January 10

 As previously mentioned, last Saturday was Scott and I's one year anniversary. He got me a couple of books. One of them is a really cool interactive book about designing your own bucket list. I'm going to have some fun with that one! The other one is a naughty one that I'm not going to talk about in this blog. ;-)

I started making him a scrapbook of our activities this past year. I only have 3 pages done so far though so I had to show him the preview of his anniversary gift and now I have to finish it up so that he can enjoy it. I forgot how much fun scrapbooking is but it's also pretty time consuming. And messy! My puzzle room was turned into a gift wrapping room for the holidays and no sooner did I get the holiday stuff put away, it has now been transformed into the scrapbooking room. Pretty cool that I have an entire bedroom that I can morph to meet my needs in the moment.

We were supposed to go bowling on Saturday to celebrate our anniversary but babydoll was really beat. When he stays at my house we're usually in bed by 11 at the latest. When he stays at his own house he stays up until 1 or 2 in the morning for some reason. And last week he stayed at his house almost every single night. That leads to a big buildup of sleep deprivation, hence he didn't get his butt out of bed until something like 2 in the afternoon on Saturday at which point it was too late for us to go bowling because he leaves at 5:30 to pick up Jessica for the weekend. Luckily this week he's spent almost every night at MY house so we're going to try to get up tomorrow in a timely fashion and make it to the bowling alley, for sure.

I've had a few people ask me if I'm going to start back to work doing half days until I build my stamina up. It sounds like the smart thing to do but.........nope, I'm just going to dive right in. I'm hoping that by pushing myself a little, my stamina will bounce back that much faster. I've noticed since treatments have ended and I don't have anything to get up for, I'm spending a lot of time on the couch and I've been taking at least one if not two naps a day. I need to snap out of this lethargy, quick-fast! I told baby-doll that I might be crashing the moment I get home from work for a couple of weeks but I'll make sure the freezer is full of stuff that he can heat up himself. And if it turns out that my body REALLY can't handle what I'm asking of it, I'm sure my boss guy will work with me to find a way to make it work until I can ramp up to full throttle. He's good like that.

I had my hair cut and highlighted this week. I think shorter haircuts need a little more upkeep than longer haircuts. It had only been 3 months since I had gotten it cut but it was driving me nuts and I felt really drab and ugly. My bangs were so long that every time I would try to blow my nose, my hair would fall down and get in the way. I had Jen, my hairdresser, trim my bangs 3 times before I was happy with their length. And the moment they start irritating me, I'll be e-mailing her for an appointment. We were yacking away while she was doing her thing. Typing in a Word document on my iPad didn't slow down our conversation all that much, I was relieved to find. Out of the blue she told me that I should write a book about my cancer adventure. She thinks with my dark sense of humor that it would be a hoot to get my take on things. I told her a large group of my friends had also made the book suggestion. Maybe once I get some stamina back...........


Baby doll and I went to Kunkel's Wheel of Fortune get together on Wednesday night. Fun stuff! It was freakin' awesome to see her on TV and even better that she won!! She missed the bonus puzzle at the end though so she didn't come home too terribly rich but she picked up some nice pocket change. Woo hoo!

Yesterday I managed to pick up prescriptions at Strong and had 3 minutes to spare, according to the parking lot attendant, before I would have been charged. Woo hoo! And that was with the Strong Pharmacy giving me trouble as usual! Although I have no idea what the trouble was. The chick behind the counter rang stuff up and then went and got her manager. They ended up conferring over the paperwork and the labels for a good 5 minutes before he finally okayed her to proceed. I have no idea what the issue was but am unsurprised there was an issue because as you know, there always is one.

Today I had an appointment with Dr. Miller at 11:00. At 11:30 I was still in the treatment room playing games on my iPad wondering if I had been forgotten. Then my nutritionist, Joanna, came in to see me. My weight is up a little again from my last visit. Yay! Although I told her I currently have a backstock of 10 cases of the Jevity because I'm not eating as much as the script is written for. I also told her that I do a syringe feed for every meal and haven't done a gravity feed in months. She took care of things for me immediately. I even received an e-mail from Upstate, the medical supply place, detailing the changes for me. They're going to start delivering enough Jevity for 6 cans a day instead of 8. They're going to skip delivering any food to me at all this month since I have 10 cases backstocked. And it turns out that they have a 'kit' in case a patient does bolus feeds instead of gravity feeds. They're going to stop sending me the gravity bags (thank goodness because I have ~100 of those backstocked!) and instead of only sending me 4 syringes a month, they'll start sending me 30. I was psyched to hear that last part because I just hopped on-line and ordered myself a dozen extra syringes a couple of days ago. I've been finding that they gum up a lot faster than just once a week. I can't say that I need one a day either but I guess that's the only 'kit' they have. Joanna told me that I shouldn't ever have to pay for medical supplies. She wrote down a website for me that gives away free supplies. She said I can also donate my backstocked stuff to them as well so that someone else out there in need can benefit. I'll have to check it out this weekend. Lastly, I mentioned that according to my records, my PEG is supposed to be replaced next week. I told her that I wanted to contact LiLo and get the next size smaller this time instead of trying to gain enough weight to get the PEG to stop leaking. She asked to take a look at it so I showed it to her. I told her that LiLo had said you shouldn't be able to fit more than a dime between your skin and the PEG. I can actually see a good 1/4 of an inch of the PEG which means a whole stack of dimes can fit under there. Joanna said that she would e-mail LiLo and let her know what's going on and have her step me down a size.

