Merry Christmas!

Bookends

Today God is celebrating with me. Once again He is sending snow. (This time we are in north Texas visiting family) For most people, they are welcoming a white Christmas. I am welcoming a “You did it!” from God.




He sent me snow to start my treatments this month. And he sent snow to mark the end. (I completed my last treatment yesterday!)

Never in my life have I experienced snow in Texas twice in one decade, let alone in a month!

Thank you to all my friends and family who prayed, fed, and helped us through this month,too. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Buddies

Adding another puppy is sort of like adding another sibling to the child mix. It takes some time and effort to get them to like each other. And a little bit longer to be sure the big one isn't going to hurt/kill the little one.

We seem to be making progress and Feller and Missy seem to be the best of buds.

Taking Matters into My Own Hands

WARNING: This is more of a self-medicating trial-and-error post full of information simply for myself to remember in the future and for others who may have bad days post steroid infusions. But, it could also be for people who sometimes just seem to have a bad day . . .

The first week after treatment was a doozy. I didn’t just have a bad DAY, it was an entire bad WEEK.

In talking with my doctor about why I have these “days” she suspects it is the steroids that I get via IV just prior to the Rituxan infusion.

So, I am trying to get a handle on the cause/effect and formulate my own solution. And I will preface it all by saying I am not offering medical advice, and by no means am I an expert on the subject of cortisol/adrenals, but just letting you know what I did and how it worked for me in my situation.

First theory: I am getting a bolus of steroids that is shutting my adrenals down on Friday and lasting through the weekend. On Monday, my adrenals “wake up” and realize they need to start producing my own personal steroids again, which for some reason causes me great pain (starting in my adrenals/kidneys and then moving throughout my body).

So I consulted my very knowledgeable friend, Marie, on what kind of adrenal support I could take to moderate the drop from Sunday to Monday. Her suggestion: OTC 1% Hydrocortisone cream.

Now, this is the stuff that you use when you get an itchy rash. But it also happens to be the same stuff your adrenals make every day just to keep you balanced somewhere between stressed out and asleep. (Too little cortisone = asleep or fatigued, Too much cortisone = stressed out).

If you apply it to your skin, (preferably a thin skinned area, like your forearms) it is absorbed into your bloodstream and it functions just as the cortisone your adrenals make.

Theoretically, normal adrenals make 20 mg of cortisol a day. And 2 ml of 1% Hydrocortisone cream is 20 mg.

Second theory: If I started taking the cortisone cream prior to my crash on Monday, it would balance out my cortisol levels. My adrenals wouldn’t get an alarm signal to start producing cortisol from zero, and I would not have the bad day/days I have previously had.

I started by taking .5 ml (5 mg) of cream on Saturday night. I repeated the dose Sunday morning and Sunday evening (total 10 mg for the day), Monday morning/evening, and Tuesday morning/evening. I was going to taper off the dose to just the mornings on Wednesday and Thursday, but I was starting to get a chest cold and became concerned about that and just forgot.

The results: I did not have a bad day this week at all. There were a few hours on Monday night when I felt the adrenal pain (around my kidneys in my back) coming on, but it was close to bedtime and I felt confident if I took a pain pill and went to sleep it would not get any worse. I also was not exhausted and draggy all week (which is what usually happens after my bad day). I actually felt pretty “normal”.

You would think something so simple would be recommended for treatment. But I guess the makers of a $2 tube of cortisone cream have no incentive to get you to use their product like, say, the makers of the prescription pain pills I take, do.

I will say, too, that the cream is not to be used on a daily basis long term. It contains stuff that, when used long-term has been known to cause cancer. But when you have a short term period of stress or are feeling run-down, a little "pea-sized" dose of Hydrocortisone cream once or twice a day for a few days can't do any harm.

More Snow Pictures

THE "M's" WITH THEIR SNOWMAN



SNOW FORT




SNOW BALL THROWING DEVILS


SNOW ANGEL


FRONT YARD


BACK YARD

Sedative from Heaven

The long dreaded day arrived for me to have my first of four weekly preventative Rituxan treatments. All the kids were up early (for us) and around 7 a.m. it began to snow like crazy at our house. It was the most beautiful snow I have ever seen in Houston. Tons of it.

