We are Fighters

We just returned from a fabulous week at the beach.  The weather was perfect, with highs in the 80's.  The waves were great for boogie boarding.  We ate fresh gulf shrimp almost every day.  I was able to jog and play tennis.  My energy levels were the highest they've been since starting chemo.  We really felt like we were blessed with a miracle.   Round two of chemo has predictably followed the same patterns of round one.  My lowest energy days were again, Saturday and Sunday, days 13 and 14.  It worked out perfectly, resting during the entire drive home.  Kirsten and Weston are now with us until August.  It will be so nice having them with us for the summer.  

At our reunion, we had a talent show night.  For those that know us well, we aren't a family with an abundance of talent show type skills.  Our show consisted of a show and tell, a fish face, card tricks, and three videos.  I'm including Heath's in this blog, because it brought a lot of laughter, and is a great description of my closest support team.  Enjoy!!  

On a spiritual note, in reading through the four gospels, something that has stood out to me this reading is the healing of the blind.  These healings seem to be one of the most frequent types of healings Christ performs, yet He heals each one in an individualized way.  In thinking about this, it seems Christ is trying to teach us about blindness to the spiritual things in life.  He is the light, but if we are spiritually blind, we can't see or recognize His light.  As we come to Him, our eyes are healed to be able to see things as He sees them.  It seems that spiritual vision is a life-long process, but as we draw near to Christ, we are more able to see the things that He desires for us to see.  This cancer journey has helped me better recognize His hand in many things.  I'm thankful for my Savior and His loving watchful care as we climb this mountain together.  I'm thankful for the kind acts, notes, suggestions, prayers, and love that continue to bless my life.  Thanks for being part of our team!  Your love is felt!  WE are fighters.

Life is Good--Chemo Round 2

It is hard to know how often to update this blog, I'm thinking weekly, or if there is anything new to report.  I'm doing well, but can definitely feel a gradual decline in energy from chemo round 1 to round 2, day by day.  Today is Chemo Round 2, day 5.

Monday, Chemo Round 2 day 1,  was easily the hardest day I've had, and hopefully ever will have with this cancer battle.  They put me under general anesthetic at 7:30 a.m., did surgery to place a power port just below my right shoulder blade, under the skin.  This will give easy access for drawing blood and giving meds or chemo.  Since my wrist has a big bruise from Monday's I.V., it helps me appreciate the ease the port will provide, esp. when I'm on the weekly chemo for 12 weeks after these rounds.  Anyway, I don't remember anything but waking up around 9:00 a.m., changing, and Scott driving me across the street to the cancer center for chemo.  I was groggy during the chemo and for most of the day as the anesthesia wore off.  Heath came to the cancer treatment center and stayed with us for a while.  He brought some beautiful flowers.  Around 1:00 I could feel some discomfort from the port, so took the pain meds prescribed, which had Codeine.  We left the cancer center, walking in the door at 2:15 p.m.  I immediately went over to the kitchen sink and lost everything liquid or solid I'd consumed since surgery.  My first thought was that I needed to take additional anti-nausea meds, like I needed to with round 1.  After taking Zofran, I was still throwing up.  After that dose was wearing down, decided maybe I needed the stronger anti-nausea that wiped me out.  After taking it, I was still throwing up, when I was not sleeping.  Finally, I realized that the only thing different this time from last was the pain meds.  After droppping the pain meds and switching to Extra Strength Tylenol, everything was back to normal.  I threw up for the last time at 10 p.m. and have been fine ever since.  I must be allergic to Codeine.  Sorry about the gory details.  It was a miserable day, and made me so thankful for all of the other days that have been more pleasant!  Round 2, days 2-5 have been fine.  I've controlled the nausea with Zofran, have tried to keep something on my stomach, though there's not much of an appetite, and have tried to get a bit of exercise each day--even if it's only a half mile on the hardest days.  I can work on things for a couple of hours, then rest, and then hit a few more hours of work.  The resting time is a treat, with lots of uplifting things to read.

Today, we are packing up and heading out for our first small family reunion with our own kids.  Kirsten & Weston arrived last night after finishing their Spring term at school.  They are here on an internship until August!  We will meet Garrett at a beach house on the Gulf, for a week of family time together.  I'm so thankful that we're able to enjoy this event that was planned long before we knew we'd be fighting cancer this summer.  It will be a wonderful time together.  

