The End of the Beginning

The day after round 6 I don't feel nearly as terrible as expected. Round 5 was way worse. I couldn't really eat my new year's eve dinner and needed to get air several times to quell the nausea, but we did venture out with friends and I was awake (although not so pleased about it) at midnight. The next few days weren't the best, but not the worst either, so it could have been worse. The doctors' appointments have started tapering off too, which is scary and a relief all at the same time.

I meet with Dr. McAndrew 1 week after round 6 and have to wait forever. I thought cancer had taught me patience for doctors, but I am impatient and annoyed. She's pleased with my blood results and says that she doesn't need to see me again until I'm about to deliver. "What?," I ask her. "Don't I need to be monitored? What if the cancer comes back? Don't you want to take some blood or something?" She smiles and tells me that my white blood counts are higher than most people's are normally, and I'm in my low immunity week, so it's not necessary. And sadly, there's really no way to know whether my cancer has come back or has metastasized until I can have my scans, which I can't do until I deliver. She tells me that we can set my scans up now though and again tells me how much better I'll feel once I have them. I guess I'll feel better if they come back clear, but not so much if they don't. The only reason I need to come back to Tower over the next 7 weeks is to have my port flushed out. So scary. And so nice.

We spend a long time discussing my next chemo regimen and the options I have. I can either have smaller, weekly doses that I am more likely to tolerate well, larger doses every 3 weeks if I don't want to come to the office every week, and larger doses every 2 weeks that I probably won't tolerate well at all, but I'd be finished with treatment in 2 months instead of 3. Dr. McAndrew warns that this condensed "dose dense" treatment is particularly brutal because the body really needs 3 weeks to recuperate. She says that no studies indicate a difference in the results of the treatments and that we can discuss as we get closer to March, but that the decision is mine. I email my friend who is a fellow at U.C.I to see if Dr.Mehta , who I met with before beginning treatment, has any insight into which course of treatment is best prognostically. I wonder if it's better to feel pretty crappy for 3 months or incredibly crappy for 2. Boris and I will discuss.

Now that I only have 1 or 2 doctors' appointments a week instead of daily appointments, I decide to cut back on acupuncture to take advantage of my time off. The fewer appointments the better. For some reason, even though I'm super anal and so good about taking medications, I can't seem to remember to take all of my herbs. Each time I see Dr. Dao he asks me if I need more and usually I don't. He asks me how I'm feeling and about my appetite. I tell him I'm feeling pretty good, just tired, and my appetite is fine. He asks me what I've been eating. "Macaroni and cheese," I tell him. He looks up at me with a quizzical look and smiles. "Sharon, you know that's all fat, right?" "Yes," I tell him. "And it's delicious. I'm going to have to eat the saddest most un-delicious food for the rest of my life, so please don't make me feel bad about my macaroni!" He laughs and says I can eat anything I want but warns me that after I've completed chemo, he's putting me on a strict diet. Hurray. He also tells me that I should drink freshly made vegetable juice daily. "Nothing sweet," he says. "Greens, celery, cabbage, ginger, carrot tops." I can include a beet for flavor. I promptly order a juicer. The juice is one of the most disgusting concoctions ever. It takes me 1/2 a day to drink 1 glass. Now I cheat and add a carrot and a pear and it's much more tolerable. So tolerable that Miles will occasionally take a sip (although he usually ends up letting it dribble out of his mouth all over my clothes or floor).

I also use my time off to meet Susan, a woman I was introduced to when I was first diagnosed. Like me, she was diagnosed with a triple negative tumor during her first trimester, and like me, she opted to keep her baby while battling the disease. Unlike me her cancer didn't spread to her lymph nodes. She has been a source of strength, inspiration and information to me. When I first spoke to her she told me that after going through this, I will be superwoman and there won't be anything I can't do, there won't be anything that's overwhelming or daunting (except beating cancer). It is so wonderful to put a face to her voice and emails and best of all, I meet her gorgeous, perfectly healthy, happy little girl who just turned 6 months old. Susan and I could talk for hours about our experiences so far, our fear of the cancer returning, our babies. She shows me pictures of what she looked like pre-cancer. Her now dark brown, wavy short hair used to be straight and blond. I wonder what I'll look like when my new hair returns (which, thankfully, it has started to do! I look like G.I. Jane again. My hair is dark but too short to tell whether it's straight or curly. I can only tell that it's not as thick as before, although I've been told that will change.).

We spend a long time talking about how different our second pregnancies were/are from our first. With Miles, I knew his exact gestational age every day of my pregnancy. I knew how he was developing every day of my pregnancy. I knew when his bones were developing and when he was getting eyelashes, nails and hair. I thought about being pregnant every day. This time....not so much. I've had to ask Dr. Ottavi several times how far along I am in my pregnancy. I have no idea what Miracle Warrior is doing, I just know that he's busy and miraculous and kicking ass (often mine) every day. That's really all I care about. Miles' room was in perfect order a month before his due date. Miracle Warrior's room looks like a bomb of baby clothes exploded all over it. He has no furniture. And he probably won't until after he's born. And as much as I want to nest, and swear that our lives might come to an end if I don't have a chair for his room prior to his arrival, I know that he doesn't need furniture. He just needs me and Boris and some diapers.

I'm also using my time off to obsess about important things like new end tables for the bedroom, more pillows for my couches and art to hang on the bare walls of the house we've been living in for over a year. I'm driving Boris nuts with my daily emails and questions about decorating. I'm trying to convince him to let me buy an amazing orange leather chair that I "need." He swears it will go on sale and I explain to him that things I want never go on sale. A wise friend recently told me that if you have taste, what you want doesn't go on sale. So true. And so sad. I thought we were in an economic crisis but the stores that I want to buy things at apparently aren't suffering. At least not enough to discount the items I want. Sigh. Even though I can't buy anything I want at the moment, I'm enjoying browsing Elle Decor and Cisco Brothers instead of medical journals and cancer websites. It just feels so much better wondering which chair I should buy than which surgeon, chemo regimen, reconstruction technique, and the million other surreal choices I've made in the last few months.