It's all a balancing act

I was told this week that I suck at painting the real picture on social media. Ops! After I posted my update last week it really hit home that yes we have been getting good news (the good news being I was switched to oral antibiotics) there are a whole lot of hard, challenging, and bad things also happening to me. All because of cancer. I’m not posting this to get sympathy or attention. I am publishing my feelings, the good and the bad, to seriously and honestly show you what life as a cancer survivor looks like. I remember being pregnant with Ali and obsessing over watching TLC’s a birth story. Over and over I would watch these strangers falling in love with their babies. I was going to get to do that (again but with a partner this time it was a new experience) and I wanted to plan it just right so we would also have a TLC birth story moment. But in all reality when it came time for that experience it happened just the way God intended it to. The universe, “life”, happened. With no control given to me except to pick between choices the universe laid before me. Moment after moment. Curve ball after curve ball. When you are battling cancer it's a marathon for months and then boom I beat cancer! Now go live your life normal again they tell you. (Insert one eyebrow raised face emoji)

Wife, Mother, patient, survivor, sister, daughter, friend, cousin, sales consultant, cookie maker, my hat list is unending. Like all of us, right? When you add an illness, a sick child, an accident, past trauma, divorce, any trauma it makes those hats so much heavier. So how do you balance the hats despite the weight? Honestly I have no fucking clue but incase I get it right (which is the plan) I am going to tell you how I am currently trying to balance the hats!

The 4 changes I’m making this month to help me :

1. Be Healthy

2. Be Confident

3. Be Thankful

**If you do not recognize these 3 affirmations I would suggest you stop and go back to red this blog: https://wolfeeepackmama.wixsite.com/wolfeeepackmama/single-post/is-saying-goodbye-to-cancer-every-really-goodbye

Change 1:

Write it down. There are apps for this people. Just write it down. Lists, reminders, thoughts, things that made you laugh. Write it down. Just that simple. Two points to this one. A- I forget everything so it helps to not put so much pressure on my brain to remember things. B- If your beautiful amazing brain spent time thinking of it, “it” must be important. Important to you, important to the dog, important to your boss. It crossed your mind for a reason. And if we only start thinking things with reason, better yet thinking our thoughts with purpose and in return we will become so much wiser don’t you think?

Change 2:

Outlining the plan. Otherwise known as don’t set expectations. This one is mostly for mom and wife hats. Being a mom is a lot of things all by itself. Having multiple kids makes things extra a lot. There’s always people moving from point A to point B and every day‘s plan is a little bit different. I used to think that at the beginning of the week I needed to hash out each day's agenda and know who was driving who where and who is picking up today versus tomorrow but as cancer has helped me see, each day is it’s own opportunity. Having a plan to the madness before the madness takes place is a big old waste of time. The plan never goes accordingly. So now we “game plan” and call the plays as the day sees fit. It both saves me time (and thoughts) and allows me to choose what serves me day by day.

Change 3:

Be good to yourself. This is something I have done for myself in certain ways for a while but now I am working it around the table. Self care and love is very important. I let the girls choose what they want to join in on. Ali loves to join me for yoga and mediation. Ava prefers joining me for a walk or a pedicure. Willow enjoys shopping (retail therapy is a thing) and baking in the kitchen. Ryan is jumping on board when it comes to regularly seeing his chiropractor and getting massages. We also have continued our monthly date night with my mom. This is year 3 of a guaranteed date once a month. If your mother or mother in law wants to know what you want for your birthday this year you tell her you want 1 year of dates. 1 evening, one time a month. Who can say they have dated their spouse every month for the last 25 months?

Change 4:

Put in a little effort! Everyone is guilty of getting stuck in a lazy rut. This pandemic for sure did that to me. We’ve gotten used to living at home. Yoga pants are a style and door dash can deliver dinner so why cook. Following me? Sounding familiar? I know we are guilty of this. After a couple hard weeks I found it easy to crawl back in bed and let the list go untouched. But that's not helping me get anywhere. So I am challenging myself to once a day put in extra effort. Say yes when you want to say no. Sometimes that means playing barbies, others it's a trip to the park, and some days it is taking on an extra task. Find your boundary each day and meet yourself at the wall. Because the next day you may have the opportunity to push that wall a little further.

Lets circle back around and talk a little bit more in detail to what has been happening for me. Everything was happening so fast that it was sometimes happening before we were able to fully understand the process. Which made sharing it on social media hard! It all began during a shitty week in December. The week of Christmas I was able to snag up a canceled procedure time with my OBGYN Dr T the 2nd. I was having my ovaries and tubes removed as part of my long term survival plan of being hormone free. Doing this would mean my body could begun and hopefully end menopause naturely. (please God let it be freakishly soon) It was also suggested I have my port removed. I wasn’t sure if I was ready but my oncologist said it's time! Ryan and I spent the whole day of December 21st at my local hospital Blanchard Valley making jokes about how I clearly lost some weight if they took shit out of me and that now I can't joke about having more babies! I always teased him about having more just in case he spilled and said yes ;)

