Feeling groovy

No chemo this week, and last week ended up pretty darn good considering the drugs in my system! I'm not sure if it's Dr. Gu or the new drug, but I wasn't incapacitated. Go Gu! My counts are still down, so I'm not out and about as much as I like, but that's good for the wallet :). This week I have to get out and get the Xmas shopping done. Joe volunteered, but that just wouldn't be the same, and it would be VERY good for me to have something else to do. I'll just carry a mask in the purse in case people start hacking and sneezing around me!

I'm not sure what happened, but I was supposed to have chemo next week and it has been moved to the week after. Maybe they thought I needed a Christmas break. It's the same as Thanksgiving; it will be really nice to have the time with family, but it's delaying the next scan (and my ultimate recovery) by another week.

Thank you to all the people at the RFC happy hour. The card was awesome and the girls will be spoiled! It was an incredible gesture and I'm sorry I missed the happy hour! We're planning mommy and me days with each of the girls while they are on break. Kate to Underwater world and Jenna to a spa (manny and peddy's). Thanks for making it possible!!!

Happy Holidays to everyone!!

baldie

I couldn't take it anymore. The hair falling out was a mess and the receding hairline in front wasn't fooling anyone. It was time to take action and that action was a number 2 setting on the clippers. I thought I looked pretty fierce the first day and 1/2. Then we went down to Mayo yesterday for treatment (again no fireworks, we may be on to something!!) and I had them show me how to tie a scarf on my head. They had me look in a hand held mirror at the back of my head and I nearly dropped the mirror. There are two patches of near black hair on the sides in the back. While this might be prized on ferret pelts, its not so cool ON MY HEAD! The rest of my head is a nice mix of salt and pepper - mostly salt - these, these patches of pepper look completely ridiculous. It won't matter much, since I'll never look at them again and y'all will be subjected to them more than I will :). It will not stop me from walking around without a hat or scarf. Since I don't wear makeup, do you really think I'll bother with headgear - except for the cold weather? FYI* the girls both stared at me when they got home from school on Monday, they had never seen their mother looking like a ferret pelt. Joe said it didn't look awful, ah Mr. Sensitive.

Dr. Gu is helping with the nausea and he gave me two more bags of herbs to brew up. Pretty sure I saw eye of newt in one of the bags.....I still feel pretty good today and told that to the interpreter when asked how I was feeling. He came back with "it usually takes the chemo two or three days". Okay Mr. Rain on my parade. That's true but I usually feel crappy after chemo until the REALLY Crappy starts on Friday. Today really wasn't that bad.

I know that some people swear by chiropractors, and others...don't. Today I saw one that also does nutrition and I liked what she said about my diet and the foods that I should be eating. It was getting to the supplements that seemed a bit voodooish to me. She laid some vials on my stomach to see which ones my body reacted to. That must be some pretty strong stuff if it can get through the bottle, my thick sweater, the fat on the top of my tummy, down to my innards and still send a signal to her that they are needed. I'll keep an open mind and see how I feel and let Dr. Chemo know which supplements I'm taking.

Ugh

This dose of chemo is almost through. I'm not really a fan of feeling drugged for 5 days, but hey, it could be worse. There were no allergic reactions!!! No open sores, no burst blood vessels, no fever, no chills, minimal headaches, very few stabbing pains. Really a pretty quiet week as far as side effects go. There is just an overwhelming fatigue and some nausea. Dr. Gu took care of the nausea with sessions on Wednesday and Friday. I didn't even have to take a pill! My own stupidity reared it's familiar head after the acupuncture session yesterday. I was starving after seeing Dr. Gu and there was an Arby's right across the street......can you believe I ate an Arby's sandwich after chemo and acupuncture? It did taste pretty good, but even though I wasn't nauseous, my stomach was protesting for the rest of the evening. Next time I'll bring some nuts to snack on during the ride home. I'm still tired, but that seems to be slowly fading away, hopefully by tomorrow things will be back to normal - (there's that word again, I'm unsure of the definition at this point).

One of the new chemo drugs, Navelbine, is given on day one and day eight, so we'll be back down at Mayo on Tuesday, that will complete round two of chemo. We'll be doing another PET scan after round 3 to see how everything is responding. I've been having PLENTY of conversations with God on how that's supposed to go.

The girls are excited to go scarf shopping. Jenna wants to get me a snowman scarf/hat, but I have no idea where to go?? We may have to buy some material and have Mersa make a scarf. She has talent, I would try and sew it together and it would look like a bad blanket.

Thanks to Barb, Lisa, Ann, and Chuck for the yummy meals! Seasons Greetings!!

New drugs!

