Sleep=Happy:)

Three good nights of sleep = happy Carla!  I have felt the best in the last three days out of the last 2 weeks since chemo round one! I am doing regular things like going to the grocery store, making dinner, cleaning up the kitchen, doing laundry, scooping kitty litter...you know all the stuff Mom does when she's not undergoing chemotherapy.  As Vinnie said to me yesterday:
Me: "Vinnie, don't you know Mommy is tired? I'm sick you know!"
Vinnie: "You're not sick, you're fine, look at you!"

I guess I don't get any special treatment....LOL...I look fine!  All in all, I feel good enough to be normal and do normal things, I am almost....(just almost) a little happy about doing regular things. 
I had anticipated having my head in the toilet and feeling like crap for the duration of this journey, and am pleasantly (if you want to call it pleasant) surprised that I am not nauseated and vomitting 24/7.  I certainly have had my share of other issues...clearly, it appears I am through the worst of it and can enjoy the next week as I wait for my port a cath insertion the second round.
So what should I do....I am sewing lots, I making clothes! I am taking advantage of this cancer vacation, as I call it, and doing things I would not be able to fit into my life if I was managing work and kids and all the rest that life brings to the table. 
Tonight we are having Monique night, she is bringing dessert and we are going to have a nice evening of visiting and she gives the kids some special one on one time.
Thank you for all the well wishes and I will take all that positive energy and apply it to my upcoming chemo, I'm going to need it!
x0x

A visiting day

Today was a great day! I felt good today right from the time I woke up. I slept great last night, not sure why, don't care, I'll take it!
I had a Doctor's appointment with my GP (Dr. Ferg) today for a pre-op exam for my port a catheter insertion. Kinda a waste of time, other than the fact that I had a nice visit with her, they told me I gained 14lbs since my last weigh in (holy shiza), and I had to dodge the disgusting sick people in the waiting room......
The best parts were I had a lovely visit at Alma & Allan's house with baby Luz.  I went to Nicaragua with them in February 2010 to celebrate their wedding (Nicaraguan rock star style) and I worked with Alma on 4west at the Jubilee (back in the day!) It was such a great chat and catching up so nice to sit drink tea and eat giant cinnamon buns (hence the 14lbs! LOL) I'll work on that later....
Then I arrived home to have Georgia tell me that Tracey was going to be dropping by with "food." Tracey and I met in grade 6 at Lakehill Elementary, we go way back. We have connected on and off for the last 10 years and this is just one of those relationships that you are just so very thankful you ever met them! A friendship you cherish, even if from afar at times.

So her cheerfulness Tracey, came over and did she ever bring food... what a fantastic meal russian chicken, with all the fixings.....I am now starting to think I need to collect some recipes from all these chefs in my life......and apparently you people eat way more gourmet than this house! Oh ya, Tracey brought beautiful gifts too!
I'm so blown away by the kindness and pure thoughtfulness, of everyone.
Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you

Headed into week 2 of cycle #1

I hope you had a great weekend.  We kept busy this weekend.  I was feeling relatively like a human. I have my ups and downs with mood and feeling really tired and sometimes just downright yucky.  I am having heart palpitations that are quite uncomfortable but were to be expected with this chemo.  I reported them when I was into the cancer agency last week and will tell them about it again when I go in next.  The skin on my face is covered with blemishes and little sores, I look a wreck, but feel ok. My hormones are affected with this as well, so that's why my mood is up and down (mostly I just get really irritable.)
Saturday was a beautiful day and Phil and I went for a walk, not to far, just around the park and through the small forest near our house. It was really cold, but I'm sure that's what made me have a good day. I felt pretty good and we went out and got some groceries and then went out to the "W" ( Whitespot) for dinner, just the Vidalsix.  My Saturday craving was poutine! The "W" has lots of poutine choices. I only tried poutine for the first time at the Irish Times pub, the week before my chemo, and now it seems to be my cancer craving!! Too funny....
Sunday was beautiful as well, Stella had a swim meet so we all met at the Howard Johnson for breakfast with Auntie after the meet, and
then Abby and I went downtown to look for a new scarf for me. I saw a girl wearing the most beautiful scarf and she said it was on sale at Oscar and Libby's downtown, so off we went in search for the beautiful scarf. Well, I didn't get it, too much of a rig-a-ma-role to get to the store so after a valiant effort we ditched and headed to fabricland instead.  More sewing projects on the mind......

