End of radiation treatments!

Monday this week marked the last radiation treatment for me. To celebrate the occasion I bought a couple of boxes of See's candy for the staff at the radiation oncology office (and I included the doctor's office as well). I wondered if candy would be frowned on, but a couple of the nurses said that (I quote) "Sugar is goooooood!"  Who says it's not a drug?

At home, we opened a great bottle of champagne at dinner, and I also brought a box of candy home for celebration.  I'm glad that the treatments are over, but I already miss seeing the great staff at the radiation oncology department.  Wonderful people who manage to keep a tolerable face on some very serious business.

Of course, stopping treatment doesn't mean I'm off the hook.  I was reminded by my body that the effects of the radiation are still underway, and so I've made some adjustments to my diet, and am sleeping whenever I can.  However, ending radiation does mean that I'm off the bicalutamide (the testosterone blocker).  I think it's also a bit sad to say good bye to my visual - the Roller Derby grrl I envisioned as a "testosterone blocker" ... aptly named "Maura Lee Bankrupt".  But all things have their time.  So, I'll embed one last view of Maura Lee... give her a big wet one, and move on.  OK... maybe not a big wet one. Maybe just a Roller Derby high-five.

So, what next?  Well, there's another hormone still in play here - the Trelstar shot that I have been getting every three months.  I have the third one of those coming up the end of March, and another one sometime in June.  This is the hormone shot that essentially keeps the pituitary gland "out of gas" if you will... so my body has none of the stuff that triggers testosterone production.  It's a strange and wacky world!  So, I need to keep slamming calcium and vitamin D.

And try to get some exercise, even when I don't feel like it.  Hopefully being off the testosterone blocker will have some effect that helps in that regard.  We'll see.

Changes, changes, changes...

And now I have that silly David Bowie song stuck in my head.  Yaaaaaa!  Oh well, my own fault.

I haven't posted since ... March 3rd... and looking back, I'm surprised I had it together to post on that day.  I had a bit of a curve thrown my way on the 1st, and it's taken me quite awhile to get some semblance of a handle on it.

Let's see... what are the positive words to use about the curve?  Here's one version: "My company is going through a major restructuring.  Many kinds of work were being affected and mine was one of them."   Or, here's another spin: "My company decided that since my work was to make things easy to use, and because all of our products are now so intuitive, essentially I had worked myself out of a job."  But let's just be direct:  I was laid-off. 

Anyway, I wanted to get through some of the emotions before writing about it in public. Reason? Well, I don't want anything I say appear to be something the company could construe to be negative press, because that could affect my severance package.  I am not making that up. Or at least I think it could, potentially, at the sole discretion of said company, come back to bite me somewhere that would most likely hurt a lot.  Like my wallet.  But really, to say that I was surprised, hurt, shocked, angry.. is all talk about me, and you know.. it is all about me.

The reason it (my job) even figures into this blog is because this came at a time when I feel particularly vulnerable.  And at a time when I know my energy level is pretty low.  And so, I felt as if the cosmos was just adding insult to injury by this happening at a time when my ability to be excited about a job hunt was maybe at its lowest ebb.  Perhaps not, but that was the initial feeling.

But the layoff led to some amazing interactions with the people I love.  Truly touching, loving, practical help was offered and given by family (thank you!), friends (thank you!), business colleagues (thank you!)... and I felt as if I was taking part of an enormous group hug.

One example: I was at radiation on Tuesday after getting the news.  Tuesdays are doctor day for me, and before I see the doctor, I get weighed (ugh!) and one of the nurses usually asks me how I'm doing before the doctor comes in.  So, Carolyn asked. And I told her. Poor Carolyn!  But she was great.  She said, "Oh you need a hug!" and gave me a great big hug.  Now you need to know that Carolyn is almost as tall as I am, so that hug just wrapped me up... it was exactly what I needed and I'll never know how she knew.

But really, it seems that everyone I've talked to about this event has done the same thing, sometimes in a different form, but in the same sense, and I have felt so loved, so cared for, so strengthened by it all. 

And today marks the last day of radiation!  I will miss seeing the team who has treated me with such kindness and patience (with my antics and this blog) every day.  I won't miss the dash to the doctor's office down highway 85 though. 

Next step?  More hormone shots, coming up.  Ouch!

March, 2010... How did it happen?

Well, hey, I thought I'd get in a last post for February, but the day turned into something completely unexpected. I mean, I slept in, puttered about for most of the morning, took Katie for a walk (she was completely thrilled) and then... found myself in a listless, pacing, weird state of mind. And dang it... I couldn't shake it.  There were plenty of things to get done, and I didn't do one of them. I hope that wasn't a glimpse of things to come.  Heck... I didn't even feel like drinking a glass of wine! That's how bad it was. 

I ended up taking a nap, hoping I could sleep it off kind of like the way I used to try to fall asleep on long car rides when I was a kid because of the nifty way sleep has of compressing time. If you can get to sleep, a day-long ride in the car seems more like a couple of hours.  And then I started this post on Monday, the first of March, and got derailed by some completely lousy news at work, and so now it's mid-week and I'm lagging behind.  In more ways than one.

Last week, I gave the radiation tech's my blog address and now I find myself wondering if I've made anyone feel bad in how I've reported on this journey. I sure hope not. But really, I'm not aware of having said *too* many rude things.  And it seems a bit presumptuous to think that there are a lot of people reading this. I know of a few, but most of them know me fairly well. In some respects, this is a bit like working as a disc jockey was for me (yes, I did that ...and worked as a radio engineer for a few years). There's something very unnerving about having a conversation with a microphone, which is a little like writing here. But that's not what I want to talk about.