Mom told me to be less eventful today as we left the house and the Dr. told me to have a "boring day" after our consult. So far I am for once listening to my elders. We got two chemo drugs in without fireworks!!! Hurray for Team Solheid :). There was some confusion in the chemo ward when the nurses wanted to verify with the Dr. that the orders were right. The regimen he has chosen is not normal (but look who it's for). The two drugs, Carboplatin and Navelbine, are not usually given together and the dose of Carboplatin was unusually large. The nurses were ok with the explanation from the Dr. and went about poking me with needles and handing out prep drugs like candy. The really good news is that they shrunk the steroid dose in half. I HATE STEROIDS. After last Wednesday I had Roid rage and spent most of Friday mad at my circumstances, full of joint pain, swollen, and had a lot of pain in my scars. I had thought most of these effects were due to chemo, but after just getting steroids and benadryl last week, it seems that only half my side effects are from the chemo. Good to know. The side effects from this chemo are supposed to be low blood counts, nausea and fatigue. We'll see if I end up with the "normal" side effects. For once it might be nice to be normal - whatever that is.

Kate doesn't like my short cut, she thinks it looks weird and is even more sceptical of my going bald. Jenna keeps wanting to pull the hair out. Both are going to be a little more affected by my baldness than I had originally hoped. We'll have to go scarf shopping together, so they can be more a part of the whole thing. If you see me in a Hannah Montana scarf, or a bright pink scarf with big, beautiful butterflies make sure you let the girls know how cool it is :) I like Rana's idea of documenting a wig search. It would be really fun to try on red, blonde, or pink hair and the girls would get a kick out of that too. My hair isn't long for my head, so it may come up pretty quickly. Hopefully by then I can figure out how to post pictures with the text, or I'm calling someone to walk me through it!

Blessings, love and hugs,
Liz

Haircut

It was time for a much shorter hairdo, the 3 inches we cut off a month ago was no longer working. Every swipe of the brush took out more clumps of hair and I was leaving a trail throughout the house. Since there was a Fantastic Sam's up the street and since I'm going to be bald in a couple weeks there didn't seem a point in spending a ton of dough on a cut. The girls at the shop were very sweet, but also very young (or so they seemed to me). They decided that I could go with a short cut and didn't need to shave it - yet. The conversation during the cut was....interesting. Let me give you a couple pointers. Don't tell someone going through chemo that they should "watch out" and that they are "going to get tired". At least they didn't ask "how long do you have"!! It is okay to talk about chemo, just don't tell someone what they are going through. Like I said they were sweet, so I didn't lay into them, and I got a nice scalp massage out of the deal :)

Mom comes tonight. She stays over on the nights before chemo since we usually have to leave before the kids get on the bus. Thank goodness, it keeps things almost normal! Kate likes her dog better than our own, she doesn't sneeze or pant (0r yak on the carpet- the dog, not Grandma). But while the dog is excellent with kids, she doesn't seem to share the same excitement for contact that Kate does.

A couple shout outs.... Thanks to Brad and Anna, Roberta, Ray and Becky, Aunt Gloria, Karla, and Jeanne for the generous and thoughtful cards and gifts. Isn't it amazing that y'all can make me feel lucky through all this?

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, I sure did!

Still no chemo

My body does not like chemo. I think it's pretty smart that way, but when you're fighting cancer it gets a little problematic. Yesterday started out getting my blood tested in Eden Prairie. Deb came and picked up the girls for a playdate (after Kate cried for 45 minutes about wanting to stay with mommy - but of course she ended up having a great time), and Joe on the ready to take me to Mayo if the blood counts were high enough. Turns out the counts were fine and we headed down to Mayo for a 2:30 chemo appt. We were a couple minutes late because my hair started falling out yesterday and I didn't realize this would take an extra 10-15 minutes in the shower to pick all the hair off me, clean the drain and some of the shower. The hair is now in a pony tail since that seems to hold it all together and it only falls out when the pony comes out and I brush it. YUCK! I don't mind the hair falling out, it's just the mess that it seems to be making all over my clothes and the house. Although it will get me out of cooking again :) We don't have a supply of hair nets, tee hee.

