Well crap.

One of my holiday gifts from Dave was an appointment to get a new tattoo.

We got up, and ate and ventured out into the horrible wintry weather for my appointment, only to sit there and wait for a half hour and finally be told that the artist wasn't going to make it in because of the weather.

I really wanted 3 weeks before chemo starts again for it to heal.  Oh well.  I got it rescheduled for next Saturday.

The other big part of my gift was a massage appointment, though, and that did NOT get canceled because of the bad weather yesterday.

It was lovely to finally get a massage after a full year.  The last time I went was right before I was diagnosed.

Hopefully, I can go again soon.

We had a very nice holiday week last week, with Solstice on Monday, and a nice fire in the fire pit.  Some day, I will take time off for winter solstice.

Then, Christmas eve was great, with friends and Dave's son joining us.  Dinner turned out perfectly, and we had a fun time playing Cards Against Humanity.

Christmas day, we went to a matinee showing of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."  Loved it.  Went and visited Dave's dad briefly, then home to make Christmas dinner (sauerbraten that had been marinating for 2 days, spaetzle, and spinach souflee).

The huge storm started yesterday.  Dave got groceries while I stayed home and put away all of the holiday decorations.

It was 64 when we got up in the morning, and it was dark and rainy all day   The wind kept getting stronger, and colder, and there was flooding here and there.

Then, overnight, it went down into the 30s, and the rain has now turned to slush, sleet, and freezing rain.  The wind is brutal.

It's supposed to stay cold today, and the precipitation is supposed to keep coming, and if it changes to snow, we could have 6 inches of snow by mid day tomorrow.

That probably means that I won't have to be at work until 10.  I hope, anyway.

Meantime, we are home, and safe, and hoping the power stays on.

I am off to make some hot tea.  Hope my readers are enjoying Sunday.

Just another Sunday

It's nice to not really have anything much to blog about!

The errands are done, the holiday groceries are procured, and the cleaning has commenced.

It's a gloomy, windy day, but there is no sign of winter.  It's going to be in the 60s today.

I have managed to see all of the holiday programming that I want to see every year, and the greeting cards are starting to accumulate.

The only thing that's wrong with this holiday season is the morale at work.

I had typed out lots of details here, but decided not to share all of it.

Suffice to say, we're used to being treated pretty well at the holidays.

There were no bonuses, but we were given a couple of nice, fun parties, one of which had awesome prizes, such as my coffee maker, and the two days off I won.

This year, we are being punished for the inappropriate actions of some of our co workers who have all since been fired...months ago.

(they thought "dirty Santa" meant DIRTY Santa at last year's luncheon)

The Tulsa office gets to have their parties, and our office gets absolutely nothing at all.

No expression of gratitude and appreciation for a year of hard work.

So, yeah, it's unpleasant to hear all of the grumbling, and to feel grumbly myself.

I was doing sort of okay with it, but it started to bother me at the end of last week, when some stuff happened that just made it all worse.

There was a showing of blatant and overwhelming favoritism, with people leaving work in the afternoon to go party together, and then lying about it....and then with some taking off work Friday to go to the Tulsa office for THEIR party.

The rest of us had to stay at our desks and work while they all went off and partied on the clock.

Yeah.
Nasty.

Anyway....aside from the annoying low morale at work, everything's going well.

I just keep trying to focus on the good stuff that happened at work this year, like people pitching in and helping me out so much.

I am clearly not one of the favorites, but I am extremely grateful that I didn't have to go unpaid, and I didn't have to leave my job because of my  treatment process.

That helps.

Wrapping and packing and decking the halls

I have the gifts ready to wrap and get shipped out tomorrow.

The tree is up, and Dave actually helped to trim it this year (it's only the second year we've had an almost full sized Yuletide tree).

Thinking back on things....last week marked the one year anniversary of my first biopsies, and first round of incredibly bad news.

Little did I know that the news would get far worse before it was over, in stages.

First, there was the MRI and the second biopsy, and discovery of a different kind of cancer in the left breast.