I came home and made homemade wonton soup, chinese lettuce wraps, and chicken chow mein for dinner.....good weekend I'd say.

Here's to a good week.

TGIF.......

I do like Friday's! Phil has weekends off so it is nice to have the weekend together and we often get tasks done around the house and try to do some kind of activity or outing with the kids. 
I stayed in bed this morning.......I had to be up and out so early the last couple of days I needed a
lay-in.  I have taken to pinterest (cherrypop66) and online shopping! OMG! This cancer vacation is going to cost me a fortune! I'm actually not that bad, but I imaginary buy lots of stuff, and if I was thin....oh dear, I would have so many new outfits! I think that's why pinterest is a good thing, I can just pin it to a board instead of "adding it to cart!"
I went for Baan Thai for lunch, delicious! Apparently you can have "chemo cravings", kinda like pregnancy cravings I guess, I haven't had any weird ones, like pickles with peanut butter, I just want specific foods that I love.  It's a whole lot better than throwing up, that's for sure!
All in all a good day.
A huge thank you to angel Tricia, and the Smith family for the fabulous Japanese chicken dinner last night.  Deeeelicious!

Feel so loved.....

So it has been a couple of days since I have posted, I've been really tired by about 18:00 which is when I usually write.
So where did we leave off?  Wednesday night.....going to the Surgeon's office for porta cath insertion consult in the AM.

Thursday Jan 17 - Dr. Hiyashi, general surgeon appt 08:30!! OMG is that ever early to get up, get the kids out the door and get accross town to the jubilee.  My angel husband Phil, managed to get everyone organized and we were in the car enroute in fairly good time.

We ended up waiting an hour to see the Doc, not surprising, but he was lovely and took one look at my veins in my arms, laughed out loud, and said I'll get you in ASAP.  A port a catheter is a centrally inserted catheter in your upper chest into a central vein. It will allow for drugs & IV fluids to be given and lab work to be drawn very easily.  I am a "tough stick" with my "skinny" veins!
By the time I got home from the appointment I had an email with my date of surgery Jan 30/13.  So this is GOOD! It will delay my chemo by one day but that is not the end of the world, they can delay chemo up to one week if necessary and your bloodwork is good.
The rest of the day was good, the home lab came and sucked out some more blood, I'm a bit of a pin cushion, but it was non-eventful.
I went out with Auntie for lunch, I had a craving for pizzeria prima strada (I'll write about this in my food blog) it did not disappoint. 
I got a bit weak and tired by about 14:30 while we were at Thrifty's so she dropped me off and I came home and sat on the couch and watched Ellen.
At 16:00 goddess Emily arrived with a full on chicken dinner with all the fixings & dessert too! She had told me the day before she was bringing it so I was so thankful I didn't have to cook tonight.  Well, were we ever spoiled it was amazing and we enjoyed it thoroughly. Thank you so much Singh Family!
At 17:00, her loveliness Monique came over with more dessert (ice cream & brownies) and enjoyed our chicken dinner with us, cleaned up, did homework with Stella and Vinnie and then rubbed my head and gave me an amazing shoulder and neck massage.......seriously.....I thought I had died and gone to heaven!  It's amazing how much negative energy I'm carrying even though I try really hard to be limber.
The evening was great and I was exhausted and we all went to bed with our bellies full and feeling very loved!

I made it a whole week! Well sort of.....

