Art Heist

You know how we all have disclaimers. Like ‘what a cow, I can’t believe she just did that (don’t get me wrong, I love her to pieces.)’

Many of you tell me how much you like the art on my blog and some of you even question me as to whether I did it or if not, do I know the artist’s name.

Here is the story of the great art heist, the disclaimer so to speak.

My sister Camille came to spend a week with me during the time I was having chemo. I felt like a complete bag of shit and so Camille brought a bag of computer tricks to get my mind off of myself. She downloaded games, downloaded art she had saved (she loves child-angels), and showed me how I could download the art that I would like.

So after two years of chemo I would sit on the computer and download. I have hundreds of pictures now and I don’t know where I got them from or who the artist is that did them. I just wanted eye candy and to make my brain feel happy.

So, there you have it, almost all of the pictures in my blog are stolen. At one point I wouldn’t have given two shits and now I barely give one.

But, getting to know so many wonderful artists and seeing how hard they work I now try to ask them if I can use their art. If I have the artist name I place it at the bottom of the post in italics because I still haven’t figured out that link thing.

The writing is all mine but the art is not.

Actually now that I am coming clean I should also state that having asked many artists if I can use their work in my blog, I have forgotten who has said yes. I am going to use the defense of chemo-brain at my hearing.

*Art by Brian Romero

What's In A Face

Besides your eyes, nose and mouth, what’s in a face? Usually besides your weight, it is one of the first things that you are judged on. People look at our faces and they see us and we see them. They become real and we become real. We connect. What do you think happens when they stop looking? Are we no longer here?

In other words, if you have a face in a forest but no one connects to that face, does that face exist.

Well if you have cancer, others’ reactions to you may make you feel unsure if you exist or if you do exist, why you are out of your house putting a damper on other peoples groove.

I have been thinking of my sweet friend Jill so much in the last few weeks and remembering the time that Nadalene drove us to see a movie and how we were pointed at because of our appearance.

I want to tell you what it feels like to be gawked at. How it makes you feel and how eventually you start gawking at yourself. Here are my feelings and a few little stories to help you understand.

When Kirsten first shaved my head, and I was on chemo every Friday I not only looked greenish but I also looked like my brother Gerry. I basically had a quarter of an inch of hair. I looked foreign and I also looked androgynous (I’m surprised to see that I’m tearing up). I knew it was going to happen but I was in awe of how sick I suddenly looked. It doesn’t look like me and it doesn’t feel like me. This is what a person with cancer looks like. There is no denying it now. I introduce my children (who are pretending it looks great) to their new father.

Jill had not been feeling well from radiation and I was not feeling well because I had chemo the day before (normally I would never go because I felt like shit – I can’t even say the name of the movie because it reminds me of how sick I felt and makes me want to throw-up) but Jill wanted to go see it and I didn’t want to say no, because I knew we might not have another chance.

Nadalene dropped us off at the front door and I’m telling you it took us probably 20 minutes to get to the ticket counter, we were so pooped out and Jill was having a hard time breathing.

But what I’m really trying to get to here is how everyone stared at us. Neither of us had any hair to speak of and we walked like we just got out of a concentration camp. I understand too well the term ‘walking dead.’ There were two young girls (maybe 10) that couldn’t take their eyes off us. That I could understand.

Somedays I remind the woman in the mirror that the pursuit of happiness lays within. Who I am is determined by me, not somebody else (or in many cases with contact in the outside world many somebody else’s). I know that the physical is just that: physical. But it is my physical.

Yet up pops my ego (also known as my inner critic) with her self-centered narrative always finding flaws and never seeing the beauty in the image in the mirror. Always jumping on the negative and never getting near the positive.

I am unable to wear a bra because of the metastasis to the skin and my right breast is about six inches higher than my left and is also much firmer because of the radiation. I have burn marks on my upper collarbone from the radiation as well. My left arm is half the size of the right. My left arm also has my PICC line in it so it looks very robotic.

When Josephine was born I decided to wear the wig so that no one could see my life by my hair. I wanted it to be about Angelique and Don and the baby and not any doctors thinking oh ‘the mother has cancer.’

I felt so phony and I had to hold my sweet girl with that thing on my head. Her first sight of her grandma was not real. My ego was beside me taking away my feelings of pleasure by telling me that I looked ridiculous and phony. I kept the charade of the wig all the time Angelique and Josephine were in the hospital.

