As I was laying awake again last night with the steroids running all rodeo through my blood and the Ambien that I had taken hiding somewhere in a sulking corner, of which the Adavan I took two hours later joined after one quick look around - I was left to my own devices dealing with the drug that hi-jacked my body and I am laying there making up more lists.
Some of them - and if you have had poor experiences with steroids as well, you will understand this - are *not printable*, but this one, makes the cut.
Mostly.
What to do Before You Start Cancer:
1. Go to your dentist. If your blood counts are low that's one more thing in your life that you cannot do unless you are having huge problems. I am brushing my teeth like five times a day along with using a good non-alcohol rinse even more times on some days, so I'm not probably getting a lot of plaque buildup, but I do miss my dentist and wish I would not have been so lackadaisical about my two times a year insurance paid appointments. Could it have been any easier to get there???
2. Take care of all fungus. Gross to talk about, but true life here folks. I've dealt with a fungus on a toenail for several years now, and leaned away from taking the final meds that would have finally *nailed* it gone - but the *super* toenail fungus meds were like $300, so I didn't do it.
Getting out my summer shoes seems to have reminded that toe how much trouble it could cause with one single rash. They really don't like you to deal with this when your blood counts and immunity are low. They keep leaning towards the idea of the old marketing "KISS method" - Keep It Simple Stupid! Don't make your body fight anything else it doesn't have to - narrow it down to one foe - the cancer.
So, my simple backwards looking advice - pay the $300 for the meds and get rid of any lurking fungus pronto!!
3. Be married to someone that takes the computer keyboard with him to bed on nights he realizes steroids are going to have you awake all night.
It'a a cruel kindness someone has to be in charge of because:
- First, you will type crazy things and say things you should not while the mean nasty bullies are coursing through your blood stream untamable. In fact I can feel some blood vessels widening just to let them cruise on by - it's like they are giving wide berth to the pirates in the river and if we have to make it wider to avoid the bloody jolly rogers, we certainly can suddenly. Trust me there's no fight in my body when it sees the Decadron-Bully-Monster marching in - they don't even walk up to it and say "hey, can't we just all get along here?" No. My body just takes one frightful look and goes into sheer full on retreat and decides to let it have its way, leaving the quivering unprotected mass behind under full control of the Monster-Decadron. Maybe it's kind of like being in a 1970's Rolling Stones hotel room. Nothing is recognizable in a few hours.
- Secondly, you won't care if you type crazy things and say things you should not while on steroids.
This should be on your annual marriage checkup list. Someone has to watch that gate for you when you get a trigger happy steroid dose.
4. This might be part 3 of number 3: Long before you meet steroids, learn to laugh at yourself. Otherwise, I could easily see where violence could come into play quickly. And I am only half kidding. Think of it as taking PMS, Menopause, Male Aggressive Disorder - along with a couple of other ingredients like puppy dog tails or such - but think of putting that all into one pot and simmering it for three days making it ten times more potent than the original 500% strength it already was, then injecting it into your blood stream.
You better be ready to laugh when you partner lovingly says things like "talk lower"; "calm down, sweets"; "it's not that big of a deal". Because, as your head is spinning around trying to decide which piece of flesh you can get the easiest bite out of, you will want to, um, laugh at yourself and how extreme you have become.
That takes a lot of pre-practice.
5. Get a stove vent that vents OUTSIDE!! Smelling extreme foods, while cooking or having a cloud of dense fog in the kitchen is not good on most days, but when dealing with chemo it's a deal breaker. We have the builder grade typical stove vent that vents all stove top gases right back out the top of it, right back into the kitchen.
We have been trying to find someone that is brave enough and cheap enough to break through the wall and do a proper stove vent, but they seem to be few and far between. Scott was frozen out while I spent a good part of January, February and March with the doors and windows all open while he cooked.
It was the really strong smells, like bland potatoes cooking, or toast, or hotdogs and beans that could completely do me in. Let Scott pull out a heavy stove top pan and start a good saute - and I was locked in my room for an hour until the air cleared. Roasting meat was out of the question for four days a week.
My iron kettle stomach that rarely so much as caused me to gag, has been broken this past year. It's as squeamish as sixth grade girls at a horror movie now.
If I do another go-around of chemo, I'm guessing we might just put that hole in the outside wall ourselves..... and maybe, like Pa Ingles, use tar paper over it during the winter or something.
6. Get your ears pierced. For like the fourth time in my life. I've never had good healing results with any of my previous attempts at ear piercing, so I decided to let them "heal" for about fifteen years. Then, a couple of years ago, I announced to Scott I was going to get them done again. He bought me a nice pair of earrings that year for Christmas.
