You know you're a cancer patient when....

mumito

Too funny

Lena

Yeah Barbe, rats. Ever since I got too allergic to have real rats anymore, I started collecting toy ones. You know, stuffed rats, rubber rats and so on. Every once in awhile I take one with me -- usually a stuffed one now: since I moved, the rubber ones have such a perfect new home on one of the windowsills, they really need to stay where they are.  I posed them up to give a somewhat menacing silhouette from indoors against the semi transparent white curtain on sunny days; looking in on them from outside on the deck, it appears like I have a major rat "infestation" which is getting "worse" since I positioned two of them as "mating"....  ;-) SQUEEEK!

Anyway I had to bring one with me yesterday since we were meeting one of my online buddies (who I met on an AOL pet rat message thread -- in 1995!). I had to one-up myself since I was also wearing my plague rat T-shirt. But we all like rats so all was well. 

YKYACPW...you're reading through archived email correspondence from over a decade before diagnosis and realize that while here you'd been recently thinking maybe you finally got about 90-95% of your lost marbles from chemo and AIs back, a closer estimate might be 75-80%.  :-(

badger

YKYACP when you can no longer trust yourself to do math in your head due to chemo brain.

... when you wonder if it's chemo brain or the onset of the Alzheimers that runs in your family.

... when your lower lid eyelashes are longer than your upper lid eyelashes.

Lowers grew in OK but uppers are still short and stick straight out instead of curling up.

I had hoped by now my eyelids would no longer remind me of Venus flytraps! 

sas-schatzi

tnbcrRuth---------I remeber the days everything had to be perfect and no dust LOL. Now in particular places we could play drawing games. Rather be here with friends. The dust just doesn't have the same importance anymore.

If you meant June 25th as BD------HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!! AND MANY MORE WITH THE FEELINGS OF LOVE , HOPE, JOY AND HEALTH.

sas-schatzi

Lena and Badger -----it is too true about the brain thing and I was going to mention one more thing HHHMMMMMMMM what was that?

Lena way too funny on the rat thing. One thing on the rats, they are included in the list of best moms and aunts aren they?

Fitz33

when someone suggests you get a new wig...

DeeLJ

YKYACPW when in the course of just 2 months, 12 different strangers have felt your boobs, and your husband watched most of them do it!

Lena

Sas, sorry, I don't know what list you're talking about.

YKYACPW...you realize that what used to your life is now in bitty shards, for good, and what's passing for life now just doesn't seem real, not even the parts that aren't so bad.

YamahaMama

DeeLJ - too funny!  I once told a friend that having my DH watch the PS grab my foob to show me how to "massage" was the closest he was ever going to come to a threesome!  LOL

sas-schatzi

Lena-----Rat moms are supposed to among the most attentive mammal moms. and when mom isn't around another female will nurse the babies and care for them.  It was a nova or history channel thing, Sorry about the random referrence.

sas-schatzi

Yamahamama--------almost did the same thing ,PS was showing us the massage. I said" okay DH get up here and learn how to do it" The pic would have been priceless.  "OKAY everybody smile"

sas-schatzi

DEELJ------kind of like when you were pregnant and total strangers would come up and put their hand on your belly--------of all the stories that were told to me --------you would think someone would drop that in conversation.  I had no clue someone would do that. The first time was a bit scarry. AND the way some men would look at my pregnant belly ----it's a special look, actually very special. Awe, gentle, not lustfull--------just melting. Someone should study it.

 Now the Foob thing ------different story.

Anonymous

YKYACP when you need pen and paper to place a restaurant order. (Chemo brain.)

badger

YKYACP when you need a calculator to figure a 15% tip in a restaurant (chemo brain).

jdootoo

When you look like Orphan Annie from behind because your hair is SO DAMN CURLY!!

Lena

That's OK Sas. I didn't breed my rats though. We adopted two females who had less than week old ratlings so got to "raise" two litters, but I didn't breed them deliberately (in fact, until I started getting the females spayed, I kept the males and females in separate cages). The mama rats Daisy and Moosie WERE really good mothers to their 4 and 12 ratlings, respectively (and we kept all of them), but I never had any "auntie" scenarios.