Both my surgeries went well and I headed home feeling tired but overall low pain and nausea free. Two days later I received my last radiation treatment and was finally able to call myself cancer free. We had a wonderful Christmas at home with the girls. Christmas Day I noticed a red line around my glue and it itched a lot. I waited till morning then called my surgeon. We exchanged texts and decided I was having a reaction to the glue and that caused me to get a yeast infection on all the incisions which was making me itchy. So I started an oral pill for a yeast infection. Well the yeast infection gave me a skin infection in my belly button. I will spare you the details. It was gross. I started an oral antibiotic and 24 hours later I earned another file check marker when I had my first ever allergic reaction to a drug. Thank God it was mild. God love those of you living with severe allergies. At this point we decided to stop all meds and start a steroid. My least favorite drug. Luckily that was enough and with time all my incisions healed up and stopped itching. My port incision was still unhealed until about last week. It also developed an infected stitch but since I was on so many antibiotics it took care of itself. (Who has a good scar oil?) So overall at this point I was not feeling good. I was in menopause shock. My kids were all home on Christmas break. I had mild headaches and body aches almost everyday. When I went to follow up with my oncologist he was shocked to see how red my breast was during his exam. He pulled in some friends from radiation and we decided that I had a skin infection on my left breast (cancer side) and that I should start oral antibiotics. I started that day (Monday) and by Thursday I was feeling like shit. Headaches, body aches, nauease, breast pain, the works! I saw my radiation oncologist in the office who was not as concerned about an infection as the fact that there was not good blood flow in my breast. I had this happen once before so I knew the drill. I needed to go see my surgeon who could remove fluid out of my spacer. He called and they had an appointment for me the next day. Of course school was canceled the next day (thanks Ohio weather) so I had to leave the girls at home while I went to this appointment. This appointment was my brick wall. It hit me hard right smack dab in the nose. Dr B removed 200 mL (approximately 2 cups) of fluid from one of my boobs. Talk about a lopsided set. This was hard on me. To this day when I have to look at my current set, which is now a 660 mL and 310 mL pair, I cry. He facetimed my plastic surgeon Dr K and they agreed there was no infection fluid gathering anywhere (this done by an in office ultrasound) and if we removed the fluid and switched me to a stronger oral antibiotic we should clear it up. I had to do daily boob pics to my surgeon until it cleared up. Doesn’t everyone enjoy bood pics and coffee? Well on day 2 I was told I needed to prepare to be admitted to the hospital for IV antibiotics. I was in shock. It happened so quickly and I was so unaware of what was about to happen. Sunday afternoon after dropping all three of our girls off at friends we made the drive to Columbus to get admitted. I choose to go to Columbus because this is where my plastic surgeon works and he would be closer should my infection get worse, Dr K would have to go in and remove the left spacer leaving reconstruction surgery a little bit harder to do. From Sunday night through my final night on Thursday I would be placed on a nothing to eat diet every night at midnight. I would wait for my surgeon to come in for rounds and he would decide each day if I was getting worse or making progress healing. It was a merry go round. I wanted to get off but just had to keep riding. I was lonely after Wednesday when Ryan needed to go home and be with our kids. I would receive 1 IV round of antibiotics every 6ish hours, receiving 4 treatments a day. On Friday after making a small amount of progress they released me home with a Picc line and a 20 minute power class on administering my own meds for the next 12 days. Coming home was such a huge blessing and a huge hurdle! I was happy to have my kiddos and my own bed. I have not been away from the kids for that long since our honeymoon! But it was also a huge wakeup call to how weak and sick I really was. It took me a whole week to get my energy level to about half of what my new normal is. I am still not 100% Emily which is extremely frustrating. In all I did 12 days of IV antibiotics at home which consisted of me flushing my line, hand pushing 5mL every minute for 5 minutes of one kind of antibiotic, another flush, then a gravity drip (which is an IV pole without a pump) a 250 mL bag of vanco, then a final flush and I would wrap my line up and tape it to my arm. In all it would take me 2-3 hours of sitting in one spot and I was doing this at 8am and 8pm. Around day 3 I started to get extremely itchy to that point that Wolfe would wake up to me digging away in my sleep. Poor man had to sleep on my hand to stop me. I love him. So I called my home health nurse and she came to draw labs and change my dressing right away. When she took the dressing off the entire picc line came off my arm. The adhesive that held the line in place with this wing looking thing chemically burned my skin and so my skin came off with the sticker :( it was horrible! I was sent to the ER by my home health nurse. I was not doing that in the middle of the covid surge we were having so I called my surgeon Dr B and he saw me everyday that week to baby my picc line so hopefully it wouldn't fall out before my February 1st appointment with my infectious disease doctor. That care is what I love about being treated in a small town. February first brought a day of doctors and being with my mommy. She drove me to Columbus and I met with my plastic surgeon and the infectious disease doctor from my hospital stay. I was released from IV meds and moved to oral antibiotics for 20 days. Since then I have had a whirlwind of other appointments to address a couple other things happening. I have been having some GI issues since chemo and since they have not cleared up or gotten better they sent me to see the specialist. He kindly gave me the news that a colonoscopy and endoscopy would be a good idea. So that is coming up at the beginning of March. I also have been dealing with ongoing body aches and headaches. Overall I am just not feeling good. So we are doing some medication trials and seeing if I can eliminate those symptoms. Prayers and Hope. That's all I got. Some days I listen to my own advice and I get through with no tears. Other days I spend in my bed crying and only retreat when the girls get home from school. One day at a time.

Whew! Maybe my longest blog! Thanks for catching up with me, it means so much to me that people care. I will keep you updated and if you are taking prayer requests please pray we receive answers to our questions and good news each passing day. Xoxo

This is a picture of my picc line after being removed. I could not believe how long it was!