I have been and will be keeping you and your family in my thoughts and prayers and wanted to wish you a Blessed holiday season…

Mary

I hope that you and your family have a blessed Thanksgiving!

May god continue to answer our prayers. We do miss you lots.

(This is my first attempt at blogging if that is what it is called. So hopefully I have done it right.)

Tanisha

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I hope you have a relaxing day and are thankful for what you have this year.  I know it seems strange that I am putting in an update at 3:30 in the morning, but I’ve been having weird side effects from all the things that have happened in the last three months and the last two nights have woken up with something that seems like the restless legs syndrome.  The computer is always a quite diversion when I can’t sleep. I commented on me being an idiot on the computer because for some reason I’ve had trouble logging on to my own blog and just tonight I somehow saw a comment for the first time that was posted by a friend on August 17th, hoping I made it through the surgery ok. Thanks Brian! Sorry I didn’t see it before!  I think I’m getting a little better at the blog the more I use it, so hopefully it will not cause anyone to feel ignored if you’ve posted a comment on here for me.

This week seems busy for me because of Thanksgiving and most likely because there are things I feel I should be getting done.  My kids are anxious to decorate for Christmas and our basement needs some serious cleaning out to get the decorations upstairs.  I also have had to do a bunch of paperwork for my disability insurance and it’s confusing to know what to do with taxes and so forth on that type of stuff when I’ve never had to mess with that before.  I’m thankful for our tax accountant meeting with me this week so I can get my papers sent in in time to get my payment in December. 

I’ve had a strange week as far as physical symptoms.  Most of my problems are still with my head itching, but it’s starting to get better.  I got my two staples out yesterday and I’m finally allowed to get the top of my head wet after three months.  It feels weird to do so since I still have really newly covered burr holes in my skull.   The shower gives it a weird feeling.  I’ve also been having this shakiness that started in the mornings and got worse with each day and my neurosurgeon felt it is probably some withdrawal effect from not taking Valium five days a week to get through radiation.  My jaw is still stiff and I still have to smash my sandwiches just to get them into my mouth and I frequently feel like a stroke victim as food falls off my fork when it can’t get into my mouth, but my surgeon also wants me back on ibuprofen (which used to be my favorite med!) which I know will help get the inflammation down in the joint and I’ve started stretching it more each day, so hopefully I’ll be able to use it fully again some day. 

My next MRI will be December 10th.  It will be considered a new baseline.  I got the reports from the eight or so MRI’s I’ve already had and it’s very hard for them to say exactly what is happening in the surgical area right after surgery.  This will be the first time that inflammation and bleeding from surgery will have calmed down and gone to a new normal state.  It will also be the first to show any effect from the radiation.  I know they are planning on giving me an MRI every three months at least for the first year.  It looks like my chemo is going to be for six months (after the six weeks I’ve already done) and will start in mid to late December. I’ll be on the tablets for five days and then off for 23 days.   I’ll still have my blood work checked every week.  My report from yesterday was still normal, though my platelets are in the low normal range.  Looks like I’m handling the chemo so far!

I hope everyone has a great holiday this week!  Thanks for checking in on us!  Doug and the kids are doing fine and I think we’re all going through changes that will be good as far as time needed to treat me and so forth, but it’s still hard going through change.  I think they’ll be happy when I have hair again!

Laurie 

This morning is definitely not the best I’ve ever had.  It started with me being awake from 3:30 to 5:00 because of headache and itching skin that feels very tight and then the kids were awake at 5:20 because of the time change, making it hard to get back to sleep.  I did get back to sleep and that made it hard for me to get up in time to get the kids to school.  I got them there, but my mornings always feel awful, so I was tired, aching and tearful.  I think all these things are still side effects, which makes me hopeful that they will go away, even though it may take a few months.  It’s funny that I was worried about January and February being hard months, but now I think it will be November and December with the radiation effects.  I’m feeling better now after a shower, washing my face, brushing my teeth and getting some percocet in my system.  The skin on the top of my head feels like it has been stretched really tight across my skull and burned to a crisp, even though it still looks normal.  It makes it hard to watch shows like Desperate Housewives with someone on the show with cancer and having problems too.

This morning I told myself that I made it through the marathon even though I had an injury to my hip after the 30 K run, so I damned well will make it through this!

Doug and I found out yesterday that Sweeney Todd is coming out as a movie at Christmas with Johnny Depp as Sweeney.  We’re excited to see it, though on the trailer, it seems his voice just won’t be quite deep enough to sing as Sweeney.  It’s a Tim Burton movie, so it should be interesting!

Laurie