Thank you for your continued prayers and kindness.  We feel so blessed, loved, and watched over.  I enjoyed a verse in the book of Luke that made me smile in my baldness:  Luke 12:7 "But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows."  I have loved reading in Luke, and how his account of the Savior's life gives a bit more insight into the good women that surrounded Him and served him.  I am so thankful for the good women that surround me.  Women friends locally who insist on doing small things that make a big difference, and women who live far away that are inspired with uplifting words to share.  I am also so blessed to have a wonderful husband, sons, and daughters who are taking such loving care of me and our surroundings while my energy levels are limited.  Life is Good!

Date Night

I’ve almost completed my first round of chemo!  It feels great having a feel for what to expect moving forward.  Last Saturday and Sunday, days 13 and 14, were my most fatigued, so far.  Sunday, I attended Sacrament meeting, and then returned home and rested the remaining part of the day.  Monday my energy level was much improved.  My energy level has continued to improve throughout this week, but even as the week draws to a close, what is spoken of as the strongest week of the chemo cycle is still a far cry from my normal energy levels.  I’m learning to prioritize and allow a resting time in the middle of the day.  Monday morning they will do surgery to put in a port for easy vein access, and then I'll receive my 2nd dose of chemo.  

This week’s adventures were all about hair.  Monday night for Family Home Evening, we skyped Garrett and Kirsten in (Weston was at work and missed out on the fun).  Since Sunday, my hair was loosening.  If you grabbed a pinch of it and pulled, it would pretty much all come out.  It was interesting and intriguing to me, but grossed my kids out, and they were appalled when I’d demonstrate this trick for their friends.  So, Monday seemed like a great day to take control of the hair loss issue.  Thankfully, a friend had told me the stubble can hurt and make it hard to sleep, so she suggested cutting it off a very short length but not shaving it.  So, surrounded by family, holding Scott’s hand, Courtney took the clippers with a #8 guard on them (I think that’s 2” in length), and she gave me a really short hair cut.  Afterwards I looked a bit like Ellen Degeneres.  It was a great additional stair step to baldness. 

 

Tuesday was the “Shave the Date” party.  It was SO much fun!  On Monday, realizing that we didn’t have anything fun for little kids to play on outside, I called a party supply rental place to see if they had anything available for the next day.  They did!!  At 11:00 a.m., they delivered a bounce house, cotton candy machine, and a snow cone machine.  They set it all up for us, showed Heath how to work the cotton candy and snow cone machines, and later returned at 6:00 p.m. to take it all away!  At noon, people started arriving.  I was overwhelmed by the turnout.  There were probably 75-100 fun hats and wigs worn by wonderful friends!  Cars were parked all along the road.  There were hats of all kinds and a few wigs!  It was so much fun.  We ate lunch, visited, laughed, bounced, ate cotton candy, and watched “Tangled.”  Heath made cotton candy and snow cones the entire time, wearing a fuzzy hat that looked like cotton candy.  Courtney was a photographer and concessions helper, and Scott Jr. supervised the dog petting.  At 2:00, the crowds disappeared once everything was put away.  My energy levels (aided by party adrenaline) were still holding strong, so I bounced in the bounce house and had fun enjoying the cool breezes.  It was a perfect day with temperatures in the 70’s.

The party was celebrated virtually too!  Lots of friends and family from all over the country emailed or texted photos of themselves wearing fun hats, wigs, or baldness.  Photos are still arriving daily.  We’ll be partying for 9 months!  It was a great day that brought lots of joy.  I’ll revisit the photos and memories of that day throughout this mountain climb!

Wednesday night, Courtney decided it would be really fun to dye my hair hot pink.  There wasn’t much of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last long, so we bought some temporary hot pink hair color.  It looked like hot pink mascara that you stroke onto your hair, and then it can wash out (or fall out).  It was fun trying something outlandish.  Luckily the kids took some photos that night. 