As most southern Texans do any time a flake of snow falls from the sky, we all went giddy. We went outside just to see what it was like. We couldn’t stop watching it fall. We took video. We took pictures.

Unfortunately, M1 and I had to leave our observation post and head out on the road to get him to school and then me on to chemo. I think we were both sulking all the way, thinking we were going to miss the whole thing being stuck inside all day at our respective locations.

But many amazing things happened that day.

It stopped snowing at our house for a while – so we didn’t miss anything there.

It hadn’t even STARTED snowing at my chemo location. And when it did, there was an entire wall of windows for me to watch it fall from. Later, my friend Marie and I had a fabulous Potbelly’s lunch while we watched the snow together.

M1 was dismissed early from school. By the time he got home there was more than enough snow to go around. He even got to play in the snow AT school during study hall.

When I got home, the kids had built me a snow person (not sure of the gender . . .) and everything around our house was blanketed in white.




We were able to spend the rest of the afternoon in the snow, then inside thawing out, then out in the snow, then inside for hot chocolate.

We even decked Missy out in her amazingly fashionable coat.



The only bust of the day was our attempt at “sledding” on Rubbermaid container lids.



God knew what I needed today. I needed something to calm and distract me. And he sent me a sedative in the form of snow.

It was the best “snow day” ever!

Yes!

Here is our new baby, Missy. She is a toy Australian Shepherd, M3's Christmas present, the answer to our puppy prayers, and well worth the wait. (She is also my "fuzzy therapy" to help get me through chemo. When we are not house training, dealing with teething, socializing, etc. :) )



If you are looking for a dog like her, you can check out her breeder's website. I think all of her littermates are spoken for, but I am sure there will be more in the future!

Thanksgiving

Our church began celebrating "A Season of Prayer" for the next seven weeks. Don and I were both asked to contribute a daily devotional.

The verses for my assigned day (yesterday) were: 1 Thess 5:16-18 and Psalm 103. The verse that stood out to me was:

Give thanks in all circumstance, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thess. 5:18

And the first thing that came to my mind related to that verse was a day about seven years ago. I received a phone call from Hermann Hospital here in Houston. It is the primary trauma hospital for our entire region. They fly people there in helicopters. It was also close to my husband's office.

They told me Don had been in a car accident and that his ankle was broken . . . so far.

Now, I am an optimist, and so, I figured I was driving to the hospital, picking up my injured husband, and bringing him home. Got a call from Don's tennis partner, who said the weather was probably too bad for tennis that night. I jokingly told him tennis was definitely off and that hopefully Don was at Hermann because he had the accident close to the hospital and not because they had to fly him there in a helicopter.

Over the course of the hour long drive to the medical center, I went from thinking I would bring him home to what would I do if I had to identify his body? (When I was in nursing school doing my ER rotation, I overheard them calling a family member to come to the hospital when the patient had already died, but they only told them they were seriously ill.)

When I arrived at the ER, they couldn't find him on the patient register. I panicked, thinking he must be in the morgue. But then the volunteers at the desk realized he was "the John Doe that came in on Life Flight" (what a way to find out your husband was airlifted . . .) and that he was in X-ray.

They quickly took me to him. He was moved to an orthopedic room, awaiting surgery the next morning. Into the early hours of the morning, it was a blur of phone calls, anxious visits from friends and ministers, and coordinating our children's care at home.

And, when reading the above verse, this is what specifically came to mind about thanksgiving:

One drizzly October evening, seven years ago, I received a phone call from Hermann Hospital downtown. My first thought was that it must be someone from church calling. When the voice on the other end called me Mrs. Allen, I realized it was something very different. My husband had been in a car accident . . . he had a broken ankle . . . was I coming? I went from cooking dinner in my kitchen to the wife of a trauma patient in an instant.

That night, in Don’s hospital room, I lay on a cot next to his bed. My husband was bruised and bleeding, hooked to many tubes and beeping machines. He was scheduled for the first of what would end up being a total of seven surgeries in the morning. The road ahead would be long and difficult and painful. But right then, I was just thankful that he was alive and, at the moment, sleeping peacefully.

And my prayer matched his rhythmic, sedated breathing: “Thank you, thank you, thank you . . . “

God wants us to give thanks in every circumstance, whether good or bad.

