The second chemo was WAY different from the first. The bone pain and stomach cramping was nearly nothing with the advil, claritin, culturelle, and ativan! I'm such a druggie! I did however contract a NASTY upper respiratory infection that had me calling Emory with a fever and colorful cough by Saturday afternoon. We had the scare of, "if the fever isn't gone in 6 hours you need to go to the ER." Well by the grace of God, MANY prayers and a Z-pack, that sucker was gone by midnight! Whew! Took about 6 days to knock the other crud out, but by day 10 I was feeling back to normal. Buttttt... that's when the rash came. Now at first, I'm thinking a little contact dermatitis. I was wearing a new hat and it was nasty hot. It was all around my scalp and I was an itchy disaster. Taking 3 sometimes 4 showers a day just to scorch it and then put ice water on my head! HA! I got prescription strength cortisone cream from a friend. Nada. I finally called Emory (once again over a weekend, and a holiday weekend at that!) and this sweet doctor (remember her for my next post, she stood out to me as super nice, I even facebooked that she was sweet) told me to take Benadryl, 25mg every 6 hours. I was ready to go the the ER but she said that is what they would do first anyway. It helped tremendously, took the itch off, but made me OH SO Sleepy! After a couple of days of naps and working through a Benadryl fog, Tuesday came and I had to call back. It was EVERYWHERE now. Coming, going, itching, like giant mosquito bites! I was even convinced I had bugs in my house. I vacuumed for the FIRST time in 12 weeks. With two hands and if you know my living room rug, it's like 16x16 maybe? Took 30 minutes because I thought I was sucking up bugs galore. I went outside and dumped it in a bag and started digging with my fingers... you know what I found? Nothing. haha! No bugs. But at least my living room carpet was clean! They finally got me a steroid pack called in Tuesday afternoon and it saved the day! I was on it for 6 days, tapering off. By the last day it was already coming back, but not itchy! So I was okay with that! Had my appointment yesterday and she called me in an extra pack in case it comes back this time, had Benadry in my IV and I'll do the medication coctail that helped last time...
Some fun things to recap on...
Wig! I got my wig, finally, thanks to the special sweet employees at Pings Salon! They are too good to us! Star went with me and we didn't get to meet with my wig-dresser (is that what they're called) but another lady. She was okay but scared me to death when she started cutting it all up! lol. I was like, uhhhhh, is that what you do!?? I think Star freaked too, but in the end it looked great! It was a little "poofy" for me and my flat hair self, but a fun change. I wore it home and Skip I think, was questionable. He never said he didn't like it, but I think it was too-not-me for him :) Then the girls got home and they NEVER SAID A WORD! I was like, hm, did they forget i lost my hair??? I asked madison like an hour later and she goes, "ya, I think I'm used to you without hair now." SAY WHAT?!?!! She was the reason I GOT the wig! Girlllll.... Anyway. I did wear it that afternoon and I like it. I don't need it to feel secure or anything, but it was a fun change. I wore it out the first night to the 24 Hours of booty bar Crawl and loved dressing up! But after about 2 hours, I was done and off it went and onto other people it went! lol. Like I said, it's fun to dress up... The Crawl (a tour of the Woodstock restaurants) was top notch. I don't know how the Offenbergs pulled it off, but it was so good, people were signing up last minute that saw the signs!! It was AWESOME! There was one group that was a Pure, saw the poster and the girls friend had passed away from a brain tumor and that day was her heaven day. They looked for the group and asked to sign up as did 4 other people! That's a God thing... I know it says "Bar" Crawl and that's a little hard for some people to get past, but this event was prayed over as well as the fund raising. It was truly inspiring, exciting and you know what, its over a week later and we are STILL talking about how much fun we had. And the donations the restaurants and local merchants gave, the cover was WELL worth it. I'm so going back to ICE for Sushi now! I never knew they had that amazing sushi!! I'm literally craving it! So huge shout out to Firestone (appetizers and drink specials), Pure (20% off bill and bottomless cheese dip), Ice (sushi, edameme, hummus and drink special), and Cupcakalicious (free mini cupcakes to anyone who stopped by). All four places were extremely generous making this an event that could be pretty huge in years to come... Love our little town and the friends we have here!So good to hang out and laugh in the midst of all the crazy... It's a night I'll never forget.
One other fun thing to recap on! I TOTALLY road my bike up hills last weekend. Yep, I used gears and rode four miles through the neighborhood. It was beautiful. I was feeling wonderful. I couldn't crank it up a hill, that was too much. So I was definitely limited there and had to use my gears wisely, but overall went well. Even went up some big hills! So I am hoping I can get in a couple of laps at booty. Speaking of, I sent Skip a few links to build your own pedi cab and I SO want him to do it this weekend! We have an old bike trailer that the material fell apart on us, that would be PERFECT. We are getting close to the event, only 3 weeks away and I'm getting SUPER excited. We did the booty crawl, the annual school yard sale is in 2 weeks and we started an ipad mini raffle this month!! For $10 donations we enter you into the raffle to win!! some people are getting 5-10 at a time!! LiveStrong and Radioshack donated it and we are SO thankful. Good friends helping us be successful - truly heartwarming. (So if you haven't donated, you should, because right now, I think we only have 60 entries. GOOD odds! And we are going to draw the name at Booty... www.sweetridesga.org for instructions. You have to email your receipt to ipad@sweetridesga.org to qualify, so don't miss that step!)
