14 E-mail: update on the arm

My arm is better. It hurts less today than it did yesterday. Maybe tomorrow it won’t hurt at all. The swelling comes and goes. Sleeping or laying down tends to encourage swelling, but I’m not willing to give up any more sleep than the baby takes from me so I guess I’ll live with it until the medications take care of the clots. When it swells my hand and sometimes my arm turn a ruddy color. The veins are still easily visible compared to my right side but I’m not freaking out anymore. The shots of Lovenox to prevent my body from forming new clots are given in my belly. Each shot is leaving a lovely bruise, but each bruise seems less spectacular than the one before so I take that as a good sign.

My hair started falling out today. It’s just a few strands here and there, but it’s a lot more than usual. Losing my hair is one of the toughest parts about my current events. I’ve been grieving all day. I don’t care that it will grow back and will probably be curly and possibly be a different color. I don’t care that the baby will lose his baby hair and be bald the same time that I am. I don’t care that I’ve got a pretty wig and a cool hat and a soft head scarf and a sleeping cap. I like my natural hair color and texture and I’m deeply sad to lose it. I would rather get shots every day for the rest of my chemo treatments than lose my hair, but I don’t get to chose. I’ll probably get my remaining hair shaved off Sunday so that I don’t have to have a prolonged time of seeing clumps fall out every day.

On the positive side, the incisions from the lumpectomy and lymph node surgery are healing very nicely. My body is doing a good job of making scars out of cuts, and I believe the scars won’t be very dramatic after they’ve had a year or so to weather. Even the stretch marks are looking relatively tame.

Well, I’ve got chemo in the morning so I need to get some sleep now.

Angela

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