parts feel so alien

Here it is Monday morning...I am at my desk feeling like I have alien parts...and some of them are green. ugh. All set for Halloween! Hands and skin feel so weird, and so dry....and, who wandered through my mouth with the jeep?!

Chemo went well on Thursday. Des went down with me and then we went off to wander Wild Oats. By the time we headed north, the roads were dry. Hard to be heading into the "scary road" time of year with chemo travel.

Thank you to all who contributed to the Queen Bed! More on that later... All I can say for the moment is, wow!

have a fun Halloween!
Hugs,
chris

Good morning!

I had a wonderful weekend of celebrating--both the message of STABLE and HOPE from Dr. Kanard and the beautiful fall! Your happy messages to me were part of that celebration. Thank you!
Don't forget to take a look at the NPR blog (npr.org/mycancer). It has been so helpful to me to read Leroy Sievers' blog entries and the comments.

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible,

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.

Dawna Markova

Hugs,

chris

All Hail Alimta!

There is NO GROWTH!!! Stable....what a beautiful thing! Back on the Alimta. What a happy day!
Even coming back to the sewage soaked State Library could not bring me down (ok, a little bit when I realized some of the things that I have lost....)

So, go out and celebrate with me this weekend, and Happy Friday the 13th!!

Yahoo!!
Hugs,
chris

no chemo, more tests, new plan

No chemo yesterday. The CT scan showed some suspicious activity on the part of the little buggers. Monday I have a PET scan and a brain MRI. I will glow in the dark by evening! Too bad I am not having it done on Halloween-It would be great for trick or treating! Anyway, I will meet with Dr. Kanard next Thursday to see what the new plan of attack is.
Send out all the good juju you can! And, thanks for it!

Have a wonderful weekend-enjoy this beautiful fall!

hugs,
chris

story and blog from NPR

Amy Shelley and I were on our walk yesterday (the trees are gorgeous!) and she mentioned a story that she heard on NPR. I went looking and found that it is part of a project called mycancer (npr.org/mycancer). I loved some of Leroy Sievers' entries. He was executive producer of Nightline and now does monthly contributions to Morning Edition.

Sometimes I feel a bit isolated, in regards to the cancer, and can see why folks join support groups. Reading some of his comments, and those of people writing in, made me feel like my situation and feelings are not that unusual.

"But for those of us directly affected, cancer opens up a whole new world. I like to call it a parallel universe. It looks like the regular world, but it's very, very different. It's populated by other patients with whom you share war stories. "What drugs are you on?" "How are your side effects?"
And there are the doctors and nurses who fight like hell to save patients when they know that they will lose virtually all of them.
And there are the loved ones, and no matter how hard you try, there's really no way to comfort them. "
Wow. He really expresses well the issues that we deal with. I worry every day about how this hurts my family and my friends.

On a more cheerful note, I love that he is not giving up his red wine either! Here is another section of his blog:

"But I'm not going to change my diet. Eating well is one of life's great pleasures. A great bottle of wine. A nice meal. A great big greasy cheeseburger. I'm not willing to give that up. Maybe it would be better for me healthwise if I did, but I'm not willing to give up any more of my life to the cancer. That's where I draw the line.
If someone told me that I would live another month if I never had a hot fudge sundae again, well, you can probably guess what my decision would be. Cancer takes so much away from all of us, but we have to hold on to the little pleasures. Because, let's face it, when you don't feel well because of the chemo and you're depressed about the future and you just want to scream, well, a hot fudge sundae or a cheeseburger or whatever your favorite food vice may be -- those things can go a long way towards cheering you up. And they're also a reminder that our lives do go on. That we haven't lost everything. "


There are other parts that I really liked (not just about red wine and food!) and I will share some of my favorites from time to time. If you look at it, there is a link at the bottom of the first page to take you to more...there are 7 pages right now-from the beginning of his battle.

Tomorrow I find out results of the CT scan and have chemo. Exactly one year since I started the Alimta. Bless it's toxic little heart!

Hugs,
chris