After she left I was alone for a bit again and then Dr. Ryan came in. I had been thinking on the drive over to the appointment that at least today I wasn't scheduled for anything that would hurt. Little did I know about Dr. Ryan. Super sweet guy but man, he's really rough! He had me in tears and twitching all over the place with his pushing and prodding at things. I had taken my pain meds at 9:45 this morning so I wasn't due again until 1:45 but when I got out to my car at 1:00, I immediately shot up again. I hurt! 

Anyway, Dr. Miller finally wandered in around 12:10 (for my 11:00 appointment!!). I told him that I took my last antibiotic this morning but I think the hole in my neck is still infected because I'm still leaking a tannish/gray pus. He said he's going to leave me off the antibiotics for now. Not sure why but whatever. He asked if everything else was okay and if I'm all set for my surgery next Wednesday. I told him I was ready. He also finally got a hold of the Botox guy. I guess he was on vacation for 3 weeks which is why he hasn't responded to the appointment request. I am now set to get my saliva glands Botoxed next Friday. 

Phew. That's been my week. As I mentioned last week, I've still been kind of heavy handed with my pain meds. On top of my burning mouth and my infected hole, my ear has been aching again AND I've been getting a headache behind my right eye. Plus the spot where my tooth was pulled is back to bothering me. There was blood on my washcloth 4-5 days in a row last week. Thankfully Dr. Mike had no problem giving me another bottle of morphine to bridge me to next Wednesday when I can hopefully pick up more oxycodone.

I discovered yesterday that I screwed up my thyroid medication again. I was taking the 175mg and Dr. Kranz said she wanted to bump it back up again. So I picked up a second prescription of 25mg pills and started taking them as well. Now I'm almost out of the small pills but I still have like 2 weeks of the big pills. I couldn't figure out why the amounts were so mismatched and then I looked at the bottle for the small pills. It turns out I was only supposed to be taking half a pill a day. DOH! It never occurred to me that a prescription would dictate a half a pill! I'm such a bonehead. So, I guess I'm back down to the 175mg only until I can get the 25mg refilled. At the rate I'm going, I'm never going to get my darned thyroid back under control!

Updates on my resolutions:

I walked on my treadmill for 30 minutes this past Monday. And then that was it. I'll try again this coming Monday to get back into a walking/running schedule.

Peeps have been giving me some good ideas for interesting charities. I guess in Watertown there's a backpack program. You pick up some extra groceries each week and donate them to the program and every Friday, they give needy kids a backpack full of food to get them and their family through the weekend. That sounds pretty cool. I'm going to have to research if we have that in our area. Somebody else told me that you can adopt a family for the holiday season. You then buy them gifts, feed them dinner, stuff like that. I think it's flexible, you can be as involved with the family as you want to be. Lastly, I think it was two years ago that QED participated in a coat drive. There's a charity called Coats for Kids. You can donate gently used children's coats to help fill a local closet that then distributes them. I went to Walmart and bought a little boy and a little girl coat and donated them since I don't have any kids that would generate gently used anything. I like the charities where it's not just about donating money. I like donating 'stuff' so that I know it's more likely to benefit the needy and not be mis-used.

As for making better financial decisions this year....I did not make it to the bank this week to see about refinancing my mortgage. I don't have a good reason for not doing it other than that I'm lazy. I WILL go to the bank either Monday or Tuesday and get answers to my questions. With the appearance of the 60" flat screen, baby doll talked me into upgrading my cable package. Now that I have a bazillion channels, I've been watching more TV in the past month than I have in the past 5 years. This means I'm being exposed to a lot of commercials as well. I saw one for Credit Karma where you can get a free credit score so I checked it out. My credit score is currently excellent at 759. I'm hoping that that will be a big help if it turns out I'm able to refinance a SONYMA mortgage. Another feature of Credit Karma is that they then match you to deals that are going on out there based on your credit score. One of the deals I was shown was for a Discover credit card that is offering a 0% interest rate for 18 months on all balances transferred. I'm thinking that signing up for that might be a good financial decision....I'm still pondering though.

Okay, I think that's more than enough rambling. And if you think it's too much rambling, you can blame my friend ElRay. She e-mailed me last night and said she was having Quinnster withdrawal symptoms and demanded that I update my blog. So this one was with her in mind to tide her over for another week. :-)