It’s Hard to Be A Woman

I’ll do just about anything to get out of housework. This morning, my husband and I brought our vacuum cleaner into Sears to get it fixed while it’s still under warranty. The clerk said, “It won’t be back until September 22.” Yee haw.  

Now that I’ve covered how the chemotherapy has affected my fingernails, toes, and hair, I must talk about my right boob. It is, after all, what got me into all this mess in the first place by getting diseased and having to be surgically removed from my body. Yesterday, I could not figure out why […]

For breakfast this morning, I took out a grapefruit and chopped it in half. Not a big deal, except it finally clicked in my chemo brain that grapefruit is no longer restricted; seems the lowly fruit interferes with certain medications, Lapatinib being one of them, and I haven’t taken that for months. I took my […]

Yesterday, I thought I had a lot of freedom… I drove for the first time in six weeks. It was wonderful. Today, I felt even more freedom, because not only did I drive again (since it was so fun yesterday), I did it naked. Not naked, silly. Just checking to make sure you really read […]

On Monday, President’s Day, my daughter’s friends came and weeded for several hours while I sat on the couch knitting. I felt extremely guilty. Also, the strange bruises beneath where my eyebrows used to be? I think those are my eyebrows trying to come back. They just seem to be lower than where they used […]

The “happy traveling nurse” came again yesterday to take my temperature, chide me for going out the day before, drain the tubes, and… weigh me. She’s the first one to do that. Guess I can’t hide anywhere. I was so shocked to see that I had lost 10 pounds since the last time I was […]

I’m thinking of going out in public tomorrow and have come to the conclusion that I’m more self-conscious about the amount of hair on my head than the fact that I have a gaping hole where my right boob used to be. Go figure. Hey, a pun. Oh boy, too much Vicodin. I’m laughing at […]

This morning, I washed the little bit of hair that I have, took a bath, put on jeans and an over-the-head shirt instead of sweats and a zip-up jacket (this might not sound like much, but, after a mastectomy, this is huge), cleaned my face, put on moisturizer, applied makeup, and brushed my teeth. It only […]

Okay, now that my hair is finally growing in enough so that I can see what it is doing, I need to decide to: a) keep it short and grey, b) grow it out and start spending exorbitant amounts dying it some other color, c) keep covering it with a hat, scarf, or bandana and […]