“Hello boys, I’m Back!”

As Randy Quaid said when he flew the fighter jet into the alien space craft in Independence Day: “Hello boys, I’m back!” 

Yes, it has been two months since my last posting and I am back feeling a lot like my old self.  After some gloomy postings in which I vented about how crappy I was feeling, I am happy to report that I turned a corner in mid-September and have bounced back.  I am feeling more like a normal human being (well, normal is a relative term these days).

It is hard to describe the roller coaster that was the last two months.  From August to mid-September, I will admit that I struggled. I ended up getting an infection after my last two drains were pulled.  The infection really knocked me back.  I had no idea why I was feeling so sick, tired, and miserable.  I was so sick that I literally had to lie down between dinner and my birthday cake on my birthday.  Seriously, in order to make it through my family singing me Happy Birthday, cutting the cake and opening the presents, I had to go lie down on the couch for 10 minutes to try to pull enough energy together to sit the in chair for another 20 minutes. How sad is that?  Fortunately, when I went to see my plastic surgeon for my follow-up a few days later, he spotted the infection and immediately put me on some extra-strength antibiotics, which really did the trick.  I was feeling better within 12 hours of taking my first dose. 

I think that the infection combined with the horrible air quality that kept us trapped inside for a month, my anxiety over starting my new treatment and the additional new drug that I have to take for 5 years, and my limited mobility due to my surgery, I was definitely feeling pretty beat up and tired.  I was wondering if I was ever going to feel good again. 

I was also dealing with Samantha returning to Boston at the end August.  I was thrilled to see her return to at least a somewhat more normal life.  She deserved to go back and try to enjoy even a modified college life.  She had put in 6 months helping at home when I was at my sickest. I was happy to see her head back and meet up with her roommates.  But I did miss her.  She was such a blessing to be there every day, helping me and her dad out with cooking, cleaning, etc. 

In addition to Sam leaving, my mom returned to Utah over Labor Day weekend.  Since I was back on a treatment that continues to suppress my immune system, Chris and his brother Steve went with my mom back to Utah so she could start to wrap up all of the loose ends left by my dad’s sudden death in December and then the COVID lockdown.  I was happy that we had entered a phase in our life in which my mom could go back, but I felt terribly guilty that I was not able to be in Utah with my mom as she navigated – all alone – the downsizing of her house and putting her house on the market.  I had planned to go with her and stay for a couple of weeks to help her with trying to wrap up a lifetime of memories and belongings. Instead, I was prohibited from leaving my house and venturing out into COVID-land. 

I think that with all that “stuff” – sadness, frustration, guilt, fatigue, anger — going on in my head, I was kind of in a rough place in August/September, but then a wonderful thing happened:  WE GOT OUT OF SACRAMENTO.  Yes, Chris, Ben and I got to take a one-week vacation to Santa Cruz in mid-September.  It was our first vacation since August of 2019.  I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to get the hell out of Sacramento. 

I started our vacation feeling pretty tired.  I had my first round of the 14 rounds of my new treatment.  Fortunately, this stuff is lightweight compared to the horrific Taxotere/Carboplatin.  I only have one 30-minute infusion followed by 30 minutes of observation and then I am out of the infusion center.  No more 3-4-hour infusions. Instead of feeling like toxic chemicals are swishing around in my body and then feeling like crap, I get tired for a few days after my infusion.  For my first round, I felt more tired than I have felt in rounds 2 and 3.  I do not know why.  I pretty much napped for a couple of days while in Santa Cruz, but by Wednesday, I was feeling A LOT better.  We walked on the beach every morning and every afternoon.  I read books.  I even had a beer for the first time in months.  Food started to taste like food again. 

It is hard to describe what it is like to come out of the fog of chemo.  It is like you are sort of marching through your days just holding it together – living in black and white and not color.  Then, slowly, the color starts to come back into the picture.  The sky is blue. The grass is green.  Food looks good.  Music sounds good.  You wake up and coffee smells good.  You feel like exercising and seeing your friends.  You start to plan weekends.  You start to realize that you have a whole life ahead of you to live and embrace and enjoy.  This probably sounds dramatic.  But I did not really realize just how sick I was feeling until I started to feel better. 

So, here I am.  Since we got back from Santa Cruz, we have had friends come over for social-distanced dinners.  I have had social-distanced coffees and “drinks” with friends. I say “drinks” in that I am drinking something, but it is not alcohol.  With my new drug regime, my liver is particularly hammered by the drugs, so I am trying to keep my liver happy by avoiding alcohol.  After my first infusion, my liver numbers were more elevated than previously, so I experimented and did not drink any alcohol between my first and my second infusions.  My liver numbers were still elevated, but much closer to normal.  So, with my “Web MD” knowledge, I have decided to cut out the liquor.  It is funny, but I thought I would miss having a beer or glass of wine more, but I do not.  I am fine with my bubbly water. 

