It’s been a very busy year.  I kept telling myself to write another post and then I’d forget.  Time passed and I hadn’t realized how much had passed until I signed into my account.  I’m still here.  I’m still dealing with a number of issues related to my breast cancer diagnoses.  The biggest being the pain and, even worse, the itch in my reconstructed breasts, and the neuropathy in my feet.

But I’ll get back to that in a bit.

Over the last year, many first responders have been diagnosed with 9/11 related cancers and other illnesses and a number of them have died.  It’s tough reading on social media or in the newspaper of another death.  It always makes me wonder why some people survive and other people do not.  Is there still more that we survivors are supposed to do?  Is just writing this blog and spreading my message my purpose? To help the next woman who will face breast cancer?  I don’t know but I guess we aren’t meant to know.

Last August I had the opportunity to travel to Italy with my best friend.  As it was a last minute trip (for me), I could only stay a week.  We stayed in Cernobbio (on Lake Como).  We also took a couple days and visited Rome, Vicenza, and Venice.  We also took a few hour trip into Lake Lugano, Switzerland.  I had an amazing time & because I loved Italy so much, I booked a trip for this past July with Charles & Gillian.   It was wonderful.  We took a tour of Sicily and Southern Italy.  We extended the tour a day on the front (in Palermo) and a day on the end (in Rome).  We saw many wonderful sights including: Monreale (Norman Cathedral), Agrigento (Valley of the Temples), Taormina (Greek Theatre with an erupting Mt. Etna as a backdrop), Giardini Naxos & Catania (Mt. Etna & Allied Landing Museum), Reggio Calabria, Matera (Sassi), Alberobello (Trulli), Castellammare di Stabia (with Mt. Vesuvius as a backdrop), Pompeii, and Rome.  On the extra day in Rome, we took a VIP tour of the Vatican museums (Waking Up the Vatican).  We were three of only 20 people in the museums.  We unlocked doors and windows, and turned on lights.  This was truly a once in a lifetime experience.  I would definitely recommend the tour if you wanted to enjoy the Vatican museums without the huge crowds.

May 2019 was very busy.  Charles & I went to Philadelphia for a long weekend.  Xavier graduated from Temple Law School on Thursday May 16, 2019 and two days later, on May 18, 2019, he married Kaitlyn.  They had a small wedding (by our family’s standard) of 40 people at the Philadelphia Wedding Chapel.  Christian and Gillian were part of the wedding party.  A brunch reception was the following morning at The Dandelion.  The whole wedding was planned in under 4 months.  Kaitlyn had been teaching English in China for over a year and had only returned to the US in January.  (Xavier took the Pennsylvania Bar Exam at the end of July & I’m proud to say that he passed)!

Gillian graduated from the undergraduate portion of the her 7 year BS/MD program at the City College of New York on May 31st.  She started Medical School in August, a couple weeks after we came home from Italy.  Gillian comes home for an occasional weekend and I’ve visited her in NYC a couple times.

On October 10, 2019 I had a parathyroidectomy.  I had been putting the surgery off for three years.  I had an adenoma on one node of my parathyroid (the node was removed),  which was causing my parathyroid hormone (parathormone) to be high and the calcium in my blood to be high.  If your parathyroid is working normally, the hormone level would be high if your blood calcium is low (and vice versa).  The high hormone level was causing calcium to be leeched out of my bones (causing osteopenia which could have lead to osteoporosis).  When I was originally referred to the ENT who specialized in the parathyroid, he wanted to do surgery right away.  I saw the World Trade Center doctor & she suggested I see an endocrinologist first.  The endocrinologist advised me I could wait a while. However, if my blood calcium reached a certain level, surgery would be necessary.  I reached the level earlier this year.  I went to the ENT in February or March and as my son was getting married in May and I didn’t want a nasty scar on my neck, surgery was scheduled for mid June.  Then I got tickets to see Hamilton on Broadway.  Surgery or Hamilton.  It was a no brainer.  I hoped to reschedule to surgery for late July or August.  Unfortunately the ENT had no availability until October.  I must admit, I also put off the surgery because over the last few years, I had so much surgery, I was all “surgery’d out.”  In addition to chemo brain, I am now dealing with the general anesthesia brain fog.  Oh Joy.  I just love it when I can’t spit a word out or remember something.  

The weekend of October 18th, Xavier & Kaitlyn, Christian, and Gillian were all home.  It was nice for all of us to be together because we aren’t sure when we will all be together again.  Christian works a crazy schedule with Hornbeck Offshore.  He had come home very early Friday morning (after working for 6 weeks straight off the coast of Mexico) and he was flying out very early Sunday morning to Miami.  He moved down to Florida.  On Sunday Xavier, Kaitlyn, Gillian, & I participated in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk.  I’m happy to say that our small team (Team Coddfish) raised about $3700.

As previous noted, Christian moved down to Key Largo.  Less than a week later, he proposed to his now fiancée Christina (she is also a mariner).  We are so excited to be adding another daughter to our family.

Neuropathy- it sucks.  I have “dead” spots on my right foot.  I have feeling in my foot, but it feels numb.  I also get pain & tingling from just below my right knee down to my foot.  I have the same issue going down my left leg but not nearly as bad.  I am on a few different medications for the neuropathy as sometimes it is so bad, I can’t fall asleep.  I was started on Gabapentin, then Nortriptyline.  The Nortriptyline worked for a few months & then it stopped, so the neurologist doubled the dose.  The double dose started messing with my emotions.  I just felt “blah.”  I told the neurologist. He cut the Nortriptyline back to the original dose & added Gabapentin again (he upped the dosage of Gabapentin).  I’m supposed to take Gabapentin 3x per day, however, with all the side effects I’d read, I’d probably never be able to leave my house.  I usually take it at bedtime.  If that doesn’t help & I’m still up at 3 am, I take another.  I recently started taking magnesium as well.  I’ll give that a some time to see if it works.  So…that’s the neuropathy.

Itchy. Achy. Boobs……….I’m not sure which is worse.  The neuropathy or my reconstructed breasts.  I get random sharp pains shooting through my breast.  It’s almost as if I am being stabbed through (the reconstructed) nipple.  I also experience muscle spasms in above my right breast and occasionally by my right rib cage.  It can occur while reaching for something, stretching, exercising, etc.  I usually have to stop what I am doing & try to breathe through the pain.  The pain doesn’t usually last long, but it is intense.  Then there is the itch.  Have you ever had an itch you couldn’t scratch?  It can drive you nuts.  I get an itch deep within the scars of my right breast.  I can’t scratch it.  I usually end up punching myself.  This can occur anywhere.  People must think I am nuts at times as I am punching myself in the chest.   I occasionally get an itch in my left breast but isn’t as bad.   I had reconstructive surgery (DIEP flap & SGAP) back in March of 2014 & revision surgery in December of 2014.  It has been almost 5 years since the last of my reconstructive surgeries and  I thought the pain and itch should be gone by now.  So, what do most people do when they want answers, I Googled my symptoms.  I found a possible answer to all of my issues: Post Mastectomy Pain Syndrome.  Hooray, I’m not crazy.  The pain and itch aren’t all in my head.

Please continue to pray for all of our first responders and volunteers who spent time down at Ground Zero and for the students and residents who went to school in the area and are now suffering from cancers and other illnesses attributed to the toxins in the area.

I will edit this post soon to include photos. My computer is being fussy and as it has been so long since I posted, I’d like to publish this rather than waiting for the photos.