Let it flow, let it flow...

The good news is that I'm still cancer free! My doctor gave me the results of my recent PET scan yesterday. My next scan will be in a year, and after being cancer free for 5 years, I won't have any more PET scans. Woohoo!

I have a few side effects from the chemo and radiation, but I didn't get the worst side effect, which is death, according to the documents my doctors gave me. That's a really long-term side effect, that's tough to beat. Some of the side effects that people have while living came on a few months after the treatments stopped, and others are gradually happening. To tell the truth, I don't know if some of them are from the treatments, or just because I'm getting older, when shit starts happening at an alarming rate - that also happened when I had my colostomy bag. 

The side effect that I got a few months after treatments stopped is peripheral neuropathy. I wrote a lot about it in the post called "No Pain, No Cane." The condition has settled down a lot from the original pain, which often kept me from sleeping. I'm still on pain meds for it, but I recently went from taking six Tramadol tablets a day to only three. Because of the neuropathy, I also have foot drop, which I have mistakenly been calling "drop foot" since I first got it, in my left leg. "Foot drop is caused by weakness or paralysis of the muscles involved in lifting the front part of the foot." It's often caused by a nerve injury, which is what peripheral neuropathy is. Most of the time, it doesn't bother me. Sometimes, when I'm walking, and I can hear my left foot smacking down on the pavement, I become more aware of it. Sometimes, it causes me to limp and I am more aware of it. Once, when I was walking the dogs, I thought that we'd jog across the parking lot, but I quickly discovered that jogging, when you don't lift your foot up all the way is dangerous. My toes rolled and dragged on the pavement, and I almost fell down. I'm happy to report that my jogging days are over. I still go to the gym several times a week and use the elliptical trainer which is great for foot drop, because you don't have to lift your feet off of the foot pads. 

Because of some of my side effects from the radiation, I am allowed to work from home full-time, which I really love. I work at my computer, and my dogs lie on the floor around me. For my lunch break, I take them on a walk. I have to be really vigilant and avoid meeting up with other animals, because my three dogs' combined weight is a lot more than my weight, so they can pull me where they want to go. The other reason for that is because I've never trained them to obey me. So it's my own damn fault. A few months ago, my neighbors were coming out of the wooded area where my dogs and I were headed, and we met in the narrow street. I stopped and moved over to the side and was holding back my dogs, but instead of moving on towards their house, my neighbors stopped and held back their dog, who was lurching towards us and growling. That irritated my dogs, and they started pulling me towards the neighbor's dog, and somehow, I fell backwards and hit the right side of my body, including my head, on the asphalt. I remember hearing my skull smack against the street. Finally, being hard-headed paid off, and I avoided injury, except for some bruises. The husband quickly took their dog home, while his wife helped me up.  They promised to give me a wide berth anytime they see me walking the dogs. 

The main side effect which allows me to work from home is a sense of urgency to get to the bathroom. I did not relish the thought of having to jump up from my desk in the office and sprint to the women's restroom in front of all my co-workers, several times a day. And what would happen if my foot drop tripped me up, and I ended up on the floor instead of in the restroom? I foresaw some potentially embarrassing moments ahead. "Clean up in aisle nineteen!" Unfortunately, the quick move to the restroom from the sense of urgency is sometimes rewarded by the inability to let the flow go. My colorectal surgeon said that I have a posterior prolapse or rectocele, which can be the result of the radiation. Radiation can weaken the tissues between the vagina and rectum, and that makes the rectum bulge into the vaginal wall. The rectum goes from looking like a narrow stream which flows to a dam, to looking like a wide lake with tributaries which are below the dam, and the poop sits in the tributaries unable to let gravity work. When my surgeon was telling me about the condition she said, "And you'll see women with this condition squirming around leaning to one side and then the other or inserting their fingers into their vagina trying to push the stool out." And I thought, "I wonder where I might see these women."

Radiation has also caused problems with peeing, and I can no longer pet the dogs and pee at the same time. And I can't just pee when I want to; I have to concentrate. The only time that this doesn't seem to be the case is when I cough, and then, of course, I can't stop myself from peeing in my pants a little. But I think that happens to old people, too, so I have two excuses instead of one.

Next, I would like to tell you about my sex life. However, I don't have one, so there's not much to say. Based on what they told me that radiation did to my nether region, it now lives up to the other meaning of the term, which is "Hell, the Underworld, or any place of darkness or eternal suffering." The closest thing to intercourse I've had was briefly using the dilator that Dr. Big Hands gave me after I'd completed radiation. I have two dilators, and one is a little larger than the other. They are not very big, are made of smooth, medical grade plastic, and are flat on one end and rounded on the other. They are supposed to help stretch the vagina, after it's been made useless by radiation. You insert one (usually starting with the smaller one until you're ready to try the big, one and a half inch diameter model) three times a week for 10 minutes. And you let it sit like that and not move. From what I remember, it is a lot like real sex. 

My other side effect is depression, which I am being treated for at the cancer center where I received chemo and radiation - and the therapy is free, which doesn't depress me at all! Although I am truly happy to be alive and grateful that my side effects aren't worse, sometimes, I get depressed. And I worry about the old cancer coming back, or a new type of cancer appearing. And I wonder if I'll be lucky again. Reading or hearing about someone dying of cancer saddens and worries me. I think about how they probably suffered and didn't survive the treatments, didn't survive the cancer. I think about their family and friends who miss them. I think about what an awful disease cancer is. I don't want you to think that I'm clinically depressed and can barely function. I'm really good most of the time, I just get down sometimes. But, I always get back up. After coming this far, I'm not going to let something like cancer keep me down.