I was done with those anyway...and those

I always said that I wanted to be done having kids by the time I was thirty.  My mom always said that she didn't want to be a grandma before she was fifty; we're twenty years apart in age, so you can calculate how this left us at a bit of an impasse.  Unfortunately for her, I had an obliging husband and a series of supportive work environments, so even with a miscarriage I reached my goal with time to spare.  It has all worked out, as these things do, because my mom has embraced grandmotherhood and I am done with my ovaries.  Thank goodness I'm done, because it turns out that the chemo drug taxotere is killing my ovaries.

Ever since the beginning of chemotherapy I've known that the dexamethasone (steroid) made my face flush periodically.  Early on I noticed that the face flush was getting increasingly hotter, and that after each treatment it intensified.  A few weeks ago, I asked how long the 'roid stayed in my system, and Dr. Oncologist said 36 hours.  That's where that conversation ended, but it didn't explain what was happening since I was still getting flush flashes well past 36 hours after my last 'roid dose.  Well, over the last week or two I have come to recognize this face flush as a bona-fide "hot flash", and I break into a sweat for about a minute before I get freezing cold because, that's right, I'm bald.  So on Wednesday I probed into the nature of the hot flashes and left the 'roid out of the inquiry.  As always, Dr. O nodded and explained that the taxotere is killing my ovaries and sending me into early menopause.  It might be temporary, as in just while I'm undergoing chemotherapy.  And that's where she left it.  I'm not sad, because as I said, I was done with those anyway.  The possibility of permanence is kind of unsettling, but I'm also getting used to that.  Basically it's just another side-effect surprise, and I am indeed tired of those.  

Happy New Year to all of you!  I've decided to pass on a New Year's resolution this year.  Anything I posit I can't possibly execute under these circumstances:  be more positive?  Exercise more?  Work harder?  Instead, I am setting a 100% attainable goal:  be the smartest, loveliest, 30-year-old mom without breast(s) this side of the Mississipp'.  I feel that such an utterly subjective goal is appropriate for this situation in which I keep losing strength, feeling, and body parts.  I hope that you too can set attainable goals for yourself this year!  Big electronic hugs from me to you!