Fast facts (if you don’t have time to read the full post): This morning I had my consult for radiation! I am still many moons away from starting radiation, but it was great to learn what it will entail. I also had my first ER visit (ever) for my head lump. It has been a day to say the least.

TO THE LONG VERSION!

“The Fuckening” can be described as when your day is going too well and you don’t trust it and some shit finally goes down.

Ah there it is, the fuckening.

Here is what I have learned about chemo: you get told all the possible side effects and for some reason in my mind I just assumed you would have like a couple of the side effects all the time and that would be that. But no. Every chemo I have experienced has had different side effects each time. The first round was nausea and fatigue that made me feel like a sad worthless little potato. The second round was constipation. Ugh. The third round? Chemo brain and lumpy head lumps. I wonder what round four will bring.

This week has been hard, but like manageable. I mean I got lost at Target, but I obviously made it home. The last two days I have been doing better and I thought I was on my way up, but then the fuckening happened: the lump on my head. The pain felt like bone pain initially but late yesterday night it became a bit harder to ignore and seemed like a problem I needed to address. So this morning I woke up with plans to tell my radiation oncologist during our consult about my strange new addition. I was actually excited to learn about radiation treatment mainly because although cancer really sucks, I enjoy learning about all the medical in’s and outs. It has been the strangest and hardest journey I have ever been on, but also the most interesting.

I have to say the radiation ward of the cancer center is not nearly as exciting or vibrant as oncology and hematology. It feels a bit sad. And it is a lot more quiet. I loved meeting my radiation oncologist though. She is fabulous! But she is also retiring in June, so I most likely will not be receiving care from her which is insanely sad. She was so thorough during our consult, writing notes on a notepad for me as she talked. Um who does that?! So nice. All forms of my learning styles were entirely fulfilled. I will receive 28 rounds of radiation following my double mastectomy. I will go five days a week for a couple of minutes, get some lasers pointed at me that will give me a sunburn and burn all possible leftover cancer cells, and be on my way. It will be my final leg of my cancer journey before reconstruction, which will happen a year after radiation is complete. It is hard to believe I will be breastless for a year. The mastectomy part of cancer is a part I think I will really struggle with but I don’t want to think about that right now.

Before my consult started my mom wanted my radiation oncologist to examine my head lump since it had gotten worse. Gotta love moms because here I was just waiting until the end of the appointment to ask about my weird head issue and she wanted answers now. Thanks mom! So she examined it and put in an order for an x-ray. By the time I left and went to work, the pain had increased in my mysterious lump so I called the imaging center, but they said my order wasn’t in and probably wasn’t going to get approved until at least Monday so I started thinking of a plan B: do I want to go to the ER? I’ve never been to the ER in my life and in my mind it is somewhere you go late at night when it is storming and you are insanely sick and someone is like randomly bleeding out on the floor. I watched too much Grey’s Anatomy growing up.

Long story short, I made the decision to go to the ER to get it checked out because I was in enough pain, the nurse at the cancer center told me it could be a cyst that might need to be drained, and I just didn’t think I could wait all weekend in my current state to get some answers. Emergency rooms are basically places you go to just wait and wait and hope that you’re in much worse shape than anyone else in the waiting room so you can get seen faster. Luckily, “cancer patient with head pain” is the golden ticket to get seen, so I got a room fairly quickly. Nobody was bleeding out, but there was a lady who was puking a lot so I felt really bad.

Emergency rooms are kind of spooky. There are so many gadgets on the wall that you hope you don’t need. I had a physician’s assistant and nurse both examine my lovely lady lumps (aka my head lump) and both said “Hmmm this is weird and interesting.” Very reassuring. They ordered me an ultrasound and two and a half hours later, I was told that the radiologist ruled my ultrasound results inconclusive, but they think it could be angry and inflamed lymph nodes. They basically said if it gets worse, come back. Otherwise, tell your oncologist Monday and hopefully the inflammation goes down.

Again, very reassuring.

I mean, I get it. These folks are not cancer experts like my oncologist is but damn. Inflamed lymph nodes could be right given that is a possible side effect, but does it really manifest like this and out of nowhere? Is it this painful? Why my head and why so quickly? For bébé’s first ER visit, it was not my favorite and I felt like I had wasted two and a half hours of my time to be told to just take some ibuprofen and hope things work themselves out. I guess I am glad to know it is not a brain bleed or something terrible, but I still left in pain with no solution. Anything can happen with cancer, so I would rather take pain that I don’t understand or have never experienced seriously than to ignore it. We take no chances here! Your girl wants to LIVE!

So I am back home, still in pain, and still lumpy. Moral of the story? The fuckening can happen at any time. Stay vigilant, my friends.

Today’s song lyric of the day is brought to you by Big Sean. I was singing this to the lump on my head. I do give a fuck about lumps on my head for the record.

“I don’t give a fuck, I don’t give a fuck, I don’t, I don’t
I don’t give a fuck, bitch, I don’t give a
Fuck about you, or anything that you do”

– I Don’t Fuck With You, Big Sean, E-40