I knew for sure that my shaved head would elicit a few stares. But mostly people avoided looking at me. It is like I became invisible overnight. I look so different from my former self that people I know do not even recognize me. I went from someone with no wrinkles to someone with lots of wrinkles.

People avert their eyes when I walk by. Is it because they know that I am sick and they don’t want to take a chance at looking in case the evil eye gets them and they too end up with cancer. Or is it because they know I’m sick and they don’t want to stare? Have I become so hideous that people don’t want to look at me anymore?

I’m beginning to feel that no one can see me but children. Adults pretend they can’t see me or they avert their eyes, while small kids eyes widen in horror.

When I was having chemo at the hospital I was looking at some pictures of me, my mother, Angelique and Josephine. A couple of ladies who were also getting chemo asked to look at the pictures. They then asked me if my mother was my sister.

Another time I went to the doctor’s office with my sister Shelly (five years younger) and the doctor asked me if she was my daughter.

Kermit the frog says it is not easy being green and I have to agree with him. It is also not easy to be exposed to possible ridicule, to naked viewing, to seeing and feeling things that I’d rather avoid, to not seeing myself as other people see me. I have become visually unpleasant to people. They wish I would stay in my home.

I forced myself to wear my wig to Nadalene’s wedding because I did not want her wedding pictures to have me in it with a bald head and to have her looking at her pictures and being reminded of my cancer. After all for 29 years of her life I did have hair.

I wore the wig and although it was okay, it also wasn’t. On the other hand when I look at pictures I am glad I wore it.

Everyday we get stuff wrong. We forget the dignity and respect that others deserve. We communicate badly and worse than that we ignore (instead of respectfully lay aside) other people’s concerns.

The funny thing that you would never gather from this post is that I didn’t ever care that I lost my hair. It didn’t and still doesn’t matter to me. All of the physical appearance stuff really doesn’t matter in a generic sense. I tend to shuffle instead of walk. I am hunched and totally baby my shoulders so that they don’t hurt.

But with the help of people’s reactions to me I look less rosy. My eyes don’t light up the way they used to. I still smile. I still try.

In Moose Jaw, Jacquie, Nadalene and I were at a mineral spa for three days and not once did anyone initiate a conversation with me. They talked to Nadalene or Jacquie and looked straight over my head, unless of course I turned fast and then they were looking at my PICC with the plastic sleeve over it. As a matter of fact, one day about ten people were laughing and talking and then I came out with Jacquie and as they all tried to pretend I was not there, the silence became deafening.

I want you to know that if you are going through chemo for cancer or are taking medications for other serious illnesses and you don’t look like you use too, that you don’t frighten all people. There are always the people who love you and there are always people who care.

When I first met Jill she was sitting cross-legged in a chair in a group meeting room. My first impression was ‘Wow is she ever beautiful.’ Jill had curly hair and the friendliest smile and the best personality. When I last saw Jill in a hospital room my impression of her was ‘Wow is she ever beautiful.’ Jill had no hair and the friendliest smile and the best personality.

Even when you feel really alone there is always someone out there wishing hard for you. Wishing they were able to share your pain with you. Maybe there is even somebody watching you and thinking how beautiful you are, but you just can’t see them or maybe you turned away just at the wrong moment.

Queasy

Tilt Your Head Back

Just before Nadalene and Charlton's wedding in September a cap on my second molar was very loose and I thought it was going to fall out.  

Okay, simple enough, go to the dentist and get it pushed back in more firmly.  Just one of my famous last thoughts.

I need to set the stage here before this actress can go on.

I was getting my chemo (FEC) every three weeks so the timing with the dentist was important.  My blood had to be up and my chemo gut had to be down.  Fine, I get myself to the dentist and guess what, it is not so simple after all.

Number one, my gums have shrunk, probably from the chemo and so the cap no longer fits.  Fine, make me another one.  Number two, can not do that as the tooth and post have broken a bit and there is nothing for a new cap to hold on to.  Number three, I will have to go see an oral surgeon and get the tooth pulled.

Okay, what could I get done that day at the dentist.  I get some x-rays which should have been a few minute process which dragged on for 1/2 hour because of my severe gagging.  In she would shove the film.  Out I would pull it and hold my head over their garbage can.  In she would shove it, out I would pull it.  Finally I told her to give me the film, for her to stand by the camera and as soon as she saw me put in the film that she should take the picture.  Believe me it was a Herculean effort.  After that I get my teeth cleaned (You can only imagine.  And if you can't, re-read the bit about the x-rays).

