First Experiences

My birthday is May 8th, I worked my last day before my six month leave from work. At my house we usually have cake and ice cream with my family. I told my parents I wanted brownies this year only because I know my family can eat those up pretty fast and I wasn't really much of an eater ever since I had my surgery. I was very surprised when my friends Ashley, Nicollette, and Aaron came over to give me birthday gifts. These gifts weren't the usual gifts either, they were all something that described me. Aaron came over to give me a bucket of cookie dough and a book light, Nicollette came over and gave me a book she had told me about and I wanted to read, and Ashley came over with some batman balloons and... a life size Captain America. Let me tell you, I love Captain America mostly because of the movie and yes his body.
The next day was my dry run for radiation, this is where they explained how it would go and did everything other than give me the radiation treatment. I would start that the 10th. On the 10th I also had my port surgery in the morning. I was exceptionally nervous for this surgery because my last surgery was hard to cope with. Will it be painful? Will I be able to do my radiation treatment today if I just had surgery? Apparently they weren't going to really "knock me out", but I would be awake. Awake during surgery? yes, awake. They promised I wouldn't feel anything although someone warned me that the first thing I would feel is like a painful bee sting. That actually got me nervous since I didn't want any pain. I started to panic while I was lying flat while they prepped me. The people there were very funny and nice and they had some good music playing and even asked me what my favorite station was on pandora and played it for me. They asked me questions of my future and were very optomistic even though they knew that I was getting this port because I had cancer.
I was still not relaxed, if anything I was just getting more nervous. They told me that they were going to start and the next thing I knew I was feeling very dizzy and closed my eyes. I woke up in the recovery room feeling really good being drugged. When I got up I got really dizzy and once again nauseated. I just can't have a surgery without getting sick.
Later in the afternoon I had my first radiation treatment. It was an easy first day of radiation since I was drugged up and all. When they put the mask on me, they had to snap it to the board, keeping me locked in. The mask was so incredibly tight that I could barely breathe. During the whole fifteen minute process I looked at one small light on the ceiling to keep myself from having a panic attack. Though the worst part of it was the smell, now normally people can't smell the "radiation" but I could and it always made me sick. I think I could calm myself from being held down by a tight mask, but that smell was excruciatingly painful to sit through. After each treatment when I got out of the mask it would leave marks on my face. My sister and mom said it looked like I had "snake skin".

I continued my radiation treatments everyday, on the 15th I started my chemotherapy. The first day of each chemo cycle was the longest because I had three poison IV's going through my body, the next two days of that week I would only have two. While I had the chemo going I had radiation at the same time. Within two weeks I could tell my body was reacting to the many treatments. I started having saliva issues. My saliva started to thicken, and my taste buds were starting to dissolve.

I had been having problems eating since my last big surgery. I was told to keep drinking ensures, they are so disgusting I never want to drink one again unless I have to, but they did help my weight. Until I decided to stop drinking them cause I couldn't handle the taste any more. My weight kept decreasing and I got down to 93 pounds. It was either get a feeding tube to get my nutrients or not and force myself to eat through the pain and feeling nauseated. I decided for myself that the best thing for me was to get a feeding tube. My doctor, parents, and other family had used that as a weapon to get me to eat. I knew I didn't have much of a choice, but I decided for myself that I would get a feeding tube. If something could help me feel better this was it. I had a blood check on the 24th and they told me that my blood count was really low, my white blood count was at zero. The next day I was scheduled to get my feeding tube in the morning.

I have a terrible gag reflex, so when I got my feeding tube in, it was painful, exhausting, and traumatic. During this whole experience, having to get a feeding tube was one of the hardest things for me to do.