Christmas Break Is In Sight

-
DSC_3506

Untitled

Untitled


Untitled

Untitled

The kids are finally on Christmas break as of Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. This year only Rory brings home Christmas crafts since 7th graders are much too cool.

We spent 36 hours this week in a little private chemo room at Vanderbilt. The queasiness is a familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach as is the frustration of letting Brian help me do every solitary thing (he's in perpetual overprotective mode), and the crankiness (I am not a good patient). The nurses have been kind, and we have had our share of warm blankets and snacks. They even let us sneak out to walk around the block for a coffee break.

I am easily the youngest and healthiest person on this particular floor. Camden and Rory have been so patient with the long hours and they spent Monday and Tuesday evening with us here in the room. Supper in the hospital cafeteria makes it worth their time.

As Thursday winds down, you can literally feel the mood lightening in the infusion wing as patients finish up and nurses prepare for a 4-day weekend. I am impatiently waiting for 7:16, which will be my last blood draw of the week.  I'm ready to break free and begin my own Christmas holiday!


Comments

Joan B said…
Bless you and your family during this holiday season and beyond.
6:39 PM
Jocelyn aka JoBear2 said…
Thinking of you and your family and upholding you in prayer. God bless you!

Jocelyn x (in Australia)
5:30 AM
Mimi said…
Merry Christmas, Melissa. I love your positive attitude!
Blessings to you and yours.
Love,
Mimi
7:40 AM
Christine @ 12,450miles said…
You have been on my mind a lot these past few weeks and this post, for some reason, fills my heart and soothes my soul. Hope you had an amazing holiday!
6:16 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Scoop

-
Our meeting with Dr. W today was fine. Not encouraging, but fine. I don't know why I expected better news, but I think it's hard not to hope that the bad news you hear is somehow wrong; that they've somehow made a mistake. Basically, the cancer is still the same as prior to chemo. Possibly a little larger, but he said it was hard to tell. He was glad that it had not returned to my bowel or colon (because that was a large part of my initial surgery), and my chest and lungs are still clear (apparently, this is the next place the cancer would go). It does not change my stage of cancer (still 3c), and remission is still a possibility, but he said that it would be very tough to get there.  There are several more drugs that we can try, which is good, but unfortunately they each have a success rate of only 25%. It's a little too early to be considering clinical trials because hospitals who hold the trials like for the patients to have tried the more main-stream drugs firs
Read more

Late Night Ramblings

-
Image
1. Thanks to Andrea for driving me to chemo today. I'm always a little anxious on the way in and the very few times I've had to drive myself, it's been a little lonely coming home. But not today. 2. A fellow chemo patient today thought I was in my 20's. Score.  ("score" would be a term I'm borrowing from Becky ) 3. I did not wear a scarf today to chemo, and all the nurses and doctors did a double take since they didn't recognize me. So wierd. I recognize me with hair, bald, and with a little puppy fluff. 4. Dr. W. is adding Avastin , a new drug which will help prevent cancer cells from growing, to my current Gemzar routine. Good news is that it won't make me feel any worse. Bad news is that in a small percentage of patients it causes severe side effects involving blood clots, kidney failure, ulcers, and holes in your bowel. Good times. 5. I've been instructed to head directly to my primary care doctor for blood pressure medic
Read more

Scenes from the Soccer Field

-
Image
So I may not have apologized yesterday about the number of pictures, but I am definitely going to today. Because  coughcough thirty coughcough just might be excessive. And probably my family will be the only ones who look at all of them. But I don't care. :) By the way, we completely lost and did not even score a goal yet again. Rory tried really, really hard. This team was head and shoulders bigger than we are, way more coordinated than 4 year olds should be and their coach kept their A team in the entire game. Even after scoring some 15 goals. Oh, well. Rory still enjoyed herself. Which way is the goal again? Notice her position in this picture. Notice how she passed the girl next to her? No, I am not competitive at all. Not sure where the other team is. Oh, wait. There they are. See how much bigger they are? You'll notice she almost always runs with her mouth open. Either that or her tongue hang
Read more