"in my pocket"

My toenail that fell off two days after Christmas has almost grown completely back. The last chemo stripe in my toenails is still visible in it, because I don't / can't paint that one.

Actually, the toenail didn't fall off. 

In October, I walked through a dark bedroom and slammed my toenail into my suitcase laying on the floor. I yelled things that my son said he had not heard most soldiers scream out when suffering. It hurt like hell. I had chemo the next day and showed it to my oncologist, asking her if I could do the usual 'pin-stick-through-the-toenail' to relieve the pool of blood under the nail. 

She hastily said "NO!" and told me to get to a foot doctor immediately, that it was "chemo-toe" and I was going to lose that nail. I told her no, I do this all the time, and have doctored myself for a long time when it comes to my toes and she said "Karen, look!" pointing to the dark stripes in my toenails. "Those are chemo-stripes". She told me to look at my fingernails, and sure enough, more faintly, there were two stripes on each nail there as well. 

She told me chemo-nails do not heal. 

I made an appointment with the podiatrist that my son saw after he came home from bootcamp, and had to cancel it because Scott ended up in the hospital. I made another appointment, and he ended up in the hospital that day as well. 

By that time, I had been using triple antibiotic cream and a bandaid, and only wore flip-flops, hoping for a miracle re-attachment. 

I thought it had. Then while the whole family was here over Christmas, it was abused a little again, and it started flipping over again. And yeah, that is just like it sounds - it was on the nail bed - then would flip off while walking.

Not so painful by this time, just more irritating. 

It was being held onto my toe by one little centimeter of tough nail in the corner that would not let go. After all our holiday guests left, I told Scott he had to put me out of my misery, and yank the dang thing off. 

He said he would not. 

I reminded him of some things I had done for him when sick that I would rather not have done, so he conceded. I laid down on the bed, put a washcloth in my mouth and told him to yank. He closed his eyes, looked the other way and yanked hard. 

It didn't budge. And started to bleed. 

I told him to yank again, that it had to come off. He yanked again, and again it wouldn't budge. The whole toenail was off except for that one little part in the corner that was holding on like a steel cable. 

He yanked a third time, I yelled, and he said he was done. 

I went and got a pair of small scissors, dipped them in alcohol for a bit, then snipped it off as close to the tender skin as I could get. 

Don't worry - I did not drink the remaining alcohol. 

It's been a long growth process. The only pair of shoes I could wear for six months were the pair that were one size too big that we bought when I first started chemo and was swelling up prodigiously for five days each week. 

So I wore them, and washed them in bleach, then wore them some more, then washed them a few more times, until I found that all I noticed on other people is what shoes they were wearing. 

But now it's almost all grown out, albeit a bit shaggy and gross looking, and the last stripe of my total of four from the last three months of chemo is towards the end. 

***

I feel like I could write a book about the one thing in which I seem to have become an expert: Waiting rooms. I sit in the waiting room and I can point out the "newbies". I can pick out the ones that have been doing this for a while and feel secure. And I can usually pick out the ones that are here, and just don't know what kind of hell they are about to begin, but they get nervous watching others in the battle come and go. 

Sitting in the "Nuclear Medicine" wing, I'm sitting by the couple with the husband being called back for his scan, then told a while after he comes back to "please wait here, we'll see if we can get you in for a CT scan in a bit". 

There are few sentences in the English language that carry more weight. And that phrase always puts a 200# weight on the backs of the hearers. 


I've done at least two bone scans this year, and maybe another one but I can't remember. This, my third one, has affected me the least leading up to it - the others were fraught with what some have termed "scanxiety". Even if you don't, won't, remember to accumulate anxiety leading up to your appointment, your body seems to, and you tend to get a little crazy.

With bone scans, it's waiting. Waiting while the almighty radiation that they put into you in a syringe encased in lead, flows through your veins once more, enabling a full body scan to pick up any bone problems. Bone problems like arthritis or degenerative bone disease. 

Bone problems like a new cancer lesion.

Bone scans are all about waiting - you get injected then wait for three hours. If you leave, you pay for parking twice. If you stay, you end up studying too many people in the midst of their worst life nightmares. I left my house at 8:30 this morning. With a ten minute stop at Starbucks I ended up traveling for 3 hours and 10 minutes due to car accidents, construction and just slow people. 

No matter which way I go in Columbus, I notice that my body always feels the exit turn onto South 315. It's all too familiar of an exit and my body knows it is 18 minutes away from pain and hurt. I don't even have to tell it. 

It starts to tighten up, not even with anxiety maybe, but more an acceptance that it knows it's about to be poisoned to close to the end of its endurance, and I can feel it start to line up the soldiers inside, trying to strategize the best deployment of help.

As I turn onto the Kinnear exit, I automatically turn the radio up louder. Anything to stop the brain and turn it's attention into a different place. 

By the time I turn the car over to the valet, it's almost full volume.

I know this place too well. I know where to get my parking ticket stamped to get half price valet parking. I know to take the steps instead of waiting on slow elevators. I know where to sign in at the nuclear medicine wing. I know where to sit. I know to where to grab free waters as I go because I want to be pounding those all day to help my poor overused and abused kidneys. 

I know where to sit if I don't want to talk to anyone. I know which chairs have the electric plugs nearby to charge up my phone. I know where to sneak to get a free coffee. 
I know which wrist to put out to get banded. I know where to sign all of the privacy notices without reading them. I know how long I need to leave the compression bandage on the one good remaining vein they found today. 


I know it all too well. Too well. 

It's all too familiar - a familiarity I never wanted. 


