Online Chat Room

This space could use a little jolt of happy, wouldn�t you agree? I had my first post-op appointment with my surgical oncologist yesterday. Remind me to stop scheduling things in the afternoon. Waiting around all day turns me into a strung out lunatic. By the time we were ready to leave, my stress level had surpassed its breaking point. Paul drove. I cried. Perched on the examining room chair, I fidget with the ties of my pink cover-up. My doctor pokes his head in the door, smiling. Smiling is a good sign. I like smiling. We talk about how I�m feeling. He takes a look at my incision. He decides it�s time to remove the sutures. �I�ll be right back. I�m just going to run and grab a suture removal kit, ok?� Ok. But um, like -- do I still have cancer? I love my doctor. He�s the best. He�s brilliant. And sometimes brilliant people are�slightly scatterbrained? Or eccentric. So I forgive him for not launching into my pathology results the moment he walked in the door.  As he�s pulling...

September 26th is Mesothelioma Awareness Day , so I�d like to turn the mic over to my dear husband, Paul.  �Enough with the Liz chronicles. We want Paul!� said everyone, everywhere.  I hear ya, I do. Let�s talk about meso. If you�re asking Google (like I did 5 years ago when Paul was diagnosed) you�ll mostly just find lawyer ads and a lot of bleak statistics. Like these numbers are not going to make you feel good.  And I am not exaggerating about the sue-happy law firm sites. I just typed �Mesothelioma Awareness� into Google and FOUR ads promising �just retribution for a cruel disease� popped up on my browser. So...where�s my money guys? Huh? HUH? There�s a lot of unhelpful information about mesothelioma floating around on the Internet. So it was by divine intervention, I think, that I was able to find the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation while desperately searching for financial assistance a few years ago. This organization is the real deal. They are:  �th...

In case you were wondering, here are ten ordinary tasks that are impossibly hard to do after a mastectomy: getting out of bed  getting into bed getting comfortable enough to sleep in said bed  opening the refrigerator  opening pill bottles  opening anything  staying awake for more than a few hours at a time  putting on t-shirts  sitting on the same couch as a squirmy 3-year-old  updating your blog, apparently Things went fine on Monday. As fine as these things can go. No complications, unless you count a bout of nausea so severe it made me reach for the call light. I LOATHE using the call light, so yes, it was that bad.  No skin grafts were necessary for the wound closure. Thrilling news! We are so, so pleased about that. By Tuesday afternoon, I was home. I�ve been sleeping ever since. I wouldn�t be surprised if Ingrid equates adulthood with perpetual naps and constant doctors' appointments. Because that is what the adults in her life do: sle...

I�m a little late to the party, but a fellow breast cancer blogger, Nancy Stordahl , whom I admire greatly, proposed a summer blogging challenge last month. Though the grocery stores here in Western New York are stocked with Oktoberfest, and our temps are hovering right above sweater weather, the calendar agrees with me: it's still technically summer. I got Paul�s answers for these, too. And they�re good. 1. Share anything you want about your cancer diagnosis (or your loved one�s). Share your age, cancer type, stage, when you were diagnosed, family history (if any), your reaction, how you learned the news, or whatever you�re comfortable sharing. Liz: I was diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, stage IIIb, in February 2017. The cancer was in my right breast and had spread to my underarm lymph nodes. I was 30. No family history, really. Just one cousin on my dad�s side who was also diagnosed fairly recently. Because a lot of people ask: I found a lump so I went to the Doctor. P...

I can't write a post about "scanxiety" and then leave you hanging with the results. Actually, I can. And I did. And I'm sorry. My in-laws are in Buffalo for a quick visit from Wisconsin, so writing has taken a backseat. I have exactly 10 minutes of free time. Which I could use to clean out the kitty litter. Or vacuum the crumbs from our nutritious breakfast of saltines that Ingrid and I scarfed down on the couch while watching cartoons this morning. (Obviously, I am a pro at this whole motherhood thing.) The litter box can wait. So can the crumbs, according to the parade of ants that just marched by. Paul's scan results showed that things are mostly stable. There is some tumor growth, but it's minimal. Of course, we'd like zero tumor growth. We'd like tumor shrinkage. But I'll take mostly stable, I suppose. His kidneys are functioning normally again. His hemoglobin went up to 8.7. These are all good things. Symptoms are reappearing, though (cramp...