Finally, and with great relief, I saw the oncologist today, and Lew and I sat in, daughter Kelley was on through FaceTime from her office. So much better to have the reports in, and the Lymph nodes negative that I felt quite wonderful. I had planned on this being good news today.
It was. We talked about chemo, and decided for several reasons that we’d not be doing that. Radiation is applied directly to the area of the tumor, for several days – it’s a specific area target that radiates, or burns the area in question, and hopefully, not too much else. I will know more about that on Tuesday when I see that person – it is, of course, a different company. The drugs that block hormones, which are the feed for greedy little cancer cells who grow with them; they will begin those – You may have heard of Tamoxifen -it’s one of three kinds of blockers that are used with my kind of cancer – that will begin after the radiation. Hooray with me – no chemo – although secretly, it would have been my bald-headed choice for a weight loss program. Maybe not my best thinking.
MY doctors — all of them — seem to be competent and experienced. What more could one want! They seem nice too – a bonus. They use gentle voices when speaking about cancer, by the way, soft and modulated.
So – my silly story of underwear misunderstandings.
Sports Bra or Compression—Lessons learned — I promised you I would share. So here goes.
At our first doctors’ appointment early on, I was told that I would need to use sports bras after biopsy to keep things from swelling, and that I would have to wear it/them all day and night. Now, I’d never had one of these particular intimate accessories before, so I felt all kinds of cool to be sporty. Following the biopsies, I was instructed to wear the bras, day and night, continuing through the final surgery’s fore and after. (Perfect-two weeks or so of comfort-cushioning)
After the actual surgery I asked about swelling, and was told that the compression bra should have, maybe, a frozen wedge in for swelling, and then some material like a sock to keep pressure against it to keep down more swelling. I said, “compression bra?” to myself. What’s that? They probably meant a sports bra.
Early In the morning, nearly two weeks post-surgery, I dressed, putting on a freshly-washed sports bra, one of the two I had purchased. It fit funny. Like one-sided. All of the light padding was on one side, the other side was just squishy stretch material. I felt as though I was wrestling possessed underwear – somehow-the thing had its bumps all wrong. They had migrated to the left – which isn’t a bad thing, but how did that happen? I tried to put the additional padding on correctly, that is, one on each side, but couldn’t find any way to do that. And what do I do about it? Of course, I put it on – must wear sports bra. Maybe somehow the bra knew I needed something for Lois. A little support. Now I look a bit like a crazed Keith Haring line-drawn figure, a bit off-balanced. I explained this to a friend this morning and had the insight to look up compression bras on the Google. Guess what? Did you already know this? They have such a “thing” it’s a “thing”!!! For Men and Women ( I suspect different issues ) Fascinating, but the news two weeks late. I keep poking at the sporty thing I am wearing, wondering when, and how, did it all slide to Lois?
The value of friends-later this afternoon, in a really fun-filled day of phone calls, I received a message from the same friend. She sent me instructions from Google entitled How to Wrangle Removable Sports Bra Pads on Laundry Day. There really are directions. And Pads. Moveable. A sports bra is different than a compression bra-check out your Google. This is news. Unflattering, but newsworthy.
I do love Friends. I do love Google. I tell you all this you’d rather never have known, because- well – you never know. Appreciation for you, and Much love JL