***


My brain is working backwards - since I didn't build up with all of the usual requisite anxiety before any given test, is this going to be like all my other stupid "oh, it's not going to be a problem" things in life that end up being of course the biggest of problems?There is someone in my life that I avoid like the plague before these things so I don't stumble and tell her about the upcoming test. To date, every assurance, everything she has said has employed the "Law of the Exact Opposite" to happen. 

I cover my mouth when around her - it's not superstition, it's the fact that it seems when some things are said out loud, there seems to be something 'lurking about' needing to make the opposite happen. 

The Law of the Exact Opposite worries me more than the actual scan today. More than the fact that my bones are getting blasted again with "a little bit of radiation". More than the fact that my doctor might call me and tell me "to sit and wait, we want to do another test". Life circumstances have sadly taught me that the very times my brain is ok with something, is the time that the greatest disaster can happen. The times in our lives that have been the sweetest, have been followed by a walloping huge tsunami. 

So my body and my mind instantly tense up, when my brain says 'relax'.  My body knows that my brain can be easily tricked into being stupid.......

***
After the scan, I waited for the doctors to take a look at it before I left the room. I know the technician can tell me nothing, but I try to 'read them' - try to get them to talk to me to see any reaction. 

She wouldn't look at me. She wouldn't smile. She talked and *kindly* chatted. Her face looked sympathetic. 

I told myself I could be wrong. But I didn't like it. 

To compensate, while waiting for the worst of the radiation to wear off, I threw my careful diet out the window and went to Target and bought a bag of cookies. Then I went to World Market and bought Polish milk chocolate. And another bag of cookies. 

My car looked like a bunch of teenage runners had just finished a race and were trying to replenish empty calories. 

The call came the next day, just after I had put sweet Little Bird down for a nap. 

I wrote down the words "increased activity" in the spot on fifth rib on the left side of my sternum that they had been watching. 

They were wanting me back in for a CT scan that afternoon. 

My daughter was involved in a long, no-phone call meeting, so I told them I could do the scan on Monday or Tuesday. 

They called back with Monday. My little Millie-beans birthday. 

It's all so wrong. 

I cried for an hour. 

My body kept remembering the washing of the chemo over me. I couldn't eat that day anyways with the waiting, and now my stomach just felt chemo. 

My very favorite nurse called back and said "Karen, I hated to call you because I knew you would know, and would be having a hard time with it." She told me three times I think: "Just remember, it could be an old fracture" (I've never had a fracture there, and plus this spot did not show up on my first bone scan this year....) 

She told me also "It could just be arthritis". That's true. They are watching a few other "hot spots" that have turned out to be just plain old degenerative disc disease and arthritis. 

So we wait. Scott was in the middle of class and although he swore it was going to be ok, that they were just being safe, he went home early. 

My other daughter put everything aside and drove a half hour just to sit with me.  She knows what to do when someone gets scary news.  

This is what cancer-land is like. 

It's not over when it's over. For triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) ladies, it's never over.  Never safe. 

***

During chemo, I didn't allow myself to read other's journeys.  I didn't allow myself to read other cancer sites.  

Now, I'm on a few cancer sites and the recurring theme is recurrence. 

The recurring theme is walking in a world that doesn't know where you've been and certainly doesn't know how to connect any longer. 

For TNBC ladies, there is a little invisible sign up that says "it's not "if" it recurs - it's "when".  

I don't know how to connect to this world anymore. I feel a step out of time. I feel like I walk in a different dimension. I feel like I don't fit in with the rest of the world that never had their clock stopped. 

I walked with the eternal for a while, and I don't know how to slip back into real time. 

***

I've been told it's PTSD.  It just takes a while before you feel like you are living again, and no longer 'watching'.  

It does feel like I was relegated to the nicest prison, and was released.  I do connect to stories of those that have been sent to a faraway unfamiliar land, and don't know how to come back home.  

I want to jump up and say "THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT!!"  "WHAT IS WRONG WITH ALL OF YOU - DON'T YOU KNOW YOUR TIME IS SO LIMITED??!!!"

Suffice it to say, the only place I feel "right", is with my grandchildren.  They didn't care if I had hair or not.  They didn't care if I could add sums in my head or not.  We just talk, and they act as if they found an adult just like them - simple and only concerned with the momentary importance of things.  

I keep talking to God.  If what He has taught me is true, and all answers are indeed in the Torah, I'm still searching.  

When looking how Adam, and Noah, and Abraham, and Sarah, and Moses and Rahab and Joshua - when searching and wondering how all those of great faith reacted to trauma - I ask God how they did it.  Is the answer still there?  

It seems to be wrapped up in the walking, wrapped up in the journey.  And the fact that in the face of great obstacles, they kept on the journey even when they were wrong, they came back and kept walking it out.  

So I don't know what the answer will be Monday.  I do know that they will have to "watch" this forever if it is "just arthritis".  

If it's not, I'm praying that God gives me the strength to just keep journeying.  

I don't have to look far at the hospital to see how truly blessed I have been.  I remember that, and tuck it all into my memory time and again, so I don't forget.  

The ladies on some of these websites are awesome.  Some have gone through much worse.  

One of them posts something that has stuck in my mind - she says "we've got you in our pockets!"  Meaning, we are carrying your hurt and sorrow and know that it helps to know that someone is holding you close.  No matter what.  You can tell them anything, and they support you.  You can rant one day, and feel blessed the next.  

Somehow, I really like that.  And I think that is what God keeps saying to me too - "I've got you in my pocket, Karen".