Done!

As of Friday, I have finally officially finished with cancer treatments.

8 rounds of chemo,

2 boobs removed,

33 radiation treatments,

and a partridge in a pear tree.

I am tired and I'm happy it's over. Many people have asked what the next step is, so I figured I would address it here. At the bare minimum, my plastic surgeon wants to wait at least 3 months until I can have surgery to replace the tissue expanders with implants. I also still need to have the expanders filled a few more times before I'm ready for the exchange. We need to wait until my skin heals from radiation before that can happen - I would prefer the redness and peeling to be gone before I start stretching the skin, ya know? I also have to consider Phish. We're going to see their first concert in almost 5 years, and I can't enjoy myself if I'm sore, tired, or writhing in pain with C Dif. I'll be able to get the expanders filled in about a month, but the surgery will have to wait until after Phish.

And the Winner Is...

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale!!! If you know me and my beer, that shouldn't be much of a surprise. It's my favorite beer of all time.

On Monday evening, I did a little googling. I figured, since I already decided to have my first beer the next day, let's look up why I shouldn't have had it in the first place. Big mistake.

Now, before you call me a square, know that this isn't one of those "alcohol should be avoided" types of medications. I was taking metronidazole (Flagyl), and when they say not to drink alcohol they're not joking. I read that you should even avoid things like mouthwash.

So, in my googling, I read that after you finish the antibiotics you should wait 3 days before drinking alcohol. THREE DAYS! What's a girl to do when she's been pining for beer for so long? Well, I looked up the side-effects and determined on my own that the way to approach this was to pretend I hadn't googled the information, drink lots of water, and have half a beer yesterday evening (over 24 hours after my last dose) and see if I had a problem. I did not, so I had the other half. Phew.

In non-alcohol-related news, I'm kind of happy about the early radiation thing now. I like that my incisions will get a chance to heal before we go expanding too much, and I'm also happy that I'm not having to deal with the discomfort of healing from surgery and the discomfort of expanding the tissue all at once. Of course, I'll look weird for much longer, but I guess I'll feel a lot better.

One more thing - Phish is coming back in March!!! The joke around the house is that I'd give my left boob to see Phish again. :-)