What can you thank God for today in whatever circumstance you find yourself?

I hope that you have a blessed Thanksgiving, in whatever circumstance you find yourself.

You would never know . . .

Recently, I was at one of M1's junior high basketball tournaments and enjoying watching the game. As I was watching the opposing team, I kept having the feeling that I knew some of the players. All the various places I could know those boys from ran through my mind: little league, homeschool groups, community organizations, etc. but I couldn't figure it out.

At half time, I was scanning the crowd for the rest of our cheering section and saw a familiar face. But it wasn't a face for our team, it was for the opposition.

In my former life (before children), I was a neonatal intensive care nurse. I took care of many babies, born at various stages of development. And every once in a while, I developed a special relationship with the parents/family of one of my patients.

And THIS familiar face was a mother of one of my former patients. One of the special people who I have been fortunate enough to keep up with for the past fourteen years.

And her son, one of the players on the opposing teams, was one of my last (and most favorite) patients I took care of in the NICU.

He was due a month before M1, but was born about four months premature (correct me if I am wrong, Chris). Eric (as I called him) was special to me partially because he was a living visual of what M1 was looking like in utero. But he was also special because of his parents and sister. They were just neat people. And over the course of his time in the unit, we spent a lot of time together.

One of the last days before Eric was discharged from the unit, he was my only patient. I spent a lot of time rocking him. He layed on my belly and kicked from the outside while M1 kicked from the inside. They must have been practicing their basketball moves even then . . .

Fast forward fourteen year, and here is Eric (at 6 ft.)and M1 (at 5'11")out on the basketball court battling it out. I was in awe and overwhelmed at BOTH of them.

You would never know that Eric had once been a micropreemie and the M1 had once fit in my belly!

How can you say no to this face?

We have been talking for over a year about getting M3 a dog. She has done a lot of research and looked at several different breeds. But the timing (for many obvious reasons) had never been right.

So this weekend, we found out about a friend of a friend who was keeping a sweet Jack Russell/Chihuahua puppy looking for a home. When we saw "Sammy's" picture, we fell in love with him.



But in discussing him with Don, we decided he was not the right puppy for M3. It broke both of our hearts to have to tell her that we needed to keep looking and say "no" to Sammy.

I cried with her when I sent the email to my friend and her friend who had been looking for a home for Sammy. I am grateful that these two precious ladies were praying for us as we made our decision.

M3 seemed to be at peace when I assured her, that in respecting her Daddy's direction, in the end, the puppy she got would bring her so much more happiness (overshadowing the sadness she now felt).

And I am grateful for my husband who has to do the difficult thing sometimes and tell us "no". In the long run, I know it is the right decision.

Confession

I have to admit, I really DON'T want to do chemo again.

(UPDATE: This is preventative chemo - I have to do it once a week for four weeks every six months for two years after my original chemo. June/December 2009 & June/December 2010)

There is something to be said for being blissfully ignorant, and I am not (ignorant) anymore about what is coming.

I am feeling really good. It is going to be the Christmas holidays and school holidays. I have a lot I would like to do and enjoy.

And what do I get to do? Go get pumped full of medicine that is going to make me feel sick and tired.

I actually had a king-sized meltdown in front of my husband. Like a two-year-old, I told him I hadn't made my appointments yet "because I don't want to . . ."

Thankfully, for both of us, the last time I had a meltdown was over a year ago and related to the cancer, as well.

So, I'm steeling myself to make the call (still haven't) and considering booking a padded room as well.

Reminiscing

The month of September has found me reminiscing quite a bit.

All the talk around here in the news is about IKE hitting our area, and that definitely brings up a lot of memories from the period of my diagnosis.

Every few days, I find myself thinking, "What was happening a year ago today?"

Scans. Tests. Surgeries. More scans.

We are preparing to go out of town on vacation next week, and once again, I was wondering what anniversaries I would be celebrating then.

And then

I realized

that I could

take this picture

on the anniversary of my first day of chemo.

Pretty cool, huh?

Good news

regarding my health.

Not only was my quarterly CT scan clear this week, but "there has also been interval improvement/near complete resolution of post-radiation inflammatory changes involving anterior lungs".

