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        I’m getting hot flashes. I’ve had one or two before, but they’re coming more frequently now. I’ve found myself Googling things like “Will hot flashes make you pass out?” “Will hot flashes make you throw up?” “Will hot flashes make you vomit and then fall over?”

        The ones that I’ve been feeling rise up suddenly and I feel intense heat on my face and upper body. Then I feel like I’m going to vomit. Big time. It sucks when they happen out in public. Or when it’s hot out already. Or when it’s hot and I’m out in public.

        I’ve also been getting cold. So cold that I want to put a hat on and cover up with a blanket. Which then might in turn trigger a hot flash. It’s really annoying.

        Speaking of fun new side effects since finishing chemo, I got an eyelash stuck in my eye DURING radiation yesterday. ‘Oh sure,’ I thought. ‘You decide to show up now.’ I haven’t had eyelashes in months, and now I have one painfully stabbing me in the eye when I’m not allowed to move. I started blinking rapid-fire but the thing was stubborn. I tried squeezing my eye shut, but that doesn’t work well when I’m holding my breath. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this is the stuff of nightmares.

        Oh yeah, and for those of you that remember my Hulk Hogan ‘stache…I now have ingrown hairs lumping my landscape. And let me tell ya, when you’re a breast cancer survivor who had lymph node involvement and you start feeling lumps in your groin–WHERE YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE LYMPH NODES–it seems like a good cause for panic and feelings of doom. 

        When I found the first groin lump, it was a couple months ago. A COUPLE MONTHS AGO. It didn’t even CROSS my mind that I have lymph nodes down there. I messed with it. I squeezed it. I tried to push it. It remained. It felt deep. Then it dawned on me that it was a LUMP. DUH. GO TO THE FRIGGIN DOCTOR!

        I sent a message via MyChart to my oncologist. 

        “Good Morning! I have *what I thought was* an in-grown hair or something like that, however it's a lump in my groin area. It just occurred to me that it could be a swollen lymph node or cyst, since it's hard and it's been there for a few weeks, not getting any better. Should I be seen?”

        They got me into the office immediately. I showed my oncologist.

        “It would be extremely rare for the cancer to jump from here” she placed her hand over her left breast, “to here,” she placed her hand over her right groin area.

        “I know, I know. But you’ve got to understand I found my breast lump. I’m scared of lumps. I don’t like lumps.” She ordered a CT scan. 

        “And an ultrasound?” I insisted.

        “Yes, yes. We can do an ultrasound, too.”

        Phew.

        My ultrasound was on a Saturday morning. SATURDAY? I didn’t know they would do something like that on a Saturday. The only other woman in the waiting room had the same sentiment. She had to bring her toddler with her and hope that he would play with her phone without breaking it.

        The ultrasound tech was gracious enough to tell me she didn’t think the lump was a lymph node. She put my worry to rest for the weekend.

        Lo and behold, when they reviewed the results of the ultrasound and the CT, the lump is just an infected follicle or ingrown hair. And I’ve now grown two more on my left side. I’m not allowed to panic about those because we’ve already confirmed their cousin over there on the right is nothing to be concerned about. 

        But this is what scares me. It’s the Boy Who Called Wolf idea. If I have enough false alarms, it might make me ignore a real concern. And this is going to be the rest of my life, looking over my shoulder, thinking every rustle in the bush is a wolf. A lumpy cancerous wolf.

        I must say, though, if I've learned anything from this, it's that I'm only good at growing hair on my head. No where else.