Have You Lost Your Senses?

Chemotherapy and radiation can have some pretty harsh, long-lasting side effects.  I have discussed chemo brain, depression, body image, and a range of other effects in this blog, but a larger attack on the system is the five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.

One of the areas that I noticed a change almost immediately was my sense of smell.  I have always had an excellent sense of smell that actually saved my life once during a gas leak in my apartment. After chemotherapy, it escalated ten-fold! 

The first time I realized it was while I was still going through chemo and my mother had hard-boiled some eggs and set them in the fridge uncovered.  Later that day I opened the fridge and gagged, ran to the bathroom and threw up.  I have had the same reaction to that smell ever since!

Another instance while still receiving chemo was when a friend was cooking scallops with garlic and I could smell it from my room on the other side of the house. I had to stay in my room the rest of the night to avoid getting sick.

What is odd, is that after almost three years, this is still having an effect on me!  I can smell things from miles away, I swear! I can smell when there is a fire in the hills; when neighbors across the street are cooking something wonderful; and when the trash in our garage three floors down needs to be taken out!

The next sense that was affected immediately was my eyesight. During chemo, my sight went blurry and my eyes would water whenever I tried to read.  After chemo, my sight never did return to normal and I had to get reading glasses.  Three years later, my sight has deteriorated quickly and it is time for a stronger prescription.  

Next came my hearing.  Now, remember, during chemo you lose ALL the hair on your body not just on your head.  This means eyebrows, eyelashes, nose hairs and the tiny hairs in your ears that vibrate to pick up the sound. I literally went deaf for about a week. 

Today, the long-lasting effect is that everything seems TOO loud! When I am out and about in the city I feel like I am being bombarded with noise.  When at my computer I must use headphones so I can be in control of the volume. 

Then there are the taste buds.  I have been a pretty picky eater most of my life.  Texture plays a big part in whether or not I will like something as well.  During chemo, I preferred my food to be somewhat bland. I wanted savory, not sweet. I wanted smooth and creamy textures.

These days it is like I have a whole new appreciation for good food.  I acquired a taste for asparagus that I refused to ever eat before. I lost my appetite for fish altogether.  I prefer salty snacks over sweet ones.  Some foods simply have no flavor to me at all and I need to add salt or spices.

Luckily, for me, my sense of touch was not affected at all.  I did not develop neuropathy in any of my limbs or digits and for that I am grateful.  I have spoken to many survivors who say the tips of their fingers have lost feeling, or they find it hard to walk because they developed neuropathy in their feet.  

I find it so interesting that my sense of smell and my hearing were both escalated above normal, yet my sense of taste and my eyesight deteriorated.  I would love to hear from any of my readers how chemo affected yours, and which senses were changed the most!


Image provided by Pixabay.com 

LIFE is a pre-existing condition!

Obamacare vs. Trumpcare.  Even my spell checker does not recognize the latter!  No matter what side of this issue you stand on, there are problems.  There will always be problems.  Reforming the health care system in this country is a huge undertaking and you can't please everyone to do it.  However, this new Senate bill is a travesty and does not repeal or replace Obamacare...it demolishes the entire system.

Under the Affordable Care Act -or- Obamacare, I was eligible for Medi-Cal (California's version of Medicaid) when I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  I was unemployed, uninsured, putting myself through college at 45 years old trying to change careers and make a better life for myself.  If it were not for the program called Avon Cares For Life, and their funding, I would not be alive today.  My cancer had already started to metastasize into my armpit lymphnodes and was well on it's way to keep moving throughout my body.  My Medi-Cal eligibility literally saved my life!

The Medicaid cuts in this new Better Care Reconciliation ACT (BCRA) bill would have made it impossible for me to get insurance in that situation and I might have died.  It's as simple as that.  If this thing passes I will have new nightmares about cancer recurrance over the next decade and being dropped from my insurance for two reasons: Cuts to the program...and cancer now becoming my "pre-existing condition."

On June 22nd of this year, Barack Obama released a statement that hit me so close to home that I want to share a certain part of it with those who may not have even seen it:

"So I still hope that there are enough Republicans in Congress who remember that public service is not about sport or notching a political win, that there’s a reason we all chose to serve in the first place, and that hopefully, it’s to make people’s lives better, not worse.

