Sarah drags her sorry ass back in.....

Hello, all! I apologize for my silence since getting out of the hospital. I know it's been just a crazy-long time since my last post, and I'm sorry for any worry and annoyance that I might have caused. I honestly do appreciate your caring and interest.

I've reached Day +65, and while I'm doing pretty well now, it's (predictably) been pretty damned hard, both physically and emotionally. My oncologist told me that it would be a start-and-stop practice of recovery at home, sort of a two steps forward/one steps back and then one step forward/two steps back sort of thing – and that's exactly how it's been.

For those that just want to get to my current state without all the gruesome details:

The long and the short of it is that I'm ok now. A lack of stamina and weakness continue and will for some months to come, my mental/cognitive functions are definitely diminished, and I've got some persistent yeast and dermatological issues that I'm told will dog me until I'm off the antibiotics that I'll be on for the next 5-6 months. No hair growth yet -- it takes much longer after the high dose chemo you get for a transplant than for normal chemo. (I got 10 months of chemo over 6 days.) But life has gone on, and I had a great Christmas with Lorraine and the furkids. It's good to be alive, to be honest.

That said, I'm much more tearful now, and I'm battling depression for some perverse reason. I say perverse because you'd think I'd just be grateful -- but I definitely feel grief and anger that my life has been turned upside down by this disease. I'm crying now as I type this. I haven't just neglected this blog, I've neglected my friends also -- I haven't kept up with my oldest, dearest friends, and I'm very quiet at home because I just really struggle with being my old cheerful self. I just don't have it. PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is said to be quite common after a bone marrow transplant (and cancer treatment in general, to a lesser degree,) so maybe I've got some of that going on. I think I'll start with some anti-depressants and then maybe see about a therapist later on. Some people deal with anger afterwards -- I've got some of that, in addition to the sadness and sense of loss. When I talk about it, I speak in terms of gratitude and hope, and refer to the positive possibilities that lie ahead, but I don't know if that's just an old positive habit of mine kicking in. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism. I know that I do feel positive on one level, and then afraid and angry and sad on another altogether. The former is for public consumption, and the latter -- until writing about it here -- has been entirely private. People don't typically want to see or hear about the ugly emotional underbelly, so I've kept it to myself. “If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all” -- and that left me with an ignored blog, and you with no updates at all.

But I am alive, and 2007 does bring hope and possibilities! I'm hoping to be able to return to work in the spring and I know that with time I'll just continue to feel better. Soon I should be getting approval for the Social Security Disability benefits I applied for last summer, so we'll get that desperately needed income at last, and I'm in the process of looking into food stamp benefits (which I definitely qualify for as well) so that ought to help also until I can go back to work. So things should steadily improve.

In other news, I’m back on the weight loss wagon! I’m doing about a half hour of cardio (a far cry from what I used to do, but it’s a start and I’m sure my heart and lungs are thanking me for it!) and I’m following the same plan I did to lose the big weight before. So far I’ve lost 4 ½ pounds. I’ll post more on this another day.

OH! We're going to be rescuing another Italian Greyhound adult male so Louie can have an iggy friend! He's just slightly younger than Louie – 3-4 years to Louie’s 5) and apparently very sweet and playful. He's fully recovered from leg surgery (they're prone to broken legs) and is ready for his forever home! We met him yesterday and he was adorable. He’d just been attacked by one of the new full-sized greyhound puppies at the rescue place, and had just gotten a few stitches in his back. So now we wait a couple of weeks to return with Louie to make sure they get along ok on first meeting, and we’ll take home this new guy! He’s purebred IG (Louie’s a mix but seems much more iggy) and he’s very, very wimpy. I think he needs some focused TLC to let him know he’s safe in a new home that doesn’t house another 16 dogs! His name is Sergio (Serge) and I don’t know if we’ll change it or not. We’ll see. For now I wish him good healing – and I can’t wait to see him again and bring him home! I really feel with his temperament and energy level he’ll be a great match with Louie, and he’s a big cuddler on the couch, so I anticipate some iggy-on-iggy LURVE once they relax in their friendship.

For those of you seeking to learn from my SCT experience – or otherwise just gluttons for punishment – I'll share more details on my post-SCT experience below:

When I got out, the biggies were weakness, an inability to eat (I ended up going like 3 weeks consuming nothing more than about 300 calories a day,) bowel/stomach problems, and a horrible case of full-body Candida resulting from the astronomical doses of antibiotics they gave me in the hospital. It totally wipes out your body's flora system, which for me, anyway, resulted in a pretty stubbornly yeasty existence that will continue to some degree or another until I get to stop taking antibiotics. A huge problem also was a gruesome case of "radiation recall" in the areas I had radiated (right front neck and upper chest and the same area on the rear side.) It was livid purple, with open, peeling, painful and raw open burns over the entire area -- so I had a straight line straight down the center of my neck (at least now I have visual verification that they DID manage to avoid radiating my esophagus!) Apparently our cells retain a memory of what has occurred to them, and the high dose chemo exacerbated the effects of the radiation to my skin. Poor Lorraine gets major points (as if she needs them!) for applying the cream to my raw, peeling back -- I was like an alligator shedding their skin and it was pretty disgusting. It's healed now, but still much darker in that area, so you see a brown rectangle representing my rads site.

I couldn't eat for a few weeks after getting out for a couple of reasons. First, my taste buds were totally shot -- things either tasted like crap or I couldn't taste them at all. Second -- and this was actually worse than the first reason -- I had this greasy film in my mouth, as if I'd just eaten a bunch of lard. SO disgusting! Anyway, it did pass....and I'm eating just fine now. I did lose 30 pounds though, from my transplant!

Two months out, still no sign of hair growth, and now over the last couple of days my eyelashes have opted to bail also. Not all, so far, but at least half – and I thought I’d been issued a reprieve!

One of the chemo drugs really darkened my skin, which I was told to expect. It has to peel off, and where I had/have the candida and have peeled, it's very light, so I have all these light patches over a dark landscape. It's not the end of the world and will eventually pass, but my reflection in the mirror definitely serves as a constant reminder that I've been through a war. Between the bald head, the radiation scars, and the discolored and patchy skin, I am definitely looking the part of the cancer survivor. It's hard. But this too shall pass, right?

So that's where I am! There are negatives and positives, and the process continues. I’m on the right road, though, and I’m pleased with my progress overall.

Happy New Year, everybody!