I can't get in to see the oral surgeon until after the wedding.  Needless to say, I just kept pushing the tooth back up in my gum.  By the way, it fell out when I was eating a chocolate bar and I thought it was a stone or even a little bone from a mouse.  After washing the chocolate off of it I realized that it was my cap.  Then of course my tongue went up to the molar and sure enough the cap was missing.

I see the oral surgeon in October, he tells me he will pull it that day, but has to call my oncologist's nurse (Lori, who I love) first to see if my blood is okay.  He comes back in and tells me that No, he can't do it and they will have to wait until I come off of chemo.  My tooth is not killing me so of course I stay on chemo.

In the meantime, I need to go back to my dentist beause the post they put in to hold the cap feels like steel and it is long and cutting the shit out of my tongue.  The dentist proceeds to file the steel down.  Now I have the grinding sound with steel chips going in my mouth and the hygenist with a water hose scooping them out.  Does it sound fun?

Four months later, I am on a break from chemo so I rebook an appointment with the oral surgeon.  I tell him he has the go-ahead from my oncologist, but more importantly from my nurse Lori (hee hee).  

My appointment was on Thursday.  Mickey dropped me off and I went to face the music.  I was an absolute nervous wreck.  I need to reset the stage before I open the curtains.

Up the elevator to the 8th floor.  Down the hall to an office within his office.  The dental hygenist is kind (Kendra remember that).  I sit on the dental chair and tell her that I am nervous (as if she doesn't have eyes in her head) and that I have a bad gagging reflex.  She tells me not to worry as they are faster than a dentist's office and it only takes more time if the tooth breaks.  She leaves, the dentist comes in.  He tells me that it will be fine and that he will just give me a couple of needles to freeze it and then we will be on our way.  He puts a dental bib on me  and gives me a needle in the cheek (not bad) followed by a needle in the roof of my mouth (holy shit).  Tells me he will be back.

I sit straight up in the chair telling myself that 'fear is the mindkiller'.  I breath in and out and try to relax my muscles.  I look out the window at the CTV building, nothing seems to be working.  I am still petrified.  

I look out the window again and I see my reflection in the glass, it is almost like a mirror.  I see a giant baby Josephine with her bib on.  (I'm lucky I get to feed her quite often.)  I keep looking at myself/Josephine and then I actually start making baby faces and doing baby snarls at my reflection.  I keep snarling and moving my head just like Josephine does.  A miracle, I don't feel quite as afraid anymore.  Thank you Josephine.

The surgeon and the hygenist come in and I am all set to go.  I keep my eyes closed and he pulls.  He tells me she will have to hold my shoulders down as I keep popping up and he keeps pulling.  Tells me to open my eyes.  I do.  He says are you okay.  I nod.  I close my eyes.  He keeps pulling.  

Now he tells me what I don't want to hear.  The tooth broke
and now he will have to pull the roots out.
I tell myself what I want to hear: it doesn't hurt, they are
 almost done, keep your eyes closed.

It is done. I pay.  I phone Mickey.  Mickey comes to get me.

I get in the car and as she says how did it go.  I cry hysterically.  My nerves are shot.  I appreicated that Mickey reacted exactly like I wanted her too.  She said nothing and just let me be, because sometimes there is just nothing to say.

I want you all to know that I had myself all worked up for nothing.  We just can't let our fears get the best of us.  Do what you need to do to bring yourself back to what is real.  If it is horrible, it will be upon you soon enough.  Fear just makes it that much harder.

Thanks for listening to my whinings everyone.  Love from the actress with a huge gap in her teeth on the left hand side.

My Weekly Flush

Yesterday I made my weekly trip to Cancer Care Manitoba at the St. Boniface locatiion.  I have PICC care once a week and it can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.  While I was there I thought I might describe the PICC care and the chemotherapy rooms for all you lucky people that hopefully will never ever have to receive this care or enter these rooms.

A PICC is a long, flexible tube that is put into a vein in your arm and threaded up into a large vein just above your heart. It is used for giving fluids or drug treatment into your bloodstream. PICC stands for "Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter".  The picture above is just like my PICC only mine comes out three inches higher on th arm.  (Did you notice a ring of ownership in the 'mine' if you did you are quite correct as I love my PICC line and am quite attached to it.  It has saved me grief beyond grief.)

