Month: June 2020

I rode my bicycle to work last week. It was the first time I’d been in the office since March 27. I thought I hadn’t gone in since before my cancer diagnosis on March 25, but I guess I did because I found a paper that I signed dated March 27 and I know I couldn’t have physically signed it from home.

I have been riding my bike since, let’s see, June 6, which was 32 days post-op. I started really slow and worked up to the 7 miles and back to work, and then decided to go ahead and try doing a bike commute, and the actual bicyling part of was fine.

Of course it did take me forever to get my bike locked up in the bike room, and I walked almost to the work building and then decided to go back and get my panniers, so it took forever to get inside.

Also i was a little nervous to be there. We officially “reopen” on Monday July 6, and I wanted to go in at least once before then, so I could get myself re-situated before any kind of rush. They had re-sized the cubicles too, so all my stuff was packed up, and I wanted to get that set up again.

There were very few people in, and everyone who was there was wearing masks. They also provided masks to any customers who didn’t have one.

I was afraid to go to the restroom too often since it is public, so I didn’t hydrate myself nearly enough. Also I didn’t want to keep taking my mask off to drink water. And I didn’t want to get water out of the cooler. And I used hand sanitizer every 30 minutes.

When I got home I was very tired, and I had a migraine the next day. The nice thing about it was that it was not a vomitous migraine. My head, neck, eye, and back hurt, but I did not have to barf. The Mighty Sam speculated that the hormone therapy maybe took the edge off. Maybe so, but it was still worse than recuperating from major surgery. It blows me away that migraines are really that bad, but MIGRAINES ARE REALLY THAT BAD.

Next doctor’s appointment – tissue expansion 2.0 next week. Then I will see about getting with the radiation oncologist. I hope radiation won’t be too difficult. I feel like I’ve gotten off light so far.

More progress on treatment: yesterday I had my tissue expander expanded. That was a weird sensation. Not even uncomfortable, but just weird. It did start feeling a little uncomfortable yesterday evening, but I took some ibuprofin (permitted by the doctor) and that took the edge off, and I feel more or less fine today.

I go back for another expanding session in 2 weeks. Then, a couple of weeks after that, I should be ready for radiation therapy.

I did point out to the doc that it did look like they took a pretty big chunk out of the left breast as well (that was the benign fibrous stuff that they wanted to take out and biopsy just to be safe). He mentioned possibly doing that tissue transplant thing he mentioned before, but I assume that would be later down the line, after the radiation therapy. Probably at the same time we take the tissue expander out and put in the permanent implant on the right.

After a week of hormone therapy I still haven’t noticed any side effects other than just a few possible tiny hot flashes across my shoulders and back of my neck. But I’ve been having a few of those for the past year or so.

I’m going to guess that the most difficult part of all of this will be the radiation therapy. So far everything else has been very manageable.

I’m also making good progress on the fitness front. I started riding my bike again on June 6. I guess I’ve forgotten to mention that until now. I worked up from a 20 minute slow ride to going about three quarters of the way to my work. Which means I will be ready to start bicycle commuting soon. I think I’ll make it to the downtown area by this Sunday. I am petrified to ride on public transportation.

I had a Skype meeting with one of the managers at work today and after we were done talking about our business she asked how I was doing. We chatted for a while, but I said that I thought I was really more focused on what’s going on in the world now – a worldwide pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. It seems really weird to have a personal crisis happening at the same time as these matters of significant worldwide historical significance.

It was a good talk. I’m glad I work where I do, and that my colleagues and management are so supportive: both of me and of Black lives.

I started hormone therapy today! woooo. I feel fine, no side effects other than a possible hot flash across my shoulders, but this is something that’s been happening to me occasionally over the past year or so, so it’s nothing new.

My oncologist talked with the radiation oncologist and the plastic surgeon. Plastic surgeon does not want me to get radiation until my tissue expander is fully expanded, and I am fully healed from that. So my oncologist decided to get me started on the hormone stuff right away.

This morning i had my one-month shot, leuprolide, that induces menopause. Onocologist wanted to see how I do on that – we’ll touch base in a few weeks. If it goes well he may switch me to a 3-month shot, so I would only have to come in every 3 months.

Then I take Anastrozole every day. My oncologist said I could start taking it right away so I will take my first one tomorrow morning. I didn’t want to start today in case the combination of that with the injection gave rise to some giant side effects.

So far so good.

My secret hope is that it also shuts down my migraines. Because migraines suck SO BAD. In all of these diagnostic procedures and surgeries and treatment, none of has been anywhere near as bad as a migraine.

Phone appointment with my oncologist this morning. It went well – now I have a good idea of what to look forward to in terms of treatment.

The “oncotype” score was low, which means no chemotherapy. That’s definitely good in terms of how strenuous my treatment will be. I was already prepared to shave my head and learn to tie headscarves, and was checking new short hairstyles to adopt when my hair started growing back. But no need for that now, at least not for this iteration.

So the plan is to do radiation first, and then when that is done, start hormone therapy.

I go back to have my tissue expander filled on the 17th by the plastic surgeon. The oncologist thought i would need a couple of weeks to recover from that. It shouldn’t be a huge deal, but it would be good for the surrounding tissue to get used to the new size, especially since radiation causes tissue damage.

I don’t know how long the radiation will be yet – I remember from my earlier talk with the radiation onocologist that it’s usually 4 to 6 weeks of appointments every weekday. I hope it’s more like 4. Six weeks of daily radiation sounds like a long time. So that’s likely most of July, if we start 2 weeks after the tissue expansion is done. Then hormone therapy starts after that. My understanding is that hormone therapy goes on for 5 years and the main effects will be the same as menopause.

So that’s the deal.