It's been a while. Let's rewind to Saturday. Short version - I tripped on a really crappy broken-up bit of sidewalk and fell down. Twisted my left ankle, scraped my right knee, scuffed up my palms a bit. I'm pretty sure that three months ago my balance was good enough that I wouldn't have gone down, and my attention was good enough that I would have avoided the bad piece of sidewalk while dodging the homeless guy in the first place. Evidence: I've been walking that stretch of sidewalk and dodging that homeless guy every Saturday morning for at least five years and never tripped on it. But maybe not. That is stuff I was working on in PT, and I hadn't been marinating my brain in poison for 9 weeks.
Either way, it happened. I went to breakfast and the waitress brought me ice for it. I went to Trader Joe's and got our groceries and hauled them all upstairs (Bob was at football) and put more ice on it. My feet are already hugely swollen from chemo (water retention is standard, good times) but it didn't hurt that bad. I've got TONS of pain meds floating around here, and I didn't feel the need to do anything more than wrap it, take Aleve and ice it, and it really didn't hurt that bad or feel unstable. Bob saw it and flipped out when he got home Saturday night. So we got up early and went to the ER for an xray.
Here's where we get to the cried-wolf part. The doc said that the radiologists thought it might be a fracture but couldn't agree, and that a specialist would look and call me back on Monday morning. Then a nurse put me in a really shitty fiberglass splint that was too tight and too tall and cut into the back of my knee. Within thirty minutes I went from no pain to 5 or 6 on a scale to 10.
I left it on to keep Bob happy even though it was hurting. That night I took a percocet before bed and couldn't sleep because it hurt so bad. For reference, in June when I had my port surgery in my chest, one percocet knocked me out in 20 minutes flat and kept me out for five or six hours. I haven't taken any opiates since then, so my tolerance should be the same. Five hours, three percocets, and no sleep later, I ripped the splint off. INSTANT relief. I rewrapped it like you would a sprain and was asleep within five minutes.
No specialist called yesterday, and thanks to HIPAA they won't give me any information over the phone. The soonest the ortho can see me is next Monday. So I called Fisher and asked if she could track it down for me. She did, and the reason why nobody could tell me which bone might be broken is that the doctor who told me "fracture" wrote sprain, with possible fracture TBD on the report. So basically he lied to me to cover his ass.
So now I'm treating it like I would a mediumish sprain - ice, wrap, Aleve, trying to stay off it around the house, crutches when I leave the house until I see the ortho on Monday.
Today I went down to Stanford for the beginning of round 4, infusion 10. This was one of the longer days - bloodwork, see the NP, see the oncologist, infusion. We planned out the rest of my treatment on the trial. Here's what my medical stuff looks like (including the ankle):
Fri Oct 4 - Surgical consult with Dr C. She will be doing a bilateral mastectomy, and refer me to a surgeon who specializes in gynecological oncology and a couple of plastic surgeons. We will get me on the calendar with that team for mid-November to do a bilateral mastectomy, oopherectomy (ovaries and fallopian tubes), and a "flap" surgery (essentially a tummy tuck where they yoink everything in my abdomen up to where my breasts are now) all in one go. Note that this is *not* reconstruction, there will be a separate surgery (and probably more than one to tweak it) later.
Mon Oct 7 - Ortho to look at the ankle.
Tue Oct 8 - bloodwork and infusion number 11 in the afternoon
Tue Oct 15 - last day of trial, which will be a repeat of my first day - in the office from 9-6ish for bloodwork, chemo, last dose of LCL, and then bloodwork throughout the afternoon to see how fast my body is moving the LCL out of my system.
Wed or Thu Oct 16/17 - full round of imaging - MRI, mammogram, ultrasound.
Mon Oct 21 - final meeting with Dr. T to close out the study. She will read the MRI and determine if any part of the tumor remains.
If it does, we will do a final core biopsy that afternoon to close the study out, cancel the November surgeries and move them to early February, and start my first dose of AC chemo (another 12 weeks) as early as Friday 10/25.
If there is no tumor, we go with the November surgery, AC as soon as I've recovered enough to tolerate it, and then reconstruction.
This is a plan. I can work with a plan. I'm probably going to be flipping out the weekend before Oct 21, but I have a ton of fun plans (family reunion and hanging out with some old friends for a very low key birthday party) and expect to be too busy or too tired to think about it. Which is probably a good thing. I'll take the big bottle of Ativan along just in case.
