Upping my anti-depressants helped. Had two surgeries. The first removed the lump. The second was to remove more of the margins so they were clean. Both surgeries went well. The pain after the surgery was not very bad at all. Easily handled with ibuprofen. I'm a side sleeper and it didn't interrupt my sleep when I was on my bad side.
Then I had 15 rounds of radiation, mostly daily, over 4 weeks. Pro-tip: when they ask you to scooch up, they don't mean pull on a part of the machine and dislodge it. Oops. They said I would be tired and it turned out to be more true than even I believed. I felt sort of tired, but felt like I was not that tired. When the sessions stopped, within a few days, I had WAY more energy. Wow. What difference.
They had valet parking at the clinic which I used a few times. Mostly I parked a few blocks away and walked through a lovely neighborhood. The walk was maybe all of 6 blocks and it was surprisingly tiring, but it felt good to take that sort of control.
I had some mild twinges during the sessions but no changes to my skin until after they'd ended. Then I got some darkening of the skin and a very, very itchy red bump rash. That lasted a good two weeks. While I was applying some prescription anti-itch cream I noticed some ugly brown bumps. Not cancer. Just some sort of ugly brown bumps that people get.
I'm now back to weekly horse riding lessons and have even gotten on and off my lesson horse a few times. We are working on mounting and dismounting as I'm having some difficulty with that. During the cancer treatment I stopped by a few times and hand grazed some of the horses and did some ground work. Very therapeutic.
I'm now taking an anti-hormone pill for the next 5 to 10 years. I was dreading it. For some reason I thought it would make me look and feel much older. More gray hair, less gray hair, more wrinkles, more tiredness. I feel fine. Worries gone.