Thursday morning, I woke up to a pillow case full of hair.  It looked like someone had brushed a shedding dog and left all of the hairs on the pillow.  I shampooed my hair; my hands were filled with hair multiple times.  It felt like there would be no hair left afterwards.  The shower drain had tons of hair.  After drying my head and looking in the mirror, I was more bald than “haired.”  It was still shedding very easily, so to get it over with, I used the trimmer part of Scott’s electric razor and trimmed the rest of it off.  It’s an adjustment, seeing your reflection with no hair.  When they said it would fall out anywhere between 2-3 weeks after the first chemo treatment, I didn’t realize it would literally be 2 ½ weeks after, all in one day!  The pink hair lasted less than 12 hours!  I’m now bald!  I now look like a cancer patient.  Some of the positive things are:  at least so far, I still have my eye brows, eye lashes, and side burns;  I’ll save money on hair products; I have a nice assortment of hats, scarves, and wigs to choose from; and I can decide what type of hair I’m in the mood for each day.  I would highly recommend baby steps to baldness.  Gradually going from longer hair to shorter and shorter hair was helpful.  Having fun along the way was helpful too.  But the reality is, no matter how well you prepare and how fun you try to make it, the initial shock of baldness so quickly is still an emotional event.  I only cried for a minute or two both Thursday and Friday mornings, but from all I read and hear, that’s totally normal, and it was healthy to let some tears fall out along with the hair.  I’m doing great now.

Friday night has been our date night for the past 34 years (minus 2 years when Scott was on his mission in Tokyo).  We met at a church Christmas dance when we were 14.  We couldn’t date until we were 16, but from that point on, pretty much every Friday night since we go on a date.  When we had young kids and no money, we always found friends to swap date nights with.  Friday nights are the highlight of our week.  Last week, I didn’t prioritize my time well.  I’d been wig shopping during the day and had not allowed rest time before our date.  I was worn out by the time we finished our early dinner, so we headed home early.  It was still nice, but shortened our time together.  This Friday, I was careful to rest in the afternoon and not do anything strenuous before our date.  If I ran out of energy, I’d at least know I’d given it my best effort.  I was able to have dinner, go to a movie, AND then go out for shave ice (which seemed appropriate considering this week of shaving bald heads).   

It was my first public outing in my "Sunday" wig (the wig insurance paid for, the more serious one).  I was self-conscious, worrying if it looked natural, if I had it on evenly, and how it looked in back, where I couldn’t check it.  While we were at the shave ice stand in downtown Fishers, there was a lady sitting on a bench with her husband.  We were standing on the sidewalk, walking towards the car, eating out treat, and she said, “I love your hair.  I love the way it goes in at the back, it’s really cute.”  I told her thank you and smiled.  As we continued walking and got closer to the car, tears of joy fell from my eyes.  That was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me.  A complete stranger told me something so kind.  She had no idea how much I needed to hear that, especially from a complete stranger that had no idea what I was going through.  As we drove by, I told Scott, “I have to look and make sure she is still there, because I think she was an angel sent to make my day.”  She was indeed still there.  And she was an angel.  She taught me how important it is to say kind things to complete strangers.  Kind words can never go wrong, but sometimes they may be something that someone really needs to hear, and perhaps we are the only one that recognizes the prompting to say them.  This complete stranger made a huge difference for me.  I should have taken the time to tell her how much it meant, but I was too emotionally beaming, and my simple thank you carried a lot more depth than she will ever know.  

Happiness

Thursday (day 11) and Friday (day 12) were great!  Friday morning I was able to run my pre-chemo route, which was really encouraging (still a whimpy distance needing improvement, but same status as the last several years).  The day definitely goes better if I allow some space to rest in the middle of the day.  If not, at this point, I start feeling really tired around 5:00 p.m. –lesson learned on Friday.  Consequence, Friday night’s date of dinner and a movie was cut to dinner with a movie at home, which was still really nice.   