Then, after the first of the year, there was the PET scan that revealed metastases.

Ugh.

At least there was the little ray of good news when the genetic test was negative.

Here, a year later, I still feel acute anxiety when I think about it all, even though, at this point on the calendar, and at this point in the process, I have nothing left to fear.

It's been a rough road, and I am pretty sure my adrenal glands, which were already "iffy," have gotten the workout of their lives.

But really?  The worst of it is over.

Almost all of the cancer is gone (or possibly all of it, we're not sure), and the breast tissue where it all came from is gone, so if I ever do get another cancer diagnosis, it will have to come from somewhere else.

If I ever do get another cancer diagnosis, I will have been through it all already, and, while it will be stressful and scary, nothing about it will be "new."

But from here on out, I am going to choose to have faith that none of that will ever happen.

I'll die of old age, comfy in my bed, way off in the future some time.

And right now, the only thing that matters is finding the packing tape, an appropriately sized box, and getting that box taped up.

Hope this Sunday, gentle reader, is pleasant for you as well.

Preparing for the holidays

Now that we know the news is good, I am able to relax a little and enjoy the holiday season.

The website where I used to get my ham has been absorbed by another website, and the price has been raised, so I found a ham on Amazon.

We will be placing that order this week.  It's still crazy expensive, to my way of thinking.... $71 for a freaking ham.

But other websites (including the one mentioned above) have them for $90-140.

I got the holiday cards addressed yesterday, and have composed a letter to insert into those that are going to people who are either not on social media, or who, for whatever reason, need an old school update on what has gone on this past year.

I needed to wait until we got scan results, but now the mailing will be done this coming week.

Today, I'd like to get the floors swept and mopped, and maybe put up some decorations, but the afternoon is going to involve meeting friends for a beer to celebrate my good news, so I am not sure time will allow for those tasks

I have some modest gifts picked out for my sister and brother in law, and need to get something figured out for my brother pretty quickly so that we can get that package shipped next week some time.

I also have to think about what to get for Dave.

It's all good!

OH, and I forgot to mention that the trip to the physical therapy clinic was really aggravating.

We sat there and waited and waited, and no one ever came out for me.  It turned out that the front desk staff had me mixed up with someone else, and they didn't even know I was there, even even though I signed in when I arrived.

Then, the therapist only took measurements and insisted that I had to come back.

SO I have TWO more appointments scheduled for before the end of the year. What a pain in the butt. It's not exactly in a convenient location for us, and I have to save my time off to go to chemo, so the time that I need to go to therapy, I will have to make up by skipping lunches and so on.

And the sleeve I am supposed to get is probably not covered by insurance.

Insurance will pay for fake strap on boobs, but not for something that is medically necessary.

Weird. Dave is working on getting them to approve it, and my lymphedma is not that bad, so I am not being "damaged" by having to continue to wait to get a sleeve.

Midweek blog post in case anyone is waiting for news....

"What do you want?  Good news or bad news?"

That was how my doctor started the "reveal" of today's scans.

Dave said he knew right away that it was good news, or the doc wouldn't have presented it that way.

I, however, was so full of anxiety and fear that I wasn't sure until he said "Great, because good news is what I have."

To sum up, the bone metastases have resolved and are turning to scar tissue.

The lymph metastases in the breast bone and clavicle area are completely gone.

The liver metastases are 90% gone.  All that is left is about a dime sized lesion in the liver, the nature of which is uncertain.

SO, since liver biopsying and liver surgery is a special kind of difficult, according to the doc, we will resume chemotherapy in January for 3 treatments (actually it turns out to be 9 because we will do the same protocol that we did at the end here recently where each treatment is broken into 3 weekly sessions with a week off in between).

We are winning.

Thanksgiving at the cabin, 2015

A little nook in the stone wall is just big enough for a tea light candle. 

First fire of the stay. 

Just a few pictures of this year's Thanksgiving trip.  Since we had the same cabin this year, there really isn't much different about the pictures from the ones I posted last year.

While in the car on the road, I realized that I had forgotten the stuff that was in the freezer above the fridge....so we had no pie, no breakfast sausage, and no green beans.

