Today was one of those interesting days...
It all started out around... well, when I woke up. Happy BIRTHDAY to YOU! It was Skip's official 39th birthday. We've basically been celebrating since Saturday. And have had buckets of fun! I made Skip and I omelettes and we sat on the couch and decided to watch the news. First two were not streaming yet, so the third it was. Now I am not sure what I was expecting, but wanted to catch up on world events. The first broadcast ends up being about this Secret Santa who every year spends hundreds of thousands of dollars giving out $100 bills out to people in stores who look like they could use a little love and kindness. The stories were UNREAL. I'm in tears after 2 minutes and then they interciew a lady with stage 4 breast cancer. I may have sobbed, I don't even remember. Then Will Smith comes on being asked about his new movie based on a true story. The man he plays comes on at the end and they ask, "what do you want people to take from this movie." He says something about "needing faith, needing hope, needing joy." Another skipped heartbeat, this was too much, off it goes.
We start our morning routines and I have 30 minutes before Tracy comes to get me for chemo. So I decide to begin tackling Alana's room. Skip walks in, "this room is hopeless!" No. It's actually not. Every little piece of whatever has a bucket, bin or someplace that it ACTUALLY goes. Problem is that its just all in one big sea of a pile in her floor, bed, shelf, closet, and desk. I kid you not. I shouldve taken a before, and after has not come.
Tracy arrives and we have our catch up time. It was awesome. We got there and we climbed the stairs and checked in. Did my bloodwork, laughed a lot and then Dr. May comes in. I have really gotten to love this lady. I showed her my knot in my chest/stomach and Tracy said she rolled her eyes at me!! I swear I am not a hypochondriac! And she knew so when I about kicked her from pushing on the sore spot. She still thinks its muscular and suggested I take care of it like so. So, I will. Maybe I'll do a bunch of sit ups and see if that helps. JUST KIDDING.
Everything went well, numbers looked good. Still a tad anemic which I thought was odd, she did not. She had me start one of the two drugs today so we shall see if I get the side effects. She said low counts are the typical side effect but no one has really complained, they just see it in the blood work. I did ask, "why do the doctors not run tumor markers on everyone after they are diagnosed with breast cancer." Basically in a nut shell, BS insurance not wanting to pay for unneeded tests IF the tumor marker was incorrect. But what if it IS correct! Look at the halt in progression of disease you could put on a person. Sickening - we shall fix that as well over time.
As I sit there, a friend lets me know her MRI didn't look so hot while another is telling me she will catch me up on the drama of her chemo day. What is happening?! This is too much and my heart hurts. I go on and get my intrathrecal chemo #15 and all goes well. We wait our 20 minutes, we pray, and I show her around the office. Which is about 1/100th the size of Emory. Then I showed her the little office/exam room where the nurse wanted to access my port that day. We got some GOOD laughs from that story. I'm telling you I will never forget that.
We made it home, Starbucks and all, and it's 2:00. WAY later than I expected and Alana now has a 3:00 doctor appointment. Oh, I failed to mention that she wheezed HORRIBLY all weekend and when she coughs its deep and gurgly. Not to mention she supermanned onto the hardwood last Monday when we were at the Christmas party, coincidentally when the worst of this started. She's been coughing since November 1st almost and hasn't stopped. Asthma/allergy trigger seems to be the most likely issue at the moment, but I was thinking we need an x-ray please, lets rule out the bad stuff. I don't have time to sit around and wait on trying something else. And so it happened, I got super frustrated with my doctor and decided to hunt a new one, who happened to have a cancellation at THE perfect time.
So I head to the school, check her out and get on our way. We fill out a mound of paperwork and she graciously walks us back to get us out of the germ infested NASTY sounding waiting room. Ah, I was freaking. Now we wait, and wait, and I find out there has been an emergency. Now I wait patiently-ish. Only I start feeling nauseated and my stomach is not happy. UH-OH. We run the the bathroom only guess what, I can't get the toilet to flush. I AM NOT MAKING THIS STUFF UP. So Alana is gagging and I'm spraying lysol and this is SO TMI but it finally works. We run back and after an hour, she comes in.
I am in total love with this lady already. SUPER thorough and detailed. She listened to her forever!! Asked tons of questions and finally, she says, "I think we should get an xray to be safe." To which I respond, "that is really what I wanted. Thank you, you are my new best friend." Now we are jumpin gin the car and heading to childrens. Mind you, I've been home a total of 5 minutes. Long enough to refill my water and kill a quinoa salad. It's 4:15, and I know what's about to happen. Rush hour. We go anyway and theyre awesome as usual as well. Alana was a champ and we were in and out by 4:50. SWEET! We talked to Skip and now we were meeting at Taco Mac. I had ZERO energy to cook him a birthday dinner.
We arrive and I realize I had very little to eat. Everything looked good. It was super hard to sit in that chair after literally sitting and driving all day but I made it work. Everyone was happy and I actually had an amazing black bean burger with a side of broccoli. It was fabulous. About half way through dinner a gentleman and his son approach us with a gift card to pay for our meal. He was short and sweet and caught us very off guard. I instantly teared up. People are so generous, this is unreal. The lesson he just got to teach his son and the lessons my girls are learning through people's generosity I hope sticks forever. I realized today, there is a ton of evil, hurt, and terrible things happening, but there are good things happening too and people are generous and want to love on others. It is truly humbling and that man had NO idea my day. Had no idea I had chemo in my head that morning and that I for all practical purposes had not been home since 10am. Today was a struggle and their kindness made everything seem to just disappear. Goodness, pass it on. May my eyes be opened to those around me struggling. May I be moved to give like he did and care for others like secret santa does.
We wrapped up the night with a little carvel cake and PS4 surprise which Skip has not put down since opening it... Maybe 3 hours? Everyone went to bed well after bed times and overall it was a super peaceful night. I wrapped up more Christmas shopping online and got to share war stories with one of my chemo sistas. Alana's doctor called and there are no breaks or pnemonia. She has significant irritation in her lungs and she is keeping her on the inhaler and starting on steroids. She was contemplating a breathing treatment but is in hopes this will help. Me too!!
In the end I basically sit here, sore literally head to toe from way overdoing it and look forward to some good, really good sleep. I'm meeting a friend I've met on facebook tomorrow and cannot tell you how excited I am. She's been a super big encouragement these last 12 weeks and we have a lot in common. Always good to have those around you who understand just a little. Praying we both get some good sleep and don't let our chemo brains interfere with our plans again. We seem to have a hard time in the get-together department. Two chemo brains making plans, probably the worst idea ever! But no one else can do it for us, so tomorrow finally it is! Can't wait.
And that was my day. Interesting and beautiful all at once.
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