Oof, I am so sorry dear readers! I cannot believe it has been since August 2023 that I last wrote. It is amazing how life will pass by you so quickly when you are so wrapped up in it. As my Dad, also known as Opa likes to say, “the days are long, but the weeks are short.”
The Final Countdown My Ass
I love that the last post was one where I thought I was almost cancer free. Whoo that would have been nice. Instead, the week after my last post my counts were too low to get treatment again, but if I remember right I threw a fit, they gave me a booster, and they gave me treatment the next day. Something along those lines anyway. For my final treatment I could barely walk. My knees were so messed up. My counts were way too low, and the oncologist said the risks outweighed the positives of having one more treatment. So, to my surprise, instead of treatment I got to ring the bell!
I think it ended up being 6 weeks later that I got what they called a partial mastectomy, which is another term for a lumpectomy. My mum and dad were very sweet and flew out to help me out and my mother-in-law agreed to come the week after my mum had left. They ended up removing a large tumor, almost 6cm, and some of the tissue around it. They took out one lymph node, and it came back negative for cancer. So they stitched me back up and were congratulatory that I did not have to remove my other lymph nodes. They scheduled me to meet with the radiation oncologist.
When I met with radiation, he said I should probably have another surgery to have the rest of my lymph nodes removed. I am to this day perplexed why they didn’t just do that in the first place. The radiation oncologist said the other lymph nodes looked big on the scans, and confirmed with the surgeon that, yes, I should probably have them removed. They called me to let me know this, and to tell me it was scheduled for two days after they had called me! My mum was incredible and turned right around and flew back two days after receiving the call, just a month after she had left. My mother-in-law was also amazing, and came back as well the week after that. After the first surgery I was doing ok, after this surgery I couldn’t even lift the baby…more on baby in a sec. It took me a few weeks until I had the strength to do that. And then I had to go to PT.
PT said that I had what they called cording. Basically, in the absence of the systems your body is used to, it creates sort of guitar strings, or cords, between your armpit and thumb. Those prevent you from fully being able to lift your arm. And the way to get rid of them…is to snap them. Yup. She helped snap 3 or 4 of them, and I did 3 or 4 on my own, one on accident while we were moving…more on that later in this post as well.
Something like a month after the second surgery, I started radiation. I went for 30 business days, for about 20 minutes a day, with a 20 minute drive there, and a 20 minute drive back. My symptoms from radiation were fatigue and basically a really bad sunburn which has since peeled. Now I have rung the bell again. My nurse navigator told me this meant she was no longer my nurse because instead of being in the navigating cancer category, I had been moved to the survivor category!
That doesn’t mean I am fully done. I still have 6 months of a chemotherapy pill to take from home. I still have follow up appointments with the surgeon, the oncologist, and the radiation oncologist. And I will have a yearly mammogram and be monitored closely to see if it will return. But for now I am a cancer survivor, and I can focus on being a mama to my beautiful baby.
The Baby
The baby is home! They came home over two weeks after my last post. They spent exactly 100 days in the NICU. I love that I am all excited about how they were taking full bottles in the NICU. A full bottle was something like 1.5 oz. Now they are drinking 8.5 oz with no problem, and they weigh 17.6 lbs!
They did end up coming home on oxygen. They were so close to not having to. There was just one feeding on the final night where they tested them in the NICU that they failed without oxygen. Man, that shit was a hassle. I knew it was going to be. Initially they had told us that they were hoping to get baby off of oxygen because it was a lot to deal with at home. Then when they learned we were coming home with oxygen they switched their tune to one of assurance that it wasn’t that bad. They lied. Our child was still hooked to wires, and we couldn’t carry them too far. We moved this heavy oxygen machine upstairs to sleep and downstairs during the day. Whenever we wanted to go for a walk or go to an appointment, we had to hook them to an external oxygen tank and take that with us along with a monitor that was showing their pulse and oxygen level based on a sensor wrapped around their foot. The sensor was awful as well, and because of a poor signal, the monitor would beep incessantly, even in the middle of the night, leading to very little sleep, on top of having a newborn in our home. It was enough to drive me absolutely mad.
Now we are off oxygen and living a normal baby life. It is a bit interesting when people ask how old they are. They are 8 months old now, but because they spent 3 months in the NICU, they are about 3 months behind developmentally. So think of a 5 month old. We are learning to push up all the way during tummy time, and to sit up without help. We also just started foods. We don’t really like carrots or oatmeal, which is all we have tried so far. We do really like throwing food across the kitchen.
The Kitchen
We got a house! We had stopped looking for a while with everything going on. Then we got a new realtor, and two months later we were home owners. It is a split level, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, and we love it. It has a very large back yard for the dogs to go crazy in, and later for River to follow suit. It has a nice entryway to hide our piles of shoes, and strollers, and car seats, and future backpacks. And that 3rd bedroom is perfect for guests.
We have hosted all of the parental units here. My brother and sister in law also visited us for the holidays. After all the craziness of the holidays and people visiting, and the stress of buying this new place and then moving all of our stuff, it is nice to just exist in a new space.
It is also so healing to be out of the old space. The old space held the memories of learning I had cancer, and calling 911 which led to baby being born. My spouse and some friends were very sweet and redecorated the bathroom and rearranged the bedroom to help shift the feeling. It really did help, but being in new space feels like a fresh start.
A Fresh Start
Here is to a brand new year. I am a cancer survivor. Baby is a NICU survivor. They eat and weigh more. They are hitting all their milestones. The smiles and giggles are heart-melting. My hair is growing back, my joint pain is 99% gone. I can do the things I have been struggling with because of fatigue and nausea, like the dishes, in a dishwasher, which we didn’t have before! I am excited to sink into a new normal. I get to figure out baby napping/feeding schedules, and lose my mind singing the same songs along with Miss Rachel, and I can start a garden, and get work done, and baby and I both get to continue to experience life.