I am starting chemo in July 07. Anyone else?

Hi everyone and thank you Pat for asking about me. It prompted me to post when you're right, I haven't done for a while. There are 2 reasons - firstly our rickety rural broadband has been playing up but the main reason is that my stay in the bristol Cancer Centre has changed my life quite profoundly. i have still been following the thread through getting the emails but I used to post a lot early in teh morning like now (4.45 in Ireland). My stay in Bristol gave me a lot of helping tools, including meditations and T'ai Chi type exercises and keeping a journal of my feelings. So most of the time this is what I now do in the early mornings. I find that really helpful and I just can't do everything. I have just had my 2nd chemo and finding it more manageable than the first. I just wanted to die i felt so awful and I know someone else posted saying that they were telling their husband that they couldn't go back - well I was just the same. I did of course but they changed the anti nausea meds and although I still feel pretty sick I'm not so bad that I can't sleep through some of it. the first weekend I felt so sick I never fell asleep for more than 5 minutes and the nights were like long nightmares. My hair is just starting to loosen.
I have my chemo on a Friday and have now booked leave every Monday afterwards with an acupuncture session on the Monday. That will hopefully minimise my time off work.
I find I'm pretty tired all the time but have managed to streamline my life so that i am keeping up with my two main aims which are work and my veggie garden. I have got a cleaner in (yippee) and most nights I get home from work, eat and go to bed. Luckily my kids are 18 and this summer are in and out and pretty much living their own lives so don't need me so much. I am also following a pretty strict diet, prescribed by the cancer centre and that takes a bit of time - although my husband is happy to eat what I do when the kids are home they want their normal food. I also have to make up my lunch in the mornings to take to work. I do break it occasionally when I eat out at work and find that oriental food is the closest I can get to eating what I should. Interestingly the incidence of breast cancer in Oriental women is tiny compared to Western women. If anyone is interested in the diet they put me on please let me know and I will be more detailed. the biggest no-no is dairy food - and I did love my butter and cheese! But part of the course in Bristol was about cooking and so I came home with some nice recipes.
Like others I have found my surgery spots re-activated and more painful again. I am managing to do a bit of walking and the meditation is definitely helping me to live through the day with less stress and more enjoyment of life in general. I feel that I am learning a lot about what was wrong with my life and that this cancer is an opportunity for me to stop in my tracks and re-evaluate a lot of things. I'm still a bit of a workaholic but calmer about it! Oh yes, one of the things that they said at Bristol was that the research these days suggests that being always positve is not helpful in beating cancer. It's important to have a free flow of feelings and acknowledge the fear and down bits but to move on back to a positve state. That's why they suggest keeping a journal - to keep in touch with feelings and to discharge them onto the page. I do find it helpful.
Well this is quite a long post - I do hope everyone continues to manage their treatment.
Have a good day,
Asia