Confirmed: Fatty Globs are Benign

In a phone call from the doctor yesterday it was confirmed that the three fatty globs removed from near my triceps in outpatient surgery last week are, in fact, completely benign tumors and have no trace of cancer whatsoever. Yay!

On another topic, I was also told that my daily anti-nausea meds were going to be changed, which makes me a little bit nervous. Rather than being nauseated, I have lately been experiencing more of what I would describe as just bad heartburn, an upper g.i. tract kind of heat. They had told me previously that I could just take an OTC antacid for this. I have and it hasn't been helping. So the plan is to get something stronger for the burn and see if that helps. As long as the uncontrollable vomiting doesn't return (which it hasn't for this second round of chemo), I am willing to try new scrips.

Now, if they could only come up with a prescription that would make all of my food and drink taste "normal" again, I would feel like I have hit the pharmaceutical jackpot.

Crayola Doesn't Make These Colors

Some very strange things have been happening to me while undergoing chemotherapy. I mean strange in addition to excessive vomiting ( we seem to have that mostly curbed), hair loss, a strange of sense of taste (it's like I have had a tongue transplant and the taste buds are different, a twisted sense of smell, etc.

These are all things I had fairly regularly heard of associated with chemo. I was not prepared for how it has affected my eyes.

After the first round of chemo I noticed that my eyes had problems focusing. I figured I would be able to happily read my way through a very tall stack of books to keep myself busy as I went through treatment. Buuzzzzzzz - wrong. I can read some, but my focal point doesn't even stay in the same spot. Add that to the  general jitteriness I felt in all of my limbs and I just couldn't hold a book still unless there were pillows propped around my arms. Oh well, I didn't really have the attention span to get into a good novel anyway, so I started reading through some of the non-fiction I had waiting in small bursts.

After the second round of chemo, and with all of the new anti-emetics I am on, my eyes are definitely on drugs. My left eye is completely out of whack. From five feet away a person will have four eyes. All of them are slightly out of focus in different degrees. But the strangest thing happened when my husband was driving us home from an athletic event in another town.

You know how headlights and taillights always have kind of a starburst affect at night? That was happening to me, but in a greatly magnified manner. As headlights approached, they were huge chrysanthemum-like burst of intense white lights - almost as if I was seeing a firework explode on the ground right next to me. Many, many pointed star points on the outer rim of the burst. Also, these multiple tips of the burst had very cool colors burning on the edges - blues, purples, greens. Newer, halogen headlights seemed to be more colorful than an older style headlight. Very strange and beautiful. It was happening with the red taillights also, but it was not as intense as the white headlights, and there were no colors on the edges.

I had mentioned the first differences to my oncologist and he said that chemo can affect every single process in your body. He did tell me to not go out and buy glasses, though, because it would very likely be just like hair loss. It will almost certainly come back, but it might not be the same as before chemo. He told me to buy cheaters to read if I want, but don't get prescription lenses, because it will probably change after chemo is done. I also asked my sister who worked for eye doctors for years and years and she said the same thing - could be the chemo, could be the hormones that are changing during that time. Get glasses if you want, but you will likely need a different prescription by the time you are done with treatment.

I have not worn glasses, not even cheaters, my whole life. If I need to get some prescription glasses after treatment is done, I already have my eye on some vintage, cat-eye frames that will hold new lenses.

Fatty globs are GONE!

Yesterday on Tuesday January 20th, I went in for outpatient surgery to remove the fatty, benign tumors from underneath the tricep, near the inside elbow of my right arm. I didn't know until I talked to the surgeon that morning that they had decided to take them out of both arms (I have a smaller one in the same spot on the left arm. Again, the worst case scenario is that these are lymph nodes that are out of whack and not in the exact right spot, As the surgeon said with a big grin on his face, "If these turn out to be lymph nodes with breast cancer cells in them, you're going to have several papers written about you!"

Yippee! I did not have a general, just a local, so it was a little strange to be awake for most of that. The positioning was weird as they had to hold my arms kind of over my head as well, pinned down to trays like flying buttresses. But it went quickly and and I was back at Michelle's by about noonish and soon she drove me home. Will helped me changed the first layer of bandages this morning and the final layer will come off in four days.

