site of our honeymoon in between chemo treatments. I’ll happily supplant a fancier celebration with this year’s simple dinner at a local restaurant, accompanied by cancer-free body and the relative sense of peace in my heart.

I suspect that, eventually, I’ll grow my hair out, and take its color back again to the blond of my youth. But for now, if my pixie prompts me to spend less time in front of a mirror, and more time drinking in the wonders of this too-fragile world, it’s more than enough hair for me.

Photos taken at the second annual Sunflower Festival at Beaver Dam Farm, Fincastle, Virginia.

Independence Day: New Blog Title Debut!

July 6, 2017Sandee McGlaun

At the party with friends Cheryl and Brigitte

Yesterday was Independence Day in the US, typically celebrated with cookouts, parades, and fireworks. Steve and I have an annual tradition of attending a pool party thrown each year by a hiking friend, Jeff, and his wife. They grill hotdogs and hamburgers, everyone brings a dish to share, and we sit outside in camp chairs (or inside if it rains) and occasionally take a dip in the pool. Jeff always takes lots of fun pictures, and it’s a great afternoon spent with friends.

At last year’s July 4th party, Steve and I were still trying to get our heads around my recent diagnosis; it was so recent, in fact, that we’d told a few of our friends, but not yet all. I had an appointment on July 7th to get my port surgically implanted, and my first chemo was set to begin on July 8th. I remember feeling strangely calm—I managed to talk with some of the friends who knew what was happening about my illness without ever crying. But it was hard to feel genuinely celebratory, anticipating a year whose few certainties included pain, grief, and loss. It didn’t feel much like freedom, of any kind.

This year felt much different. Two weeks out of my last major reconstructive surgery, I’m doing well and feeling stronger each day. This year’s Independence Day was marked by a return to a sense of personal independence, of healing, hope, and looking forward to regaining health and strength. My friend Cheryl surprised me with some beautiful roses, a happy acknowledgment of a day that had more significance than even she may have realized. There’s still a long road of recovery yet to travel, but I’m so grateful that this holiday, my struggle was trying to get my head around just how much can and has transpired in a year. I am once again free from cancer. It feels like a whole new world.

So, in honor of Independence Day, I’m making the name change of the blog official: Still Life, Beyond Cancer. As some wise friends have pointed out, I may wish to make still another change in the future, as I continue to heal and my world shifts and changes further. For now, I think the word “beyond” acknowledges both my cancer-free state (hooray!) and the fact that the physical and emotional effects of this past year still affect me daily. I hope that continuing to tell my story helps others who are themselves survivors or who know and love survivors.

Survivor: sur– referring to beyond, in addition to; -vivor as in vive, life. There’s life beyond cancer, something I’m thankful for each day.

Over the next week or so I’ll be updating some of the images on the site, too, to reflect the change visually. Now that my last major surgery is complete, I hope to resume a weekly posting schedule in the near future as well.

As always, thank you for reading, and stay tuned!

And—better late than never—cheers to freedoms of all kinds, to (re)gaining independence, and to those fighting for both.

Treatment Countdown 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!

March 6, 2017Sandee McGlaun

ONE and DONE!

Go on now, go. Walk out the door. Just turn around now, ’cause you’re not welcome anymore! Weren’t you the one who tried to break me– WELL, GOOD-BYE! Did you think I’d crumble? Did you think I’d lay down and die? Oh no, not I! I will survive! Oh, as long as I know how to love I know I’ll stay alive. I’ve got all my life to live. I’ve got all my love to give. And I’ll survive, I will survive!

I couldn’t help adopting Gloria Gaynor’s anthem (lyrics above, with one important edit, in red!) to accompany my exit from my LAST radiation treatment.

After I danced down the hall, I cried, tears of relief and joy.

It’s been almost nine full months since I was diagnosed with breast cancer on June 10th. (Interesting side note—that’s about how long Steve and I had been married prior to my diagnosis, as well, nine months). After 16 weeks of neo-adjuvant chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and 5 weeks of radiation, I’m now done with treatment for cancer. Though I was officially declared cancer-free post-surgery, I finally feel I can say “Bye-bye cancer!” with feeling.

And it feels gooooood.

My skin (ouch) still has to recover from radiation, and then there will be a couple of follow-up reconstructive surgeries. But as I noted when I started this countdown, today feels like a significant milestone. Back when I was first told I would need chemo, surgery, and radiation, the prospect of all of it seemed so overwhelming. It was hard to imagine this day. Now it’s done, and I can move forward and focus fully on healing.

Feeling good and healing better. And to top it off, my celebratory iced latte, fortuitously, matched the card Steve gave me–and both are the color of shamrocks and four-leafed clovers.

Yay! I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Treatment Countdown 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2…

March 4, 2017Sandee McGlaun

2 kind technicians…

Every day that I receive treatment, two kind radiation therapists help settle me onto the table comfortably. A third supervises and collaborates with them to make sure I’m lined up just right. Often one of them is a student of the medical school. Then they all leave the room to watch the computer monitors, administer my doses, and come back in and help me sit up (not an easy task, balanced on a surface not much more than 12 inches wide and several feet off the ground). Together we reassemble my cape, and they help me get my feet back on the floor.

No matter who is on duty on a given day—Bridgit, Raye Lee, Lynn, Amber, Aaron, Lauren, or one of several others—they’ve been unfailingly kind, professional, and upbeat. And they have been very tolerant of my requests to take photos. 🙂 I owe them a great thanks.

Knowing the penultimate treatment is in the books (and in my body) gives me peace. Thumbs up to two days off, and just one more turn under the rays!

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

ONE and DONE!

Share this:

Like this:

2 kind technicians…

Share this:

Like this: