travels, races, and other musings

I'm now 5 weeks post-op and I'm feeling almost normal again. I still have some very slight cording pain/pulling in my arm, but with Dr. Wag's work, it's almost completely gone. What a relief! Both my incisions have healed up very well and I'm working my way back to full strength in BODYPUMP. I'm not there yet because I'm taking it very slow coming back in to get up to my full weight. It's not worth pushing things too quickly. I'll get there.  I was in sort of a crappy place emotionally last week. It's just hard sometimes. I'm doing a little better this week, but I started radiation today and it's not painful or anything, but there's just something about doing it that just feels...crappy.  The process began on Thursday with my simulation. I had to lie facedown on a table on a CT machine. Then they scanned me several times to pinpoint the exact area they will need to target. After they got me all lined up right, they put stickers on my ...

I met with my medical oncologist today. To recap, I have three docs: medical oncologist, breast specialist/surgeon (who I've been seeing since my original AHD diagnosis in 2019), and radiation oncologist. So this was my medical oncologist who looks at things from a broader perspective, and not just in the here and now, but she's also looking at preventing recurrence.  I mentioned the Oncotype DX in my previous post. This pathology test looks at a bunch of different genetic stuff in the cancer and it all gets scored and makes some determinations about possible future reoccurrence. If you're post-menopausal, you want that score to be under 26. If you're pre-menopausal, you want that score under 15.  Welp. That's not what we wanted. Sigh. I was given two crappy options: four rounds of chemo OR 2 years of monthly, painful injections into my stomach with a giant needle to block my ovaries from producing estrogen thereby putting me into "chemical menopause." Fun...

I was in Michigan this past weekend where the rest of my dad's things were. My step-mom had taken them there when she moved in August and I just hadn't gotten the opportunity to get up there until now and we combined the trip with her celebration of life on Saturday.  I got everything that was left sorted out and either carried back in a suitcase (thank you Southwest Airlines for the free bags) or shipped back (thank you Kevin at the FedEx store in Portage). Among the things coming back with us were more framed pieces of Red Baron photos than I'll ever need, several of my dad's Red Baron jackets (not his leather jacket, that belongs to "Boo" - read the book), all of his log books from his first flight to his last, a piece of his actual airplane (look at the photo below - it's the headrest and that red sort of triangular part just behind the pilot's head), and a little journal I found with some musings within it.  In this journal was his spiel that he w...

I'm a little over three weeks post-op and some things are going well and some things are problematic. First the good. I ran for the first time on Sunday. It was exciting! I mostly walked and then tried some light running and then some real  running and I felt really good! I'm feeling fairly normal in my surgical areas quite a bit of the time now, though I know all the deep healing isn't done and I still need to be very mindful. But my surgeon said to listen to my body and if it hurts, don't do it. It didn't hurt to run so a couple days later I went out again and ran for nearly all my run and felt super great. We were actually in Mexico visiting my mother-in-law and her husband. They spend 12 weeks a year in Mexico and we've often visited them. This was our first time since 2019. The resort they stay at has a lot of cool walking/running pathways and it was beautiful to run there. I tried to enjoy that time. Otherwise the trip was a little subdued. My mother-in-la...

It's been two weeks since my surgery and everything is healing up. I taught my first Cycle class last Wednesday and my first BODYPUMP yesterday. In Cycle I'm going nice and easy and in PUMP I'm going very light, in some instances with just the bar with no weight on it. It feels so good to be back in class! I had my followup with the surgeon on Friday and she says everything is looking good. I'm not in too much pain, but now and then I still need to take some Tylenol. It's mostly the incision at my armpit that really bothers me. The arm just moves so much! I'm trying to balance work and rest. I think I'm doing pretty well with the balance.  Yesterday I had an appointment with the medical oncologist (I have three doctors: breast specialist/surgeon, medical oncologist, and radiation oncologist) and she told me we're waiting on some more pathology. Apparently they need to do something called Oncotype DX to get more genetic information on the cancer cells. Fr...