Thursday, June 2, 2011

Five More to Go... | Halifax, NS Breast Cancer Treatments

Just five more radiation treatments to go.  It seemed so long ago that my journey started, and yet it sometimes seems like it just started yesterday.   I feared the journey, the ending seemingly so far off.  And here I am, having gone through so much - and so incredibly lucky that I didn't have even more to go through - and so near the end of treatment.

I have been blessed and have so much to be thankful for.  But that will all come in another post.

For now, I wish you a happy Friday.  I will spend it with my boy, having treatment and maybe finding a few moments to take some pictures and be thankful for how far we've come.

xoxo


...Kare
email:  karenk{at}eastlink.ca

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Life is a Beach | Halifax, NS

Sometimes I have bad days and sometimes I have good days.   And sometimes I have days that start out bad and end up great.

Yesterday, I'm happy to say, was a good day.

It was "clinic day" at the hospital.  Every Tuesday during radiation, I see either the oncologist or the radiation therapists to determine how my treatment is going and how I'm reacting (physically and mentally) to my treatment.  They ask me about side effects and how I'm coping with them.  Luckily, my side effects aren't too bad - my skin is turning a little pink, which is to be expected, and I have an assortment of creams and gels to use.  I've become fatigued in the past week or so, which surprised me - I had heard fatigue was a side effect but wasn't really expecting it... really, I'm going to get tired from laying on that table during radiation?  Guess I was wrong about that.  I'm working on sorting the fatigue out with medication.

After treatment, we looked upwards to that strange ball of light in the sky that we hadn't seen for weeks and weeks and weeks.  We jumped in the car, hit the grocery store for snacks, and then headed to the beach.

This was our therapy.

We got to play with someone's puppy.  He had been playing in the sand so we got lots of sandy licks (ewwwww)... 



We watched the ducks while we had dinner...







































  











We strolled along the beach...

























We got wet cleaning my flipflops...


 
 No.  Wait, that was just Jason who got wet.  :-)

I hope you are all got a chance to enjoy the sunshine as well.

xoxo
 
 
 
...Kare
email:  karenk{at}eastlink.ca

Monday, May 30, 2011

Northern Exposure | Halifax, NS

Let's face it, there is no shame left - my breasts have been seen by more people than you can imagine in the past six months.  Doctors, nurses, med students, technicians, janitors, they've all taken a peek.  Ha, kidding about that last one, just making sure you were paying attention.

I'm not shy about it; in order to treat it, you've got to see it.  But today during treatment, I felt exposed for the first time.  While setting me up for radiation, one breast is exposed so the technicians can line up my tattoos, while the rest of me is covered.  Should my gown move, the technician will quietly cover me back up.  Today my gown was inadvertently moved during a "roll."  Then it slowly crept its way off.  I couldn't move to cover myself up.  I should have spoken up and asked the technician to cover it but I felt silly - really, what's one more breast for them to see, they've already seen the other.

There were students in the room, which may have attributed to the exposure - they were anxious to get me set up correctly and probably didn't even notice.  The extra people in the room probably also attributed to my angst at being exposed.  You would think after all this time I would be okay with it.  Obviously, with everything I've shared here, I'm not that shy about my treatment and everything that goes along with it.  Maybe I should just think of it as "you've seen one, you've seen them all."




...Kare
email:  karenk{at}eastlink.ca