Am still very happily to be nausea free, even with the hydrocodone that they always give me after surgery. That has always been a bucket-worth med for me, as well as any other narcotic pain relievers. Not this time.

We are supposed to hear by Friday what pathology says about the growths.

New and Improved chemo ... whew!

The second round of chemo on Friday the 16th was accompanied by an additional horde of anti-emetics, and for the most part they did the trick. I had Zofran, just like the first time, but got a double dose this time, in addition to EMEND, which is the heavy hitter that lasts for three days, and then Ativan mixed with the steroid Decadron to help boost it all.

I was so out of it I had a hard time walking straight, focusing my eyes, and still have a hard time typing. I vomited once Sunday and once Monday, so I am scoring this round a win.

Marbles and Acorns and Walnuts - Oh, My!

Constipation. That's all I have to say about that.

Fatty globs of what?

Yesterday was my ultrasound on what the doc thinks is a lipoma (benign, fatty tumor) on the upper inside of my right elbow. I have another one on my left arm, but it is higher and more towards the back of my arm, right over the tricep.

I discovered these myself after I was looking at a chart of the lymph system. I know that finding swollen lymph nodes would be a very bad thing when associated with breast cancer, and that this is how the cancer can spread to the rest of your body - through the lymph system. I know the lymph system travels the entire body, but I didn't know that I had lymph nodes just above my elbows. I thought all the ones near your breasts were just in your armpits, across your collar bone, and in your neck. The chart shows more of them on the inside of your arm, just above the bend of your elbow.

I knew that I had a lump on the inside of my upper right arm. It has been there for several months. Maybe a year or more. It has never bothered me. I always assumed it was some sort of fatty deposit. I have a fatty deposit near my left wrist, and again, it's never bothered me.

I knew a man who had so many of these that he looked like he had marbles just below the surface of his skin all up and down his arms. He told me his doctor had told him that they were fat deposits and not to worry about them unless they caused him pain of some kind. I did what anyone would do and accepted his doctor's diagnosis for my own singular, fatty deposit on my wrist.

When I saw on the diagram that there were lymph nodes above the elbows I immediately palpated the one on my right arm. It definitely felt larger and was definitely more sore and tender than it has been in the past, but only when manipulating it. Then I started feeling all around the back of my left arm, and was completely surprised to find another tender, swollen area, this one higher on my tricep and more at the back of my arm.

Since that makes a pair, I have to assume that maybe my lymph nodes are just in the wrong spot. I called my oncologist to let him know. He told me that in 23 years of treating cancer he had never seen breast cancer cells travel to the elbow lymph nodes. He explained the lymph nodes kind of work like little, filtering sponges, catching and trapping things before they move through the body's lymph system. This is why the cancer cells are "caught" in the armpit, collarbone, and neck nodes - they are the ones closest to the breasts. They have repeatedly palpated those three areas and ask about them every time I have been in to see them, but no one has ever checked or asked about inside my elbows.

I was making a trip to DSM the following day and asked if I could just stop in and have him take a quick look. He said sure, so I did. He examined all of the usual node locations as he has done in the past, with the addition to the elbow ones. The one on my left arm is small - I had to find it twice and show him exactly where to palpate. He repeated all of the same information he had told me on the phone: It is highly unlikely that first of all, those are even my lymph nodes, and second of all, that they would have filtered and collected breast cancer cells that would have run right by the armpit nodes. Just to be certain he said they would do an ultrasound but on the right arm only, since he can barely feel the one on the left.

While I was laying on the table talking to the ultrasound tech (her name was Karri), I was able to get a little information out of her. She told me the size was 2.5 cm, or about an inch. She also warned me when she was going to press down fairly hard on it, but that was something she was supposed to do. I asked why and she explained that they want to know if the tumor compresses or if it stays fairly hard or firm. Mine was staying firm. It was a nice, short ultrasound visit.

