the weasel and the hare

31 y/o immunology PhD candidate @ Queen's U. master's degree in animal science from McGill. bachelor's degree in organic agriculture from U of Guelph. breeder of show rabbits, cavies, longtime tropical fish keeper, horticulturalist, fibre artist, pigeon keeper. believer that mustelids are the supreme family.

[mad-hare]

Lone star tick (?!) found on my neck in my yard

I hate this day I’m so scared of these things I have enough problems

[mad-hare]

I have to beat cancer or the lady that told me to drink ivermectin wins

[mad-hare]

I wanna get off prednisone so bad obviously, and I take it in the morning. And yesterday I tapered my dose to 35mg because I figured that was the only option for me and I take it in the morning

Hepatologist calls like 2 hours later and is like “your liver values are better than they have been in months, I was thinking that we could taper to 30mg”

And I’m like well I already took the 35mg…. And she was like “okay that’s fine too let’s do 35mg for a week”

🫩 I can’t win I didn’t know 10mg taper was an option cause you were so hung up about the extra 2 days of it before. But she said maybe next week we could lower to 25mg so I’m gonna actually wait for her to call before I take it even tho I kinda have this schedule that I’m supposed to take meds on (pred with breakfast than an hour later mycophenolate on empty stomach?)

BUT I’m finally getting chemo this Friday I’m cleared for that. And it’s been so long and I’m honestly now just scared and of course I seen 500000 TikTok’s about how doxorubicin is the most awful evil thing ever and idk if they’re doing a lower dose or not of it but I’m scared and I feel like I woulda been less scared if I had just started immediately after finishing treatment 1.

My heart was perfect before starting but since all these treatments I’ve developed high blood pressure and tachycardia since then so like things have gotten worse in there clearly right 😭

[mad-hare]

I got chemo rug pulled less than 24 hours before my appointment.

My onco didn’t want to give me chemo before seeing my MRI results but I never got a call for the MRI. She finds out yesterday (and she was supposed to follow up Wednesday but whatever) and then the MRI people call and I am having an MRI Monday morning.

I guess if my MRI shows no cancer she’d still want to do surgery first then chemo. If there’s still cancer in me she’d want to do chemo first. I’m going insane fr. I have to go see her again Monday after my MRI.

And there was more prednisone drama cuz she told me to take 30mg starting today so I did but she’s like “the hepatologist and I are on the same page about this” and then later she’s like “she didn’t email me back” so idk how much on the same page they are if this was a medical show they’d be like in an all out war over this.

[mad-hare]

I wanna get off prednisone so bad obviously, and I take it in the morning. And yesterday I tapered my dose to 35mg because I figured that was the only option for me and I take it in the morning

Hepatologist calls like 2 hours later and is like “your liver values are better than they have been in months, I was thinking that we could taper to 30mg”

And I’m like well I already took the 35mg…. And she was like “okay that’s fine too let’s do 35mg for a week”

🫩 I can’t win I didn’t know 10mg taper was an option cause you were so hung up about the extra 2 days of it before. But she said maybe next week we could lower to 25mg so I’m gonna actually wait for her to call before I take it even tho I kinda have this schedule that I’m supposed to take meds on (pred with breakfast than an hour later mycophenolate on empty stomach?)

BUT I’m finally getting chemo this Friday I’m cleared for that. And it’s been so long and I’m honestly now just scared and of course I seen 500000 TikTok’s about how doxorubicin is the most awful evil thing ever and idk if they’re doing a lower dose or not of it but I’m scared and I feel like I woulda been less scared if I had just started immediately after finishing treatment 1.

My heart was perfect before starting but since all these treatments I’ve developed high blood pressure and tachycardia since then so like things have gotten worse in there clearly right 😭

[mad-hare]

I’ve really been wanting one of those massage foot baths because I think it might be good for my neuropathy if I did hot and cold baths with the lil jets but I know if I got one I’d start using it 5 hours a day and develop some new foot rotting disease from overcooking my feet so it’s an avenue best left unventured…..

