I did it!

As planned I did run my first 10K two weeks ago.  My goal was to run the whole 10K, even if I had to run slow, very slow.  I persuaded a good friend about a month ago to do the run with me and he did.  It was great because he drove the almost 2 hr drive while it was still dark out and snowing.  Before the race we got our bib numbers, and bags, drove through the course to see what it was like.  The shuttles took us from the finish line to the starting point where they had several fires going to keep the runners warm, in addition to some hot drinks (well warm chocolate, and tea).  As they fired the pistol for the start of the race it started to snow.  The temperature was well below freezing (17F) and after 3 minutes of trying to run faster than I usually do, I asked my friend to run ahead instead of trying to keep me company and thankfully he agreed.  For a long time people just kept passing me.  The cold air took my breath away, it felt like my lungs were frozen, but finally about half way (at 3 mile station where they had 'ice water' for the runners :) ) I started getting into my rhythm. Even passed a few people who had earlier run by me.  Once towards the end I almost fell face first because it was icy but I caught myself.  By the end my time was about what I was doing on the treadmill.  I was tired by it felt good to have completed it and achieved my goal.  Here is a photo to prove that I really was there:

Last week I went to an endocrinologist for my thyroid.  Based on the way my thyroid feels, my ultrasounds and family history he thought I had Hashimoto's disease, but the lab results looked good, so no need to take drugs for that.

On Monday I had my 6 month check up with the oncologist.  It went well.  Of course I got to hear the usual questions of if I was coughing up blood or had a bone pain, but did not let it bother me.  She wants to see me in six months again.  Before that I will be having another CT scan of my chest.. not sure when yet, trying to schedule it to work out with my teaching schedule.

That's all for now, folks..

Giving Thanks

It is not just today - Thanksgiving day - , that I give thanks.  Almost everyday I am thankful for my family and friends, for my health, for a job I love, for the beautiful place we live, for having the most wonderful support group in my life.  It is such an amazing thing to feel healthy - and after what I have experienced, it is truly appreciated.
I am working on the 10K training, only 10 days left..  It is going well and the crazy thing is that I actually enjoy it.  Seeing the progress is very rewarding and is a great example of how with practice, effort and time we have the potential to do things that we never thought we could.
A few weeks and I will have my 6 month check up - it will be the first time that I have not seen an oncologist for a full 6 months since the diagnosis.  Of course I am a little anxious but really too busy to think about it for now.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Celebrating another birthday

43!  Three birthdays since the diagnosis.  I used to get upset about growing another year older, not any more.  It actually reminds me that I am here and 43, that is awesome.  I am so grateful to feel healthy, to have the most wonderful family and a supportive circle of friends.

If you know me you probably know that I hate running.  Well, this year my book club proposed a personal challenge for everyone to tackle.  I chose to run a 5K. In my previous life I have run only very rarely: when I was in high school for training for the tennis team and a little in college for a month or so.  That is it.  I hate it because I get out of breath, and cannot do it for even a short time.  This spring I installed an app for Couch to 5K and started training.  And little by little noticed that I could run longer each weak.  Finally early in May I made it, I ran the 5K with a friend, and bunch of little girls (it was a Girls on the Run event).  It felt so good to accomplish it.  Then summer came and I stopped.  This fall when I got back on the exercise wagon I decided to run a 10K.  So I am training - it is my 8th week (I fast forwarded the first few weeks since I was still in good enough shape from the spring) and will be running 5 K this week.  My goal is to be able to run the 10 K without walking on December 7th in Moab.  I really do not care about my time, maybe that will come later.  But I love being out as the sun rises, seeing the beautiful colors on the mountains, feeling the cool (and it is getting colder and colder) air on my face.  I have also signed up at the gym on campus just so I have the option of a tread mill if the weather gets so bad that I cannot run.  This was my view about a month ago, full moon setting as the sun is rising.

I hope I can post a picture of myself at the end of the 10K in a month and a half.