I'm getting dropped to the door of Cancer Care for chemo or PICC care usually first thing in the morning.  My rides are either Nadalene, Jacquie, or Gilbert.  I walk straight to the elevator and arrive at the first floor.  Off I get and walk down a long hall to the back reception area where I am always greeted by the smiling Terry (I could tell from the start that she was a sweethearted person).  Terry gives my file to a clerk and I am brought down another long hallway where I pass three treatment rooms with beds (where I usually have my blood transfusions), there are two bathrooms in this hallway as well (we need them often because we are getting so much fluid so it is important to know where they are).  

I am now at the far end of the hospital with the clerk and she puts my file on the nurses' desk and I take a seat in a blue recliner.  When the nurse comes I am offered a pillow
and a blanket.

At this back area there are four recliners for the 'cancer putter-up with' and a chair beside each recliner for the 'cancer putter-up with's sidekick of the day.'  There is another room with four recliners on the other side of a wall, as well there are two beds with curtains that can be pulled around them.  Also, there are curtains that can be pulled around each recliner.

Unfortunately there are too many people with cancer and these chairs and beds are in constant use.  I like an early appointment so that I can get a chair in a corner by the window when I am getting chemo or my monthly treatment of Pamidronite (for my bones).  For the PICC it doesn't matter because I am in for such a short time.

Every week I get my PICC line flushed out and I get the dressing changed.  Piece of cake.  Speaking of cake, I almost forgot to mention that besides having absolutely wonderful nurses, they have a great volunteer staff as well.  We don't get offered cake but we do get offered cookies and if you are there over lunch you are given a choice of soup.  I always get either the chicken noodle or the cream of mushroom.

When I am having chemo or a blood transfusion I can be there for 3/4 of a day so I always have someone come and bring me lunch or just stay and visit for awhile.  For the blood transfusion I have had Wahid, Angelique, Nadalene, Jacquie and Shelly.  For the chemo I have had Wahid, Jacquie, Colette, Angelique, Nadalene, and Nathan all stay the day with me.

 When Wahid, Angelique and Nadalene were all at work, Nathan had Fridays off of school so he always brought me.  It was always fun with Nathan and for some reason the time would fly.  One time we brought all of our income tax stuff and I taught Nathan how to do it.  Next thing I knew while we sat there he did everybody elses too.  

Another time that sticks out in my mind was when the nurse Tammy was going to give me my first treatment of FEC (I was really afraid of this because I had heard all the horror stories, by the way, they are justified.)  Tammy was going to manually inject the E in the FEC (Fluorouracil (5FU), epirubicin and cyclophosphamide, it is a chemo cocktail with three different drugs) which is red in colour (its alias is the Red Devil) and I had told Nathan ahead of time that I was dreading it.  At that point, he pulled out a Maxim magazine and asked Tammy and I a questionnaire on what we thought men think of different subjects.  It was so interesting and Tammy and I were so into it, that before I knew it she had finished injecting the epirubicin and the 5FU.

I am thankful to all of the wonderful people that have made this horrible experience more easy to swallow.  I am sorry that my family had to go through this with me and it makes me sad for myself and for them.  I love you all.

Some Fantasies Are Better Left As Fantasies

Not many people know this about me but in the past two years I have wished for someone to sneak in my room and blow my brains out.

Chemotheraphy has helped me tremendously but I am not going to pretend that it has been easy.  When I first started, it wasn't too bad, all I had was the shakes, flue like symptoms and aching bones.  

People who know me know that for me to throw-up is a traumatic event. My routine is to #1  lay around holding my stomach and moan; #2 stand by the toilet holding my stomach and moan; #3 stand by the toilet and stomp my feet while saying "God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God." #4 is screaming for someone to bring me a pail (usually Nadalene). #5 sit on the toilet with the pail in front of me and throw-up.  While throwing up I scream for someone (Nadalene again) to bring me water, a cloth, a new pyjama and while they are at it change the throw-up pail and for Pete's sake turn down the heat.

Okay, so you can see what is coming.  I started throwing up.  I took many pills to stop throwing up, but after a while taking the pills gave me the shakes and made me want to throw up.  Isn't it funny what you can get use too.  Eventually, even though I still did my steps from #1 to #5, I got to the point where I would just come downstairs and continue carrying on a conversation, gag a bit more and continue where I left off.  

I feel that I could have been okay if all I did was throw-up.  Worse was to come, so I was not okay.

I developed by my fourth chemo what I would call chemo gut.  I would just try to sleep and wished that the medical profession could slip me into a coma for the first 3 days of my treatment.  As I had chemo every 7 days this seemed like a lot of suffering.  In the end I was sick 7 days of the 7 and it was unbearable.  But I knew I could still do it.  I had to do it.

