The Comfort of Home.......

11/9/12--Friday--Day 27--Whew...Home, For a Few Days
It was super nice to come back home this afternoon after being in Phoenix since Tuesday.  I had planned to work at least half of the day, but strangely, I realized my brain just wasn't snapping the way it should.  I kept making crazy, absent-minded mistakes, so I just decided to hang out a few hours with Trina before she flew out, and take it easy for the rest of the day while Brooklyn and I drove home.

We are scheduled to see the radiologist oncologist on Monday so guess it will be back to Phoenix.    She will discuss the six weeks of radiation treatment that will come once I recover from surgery   So far we have been told it will be daily for six weeks, so looks like I will be relocating to Phoenix maybe at the first of the year.

Emotionally I'm sort of in a strange place right now.  I'm super relieved the news isn't as bad as we first anticipated--no mastectomy, no anticipated hair loss.  A lumpectomy is much better than a mastectomy!  But at the same time, it becomes easy to think this is no big deal.  Don't get me wrong; I want to stay very positive, yet in doing so, it's easy to treat this like a pimple that just needs to get popped out.

Last night Trina, Brooklyn, Preston, Yuri and I went to dinner then to see a movie.  We all needed a little comic relief and an escape from reality and a movie was the perfect place to do that.  Just as we walked in to the theater, I stopped at the drinking fountain and took a drink.  As I stood back up and walked toward the doors, Trina said, "You're not going to be able to do that kind of stuff anymore you know."  "Do what," I asked. "Drink from drinking fountains," she answered.  I was completely perplexed.  What in the heck was she talking about.  Brooklyn must have read the confusion on my face. "Germs, mom.  You can't expose yourself to germs like that," she said.  Since Brooklyn moved to Idaho to live with Trina, she has been part of Trina's mom's struggle for survival on a daily basis.  Bonnie, Trina's mom, lives with Trina and had bone marrow transplant.  Even knowing that, Trina's statement completely shocked me.  Once we were seated in the theater, I explained to Trina, "I'm not as sick as your mom is.  She had leukemia.  My cancer isn't like that."  That is when Trina said the words that took me back.  "You are in a fight for your life, Susan.  Cancer is cancer.  It weakens your immune system.  Your body is using everything it can to fight against your cancer.  You can't afford to get sick, be exposed to sick people, or be exposed to germs, especially after you start your treatment."  Wow, I thought, but she was right.  By oversimplifying the treatment of my cancer, I had begun to minimize it to myself.

When I dropped Trina off with the people who flew her down, I learned the wife of the pilot helped a friend go through breast cancer.  She explained some of her experiences and suddenly the germ thing surfaced again.  She talked about how her friend had to throw away her make up and buy fresh makeup only using Qtips to apply it and never double dipping.  She told of how the radiation changed her skin and she became more sensitive to many things that never bothered her before.  She talked about hand sanitizers, shampooing carpets, and staying away from anyone who was sick.

Sitting in that theater, and then again much of today, I began to think about some of the simple things I probably should start doing to minimize my exposure to germs.   No more sharing a sip of my drink with my kids or quickly hand washing a dish and leaving it to drain.  Washing hands should be even more of a priority as well as avoiding people who are even a little sick.  I probably should even clean my house and my office before I leave for surgery.  While I won't obsess over the germ thing, it did bring a whole new reality to how I enjoy the comforts of home.