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 @.

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) -

3 down 15 more to go

today i decided to write an early morning blog...or somewhat early morning blog, before radiation because i usually feel pretty dead after the procedure. i had my third dose yesterday and have only 15 more to go. if i don't miss a day, i should be finished by the second or third week of february.

i had to cancel my pre-admission testing for my metaport removal yesterday due to the crazy weather which means i had to push the surgery till next thursday. at least now i have a little more time to try to take a pic of my metaport and post it online before i say goodbye to it forever.

ok, my brain still seems pretty fried, so here's another old entry from my facebook notes -


tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow

Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 4:08pm

So I'm still here...in North Shore Hospital...waiting for results...

The pathologists could not determine from the tissue samples of my biopsy whether i actually have Hodgkins or not. So my doctor fedex'd overnight my tissue samples to Harvard Medical Center, whom they claim are the best of the best, to have pathologists there look at them. Hopefully I will have answers tomorrow.

For the past week they have been saying tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. I will get my results tomorrow...I will be getting chemo tomorrow...I will be able to leave tomorrow... but tomorrow just keeps on coming, and I am still here...waiting...for them to just tell me that I have cancer.

It still hasn't really hit me yet. I know and can obviously feel that something is wrong, but I am still in disbelief. Cancer is something that I thought i would never have to face in life...or at least not at this age. My 20's have proven to be a life struggling experience; from breaking my neck in car accident in 2001, to this. What next?

If the pathologists at Harvard cannot determine what I have from the tissue samples they received, I'm going to have to undergo a media stenoscopy (I think I spelled that right). Basically I will have to be cut open again in order for them to retrieve a better tissue sample from my tumor. I think i'm more worried about my tattoo being destroyed than actually being hurt myself.

Well that's my life so far...just waiting...