Finally. Special thanks to my mom and Skip's mom and Warren for staying here when I was down and out. For the MANY meals we received that week. The cards, notes and letters... You all will never know how much they helped... we are so grateful!!
Okay... think that it it for now. I know a ton happened, but it's really hard to blog when i don't feel good, and then when I do feel good, I'm catching up on work. I promise to try to do better this time! Even if not for you, but for me! It's SUCH a good therapy and outlet, and I want to keep my story. Y'all know that I don't have chemo brain... I NEVER have a memory... so this is good :)
Thanks for reading and don't forget to enter to win that ipad and donate in honor of someone YOU know that's battled cancer!!!
LOVE YOU!
Some fun things to recap on...
Wig! I got my wig, finally, thanks to the special sweet employees at Pings Salon! They are too good to us! Star went with me and we didn't get to meet with my wig-dresser (is that what they're called) but another lady. She was okay but scared me to death when she started cutting it all up! lol. I was like, uhhhhh, is that what you do!?? I think Star freaked too, but in the end it looked great! It was a little "poofy" for me and my flat hair self, but a fun change. I wore it home and Skip I think, was questionable. He never said he didn't like it, but I think it was too-not-me for him :) Then the girls got home and they NEVER SAID A WORD! I was like, hm, did they forget i lost my hair??? I asked madison like an hour later and she goes, "ya, I think I'm used to you without hair now." SAY WHAT?!?!! She was the reason I GOT the wig! Girlllll.... Anyway. I did wear it that afternoon and I like it. I don't need it to feel secure or anything, but it was a fun change. I wore it out the first night to the 24 Hours of booty bar Crawl and loved dressing up! But after about 2 hours, I was done and off it went and onto other people it went! lol. Like I said, it's fun to dress up... The Crawl (a tour of the Woodstock restaurants) was top notch. I don't know how the Offenbergs pulled it off, but it was so good, people were signing up last minute that saw the signs!! It was AWESOME! There was one group that was a Pure, saw the poster and the girls friend had passed away from a brain tumor and that day was her heaven day. They looked for the group and asked to sign up as did 4 other people! That's a God thing... I know it says "Bar" Crawl and that's a little hard for some people to get past, but this event was prayed over as well as the fund raising. It was truly inspiring, exciting and you know what, its over a week later and we are STILL talking about how much fun we had. And the donations the restaurants and local merchants gave, the cover was WELL worth it. I'm so going back to ICE for Sushi now! I never knew they had that amazing sushi!! I'm literally craving it! So huge shout out to Firestone (appetizers and drink specials), Pure (20% off bill and bottomless cheese dip), Ice (sushi, edameme, hummus and drink special), and Cupcakalicious (free mini cupcakes to anyone who stopped by). All four places were extremely generous making this an event that could be pretty huge in years to come... Love our little town and the friends we have here!So good to hang out and laugh in the midst of all the crazy... It's a night I'll never forget.
One other fun thing to recap on! I TOTALLY road my bike up hills last weekend. Yep, I used gears and rode four miles through the neighborhood. It was beautiful. I was feeling wonderful. I couldn't crank it up a hill, that was too much. So I was definitely limited there and had to use my gears wisely, but overall went well. Even went up some big hills! So I am hoping I can get in a couple of laps at booty. Speaking of, I sent Skip a few links to build your own pedi cab and I SO want him to do it this weekend! We have an old bike trailer that the material fell apart on us, that would be PERFECT. We are getting close to the event, only 3 weeks away and I'm getting SUPER excited. We did the booty crawl, the annual school yard sale is in 2 weeks and we started an ipad mini raffle this month!! For $10 donations we enter you into the raffle to win!! some people are getting 5-10 at a time!! LiveStrong and Radioshack donated it and we are SO thankful. Good friends helping us be successful - truly heartwarming. (So if you haven't donated, you should, because right now, I think we only have 60 entries. GOOD odds! And we are going to draw the name at Booty... www.sweetridesga.org for instructions. You have to email your receipt to ipad@sweetridesga.org to qualify, so don't miss that step!)
Finally. Special thanks to my mom and Skip's mom and Warren for staying here when I was down and out. For the MANY meals we received that week. The cards, notes and letters... You all will never know how much they helped... we are so grateful!!
Okay... think that it it for now. I know a ton happened, but it's really hard to blog when i don't feel good, and then when I do feel good, I'm catching up on work. I promise to try to do better this time! Even if not for you, but for me! It's SUCH a good therapy and outlet, and I want to keep my story. Y'all know that I don't have chemo brain... I NEVER have a memory... so this is good :)
Thanks for reading and don't forget to enter to win that ipad and donate in honor of someone YOU know that's battled cancer!!!
LOVE YOU!
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