stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni

I have temporarily become a “sick” person.  Motherfucker, this shem cycle has been brutal, and I’m not too pleased about it.  I’m going to be having a serious discussion with my oncologist about: (1) reducing my steroid intake, and (2) reducing the taxol dosage.  I am not a very big girl (and getting smaller lately) and it doesn’t make sense that I should be ingesting the same steroid load as others.  And regarding the taxol, if that’s the normal dosage, I am serious about becoming a chemo dropout.  I have felt SO badly almost every day since treatment, and just when I think it’s subsiding in some way, it becomes worse in another.  I’m weak and exhausted, for fuck sake.

In my mind, I’ve successfully completed enough toxic cocktail to inflict sufficient pain on any remaining cancer cells (which, ahem, there are none of, let me remind you).  Do you know that my oncologist told me before this journey started, “if you were sixty, you wouldn’t be doing chemo” ?  Chemotherapy is something they do as a “just in case” in younger women with any type of “aggressive” qualifiers.  So my cells were “grade 3″ and that makes them scary.  But my lymph nodes were negative, and it’s considered a good thing that my ex-tumour was hormone positive, because that gives me more treatment options.  And hell, I’m going to do radiation after this.  When is enough enough?

I know, I know, you have to do “enough” to satisfy yourself that if ever there was a recurrence, you’re not kicking yourself for it.

It just makes me mad that I don’t get a chance to participate in the getting well by implementing new diet and lifestyle habits (well, of course, I can do these things, but they’re not given any attention by doctors).  Devin accuses me of thinking I’m somehow different than other breast cancer patients because I always wonder, when reading study results, “but what about non-medical things that people changed?”  You see, I have this crazy notion that I COULD radically alter my diet and add some good natural supplements and habits to my life that might actually have an impact.  Nobody has stats about this, so you don’t get a chance to get involved in your own healing; it’s just assumed that it’s out of your hands, and the only options are medical, slash-and-burn ones.  And then cross your fingers or something.