Friday, October 20, 2023

All the Feels

 I wish I could think about nothing. I'd love to go to some remote place and sit in silence for hours at a time-and it can't be my bed. I hardly ever wear a hat, what's the point when I'm this many years into cancer? BTW, 6 ¼ years. I just need to go as long as July next year for our 30th anniversary.

There's an adorable little boy in the ward, maybe 1 ½ to 2 years old? One day his eyes went slowly up my body and stopped on my head. I asked him if he wanted to feel my head that was so different from everyone else. He slowly nodded a shy ... "yes" so I bent down and touched my head so he knew it was OK to touch it. I asked his older siblings if they wanted to touch it too. Both nodded a shy "no".
I do that sometimes so my bald is normal to kids who see me, maybe they'll be more brave next time someone offers their head for touching. I find that older kids are too cool or embarrassed to touch my head. It's like someone touching a pregnant woman's belly. Eek! 🙂
I've been obsessing about getting another pair of UGG winter boots. When we had our first dog, and I, as the human wasn't fully trained on how to do "dog" yet, that dang pup dragged one of my UGGs out the back door and chewed it to pieces. I kept those boots for longer than reasonable, because my sis-in-law sent them to me after my diagnosis. I loved those boots, wore them everywhere! I couldn't stand the idea of throwing one perfect UGG boot (and one chewed up UGG boot) in the trash! But that's what I did after accepting the fact that one boot was NOT bringing me joy.
Last night I was looking on Marketplace and found a pristine pair for half off the regular store price (which is obscene-don't google it!). They are the tall ones, worn twice. So I reached out to the seller who lives 30 minutes from me and told her I loved the boots I had, but I'm end stage cancer, and wasn't sure I could justify the cost at this point in my life, or even if I will live for them to see spring (that news flash is still forthcoming). She lowered the price and I'm picking them up tomorrow. Hooray!!!
No kids were home tonight, so we went to Olive Garden and ordered a spartan meal to share and save money. Our waitress came several times to make sure we were good, and we were, but I have taste distortion happening right now. How could Olive Garden not taste good?! Mat happily ate everything. Clearing my dishes that still had a fair amount of food on them? I told her about my taste distortion and that there was nothing wrong with the food, I just couldn't taste it. She asked us about dessert, which we in our spartan manner declined. She said, "I'm sending you home with some dessert, on the house! What would you like?" We'll be eating pumpkin cheesecake for breakfast. She was so nice, went out of her way to make sure we were happy. She got a healthy tip from us.
I had my CT scan today, had the results by middle afternoon. In a nutshell, The biggest problems are still in my liver. The giant tumor, previously 9 cm x 6 cm, is only one cm smaller. But there are new tumors in that general area as well. (More later!)

OK, here's the conclusion of my last post, what we're going to do about it. Dr. Buys called me to go over the results last night. She wasn't completely unhappy because we went forward and backward. I'm going to do one more 3 month cycle on Taxol, then get another scan. At that point we'll talk more about options, whether to stay on Taxol (because maybe it will work, we could try a different drug, or forget treatment all together-those are my options). I'm kinda at that point, friends. If fatigue makes "living" difficult, its a valid reason to stop. It will be a hard decision to make, I'm certainly not "living". I can get by on a very basic level at home, but I can't be on my feet very long, like making food would be impossible. I can't go shopping unless I know there are reliably charged carts, or a wheelchair I can use. That pretty much means Costco.
I didn't want to alarm anyone with this news, Mat doesn't like it when I talk about it. He has an idea in his head of what he wants me to try to get to. I have an idea of how much more I think I can handle. As I type this the bottoms of my feet feel like they're on fire - neuropathy. It's no cake walk. I'm so used to side effects, I hardly ever mention the less obvious ones. So, that is my life right now. There will be no drastic decisions for several months!

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