They still are not done. I had not realized that the only places that do ear piercing these days is situated in the middle of the mall. We don't even do it in the stores now, it's right out there where everyone is walking by, looking, calculating the right spots along with the lady with the placement gun, and it all just seemed a bit much to me.
Not having hair, kind of makes me wish I had done that after-all - it helps "the look" if you can get some big fabulous ear rings to dangle, drawing the eye away from your naked hairline.
The first time I had my ears pierced, was the fall of my seventh grade year. I had a new friend named Dian, and we seemed a bit prone towards trouble. She had an older sister that had done her ears, swore it was simple and so we thought we would give it a try one Saturday morning after I had slept over at her place.
Dian took me to her kitchen, proceeded to get out the needed tools and they piled up like this: one needle threaded with a long piece of thread; one ice cube; one potato. I don't remember there being any rubbing alcohol or any peroxide present, but with it being the early "hippie" seventies, that's not such a big surprise. We were "natural" then. Children of the earth. All at peace with our environs and all.
She instructed me to put the ice cube on my ear lobe to numb it. I did. She then told me to hold the potato behind my ear as she keenly looked at my ear lobe for a good starting point. I asked her "why the potato?" and she said "that's so the needle doesn't go through to your neck when I jab it through."
Still not any concern on my part. By the way, I don't remember washing the potato at all.
She squinted but seemed perfectly confident she could do this. She started to laugh, squinted again at my ear lobe and took a little break to think about it all.
My ear lobe was sufficiently frozen, I told her I could handle the potato and protect my neck, just to go for it.
She closed her eyes and jabbed. She jumped maybe sixteen inches into the air when she felt it go through the first layer of skin.
It turns out your ear is a little sensitive even when iced. I didn't yell because I knew she would jump again and it could possibly land a needle in my eye, literally, but she had got it through the first layer of my ear.
She pulled back and sat down, with the needle dangling halfway through my ear, the thread hanging down......
We laughed and laughed, because we were thirteen and because she had jumped so high, then I said "Dian, you have to finish this". And she said "I can't do that now"......
She did look close to passing out every time she fingered the needle.
Oh, oh, oh.....
I was a little tough, with most of my playmates being brothers and neighbor boys and all most of my first decade of life, so I pulled from somewhere deep and made some lifetime decisions.
I tried to push it through, tried again, and it went through finally. I now had a piece of thread clear through my earlobe.
It was already hot and angry. I have *sensitive* skin and it certainly was not liking this any more than it did the four third degree sunburns I've had in my lifetime.
This was way before it was ever popular to do different things with ear piercings. This was way before I might have been able to pull off having just one ear pierced until I could beg my mom to get me somewhere to get the other one done, like the next time we went to the doctor once a year - which at that time was kind of the proper place to get such things done.
I mean for ears and ear piercings in the early 70's there was one option: you had to have two holes - one placed evenly on each side of your face - and that was the way it had to be.
Hippies might have been all cool then, but there were pierced ear standards.
Dian, recovering nicely and taking control of the situation again, pulled out the thread and tried to fish an earring through both layers of my ear lobe.
Even though she apparently had issues with needles, put a studded ear ring in her hand and there was no stopping her on this mission. Not any comments from me such as "hey that's not where the needle went through the back" or anything was going to stop that ear looking all cool and pierced now.
But, then, we had the other ear.
I considered my options and it appeared rather difficult to do the other ear by myself with a tiny hand mirror.
Her sister Debbie, who had done this herself I thought, walked through the kitchen and said with a little hint of 'oh what are they doing now -- stupid seventh graders!!' "you HAVE to do the other ear! Do you know what that's gonna look like if you don't?"
I had a pretty grim image in my mind already.
She was on her way to work. Or somewhere, so there were no plea bargains with her. Dian's brother Louie walked through the kitchen and just shook his head and laughed.
We were on our own here. And from the looks of Dian, it was kind of apparent it wasn't even a "we" here.
I just decided to do it. I iced my ear, Dian held the mirror and I pushed fast and hard and decisively. She fished another ear ring into that side and they were both done.
And angry and hot to the touch. They never did heal up correctly.
There are several "Dian and Karen" stories just as interesting and outrageous, but we stop here today. I still laugh every time I think of her.
***
When they asked me my first week of chemo at OSU if "needles made me queasy", that is the first memory that flashed through my mind.
"Um, no, I've survived several ear piercings, I'm ok".....
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