My First Weekend!

Remember how I thought that I would have my energy back right away?
Well, last Saturday I felt great - so I was trying to catch up on some things around the house.  Evidently that, or the week before had caught up with me.
I got up Sunday morning to have donuts with Carrie & Justin & John after they came home from sunrise service - but then decided I needed to go back to bed, so I did - and I didn't wake up until after lunchtime.  When these"down" times hit - they come on really fast.
But I rested up the rest of the afternoon . . . so that when Jeff & Jill & Brody & Brant came back from having Easter at Jill's family - we had promised Brody that he could spend the night.  Well spend the night he did and then the three of us went to see "Rio" in 3D on Monday.  It is a very funny movie, and we had a great time.  Even went and got ice cream as a treat afterwards.  Jeff picked Brody up on his way home from work - although he wasn't really ready to go, and we weren't ready for him to leave either!

Side effects

Since I had done radiation with my first bout of cancer - I thought maybe the symptoms would show up in about the same way this time - not until the treatment was almost through. 
Well, I was wrong about that too! 
Actually the side effects started showing up about halfway through the radiation & chemo.  Diarrhea was the first thing to show up (that was a side effect of both) - and I found that Immodium might be a very good friend to keep on hand.  The couple of times that my mouth started getting a little "tingly" I rinsed it with some baking soda - I never did get any sores in my mouth.  Some of the other side effects were skin irritation (this might not be for the squeamish among you) - when that started to happen I used baby powder and preparation h to take care of that.  Believe me, you don't have to have hemorrhoids to use preparation h.  Dr. H had prescribed some anti-nausea pills to take if I needed, but I never did.
This is not really one of the "side effects" of the radiation treatments - but when you start receiving your treatments, you are "marked" with some "tatoos".  Now these are not tatoos like you would think - but actually little round black dots that they use to set up the lines for doing the radiation treatments.  So I now have approximately six tatoos (three from the first time around and three from this time) at various places on my body.  So I guess if I am asked if I have tatoos - I can say yes!  I'm just not going to tell you where - or let you see them!

I am a free woman!

Or so to speak anyway!
On Friday, April 22 (Good Friday) I finished up my 28th radiation treatment - and also did my last day of chemo (about 5 weeks total).  Wow was I anxious to be done!  And, in my mind, as soon as I was done with all that I would automatically get my energy back.  Of course I was wrong!  I'm hoping that will come in a week or two!  Actually I am feeling very good and love having everyone tell me that I look good!  So now we wait to let the radiation & chemo continue working to shrink or get rid of the tumor completely.  The next step will be surgery - but at this point I don't know when that will happen yet.

The Wall

Half of April is gone - and we officially passed Income Tax Day . . . here in Fremont, Nebraska, we celebrated that with some rain and then some wet, wet snow.  At least here it only stuck to the roofs and the grassy areas - not like out west where the interstate was closed for 17 hours because of all the snow they got!
Anyway this has been an exciting week - I was looking forward to the next to the last week when I finish up radiation and hopefully chemo.  I started off the week with radiation treatment #20 on Monday, April 11 and started week 5 of chemo on Wednesday, April 13.  This was also the week to get the newsletter out at church.  Everything was going along fine - until I got home from the Lenten service Wednesday night - gosh was I tired!  So, as is not uncommon, I fell asleep in the recliner and woke up around midnight or so and went to bed.  Got up not feeling too bad on Thursday morning, was still really tired - but I went to work because after all, my volunteers were coming to get the newsletter out.  Well by the time we got done putting things together I knew that I had to get it ready to go to the Post Office and go home!  (Thanks to Marvin & Myron it actually got to the Post Office.)  So that's exactly what I did - and went back to the recliner!  About 2:30 I called Dr. Z's office to say that I wasn't feeling well and thought I should stay home - they thought so too!  And I stayed home from Small Group that night too - I really missed you guys though!  So no radiation treatment on Thursday, April 14.  On Friday,  I had radiation treatment #23 - and they will add the one I missed on Thursday on to the end - so I will have radiation treatment #28 on Friday, April 22 (Good Friday).  I'm still not sure what I did to over extend myself, cos I hadn't had a very busy week at all, although I felt like I was fighting a cold - but I definitely hit the wall on Thursday.  Friday I went to work for half a day, and then came home and rested after that.  I hate to be such a weinie!  But Dr. Z told me on Friday that my energy and my immune system would bounce back pretty quickly after the radiation treatments and chemo were done.  I am hoping that when I see Dr. H next week he will tell me that I'm done with the chemo too, but we'll wait and see.  Either way - I'll keep you posted on where we're at!

