Done with chemo, hooray

 Last chemo treatment was yesterday, bloodwork was good, I still have a long ways to go, but I'm feeling good today and happy to done with this portion of the process!

11th Taxol treatment done, a nice weekend

 Last Friday, I had my 11th Taxol treatment. It went smoothly, no issues with bloodwork or anything else. Just one more to go. I have been so grateful for the staff at the infusion center. They are all very helpful and nice, and it makes what could be a very tedious weekly event into a relatively pleasant outing. 

The past couple of weekends have actually been quite busy. Last weekend, Ben and I drove to St. Louis to attend SLICE (St. Louis Independent Comics Expo). It was a wonderful show. Lots of comics and art and camaraderie. This weekend, we went to the last Third Friday Artwalk of the year in KCK. There's so much beauty and community and food and art, and a local artist had made a mandela of positive intention and hope for Palestine. It was beautiful and I was overwhelmed by emotion seeing how many people had made signs in support of Palestine. 

My cancer feels very small and very manageable in the face of the larger world. But even with that, I am tired. I am looking forward to being done with chemo, and then I will need to prepare for surgery. I am feeling ready. 

10th Taxol treatment done

On Friday, I had my 10th of 12 Taxol treatments. My bloodwork was better than the week before, I'm no longer neutropenic, and things are looking good. My oncologist has told me that if I were to have a week where my numbers were low, she'd be more likely to adjust the dose than to delay treatment since I'm so close to the end of chemo. 

As a reminder, once I'm done with chemo, I still have surgery and radiation, so I've still got plenty to do, and I won't be done this year. But I'll be closer. 

Not a cancer post for once

I just wanted you all to know that aside from the cancer part, things in my life are going really well. I wake up, I have coffee, a small cat sits on my lap and slowly falls asleep, I have meetings, I write emails, I do work things (I am still learning the new job, but it's just enough to keep me busy and interested while not enough to overwhelm or exhaust me right now), I see my friends (safely outside or on video chats or on phone calls), I see my parents, I see my partner. I cook, I go on walks, I sit with different cats, I watch a lot of competition baking and cooking shows, I watch low-stakes, very silly movies, I play low-stakes, very silly video games, I do yard work (minimal), things are good. 

Feeling worse, feeling better, doing well

Remember when I said I was slightly neutropenic and I needed to be very cautious? As a recap, my white blood cell count and my neutrophils are low, so my immune system isn't where it should be to protect me from normal things. This means that right now I am masking all the time, even outdoors, I am not riding my bike (because a fall would be bad), I am washing raw fruits and vegetables very thoroughly, I'm not going to salad buffets (this is a joke but I am not actually supposed to do those right now), I am just trying to be careful so I'm not exposing myself to germs. 

Well, I went to the Renaissance Festival on Saturday and it was awesome. My partner and I masked up (we are masking even outdoors around other people now for my safety), we met a couple of friends, we walked around, and I got a turkey leg. It was awesome. I had a great time. I am never excited about food these days, on account of never being hungry, and I had been looking forward to the Ren Fest turkey leg all year. That night, we went to GloWild and walked around the zoo. (GloWild is a thing where the zoo has partnered with a lantern company from China and they put up these very cool lanterns along a path around about half of the zoo and you go after hours to see them.) 

Sunday, we were going to go to an apple fest in a nearby town, but in the morning, I woke up feeling a little off, so my partner went out to get doughnuts and we had a quiet morning on the couch. Over the course of the day, my temperature hovered around 100 degrees (but crucially not 100.3, which is when I have to go to the hospital no matter what!) and I was very tired. More than that, my entire body ached, and even my skin hurt. You know when you have the flu and everywhere your clothes touch you, it hurts? It was like that. I took a nap in the afternoon and I went to bed at 8 pm after checking my temperature every couple of hours (to confirm that I still did not, in fact, need to go to the hospital at this time). 

In retrospect, a turkey leg at a fair may have not been the most safety-conscious food choice I could have made. I would do it again. I'm not sure it was worth it (they aren't even that delicious), but I'd do it again. 

Monday morning I woke up to a normal temperature. I took it easy. Took a 90 minute walk. Didn't really do anything else other than a little bit of email.