I am also back to my morning walks with my friends.  I am exercising 3-4 times a week on the Peloton and doing strength training (and stretching to get the full range of motion back in my arms after my mastectomy). I am operating under the theory that exercise will help me fight off any fatigue from the new treatment I am on.  Plus, I am taking much better care of myself since I do not plan on going through this cancer crap again.  I also have gone to the Farmer’s Market. Chris and I went on an afternoon walk at Cosumnes Preserve last weekend to check out the Sandhill cranes. I am cooking, baking, and gardening.  Oh, and I am gearing up for more work with my new venture – Earth Advocacy. 

Yes, I am back. I am not the same person that I was when I started out this crazy year. And, I would not say that I am fully 100% of my normal energy level.  I suspect that I will not really be back to my normal crazy energy level until after my infusions end in June 2021.  Even with this “chemo-light” infusion regime, I can feel the effects during the first week after the infusion.  It is not bad.  It is just that I am a little tired and bleh.  I also must take an Aromatase inhibitor every day for five years to stop estrogen production, which can fuel cancer growth.  The only side effect that I seem to be experiencing from that is some very mild muscle pain, which is apparently common. 

I am writing about my new drugs and how they make me feel so you know what is going on with me and to give information if anyone has the misfortune of going through what I am going through.  But I am so far from where I was a mere two months ago that I really feel like a different person. 

Now I am chomping at the bit to get back to NORMAL.  Yes, normal seems like such a gift.  You do not realize how wonderful it is until you do not have NORMAL.  Since I am FEELING a lot better, I have started to focus on LOOKING normal.  I’ve resigned myself to that fact that my chest is not going to look the same and that I will not really be able to take care of the reconstruction side of the mastectomy until after my infusions end in June 2021.  But that is not so bad because I wear clothes.  Ok, that sounded weird, but what I mean is that if I walk down the street, no one looking at me would say – oh, she had a mastectomy. 

What I have started to focus on (well, Chris might say “obsess about”) is my hair. Specifically, WHEN IS IT GOING TO COME BACK?  My hair is growing back S-L-O-W-L-Y.  I mean, it is growing at a GLACIAL pace.  I think it might be in part since I am still on some mild form of chemo.  I do not know. All I know if that if you want to do something that is more frustrating than watching paint dry or a pot boil, try watching your hair grow from a bald head.  I am driving my family nuts.  It has gotten so bad that if I start to approach either Chris or Ben while taking the bandana off my head, they will turn around and leave the room.  They do not want to be asked – yet again – if it looks like my hair has grown more.  I get it, but I cannot help myself.  My baldness – well, now it is more a moderate light fuzziness – is the last outward vestige of my cancer.  When I walk down the street with my bandana-ed head, I look like a cancer patient.  I hate it.  I just want my hair back so I can look like NORMAL Kim and not CANCER Kim.  I know that I am being superficial. I know that my family and friends do not think that way. I am the one thinking that way.  If I had a better sense of humor, I would embrace it.  Heck, Halloween is the perfect time for my bald head.  I could dress up like Uncle Fester from the Munsters.  Seriously, with my bald head, sparse eyebrows, and dark circles, I AM Uncle Fester.  Just thinking about it makes me laugh.  I think Ben and Chris would pee in their pants if I showed up tomorrow night in an Uncle Fester get up.  But it is not going to happen.  I am WAY too vain.

Since I do not want to end the blog with a vision of me as Uncle Fester, I should conclude this latest update on a positive note.  This last year has been a hell of a year.  If someone had told me a year ago what I – and all of us — would be facing, I would have told them to put down the crack pipe.  There is NO WAY that I and my family would have made it through this year without the love and support of our family and friends.  I really want to thank the entire VILLAGE of people who have been there through this nutty journey.  Thank you to everyone who asked me how I am doing, who delivered thoughtful cards and gifts, who wrote chalk notes on our sidewalk and driveway, who made signs and drove down our street like crazy people, who checked in on Chris to make sure he was hanging in there, who prayed for us, and who thought about us. 

This year sucked, but it would have sucked more if we did not have such support.  In a year marked by division and distance – physically, politically, emotionally – it has been the pulling together that has gotten us through everything.  I do not know how next week’s election is going to go.  I certainly have my point of view and candidate whom I am rooting for with every fiber of my being. But, god forbid, something happens, I know that it will be OK. 

I will leave you with a photo from my favorite coffee cup that I drink out of most mornings.  It is a reminder:  Everything will be fucking OK.  I know it will because if this year has taught us anything, it is that our village is filled with some kick-ass people and we are stronger together.