Fortunately, there's a grocery store in the nearest town.  We usually stop there for a bag of ice before we check in at the park anyway, so it was easy enough to get those items too.

Then, we got to the park and started to settle in at our tiny cabin when I discovered that I had also forgotten the butter.

I HAD A LIST, and completely forgot to check it twice, it seems!

So, while I unpacked and "nested" at the cabin, Dave ran back to the store to get butter.  Sigh.

It was pretty warm out, and the predicted rain had not started, so once we were settled, we took our first little hike not long before sunset.

The weather forecast said it was going to be overcast and raining, but it was only cloudy, and the full moon that night was spectacular.  Of course, no cell phone camera can capture that.

We took our traditional star gazing walk that night, too, but the moon was so bright that we could hardly see any stars at all.

We did, however, see a big yellow dog loose in the woods.  She was out there the whole time we were there, alone and too scared to come close to anyone.

The folks in the office said she'd been dumped by someone a couple of weeks back.

You'd think that the state park service would be able to come and trap her or something.

It was warm enough that night to leave the windows open.  I don't think we'd ever been there when it was so warm.

Thanksgiving day was overcast and warm, but the 90% chance of rain that we'd seen in the forecast wasn't happening yet, SO, we got out to hike in the woods on the one trail that is open this time of year.

It was so good to be able to do that!

The skies started to get a bit darker, though, and the temp was dropping, so we headed back.  The rain started shortly thereafter, just in time for me to start cooking.

I got the fire going in the fireplace, even though it was still pretty warm outside.  It got so warm in the cabin that we had to open the windows again, but it was nice to listen to the rain and the fire crackling at the same time.

Our feast was delicious.  I had gotten Gouda cheese for the green bean casserole this year (I had not forgotten the OTHER ingredients for the casserole, just the dang beans!).  It was very yummy.

The temp dropped steadily once the rain started, and we closed up the cabin and enjoyed the fire with a game of dominoes.

It rained all day Friday, and I lit the fire at 10 in the morning, and kept it going all day.  It was barely 40 degrees out, so this time, the fire was NOT too hot!

We played dominoes, and we read Grimm fairy tales to each other...it was so very very relaxing!!  Dave took a trip into town to get a bottle of whiskey, but other than that, we stayed in the cabin.

We worried about the poor dog who kept ranging around the cabins, out in the rain.

Packing up and cleaning up on Saturday morning, the dog came very close to us, so I tossed her a little bit of left over pie.

It rained all the way home, and when we got here, we found OKC had been covered in ice, and the power in our house had been out for 12 hours.  The cats were very cold.

The crew was just finishing up on our street, though, and just as we approached the door to the house, the power came back on.

It went off again for an hour or so, but was restored and did not go out again.

Our poor willow tree is still bent low, and has lost another large portion of herself (this happened just a couple of years ago on New years), and we lost a few branches off of the pecan, but it's not too bad.

Things are melting slowly today.  It's 35 degrees out there, I think.

Today is about getting errands done and preparing for a new work week.  Hope everyone is enjoying their Sunday.

Sunday before Thanksgiving.. a summing up.

One year ago this coming week, I got a letter from the breast center that said, once again, that there was an asymmetry in my mammogram.

I went into the Thanksgiving holiday with a sense of dread, because this time, it was different.

This time, there was a dimple on the side of my breast, and my nipple had started to turn inside out in the weeks leading up to the mammogram.

Yes, I had been to my doctor.  Yes, she had palpated the dimpled breast and was unconcerned.

Turns out she was wrong to be unconcerned, and I was just as wrong to not pursue it.

I didn't educate myself, I just took her at her word, so the responsibility is mine just as much as it was hers.

This year, at this time, my breasts are gone, and I have been through almost a year of chemotherapy for metastatic cancer.

I have been through a year of firsts, as I have discussed here previously....first IV, first time in an MRI machine (consequently, also my first valium), PET scanner, and CT scanner, multiple times for all, first echocardiogram.  First time in the hospital.  First time having surgery.  First time having to take multiple prescription drugs.

