At some point the first 6 chemo treatments ended. I came through it, and looking back, cannot believe I made it, but with the help of my family and friends I managed. So, back to the doctor, the oncologist to find out what was next.
Two weeks after my last chemo treatment, Dr. Chuu put me on Tamoxifen, a chemo drug that you take daily like a vitamin. Side effects I am sure but none that I noticed. When he told me about the tamoxifen I asked him what it did and he basically told me that it pretty much shut down the estrogen in my body. Mary and I were confused, so I asked him if I was going to grow a mustache or beard being on this drug? He laughed at me, thinking I was kidding.....Mary assured him that I was not. So he reassured me that I was not about to grow anything, including a penis by taking this drug.
Right after the chemo was finished, the dealership that I worked for had a huge breast cancer benefit for an agency called YSC (I think) but it doesn't really matter now anyway. When it was all said and done, we had a wonderful time and we donated $15,000 to the YSC. In my opinion at the time it was the best thing to do with the money. My goal was to help young women with breast cancer. To let women know they didn't have to be 40 years old before they could get cancer. I never heard from them again after they took the money. The complaint I have with them is that I called them a few years later and I needed to speak to someone about my children's future, whether or not they could help me get some information and after we had donated $15,000 they never even bothered to return my calls. Makes you wonder doesn't it? They are supposed to be helping women like me, right? Where were they when I needed them? I had a question. Could they even point me in the right direction? And then I found out that a non profit organization, hired a woman and paid her a salary to run the organization and she not only never had a history of breast cancer, but didn't even know anyone who had ever had it! How was she going to help women who needed compassion and understanding. I should have done more research before handing over that money. Not that it was a lot in their eyes but it was in mine.
So, I had come through all of this surgery and chemo in one piece. I was not finished though, still had a month of radiation. You might think this is a little funny, I did, my radiologist's name was Dr. Shocker. Can you believe it? Very nice man and a few weeks into the radiation, I started to grow my hair back. Dark and curly....very curly. It was beautiful, I had come through it and came through it with flying colors! What an adventure, not a fun one, but an adventure none the less. I had made it!
Now we were talking about buying a house in Nicktown. Jim's old house in Nicktown. My family would be 45 minutes away. The boys would go to Northern Cambria and dear Lord, help me, he and his ex-wife had lived there together for the last 8 or 9 years. We had a huge fight over it and I had not even seen it yet. It's not easy to live in a house that the ex lived in. Especially when there are small children reminding you of it all of the time. "when my mom lived here." Well, I got a good look at how things were when their "mom lived here." And it was not good. I never saw the inside until after the papers were signed. The bank sold me the house and the five acres it sits on. It was a lot of money in my opinion and I was scared because Jim and I were in love but not married. The house has and in-ground pool, basketball court, 4 bedrooms a laundry room. It sounds wonderful,doesn't it? Let me let you in on a little secret, the house is brick, it sits back in the woods on five acres and it looked perfect in the snow from the outside, while sitting in the truck. I wanted to raise my kids here. The secrets and bad things even with people are ALWAYS on the inside. A lot of things look pretty from the outside and are rotting on the inside.....this house was one of those things.
My first experience in this house will end this blog because it makes me sick to even think about it. So, the floor was covered in so much garbage that I made Jim just rip it up off of the floor, I was afraid to walk on it, even with shoes on. I then walked upstairs to find live animals living in one of the bedrooms, baby bunnies to be exact. The cielings were on the floor because the last person that lived here, Jim or her, walked out and didn't winterize the house. No heat or water because all of the pipes blew and that was the reason all of the cielings fell. The kitchen had carpeting, and nothing worked, not the fridge(which I wasn't gonna open)the oven or the stove. OK, 2 burners worked. Everything in the house was paneling...all of the walls had been colored on. ALL of them. There weren't just animals living here there were small children left to live like animals. I am not over exaggerating. That show "hoarding" made this place look good. We rented a dumpster and started to clean. Well Jim did because I could not do it, I was afraid of getting into something that might make me very ill. I was still doing radiation when we moved here. It was getting to be the end of the summer and still no heat or water. The heat and water got put in just in time for winter. Still no cielings and the living room was not livable. Our first winter here was awful but we were in a big house we could only use half of of it, so we were close. ALL 7 of us. Oh yeah, we have a pond that is slowly turning into a swamp too....
More later.
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