March 27 - So, the thrush got really bad again. A LOT of pain. I sent a message to Dr. K through the patient portal yesterday asking if she could call me in a prescription. Within 10 minutes it was done. Yes, she totally rocks! Although it would seem I had yet another blonde moment. I asked her to call it in to the Irondequoit Wegman's. Turns out there's more than one Weggie's in Irondequoit. So, I spent an hour driving around the city last night trying to figure out where my prescription had been filled. Finally located it but missed yoga. Well worth it though, if you ask me. The sooner I was able to swallow those damn pills, the sooner I'll be out of pain. I think it takes ~5 days for them to kick in so hopefully I'll be back to norm by the beginning of next week.

I found a food that tastes wonderful! I've been making it for myself every night for dinner, it's that good. They're Camembert and Leek Tartlets. Little cheesy, oniony bundles of goodness in a filo shell. Love them!!

Boss guy stopped by my desk yesterday to let me know that he noticed in my Order Summary meeting last week that my speech has noticeably improved once again. Granted that was before the thrush got really bad. Even my sweetie has been having a hard time understanding me the past few days because my tongue is so swollen, mucking up my speech.

JBB has indeed signed up for the Dirty Girl Mud Run. Her post on Facebook made me tear up:

My first 5k, I was roped into because it ended on the field at Shea. I got roped into a half marathon with the promise of an awesome shiny medal, a tiara, and champagne. Last night, I was invited to do the dirty girl 5k, involving obstacles, trudging thru muddy water, etc. I wasn't sure... Then I saw my friend's submission form, with the words "cancer survivor" next to her name.
So.
I'm doing it.

So, in an effort to start gaining some upper body strength for this obstacle course. I once again did the P90X workout. Or I should say I did half of it. Which might have been a good way to go because I'm not nearly as sore as last time from doing a billion pushups and chinups!

Running is still going well. This Saturday is a 2.5 mile fun run that I signed up for. Scott is going to go with me to cheer me on. He also went to Fleet Feet yesterday and bought himself some decent running shoes and running duds. I sent him the NoBo workouts that I've been doing so that he can see if he has any interest in becoming a runner with me. How awesome would that be? Fingers crossed that he starts digging it.....

My coworker, Goto, in Japan got wind of my training to run. He sent me an e-mail that was both supportive and a bit worried. He wanted to make sure that I've okayed it with my doctor to be running long distances. He's afraid that because I have such a hard time eating, and running burns so much energy, that I'm going to fall down while running. I told him I would check in with Dr. K at my appointment this Friday and verify that I'm not doing anything stupid. I told him that it should count for something that both running and yoga have made me feel like I've been brought back from the dead after 5 full months of being absolutely sedentary!

And Friday is my appointment to get that birth control thing inserted under my skin. Finally. Let's just hope there are no adverse side effects. Actually, that's one of the questions I want to ask her. If the effects of this thing are over the top and are making my life miserable, how hard will it be to get it removed again??


Boss guy stopped at my desk again today. Hmmmm.....now that I'm thinking about it, he's been awfully chatty this week, wonder what's going on. Anyway. I was griping to him about my eye appointment yesterday. I'm getting bifocals. I'm not happy. He was telling me that his wife has been struggling with the age thing for the past year or so since she turned 40. I guess she's had Botox done a few times and is now talking about a face lift. I told him that's the one good thing about life doing its best to off me over the years. My poor body is so beat up that I'm not really bothered by wrinkles, or sun spots, or varicose veins, or gray hair, or whatever other vanity occurrences have been going on with aging. But when things start not working right, like my eyeballs, well, that's when the aging thing bothers me. I think life would be much better if we were all like Benjamin Button!

I read a somewhat depressing article in Reader's Digest recently: http://www.rd.com/health/conditions/how-to-beat-cancer-twice/ . On the bright side, I HAVE taken control of my health habits—diet, exercise, smoking, and alcohol consumption.

Okay, so this week I'm going to remove the sleeping problem from my list. I think I've been sleeping pretty well as of late. I'll wake up once or twice during the night but it's usually just a 5 minute wakeup instead of the 1-2 hour wakeup it used to be.

And once again I think the hair loss might be slowing down but I'm not taking it off the list until I'm sure.

No Improvements:
- Thrush won't go away
- No spit
- Bullfrog effect (I looked in the mirror. I think this has definitely gotten better. Still there, of course, but noticeably diminished now.)
- Garbled talking
- Partial taste buds
- Ongoing hair loss

On to the fun stuff!

Scott's surgery went well. I discovered that it's much harder being the healthy person than it is being the sick/injured person. I wanted so badly to bundle him up and take him someplace safe and let them operate on me in his place! I was really glad that he let me be his "person" though. Not that I had any control over what was going on but so long as I was next to him, I could watch to make sure they were treating him like the extra special person that he is.

