Status quo

Here is a picture of the baldie at Xmas with brother in law Darin and Kate. Notice Kate is dressed up in cute dress with santa hat. She has worn this outfit to school twice since Xmas, hat and all. I used to wonder how people with small children got through things like this. Now I wonder how they would do it without kids.

Betty, I tried to take a picture of the lights outside, but it didn't turn out very well. They really do look pretty cool, I'll try again at some point. Joe's friend Paul had them put up and it made the house look quite festive!! Thanks Paul!

The leg is better, but I had a cold last week that scared me a bit. I was worried that it would morph into the flu or some infection which would leave me in the hospital. However, the cold was a little more intense than I'm used to, but it went through all the normal stages pretty quickly and now is just a minor irritation in my sinuses. Chemo last week wasn't any big deal, it was just the Navelbine (yes, the Dr. reduced the dose) and there weren't any side effects other than some nausea and fatigue. By now I feel pretty darn good, and we don't go back until the 22nd. That will be a busy day because of the PET SCAN!!! It's at 7:30 in the morning, but at least we'll have an idea on how well the chemo and radiation are working.

I had a massage today and it was AWESOME. It's one of the best things in the world and it was even better because the therapist came to the house. I'm not even going to pretend to help shovel today and ruin a good massage :) It was my friend Amy's aunt, and Amy arranged the whole deal. Thank you Amy!!

The new chemo doesn't seem to promote hair loss like the first ones. The hairs on my chin started coming back, isn't that a treat......

Happy New Year

Did everyone have happy holidays? We did. The girls have been thoroughly spoiled, the house is still a mess and we had loads of time with family. The icing on the cake was NOT having chemo on the week of Christmas. You don't realize what a blessing that is until you have it the week of New Years Eve :)

Just to catch everyone up, I did have some issues with my leg and had to stop walking (for exercise) for awhile. It seems to be better so it's back to the daily walks. There was PMS inspired depression, but I'm heading into chemo inspired menopause so that's ok for short bits. I really don't see the downside of menopause. I'm done having kids - it's really a young persons sport - no more mood swings, no more being cranky for a week at a time, no more embarrassing trips to the store for Joe, no more cramps and bloating, its about 10 years ahead of schedule, but.....this is a good thing!!!

We had mommy and me days with the girls. Kate thought Underwater Adventures was boring, so I had to take her on a couple roller coaster rides at the mall to save the day. It worked because she asked when the next mommy and me day was going to be. Jenna and I went to the mall and had our manny and peddys. She got pink fingers and blue toenails. She had a huge smile on her face when we went in and asked when we could go back on the way out. Aunt Jeanne came down from Grand Forks and pretty much stayed with the kids all week. It was pretty much a life saver since I had chemo on Tues and by Thurs I was wiped out. Its easier when the kids are at school and home late in the afternoon, trying to keep up with two tornados all day after chemo is more of a challenge.

My counts are still low, but we're on for tomorrow's chemo. The Dr. talked about reducing the dosage based on my counts, so I called him a chicken. I'm SURE that will change his mind. It's only been two months since I've been on chemo, it feels like 12. The next scan is supposed to be around the 20th of this month. It will be on the same day as chemo for Round 4. After tomorrow I'll be 1/2 way through this treatment schedule, hurrah, hurrah!

FYI, today at target I got a coupon for $3 off John Frieda hair care products :) HA. Maybe they have a good scalp balm!

SUE BOO WHAT IS GOING ON??? Are you living in Hong Kong?

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!