Basically, I am cancer free and now almost completely/completely free of any damage from the proton radiation!

There is supposed to be unavoidable burning and permanent damage done when you have radiation. Our thought was, by doing proton, that we would minimize such side effects. But it appears that God has seen fit to heal that completely as well.

I am so thankful!



(sorry this is only about two months late - hoping to catch up over Thanksgiving!)

Where's Daddy?

We are lucky around here. Don works at home quite a bit. So it is actually odd NOT to see Daddy in his study during any given weekday.

Today, M4 came in from playing and asked from the entry:

"Where's Daddy?"

From the kitchen, I replied:

"He's in the study."

Only to hear M4, with concern:

"But I don't see his skin."

(His skin, and the rest of him, had evidently LEFT the study for a moment!)

A Dory Kind of Day

If you have ever seen "Finding Nemo" you will understand. If not, you might just want to skip this.

I was getting ready for church a few Sundays ago, and having a leisurely, relaxed morning. I do this thing on the internet called "The Grocery Game" where they give you a chart (love charts) with items on sale at stores in your area that also have had coupons recently in the paper. The point of the game is to maximize your savings. Use coupons when items are on sale and stock up.

Anyway, so I was looking through this list of groceries, and it went something like this: "mayonnaise, bread, lunchmeat . . ."

OK, so picture Dory, at the end of the movie. Marlin has left to go off and mourn and here's Dory, lost and confused and forgetful again. Nemo swims up and she has no idea who he is, until she sees the word "Sydney" on the pipe in front of her. Then the entire movie flashes before her eyes and she REMEMBERS they have been looking for Nemo all along.

Back to my list, so I see these words, "mayonnaise, bread, lunchmeat . . .", and all of the sudden, I REMEMBER that I am supposed to make 70 finger sandwiches for baptism after church that morning. All the conversations and my plans I had laid out in my mind came flashing through my brain in an instant, JUST LIKE DORY!

So, of course, my leisurely morning turned into a little bit of a hectic one. Especially since I didn't even have any of the ingredients I needed for the sandwiches. Luckily, I didn't have to face any tuna nets. . .

But I laughed all the way to Walmart thinking about how much Dory and I have in common. Not just on that day, but a lot of days, lately.

I keep attributing it to the chemo, I don't THINK it runs in my family (where are they, anyway?)

And I was thankful that God used my online grocery list to give me a gentle reminder of what I needed to do that day.

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming . . .

Thought for the Day

Got this in an email today, not sure where it is from. But it is good:

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the
morning, Satan shudders and says... “Oh no....she's awake!!”’

Wordless Wednesday

2/20/09

Scars

I was told after my March PET scan that all that remains of my former tumor is "scar tissue". I have a "scar" in my chest.

Since then, I have thought a lot about scars.

I have two scars on my face from two different childhood accidents. Occasionally, someone will ask me what the one on my lip is from. I relay the story as I have been told it happened (I was only two at the time), but I really have no recollection of the event itself. I am sure the emotional trauma of the event falls more on my mom and dad. They were the ones who most likely had to hold me down and listen to me cry as they stitched me up at the hospital.

My husband has scars on his leg. Close to 30 of them from the external fixator device he had in place for nearly six months after a car accident crushed both bones in his lower right leg. And he is permanently disabled (only slightly - and some days you wouldn't even know) as it is impossible to completely restore function after such an injury.


During one of my pregnancies (probably my first, because I am SURE I didn't have time to read after M1 came along . . .) I read in a mommy magazine how stretch marks are "badges of honor". And, I suppose, stretch marks are "scars", too.


I am really grateful to whoever wrote that, because I took it to heart. And it kept me from obsessing (as we in this airbrushed age can so easily do) about something that I had little control over. Especially when carrying a baby that delivered at 9 lbs. 5 oz!


Sometimes a scar is emotional. Abuse. Trauma. Loss. They are invisible, but no less tangible for the bearer. Those I have accumulated in my own life I have found even more difficult to deal with, because there is nothing there for the passerby to note. I don't have a scar on my forehead because I lost a child. I didn't have a bumper sticker that read: "Please drive carefully around me. My husband has been seriously injured in a car accident, and if I am driving a little slow, it is only because I am terrified I will be in an accident and there will be no one to care for my children."