Friday was wig-shopping day.  This is something I was nervous about and had dreaded.  It ended up as a really good experience and was fun.  Courtney came with me, which made a huge difference in the fun factor.  I’d spoken with a few different wig places, and this sounded like the best option in the area—St. Vincent’s Women’s Boutique.  The description, given from a woman on the phone at their smaller location, was that this location was much larger, with three entire rooms filled with wigs.  I was picturing 3 rooms the size of Walgreens or CVS, with rows and shelves filled with different types of wigs.  If a wig was in stock, you could buy it on site.  If you wanted it in a different color, it could be ordered and arrive in 2 weeks—way too late for me!  They also filed your insurance, so your only out-of-pocket expense was your co-pay with no paper headaches.  Another other place I’d spoken to was in the back of a woman’s home, she didn’t file insurance, wigs had to be ordered, then delivered to the place and picked up from there.  It was 40 minutes away to start with!  Another wig place was out of town until June 16^th—again too late.   

So, Friday afternoon, Courtney and I headed off to this amazing wig warehouse I was picturing in my mind.  In reality, upon arrival, it was similar to a small hospital gift shop, with two additional wig-fitting rooms smaller than the size of a doctor’s examination room.  We didn’t count how many wigs were on display, but if we had counted, at least in my memory, there were probably 15 in the main large room, and maybe 18 in the fitting room, and probably 18 more in the other fitting room which was in use by someone else and I never even saw.  But, they had some cute options, and she must have had a lot more in the back (or maybe that other room was the huge warehouse sized room?), because she would leave and come back with additional options as we went a long.  In the end (over an hour later), we left with a wig that I liked and was comfortable with; a khaki colored cotton baseball hat with blonde hair attached to the sides and back that I LOVED (my favorite purchase of the day by far—probably how everyone will see me most days for the next 9 months, except church days, but who knows, you can get away with almost anything when you’re bald from cancer!); a soft knit headband with bangs attached that can be worn up front as bangs, or in the back as hair out of a hat; “Fight Like a Girl” PJ’s that Courtney said I had to have; 2 rubber bracelets and a trading pin (the local teenage girls know what that’s for) with the same phrase.  They only had to hand me tissues one time, and that was at the end when I was describing the party in the paragraph following the disclaimer below.

 

Losing hair is the next obstacle on this mountain climb that I’m scared of.  I’ve heard from many that emotionally this can be one of the hardest things.  I’m so thankful to be aware of this in advance.  Since this is one part of breast cancer that I don’t have control over, I feel like I can at least take control of how it happens.  I’ve heard that waking up with wads of hair on the pillow is really discouraging.  Turning something scary into something fun is a coping mechanism that helps me.  So, I want everyone to be aware that I know that cancer is a serious thing.  I don’t want to offend anyone in any way by seeming irreverent about some of the aspects.  So, if a hair loss party makes anyone sad or uncomfortable, I understand, and you do not need to feel obligated to participate.  The head shaving will occur beforehand.  A lunch party sounded fun, this was a good excuse to help me over this hurdle.  I have some confirmed attendees and will not be alone, but wanted to include anyone that would like to join us in making memories. 

SHAVE THE DATE!  This Tuesday at noon, we're having a potluck lunch party to celebrate my new bald head and kick off some summer fun.  It's mainly an excuse for a party.  If you'd like to join us, wear a hat or wig, kids included, bald babies will help me feel at home.  Hopefully some will be brave enough to wear hats/wigs that keep us laughing.  If you’d like, bring a salad, PBJs, or a dessert along to share.   We’ll provide homemade rolls, lemonade, and a dessert option.  We’ll have the movie “Tangled” running in the basement.  We’ll cut it short (unlike my vanished hair), so we’ll end by 1:30 or 2:00.  We’ll make sure the highlights (pun intended) are complete by 1:00 for any that need to head back to work.  If the weather is nice, we'll be in the back yard and patio, so kids can run around and play.  Come in the door, or join us out back.        

SHAVE THE DATE Virtually!   If any out-of-towners want to join in on the fun, between now and Tuesday, simply take a photo of yourself in either a wig or hat or bald, and email or text it to me (ktenney@comcast.net, text 801-885-0636).  Feel free to include a fun pun or joke about baldness.  We’ll make an album of all participants and later share a link for any that want to view the party.

I'm so thankful for my family, including extended family and friend family, who provide my life with happiness.  I enjoyed reading Hallmarks of a Happy Home, given by Thomas Monson (the prophet of my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). I also love the quote below:

“Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.” (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith)