Starting Chemo May 2008

Jen, dahlin, your right eyebrow looks mah-velous.  Just perfect.  How do you DO that?

Ladies~ do any of you want to exchange holiday cards this year??

Kristy

DONE DONE DONE. Hurray. Celebrate. 

Congratulations Kristy!!!!

I love Christmas cards!  Count me in! 

GS birthday party today!

DH doing okay-a little grouchy, but nothing I can't deal with. The packing in his nose is driving him nuts. 

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Mary, how nice to have a "done with rads" celebration at work . . . sounds like you have great coworkers.  And Kristy, a big "hurray" on being done with rads.  Doesn't it seem as though time is playing weird tricks on us?  Chemo took forever . . . and then it was over, just like that.  Same with rads (vicarious rads, in my case).  Same, too, I hope, for the herceptin crowd.  All I know is, this has been at once the longest and the shortest year of my life. 

Gracie, glad your husband is doing well post-surgery.  (And yeah - I've observed that same male/female difference.)

Linda

Roxi - Congrats on being finished . . . no more rads!!!  It sounds as though you have some fantastic co-workers, I would have cried as well.  It reminded me of a gift that I received from a friend after chemo was complete.  It was pictures of the pole dance (and others) and it was a scrapbook page that read "finding joy in the journey".  It made me cry, but most it made me think of you all and the laughs shared.

Kristy - congrats to you as well on finishing rads.  I also have a whopper of a cowlick beginning to show itself. 

Gracie - That is great to hear that your hubby's surgery went well. 

I have 10 rad treatments to go and eager to be done - I am red but not peeling.  The pattern has been to come home from work, eat, exercises (if possible), walk the dog and go to bed.  Which is also the reason that I have not posted much.  Work blocks & monitors web site activity so I am trying to log in at home when I can.  It is a beautiful fall day here in MN and I am going out to enjoy.  Hope you are all doing the same!

Jean

Been off for a couple of days, so I'm just catching up.

Yaaayyy to Kristy and Mary!  Wooo hoooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gracie - Also glad dh got through surgery okay, but alas for the neediness!  (Mine too, when he had bronchitis).  We await your pole dance...

Unfortunately, I did get dd's cold.  It seems to have settled in my throat/chest and if it is not better by Monday, I will be visiting my PCP.  I thought I was going to cough up an organ this morning.  However, I did learn a little trick for keeping the cough down at night (somebody emailed this to me a couple of weeks ago):  Get a jar of Vicks VapoRub and slather on the bottoms of your feet, cover with socks.  It will keep the cough away for a good 10 hours.  I did it for dd and on me last night.  It does work.  Feels weird but works. 

Yea Mary, YOU are done. I will be on herceptin for a year like Jen and I will take tamoxafin ...five years if I leave ovaries in and two and a half if I take them out I think....then switch to some other ai. What about you?

Roxi/Mary,

Keep doing whatever you were doing during rads for at least two weeks....I stopped after one week and think that is where I went wrong.  If it gets really bad, go to Walgreen's and get Domeboro soaks--packet of powder that you mix with water and put on a rag, soak the burn 2-3 times a day for 15 minutes and get your rad onc to prescribe you Silvadene cream.......It was REALLY uncomfortable for about a week, somewhat uncomfortable for another week.  Now I only have one little spot left that hurts.  YEAY for being done!!!!!

Rock, why are you going to a Halloween party on Nov, 1st? Procrastination? 

I am home alone, dh has flown to Miami overnight.  Had a really good day, took the dogs to the dog park and then for a 3-mile walk with my friend Vicki--the dogs have been sleeping since we got home at 5 and it is almost 10!

Holiday cards sound great to me!

Hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend, operative word being REST.

Sue

morning everyone.. thinking of you.TMI alert...

 I think my period may have returned, which I am quite happy about. It is not definite, but something is different about the colour I am producing. 

 I am off to work for day 7 of this week. I had a few hours off on Wed, but that is all. The basement in my shop has been ignored since my diagnosis and you cannot even go into one of the rooms it is so crammed with crap so that is todays project.

Tomorrow is a day off of sorts, but I am in the JCC most of the day with gene tests, herceptin and the MUGA ... 

 Love y'all.

 N

Kerry, you are quite enamored of the dog. ass. tired. expression.  It really works when nothing else does, doesn't it.  I agree about the neuropathy, what ya gonna do, sit down and wait for it to go away?  Me either!! Lost my second big toenail last night, and let me tell ya, my big toes are UGLY!!!! So far it's only the big ones, though, and no fingernails seem to be affected at all.  Guess everybody is different.  Oh, well, I was bald for the Texas summer heat, and now my feet will be ugly in the winter when I can cover them up. (I also left the last coat of summer nail polish stylishly growing out on the other toes.  Nothing can make you procrastinate like cancer treatment, huh?)

Feeling pretty good today, washed the bedcovers and hung them on the line to dry, that's one of my favorite things.  Noelle, glad to hear you are glad for the return of reproductive function, I seem to remember you left the possibility open for wanting another child? Good on ya, then! (TMI alert here) My DESIRE is finally returning, hallelujah!!!!  I haven't WANTED sex since I found out I had cancer back in March.  And my dh, believe it or not, hasn't pushed or complained, in fact I think I may have to convince him that he won't hurt me and it is fine now.  Guess I'm off to Victoria's Secret for a slinky something to let him know what I'm thinking.  We are going to Tennessee week after next to see family, then three days in a cabin in the Smokies, just he and I.  I am really looking forward to no phone, no TV,  no computer just he and I and walks and fresh air and good food, companionable reading and maybe a good cigar and a bottle or two of wine---the return of normalcy, or closer to normalcy, anyway.  I do feel just that tiny bit more energetic every day, and have started counting down my Mondays until retirement--about twenty to go!

Roxi, who told you no more that 5 pounds ever again? Is it because of lymphedema risk or some other reason?  I saw an LE therapist and he gave me exercises to do WITH weights, and said I could increase with time as I saw fit--but he says people either tend to get LE or not and if not you can do a lot of the stuff they say you can't ever do again....and that working the joints and muscles is also a way to efficiently move the fluids around. Anyway, just a thought. I don't seem to be one of the people who tends toward it--I do the massage every day in the shower, and am careful about how I carry things, of course immediately and aggressively treat any injury to that arm, but haven't had any trouble at all with LE. I only had nine lymph nodes removed, though, so that is probably part of the difference.  Anyway, it's a curious thing, that LE.  I did buy a sleeve for air travel, and wear it each time I fly.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Sunday and a really good next week.

CHEMOOOOOOOO!

P.S. Am back up to three miles on my daily walks, for the whole past week.  It takes me 15 minutes longer than it did pre-bc, but it feels really really good.

Hi Ladies, sorry to interrupt...

Do any of you know how to post a picture in my Post from my PC?

Driving me nuts trying to figure it out today...grrrrrrr

TY

Laura

Rock, if you do get to Sue's porch (and thankyouverybloodymuch for that most beautiful of images) you will find me there first. All I can manage is 'in the moment' stuff'. For example, we have waited 2 years to be moving into this house of ours and I am (intellectually) desperate to get my chickens, and do my linocuts in the sunny window. I am also (intellectually) beside myself about shopping for 2nd-hand timber beams, and building our shed on the estuary. But the reality is..apart from feeling (relatively) physically brilliant, I don't feel much at all.  All you other girls?  I think we have been the victim of a giant, complex burglary..you know, where for years we discover things missing.  Rock, I would be gutted on your behalf if you cannot bounce from cloud to cloud about this book and this scholarship and this trip os and this sabbatical. If fecking bc has stolen that, I will be REALLY pissed off.  Yes, the feeling will pass. But I don't want (on your behalf) the fecker to keep coming back.   O-h-h-h. That porch visual. Is there room for 10 of us? I can think of nothing I would rather do.....XXX

Thank you very much Roxi!

Laura

How do we do that?  How is it that we (the May girls) are so often on the same emotional rollercoaster?  I thought it was because I had this cold, but it's pretty much gone now, a hit and run sore throat with a cough.  But I don't think so.  I've had a hard time just logging on and reading, let alone posting anything worthwhile.  Raining outside was my excuse today (even though it stopped at about 10 AM) for staying in the house all day.  Kerry, I'm with you on the "intellectually" part of things.  I am "intellectually" ready to move on and do many other, regular things.  But I'm not DOING it.  And, for me, it changes on a dime.  For a few days, I'm up and running and then - WHAMO!  Something happens and I lose all motivation.  We watched 3 movies in the last 2 days.  I didn't even do that all through chemo! 

Rock - Apparently I needed to unload, too.  Thanks for the opening.  I, too, am sure it will pass, but for now it sucks.  Ahhhhh...Sue's porch...sounds lovely.