Friday night was the big caving meeting. I had 22 newbies signed up and then the day of the meeting, all but 8 dropped out. I was pretty relieved because my house just isn't that big. I had ~20 people here when all was said and done and it worked out just fine. And I way overdid it on the food. My coworkers have been eating like kings for the past two days and they've been loving it!

Saturday night was the birthday party for Scott's coworker so I got to meet his cubby mates. They were a blast! They had me laughing hard enough that I had tears in my eyes at one point! And it was very sweet to see how much they care about him. His coworker Kevin told me how happy Scott's been for the past two months and that he feels it's due to me. Here's a pic of us at the party:

On the flip side of that, Scott came to QED today for a tour. I introduced him to my boss guy who told him "I was just talking to our Director of Finance and we were saying that we hope you stick around because it's obvious that you make Q happy and it makes life so much easier for us here at work when she's happy.". Ha!

And on that note, I'm off to bed. Wish me luck on my run this weekend!!

March 22 -HA! JBB just pointed out that Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa. Mt. Everest is the highest mountain in the world. I'm not the brightest bulb in the pack but at least I got cute going for me. ;-P

March 20 - Scale said 121.0 this morning and I am now going to stop reporting on my weight (Sorry Patilda!). It's been the same since Christmas, running doesn't seem to be affecting it, I believe I'm good to go in that department.

Speaking of running, I have now ramped up to 3 minutes at a time and I received an e-mail earlier this week that I'm halfway done with my training. OMG! I'm halfway to running my first 5K! How bleeping exciting! I've also been talking to JBB tonight. I have her almost convinced to sign up for the Dirty Girl Mud Run in September with me. Woo hoo! Another friend almost wooed into joining me in my craziness! Actually, I take that back. She's even crazier than me. The reason she e-mailed me in the first place is because she thinks our adventure for 2015 should be to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Of course, I'm totally on board for doing that! Can you imagine it?! The tallest darned mountain in the world! It takes a minimum of 6 days to climb, for crying out loud!! I love it!

The stupid thrush doesn't seem to have gone away at all after this most recent round of medicine. I hope I'm not building up a tolerance! Ugh!

No repeats of the weird swelling thing that happened a couple of weeks ago. Still no idea what that was but I seem to be good to go, so, whatever.

The hair that is filling back in is ~2 inches long now! It is so good to see that growth happening. Any little thing that points to normalcy makes me one ecstatic chickadee.

This past Saturday I tried a P90X workout with Scott. Holy smokes! An hour and a half of some really hard exercising!! I haven't done it again since then. Meanwhile, I went to yoga last night and was doing downward dog. Suzanne, the instructor asked me what I did to my back. I was like "huh?". She then came over and put her hands right on the set of muscles in my back/shoulders that has been sore since that darned P90X workout. She said my muscles are jumping out of my skin in those two places! Whoa! There's a good indicator that your instructor knows what she's doing!!

In the previous yoga class we did a lot of backbends. Suzanne said we'd probably be wound up for the night and sure enough, I stayed up much later than usual and did a ton of housework. This week we did forward bends and Suzanne said we'd sleep like the dead. I passed out at 9:20 last night, was up briefly at 12:30 and then slept like a log until 6:30 this morning. I can't figure out if it's the power of suggestion at work or if it really is the different exercises having different effects!! Meanwhile, I kind of wish I could have taped the session last night. I'd love to do it every night if it meant I was going to sleep that well!


No Improvements:
- Sleep is hard to come by (Unless I do forward bends in yoga. Ha!)
- Thrush won't go away (Might have to live with this for 6 more months.)
- No spit (I'm still sucking on mints and hard candies which def helps.)
- Bullfrog effect (I haven't noticed this lately. Don't know if I've gotten used to it or it's getting better. I'll have to make a point of looking in the mirror tomorrow.)
- Garbled talking (My speech sounds much better even to me but sometimes I get talking too fast and I bite the 'flap' and there are still a number of words that I simply mangle.)
- Partial taste buds (This is improving weekly.)
- Ongoing hair loss (Although some regrowth can be seen!)

Fun stuff:















Last Friday was poker. During the second game RayB got knocked out of the game. I asked him to sit and play for me for a while so that I could get some of the food put away. 10 minutes later the guys were yelling for me. I guess Ray was winning too much money playing my hand. So, I sent him out to the kitchen to put away food and I sat back down. After only two hands I went all in and knocked G out of the game. The guys started yelling that they wanted Ray to come back. LMAO! There's just no pleasing some people.

Saturday I got to meet Scott's family. His sister, Karen, turned 59 and there was a little birthday gathering at his niece's house. Super nice people! And there was a total cutie, Addison, who's 2 1/2 years old, who was an absolute doll! I was talking to Karen at one point, trying to tell her where I work but saying QED is one of those things that my tongue garbles so I had to repeat it 3 times. She finally apologized and told me that she wears hearing aids so she can't hear me all that well. I told her no problem, that I'm recovering from tongue cancer and can't talk all that well. She got a huge kick out of that. Said that we make quite the pair. LOL!