[mad-hare]

me when i found this pokemon card and couldn’t stop thinking about it so bought it for $100:

[mad-hare]

Evil world we’re living in

[mad-hare]

in love with this Norwegian trotter named Express Go that’s won 7/7 races so far, is only 14.2hh, and has taught herself to duck down her head to give herself super speed (and lengthen her stride I guess)

[mad-hare]

AGGRESSIVE baby alert

[mad-hare]

Corn and soybean dinner I call it the half assed crop rotation

[mad-hare]

I have fixed my problems by accepting the hump and just having shrimp posture. I’m a real stickler about posture normally but I think this thing is stronger than me

[mad-hare]

And Pokémon center released a fantastic tissues merch which was so expensive but maybe I’d feel better if I was getting my tissues from a pincurchins mouth but it SOLD OUT instantly why did so many people want a $46 tissue dispenser

[mad-hare]

Oh my god the last 2 nights I have had the most distressing neck pain that builds up over night and I just feel all stiff and insane during the day and i was like “I swear to god I’ve grown a neck bump” and I was sending everyone pics of the back of my neck and like 4/5 of them are like that looks normal to me (what is wrong with you tech neck people how are you alive) (you guys can have a cropped version here I literally look like the eraserhead baby right now) and I am sitting in my bed crying cuz it only hurts like a 7/10 right now so it could be worse and I send a sad email to my oncologist and she calls and I go to the hospital for an x ray and that’s fine but I DID grow a hump on my back and it’s from the prednisone and she said it’s created a divet in my neck that’s probably making me uncomfortable and it will go away when I’m done prednisone (in 2 months 😭😭😭) so I just gotta be strong (she didn’t tell me that I tell myself that) I cried a little and admitted I definitely had a panic of bone metastasis which *we* both know is an extremely far down the line thought but it’s hard not to think such things but I am allowed to take Tylenol so I’ll try that tonight

So I can stop worrying about stage 4 for a little bit longer 👍

The problem is there is no position of relief I can find

My beautiful neck hump that is driving me mad it’s gonna start whispering evils into my ear soon:

Also my prednisone moon face because who even cares who sees me at this point plus I think my bald head being more narrow makes it even more comedic

And then she said because of this whole hepatitis thing they might decide that it’s safer to do my surgery before the next chemo (I didn’t get chemo today cuz they’re scared to give it to me). But she’s gonna rush the plastic surgeon referral to see about that and also I should be getting an MRI next week to see if my cancer is truly gone gone because if it’s gone I guess they can do the surgery and then I’ll still do the chemo once my hepatitis is cleared up but it might be a lower dose I’m not sure. They said they’d also maybe give me a Neulasta shot when they give the chemo if I have it next week.

The vibe I’m getting now is the hepatologist wants to taper my prednisone SLOWLY (5mg reduction every 7 days) and my oncologist still wants to taper me a bit faster (5mg reduction every 5 days). So I think they’re kinda going at it over these two days and I really hate this prednisone AT THIS POINT! And my oncologist is probably not excited that we’re digging into so much of my treatment time (we’re coming up to a month of no chemo by next week which is why she even wanted to change me from the Friday schedule to Wednesday/Thursday). But maybe if starting the chemo is so risky they could rush my surgery (doubt they can rush a plastic surgery but who knows I think oncologists have a lot of pull).

[mad-hare]

Fun fact: for some reason men that compare themselves to golden retrievers on hinge do NOT like being told “bark for me dog”

[mad-hare]

They don’t like this

[mad-hare]

Bruh no??? 😭😭😭 my oncologist seems pretty hopeful

[mad-hare]

My epic gains… my onco said it’s mostly fluid weight from the prednisone but I know I have been having unlimited indulgences as well because every time I try to stop myself I’m like “you’re really gonna tell someone with cancer no?” But it definitely did pick up once they put me on prednisone… I’m guessing it’s gonna keep going up for now, once I start A/C chemo it might drop if the nausea gets me on that. This extra poundage might be useless for my breast reconstruction.

