I have to say that, over
all, I’ve had a pretty good week. It’s been a week now since the 1st
dose of this 2nd round of chemo, Adriamycin. I didn’t really know what to expect, but they
told me the most common side effects were mouth sores, nausea, and fatigue. Perhaps it is because I’ve just had one dose,
but the SE did not really occur.
Certainly, the mouth sores were not an issue. Perhaps it was the power of suggestion, but
occasionally, I would say that I got a little queasy. Mostly, I just lost my appetite. Nothing really sounds good to eat. That makes it really hard to cook. Thankfully, Guy’s friend from Alabama is
still here, so they want to eat out a lot.
Nothing in the restaurants sounds good to me, either. I did fix some home-made chicken and noodles
one day. Instead of my home-made
noodles, which I always make, I had purchased a bag of noodles from the Amish
nearby. It was not the same, but it was
OK. Guy had made a great big pot of
chili a week ago, but what usually is very good to me, has not been very
appealing. I guess all this is good,
because I’ll not gain a lot of weight like I did with that 1st round
of chemo.
The day after the chemo, I
felt great. I realized that all the
little aches and pains (including my pesky side ache) were all gone. But I discovered they all returned after the
steroids of the chemo-day wore off. The
next day (Friday), I did not feel good – was dizzy, tended toward diarrhea,
shaky. Then that night I discovered that
I had forgotten to take my Cymbalta the night before. Those were all SE of Cymbalta withdrawal. ARGH, missing one day of that pesky pill
threw me all off!! I’m still tapering
off of it; I’m half-way – 81 beads left in, 81 beads taken out. It is a slow process. But Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were pretty
good days with just a tad of queasiness now and then. I get sleepy pretty easily, so fatigue is
once again an issue.
Yesterday morning, I got
up and ate breakfast. I was trying to
decide if I wanted to take a shower or just sponge off. I started feeling a little weak, so thought
it was not wise to get in the shower. As
I finished sponging off, I realized that if I did not get to the bed, I was
going to faint. I hadn’t had one of
those spells for a very long time, but it sure hit hard. By the time I felt good enough to find my BP
cuff, my BP was 102/66. I usually run
120-130/70-80. It took a long time to
get dressed, but once I recovered, I felt fine the rest of the day. This morning, I thought the same thing was
going to happen, but it was not as bad.
My BP was still low, so I held one of my BP meds. I went to the ladies’ Bible study and did OK,
but took a long afternoon nap.
One VERY good thing I’ve
noticed this week is that the spot on my cheek has definitely lightening and
recessed. Just last Sunday, it was still
very dark purple, and the spot was bulging to the place where I was afraid that
it might break open.
This is last Friday.
This is today.
The spot on my forehead,
too, seems to be shrinking and acting like it might scab over. I still have a lot of redness on top of my
head and down onto my forehead and around my eye, but I’m absolutely amazed at
the progress after once dose of this chemo.
I sure wish I could look inside my right lung and see what those 3 spots
are doing! And I hope there are no more
developing in my liver. Tomorrow, I go
to the infusion center to get labs drawn.
The next week I see Dr. Page and get labs, and the week after that, I go
to see Dr. Powers in OP. I don’t think
he plans to do a scan at that time – I guess he’ll decide then when to do the
next scan.
So far, I have not sewn a
stitch. L There is so much I want to
do. I want to make some of those reading
pillows. I have several of the embroidery
designs to do it, but one of the issues is that when I unpacked my Bernina
830LE from the moving boxes (original boxes), the foot pedal and power cord did
not get packed into those boxes. I can’t
imagine why or where they must be. I
still have a lot of boxes labeled “quilting” that I have not opened. The other issue is that half of my sewing
stuff has been moved to the basement from the ground floor bedroom. There is twice as much room down there than
in the bedroom. But there are 3 large
bookcases and 4 smaller bookcases that need to be moved down there from the
bedroom, so I can get all my fabric put in them. Neither Guy nor I can move them, so we are
going to have to call the movers we used to move into this place. Last weekend, Mark worked really hard in the
garage and took the boxes from the south side of the garage downstairs to the
storage room. Wow! He worked so hard. It was a lot of boxes. I was afraid he would be sore for days, but I
guess he is in pretty good shape!
I’ve never been this late
decorating for Christmas. I got my
favorite nativity set put up. This is the one Jeannine gave me several years ago, and I just love it.
I’ve never
had a place without a mantel, so it is a bit challenging to decide where to put
my decorations. I put the nativity set
up on the piano. Our living room and
kitchen are one big room, so I still haven’t decided where to put the Christmas
tree.
Guy’s friend from Alabama
is still here. They’ve been going out
every morning and evening, so Marion can get his deer. It’s been a frustrating time. He had one chance to get the big one last
week, and his gun just “clicked” – something about the ammunition he was
using. Today, Guy was up at the home
place (out at the farm), thinking he would flush them out and down to Marion down south. Marion should have been with him, because Guy
flushed the big one out, but he took off another direction. Last week, the weather was nice; this week,
the moon has been shining BRIGHT (the Super Moon), it has turned cold and WINDY
– not good deer-hunting conditions.
You know, you watch some
TV, and you see the “beautiful people” and what is important to them. Some of it may have been somewhat
important to me at one time, but all it takes is a major disease in your life
to put things into perspective really quickly!!
You find out right away what is important in life. I was also watching the fires in
California. You put your whole life into
a big beautiful home, and it’s gone in a few minutes. Tragic in so many ways…..
Whether this cancer is
fading due to the chemo or all my prayer warriors (or both!), I do not
know. I just know that I’m VERY grateful
for every day that I see improvement and for every day that I am not sick. And I give God ALL the glory. He is my constant Companion. On days that I’m tempted to focus inward, I
remember how precious my devotional book is, and how He speaks directly to me
through it. I never take my prayer
warriors for granted, either. How VERY
thankful I am for each one of you!!!!! I
know there is power in prayer, and when you say you pray for me, I can’t tell
you how much I appreciate that!!
As always……I remain in His
hands……
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