December 13

The new additions are doing fine. Ethan is eating everything in sight. Sterling is still favoring the warmed up baby food but is sounding better coughing/sneezing-wise. They both went to see my vet this afternoon to get checked out. She put them on antibiotics for a week to try to get things to clear up faster. Meanwhile, it's okay that I didn't get a picture of baby doll holding Ethan last week because it was NOT a once in a life time occurrence. Actually, it would seem that Ethan is HIS cat, not mine. I get home and I'm hustling around the house for an hour and a half before Ethan  makes an appearance to let me know he's alive. Baby doll walks in the door and within 5 minutes the mouth is there, trying to climb his pant leg, wanting to be held and tell him about his day. Sheesh. Even Sterling favors baby doll. I seem to be second choice in both their eyes. I'm like the mom who has to love them so they know I'll be there when they need their faces washed, or their bellies scratched but the real attention comes from dad. PHBTTTT. That's what I have to say to that.

Anyway, enough grumbling about my good deed for the year in taking in two homeless waifs.

So, the new stove was delivered on Saturday and as feared, it couldn't be installed. I was stove-less until Wednesday! I was dying! And let me tell you, there was some MAJOR disappoint from my cancer team when I showed up treat-less on Monday. Luckily I have my one week follow up this coming Monday so I'm going to make it up to them. Here's a picture of the beautiful Christmas gift that the love of my life bought me.

My last radiation appointment on Monday went without a hitch. The girls bought me a little parting gift. It was a bag full of cat toys and treats. LOL!

Tuesday my television was delivered and installed. The guy was there for two hours and couldn't get the TV to connect to the wifi. I was NOT happy. I had him note it on the invoice before I signed it. I then sent up the bat signal and Jamie was over to my house in a flash. It took him another two hours to figure out the problem. Turns out there was an obscure, incompatible setting on my router that had to be changed specifically for the Sharp brand. Strike one for Sharp. Then we went looking for the Amazon app because that's the app that I use the most often on my Smart TV's. Turns out that Sharp brand does now support the Amazon app. Strike two for Sharp. Jamie said no problem, you bought a Smart Blu-Ray from Samsung as part of your home theater system, we should be able to access Amazon from there. Well, it turns out that the home theater that I bought a) was not wireless (say what? I thought EVERYthing was wi-fi compatible these days) and b) it didn't support the Amazon app. Strike one for Samsung! So, I packed the home theater system back up and took it back yesterday. Traded it in for an LG system that costs twice as much but hopefully will do what I need it to do. That's baby doll and I's project for this Sunday is to get that all set up. Meanwhile I was getting a lot of flak for going 60". After having this thing installed, I don't regret it one bit. It looks gorgeous! I told baby doll that I think we should host a super bowl party to show off how awesome the TV looks in that room. Of course now I definitely need to upgrade my cable package. That's on my list of things to do this week. Here's a picture of my "congrats for completing chemo and radiation" gift:

Wednesday morning Scott's guys stopped over and installed my oven. Woo hoo! I was once again ready to rock and roll!

Kunkel came over for lunch that day, not that she would let me feed her but....

I hadn't seen her in a while so we had some catching up to do. The cats LOVED her.

Wednesday night Scott's daughter, Jessica, came over. She wanted to meet the new additions. I think Ethan was almost smuggled out of the house under her coat!!I fed her and her dad dinner (lasagna!) and then we spent the rest of the evening making gingerbread houses. Fun!

Thursday I went to the hospital to pick up a bunch of prescriptions. They gave me three prescriptions and then rung me out. I was like wait a second, where's my pain med? The chick said it wasn't in the system. Say what?? Nurse Claire said she had tubed it down the day before. Whatever. Now I have to go hunt her down and see what the hell happened. So I paid for the meds that I DID get and left. I was halfway down the hall when I realized my bag felt really light. I checked and sure enough, they had only given me two of the meds but charged me for three. WTF? I fucking HATE that pharmacy. So I went back and showed the girl that she hadn't given me my thiamine. She checked the computer and sure enough, she just assumed it was in the bag with the zinc, she didn't realize that it had to be refrigerated. So she walked over to the fridge and got it for me. At this point I simply started crying. I was having one of those weepy days. All I want to do is walk into that pharmacy, just one time, and have everything go smoothly. It never does. Anyway, I then went down to radiation and asked for Claire. 30 minutes later Nurse Carol (one of my faves) showed up, saw that I was crying, and was immediately all over me asking what was wrong. I told her about the missing pain meds, about the screw up with the thiamine, about how I had company coming at noon and it was already 11;00 at this point, and I was simply stressed to the max. She took me in back and got Dr. Mike. He was dismayed to see me crying too. It turns out my pain med script was in the system but insurance won't release it until Saturday. Couldn't the chick have just told me that?? THAT I would have understood! Anyway, Dr. Mike wrote me out a script for morphine to bridge me until I can get my other pain meds tomorrow. He also upped the dose on the oxycodone so that hopefully don't run out anymore before the insurance kicks in again. He then told me to keep my chin up. He said that I went through all the hard stuff with a smile on my face and now that it's over, I'm all sad. He said it's just not right. I told him I never do anything the normal way. He was telling me that Dr. S has been in this business for many, many years and that in all the time that Dr. Mike has worked with him, he has never heard Dr. S talk about a patient as much as he talks about me. He thinks my zest for life and my continuous sunny personality that shines through are amazing. That was nice to hear. I really like Dr S. too. He's a total sweetie and a huge improvement over my radiation doc from last year. Hell, in general, Strong has been a huge improvement over everything from last year (except their pharmacy!). I'm so glad I made the change. So, I made it home at 11:58. I thought for sure that I would run inside only to find a text on my cell phone, which I had accidentally left next to my bed, saying the guys had been there and I wasn't home so they left. Instead, I found a message from them from 2 minutes before saying they were just leaving QED. Phew! I started whipping around the kitchen like nobody's business! Normally the guys walk in and I immediately slide them food. They had to wait a little bit on this particular day but it worked out well because other than JT and Toby who are usuals, they brought along Paul who was not only a newbie to the Quinny Euchre lunch but it turns out he didn't really know how to play Euchre. So the guys taught him while I got lunch pulled together. Actually Paul even helped with lunch. He sliced my mozzarella and grated my parmesan. THEN learned how to play Euchre. THEN proceeded to beat me and Toby with one hand while eating chicken parmesan with the other hand. I'm not sure he's going to be invited back. LOL!

