The Ugly Truth

Its been almost 2 months since my final chemotherapy session and by all accounts it appears I’ve beaten the Big C, notwithstanding that I’m still awaiting that absolute CANCER FREE designation from my doctors.  You would think all would be wonderful but alas no.  I’d been surrounded by family and extended family just one week after my last chemo during a cousin’s wedding.  By the 3 week mark, my taste buds were coming back and my oncologist had given me the all clear to resume eating raw vegetables.

The ugly truth is I’ve been a ball of emotions, exhausted and I dare say experiencing depression.  I’ve gotten mad at myself for feeling this way, after all I ought to be happy to be on this side of treatment.  I’ve wanted to blog but felt paralyzed, unable to put my thoughts down in any sensible way.  Hot flashes have become the bane of my existence.  It’s as if I’m now just mourning, just able to process what I’ve been through over the past 7 months.

I learned about my cancer diagnosis while in the throws of working on a concert production late last year.  So ‘Breast Cancer’ simply became another heading on my checklist, according to my BFF I went into full show production mode with it.  I planned everything meticulously and was in surgery just 10 days after the concert took place.  My sister calls it ‘warrior mode’, which is I suppose, exactly what I needed to be to get through surgery and chemo.  But now that its all done I’m sad, in a way mourning the loss of the person I was before all this.  In many ways I’m a much better person now, certainly healthier, but I still miss the old me, my old body.  And yes, I miss my breast. And I hate dislike the prosthesis.  It’s heavy and uncomfortable and makes me feel self conscious.

Although I’ve approached my diagnosis with general optimism, right now I feel heavy.  Cancer has laid bare things I wasn’t ready to face, my vulnerability, the sheer uncertainty of life.  And while it’s likely that I’m cancer free, cancer is always going to be there, as if it’s waiting in the wings or perched on my shoulder like an annoying fly.  It was easy to write about cancer, writing about depression, not so much.  Cancer you can explain, how on earth do I explain these feelings of melancholy.

Thankfully, there is light at the end of the tunnel.  I truly believe in the power of community and sharing.  Last week I reluctantly made the trek to my monthly cooking club session, I was not feeling myself at all.  Thanks to the moderator and my sister for pushing me to go.  These folks, the majority of whom I just met in January allowed me to cry and be vulnerable, and had no judgement when I pulled off the prosthesis and shoved it in my handbag.

Pictured with my cooking club family at Stush in the Bush

So while right now I feel like I’m in a bit of a fog, seeing things in varying shades of grey, hope springs eternal that the color will come back.  Soon.

Living Through Chemo

Chemotherapy has been a delicate dance of managing symptom after symptom after symptom.  With every cycle comes something new.  As much as I thought I knew beforehand, seen my mother go through, heard from survivors, been warned by my doctors, I still had this crazy (stupid) notion that the symptoms would hit me all right from the start.  Makes no sense I know.  Instead they came one after the other, gradually, slowly, almost deliberately, never really overpowering me.  Except maybe the hairloss.  That one hit hard. After all I have a whole blog post dedicated to it.

If you’re still here reading, you’re clearly interested so let me break down how its gone cycle by cycle so far:

Cycle 1

Day 1 I felt fine but to be on the safe side I stayed home, leaving home only to get a blood count booster shot in the evening.  My first symptom was a sore throat which came on in the evening of Day 2.  Day 3 of Cycle 1 is probably the worst I’ve felt throughout this whole process.  My stomach was upset all day, I was nauseous, and spent a great deal of time sitting on the throne if you get me.  Actually I must admit that I napped on the floor next to the toilet.  Don’t judge me, it was easier than doing the back and forth from the bedroom to the bathroom.  Pains in my hands and feet started on Day 3, throbbing and soreness really.  I’d been warned that I would feel tingling or pins and needles but that’s not what I felt, not yet anyway.  The foot pains were so intense I couldn’t sleep.  That day the 2 things that got me through was smoking ganja for the nausea and injesting THC oil (the only thing seemed to numb the pain and knock me out, allowing me to get the rest my body needed).  Other symptoms included pains under my right arm and in the chest area (around the area of my mastectomy scar) and some coughing.

