I wrote this in the care on the way home from Ellijay:
What an amazing weekend, an amazing week. I woke up this
morning to a fully pink sky. It was so beautiful I jumped out of bed and ran
outside. It’s so peaceful here. You can hear little animals and the stream and
it was even warm. I sat by the lake just thanking God so much for another day
and for the strength and power I’ve felt this week. I know it’s an up season
and that this season could last another week, or could last another year, but
just like everything else, none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. So why not live
like it?!
This week I hope to start my by mouth treatment and
maintenance drugs. They come with a full set of side effects, so I guess it’ll
be a wait and see thing. I also had this horrid pain about a week ago, thinking
it was a Charlie horse in my abs, but I’m still having pain there so going to
see if we can investigate tomorrow. There seems to be a little bump there –
maybe even one of those pesky lymph nodes. Regardless, knowing how high my pain
tolerance is, I won’t mess around this time.
Get my fifteenth intrathecal chemo tomorrow! That puts me at
3/6 for this second phase. January 4th will be my last weekly dose
then we skip the 11th and do the following Monday the 18th. It’ll be
twice a month for four months! I’m at 9 weeks on Topotecan, 5 more to the 14
week mark!!! Getting closer and so hopeful this will work! Not sure when they
test the fluids again, but I’m patiently waiting and honestly hoping they don’t
test it until after the holidays and our first post-chemo vacation! Yes, we are
going to Panama City for New Years compliments of one of our beautifully sweet
friends. Such a gift!! And, we have a bunch of our NYC family coming for
Christmas and I’m jumping out of my skin with excitement.
Still doing my best to be organic, vegetarian, mostly gluten
and dairy free, and it feels SO good. My body has adjusted beautifully and
honestly I enjoy cooking so it’s been a lot of fun! Hoping to get an alkaline
water filter put in soon because we are going to do just about everything to
hold this nasty disease at bay!
Finally, I want to thank EVERYONE for their prayers,
support, gifts, love, and friendship. I made a promise to God in the car on the
way to the ER on 9/9 that I would climb to the highest mountain top and I would
scream out my praise to God if God would bring us through this. Skip said he
would too. Well the coolest thing happened when I went to shuttle the birthday
riders to the overlook. When we parked I saw theis woman pass my car and climb up
this trail. What?!! I’ve been here a hundred times and didn’t realize there was
an ACTUAL overlook! I ran out of the car, and nearly ran up the mountain.
Huffing and puffing I made it to my mountain top and I screamed! I was so
thankful! We jumped up and the woman there took our picture and then we
screamed up to the heavens! I closed my eyes, thank you God. Hugged my people
and shared one of the most beautiful moments of my life. So very blessed by all
the people that came this weekend. Skip and I cannot stop talking about how
amazing it was. How it ended up just being the most perfect day and the group
of people we got to share it with were some of the most generous loving
supportive people we know. Can’t stop being blown away at the love we continue
to receive. We feel so loved and so blessed.
Almost forgot my other energizer bunny moment! We got to the
house around 9:00 or so, and turned on the State Championships for Allatoona
High school. It was zero to zero and half time. See, I’m a Sequoyah mama but our
Pastor is a coach for their team and we do weekly posters together for them for
around 2 years now. When all of this started Mike had sent me a picture of his
team praying, and they were praying for me. Since then they’ve prayed every
week and Saturday night I had the complete joy of praying for these sweet boys.
We prayed and the third quarter began. I was jumping, screaming, fist pumping,
dancing, spinning, you name it I was a psycho football fan and I’ll tell you
when they won, I think the people on TV may have heard us. My parents got to
catch the end with us as well, and it was just one of my most favorite moments.
Found out from Facebook they were all going to be at NorthStar this morning and
was soooo disappointed I wouldn’t be there!! Skip wanted to spend the weekend
chilling so we are watching this weekend. Still hope to make a field trip to
meet these boys in person and see the posters that line the halls of their
school. I hope I get to do them again next year.
First for me this weekend, I drove the dune buggy and it was
AWESOME. I’ve been so hesitant and fragile, but I literally jumped in that
thing and smilling ear to ear me and mom took off and it was a blast. We
laughed the entire way around, and up and down.
I’m sure there were more pretty firsts, but those are the
ones I can remember for now. On our way home and the fun will continue, because
it’s Skip’s 39th Birthday WEEKEND. Yep. The entire weekend is filled
with fun…
Off I go! I’ll be in touch soon. Love and hugs to all!
Thankging God for my team of amazing people.
No comments:
Post a Comment