hello again

it has been a while since i posted, mostly because i've done a pretty good job of kicking cancer's ass and i haven't had any new news for anyone in a while. ok, i'm lying. i have honestly just been to lazy to post.

well here is a quick update.

1) my petscan came back all clear, yay! i can finally get some much needed rest and relaxation without having to see a doctor every other day now. i am feeling great, except that my immune system is still weak and my body isn't back to normal so i am still experiencing many off days.

2) i finally received disability payments! about friggin time...but at least i know now that the government is doing something right with the money i've given them for the last god knows how many years. now i can pay off the bazillion copayments and other crazy medical bills i haven't been able to pay yet.

3) i gained back all the weight i lost...and then some. so i at least look healthy again, but i'm having trouble fitting some of my clothes now. maybe some that disability money can help me pay for a membership to the NYU gyms...hmmm....

last but not least, i wanted to share an interesting article about funding for a cure for cancer that i thought was an interesting read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/health/policy/24cancer.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes

oops!

i know i haven't written in a while despite so much happening. for those of you who don't already know, i am technically in REMISSION! for the most part, i feel amazing, except that i had the worst petscan experience ever last night.

i'm not sure if it was because i ate so many carbs the night before (the nurses asked me to not eat 6 hours before the procedure and remain on a low carb diet the day before... but that's really hard to do when you're at a birthday party and there are cupcakes and cream puffs in plain sight waiting to be eaten), but i got disgustingly sick. after my shot of radioactive isotopes and chugging down 2 mixed berry barium shakes, my stomach went all to hell and i was sick for the next 7 hours. i want to believe that the cupcakes and cream puffs were worth it...but really, it wasn't. i haven't felt as miserable as i was last night in a long ass time.

anyways, i finally succeeded in downloading the pictures off of my camera onto my comp and will post the pictures of the radiation machine soon. a lot of people have asked me what it looks like and what exactly happens, so i hope i can explain well enough through the pictures i took. until next time...

radiation graduation

i graduated! again! this time from radiation. i even have a certificate to prove it (really! the staff at Nassau Radiologic Group gave me one). by the way, NRAD ROCKS!!! thank you melanie and tom for being such awesome radiation technicians and always putting a smile one my face every time i came in. don't take this personally, but i hope i never have to see you guys again! i just don't want to have radiation ever again! but if i do, i actually do hope i get to see you two and dr. pollack who has been MIA for the past 2 days (at least whenever i'm there).

and just to let you all know, i unfortunately have not gained any super powers, and luckily no extra limbs. i also have yet to show you the radiation machine that i got treatment from every day for the past 4-5 weeks, but i still can't find the damn cable i need to connect my camera to my mac. i wish my camera had bluewire...

by the way, celebration to come soon.

statistics

i decided to look up some statistics about cancer tonight. i was curious to see how i related to the information (as an asian-american woman in her 20's who has non-hodgkins lymphoma) and here is what i found courtesy of the American Cancer Society - www.cancer.org

- there was an estimated amount of 1.4 million cases of cancer diagnosed in the US in 2008

- out of those 1.4 million diagnosed cases, more men were diagnosed than women (men - 745,180 : women - 692,000)

- out of the estimated cases of cancer in the US in 2008, non-hodgkins lymphoma made up 4%

- between 2000-2004, asians and pacific islanders have the second least amount of incidences of cancer amongst other races and ethnicities

here is a particularly scary statistic

- approximately one in three women in the United States will develop cancer over her lifetime. The leading sites are breast, lung, and colon and rectum.

ONE IN THREE WOMEN!

- the probability of developing non-hodgkins lymphma from the previous statistics is one out of 53.


i was trying to find more statistics about people my age and around my age developing cancer, and if i find anything more, i will definitely post it up.

something that rhymes with remission...

i feel completely off center today. it all started after i woke up from a strange dream where i got a phone call from my best friend jess who recently passed away. she was talking to me about how someone's pet something, named fang, was still alive. but the strangest thing about the dream wasn't about fang, it was that she thought my name was roberta or maybe that she was speaking to someone named roberta. i don't even know anyone named roberta. but maybe jess does and that she's trying to give me a sign from beyond to give to roberta??? at least she sounded happy when she was talking to me and that in turn made me a little bit happy too.

maybe what ruined my day was hearing jess's voice in my head and realizing that i will never truly hear it again . every so often i get those days when i feel completely defeated, and i guess this is just one of those days.

it is another day of feeling like i've accomplished nothing. i'm sure at this point that this blog is not sounding very inspiring to those who have cancer, but the truth is, there will always be ups and downs and it's totally ok sometimes to be down.

i just got through my 13th treatment today. luck 13! and if you have all been counting as impatiently as i have, that means i only have 5 more left. FIVE!!! and if you haven't already figured out, this also means that i will be in remission by next week! at least i hope i will be. i have to get the thumbs up from my docs first.

i hope on celebrating...not sure when, but as soon as i find out i am in remission. it was decided by me and my friend stephanie that the name of this celebration should rhyme with remission, but so far the only word that we both considered cool was "ignition." but remission ignition, nor ignition remission really makes any sense. so if anyone knows a really cool word that rhymes with remission that would be a good name for my celebration, please leave me a comment.

oh and if you're have trouble leaving me a comment, e-mail me at fay.serafica (at) gmail.com. i hope you all know that the (at) means to put @.

farewell my metaport

my metaport is finally gone! woooo!!! at first i welcomed having one, but now i'm glad that it's finally out of my body. i probably wouldn't have minded keeping it a bit longer if it wasn't giving me strange sharp pains every so often.

i want to write more, but i feel pretty nauseous from post-surgery pain meds...

so here's an old post from my facebook notes -

a new scar

Wednesday, September 10, 2008 at 8:45pm

so it seems i will be stuck at north shore for quite a bit longer. tomorrow i will have to have what doctors call the "chamberlain procedure." basically they're gonna slice me open in my chest (unfortunately in my tattoo area) and try to remove better tissue samples.

it turns out that harvard came up with the same results in one day that it took north shore's pathology department a week to figure out - that the tissue samples from my biopsy were not enough to properly diagnose me. so i'm back to square one with not knowing whether i have hodgkins or not.

sooooooo....i dunno....i think my brain got fried after my last fever this afternoon.....

so far, so good

sorry for not posting anything in the last few days. i haven't been taking to my best friend's death very well and i'm still in disbelief. i still think that jess is going to call me any time now and ask me how i'm doing. what upsets me most is that i didn't get to share finally reaching remission with her. but i guess she's watching over me, wherever she may be.

tomorrow i will be having surgery to finally remove my metaport. jess had one too which is what led to so many complications to her health recently. when i started to feel strange pains in the area of my metaport, i would tell jess that they were sympathy pains because her port had gotten infected which is why she was in and out of the hospital so much in the past few months. i can't wait to get my metaport out. not only do i still feel strange pain there sometimes, but it always reminds me of jess.

and for those of you who have no idea what a metaport looks like from the outside, here are some pics of mine (it's the weird round lumpy thing on the left side of my chest) -