of chemotherapy that is..
I feel much much better! I enjoy food again, my energy levels are up enough to be exercising everyday... My cold is still with me though. I cannot hear well from my left side, but the ENT said that it had fluid inside and the ear drum was concave, so it cannot vibrate as it should and does not transmit the sound to the inner ear. He did NOT give antibiotics because it did not look infected, just a decongestant nose spray that I have used for 5 days. I am still taking the antifungal medicine because my mouth/tongue feels weird when I do not.. So I am guessing tomorrow when they check my blood values the WBCs won't be high enough yet. I also do not have high hopes for my liver enzymes. Don't get me wrong I am not trying to be pessimistic but rather realistic. My liver enzymes were bad before I got the last cycle of chemo, and how could it be any better??? It got hit again with chemo. Granted I did avoid tylenol and took ibuprofen when I had to, but there were so many other medicines that I had to take especially the first week of chemo.. so I will give my liver another month or so to recover.
Last weekend Dan and I did our "anniversary" celebration finally. Thanks to my parents who took care of the girls while we were gone. Well, "gone" is not entirely true, because we stayed in Grand Junction! Saturday night we had a wonderful dinner, checked in at a downtown hotel (the receptionist was one of my students - yes, we live in a small town :) ), and then had a walk down the main street. It was amazing, people were out walking, there was live music at several bars. It almost reminded me of Chapel Hill, which is a true College town. But I have a feeling with our student body growing and Mesa State College becoming Colorado Mesa University Grand Junction will become more and more livelier. Our bed at the hotel was awesome, it was a tempurapedic mattress, OMG, it was soo comfortable and did not move on the otherside when one of us tossed and turned in the bed. Aaand of course there were no kids who got thirsty or had an urge to go to potty in the middle of the night. We slept through the night which is almost unheard of these days. For breakfast we went to a cafe on main street, that I had never seen before, sat outside, it was WONDERFUL. Later in the day I dragged Dan to dig out antlions from our backyard (for our BIOL101 Labs) and also to a trail head to see what kind of plants I could collect from there (again for the lab review). Then we went on a 2 hour hike towards the independence monument in the Colorado national Monument. Well, in short it was a wonderful 20 hours, lots of sleep, rest, peace and fresh air in the outdoors. We should do this every year :)!!
So what else on the cancer front...
I saw my surgeon who did my surgeries in February and March, he thought that my scar looked good and we scheduled the second mastectomy for December 22nd. For those of you who do not know about this, do not panic, it is a precautionary mastectomy, I just want to have the second breast out so I do not need to worry about it. The doctors told me that my risk for breast cancer (an independent one from the one that I got this year) increases 1% every year. If I can help it I would like to avoid getting cancer in any way. Plus after this surgery I won't feel lopsided any more :). Ada was a little upset about this news but when I told her that I would have TWO delicate meme (prosthetic breasts) she got really excited :)
I saw my dentist again and he measured the brown spot in my mouth. It was the same size, yaaay! He also came up with an explanation of why I might have gotten it. He said that maybe during my surgeries when they shoved all those tubes down my throat they irritated my upper palate and that irritation caused hyperpigmentation. I also saw my ENT afterwards and talked to him more about it. He doesn't think it is cancerous (99%), he said we could do a puncture biopsy, but I am waiting to talk to my oncologist about this first. Because with a puncture biopsy or even if they remove the spot with a surgery there is a risk of spreading the cancer (if it is cancerous), the only way of doing it safely is removing an extra centimeter around the spot, that that is a huge area off my mouth that would be removed - major surgery, tough recovery. So we'll see what the oncologist says tomorrow.
Well, I decided to participate in a "walk" for breast cancer. It is called Making strides for Breast cancer and is organized by the American Cancer Society. The purpose is to bring breast cancer survivors together, raise awareness and also raise funds for research and other things that ACS does. I had written a grant to ACS (and other institutions) many years ago so they would fund my research, now I am hoping to raise funds so they can support other researchers who hopefully could find new cures for this beast! Also I have gotten so much support from ACS, like two of my wigs, my delicate meme, one of my mastectomy bras, the Look good, feel better session where they taught us how to do makeup (i.e. paint in eyebrows, etc), I feel like they should have the money to continue doing all that for others who get diagnosed. Soo, long story cut short, if you would like to donate some money, go to: https://secure3.convio.net/tacs/site/Donation2?df_id=1009506&PROXY_ID=22005483&PROXY_TYPE=20&FR_ID=36074&s_subsrc=565769027&s_src=boundlessfundraising. I have already raised $155, thanks to my friends and family, and my goal is to raise $200, so only $45s more and I will be there :). If the link doesn't work let me know.
OK, tomorrow is my check up, mostly blood work. It is also the day my dad is leaving (and my mom leave on Saturday). It will be weird not to have them with us, we had gotten used to have 3 generations in the house. I think it was very good for the girls (and for my parents) to spend time together and get to know each other much much better than they would have in shorter visits. Of course it was great for me to have their support, love and care 24/7. My mom will be back in December to watch the girls when we travel to Houston for another set of CT scans and then for the mastectomy. It is good to know that she will be back soon.
I will try to put up an update regarding the blood work tomorrow evening.
Love to you all!
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