YKYACPW when you look all over the house for the orange you thought you left  "upstairs somewhere," it never turns up and you can't remember if you ate it or not.  :-{ 

YKYACPW you remember that old public service announcement from years ago when you used to watch TV:  "This is your brain..."  (scene of egg in a frying pan) then "This is your brain on drugs."  (scene of the egg being fried) -- and think it should be for chemo...

...oh, wait, chemo IS drugs.... DUUUUUH!  I guess they were right after all...

Fitz33

YKYACPW your rad onc examines your breast after treatment and then tells you to get dressed and he'll come back and discuss it with you and you say "No, that's fine.  I can discuss it like this."

AnacortesGirl

Oh yes, I can relate to that Fitz33!  Don't you just get tired of these pretense where the docs have to leave so you can dress or undress?  For heaven sakes, you've seen everything!  Let's just get this over with!

leisaparis

Ditto

Fitz33

After my rad simulation someone held up a sheet for me to get dressed.  Hellooooo, everyone in the room had already seen everything and all I had to do was put on my bra and top.  lol 

 YKYACPW you're getting Herceptin only and you take off your top and start to take off your bra before someone stops you.

sas-schatzi

YNYACPW----------Lena on mark with the orange, but I'll add ---"did I eat today"

And that Old commercial--------duh thats all of us. I wonder what a vendor at a pink show, if they had tee's that said" this is my brain on chemo" How fast they'd sell

Fitz and Anacorte what ahoot you are so right-------new Onc was so embarrassed when I whipped off my shirt . I said "it's okay there just foobs".

ritaz

Yeah, what is UP with the "letting you have your privacy to dress"  Is there anyone on the East coast that haven't seen both my breasts at one point or another? 

For me, it's Arimidex brain...Of all the things I've lost, it's my mind I miss the most...sigh...

Lena

YKYACPW you know where ALL the bathrooms are in your ginormous campus of a college campus, hospital, medical school and cancer center.

Leah_S

I prefer the "let you have your privacy while dressing". It's a way of saying, "Yes, you have to undress for me to do this examination/procedure but I'm not forgetting that you're still a person with the right to privacy and dignity".

To each his own, my mother always said.

Leah

sas-schatzi

Ritaz ditto on missing the old brain !!!!!

txstardust

YKYACPW...you tell your boss hat you need to miss a half-day of work because you're going to be radioactive for a little while (bone scan).

YKYACPW...you still have a bald spot in both of your eyebrows, even though chemo ended a year and a half ago!  Pre-chemo, I had very full eyebrows and couldn't keep up with waxing and plucking to save my life; I never once had to use an eyebrow pencil or powder.  Now, when I get them waxed, there is inevitably a bald spot in each eyebrow, and I have to use an eyebrow kit so I don't look strange.  

tnbcRuth

YKYACPW you are flipping thru the channels on tv and check out a show you think might be funny but its not so you scroll up and down 2-3 channels landing back on the original one and think, hmmm, that might be funny, forgetting you were there less than 10 seconds ago.

badger

YKYACP when you know more people at BCO than in the small town where you live.

sacphotomom

Ok I have to say something about the Doc and undressing.. I went in for my reg yearly Physical...with my reg Physician  and I felt like this visit was really redundant.. after all my checkups with the Oncologist, Radiologist, Gynecologist and the Surgeon ...What was there left for him to do?  but I regress... when I was told to undress I automatically put the top gown on with the opening to the front.. the Doc walked in and said "OH! we put these on opening to the back, I will step out while you do that!"  ????  when he left the room  I started laughing to myself .. ok like some one said it was nice to have him think of my Modesty, but at the same time.I do believe that was a YKWYACP moment!

Kay_G

Went to a physical therapist today, just to get some advice and exercises pre-surgery for lymphedema prevention because I'm already having tightness in my arm.  I did not expect to have to undress there and have her examine my breasts.  Maybe I should have.  She asked me if my right breast was always smaller than the left.  I said I didn't know it was.  Sheesh!  It would have bothered me much more pre-cancer though, so a YKYACPW moment.