ah home.

Home....home again......

I am now permanently home.
No more hospitals, moms house, reclining chairs......

The house is clean, and I love it here. I loved my moms too but I needed to be home, as did my children.
It's a little transition now that home is home and not someplace else. It's like "Ok- so what do I do now?"
I sit and wait. Not being able to grab much of any proverbial ring.
My date to go back to work is a tentative Jan 4th, we have to see about that.

I had a sad time today when I finally made it to the radiation oncologist- to set up our voyage into radiation land- and as the nice lady named Isabella and her CAT scan guy were making the mold for me to lie in for 5 weeks and ready to CAT scan me- They told me I had to hold this ring and hold my arms over my head as the mold was setting. I kept saying that I couldn't. And I was told to "just try".
I can't. I tried, and even though I told them- I couldn't do it.
So I now am in push mode and need to get my arm over my head by next Wednesday.
It makes me want to cry that I have to do this.
It hurts terribly, I ran out of painkillers, and I just don't want to. But I have to. I'll take a fragile moment coupon pass for this and proceed to sulk over it. and cry and whine.
Why don't they take this into consideration, this whole lymph node removal?
and It felt like I was the first one to ever walk int there with this problem. At least my breasts fooled the radiologist. again- this surgery really is rare, I guess. He thought they were implants.Score anothe rone for ice cream.
I wish I lived closer to Mount Holly so I can keep going to Virtua but it ain't gonna happen.
I want people to have their shit together- because when it's not and my LIFE is being dealt with- I get a little freaked. If I wanted to be freaked, I would have stayed local for my care. so there ya go. Reason #1 why I drove the miles I did. Jesus Christ.
gah.
So I am home, walking more upright every day!
My stomach and bellybutton are pretty much all healed up- I still have scabs on the boobs. Delightful.

It's all so much when pretty much most of it is said and done. I know I still have rads left, but I got so settled into "having cancer" that's its a strange shift settling into the role of "not having cancer anymore". I think a lot, and I cry a lot too. Must be the moon but this new life is way more overwhelming that having cancer, even. Hard to believe, but it's a life where you have to watch and worry about every ache, pain, lump or spot.
I don't need any more adding to my neurosis. And I can see the frustrated reader that just wants to punch me and tell me to shut the fuck up already.
I tell myself that all the time.
What to do besides carpe the diem and wait to die from old age.....?
People have said to me "You can't sit and worry about it all the time". I don't. I express how I feel and it's perfectly valid. Expecting a cancer patient to be happy and upbeat and positive all the time is a myth. I get my moments. I charge through this shit on a mighty horse with a sword and shield, but that does not mean that I do not have soft and squishy insides and a heart and a mind and rational thinking too.
I don't worry about it all the time. But it is a major thought- and there is not one person to understand it unless you have gone through breast cancer too. That's it. Let me think about my own life in my own way.
Depression can be an easy cave to crawl into, I'm finding out. You go through a whole mental and physical war only to return to a place where the 'old you' doesn't fit in anymore. And you don't have gobs of cancer patients waiting for you upon your return for help or support or any understanding as to how this all feels. It is so much.
I need to be able to get out of my house on my own terms, I think. Having to be driven everywhere or stuck inside in the rain is shitty.
on the up side (because there's always has to be an upside or who would I be?)----My hair is growing back nice and full and ashtray colored. And I now have all my eyebrows back. ALL my eyebrows. I need to pluck them before I get mistaken for Frieda Kahlo or Oscar the Grouch.


Next week is another visit with the boob doctor and hopefully the radiation people again if I can get my arm up over my head comfortably.
ergh.



....
onward, right?
onward.....