After my oncologist had a chance to review the ultrasound and talk to the radiologist late yesterday afternoon, he called me. He told me that he still thinks this is a lipoma. He said there is no blood supply to the tumor, which is about 1" across. It does not "squish" when being compressed, which is good. However, the ultrasound revealed another, smaller tumor under the big one and this one does have a blood supply, and it does "squish" when the bigger tumor is being pressed into it. What that means is that this secondary tumor is alive and growing. The radiologist (and no one else for that matter) can't tell simply from an ultrasound what these tumors are or are not. His position is that since the patient has a history of cancer, all abnormal growths should be looked at as having the potential of being cancerous. (It took me a minute while listening to the oncologist relay this to me that he was referring to me as the "patient".)

The only sure way to know is to do a needle biopsy on both tumors, or to do outpatient surgery (probably even just local anesthesia) and just remove them both. The oncologist said if it was his decision, he would have the surgery done so that they could do a complete pathology on both tumors and have definitive knowledge on both. Again, he stated that he would be "stunned" (his word) if either of these show cancer cells.

I agreed with him and want to take them completely out. I know I have at least one more in my left arm. If the pathology is clean on the ones that are removed, then I won't have to worry about the one that remains. I will meet with him before my chemo treatment this Friday and we will try to get this outpatient surgery scheduled between my chemo treatments, but obviously not during the time frame that my white and red blood cell counts will be way down.

That is all I know so far on the "fatty globs".

Pink is NOT Pale Red

I have never really liked the color pink. I have always thought it was too girly and feminine to suit me. I think my mom must have felt the same way because I cannot remember ever seeing a picture of me in pink clothing as I was growing up. I probably had some pink clothes at some point, I just don't remember them. I can remember all of my sisters wearing pink - my older sister even wore a pink sweater with very cool silver zippers in one of her school photos. Not me. I was blue, green, brown, and sometimes purple. 

All cancers now have an assigned color - primarily for marketing purposes, which I think is rather clever. It does make it easier once you have identified yours or your loved one's cancer; you know what color the ribbon needs to be to wear on your lapel. You know what color scarves and t-shirts you need to buy now, so everyone can see at a glance which cancer you are associated with.

Bright pink is of course the color of breast cancer. Orange is for my brother's leukemia; colon cancer is dark blue; I saw one that is new to me - a black and white zebra stripe for "carcinoid cancer". Most charts list lung cancer as white, but I saw a couple that listed the colored ribbon for lung cancer as "clear" (that will suck for the marketing and promotions professional). Some charts listed as few as a dozen cancers. One chart listed the colors for 32 different cancers.

I don't want a collection of bright pink scarves, hats, and clothing. This has nothing to do with identifying with the breast cancer crowd; it has everything to do with just not liking the color. 

I have always kind of been a fan of red - intense, bold, fiery, in your face RED. Pink is a whole lot of white, with a drop or two of red. Red is a primary color with no apologies. Nothing else makes red as it is one of the untouchable triumverates of the primary colors - red, yellow, and blue. With these three colors, you can make all other pure colors. To get pink, or any other pastel colors, you need a bucket of white.

In browsing online for hats and scarves, I saw a range of pinks to be had, from a very, very pale pastel pink, all the way up to a very intense fluorescent pink. Now fluorescent pink I could get into because it is bold and strong, not weak and white-y. 

I did not see much that I was sure would fit me when googling "women's pink breast cancer hoodie". I already know from experience that when most women's sizes get bigger, it is in diameter and circumference, never in length. I have learned that the sizing on a men's XL or XXL is what is comfortable on me.

So I was in Joe's USA Athletic Apparel (actually made in Honduras, if you care) and spotted a fluorescent pink pull-over hoodie. While I would much rather have a zip-up hoodie than a pull-over, again, I could not find one in an intense pink in a size that I could be relatively certain would fit me. I figured I ought to have at least one piece of solid pink apparel to recognize my new breast cancer tribe, so I bought one.

It arrived the other day, and it is not at all the fluorescent pink, as shown and claimed in the website. However, it is not pastel, either. It is more like a dark watermelon pink. I don't expect to wear it very much, so I can deal with the color.

Some of the scarves and hats I have acquired do have a little splash of pink in a variety of intensities, so I can wear any of those with my new pink hoodie. I might have to wear a combination of blatant pinks the next time I go to see a middle school event. Even insensitive, preadolescent boys should recognize that pink screams "breast cancer". Not at all sure that it will keep them from making incredibly insensitive comments, though.