After being 5 minutes late at Mayo, it took them about 45 minutes to call me back and then they asked for my blood counts. Since the clinic wouldn't release them to me, they had faxed them to my Dr.'s nurse earlier. The chemo nurse couldn't get ahold of the nurse so she had to have the clinic refax the counts to her. By now it's 3;45 and I asked if we were going to have time since they close at 5:30. She explained that I would be the last one out, but they wouldn't make me shut off the light or take out my own IV. How nice. Then we started talking about the shot of Neulasta (this is the shot to get my counts back up), and she said that I should have it tomorrow or Friday. I was worried about Target getting the shot on short notice, so she called down to the Mayo pharmacy to get the ball rolling down there. By this time, I had taken the anti nausea pill, the benadryl by IV and they started the steriod (both the benadryl and steriod are to prevent reactions to the Taxotere - for those googling). It's the same drug I had the reaction to last time. Once the steriod was done, they started the Taxotere and the fireworks went off again. I told the nurse I was having a reaction and wanted to throw up, Joe gave me a bucket and I dry heaved/coughed a couple times and got really hot again. The pressure on my chest was offset by the nausea this time. They turned off the drug immediately and checked my blood pressure and oxygen levels again. They called the Dr. on call (mine was taking a long weekend) and she came and stared at me for a bit. This reaction was worse than the last time, and I had already had the benadryl so the new Doc was not excited about giving me either drug (I was supposed to get a new drug after the Taxotere). They rescheduled me for next Tues with my dr. and a chemo session after another consult. TROUBLE! The good news is that Thanksgiving will be much more pleasant than we had all been expecting! We also canceled the Neulasta shot since there was no chemo. Maybe third time will be a charm....

FYI, I tried to drink the witch's brew yesterday (the acupuncture potion) but couldn't get it down. I'm really not excited about drinking liquid dirt with some tar mixed in. Thought about putting some agave nectar into it, but didn't want to waste my entire supply on crappy tea. We'll try again today, but don't hold your breath.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my cancer angels out there!!

no chemo

There was no chemo yesterday. My blood counts were too low. We're going to try again tomorrow (Wednesday). I'm able to get my blood checked in Eden Prairie and if the white blood cells decide to make an appearance we can book it down to Mayo for an injection of cancer fighting potion. My oncologist doesn't want to use the same chemo as the first week (apparently everyone does not get skin rashes and burst eye blood vessels from the stuff - who knew?). We're going to try a new one with the chemo from the 2nd week. That means I'll feel crappier than I did a couple weeks ago. That's the bad news, the good news is that I only have to get this stuff once every 3 weeks. I'll let you know how that goes next week, right now I think it's a great plan because I'll have two weeks of feeling pretty good and one sucky week. Like I said, I'll let you know if that thought lasts through next week.

Guess what I did today! I saw Dr. Gu. That's right acupuncture. When calling to make the appt, Dr. Gu himself answered, which is great, except he doesn't speak English. He studied in Beijing, China, which leads you to believe that he must really know his stuff, but it makes for an interesting phone conversation. It went something like this:
Hi, I'd like to make an appt with Dr. Gu
Ya, I Dr. Gu
Great, do you have any openings for next Tues the 25th?
Tomorrow?
No, Tuesday the 25th, next week.
Ah, next week 24th
No, next week the 25th, Tuesday
Ah, yes, Tuesday the 25th. What time?
How about 10am?
Ya, Ya. Your name?
Liz Solheid, L.I.Z
Lic?
No Liz
Lic?
No Liz, Elizabeth
Ah Liz
Could you give me your address or directions (I know you're thinking this was a bit optimistic, but at this point all I had was the phone number)?
Ya, Ok (then some nervous laughter) then he hung up.

Luckily I was able to find everything I needed on the web and Lisa took me to the appt. I was VERY relieved to see an interpreter when we walked in, so the medical history part was painless. Although Dr. Gu asked me "How are you" and I thought he was asking how old I was so I just volunteered "42" and it took him a minute to figure out that I had misunderstood. The interpreter came back in (he had gone to answer the phone) and we continued on. Dr. Gu heard the history, took my pulse in both arms, looked at my tongue and decided I had a kidney or spleen deficiency and he would have some herbs (there were really sticks) waiting for me after the session. The needles didn't hurt at all, he put them on my back, around the scar on my leg and in my ankles. I felt great after, but I felt pretty good this morning anyway. After making the tea (it tasted horrible, but how do you really think twigs and bark are going to taste), I'm quite sure there is NO way I'll be able to drink it during chemo, but I can't be the first person to tell him this. If I have chemo tomorrow I'll go back on Friday and then we'll really be able to tell if it helps or not. I have enough stick tea to last until Sunday (you drink it twice a day and they are 8oz portions), but it will probably last through mid next week if the chemo taste thing kicks it up a notch.

By the way, Rana made seaweed soup for me this weekend, it was really good! Can you believe all the things I get to try? Mary brought over some Indian food and it tasted good too! Life's an adventure, I'm on for the ride!

Thanks again to all my cancer angels. I could write pages of thank yous and still forget someone. The comments, the letters, the presents, the food, the babysitting, y'all are incredible and I can't say thank you enough!!!!!