Low Fiber Diet

While going through radiation in this process, I was given a low fiber diet by the radiation oncology office.  At first I thought this was going to be my free pass to eating junk!  Instead it has been a whole new learning curve for me I'm afraid.  I have been on a high fiber diet from the time we started looking at my cholesterol and blood sugar issues.  So this has been quite a change!  I went from wheat bread to white bread, brown rice to white rice, whole wheat pasta to white pasta.  I was also told to avoid fresh fruits and vegetables.  Like I said - this is a learning curve:  so I decided to go to the internet (doesn't everybody do this) and see what I could find about low fiber diets.  Of course, some of the information contradicted itself, but I did find that there were some things that I could try - like cantaloupe, and watermelon.  I am eating all of my vegetables cooked nowadays - and I can have as much yogurt, milk products, jello, pudding, fruit cups, fruit cocktail and cottage cheese, eggs and tuna as I want.  And also can have as much protein as I want - except for crunchy nut butters, tough meat or meat with gristle and dried beans.  And I have found that tomatoes (in any form - including pizza sauce) are NOT a good thing.  Makes me hungry for mostaccoli just thinking about it!  The purpose of the low fiber diet is that it lessons the irritation to the GI tract and can help it heal.  I will have to stay on this diet through the initial surgery, and then probably through the reversal of the ileostomy I think.  For the time being, I just have to put a little more thought into what I eat and what I cook!

Up To Date

Well I think that brings us up to date - As Carrie told you I did radiation treatment #14 on Friday, April 1 (that was no April Fool's Joke!)  That was the halfway mark!
I have had no terrible side effects from either the radiation or the chemo except for diahrrea - which they told me would be a side effect of both.
The first week that I started radiation & chemo I thought I was superwoman I guess and could do it all - but by that Friday I had found out differently!  I saved up my energy for Saturday when I knew I was going to get a visit from my two favorite little guys - Brody & Brant!!
That weekend we also had the GOTRA Spring Meeting - and I was there to do my Secretary / Treasurer thing for that!
The next week I decided to go home and rest after my radiation treatments at 3:00 on Monday through Thursday - and I felt much better.
This week I have been going back to work after the radiation treatments and that seems to be working well.
(My Friday radiation appt has bounced back between 11:45 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. so I've been working all day on Friday.)
I had decided that maybe I should cut back on going to Chancel Choir - we had started doing some long practices getting ready to do a Cantata on Easter.  I think it was a good call - but I really miss seeing my choir friends on Wednesdays - and singing with them on Sunday mornings.
I have been going to the Lenten Services on Wednesday nights since Ash Wednesday and I went to church for the first time in three weeks last Sunday.  It was great to be there - and the choir's song on Sunday was absolutely beautiful!  I had a lot of comments about how great I looked - and my response was that it was great to be seen!

A Note I Forgot To Tell

In addition to all of the excitement on that Friday when I was at Dr. Z's office once and Dr. H's office twice, in between the visit to Dr. D - when I got back to church all of a sudden my pump started beeping really loudly - saying "high pressure" on the screen.  So I put a call into Dr. H's office - and got the answering service - I told them what was going on and they would have somebody get back with me.  Well, it stopped beeping about as quickly as it started - so I thought maybe whatever it was had taken care of itself . . . Until it started beeping very loudly again with the high pressure message.  I got a call back from Dr. H's office and was told to look for any kinks in the lines - but I couldn't see any - so I was told to look at the plastic clips to see if any of them were closed.  AHA - one of them was, and as soon as I unclipped it - the beeping stopped and the message went away.  By that point I was more than a little frazzled, as was my coworker - so we decided that it was a good time to call it a day.  I went home and crashed in the recliner for the entire evening!

I also forgot to say that the highlight of this whole crazy day was my lunch date with my friends Barb & Deb!!