I can confess it now but by Day 4, I was back at work.  Sounds bad I know but I had to do it.  The restaurant had been closed for 2 months, I admit my timing may have been off but as it turned out that was the week we had to reopen.  I wore a mask around other folks and when I felt low or tired, I went into my car to take a rest.  When I look back on the turn of events that week, I have no regrets but I fully get that it may not have been the wisest thing to jump back into work so soon after chemo.  The hairloss began two weeks after Cycle 1 was administered and one week after that right at the the start of Cycle 2 I was bald.

Cycle 2

Just as with the first cycle, Day 1 and most of Day 2 were uneventful.  The coughing and sore throat began in the late evening of Day 2.  By Day 3 I started to feel what I can only describe as a dull pain everywhere, my head, my joints, even my teeth. I thought about popping a couple of the Panadene I had left over from my hospital stay but held off thinking “I’ve got over 8 drugs in my system right now, don’t need anymore”.  Thank goodness for a surprise call from a cancer survivor on Day 4. She shared with me that she had the same experience and helped me to see there was nothing wrong with taking a little help for the pain.  The soreness and throbbing in my feet returned, but not in my hands.  It was a real challenge to walk from my bedroom to the kitchen.  The nausea wasn’t too bad but diarrhea came back with a vengeance.  This time around I made sure to stay home on Days 4 and 5 and by Day 6 I was feeling more like myself and able to return to a full day of work.  The following week I noticed that the skin around my finger tips was stripping, within a few days of that my hands were full-on peeling.  I quickly had to halt my newfound love of bread baking.  I couldn’t have folks eating my skin now could I ….uggghh gross!  

Cycle 3

Again things started the same, pretty easy Day 1 and most of Day 2.  Diarrhea by day 3, slight dull pains in my head, joints and teeth again but not as bad as during Cycle 2. The pains in my feet returned along with my hands.  This time I got the tingling/pins and needles in both hands and feet.  More than anything though I felt absolutely exhausted.  The tiredness lasted well into the following week.  I was constantly yawning and had to take daily naps.  Perhaps that was the cumulative effect of all the chemo cycles.  Heading into Cycle 3, I noticed that a few of my finger nails looked like they were starting to lift.  Please God, don’t let me lose my nails.  Two weeks after cycle 3 was administered my nails started to show signs of darkening/discoloration.  My oncologist had prepped me for this but again I got lulled into thinking it wasn’t going to happen to me since it didn’t occur right away.  So much for that huh. 

Today I head into my 4th and hopefully final chemo session.  Hallelujah 🙌🏾🙌🏾. And guess what??  Life did not come to a grinding halt.  Through it all I’ve still had find a way to get work done between sessions, I’ve had to figure out a way to keep the wheels grinding at the restaurant (including on the chemo weekends), still had to keep it moving.  There has however been one other symptom I wasn’t quite ready for…..HOT FLASHES.  They started about 3 weeks ago and have ramped up fiercely this week.  I swear yesterday was one 24-hr hot flash, and don’t tell me summer’s coming and it’s starting to get hot.  As I type this, I’m sitting in front of the fan sweating bullets, they come fast and furious even when I’m in full-blown A/C, they come on in my sleep, anytime, anywhere. I had been told that my menstrual cycle may be affected by chemotherapy and that the medication slated to start after the chemo is over would throw me into menopause but Lord knows I wasn’t ready for this part just yet.  It’s a good thing I’m not into wigs cause there is no way I could wear one right now, I’ve had to even park my brand new headwraps due to these confounded hot flashes.  The struggle is real.

