All sorts of weird and not particularly wonderful things happen to your body when you have chemo. Like the fact that I’m putting on a pound a week despite having given up wine and chocolate. I started off as a trim lightweight rower (that's about a 130lbs to you non-rowers) -- and at this rate I'm going to look like a heffalump by the time I finish. And the worst of it is, I had all my winter pants taken in last year, and I'm darned if I'm paying to have them all let out again!
I was slightly freaked out when I woke up one morning to find that my fingers and toes were all peeling. The fingers weren’t too bad, but my feet were a total fright. They looked as if I’d spent several years wearing the same woolly socks and hiking boots with no access to a pumice stone. I dug out an old rectangular plastic bin from the basement, filled it with warm sudsy water and stuck it under my desk so that my feet could have a good soak, and gave myself a pedicure. It didn't help all that much.
But the worst was a couple of weeks later when my feet and ankles swelled up so much that my skin actually hurt. I was at the hospital getting yet another of those darned shots to boost my white blood cells so I swung by Dr. Z’s office to show him this new development. “Hey, baldy, wassup?” he greeted me in his usual cheery fashion, rubbing my head for good luck. “Just look at my feet,” I yelped. “They look like a pair of over-stuffed burritos with five sausages stuck on the ends.
”
We stood in the corridor and peered down. Michelle, the lovely nurse practitioner, and Mary Heery, the Smilow Breast Cancer patient navigator, joined us. (That's Mary in the photo with me - and the little square thing on my chest is my port!) The four of us huddled into a rugby scrum and stared at the offending objects. Dr. Z had the answer right away. “Go and get your blood drawn and come right back.” "What's my blood got to do with swollen feet?" I shot back. "I need to check your chemistry to see what's going on," he replied, ducking into an exam room before I could say anything else.
I should have known better and kept quiet….. sigh!....it was going to be another long afternoon. I sat and waited for a finger stick then headed back to the waiting room to sit and wait again - and chat with the other patients. After a while you get to know everyone.
“Oy, sausage toes, get over here!” No mistaking Dr. Z’s dulcet tones. Everyone in the room stared at me. Mary burst out laughing. I gathered my belongings with some semblance of dignity, smiled at the collected company, and shuffled off on my burritos. The Q & A session in the exam proceeded as normal with the odds stacked against me and ended with instructions for further medical tests. “I don’t want an ultrasound. Let’s see if it goes away,” I said, tapping my sausages in frustration at not having kept my big mouth shut. “You are so-u impossible,” said Dr. Z, trying to round out his ‘O’s like a Brit. “I want to make sure you don’t have any blood clots in your legs.”
Well, I didn’t want any blood clots in my legs either, but I didn't want to spend the rest of the day up in radiology so we reached a compromise. I’d eliminate all salt from my diet to see if that helped. I hobbled off before Dr. Z could change his mind. “But if you’ve still got fat feet next time I see you, you’re having an ultrasound!” he hollered at my retreating back.
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