Spring

It's baseball season!

The weather shifts between rainstorms and heat.  My husbands allergies are in full force.  I have a desire to be outside, trimming overgrown plants and making space for summer parties.  Spring is most definitely here.

A while back, someone suggested I needed to take more pictures.  Honestly, I don't feel like having my picture taken.  They suggested that I might want to be able to look back at my strength through this process, show my future generations or other people who might fight this fight as well.  So here are some pictures.  I can't remember who they are, but I think they might have been right.  

With spring this year comes changes in my chemo regime.  I have reached a lifetime limit of one of my medications Doxorubicin.  Doxo is one of my chemo meds that is light sensitive and was given to me over 48 hours.  Most chemo med dosages are based on weight. With every medication, the more of it a patient receives the higher the possibility of side effects gets higher and higher.  Doxo effects your heart.  Going over this threshold would change my possibility deteriorating the muscles around my heart from a 30 to 50 percent chance and then up to 70 percent.  Thanks, I'll pass!  So now instead of getting Doxo for 48 hours, I get Dactinomycin.  Dactin only takes five minutes to infuse, but treats the same element of cancer, tumors.  They gave me the Doxo first, because it is the exact medication used in the study my treatment plan is based on.

Yes, that is three hospital bands in one day.

Typical daily pills.

Between rounds ten and eleven, I started seeing a councilor.  What I am going through is not easy, and I am not only physically but emotionally effected by my treatment and the changes my body is going through.  So now I have four kinds of doctors appointments each week; counciling, my oncologist, infusion center for fluids and infusion center for blood work.  It is a full time job.

Ernie's new favorite spot to sit.

Emotionally, I am feeling better.  Physically, I am more worn out.  We all know I have trouble sitting still, but now I have no choice.  With all the chemicals in my brain, I have trouble concentrating.  Recently, my sisters best friend Sara sent me a jigsaw puzzle.  This was an excellent choice, as it isn't physically demanding and I can focus on it as long as my brain allows.  It isn't a TV show I have to keep up with, so there are no spoilers or a book I have to remember the plot and twists of.  I hope that when I am done with chemo I get my mind back though.

Chelsea got me a sweet kidney keychain!

Somehow, I feel like I skipped from ten rounds left to six rounds left and don't remember the in between.  I'm not complaining.  The end is coming.  There are sure to be more bumps and bruises along the way, but we are still moving forward.
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Tomorrow is National Nurses Day!  Never before have I even imagined such a thing exists or planned so diligently to celebrate something that is now profoundly important to me.  Every day and night, these men and women care for not only myself and new born babies, but cranky smelly people who don't appreciate them.  Regularly they deal with bodily fluids and people who aren't feeling their best.  I wouldn't trade with them for the world but appreciate everything they do for me.  Like today, when I showed up three hours early for my appointment because my brain is so full of chemo I can't think straight, they just fit me in.  Or on Saturday when my silly 'please don't wake the princess' note made instagram before I woke up in the hospital.  These men and women chose to care for the rest of us.  The least we can do is treat them with respect. So thank a nurse tomorrow!