Barely hanging on...

It's 2:15 pm on my first full day back since June 16 and I'm trying to hang on for another hour. Had chemo yesterday, got home at 4 and went directly to bed. Got up at 6:30 for a bowl of cereal and was back in bed at 7:15. I couldn't believe it when the alarm went off at 4:05. Yikes! Thank goodness I have two days to recover before putting in my first full week since June 8.

Chemo went fine. Dr. Windsor ordered another shot of Arenesp. My hemoglobin is up to 10.9, but the normal low range for a woman is 12.5, so they are trying to get it up a bit higher. I'm off now for a week, so no shots for a while.

Dr. K contacted me to let me know that she spoke to Dr. Flores and that she's fine with his explanation. Even that didn't sound quite right, so on Tuesday I sent her a fax outlining every Dr. Flores and I discussed, including my treatment schedule, the scanning schedule and my follow up consultation date with him. I wrote that I was hoping for an October 15 date. Unfortunately, I just found out that he only does surgery on Mondays and Fridays, and since I don't want to be in the hospital over a weekend, I'm planning to shoot for October 19. I wrote that if anything disagreed with what they had discussed, one of them needed to contact me. So far, I haven't heard anything.

On Monday, I'm having a full body bone scan and two sections of my spine scanned via MRI. On Tuesday, I'll have a brain MRI as well as the third part of my spine MRI. On Wednesday, I see the radiation oncologist for my four month follow up.

Kudos to Ed. When I visited my hairstylist to have my roots touched up, he suggested a custom-made hairpiece to cover my thin spot -- at a price of $350. Since he didn't have one in stock and the photo made it look like a giant puff ball, Ed suggested we visit a wig shop at a local mall to see if they had something similar so we could see how puffy it was. Lo and behold, they had one in the perfect color, a little curlier than my hair, but it's fairly flat, so we bought it -- at $39.99. Ed has to put in on for me, since I can't see to hook the clasps onto my hair, but he's gotten the hang of it after only two tries. Now I don't have to worry about wearing the hat out in the sun -- which is about the only time I've been using it lately. I'm sure it doesn't blend perfectly, but how many people are going to look that closely at my hair? My boss thought it was real! That's one less thing to worry about. Yay!

Just wanted to say thank you for some recent visits from friends. Cathy (Spot's other mom) and her husband Bill were over for dinner last Friday for the first time and we had a wonderful time. I spent about three hours with my friend Kay and her family, and it was enjoyable as always just to have a chance to catch up. On Wednesday, our friend Sue sacrified one of her vacation days to spend the afternoon and evening with us, and it was a delight. Girl talk is good for the soul.

If Laura, the chemo nurse, is unable to prevent it, I'm hoping her husband-to-be will post an interesting video on You Tube. It seems that Laura was in a wedding party in upstate New York, and said wedding was held outdoors. During the ceremony, a large dragonfly, mistaken by Laura (a scaredy cat about bugs) as a rabid bat, tried to land on her bouquet. She smacked it away toward her sister, who started to get nervous and the flower girl, taking this all in, started to get scared as well. It ended with Laura running screaming away from the ceremony while the bride and groom wondered what was going on. We've all tried to reassure her that a dragonfly won't hurt you, but she remains unconvinced. If it ever makes it to You Tube, rest assured that the link will appear here.

Have a wonderful weekend!