October 31

As I sit here, waiting for kiddies to ring my doorbell, I figured it would be a perfect time to ramble at you peeps for a bit. And when I say ramble, I mean ramble. I'm not going to try to put this in any sort of coherent order. I'm just going to brain dump.

Today was the euchre tournament lunch. I was teamed up with Brian and we cam in second. Woo hoo! The lasagna and garlic toast were a hit. I also made Boston Cream Cupcakes. I went through three boxes of cupcake mix just to get 10 decent cupcakes. The stove that my mom gave me back when I moved into my house is great for cooking meats, casseroles, etc. but baking is always tricky. I've learned that it runs 25 degrees hotter than it should and can usually take that into account but for some reason, cupcakes were defeating me. It's too bad because they came out yummy and I still have a bunch of the cream filling and chocolate ganache topping to use up. Ah well. I guess I will be adding new stove to my wishlist of things I'd like to buy myself.

Yesterday was the first day with the new mask and the new radiation plan. So the 'cushion' they made for me is still hard as a rock, it's just contoured specifically to my personal head so they were hoping it would alleviate some of the pressure. I think it actually did help a very small amount unfortunately, the new radiation plan that is now targeting this huge ass tumor coming out of my neck is like 2 full minutes longer than the last radiation plan. That extra time of putting pressure on my skull kind of voids any help the 'cushion' was giving me. I just can't seem to win.

Had a blast with Kit yesterday. She took me to a place called the Ontario Antiques Mall. The place was huge!! I'm not into antiques so I wasn't sure I would actually be making any purchases but it turns out that I did, indeed, find a few treasures for myself. I got a beautiful flower vase, a couple of gorgeous crystal candy bowls, a glass fruit bowl, and a painting. I also found some Yankees stuff for my incredibly sweet man and even a funny birthday trinket for my friend Kunkel. Definitely a successful trip! And on the way home, Kit pointed out the Finger Lakes Race Track where I guess they now have slot machines and stuff. We're headed there next Thursday. This woman is a bad influence in her retirement! LOL!

I tried on all of my Halloween costumes for Scott the other night. I didn't realize I owned so many! There had to be at least 15 costumes! He picked out the Little Red Riding Hood costume for me to wear tonight. Alas, much like last year, I'm too tired (and too cold!) to play dress up. I took a good 2 hour nap today but based on how I felt when my alarm went off, I think my body would have been happy with two more hours.

Nurse Mary had me all worried about this nausea med that she prescribed for me. The first prescription was only good for 5 doses. I complained to her about the wussy amount so she went ahead and prescribed a 40 dose bottle but cautioned me that if, when I went to pick it up at Wegman's, it was really expensive and would break the bank, not to pick it up. She would get me some at a discounted rate through the hospital pharmacy. So I went to Wegman's all full of caution but the script only cost me $10! I must have much better insurance than other people. Also, my latest prescription of pain meds is for the stuff that's just oxycodone without the acetaminophen. Dr. Mike wants me to be able to take as much as I want without the acetaminophen limit hanging over my head. So that script has been costing me $25 a bottle at Strong but now that he changed it to be just the narcotics, it's only costing me $5 a bottle. Woo hoo!

It's a good thing I'm saving money on my scripts because I did my Wegman's shopping for the week on Monday and somehow managed to spend $325!! How the hell does a chick who can't eat spend that much money on food?? Seriously, it's crazy. And to go with all that food I purchased, I"ve been a cooking fiend once again this week. I made spicy, chicken stir fry and shrimp in a vodka pink sauce and chili and lasagna and red meat sauce and ........

Dr. Mike keeps asking me how my trip to Niagara Falls was every time I see him but we're always walking somewhere or Dr. S is ready to continue with what we're doing, or something prevents me from giving him any more detail than two thumb's up. Well, I finally got some one on one time with him back on Monday and he asked.....again....so I started writing my little heart out telling him all the truly awesome stuff baby doll and I did and what an absolute blast we had! He was blown away. He couldn't believe how much stuff we were able to cram in, in such a short period of time. :-)

Dr. S was so cute when I gave him his 7 layer bars. He told me that he'd bring my "box" back to me. Not my container, not my Tupperware, but my box. It made me smile. And when he did bring my box back to me and left it with my radiation team, he also left a really nice thank you note signed with his first name and everything. He's such a cutie!

I dropped something on the floor the other day and it rolled under the rack next to the dryer. I knelt down to retrieve it and much to my surprise, I was able to bend my right leg all the way. Woo hoo! I've been really worried about not getting the full range of motion back in that leg. Not worried enough to be working on it of course, but whatever. Turns out it healed enough on its own that I once again have full use of it.

I've been coming up with new systems for all this cooking that I've been doing. The first system I had to put in place was labeling everything that goes in my fridge/freezer. I discovered a container of something red a few weeks back and had no idea what it was. To make matters worse, I can't taste or smell so other than eyeballing things, I have no way of figuring out what they are! And it's amazing how similar chili and red sauce and BBQ sauce can look to each other. Ha! So everything now gets a sticky put on it. The other system change I had to make was to my recipe book. I had commented before that if a recipe comes out good but doesn't knock the socks off of baby doll, then it gets tossed, rather tthan put in the book to be made again. Well, when Toby and Pamela were over on Sunday, Toby wanted me to give Pamela the recipe to a shrimp mac salad that I had brought into QED the week before. Unfortunately, the reason the bulk of that salad made it into QED was becuase baby doll didn't think it was any great shakes. So......new process. Even good recipes make it into the book but the really stellar recipes get a little star put up in the corner of them. Luckily Sammy sent me some motivational stickers in the care package she shipped to me. I think they were sent to make me laugh, or maybe the kids picked them out for me. Either way, they're coming in handy!!

I had a bad day on the radiation table yesterday. Right at the end of the treatment my OSL clogged and I couldn't breathe. I had a hairy heart attack! I was flailing my arms all over tyring to get the girls to hustle in there and unstrap me from the table. It happened again twice during the day too. I'm suddenly producing a lot more mucus than I have been. I'm not sure if I managed to catch Mason's cold or if allergy season is kicking in. Meanwhile, I removed my OSL before letting them strap me to that damn table today.

I also had a bad day with my PEG on Tuesday. Although it was a really good day as well. I FINALLY remembered to ask Joanna, the nutritionist, about syringing the Jevity instead of putting it through the gravity bag. She said syringing it was no problem at all. Hallelujah!! No more hour long bag feeds!! No sooner did I syringe it yesterday though and my PEG started hurting.....bad. Inside, not outside. Just the slight bounce from walking was making it hurt. Not good. I told my radiation team about it. They called in a nurse to see me after my treatment. She couldn't figure out why it would be sore. Neither of us really thought it was from syringing the Jevity. She told me to go back to the bag feeds for a couple of days and see if it helped. Well, screw that. It was a good idea but I was way too excited about eating in 5 minutes instead of it taking over an hour. So, I continued to syringe and the PEG is much less sore as of today. I'm not sure what caused the soreness but so long as it's going away, I'm not going to worry about i.

Upstate didn't even bother to contact me back about my missing items, they simply delivered them to me Monday afternoon. They're communication skills might not be great but at least they take care of business!

Okay, I think that's more than enough rambling. It's time for pain meds again. The burn inside my mouth and throat are getting noticeably worse on a daily basis. On the bright side, the drool is definitely slowing down. I can leave the washcloth out of my mouth in half hour increments now.

Type at you later!