Well all was going swimmingly well up until 19:30 last night. I mean I was almost feeling too good! I jinxed myself...BOOOOO!
I took my neupogen shots at 17:00 as per usual (these are the ones that are to boost my white blood cells(WBC) to fight infection off) they go by injection into my belly x2, I have been taking them since day 3 post chemo.  The side effects of this drug is bone pain, because what it is doing is creating a whack load of new WBC's which are literally churning through your bone marrow. 

You have the most bone marrow in your lower back, hips, and femur bones. So at 19:30 the neupogen side effects reared their ugly heads and I ended up in writhing agony in my lower back not able to sit, lie down, walk....nothing it was horrendous! So I had some pain medication (Dilaudid)  that was prescribed to me on Monday while I was at the hospital for the allergic reaction and swollen neck, so I took the recommended dose. It did nothing! Didn't even touch it.  By 02:30am I called the oncologist on-call and he upped the dose significantly and told me to take it every hour until the pain was under control......well that was 10mg of dilaudid later and 05:30 I finally fell asleep.

I had 3 calls from the cancer agency yesterday. Two were follow up calls re:how was I doing with my allergic symptoms from Monday and what they wanted me to do to keep them under control. Then at 17:00 I got a call to come into the cancer agency for today because my blood work was showing significantly low WBC and neutrophil and platelette counts. So Dr. Battersill who saw me Monday, wanted to reassess me and do another set of bloodwork.

I had to get up to the hospital today this morning for that follow up visit and lab work and in the meantime this neupogen reaction in my back had happened! It's really a minute to minute deal.

What's the verdict?  Well both Dr. Battersill (General Practicioner ONC) and Dr. Bernstein, oncologist both saw me today and discussed what the future chemo treatments will look like.  They stopped the neupogen shots immediately for the remainder of this cycle (which means I miss 2 doses) and they have put me on Cipro (an antibiotic) to keep me from getting infection.  Dr. Bernstein still feels this "cocktail" of chemo is the right one for me, and stated how badly she felt that I had been through everything and was very reassuring that she had no intensions of my treatment to continue with all these issues! She is going to reduce my chemo dose to 80% of the protocol and she says the efficiacy will stay the same (meaning it is still worth it to do it) and hopefully this will be the solution.
So I slept all afternoon, as I had no sleep for 2 nights, and have been up to have dinner and seem to be in the land of the living.  Here's hoping for a better day tomorrow.......I have my consult with
Dr. Hiyashi for my porta catheter (permanent central catheter) insertion and they are having home labs come to my house to take lab work tomorrow.

Sorry no cupcakes to report, it all sounds a little depressing, but I'm going to be ok, it's just a process.  One day at a time!  x0x

Almost a week post round 1chemo!

GOOOOD day today!  Well, as some of you may have seen I was up all night and created another new blog, I am really loving this blogging thing, and was as high as a kite on dexamethasone steroids due to my "lasting" allergic reaction to my chemo drugs.  So no sleep last night, but got tonnes done and feel very productive.
I even sewed a tablecloth this morning and started making "booby" bags for the breast health centre at VGH.  The "booby" bags are a savour to anyone having had breast surgery, they go under your arm and keeps your arm from rubbing against your body.  Mine was permanently attached to me for over 4 weeks, it was kinda disgusting at times!
I bought myself a serger and a sewing machine as a feel sorry for myself present when I was diagnosed and they are coming in really handy...stay tuned for some awsome future projects I'm gonna pump out!  Pink Popcorn is just getting started!
So where am I at, so the cancer clinic called this morning to follow up on me, I am to take claritin during the day for this allergic remnant nonsense and benadryl at night. No more steroids, for the meantime, so maybe sleepy town for me tonight, and I am to take just my normal anti nauseant rescue drug and my daily white blood cell booster neupogen shot in the bellyx2 for another 5 days.
 
So went to Japanese Village for lunch, yes, I did 2 bowls of rice with steak sauce and had the teryaki salmon, yummo!
I would say a good day all in all........we'll see what tomorrow is gonna bring!

BBQ pork chops with baked potatoes in the oven with garden salad for dinner, who's having chemo??