7.31.2009

Oh, good morning.

I feel well rested yet extremely tired. How can that even be possible? Last night I finally managed the side nursing and was able to sleep through (for the most part) Elijah's night nursings. I put him on one boob and then fell back asleep and woke up when it was time to switch him to the other side a couple hours later. I bet he was like "awesome! I am just gonna suck until she pulls me off!"
Finally at around 6:30am he got a little fussy. He was acting hungry but spitting up and then getting even more fussy when I would try to nurse him again, so I finally swaddled him and rubbed his chest until he got quiet. He's finally asleep, but now I am awake. I feel like I should try to go back to sleep, but I am feeling a little hungry. I should probably take this opportunity to eat because I might not get one again today, for anything other than quick snacks anyway.
Babies are a lot of work. You know they are a lot of work before you have one, but you don't quite realize how much until you do have one. It doesn't matter if I am tired, hungry, or have to pee anymore. Baby comes first.
People tell you to nap when baby naps. Well, that's almost impossible sometimes. I am able to do it at times, but seriously, when your baby goes to sleep you finally have some time to yourself so if you aren't dead tired then you will probably take that time for you. I know that when Elijah is asleep I use the time to make myself something to eat. Once I even managed to jump in the shower quickly. Little stuff like that suddenly becomes a luxury when you have a newborn, so sleeping when babies sleep isn't entirely possible.

Now on the cancer note. I had my appointment with my oncologist on Wed. He basically told me that my treatment options were suck and suck even more. I have to have a PET scan, so we're waiting on insurance approval which takes a week or two. Once approval comes in I will have the scan (I won't be able to breastfeed for 8 hours because of radiation, but 8 hours isn't that bad and we can unfreeze some breastmilk and use the bottle, which we tried the other day to make sure he would take. He does and there's no nipple confusion, which is good). My treatment options depend on what the scan shows. If the scan comes back showing the cancer is somewhere else in my body then I could go to Dallas for a melanoma vaccine study as treatment. This sucks because I am not sure I want to do a vaccine clinical study, although it's already established it's still a study. Also, it's Dallas. It's not that close. It's not really an option if I need to go there all the time or for long stretches of time because I need o be near Elijah and I am pretty sure I would need someone there to take care of him will I was doing treatment stuff, and Jason has to work. Another also is that I can only do this study if the scan comes back with visible cancer which I clearly do not want.
There's another study I can do if there is no visible cancer, but it's in Virginia. That's really not an option.
So that leaves us with option #3, if there's no visible cancer then I will do the interferon drug treatment. This treament lasts a year. The first 4 weeks I would have to go in 4 days in a row per week to get a high dosage injection. After those 16 visits I would be able to inject myself at home every 3 days. The thing that sucks about this treatment is that the side effects are feeling like you have the flu, fever, and nausea. Great, so I will feel like shit for a year.
So no mater which way the cookie crumbles, this shit sucks.

P.S. How do I have a baby that is almost 4 weeks old? Time is moving too fast!

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