Stupid egg thing.

I've had a new development and it is just odd enough that I thought it deserved a blog entry. I've been on the adriamycin/cytoxin chemo mix for two months now. It's been a total of  four chemo cycles and I felt like I just about had it figured out until a few days ago. On Monday I woke up with very sore hands and feet. My hands were very red and painful, but the redness looked really different from the usual Dermatomyositis rash that flares up once the steroids from the last infusion have left my system. They are always sore, but now I had a really hard time doing simple things like opening doors or jars, pulling on my pants, tying balloons for my kids (seriously, that one nearly killed me. I prayed for the next 20 minutes that Lily didn't pop her balloon because there was no way my fingers would be able to tie another one.) Pretty much anything that involved the use of my thumbs was a killer.

Later in the morning, I discovered that my feet were just as sore and throughout the course of the day it got harder and harder to stand, let alone walk, without pain. I found that if I wore supportive shoes and tried to limit myself to the carpeted areas, it was a little easier to handle, but it still really hurt. The next day was just as bad. That night I really started looking at my hands and I realized that this wasn't a rash at all. They were bruises. They were starting to turn purple and ran from the base of my forefinger, down the palm and up to the tip of my thumb. Weird.

So then I pulled off my socks and really took a good look at my feet and sure enough there were big purple splotches around the base of the heal. I couldn't figure out what was going on and was even less certain about what to do about it. I was pretty sure it wasn't a Dermatomyositis issue. I'd never had bruises with it before. Pain yes, but not bruises and I didn't remember reading anything that discussed bruising as a problem with Dermatomyositis. I had to do something because if it got any worse, I was going to have to find a wheelchair to roll around in when I went back to work next week.

So this morning I broke down and called one of my angel nurses, leaving a message for her to call me. When she did and I explained the situation and she said, "Wow. That is really weird!"  Okay. If I had anything to say about anything and I was the Queen of the World for a day, one of the first things I would do would be to ban that phrase, and anything like unto it, from all medical and health professionals. They would have some sort of microchip embedded in their brain that would zap them anytime they even began to form the words. To them, a statement like that just means, "Wow, that is so interesting! I've never heard that one before. I wonder if we can figure it out. The human body is so amazing! Little mysteries like this are really what make me love my job!" But somewhere between the time that that comment leaves their mouths and actually enters the ears of the patient, it changes into something more like, "I've never heard of that happening before. Are you sure you didn't make it up?" OR "Did you know that a lot of these symptoms are just psychological? People are afraid they will happen so they do. It's probably just in your head." OR (and this is the really scary one for me) "I have no idea why that is happening. I can't help you. I'm afraid you're on your own." That last one is what I actually heard. It's the last thing in the world anyone in pain wants to hear.

Anyway, she spoke with my oncologist and a couple of other doctors and they decided that I really needed to meet with my dermatologist (one of the doctors that initially diagnosed me with Dermatomyositis and has been helping me with those issues for the last year.) So I hung up, had a ten minute pity party over the fact that my Cancer doctors were shoving me off to another doctor because they had no idea how to deal with my latest trauma, called and made an appointment with my dermatologist for tomorrow afternoon and then did what the nerdy librarian girl does every time I get freaked out and panicked and feel like I am completely alone... I sent Elijah to a neighbor's to play, put Lily down for a nap and switched on my laptop to do a little research.

Here's what I learned after doing a few searches on "bruising" and "chemo" on a few of my favorite Cancer sites:

Normally if you are injured, the platelets in your blood stick together, forming a clot that stops the bleeding. Some forms of chemotherapy can inhibit or reduce the number of platelets in the blood by affecting the bone marrow where the platelets are formed. So when you have low platelet levels, you are going to bruise much more easily, sometimes even without any kind of injury.

So I read this and thought that that made perfect sense and was a little confused as to why my nurse didn't mention that bruising could be a common problem with patients undergoing chemotherapy, depending on the kind drug they were on, the platelet levels, etc. In her defense, I was throwing a lot of other stuff at her that may have thrown her off a bit, issues that may have been due to chemo, Dermatomyositis, steroid withdrawal, adrenal gland deficiency, yadda, yadda.

Armed with that little bit of information, I felt a little better, but it still didn't explain why the bruising was just on my hands and feet. I needed to think, so I went to my thinking place.  The shower. So I'm sitting there in the shower (yes, I was sitting, feet hurt too much to stand) staring at my hands and feet trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I remember thinking how calloused my feet were even after I used that stupid Ped Egg thing a few days ago. All of a sudden a light came on in my head and I said out loud, to myself, as I am sitting there in the shower, "Marie, you are such an idiot."

Do you know what those Ped Egg things are? You can get them just about anywhere. They look like an egg shaped cheese grater. You use it on your feet if you have dry, rough heels. Several days ago I used one on my feet. I looked at my feet again and saw that most of the bruises were around the base of my heel where I'd used the Ped Egg/cheese grater thing. Then I looked at my hands. The bruise ran mostly along my thumb and up my palm to my forefinger, the exact area where I would have gripped that stupid egg thing.

Well, needless to say, I called back my dermatologist's office and cancelled the appointment. When my nurse called back I explained what I think had happened. She checked my last blood test taken just before my last infusion and they were a little low. They would have been even lower during the Ped Egg incident since it happened shortly after receiving a fresh, cell-killing dose of chemotherapy.

So there you have it. The last two days of pain and misery couldn't even be blamed on Cancer or chemo. It was entirely self-inflicted. Who knew that a little callous-removing would break open all the little blood vessels in my hands and feet and leave me hobbling around the house like a little 80 year old woman for the next week???? Well I guess I do now. Stupid egg thing.