Done Round Four

Thank you for STILL reading my blog, and more importantly, for PRAYING for me! I took 2 days off before Christmas to "lighten up" this round of chemo as my feet were hurting pretty badly in the first 11 days or so. That helped a LOT. Still by yesterday when I finished this round I was dragging, mouth weird, hands and feet hurting a little - but not too bad. My body has definitely adjusted to it somewhat and it is tolerable although not a breeze. Worth it if it saves my life, that's for sure. I read recently that some people stay on this med for years! RATS. I was really counting on stopping after 12 months..... I guess we will cross that bridge when we get there. :-(

Had my labs today, and will have my every 3 month CT scan on Wednesday. I admit I have been dreading this one too much, really struggling with fear that something will be found on the CT this time. I will not have the results until January 17th when I see my oncologist at Penn. Please pray that I can turn this worrying around in the future. I don't want to live with this black cloud hanging over me for the rest of my life. It will still always be there. I have to learn to ignore it, or live with it, or look at it's silver lining... or somethin' !!! Otherwise I am going to drive my poor husband bonkers with my worrying! My daughter gave me a great book on living in cancer's shadow and it has already started to change my outlook a bit. I do think it's understandable that occasionally I feel "down" but I can't let it consume me. Pray I don't have these "slumps" too often. Thank you so much!

Ethan's wrist surgery is on January 15th. Please pray they can use a bone graft from his radius (arm) and will not have to use his hip bone, and for a successful surgery, fast healing, little pain. Ethan has been great through the CT scan, MRI, 2nd opinion MD and 3 visits with the surgeon stuff. He took all the surgical news well, even studied the surgical photos I printed off about the procedure and kept comforting ME about it all! He didn't react negatively to ANYTHING about this until they told him he wouldn't be able to eat or drink after midnight the night before surgery! HAHA! That's a 14 yr old boy for ya! :-)

Our Christmas was really nice, in spite of our current "troubles". So many people reached out to us! We even had "secret santas" from another state who we didn't even know, send gifts to us all!!!!!! We were overwhelmed! In addition some Kohl's and Target and Visa gift cards showed up - some anonymously... and many cards and notes of encouragement kept our hopes up and allowed us to enjoy the season. It was hard for me at times as that dumb worry monster kept creeping in, but most hours of most days my mind was on my family and caring for them, which is right were I love to be. :-)

We are back to homeschool now after the Christmas break, still catching up on all the business bookkeeping and so on too. As Evan said today, "It's never a dull moment here is it Mommy?" Thank you all so much for sticking by us for the long haul. Please keep praying for the insurance case - it DRAGS on.... I am too tired of that to even write about it.....

Love,
Karen