White blood counts are low again, and Dr. Netaji has ordered me home: no going to the store, nobody can come see me if there is even a hint of a possible sneeze. So, it is Pity Party Time! Frozen French fries, fried fish fillet AND a Cinnabon for supper!
Peter is giving me shots of neupregen and I am hopeful to stay out of the hospital this time.
Bon Appeitit!

This is a picture of our evacuation from the Bastrop Fire on Labor Day, September 4, 2011. Peter is in the truck in front of me; Buck the Adorable Dog is in the truck; Jennifer is with me. Poor Jennifer came down to visit her mother and ended up being evacuated!

The winds that day were blowing up to 45 mph; the back side of the hurricane that was moving up the east coast. It was like we were in Abilene, not Bastrop; we had trouble opening our car doors because the wind was so strong.

In the picture, the fire is directly in front of us. You can't see in the picture, but you could see the horrible red flames just beyond the smoke. As we were sitting in the traffic jam, all I could think was "Heaven Forbid that the wind shifts just for a moment in our direction." We went to the Bastrop Middle School Evacuation Center and just watched the huge fire. As the sun was going down, you could see the little explosions each time a house caught on fire. And we just wondered which explosion was going to be one of our houses. It was a horrifying, terrifying experience.

We stayed in Austin the following week, sitting on pins and needles every day and every night waiting for any news about our homes and our friends. I believe almost 1500 homes were lost in that fire and that is all in Bastrop County. It is a true disaster. 94 families lost their homes that go to the Catholic Church in Bastrop, if that is any indication. Everyone that lives in Bastrop either lost their home, or they know close friends that lost their homes.

I am thankful that our house survived, as did my parents' house. I am also thankful that we were allowed back in our house before all the chemo started. It was so hard for me to think and wonder about how we were going to do all this if our house had burned down. Just too much to even contemplate.

Living in the future is so cool. I can send a text message to the blog!

Dr. Netaji, Tumor Warrior

I finished my first round of chemo and am very happy to have a week off to recuperate and let my "good" cells rejuvenate. When I first spoke to my doctor about the chemo plan he had in mind, he told me that it would make me very sick and that I could possibly end up in the hospital because of low white blood counts. Well, it made me nervous, but I agreed to the treatment and told myself that the doctor just had to tell me the "worst case scenario" and that, of course, it couldn't be that bad. He told me that he was very excited about this plan because he thought that after two rounds we could completely eliminate the bad tumor.
Chemo started on September 19 with 2 different kinds of chemo dripped into me through an IV. He sent me home with chemo number three in a pump, that dispensed the chemo for 4 days in the comfort of my own home. We named the pump "Ahnold". Somebody at the doctor's office named his Chemo Sabe, but I think Ahnold is more appropriate in this case.
Ahnold was removed on September 23 and I felt very poorly the entire weekend after this. I went to the doctor on Monday to check my blood counts and my white blood cells were so low as to almost not be there at all. Doctor gave me a shot of Nupregen, which stimulates the bone marrow into making more white blood cells and was told to come back to his office every day for another shot. I was allowed to stay home as long as my temperature did not get up to 100.5.
Tuesday night I developed a fever and was ordered to the hospital. I stayed there until Friday, where they took care of me until my white blood counts returned to normal.
As I was recuperating in the hospital, Dr. Netaji saw me at least two times every day. As he saw that I was getting better, he said "I think I will keep the chemo plan for round two the same. You can handle it; it is not so bad, right?"
Dr. Netaji, Tumor Warrier, is very excited to get rid of this thing. He hopes to talk Dr. Chen into scaling back his radiation plans if he can show he eliminated the tumor.
Meanwhile, my appetite has returned and I am eating and fattening up for the next round.
I will try to post more this week before Ahnold goes after me again with his big guns.

Vacation to Florida

The day after Peter and I talked to my doctor about the results of the MRI of my tongue, we all piled in the truck for a road trip to Destin, Florida. Peter was not able to go with us because of work and it was very hard for him to stay home worrying about what might be wrong with me.

It was a wonderful road trip and a beautiful destination. I just wanted to enjoy the beach, the scenery, the ocean, and most of all, time with my kids. We walked, we swam, we tried not to drown in the undertow, and we had a wonderful feast where we all cooked something, including a Chilean Sea Bass that we found at the grocery store. (Yum Yum!!! It was good!) We stopped in Lafayette on the way and ate lunch after wandering around downtown a bit. We drove by what used to be called USL and what I thought was always one of the prettiest college campuses with its huge oak trees and red brick buildings. And we enjoyed rain almost every day!

Coming home was: everyone back to school and a petscan, biopsy, portacath and peg tube placements and doctors appointments all the time. It really was one of the best vacations I've ever had.

The following is a post that I sent to my children today. I will start with NOW and I will go back in time for everyone! I call this my WTF moment of my life because I really liked thinking that I was in good health and this couldn't possibly happen to me.

I am sorry that I haven't posted everyday. Going to the hospital to have a feeding tube inserted, along with the chemo port, really took alot out of me. I now officially now what it feels like to be stabbed. The feeding tube sticks out of my stomach and is about 6 inches long. They had to poke a hole through my abdominal muscles to get it there and I was in more pain than I thought it would be. Which means, I was on more pain meds than I thought I would be. And, believe me, you wouldn't wanted to have read a post by me while I was all doped up!
I talked to the chemo doctor Wednesday and he spelled everything out for me. I will be at his office all day tomorrow. They will be doing blood work, etc., then I will sit in a nice, comfy chair and have two kinds of chemo dripped into my port for a couple of hours. Then, they are going to attach a pump to my port so that I can go home and have another type of medicine slowly dripped through my port until Friday. Then, Friday I go back, they remove the pump and let me go home for 2 weeks to recuperate. After these 3 weeks, I go back and do the same exact thing for a second round. THEN, after the second round, radiation starts...........
The chemo is going to be killing all fast growing cells in my body, so I may get an upset stomach, my blood counts may get low and I will be prone to infections, and I will lose all my hair. So, yesterday, I took matters into my own hands and let Dawn shave my head for me. It gives me a tiny amount of power over this to make this decision on my own instead of waiting for clumps of hair to fall out. Jenny, Laura and even Sharon were there to cheer me on and take pictures. So, I've attached a few. We decided that I should at least have a mohawk for a few minutes before I was completely bald.
Jennifer sent me the beautiful scarf to wear; it is my new substitute hair!
I won't be going to work very much and would really, really, really love to hear from all of you. Call me........send messages on facebook.............let me know how school, jobs and life are going! Oh, and send me funny links on facebook, too.
I love you all! I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.