Today, I had physical and occupational therapy, and I was worried about how I'd do since I had spent Sunday feeling so bad and Monday resting. I've been going long enough that they needed to basically test to see how I was doing and whether I was making progress or declining. I actually did incredibly well. I performed better in every test than I had when I started (which is amazing when you consider how much chemo I have had since the beginning), I'm stronger than I was when I started, I'm more flexible, and both of my therapists were really happy with my progress.

So it's been a real wild ride these past few days! I'm going to take it easy for the rest of the week and give my body time to hopefully recover. I'm really hoping my bloodwork is good on Friday, and I can continue receiving chemo without any delays, but there isn't much I can do about it. I have to keep eating well, I need to rest this week, and the we'll see. 

Good news, less good (but not bad!) news, cat news

 The good news is I have completed my ninth Taxol treatment and only have three more to go! The less good news is that my white blood cell count has fallen (just slightly) under the acceptable low threshold, and so now I am technically neutropenic, and I need to be very cautious until those number come back up. It's possible that I won't be able to receive my next treatment on my regular schedule if that number stays low, and there's nothing I can do to affect it. My body just needs time to rebuild those cells. I will find out next week when they do my labs, and if necessary, they will delay treatment for a week. This is fine. It's not really that bad when it comes to news. I would LOVE to be done with everything on schedule, but I have been repeatedly reminded that you can't assume anything when it comes to cancer or chemo or treatment or scheduling, because things change depending on your body. 

Anyway I will be masking even more aggressively for the next week, and continuing to mostly stay home (normal for me, not a huge change!), and health care professionals will wear masks around me (FOR ONCE) since my immune system isn't really functioning at the moment. I will also not be biking, since I can't risk a fall. It's too bad, since we've finally got some beautiful crisp weather (so perfect).

In completely unrelated news, I got a fourth cat a couple of weeks ago. Her name is Myrtle, she's 14, she's a tiny Siamese mix, she's got one galaxy eye (an eye with a cataract that covers the whole lens so it looks white) and a funny little ear (they don't know what happened to her but suspect since these are on the same side of her head they are related somehow) and she's very, very good. She has already made friends with the two cats who are open to friendship, and the oldest cat (he is 20 and no longer wants to make friends with anybody but human people) has decided to move to the basement permanently. It's a lovely finished basement with a window in the office where the sunlight pours in and many comfortable spots. I'm writing this from my basement office, actually, and everyone is much happier. He's getting to do whatever he wants and the other cats don't have to worry that he's going to try to swipe at them. As much as I had hoped for a household where everybody gets along in the same space, I have to admit that this seems better for everyone.

Things are fine, no updates because nothing is different

I realized I hadn't updated in a while, so I wanted to let you know that the reason for this is that things are going well! Treatments have gone smoothly, I seem to be avoiding nerve damage (via "wearing little bags of ice on my hands and feet for the hour I receive Taxol"), which is a huge relief. I continue to do my physical therapy and occupational therapy exercises (some focus on strength, some focus on balance, some focus on flexibility), I am getting out into the world (cautiously, masked when inside), riding my bike, going for walks, having a good end of summer/beginning of fall. I am very excited for a drop in temperature because this will mean 1. no more mowing 2. TIME TO WEAR JACKETS! I love jackets!

So all of this said, things are going well, my mood is good, life is going well, I occasionally find myself going over what I'll need to do next. Not even "have surgery," more "I need to put a small table in the bathroom so I'll be able to get things without reaching beyond my range of motion post-surgery, I need to put the shower chair in the shower and I can use it as a place to keep things so they are easy for me to access, I need put my coffee stuff on a lower shelf so I can make myself coffee." I go over these things in my mind and I find myself muttering "I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate all of this, I don't want to do any of this."

And it's true. I hate this. I don't want to do any of this. I want to not have cancer. I want to have never gone through any of this. But I do have cancer. I am going through this. It's even going well. I share this just to show you that even though EVERYTHING is going as well as possible, it also sucks. And I'm lucky! And I'm grateful. And I'm feeling pretty good and I'm not even upset about it most of the time. But sometimes I whisper to myself that this is so unfair and I hate it so much. And that's ok too.