They predicted that week 10 was the week I'd really be feeling it. They were right. Last week was the first time I felt dopey through the infusion despite the steroids. This week I actually fell asleep for 90 minutes of it. On the plus side, blood return worked great this week. And I realized it was probably helped along by all the Aleve I've been taking for my ankle. DUH. My blood actually looked thinner going into the test tubes. DUH.
Either way, it happened. I went to breakfast and the waitress brought me ice for it. I went to Trader Joe's and got our groceries and hauled them all upstairs (Bob was at football) and put more ice on it. My feet are already hugely swollen from chemo (water retention is standard, good times) but it didn't hurt that bad. I've got TONS of pain meds floating around here, and I didn't feel the need to do anything more than wrap it, take Aleve and ice it, and it really didn't hurt that bad or feel unstable. Bob saw it and flipped out when he got home Saturday night. So we got up early and went to the ER for an xray.
Here's where we get to the cried-wolf part. The doc said that the radiologists thought it might be a fracture but couldn't agree, and that a specialist would look and call me back on Monday morning. Then a nurse put me in a really shitty fiberglass splint that was too tight and too tall and cut into the back of my knee. Within thirty minutes I went from no pain to 5 or 6 on a scale to 10.
I left it on to keep Bob happy even though it was hurting. That night I took a percocet before bed and couldn't sleep because it hurt so bad. For reference, in June when I had my port surgery in my chest, one percocet knocked me out in 20 minutes flat and kept me out for five or six hours. I haven't taken any opiates since then, so my tolerance should be the same. Five hours, three percocets, and no sleep later, I ripped the splint off. INSTANT relief. I rewrapped it like you would a sprain and was asleep within five minutes.
No specialist called yesterday, and thanks to HIPAA they won't give me any information over the phone. The soonest the ortho can see me is next Monday. So I called Fisher and asked if she could track it down for me. She did, and the reason why nobody could tell me which bone might be broken is that the doctor who told me "fracture" wrote sprain, with possible fracture TBD on the report. So basically he lied to me to cover his ass.
So now I'm treating it like I would a mediumish sprain - ice, wrap, Aleve, trying to stay off it around the house, crutches when I leave the house until I see the ortho on Monday.
Today I went down to Stanford for the beginning of round 4, infusion 10. This was one of the longer days - bloodwork, see the NP, see the oncologist, infusion. We planned out the rest of my treatment on the trial. Here's what my medical stuff looks like (including the ankle):
Fri Oct 4 - Surgical consult with Dr C. She will be doing a bilateral mastectomy, and refer me to a surgeon who specializes in gynecological oncology and a couple of plastic surgeons. We will get me on the calendar with that team for mid-November to do a bilateral mastectomy, oopherectomy (ovaries and fallopian tubes), and a "flap" surgery (essentially a tummy tuck where they yoink everything in my abdomen up to where my breasts are now) all in one go. Note that this is *not* reconstruction, there will be a separate surgery (and probably more than one to tweak it) later.
Mon Oct 7 - Ortho to look at the ankle.
Tue Oct 8 - bloodwork and infusion number 11 in the afternoon
Tue Oct 15 - last day of trial, which will be a repeat of my first day - in the office from 9-6ish for bloodwork, chemo, last dose of LCL, and then bloodwork throughout the afternoon to see how fast my body is moving the LCL out of my system.
Wed or Thu Oct 16/17 - full round of imaging - MRI, mammogram, ultrasound.
Mon Oct 21 - final meeting with Dr. T to close out the study. She will read the MRI and determine if any part of the tumor remains.
If it does, we will do a final core biopsy that afternoon to close the study out, cancel the November surgeries and move them to early February, and start my first dose of AC chemo (another 12 weeks) as early as Friday 10/25.
If there is no tumor, we go with the November surgery, AC as soon as I've recovered enough to tolerate it, and then reconstruction.
This is a plan. I can work with a plan. I'm probably going to be flipping out the weekend before Oct 21, but I have a ton of fun plans (family reunion and hanging out with some old friends for a very low key birthday party) and expect to be too busy or too tired to think about it. Which is probably a good thing. I'll take the big bottle of Ativan along just in case.
They predicted that week 10 was the week I'd really be feeling it. They were right. Last week was the first time I felt dopey through the infusion despite the steroids. This week I actually fell asleep for 90 minutes of it. On the plus side, blood return worked great this week. And I realized it was probably helped along by all the Aleve I've been taking for my ankle. DUH. My blood actually looked thinner going into the test tubes. DUH.
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