Cheers!

another 6 month appointment

Today I had my 6 month check-up.  During last 12 days my mind was so preoccupied with work and the events in Turkey that I did not have a chance to worry about it.  So the only thing that I had to tell myself before seeing the Dr. was not to let her words worry me.  Because it seems like after each visit I end up having a scan or another visit to the Dr. because I get stock on something that she said and make myself sick.  So when she walked in with a student Dr. and started asking a series of questions: "how is your vision? blurry?  double?  what about headaches?   trouble breathing?  coughing?  do you cough up blood? any pain in your bones?  what about your abdomen?" I was taken a little back but tried to look at it as a class demonstration, and I was the object of the lecture. 
Anyway, everything went well, physical examination fine. CBC fine.  The liver panel was not in by the time I left, I will call tomorrow and confirm that it was fine. 
She wants to see me in 6 months, so yaay!

See you in a year

The appointment went well. The CT Scan looks good. I will come back in a year for a check up and another CT Scan :)
Now off to see the Picas
so exhibition

Another check up

We are back in Houston for another CT Scan and a Dr's appointment. We are waiting for the CT Scan right now. Earlier thay had to draw blood and I got a STUDENT phlebotomist!! She tried but couldn't go in so an experienced phlebotomist took over - yay for experienced phlebotomists! She got in the vein in the first trial.
I feel like I did my share by letting a student get experience without getting hurt too much. ( By the way can you tell that I just learned the term "phlebotomist" and proud of it :))

Two years ago, today

I got the phone call from the doctor, telling me I got cancer. 
It has been two years!  I am so grateful to be here, I am so grateful to feel healthy, I am so grateful that this year's anniversary did not bring up as much anxiety as last year.

LIFE IS GOOD!

Bone scan - CLEAN :)

This morning sharp at 8 am I called the doctor's office and left a message on their answering machine.  The message basically informed them that I had the bone scan on Friday and kindly asked them to call me on my cell phone to let me know of the results.
At nine am the girls and I were at the Girls Scouts meeting - to find out what it is all about and if there were any troops accepting new Daisies or Brownies.  I may actually end up being a Troop leader or preferably Assistant Leader, so we can have a troop at our elementary school..  We'll see, I need to contact a few people.
Then we had to go to the dentist for Ada.  She has always had problems with her teeth - so I was worried.  Especially since she is getting her 6 year molars and as they break skin, the pocket that forms over half of the tooth is a perfect place for bacteria to hide.  So far so good, no cavities.  The doctor encouraged us to pull her second wiggly tooth, so Dan will work on it tonight.
Then just as we were driving from the dentist to the girl's friends' house my phone rang.  It was one of the nurses that works for my oncologist and she told me that the bone scan looked normal.  Yaaay, yaaay, yaaay! I had been so worried.  Over the whole weekend, I had several parts of my body ache and hurt.  I found the spot that bothered me on my back, it is the corner of the scapula (shoulder blade) that faces the other scapula.  So now that the bone scan looks normal I am relieved that it is just a muscle that tenses up even more as I worry about it.
I am so thankful and grateful for this wonderful result.  Last week, Deniz asked me quite a few questions about the bone scan.  They were specially bothered by the fact that we had to stay away from each other.  She wondered why I was having the scan done, what would happen if the scan showed "something", etc.  I tried to answer her questions correctly but did not want to talk about if the scan result was not good.  We left it at, " we'll talk about it if it come to it", so I am so happy that we do not have to have that talk.

Well, tomorrow our semester starts.  Thankfully I do not have any classes tomorrow, just need to meet with my research students. It will be short week with no labs.  I am looking forward to the next semester but cannot deny that I really did enjoy this wonderful break.

Wishing everyone a great week!

I am one hot mama..

Yeap I am hot. Radioactive that is... As of noon yesterday I had 25 mCu of Tc-99. Hopefully it is much less now. It has been 15 hours. So that is more than two half lives. First 12.5 then 6.125. I bet I have less than 5 now, especially since you lose the radioactive tracer through urination too.
Well the scan went fine. I was given the tracer intraveneously at noon (the nurse did a wonderful job of giving the injection) and then went back at 4 for the scan. Basically you lay down on the strecher and they bring a 2'x2' platform (the sensor) very close to your body (a little clostrophobic- it almost touches your nose) starting on your head and the sensor moves very slowly towards your toes. I was done in half an hour.
I don't know the results, of course the technicians are not supposed to tell me. So I have to wait till Monday for my Dr to call.
I am a little worried, thus the blog post at 3 am. I am staying at my father in law's house. The girls and Dan came by for half an hour to see me last night. It was nice to see them. They were wild as usual. I will go back home in the morning to fix their hair for ballet. By then it should be less than 3 mCu. I think that as long as I don't sit too close to them we should be alright.