But my god I basically feel like a horrible beach ball (it’s like mostly in my gut) and I’m weak, and it’s hard to like, move, and be comfortable, and clean myself. And my head is so puffy now. I want to be deflated. 😭

[mad-hare]

Things TikTok health influencers are scared of:

-sunscreen

-doctors

Things TikTok health influencers are not scared of:

-buying random “peptide” mixtures online and injecting them

-taking dozens of supplements in unregulated doses from unknown origin all at the same time

-doctor (just this one guy they like with a tiktok account that also sells them things)

[mad-hare]

These new drugs are making me so sleepy. 😴

I saw the hepatologist yesterday. I’m a big statistics person as a scientist so it kills me to not have a “__% chance of improvement” that the doctor can give me, we just have to play it all by ear and hope my body does what we expect it to do… Right now we are going to do a slower taper on prednisone (I’m on 40mg right now) with the immunosuppressants.. I am gonna get weekly bloodwork (which lately it’s been 2 times a week) and the hepatologist will call and tell me if I can proceed with the taper… it’s gonna be minimum 8 weeks to get off that, then they try to reduce the immunosuppressant and hope that my T Cell response is just burnt out and stays quiet… There’s no indication that I’ll have any permanent damage from this nor a permanent autoimmune hepatitis which was definitely a fear of mine.

The resident that saw me before was so funny she was like “oh there’s a lot going on here, oh there’s a lot of moving parts.” 😭 And I think I need to learn to better explain my chemotherapy’s because when I see specialists they do not know much about cancer (normal and expected). All the regimens are different so even if they know the drugs they probably don’t know the regimen for my rare breast cancer which is fair (it’s reverse order from other cancers). I was good enough to have a little paper schedule of how my prednisone dosing was changing and they were at least able to cross reference that easily to the bloodwork I had done.

Unfortunately we were under the assumption that I could do this immunosuppressant and do my next chemo and it’ll be fine and I am booked on Friday. The hepatologist I think brought this up to the oncologist because I said I’m starting AC Friday though and my onco called today and said she’s going to have to be consulting with pharmacy and some other doctors because turns out it might be safer to not give me chemo until my prednisone dose is 20/25mg (this must be what she’s leaning to now unless consulting brings up something different). So that might mean I have another 3-4 weeks delay before I can start my chemo. I can’t even find a published case study or anything about this stuff. P

I swear at this point if I need another semester off I am not gonna be happy.

Also this is way down the line but because I am BRCA1+ they will likely want to put me on a year long oral “chemo-like” drug (olaparib), which would reduce my recurrence risk by ~10% (from around 30% to 20%). I’m not gonna sneeze at that number, I am just hoping the side effects aren’t too bad. Most of the other cancers ladies I’ve seen talk on Reddit say it’s a breeze after going through cancer treatment so I’m hoping for that. Just nausea issues.

[mad-hare]

I get to start immunosuppressants tomorrow, and see a hepatologist on Tuesday morning. Oncologist said it’s nothing I did because only a single of my liver values is acting up. but also she called again Friday night saying some of my other values are acting up a little but probably not enough to worry.

But on Tuesday she said she was gonna wait till I see the hepatologist so they can decide if I should go on the immunosuppressant, then Friday night she’s like uhh actually I’m gonna just prescribe it to you now and you can start it Sunday if you want or you can wait till you see them on Tuesday.

Why make me decide these things 😭 I know I’m having a rare response and she’s probably like reading or consulting other people in the off time but like how am I supposed to decide that. I figured it’s pretty likely the liver doctor will want me taking the meds so I do plan on starting on Sunday because I found one single small study saying combined with prednisone it could reduce my ALT by an additional ~30% within 7 days and I’d like to be fit for my next chemo session on Friday.

I could have taken chemo last week but the dose would have been 50% and again idk the implications of that!