(no subject)

I meant to post yesterday. I really did. It just ended up being a long day with an awful lot of time spent on the phone. Too much time, really. I don't do well with the phone.

Sunday, Cordelia left about 11:30 to go spend the afternoon with her friends' family. Around noon, I got a phone call from a couple of friends who had been in the state, visiting family, and were driving home. They expected to hit Ann Arbor about 2:00 and thought that, as their daughter would just be finishing a nap and as they wanted to see me, they'd like to stop by. And they did. Their daughter is eighteen months old, and our house is no longer even remotely toddler proof, so there was a lot of time that they spent following her around and taking things away from her.

They wanted to get some lunch, and we ended up going to Applebee's. I thought, briefly, that we'd get to try the nearby Indian place that always smells so wonderful (except to Cordelia), but the person who needed gluten free food also needed low fiber food, so Applebee's gave her more options. We did have to ask the waitress a couple of times before she brought the GF menu, but she did eventually do it. I had already sort of had lunch-- some cheese and some popcorn-- but I thought I'd eat anyway, so I ordered fish and chips. I should ask, the next time I do that, if I can trade the fries for more coleslaw. I don't tend to eat many fries, and I like the coleslaw a lot.

The little girl was too excited to eat much. Fortunately, what they'd ordered for her was a grilled cheese sandwich, and they were certain it would work for feeding her later in the car. It was really great to see how much they enjoy being parents and how happy their daughter was to explore everything.

Cordelia got home late enough that Scott ended up going to the library on his own. She arrived just as he was leaving, so she and I could, in theory, have gone with him, but she didn't want to. I warned Scott that I had about 20 holds, but I think he assumed they were mostly CDs. They were actually mostly romance novels. I decided to try pretty much every romance novel I had in my list of things I wanted to read. I will certainly end up hating almost all of them, but I'm hoping at least one author will have written something I can read. I have realized that part of my trouble with romances is that big misunderstanding plots generally repel me.

Dinner proved more difficult to deal with than expected. Cordelia ate the last of her chicken fried rice, but there was only enough leftover chicken for one person, and then Scott smelled it and decided neither of us should eat it. Scott is very insensitive to odors, so if he was sure it smelled bad, it pretty definitely did. He managed to unearth some pork buns in the freezer to make those. They were tasty but fairly awkward to eat. After dinner, Scott and I went for bubble tea. Cordelia chose not to come with us even though it meant no bubble tea for her.

We slept later on Monday morning than I'd hoped but only a little. Unfortunately, it still meant that it was 11:30 by the time Scott was showered and dressed. There was simply no way, at that point, that we could go out for breakfast as I had really, really hoped we could. Scott got us sandwiches at Bagel Fragel and then went to the car dealership to pay them for keeping the old car for so long. We got lucky, and they waived the fee. He made arrangements to donate it to Michigan Radio last night. He just has to dig out the title, and it'll be done.

We got to the Cancer Center just before 1:00, but they didn't end up starting the class until 1:15. The class mainly said, "Yes, we know this is scary. We'll be here to hold your hand. And here are some of the resources we can offer." There was one couple with an interpreter, and somebody else got mad about the noise of that interfering with her ability to hear the nurse who was talking. I was sitting right next to the interpreter, and I hadn't noticed the noise, so I don't know what the big deal was. Maybe it's just that I knew she was an interpreter; the person who complained thought the trio were just being rude and talking.

Scott's sister arrived a little after 2:00, and we sat in the waiting room and talked. About 3:00, I got really concerned that we hadn't been called and went to the reception desk. They told me that we'd never checked in, and I guess we hadn't. It turned out not to matter as they wouldn't have had a place to put us any earlier.

They had me put on a hospital gown for some reason. I'm not at all sure why as neither the doctor nor the nurse examined me in any way. They just talked. The doctor kept saying that I had choices, but he really didn't offer me any. Well, I suppose he implied that I could choose a masectomy, but he talked at length about what he thought was the best plan. In about three weeks, I have a wired guided lumpectomy (that involves having a radiologist insert a wire to show exactly where the lump is some time during the morning before my surgery. Apparently, it allows for a smaller incision) and a sentinel lymph node removal. The latter will involve a shot of radioactive something or another directly into the tumor the day before the surgery and a similar injection of blue dye after I'm unconscious. That will let the surgeon identify the lymph nodes directly connected to the tumor. He doesn't expect there to be more than two. He will remove those so that pathology can check them for cancer. If they show cancer, I do chemo. If they don't, I don't. I will do radiation therapy, and that'll run about six weeks, five days a week.

He didn't mention tamoxifen, but my sister and my SIL, the doctor, both consider it likely given the pathology report. So I guess I have several years of that to look forward to.

The surgeon printed out the reports that my SIL had wanted sent to her. He was surprised that I didn't already have copies. There were two copies of each document; they were titled differently and formatted differently, but the text was identical. Just in case there were differences I didn't notice, I included them all when we scanned them for my SIL.

We got out of there about 4:00. Cordelia was both glad to see us and sorry to see us. She likes being home alone because she can play her music in the living room and sing along without feeling embarrassed that I'm listening.