This is when I would tell my dear friends Jill, Helen, Angie and Darlene that I wished I was dead.  They totally understood because they have cancer too.  

Every day I would dream/fantasize that a person would come when I was having my afternoon nap and blow my brains out.  I didn't want to see the person because I didn't want to be frightened, I just wanted them to come in the house, float up the stairs, and when I had my face turned to the wall pull the trigger. In this fantasy it was extremely important that they
didn't scare me.

I am writing this blog so obviously there was no person, no gun, and no shot to the head.  How happy am I now that this never happened.  I am ecstatic.  I am off of chemo for now and life is good.  I know I will be on it again some day and I know I will come out of the other side of it again.  It is not easy.  But it can and has to be done for I have a family I love and I don't want to leave them.  Choose life.
 

Chemotherapy -- A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

Flashback February, 2006

Appointment to see my oncologist (I end up loving her by the way).  Wahid and I sitting in the office waiting, waiting, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I do not yet know what stage of cancer I am.  She talks to us and tells us that I need to start chemotherapy immediately and that they will put a PICC line in my arm and I will have chemo once a week.

She tells me I have Stage 4 cancer  and that there is no 
Stage 5 and that this is pallative treatment,
not a cure.  Was that a shoe I just heard drop?   

But first I need to see the hematologist because my blood is out of whack and he comes down the hall to her office and then proceeds to give me a bone marrow biopsy two minutes later.  His nurse helps him, they tell me and Wahid that they got a core sample but couldn't get anymore as I had too much meat on my bones (not his words but the meaning is the same).  He tells me I have to have 2 units of blood the next day and to be back in the morning.  I pull up my pants.  

My oncologist returns and tells me what chemo I will be starting (Taxotere).  At this point Wahid looks like he has seen a ghost and I am in computer mode (a complete robot).

Next day go to St. Boniface to get blood transfusion -- nurses try 4 times in one arm 5 times in other arm and then they try twice in the feet and finally get in right foot on third try.  Now, I don't know what can be more painful than that.  Ladies, if you think childbirth was bad you are dreaming.  I am so convinced of this that before I have to do that again, I will have an affair with an elephant and give birth to a 'humaelepha'.

Unsure of timeline here.  Anyway, a few days later I go to get my PICC put in, which will help with all this needle poking.  I go to a little operating theatre (basically a closet because real room is being used) and nurse and doctor use ultrasound machine to see best vein.  The doctor is the same one that gave Angelique a kidney biopsy years previous.  I am lying on a slab of a table crying my eyes out facing the wall because the stupid bastard can't get it in.  My arm is turning black and blue.  The nurse is wonderful and she is also getting annoyed at doctor and basically says just leave it, it is not going in.  I go home and my skin develops blood pockets so it is just hanging down and Jacquie insists I put ice on it.  That helps.

Hospital wants me to come back and try again, the next week when another doctor is there and he never misses.  Fine.  Notice the chemo is being on hold, because they can't get this PICC line in.  Go get it done, I'm ready to cry again and the doctor says all done.  He had the same nurse and it was great.  I was thrilled.

**Just an aside -- the doctor who first tried to give me the PICC line was on my television set 4 months later because he was being charged in the States with child molestation.  Yes, you heard me right.  Apparently the hospital was keeping him on????  No wonder he fucked-up because he probably wasn't even thinking of his job at the time but about the charges that were against him.

Wahid and I go back to the hospital on a snowy Friday morning and we face my fear.  My sheep in wolf's clothing.  I have armed myself with many mantras:  "Do not be intimidated by medical personnel or the process."  "I am not uncontrolled panic even though I may occassionally experience panic."  "Fear is the mind-killer."  "I am free from worry.  I know peace."  And I got great strength from "The Lord is my shepherd."  Angelique told me a quote from Winston Churchill "When in hell, march straight through."  

Flash Forward - February, 2008

I have faced my fear, my sheep in wolf's clothing 33 times wihtin a two year period.  It has truly helped me live longer.  Many times when I was discouraged (which I will discuss in later blogs) or angry, I would burst out laughing because Nadalene would be yelling in the background "Save the anger for the cancer."  I don't know why but that cracked me up every time.  She is bending down beside me and cleaning up my mess and saying "Save it for the cancer."  I still find that so funny.  

I read this just before I started chemo "I saw those chemicals as a great healing agent, something coming into my body to make me well.  I welcomed my chemotherapy with open arms."  Unfortunately I don't know who to quote it from, but whoever you are thank you.