Today I had an appointment with Dr. M and then with Michelle. Things went well with Michelle. I did a little homework this past week and there's definitely some improvement in the movement of my tongue and lips. She told me to keep up the good work. I had a whole list of questions for Dr. M. I've copied them below with the answers in blue.

1.    When will the port be removed now that chemo is done?

 They usually leave it in for 6 months after treatments end. They especially want to wait until after the first PET scan which Dr. Miller wants to have done in 3 months.

2.    When will the plastic tube that Dr. V implanted in my throat be removed?

 Dr. M wants to wait until all has healed and the swelling has subsided. He said give it another month or two and then we can revisit this.

3.    When can I get the Botox? How long does it last? What exactly are the effects?

 Dr. M is setting up an appointment for the Botox treatment for me now. He's hoping I can get in fairly quickly because they're usually pretty slow this time of year. He said it's an in/out procedure and the treatment itself should last 3+ months. It's not supposed to totally stop saliva production, just slow it down. They do it fairly often to babies who have excessive drool problems.

4.    More and more I’ve been waking up with a lot of fluid under my eyes. It prevents me from putting in my contacts or wearing makeup. Is this normal? I know that last year there was a lot of fluid retention in my neck that I referred to as the “bullfrog effect”. Is this the same thing but further up my head because of the scar tissue on my neck?

 Yes, it's normal. With most of my lymph nodes removed, the fluid in my head/face/neck doesn't know where to go. He said it should get better over time. It might help if I were to elevate myself a little when I sleep.

5.    When do you think I’ll get a speech prosthesis put in?

 At first he said 3-4 months from now but then we started talking about the next question.

6.    Is there any way I can check if the fistula is still open without trying to drink water and see if I choke?

 No, there is no other way to check on the fistula other than drinking. Although he took a look in my stoma and manipulated my neck and said he can see air bubbles being released so it's still there. He said he can also see granulation around the hole which means it's healing. I told him that Dr. V said it's in the perfect place to put a speech prosthesis so I'm wondering why we don't just do that instead of waiting for it to heal. He said it was a novel idea. He said they've never done that before. Normally they like to puncture the hole themselves so they have some control over it. His big fear is that they put the prosthesis in and for some reason it makes the fistula grow even larger. He said it might be worth a try though. The other problem is that I'm currently not opening my mouth wide enough to place the prosthesis. I guess it goes in through the mouth. Although he said there's an alternative way to placing it but it involves a lot of curse words because it's such a pain to do. And he's not even sure Michelle knows how to do the alternative placement and she's the one that would be putting it in for me. He's going to talk to her and get back to me on this whole thing. I see him again on 1/10.

7.    When can I start looking at getting a replacement tooth for the hole in my mouth? Dr. V said something a couple of weeks ago about sanding down the exposed bone. Is this necessary to get a tooth implant? I wasn’t sure why he mentioned it and it’s been niggling at me.

Shaving the exposed bone doesn't really have anything to do with getting a tooth implant. They're hoping that now that radiation is done, the tissue surrounding the bone will grow over it and cover it to protect it. If it doesn't, then it's at risk for chronic infections. By shaving it down to either the tissue level or a little below the tissue level, gives the tissue a better chance of healing over the bone. He said we'll give it a few weeks to see if it does it on its own first. As far as getting a new tooth to replace the one they pulled, again, he said to give it a few months. Wait for everything to settle down, make sure the bone didn't get deteriorated from the radiation treatments, let things reach some kind of norm before going in and messing with stuff. 

Time. That was his answer to almost everything. Just give things time. Which is fine. Everything he said made sense. He was making me laugh when he was examining my neck where the tumor used to be. His comment was "So, I see your conjoined twin decided to leave you. That was nice of it.". Ha! He's a funny guy.

So, those are my updates for the week. I'm heading back to the couch to snuggle with my hot honey bunny and watch a movie. I think we're going to watch The Illusionist. Love that flick!