50th Birthday - Tiara

My Mickey Mouse attempt at cropping and posting pictures. LOL

The infamous 50th birthday crawled up on me in 2005. My best friend sent me a tiara for my 50th birthday. I said I always wanted one and we had a great hoot trying it on, prancing around taking photos. It is a pretty ridiculous thing for a 50 year old woman to want for a whimsy. I think I’ll wear it for my 72nd injection.


50 injections done. I feel like crap and look just as bad. I sent a photo to my pal and the word she used to describe her husband’s reaction to my photo was “aghast”. I have been sending her photos of me, but that's the first time he had seen a pic of me in months. I do look terrible. I have been struggling with weight loss again. I expect the hair to take another round. Sides are still the same old exhaustion, brain fog, suffocation but major digestive problems have hit me with a vengeance since week 47.

49 - Melanoma

Kitty with heating pad

2004 was the year I turned 49 and it was one hell of a year. I went through a personal emotional crisis (not willing to discuss here) early in the year and at the same time I was diagnosed with melanoma on my right upper thigh by the summer. Both situations knocked me on my ass. I was no longer in control of my personal life and now the melanoma scared the crap out of me.

I noticed that the spot on my leg had started to change and when I visited my dermatologist in May of that year I had to insist that he remove it and check it. Well, I didn’t find out it was melanoma until August of that year because of our backed up health care system. Welcome to Canada!

They took a larger chunk out of my leg about the size of an egg and it came back all clear. I was very lucky and now I go to my dermatologist every six months for a complete skin check.


It set me back terribly being diagnosed with melanoma and now that this Hep C diagnosis has been handed to me I’m in the “frig it” mode. I’m never looking back after my treatment and I’m going to lather up with the sun screen and go swim in the ocean as much as possible for the rest of my life. I might go south and I cannot live the rest of my life afraid of the sun. I will be sensible, but not afraid.

I managed to get melanoma (I was not a sun worshipper and it’s not in my family) and hep C living my own little cloistered life in Smallville. It is time to say…”frig it”!

48 Weeks + 24 More

This week started out pretty good following my 48th injection on Sunday night. I felt good enough to push myself to my limit and by today I hit a brick wall. I am suffocating again and I should have known better not to overdo it.

24 weeks of injections left.

47 - Trip to Oz and Mom Remarries

My 47th year was a busy year. To top it all off I went to Australia in the early spring of 2002 to visit my pal. I was there in ’95, also and managed to see the Great Barrier Reef, Fraser Island, Surfer’s Paradise, etc. The country is so huge and unique. In 2002 I went to a resort in Mooloolaba, a resort in the MacPherson Mountain range (where I encountered not one, but two snakes on a hike (I was lucky to have clean drawers when I got back to the resort), Glass House Mountains…Sunshine Coast. I think it was the last time I had a side splitting howl with laughter while swimming at a resort in Mooloolaba. The Atlantic Ocean is so blistering cold to swim and the resort was just like bath water with waves that tossed me around like a bubble. I had my bum chaffed on the sand from getting tossed around in the water and I had a great hoot over it.

My Mom married her sweetheart in October and they moved here to Smallville. They are so happy and my step-father never takes the smile off his face. He said it took him 60 years to get her.

I am pushing on through this tx and lately I have been worried about how my mega time-off I have been taking may make my employer investigate why I’m taking so much time off. I am not on their medical plan and I do have many accumulated sick days, but I will run out by March 2009. I don’t think they can investigate the true reason because I am not on their health plan and as long as my doc writes me the script notes for being off work.

It stresses me to get my GP doc to write time-off notes for me monthly, but I don’t want to give my employer a time when I shall return to work. 72 week tour of duty sure put a kink in my 48 week plan and I know that it will be months to get some of my health back once I complete this in February 2009.

This is a prime example that nothing in life goes to plan. I shall not go back to work until I am feeling well enough to handle it and my nurse practitioner wants me off until August 2009. I wasn’t willing to do this at first, but as I get into the 47th week of tx I know I’m going to need the time off to recover from the treatment. I am making arrangements to stay off work until that time as I am pretty sure I will be useless to my employer until then. I want my brain back and I need it to do my job.

I am also getting concerned if I’ll have long-term hazards from taking the interferon and riba for such a long time. Will I ever feel well, again?

I attended a wedding last week and the photographer took pictures of all the guests in attendance. She took one of me up close and when I saw the picture I saw a person that was a shell of my former self. My eyes were empty, hollow, blank and sick looking. It wasn’t really me.