That is one of the reasons why I added the quote to the end of my emails: "Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle." You just never know what people are going through.


I'm not saying people should have free reign to be rude or drive recklessly or just be disconnected in some way. Just that some times we don't SEE everything.


Add another scar to the list of those life has handed me.


The thing that struck me about scars is that you have to keep on LIVING to get one. If something kills you, it doesn't heal. A scar can only form, over time, after you have SURVIVED an event/accident/injury.


So I go back to what I had read about stretch marks. They are "badges of honor".


This, I believe, holds true for any scar, whether physical or emotional. They are "badges of honor" as well. Because it means you have survived. You have healed. Although you may never be the same or function the same. The scar serves as the reminder.


You can choose to dwell on the negative: the ugliness of it, the disability, the pain. Or you can choose to see it in the positive: I LIVED THROUGH IT! I have survived.


My husband doesn't enjoy having scars from his car accident. But he is glad he is alive to bear them. So am I. And they serve as a reminder of the things he learned over the months he recovered.


I definitely didn't ENJOY having cancer. But I am glad that I am alive to bear the scar.



(Thanks to my "Sassy Scrapper" friends for helping me finally get my thoughts together on this topic! Scrapbooking is therapeutic :) We missed you Robbie and Marie!)

Back in the Chemo Chair

It is an odd experience to go back to chemo. Especially when you are well.


I spent the last four Fridays sitting in a chemo chair. Once again, hooked up to drugs which, I was assured, would have no side effects.


The reason I was there was to receive Rituxan, which is not exactly chemo, but preventative therapy. If you really want to know the wikipedia definition, it is:

"a chimeric monoclonal antibody against the [cancer] protein CD20, which is primarily found on the surface of B cells".

If there are any remaining cancer cells (of the CD20 variety) left floating around in my body, this is the seek-and-destroy missile out to get them.


But in order to get the Rituxan, which is highly allergenic, I had to get IV steroids and IV Benadryl which reduces or eliminates any allergic reaction. Therin lies the problem.


If you've ever taken Benadryl, take how it made you feel and multiply it by about 10 and that's what you feel like as soon as the Benadryl hits your veins. I was used to it (as used to it as you can get) when I was doing chemo in the fall. I had my "routine" all set. The neck pillow, reclining my chair just right, my MP3 player. Well, I didn't quite get it right the first week. I was out of practice. But weeks two, three and four, I got pretty good naps.


But every week was different as far as how I felt the rest of the day. No rhyme or reason there at all. One week I would feel rested, the next week I felt like I had been hit by a truck. So I would just have to lay on the couch until the steroids kicked in . . .


Steroids make me hyper. That is actually good. I am very productive when I am on steroids. I actually didn't know I was getting steroids the first week. But I figured it out pretty quickly when I spent Saturday and Sunday doing multiple home improvement projects and the entire week eating everything in sight.


The next week, as they hung my drugs, my suspicions were confirmed. "Yes, you are getting a steroid."


The problem with being hyper for two days is what comes next. The crash.


Those muscle (labor all over my body) pains I had with full-blown chemo came back (7 on a scale of 1 to 10 as opposed to the 15 I felt before . . .). At first, I thought I had just "over done" it, and my muscles were sore from the work. But, week after week, it came and went in the same way it did the week before. I'm not sure what causes it exactly, but it makes for a very uncomfortable 24 hours at least.


This past week, as I was breathing and grunting my way through the pain (even after taking pain medicine), I told Don to remind me, in December, when I was rethinking my decision to repeat the treatment (I do it once a week for four weeks, every six months for two years - so June, December 2009, and June, December 2010) that it was still better than going through chemo.


The whole reason for doing this preventative, is just that, to PREVENT my lymphoma from coming back. If it comes back, we start over again, or worse. It is by no means a guarantee, but it does greatly reduce the chances.


Apart from the side effects, another unexpected occurrance was how badly I felt that I was cured, when the people sitting on either side of me were still in the fight for their lives.


