Kitchen Sink Collective

I am referring to the glory that is the blood-thinner, which I am now taking daily and slowly calibrating dosage for on a weekly basis. Coumadin, or ‘generic Warfarin’. Fun times. How I came to be taking this starts with a story of feeling fired up to cook a big ol’ pot of spaghetti sauce, one Saturday evening in October, after feeling kinda droopy and pooped for a week (those symptoms were care of chemo that week.)

So I was at the kitchen counter, being supervised by Pancho who was as usual convinced I was prepping food for him and Lucy, and after chopping through some peppers, garlic and onions I was reaching for the mushrooms… And found I was totally out of breath and kinda shaky. Sort of like I had been running to catch the bus for five blocks or something equally foolish. And I was in a cold sweat. Chopping mushrooms should not be running a marathon. The dood had to help me get across the room to have a seat in the living room, Pancho sat and pouted, and I called the advice nurse who advised me to get to an ER post haste.

A CT scan revealed a pulmonary embolism in one of my lungs, and so began a week of injected blood thinners twice a day, and gradual doses of coumadin in the evenings. And here is where I add that chemo belatedly started fucking with my appetite and food preferences, which stinks when the hospital one is stuck in actually cooks good grub for its patients and staffers. Normally? I’m one of those folks barbed by jokes like, “Do you look at a menu and say ‘yes’?” Ah well, it is s l o w l y passing

Coumadin, though. Coumadin, let me count the ways it makes cooking and functioning a challenge as it saves your life. I have a lengthy list of foods that are now semi-verboten, thanks to their vit. K content. I live for brassicas like cabbage, broccoli, and other green leafies like chards, lettuces, kale, and various greens, but they’re high in K which promotes platelet production. Pfffft. It is perfectly livable of course, but makes me grumble a bit. Then we get to it being an energy sink. I could not get a straight answer on it being a brain and body drain until one of the infusion nurses over in chemo told me it can weaken the heck out of patients when the dosage is being worked out. That afternoon nap goes from 1 hr to 2 or 3, in other words. Perfectly livable, and I love sleep and all, but the tiredness can be a drag.

Hope that didn’t sound too whiny, but it is an update As far as can be determined, the chemo is still shrinking the cancer, woohoo. And that’s the bigger concern anyway.

Things have changed around ye old Kitchen Sink, since the early summer. They’re all related to that farking scum-sucking chronic cough I’ve been suffering since forever, too. Apparently, lung cancer can cause chronic coughing, but it tends to really elude doctors if you’re within a specific age range rather than a more stereotypical one better known for cancer diagnosis.

So in a nutshell, the obvious:
No asthma
No chicken fluff or mildew
No walking pneumonia
No allergies from Hades

I have very little memory of what follows, but apparently shortly after I turned 40 in June, my brain decided to just go tits up and stop keeping me mobile, stable, and normalish (which for me, admittedly, is a bit of a continuum…) The dood of course panicked and stuffed me into the truck and hauled my babbling ass to the hospital where the doc ordered a CT scan just to determine what had gone kablooey up in my head so they’d know how to treat me. And for the month of June, my imagination was way off in cloud cuckoo land, and I slowly relearned motor skills like walking and being able to control my plumbing (I have no shame talking about this stuff; it is freaky not being able to get up to take a piss.) In June, the first line of treatment was radiation therapy, believe it or not.

I had growths upstairs in my noggin, it turned out, which had metastasized from elsewhere. My oncologist actually told me last Thursday that the CT of my head had sort of resembled a Swiss cheese full of critters, it was so packed with growths. Thankfully, radiation and steroidal drugs are damn good at shrinking such phenomena, and this was easily cleared up after something like 10 bouts of radiation therapy. Most importantly, it sent my brain home and I came back to myself slowly. Nothing is the same, but I think that normalish dreaming patterns will return eventually, and that my memory will just continue to improve. (And here I cue up those milk cartons captioned with “HAVE YOU SEEN ME?” only it’s a pic of my brain looking a bit lost…)

All of this brings me to the wonders of diagnosis, and chemotherapy, which began in July. The cancer board could not initially figure out if the original cancer was in my lungs, or an ovary (what a weirdass choice, right?) It was decided this is small cell lung cancer, which is the last thing a life-long non-smoker would be plagued with apparently, but queuing up a post from last year addressed to all the dang smokers who exposed me to second-hand smoke as a kid, THANKYOUVERYMUCH. I think I am more than entitled to a bit of anger over that, especially if (Cat Deities forbid), it does the unlikely thing and shortens my life (which we all know it will not, because I just do not tolerate that kind of bullshit; Homey don’t play like that.)

What matters is this is easily treated, and the chemo I’m on seems to be working well at whomping the snot out of the growth centered between my lungs. Thanks to those who saw I needed help and got me into hospital in a NY minute, we’ve got a hell of a lot of success here, punctuated with humor (when I remembered how to crack jokes it was like the light switch for the sun clicked back on, hot damn!), renewed interest and energy in the Things That Make Sara Go, like the chickens, garden, and cooking, and now blogging, and returned physical functioning, phew.

So, that’s what all I’ve been up to. I have eleventy billion people to catch up with, it seems, so here’s a start.

I hope everyone’s in good health, and is happily occupied in what makes them happy. Thanks for your patience, and for reading my update

Last Friday I saw the doc with the local community hospital, and he’s a real smartypants. Listened to my lungs from every angle imaginable and prescribed an inhaled corticosteroid which will make its usage known within a couple weeks or so. His opinions? No chicken fluff. Possibly some mold spores, and definitely no cat dander despite Lucy’s attempts at doing some passive inoculation of my lungs. Not to mention Pancho’s attempts to make me part cat as well. And definitely no asthma. In a few weeks I have to submit to some intensive pulmonary testing which may or may not include a nosy inspection with a bronchoscope. Gradual progress, ladies and germs.