The caving brunch this past Sunday went well. We met for two and a half hours to discuss what was going to happen at the meeting this Friday. I'm still freaking out about how I'm going to fit 30+ people into my house but whatever happens, it's going to be an adventure! And you wouldn't believe the food that I have planned! Although I'm not going to report on the food until after the meeting. Scott has agreed to be my guinea pig on Friday and let me know what's working and what's not with the food. Anything that gets a thumb's down will be tossed.

I have tomorrow and Friday off from work. Scott is getting the final surgery on his hand done tomorrow. I'll be bringing him back to my house afterwards so that I can spoil the heck out of him, waiting on him hand and foot. And Saturday night there is a surprise birthday party for one of his coworkers so I will get to meet some of the peeps he works with on a daily basis. All sorts of fun and interesting things going on this weekend! Guess I should get to bed so that I'm rested enough to handle it all...........

March 13 - Scale said 122.0 today and my running homework ramped up again this week so I'm now jogging 2 minutes at a time. Woo hoo! And I've signed up for the Dirty Girl Mud Run in September. It's a 5K/obstacle course for women only to support cancer. How fitting is that?? And I've been talking up the Tough Mudder for next year and have snagged myself two team mates already! Scott and Kunkel will be joining me in my craziness. :-)

I finally remembered to refill my thrush medicine yesterday so today was the second pill and hopefully my tongue will be feeling better five days from now. Fingers crossed. And I'll have to ask Dr. K when I see her on the 29th about another refill or two. I'm thinking that I'm going to be battling the thrush all the way until my saliva glands are back up to full function, whenever that may be.

The only weird health thing to report this week is some temporary swelling that happened on the left side of my neck last Friday. It was right after I ate lunch at work. I walked into the bathroom, looked into the mirror, and backed up a step in horror. It swelled up huge! Not sure if there was way more salt in my lunch than I'm used to or if I'm now picking up slight food allergies, or what the deal was. It slowly went back down over the course of the afternoon. Strange. And other than being unsightly, it didn't hurt or anything so there was really no reason for a freak out. Alas, I really did have a mini meltdown because I just feel that all the weird stuff should be over by now. ANY change nowadays gets my heart rate up.

I went to dinner with Kit tonight. We went to my favorite Belgian Beer Pub. Tonight I tried their wings. Fantastic! God, I love that place. Anyway, I was telling Kit that I'm still a bit upset by my whole lack of wanting to read. She gave me a really good pep talk about how going through such a huge thing affected absolutely every aspect of my being and that I really need to cut myself some slack and give myself a year to recover. Good advice. I'm going to take it. :-)

Other than that, not much else to report on the health front. Ongoing incremental improvements but nothing so momentous that anything will be falling off the list soon.

No Improvements:
- Sleep is hard to come by

- Thrush won't go away
- No spit
- Bullfrog effect
- Garbled talking
- Partial taste buds
- Ongoing hair loss

So, on to the fun stuff:

This past weekend with my sweetie was fabulous! We went and saw The Book of Mormon (it was great!), and did brunch out, and had our seafood extravaganza (see pic). We did not end up doing the Opti-golf. It was so nice out on Sunday that we went for a hike at Mendon Ponds instead. It was muddier than heck but great to be outdoors. The best activity of the weekend though was our conversation. It's such a wonderful feeling to be able to talk to someone and know that they simply "get" you.

So, all the cardio I've been getting is great but I'm in dire need of more strength building exercises if I'm going to really complete this Tough Mudder thing next year. I dug out my body bar and bosu ball, along with the DVD's for that equipment. Kunkel let me borrow her Insanity DVD's and Scott is going to bring over his P90X DVD's Friday night. One way or another, I'm going to find something to put muscle back on my body a little faster than the current pace.

This Friday is another hot poker game. We don't usually have one so soon after the last one but my coworker G had such a blast at the last one he was totally jonesing to go again. So, it's on.

I was supposed to be interviewing a new pet sitter this Saturday but she has been unresponsive to my e-mails inquiring about the meetup so I'm going to look elsewhere for a pet sitter.

Sunday morning will see me doing brunch with the current chairman of the caving grotto as well as the past chairman so that we can discuss the upcoming meeting at my house with all the newbies. We need a game plan if we're going to get some new people interested in being members!

That's all the good stuff for this week.......until next week........

March 7 -Scale said 122.2 today and our running homework ramped up again this week so I'm now doing 6 intervals of 4 minutes walking and 1.5 minutes jogging. I sure hope I'll be ready for the 5k on April 20th. Seems like things are moving a little slow with this ramping up thing. Or maybe my patience is just wearing thin. I'm getting antsy for some adventure!

