Three quarters done with Taxotere!

Life’s royal crown jewels: health and peace of mind. Treat them royally.  -- author unknown

It was smooth sailing for Taxotere #9 today.  So I’m now 3/4 done with Taxotere.  Isn’t that amazing that with just one more drip, I went from 2/3 completion to 3/4 completion?  It sounds like such a big jump from 2/3 to 3/4.  Gotta love math!  Oh, and I do!! 

Anyway, today was another one of my lucky “no wait” days because I didn’t have to see a provider – I just had to have blood work and chemo.  The only tiny fly in the ointment was that the blood draw didn’t go so well.  I told the girl that I usually warn everybody that I’m a tough draw, but lately they’ve all been getting it on the first stick, so I told her I wouldn’t warn her (which of course I already did).  And that was all it took.  My veins wouldn’t cooperate.  Finally, after 3 different phlebotomists – one stick each – we got blood.  Yay!  And the numbers were all good – most importantly, the white count was 5.02.  So, bring on the chemo!  And they did.  And now I only have THREE more drips to go!  I am SOOO excited.  And SOOO looking forward to the break between chemo and radiation with NO appointments to go to – at least that is how I am envisioning things at the moment.  Hopefully Dr. Sprawls won’t ruin that vision next week when I see him.  He did say “plan away,” but I’m not sure he knew we wanted to leave immediately after my Neupogen injection on September 30^th and not return until I have to start radiation.

I had a good weekend.  It was the second weekend in a row with no severe abdominal pain, which was wonderful.  No real side effects from the Neupogen injection either.  Some mild fatigue, but that was about it.  We never did go to the zoo on Friday.  We had plans to go out to dinner, and I was afraid that 2 “big events” in one day would wear me out.  Just don’t have the stamina that I used to have.  On Friday night, we went out for Mexican dinner with our friends, Debbie and Bill, and then played a game of pool (billiards) afterwards.  That used to be our standard Friday night event – Mexican dinner followed by pool.  But we haven’t done the pool thing for months due to my lack of stamina/energy and also the fact that Debbie had surgery awhile back that prevented her from playing.  Anyway, we were up to it Friday night, and what fun we had.  As luck would have it, a “pool shark” just happened to be walking by the game room as we were playing.  He stood outside the door and watched us (and laughed at us) for a little while – we are pretty hilarious pool players!  We will only play in a hotel game room, never in a pool hall or bar!  Couldn’t stand the pressure…..or having an audience.  We can make one game last for hours!  Anyway, Dave, the shark, gave us free lessons!  And we learned some new rules and got some good pointers.  I wonder if we’ll remember them next time! 

On Saturday, we stopped by Kars Park on Merritt Island and visited our friends, Barbara and Brian, and Sandy and Don – they were camping there for the weekend.  That was fun.  Got to meet Sandy and Don’s new puppy, who is absolutely adorable, and saw their new-to-them motorhome, which was very nice.

Then we went down to the marina where our boat is now located.  Ken and a friend did some work on the engine and then we took it out for a test run for a couple of hours, which was a nice treat.  It ran very well – nice solid, smooth boat.  It still has some engine issues (wah!), but nothing too major hopefully. 

On Sunday afternoon, we went to the beach for a couple of hours and had great fun watching the surfers.  It actually was too rough for us to even go in the water – looked scary – but we had a good time anyway.  And then, of course, we stopped at Crackerjack’s for a margarita and some live music.

On Monday, I did some transcription and cleaned out some cabinets in the RV that have been annoying me forever – too much junk – and then started planning our RV trip for October.  We’re thinking Nashville as a destination.  We’ve never been there before.  Even though we’re not really city people or country music fans, we think it might be fun and different.  And there is a Corps of Engineers campground on a huge lake right outside of Nashville.  So the tentative plan is to get up there in 4 days, spend a bunch of time in and around Nashville, and then take our time coming home on some scenic route – haven’t gotten that far in the planning yet.  If anybody has been to the Nashville area and has any tips or pointers to share with us, we’d love to hear them!

Ken went to work on the boat on Monday and also planned to haul it out of the water.  He had to clear away some brush on the boat ramp and fell into a hole, taking a bad roll onto the ground, and severely spraining his ankle – on his right foot, which already had a really sore heel from missing a step in the boat a couple of weeks ago.  He said just after he bought this boat that it will either kill him or make him younger!  I hope all these things – engine problems and injuries – are making him feel younger!  His PCP told him yesterday that he has a 2^nd degree sprain and sent him for an x-ray.  He said he would call if there was anything on the x-ray to worry about – we haven’t heard from him, so we’re assuming no news is good news, although the sprain is not exactly good news and is quite painful and debilitating.  He has been very good about icing it, keeping it elevated, staying off of it as much as possible (I miss my helper!), and using a walking stick to get around.  Hopefully it will heal quickly.  Despite the serious sprain, he still managed to get the boat hauled out.  A friend with a big truck was able to pull it.  So now it’s on the trailer, and the storage price just went from $290/month to $40/month, which makes us very happy!  Of course, what good is a boat on land??  Well, it needs some work done that can’t be done in the water.  Eventually it will get to the stage we want it…..we hope…..and we’ll have a nice little cruiser.

It seems I had some other things to write about, but I guess I’ve rambled on long enough.  The main thing I wanted to tell you was that I’ve been feeling really good for the most part, and that I only have 3 more chemo sessions to go!!  I guess I could have said that in one sentence, not a billion paragraphs!  Hope all is well with you all in your various corners of the country!  As always, thank you so much for your blog comments, emails, cards, letters, gifts, positive thoughts, never-ending support, and LOVE! 

You know you’re a cancer patient when…… you look at an infant’s head of hair and compare it to yours!  (In some cases, I’m winning – my hair is slowly coming back; it’s more than just fuzz now!)

 Hair!  Real hair!  9/7/11

Hair (fuzz?) and glasses indentation!  9/7/11