Oh yes…there has been one other symptom, one that’s pretty much persisted right from the start of Cycle 1 and all throughout this process: a metal taste in my mouth.  It distorts the taste of every striking thing, the only thing I can really detect is hot pepper.  It’s been terribly frustrating, especially since I’m operating a food business and even more so because I love to eat!  Counting down and hoping that in another month or so my taste buds will be back to normal.  Ready to get my grub on if you know what I mean.

Anyhoo….I really am just super thankful that chemo hasn’t completely mashed me up and keeping my fingers and toes crossed that I will get through this last round relatively unscathed.

Turns Out I Wasn’t Ready

I thought I had things under control.  And then came hair loss.

It’s widely known that one of the side effects of chemotherapy is the loss of hair.  No big deal…it will grow back.  After all, I had watched my mother deal with losing her hair not once but twice as she tackled the ‘Big C’.  I had fooled myself into thinking that the hair loss was the least of my worries.

My first chemo cycle was not as rough as I had expected, yes I had some slight nausea, pains in my feet and hands but overall I just felt weak and fatigued.  Nothing too unbearable.  When there was no hair loss in the immediate days after that first cycle, I was like…”Maybe I’ll be lucky and not lose my hair”.  And then a week and half later it began.  At first it looked like normal shedding, but then it got progressively worse.  Next thing I knew there was hair everywhere, on my pillow when I woke up, in the bathroom sink, on the floor….just everywhere.

Exactly 2 weeks after my first chemo treatment, I headed to the hairdresser to do a big chop.  Again, no big deal right, especially since I’ve worn my hair in a ‘teenie-weenie afro’ many times over the years.  Once I had cut it I remembered how much I loved wearing my hair short….yeah I could do this again. 

Except I was still losing hair.  If I so much as brushed my hand across the top of my head, hair came out.  Pretty soon, I had resorted to only touching my hair once for the day in the morning.  Less than a week after cutting it while market shopping, a friend hinted that I might need to start wearing a scarf.  A bald patch had now appeared in the back of my head.

The next morning (last Thursday in fact) on the dreaded chemo day, as I massaged hair product in, the hair loss was more profound than before.  Literally the side of my head had peeled out.  I sent this picture to my sister who joked that I looked like a little birdie.  My response to her…. “more like a peel head jankro”.

It threw me into a tailspin.  For the first time since this whole experience began, I felt real depression.  I had planned to go into work for a few hours that day before chemo at 5pm but I simply couldn’t move.  Over the course of the day  depression turned to guilt, guilt because it felt like I was being vain to put so much stock in my hair of all things.  Turns out losing my hair was actually harder than losing my breast.  It hit me like a ton of bricks that no matter what I did, I had no control.  No matter how much I cut my hair, it was still coming out.

Later while scrolling through Instagram, I came across this post from The Laurus Project (@thelaurusproject), a non-profit organization focused on helping breast cancer survivors thrive.

View this post on Instagram

Have you ever thought, I can’t do this. Have you ever thought, I can’t compete against cancer. Have you ever thought, I just don’t have anything left inside to fight. — Well you do. You can beat breast cancer and take it to a whole new level. Because the courage, is already inside. #thelaurusproject #orangeisthenewpink #breastcancerthriver

A post shared by The Laurus Project®️ (@thelaurusproject) on Mar 15, 2018 at 9:50am PDT

The image and caption was just what I needed in that moment.  Better to take control and just shave it off.  So on the way to chemo, I made a quick stop at the barbershop.

BEST. DECISION. EVER.

Celebrating My Tribe

Yesterday we celebrated International Women’s Day and it got me to thinking about all the amazing women in my circle who’ve supported me in my darkest hour.  Without their love, support, prayers and helping hands I could not navigate my way through this difficult road.  The females in my tribe stepped up in a big way….my sister, cousins and sister-friends rallied in a way I never expected, although knowing them I shouldn’t have been surprised.