I pray that I will have the wisdom and strength for whatever the future holds.

Pelvic U/S OK, now getting ready for a bone scan

I know it has been obnoxiously long since my last post but you should take that as a good sign.  During most of them time I was fine.  As a matter of fact I seemed to find a way of dealing with my occasional body aches and pains without getting myself all freaked out.  I found that if I approach this situation a lot like meditation, where you acknowledge a thought that comes to your mind but then let it go without dwelling on it, the pains and aches do not bother me as much.
I have had a few instances where the physical stuff has bothered me.  For example just before Halloween, I stayed up till 2 am in the morning working on a craft project for Ada's class.  It involved a lot of cutting and pressing, and the next three days my peripheral neuropathy came back.  Not only to my hands but also my feet.  It had not bothered me since the chemo days, but alas here it was again. From this experience I learned not too be mean to my body, i.e. get enough sleep, do not overdo stuff.
Then about a month after that, I had a few days where I felt very out of breath.  It got so bad that I felt like I was being chocked.  I think I made it much worse than it was - and gave myself anxiety attacks.  Again it went away on its own and have not had the trouble since then.  Even through those days I could ride the stationary bike without problems, which suggested that it was more psychological than physiological. 
At the end of November we had our health check up for health insurance again, and just like last year I got 100 pts out of 100.  Yaaay for me.  Mid December I saw my oncologist and had blood tests, and all seemed OK. 
One issue that I have with my oncologist is that she says things without considering the individual.  For example, when she asked me how I felt, I said: "fine..  you know, pains, aches come and go".  So she started telling me a story about her neighbor, who had a lump in her breast, had it removed, pathology came back normal, then another lump started growing, so she didn't bother, and now she is dealing with Stage 3 Breast Cancer. Aaarghh!  I really do  not need to hear these stories,  I am already super sensitive to my body anyway, I do not need to be made even more jittery. On top of this one of my friends told me about her 31 year old niece (with a 4 year and a 4 month old), who got diagnosed with metastatic (to liver) Breast Cancer.  I think these stories got me super worried again, so I called my oncologist on Thursday and mentioned her about my back discomfort, that has been bothering me especially since a cold I had just before Christmas.  So we decided that it was best that we did a bone scan to make sure that the "discomfort" was not metastatic disease in the bone.  It is most likely my muscles around my shoulder blade, that do tend to tense up with anxiety and stress anyway, plus the fact that they are trying to overcompensate/adjust to the missing breasts :).

Well, the scan is scheduled for this Friday.  I will have it done and stay somewhere else so I do not irradiate the girls and Dan and also do not contaminate the bathrooms.  I think we'll get back to normal daily life after Saturday since the half life of the radioisotope is 6 hours, and most of it is eliminated via urine anyway.  Lots of water will be drunk that day :).  

On a happier note, we had a good Holiday season.  Went sledding both on Christmas day and New Years Day.  We did two short family trips, one to Denver to see the Van Gogh exhibit and another to Phoenix for a scientific meeting.  A lot of driving but I count that as family time also, since we listened to a lot of books on tape and talked, etc.  One day in Phoenix as Dan was attending a meeting, I took the girls to the Zoo and we spent 7 (!!) hours there.  Wonderful time! first time that I didn't had to carry a child or push a stroller.  The girls were super well behaved, Deniz could read most of the signs, they both could walk on their own and were very excited and interested in the animals.  They got to feed stingrays and ride on camels.  They talked to the prairie dogs, watched the elephant dance, the orangutan use a tool to get her food, the vultures sunbathe.  They were good in the hotels we stayed at.  Ada was very excited and always had a nice comment like "Mom, this is a lovely room!"  We also got to see family. Although it was for  less than 12 hours :) we enjoyed visiting with them.

OK, this is all for now.  Grand Junction is super cold these days, the temperature doesn't even come close to 30's.   Snow everywhere.  We are excited about the days getting longer though, albeit slowly, it is a sign that the spring is not that far away.  Updates to come next week everyone!  Wishing everyone a Happy, Joyful and Healthy Year!