Mr. P would ask me, and everyone else around, "Are you afraid of dying?" I saw him two of the four weeks of my treatment. I'm actually not afraid of dying. And I told him so. But the deaths of several celebrities in recent weeks has really been hard on him. And I remember how differently it effected me when I watched others around me lose their battle to cancer when I was still fighting my own battle. I wished I could tell him that he would be cured. I wished God would speak to him and tell him that he would indeed be well. I pray that he will find his peace with God if he never does find the cure for his cancer.


And then there was the week that I sat next to M. I was in my "usual" chair and when I woke up from my Benadryl nap, there she was sitting next to me! M was the precious lady who sat next to me my very first week of chemo, when I was gung-ho and terrified all at the same time. She looked amazing for having been through at least six months of chemo already. Her hair was growing back in a beautiful grey and I told her she should be a model. She answered my many questions about my hair coming out as well as lots of other things I had on my mind.


But it was apparent, that now, the additional nine months of chemo has taken its toll. She looked weary. But she remains in good spirits. And I pray for her, that if the chemo can't kill the cancer completely, that it will keep it at bay for a very long time. So that she can see her children graduate from college. And see her grandchildren.


I hope to see them both again in December.


It was a much different view from my seat this time around. And I am very grateful.

Life Happens

I used to wonder what happened to people whose blogs I followed diligently, and then they seemed to d i s a p p e a r.

There would be no post for weeks, and I would start to give up on them.


Now that life has returned to semi-normal, I feel like I am disappearing from the ranks of the blog-o-sphere as well. And I am learning what happens to those people, its called life.

I still think profound thoughts at times, but I am driving carpool or sitting by the pool or watching my daughter's swim meet, or occasionally swimming myself. I have made mental notes (scary!), and hopefully, I can share more of them with you in the days to come.

Summer is in full swing around here. And so is living. Gone are the days when I take THAT for granted.


I am sharing life with my family and I hope you are enjoying yours!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Isn't this how every girl wants to spend her 40th birthday?

A movie:



Dinner:



And Go Kart racing:



It was Hawaiian night (how appropriate!) at our local fun plex. Wear Hawaiian attire and get a free round of mini golf. (That is why we all have leis trailing behind our necks . . .)

And guess which song was in my card from my wonderful husband, Don? (He's good, isn't he?) Those new cards that play songs are kind of popular in my family, so #2 is from Don also, #3 is from M1, #4 is from M2, and #5 is from M3. M4 gave me one of those crazy Hoops & Yoyo cards.

But mostly, I am just happy to be alive and enjoy another day!

For Carol

My precious sister in Christ went to be with Jesus this afternoon.

All that I ever knew of Carol was that she wanted to love and be loved.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, she was already fighting her own battle with health and in need of a liver transplant.

She came up to me one Sunday morning and told me, "Molly, I have told God that he can take me in your place, but to let you be healed. You need to live for your family!"

And I remember thinking at the time, "Oh Carol, you needn't to go the trouble, because God has already told me that I would be healed!"

But in these recent days, as she has actually become ill to the point of death, and died in the presence of friends and family, it has caused me to revisit her statement so many months ago.

What if that was part of "the deal"? Was her willingness to give her own life part of the reason I was healed? And even if it wasn't, how wonderfully sacrificial a gesture that she was willing to make on my behalf!

Thank you Carol. For your love. For your prayers. And for desiring to show Christlike sacrifice through your life.

What a Day (or two . . .)!

I flew out of Honolulu International Airport at 9 p.m. Hawaii time, which was 2 a.m. local time. Was in the air for about 8 hours. Slept for about 4 hours. Arrived at IAH at 9:45 a.m. local time.

From the airport, my sweet friend Marie W. took me to visit our dear sister in Christ, Carol, who was moved to hospice while I was out of town. It was precious to get to see her one more time.

We had lunch and then spent the better part of the afternoon at M.D. Anderson taking care of my three month tests. Bloodwork, Chest X-ray, (nap on the couch in the "hospitality" area) and CT scan. First time I've ever had an IV "blow". THAT was not fun. I used to say I enjoyed going to get tests done. How I love hospitals. But the novelty is starting to wear off . . .

I didn't get home until after 7 p.m. Thanks to my sweet friend, Marie H. the kids are fed and tired from swimming all afternoon.

And I am deleriously tired.

Goodbye, Hawaii

Boy, is it ever hard to leave!