And watching Facebook videos isn't helping with the antsiness! Elvisa posted an awesome video earlier this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6XUVjK9W4o. I got totally pumped watching it! It makes me want to run out and go snowboarding, or hang gliding, or rappelling, or surfing, or............at least start looking for my 2014 adventures. This year it's running a 5k (or two or three), getting back into caving, and climbing a few high peaks in the Adirondacks. Which is plenty of adventure for 2013. And lo and behold, without too much effort, I DID find a goal for 2014. I want to participate in the Buffalo Tough Mudder! Check out how awesome this thing is!! http://toughmudder.com/events/new-york-buffalo-sat-jul-27-sun-jul-28-2013/?gclid=CKbUlvyy67UCFVGf4AodYjEArA. I especially like the electrified field at the end. My friend Brian says that you have to sign a death waiver before you participate. ROCK ON! So, the list has been started for 2014.......

Okay, blondie over here did a dumb thing last night. Actually, a little back story first. So, I mentioned that I volunteered to host the next Grotto meeting which is on 3/22. I also posted the meeting in the Meetup group that I'm a member of and 14 people have already signed up to come! That's on top of the 10-15 caving people that are likely to come. Holy crap! I'm not sure I can even fit that many people in my house! So, I've been rearranging furniture in my mind and figuring out seating as well as a menu for the night. And here's where the dumb thing comes into play. I decided my treadmill needs to go back in the basement instead of taking up a huge chunk of my living room. Mind you, it used to live in the basement when I first got it and I took it down there myself. Of course, that was back when I was robust, healthy, farm girl stock. Wasn't thinking about how I am now wussy, scrawny, cancer girl and I moved the stupid thing by myself last night. I actually thought I did okay until I woke up this morning. All I have to say is ow.....ow....ow. I would ask someone to come over and cuff me up side the head until some sense got knocked into me but I think I'm in enough pain at the moment.......

This damn cold is still hanging on. I've had to get up in the middle of the night a couple of times now to down some Nyquil because of the tickle in the back of my throat causing a 15 minute long coughing fit! And I had no idea the human body could hold this much mucus. It's seriously disgusting. Thank goodness we move our clocks ahead this weekend. Warm weather HAS to be coming down the chute at which point I hope this cold clears up for good!

Okay, so it was wishful thinking about less hair loss. Although Sammy looked at my hairline over the weekend. The last time she looked at it she gasped....loudly....because of the huge bald spot I had. She said it's now all filled back in. Granted, the hair is only about an inch long but she said I can safely wear my hair up in a pony tail and nobody will likely notice. So, I put my hair up last night while I was moving furniture. Normally, I wrap a hair band around a ponytail twice. Sometimes 3x if it's really stretched out. With all this hair loss, I wrapped it 4x easily and my ponytail was still falling down within 15 minutes. <sigh> On the bright side, I was bored yesterday so I flat ironed my hair for work. I received no less than 5 compliments from coworkers on it. Which leads me to believe I should flat iron more often and with such a minimal amount of hair to iron, it's a 10 minute project instead of the 45 minute project it used to be! (Glass half full, baby!)

I think the thrush is back. I've been spitting blood for the last two days. I'm going to call in the prescription tonight when I get home. <yet another sigh>

Food is still going okay. My sweet taste buds are definitely waking up for some things. Oatmeal has been my thing of late. And I've decided I need to calm down on my Wegman's shopping. I have a ton of food in the house and I need to start slowly chipping away at it since nothing really tastes all that great or is all that easy to eat anyway. Why spend the big bucks for so little enjoyment??

Of course that rule is out the window for this weekend. This is the weekend dedicated to my honey bunny because his daughter is away on a class field trip. Our first weekend together! How exciting! I'm taking him to see Book of Mormon Saturday afternoon. Saturday night is our lobster, steak, and shrimp extravaganza. Sunday we'll be at the Southwedge Diner for their Southwedge Skillet and then we're going to revisit our first date by playing a round of Opti-golf. It's going to be an absolutely FANTASTIC weekend!

On a side note, my 3/21 doctor's appointment has been moved to 4/18.

I think that's about all that's new over here. No manservant this week, he'll be back next week to start work on the hallway. I might have him leave the carpet alone until after the Grotto meeting. I'm also, hopefully, going to be interviewing a new pet sitter soon. Luke and I both have a ton of travel plans this year and some of our trips are already clashing so I think the manservant will fill in, in a pinch, but I also want to get set up with a paid person for even more backup.

Oh! And I had a blast with Sam and the kids last Sunday! We made a TON of balloon flowers and animals because hey, that's our thing. And they LOVED the treasure hunt that Sam and I made up. God, I love those kids!!