I made a few phone calls. Then we went to Bob Evans with the intention of getting the breakfast we hadn't gotten in the morning. Cordelia and I both had pancakes, and Scott had the Farmer's Breakfast (hash browns, scrambled eggs, bacon, and French toast). Sadly, that dinner is why I'm up right now. In spite of the fact that it wasn't greasy or spicy and that it was all eaten before 6:30, I have reflux from it tonight. And I have to be up early tomorrow morning.

We stopped on the way home so that Cordelia and I could go to Barnes & Noble while Scott went to Whole Foods for distilled water (which he says he won't do again as it was 150% of the price at Kroger or Target). He didn't want to stop at Kroger unless he was going to do the grocery shopping, and he didn't want to do the grocery shopping last night.

I suppose it's time to see if I can lie down safely yet or not.

(no subject)

Oh, boy. The scheduler called, and they can fit me in this Friday. That means doing everything in one hell of a hurry. I need to order a sports bra today, if I can figure out what kind to get. I need to let a bunch of people know what's going on. I have an appointment tomorrow very early, two appointments on Thursday, and then a bunch of things to do on Friday.

This also means I don't have time to do things I was considering like getting a new e-reader and loading it with books/fic. I'll just have to see if I can charge the old one (I should be able to, assuming I can find the cord) and get by with the fic I've got already.

At least I don't have too long to worry.

(no subject)

My psychiatrist and I decided that it doesn't make sense to start a new medication this close to surgery, not when we don't know if I'll need chemo. We're kind of assuming tamoxifen, but my doctor wants to know for sure because it takes at least one potential medication off the table. Also, several of the potential meds cause constipation, and I don't want anything like that until after I'm off whatever pain killers they give me for the surgery. It's only three days. Ativan will see me through that pretty well, and she says that it doesn't interact with much of anything that they're likely to give me.

We talked about some SSRIs, including some that are new enough that we're certain I never previously tried them. I haven't had great luck with SSRIs, but they sound like the safest things to try right now. My doctor mentioned Remaron as a good candidate from another family of drugs. The main drawback with that is that it's certain to lead to weight gain that my knees and ankles could not endure. The tricyclics are marginally less likely to cause weight gain (though still very likely), and the one time I tried one before, I had to stop it because it lowered my blood pressure too much. I'm willing to deal with that for a few months as long as I don't need to leave the house without another adult with me.

I think we will probably try an SSRI first. None of them are ideal, but they sound like better options, side effect wise, than Remaron or any of the tricyclics. I do need to check with my pharmacy to see if they have records going back fifteen years and can tell me if I actually tried certain medications and what the doses I was taking of Tofranil and Klonopin were. I took both of those for several years. The Klonopin was for non-specific myoclonus, and the Tofranil was off-label for urinary frequency. I stopped both of them some time in 2001 when Scott and I got serious about possibly having a baby and when, because I was no longer leaving the house much, taking them seemed unnecessary.

We took MAOIs off the table because it would be a couple of months before I could even start taking one because I'd have to get off of Wellbutrin completely first. There are also a whole host of complicated hoops to jump through for an MAOI that I'm not convinced I want to deal with. When I took Nardil, twenty plus years ago, I could only eat vegetables if they were cooked to mush, and I pretty much couldn't eat fruit at all*. What with the other restrictions on diet (many of which my doctor says no longer apply), I was mainly able to eat bread and meat. I did lose weight during that time. We're also not sure how much of the improvement I saw then was actually the Nardil and how much was dating and marrying Scott (also, giving up on trying to do grad school while working full time).

We also took all SNRIs off the table because the risk of repeating the Effexor side effects is unacceptable. Those were actually life threatening and not worth risking.

*If I recall correctly, this is the period when I got the IBS diagnosis which I rather think is baloney. These days, I'll have an episode once every two or three or even four months where I need to be near a toilet for two or three hours, usually in the morning. It has never happened when I needed to go somewhere that day or when I was away from home. Maybe I should talk to my PCP at some point about whether or not I actually ought to have that diagnosis. I know it once made a different doctor laugh off my assertion that I had an intestinal bug. He said it was just IBS and stuck with that until Scott and Cordelia also came down with it. Of course, he was an idiot on other occasions and almost never actually listened to me. He was, unfortunately, almost always the doctor working walk in late or on Saturdays.

(no subject)

My primary care doctor has okayed me taking the dose of thyroid medicine that I'd normally take at 5 a.m. on Friday at 11 p.m. on Thursday. That will mean taking my bedtime meds at 9 p.m. The reason to take the thyroid medicine then is that it doesn't absorb well unless I take it with quite a lot of water, and I'm not supposed to eat or drink anything after midnight.

When I got my gall bladder out, they were okay with me taking medications after the midnight cut off as long as they were necessary and were with a minimal amount of water, so I think I can take Wellbutrin in the morning. I suppose I'll find that out tomorrow. The omeprozale is supposed to be taken half an hour before I first eat, so I think not taking that Friday morning won't be a big deal. Everything else is either taken at bedtime or a vitamin that I think can be safely skipped for a day or even three.

I am making a list of people for Scott to email after my surgery is over on Friday. I don't know how soon I'll be back to DW/LJ, and I'm not sure he'd be willing to post an update here. (I may or may not ask. He's going to have a lot on his plate.) At any rate, if you want to be on Scott's list to email, PM me with your address before 9 p.m. Eastern on Thursday. Scott's only going to call family members. We've got a long enough list of them that I don't want to ask him to call anyone else.