First time hearing the words "We found breast cancer," and then, a couple of weeks later, first time hearing "we found cancer in your bones and liver.  Best chance scenario for most people is 5 years survival."

First time overcoming MANY many fears.

Through this past year, I have been amazingly healthy.  I have continued to walk every day, during my breaks at work, with few exceptions.

I have tried to do a little bit with my hand weights at least a couple of times a week, and use our little elliptical here and there when I couldn't take my walks.  I also do my stretches at least once every day, and that includes some yoga and calisthenics.

The only aspect of my usual physical fitness regime that has been missing is dance, and I hope to return to that next month, once we find out what is next for me.

For the most part, I have continued to live my normal life, with only a few exceptions (that immune boosting drug that went with the adriamycin was some nasty shit, and I missed extra work because of it.  The miracle part is that the adria didn't make me sick and cause me to miss 4 months of work!)

In going through this process over these months, I have developed a series of "mantras" that I repeat to myself during my walks.

That seems to be the easiest time to do the repetitive chants in my head...out in the fresh air (mostly, sometimes in the walking tunnel under the hospital across the street from work if it's too hot, cold, or wet outside).

With every step, I grow stronger, healthier, and happier.

Or, alternately, with every step, my strength, stamina, and immune system increase.

Every moment of every day, in every way, I triumph over cancer and the side effects of treatment.

With every breath, waking or sleeping, thinking about it or not, the cells in my body are returning to perfect, balanced health.

In my afternoon walks, I tend to pray in various ways.  So, since I get two 15 minute breaks, I've been doing my mantras in the morning, and prayers in the afternoon.

Then, since the beginning, when I took a Shamanic style vision/journey to beg the spiritual side of nature for help, I have been using the gift of a nightly visualization practice.

This practice involves visualizing a blueish white light that emanates from the depths of the universe, where all healing energy is created.

This light travels out in every conceivable direction to bring healing to all beings in need.

When the strand that is meant for me finds me, it separates into a billion tiny filaments.  These tiny threads of healing light penetrate my body, and spiral into each and every cell.  The spiraling light balances out the dna of every cell and restores it to normalcy.

Then, as the light travels through my entire body, and begins to exit, it carries with it all of the fear, carrying it away....out and away....to be recycled by the infinity of spirit.

Funny thing was, this last chemotherapy drug that I was given, Abraxane, is blueish white.

Hmmm.

Also, all through this process, Dave and I have been praying over the chemo as it passed into my body, asking for help to guide the medicine to go where it needed to go, do what it needed to do, and leave me feeling fine.

I think I posted about that way back in January some time.

We also called out to collect the prayers, blessings, good thoughts, and all other forms of energy being generated by others on my behalf during treatments as the drugs entered my body, and we saw all of it creating a golden connection between me and all of those people all over the world, most of whom I have never met.

All that being said, I think the spiritual aspects of this process have been well covered!

As we prepare for Thanksgiving this year, I await my appointment on Dec. 2 to get post chemo scans done, and to see the oncologist.   He said that appointment is for the purpose of "mapping out the rest of the treatments."

Our hearts sank when we heard that, not knowing what might be next, but at least I am enjoying two weeks of no appointments and no treatments of any kind.

We are hoping that there won't be any more chemo.  I don't thing a body can take more than what worked out to 12 treatments (the last two having been broken out into 6 weekly smaller treatments).

I also scheduled my first physical therapy appointment for that day, in between the scans and the doctor visit, so that we won't just be sitting around dreading the doctor visit.

I think I mentioned previously that physical therapy was ordered by my surgeon, in order to learn how to deal with the lymphedema in my right arm.

In regard to how I feel about the upcoming scans....I just keep telling myself the news can't be any worse than it already was.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers who celebrate.

I, for one, have a lot to be thankful for, surprising as it may seem.

To have stayed well, mostly, during almost a year of chemotherapy, is nigh upon a miracle.

Oh...one more chant I say on my walks... I AM the miracle.