You see I’m not one to ask for help.  I guess that comes from being a single woman in my late 40’s.  When things need to get done, I do it myself.  But life has a funny way of twisting and turning.  This experience more than anything is teaching me that no man or woman is meant to trod this earth alone, we all need to be nurtured, loved and supported.  We all need help.  And we shouldn’t be afraid to ask for it.  Asking for and accepting help has been the most humbling and vulnerable part of this journey for me.  The women in my tribe flew in from overseas, drove miles to pick me up in Montego Bay or just to visit, were prayer warriors and a constant presence at the hospital, opened their homes to me for recovery after surgery, set up a Tina’s Tribe chat group and a Go-Fund Me campaign, paid bills, accompanied me to doctors appointments and so much more.  Now as I’m going through chemotherapy, they are by my side, even tag teaming to call me when they suspect I’m defying orders to take it easy ;-).

The truth is though its not just the women in my immediate circle, there are some pretty dope men in my tribe too.  Leading the pack is my father who lives overseas but calls daily, my brother and nephews who send messages of encouragement.

Then we have my amazing medical team, my surgeon and oncologist, even the oncologist friend of a friend who’s taken an interest in my case from all the way in Maryland.  College friends who although we don’t speak regularly came through to visit me in the hospital, the brothers and husbands/partners of my female tribe who visited and held things down for their women as they rallied for me.  The farmer who sent me freshly cultivated greens, the male friends who continue to call or message to check up on me, drop by with food, guinea hen weed, sour sop leaf, lemons…I appreciate you all and every little act of kindness.  I can’t leave out my social media family.  Social media gets a bad rap sometimes but for me the tribe I’ve cultivated on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have been nothing but supportive.  Messages of encouragement, prayers, advice, connecting me with survivors, getting a great hook up to have affordable genetic testing done have all come from me sharing my cancer story on social media.

So this post is simply about giving thanks.  Giving thanks to all the folks who’ve touched me along this path.  And giving thanks to God for putting all these people in my path.

 

Smoothie Heaven

I have a confession….I love ice cream.  Love, love, love ice cream.  Give it to me in a bowl, in a cone or in a milkshake and I’m at my happiest.  Now that I’m transitioning to a plant based diet, regrettably the only non-dairy ice cream I can find in Jamaica is soy based.  Given my current condition, I’d prefer to stay away from soy products as much as possible, so no luck on the ice cream front 😦

The ice cream cravings haven’t gone away so I set out on a mission to come up with the next best thing…vegan smoothies that would fake me out into thinking that I’m drinking an ice-creamy milkshake.  I’m happy to report that this weekend’s experiment was a success. I’ve come up with two winners – Blueberry Almond & Chocolate Strawberry.  Both have a few things in common….frozen bananas, almond butter and almond milk.  I actually used dried berries in both because I refuse to buy the super expensive imported fresh berries on the market here.  Feel free to substitute with fresh or frozen berries.  Right now I’m staying away from refined sugars, so I threw in dried dates for some sweetness.  Its perfectly fine to sweeten by adding up to a tablespoon of maple syrup, agave or honey (bearing in mind that honey takes it out of the vegan realm).

They both turned out creamy and delicious.  Can you say milkshake craving satisfied!!  Can’t wait to try my hand at other flavour combinations.  Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Blueberry Almond Smoothie  (serves 1)

Ingredients: 1/3 cup dried blueberries, 1 frozen banana, 3/4 cup almond milk, 1 tablespoon almond butter, 1 tablespoon flaxseed meal, 2 dates & 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.  Toppings – dried blueberries, cacao nibs & hemp seed hearts

 

Chocolate Strawberry Smoothie (serves 1)

Ingredients:  1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa, 1/3 cup dried strawberries, 1 frozen banana, 3/4 cup almond milk, 1 tablespoon almond butter, 1 tablespoon chia seeds, 2 dates & 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.  Toppings – dried strawberries, cacao nibs, sliced almonds

 

Method – Blitz ingredients with 4-5 cubes of ice in a high speed blender until well combined and smooth.  Garnish with toppings and enjoy!