Heather's Blog

March, 2015

Good Morning Sunshine. Let’s start our day!!
You do not know my pain. I stand in front of the mirror over my bathroom sink staring. I have tears streaming down my face. I am begging myself to just hold on. Hold on a little longer. I try to remember how to be strong. I try as hard as I can. Can I be like I used to be. Can I be strong again. God let me be strong. Let me get through this day.
To Be Honest, that is how I start every day. That is my personal cancer journey.

When I first looked at myself without hair, I broke down. I bawled. I screamed at the top of my lungs. I hit the wall. I was totally angry. I spit in the mirror…At that “Stranger in the Mirror” looking back at me. The sight of myself…BALD. I hated myself.

Lately, Chemotherapy is taking its toll. The more I keep doing it. The more I lose my energy. It is getting really difficult to swallow. Cancer totally sucks.

The back of my head has hurt for days. The doctors worked on my skull last Monday. It is so tender. Ugh! My head is driving me bonkers. It hurts like hell. Just where the stitches are. If I find some strength, I will get over it. Damn head. I am trying to think, but I am all dark and what not.

This was what I wrote and thought about early on upon finding out I had BRAIN CANCER. I picked up a pen and the words became my heart. Every word written with tear drops hitting the paper. I coped. Many people with cancer feel completely alone in a crowded room. I suggest picking up a pen.

“And slowly she drifted into darkness, each piece cracking and ripping away, until there was nothing left. Alone. Always alone. They never realized how broken she was. Her smile was a mask. The mask she had worn for so long to hide, the poison living inside her. The sorrow. The anger. The silence. Her insides screamed a deafening tone. But no sound was ever made. The poison. It surrounded her. It suffocated her. She lost herself. She was just a body. Lifeless. Cold.
Empty. Gone.
When the darkness finally took her, she did not scream. She did not cry. She did not care. She gave pieces of her soul to everyone around her but never took any for herself. If they only knew who she was on the inside. Emptiness flooded in her veins blacker than a cold starless night. When the darkness finally devoured her, she welcomed it. Her heart was bleeding. What should anyone care

VALENTINE’S DAY 2015

I am a woman in love. I am woman in love who has a brain tumor in my head. My boyfriend Tyler and I began dating in October of 2011. He was the man of my dreams. I was a senior in high-school. When I first saw him, my stomach felt like it had butterflies fluttering around in it. Tyler is a couple of years older than I am. I feel connected to him in ways that I never felt connected to anyone before.

During the next 26 months, we fell in love and became each other’s forever valentines.

I became sick in December of 2013. Shortly thereafter, We found out why. Together, we heard the horrible words. “You have CANCER.” I slumped. Tyler caught me. He has held me up ever since. He is my rock. My safety net. The reason I can go on and fight the Cancer Monster.

After that awful Brain Cancer diagnosis, I grew depressed and dark. We started fighting more and more. We couldn’t understand how each other felt and we were not on the same page. My Fear: Losing my best friend and lover. The Cancer Monster wanted to take Tyler from me. I wanted and needed Tyler to love me. I now take pills to stabilize my moods to prevent the fighting.

As I look back on the past 8 months, I cry. Time must be broken. It felt like an eternity. I have done 30 radiation sessions (external beam radiation) with a thermoplastic mask over my face. Too much radiation can kill you. During these sessions they strapped me down to the table. Every time, drugs flooded into my veins as I became nauseous. I HATED IT.

They STOP the CHEMO!!! They had to stop the Chemo in November. WHY? I got an infection in my head. The infection caused me to have surgery on my head. I am now missing a piece of my skull. I had to have a picc line (Which is a peripherally inserted central catheter in my big vein.) for 8 weeks in my arm to pump me full of antibiotics twice a day.

Get the Gallbladder OUT!!!
One of the antibiotics caused gallstones and I had to get my gallbladder out. However, 2 gallstones passed causing choledocholithiasis. That is a fancy word that means the gallstones lodged in my common bile duct instead of the gallbladder. Basically, the stones are on the way to my pancreas.

Ready for MORE Radiation. NO WAY. First things first. This last December, right before Christmas, they put a titanium plate (Craniotomy) in my skull.

July, 2014. During the ambulance ride to the new hospital, I have no idea what is happening. My mind is swirling around between disbelief and shock. I think I am dizzy. I think I am nauseous. We arrive. I’m taken into a large room and meet Dr. S, a neurosurgeon. After a magnetic resonance imaging scan (MRI), Dr S tells me I have a brain tumor the size of an orange in my head. My mind is saying, “Who put the orange in my head? Who put the orange in my head?” over and over again. RUPTURE!!! Next, I am hearing that my brain tumor is in “First Stage Rupture” and he is performing surgery in the morning. Dr. S is very kind as he tells me the operation could leave me paralyzed on my right side, blind in my right eye, or unable to speak. I am thinking, “Who the HELL put the orange in my head!”. He is no longer talking to my brain. He is the narrator in a terrifying nightmare I am having. His words hang in the air in front of my eyes. Soon, I will wake up and go to my job at Sears. I seem to remember my family standing over me and crying. I am saying, “goodbyes” from the the top deck of a cruise ship, I am bidding bon voyage before I go on a long cruise. I never had …