But right now, after eight years, the legislation rushed through the House and the Senate without public hearings or debate would do the opposite. It would raise costs, reduce coverage, roll back protections, and ruin Medicaid as we know it. That’s not my opinion, but rather the conclusion of all objective analyses, from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which found that 23 million Americans would lose insurance, to America’s doctors, nurses, and hospitals on the front lines of our health care system.

The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health care bill. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else. Those with private insurance will experience higher premiums and higher deductibles, with lower tax credits to help working families cover the costs, even as their plans might no longer cover pregnancy, mental health care, or expensive prescriptions. Discrimination based on pre-existing conditions could become the norm again. Millions of families will lose coverage entirely.

Simply put, if there’s a chance you might get sick, get old, or start a family – this bill will do you harm. And small tweaks over the course of the next couple weeks, under the guise of making these bills easier to stomach, cannot change the fundamental meanness at the core of this legislation.

I hope our Senators ask themselves – what will happen to the Americans grappling with opioid addiction who suddenly lose their coverage? What will happen to pregnant mothers, children with disabilities, poor adults and seniors who need long-term care once they can no longer count on Medicaid? What will happen if you have a medical emergency when insurance companies are once again allowed to exclude the benefits you need, send you unlimited bills, or set unaffordable deductibles? What impossible choices will working parents be forced to make if their child’s cancer treatment costs them more than their life savings?

To put the American people through that pain – while giving billionaires and corporations a massive tax cut in return – that’s tough to fathom. But it’s what’s at stake right now. So it remains my fervent hope that we step back and try to deliver on what the American people need."

This entire statement can be read here: Barack Obama on Facebook 

What exactly is a pre-existing condition? Let's think about this for a moment...

"The American Health Care Act stipulates that states can allow insurers to charge people with pre-existing conditions more for health insurance (which is banned under the ACA) if the states meet certain conditions, such as setting up high-risk insurance pools. Insurers still cannot deny people coverage outright, as was a common practice before the ACA's passage, but they can hike up premiums to an unaffordable amount, effectively pricing people out of the market." ~Alicia Adamczyk - Money

According to this BCRA -or- AHCA bill they would include but are not limited to: 

• HIV/AIDS
• Alcohol or drug abuse
• Alzheimer's or dementia
• Anorexia
• Arthritis
• Bulimia
• Cancer, metastatic cancer
• Cerebral Palsy
• Congestive Heart Failure
• Coronary artery/heart disease, bypass surgery
• Crohn's disease
• Diabetes
• Epilepsy
• Hemophilia
• Hepatitis
• High blood pressure
• Kidney disease, renal failure
• Lupus
• Mental disorders including: Anxiety, Bipolar, Depression, OCD, and Schizophrenia
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Muscular dystrophy
• Obesity
• Organ transplant
• Osteoarthritis
• Paraplegia
• Paralysis
• Parkinson's disease
• Pending surgery or hospitalization
• Pneumocystic pneumonia
• Pregnancy or expectant parent (includes men)
• Sleep apnea
• Stroke
• Transsexualism

Then there is the list of items that could raise your premiums:

• Acid reflux
• Acne
• Asthma
• C-section
• Celiac disease
• Heart burn
• High cholesterol
• Hysterectomy
• Kidney stones
• Knee surgery
• Lyme disease
• Migraines
• Narcolepsy
• Pacemaker
• Postpartum depression
• Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
• Seizures
• Sexual deviation or disorder
• Ulcers

I don't know about you, but I can safely say of all the people I know, I know someone with at least one of these ailments.  I guarantee you every single member of the house and the senate, and the white house staff either has one of these ailments, or knows someone who does!  Some of these diseases people are born with! So I say again...LIFE is a pre-existing condition!! How can we honestly and with a straight face turn all of these people away or charge them more money for being...HUMAN????

This is a ridiculous joke and I am begging each and every one of you regardless of political party to fight this with all you have!  No, I don't know what the best way is to fix our health care system, but you know in your heart that this is NOT it!  

Let's stand up, America, and be heard!  Sign petitions, protest, talk to your state representatives, do whatever it takes (without violence please) because we cannot allow this to happen! You know why? Because it does not matter what color you are, what nationality, rich or poor, republican or democrat.  Every-single-one-of-us will have something on these lists at some point in our lifetime!!

Image provided by Pixabay.com