We are slowly getting back to a new normal around here. I had my first weekly post-chemo blood test yesterday…..only 51 more to go!  I think we’ll know in a few weeks if I’m officially in remission. Choriocarcinoma is an aggressive cancer…..so the weekly blood tests are peace of mind too. After my blood test I completely forgot about getting the results. My father-in-law called bright and early this morning….HCG at 2, down from 3 last week so that’s awesome. Visiting the doctors’s office I had some mixed feelings. I saw Nurse M and she said a few other patients had asked where I was last Thursday. She told them “She’s done!”  I met so many great people in the infusion center. I hope I get to stay away from that place though.

I feel like I’m getting my energy back. We even hosted Easter brunch here at the house for the whole family.

Boo’s new favorite thing to do? Baking. She and I have made 2 cakes in the last few days. We ate them too. My appetite is slowing getting back to normal!

Well, I spent all day making 5 pounds of bbq pork (Southern Style!) and then when it came dinner time I couldn’t look at it. The only thing I wanted was nachos and cheese from Del Taco. Boo calls it “chips in a box.” So, we had chips in a box for dinner. At least I’m a cheap date: 99 cents a box rocks.

The hardest part of chemotherapy has been what it does to my stomach.  The biggest thing I’ve learned? Never eat your favorite foods during chemo…..you may never eat them again. It’s hard to explain the feeling…..but what I can eat varies almost from minute to minute. Some days even water tastes bad. Soda is atrocious and burns going down (this isn’t a bad thing, I haven’t had a Diet Coke since October of last year!) The only food I could consistently eat in chemo over and over was a banana. I bought 15 boxes of Girl Scout cookies….I’ve eat about 5 cookies total. That’s not normal!

Dr. L says that many patients get physically nauseous when they get in the car to go to chemotherapy……just a certain car route can trigger feelings of dread. It’s like Pavlov’s dog.  He tells them to drive a different way to the infusion center each time to make it more bearable. The car ride didn’t bother me at all but I do have physical reactions to other things now.  For example, I used my favorite purple insulated cup to hold water in at the infusion center……now just the sight of it triggers a heartburn feeling and nausea. That will be going in the trash. My bag and blanket I take every week? I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to use them again for anything.

I pray that my break from chemotherapy is permanent……but I’m not going to focus on those weekly blood tests…..they’ll come and go and they are just another chore on my list. I’ll be a little vain and say I miss my butt. I don’t even fill out a pair of jeans now. I’ve got a sad, little flat bum haha. The spider bite from yesterday isn’t helping…..I can’t tell what side effects are cancer-related or spider bite-related now!  I’m on antibiotics and it’s still spreading up my arm….. you have to laugh at that…..if it gets more serious maybe I won’t think it’s so funny…..but all I can say is: really? a poisonous spider? this must be a joke.

Since I’ve started Cisplatin my hair has been growing in a little!  Most of my hair loss was from the other chemo drugs I took.  It’s growing in kind of spotty still…..but I asked Lisa to take some photos today to mark the progress since I had some energy back.

Boo asked to be included in the photo…..that’s a first. Be still my heart.

Cutie.

Yep….still pretty bald though:

After Lisa took some photos the next thing I knew…..my arm was swelling up. There were little menacing fang marks. My arm didn’t hurt at all but it looked crooked due to all the swelling. No biggie. Lisa called my primary doctor…..who just happened to be out of town for spring break.  She told me to go to Urgent Care. Ugh. I had to cancel my first colonic appointment. I was looking so forward to that today. I thought I was done with doctors for at least a week! Guess not. I got a nice little nap in at least as I waited for the doctor. Look at that nice spider bite on my arm:

I love filling out the forms:

The doctor gave me some antibiotics to take to keep the venom from spreading up my arm. I still have to get a tetanus shot. What are the odds that I get bitten by a poisonous spider? High I guess.  I’m glad I went…..I don’t want to wake up with gangrene in a week. I got in and out of the Urgent Care in about 45 minutes…..that’s enough to make me shout for joy. The only thing I worried about the whole time was catching some disease there….so I slathered my hands, arms, iPhone and handbag constantly hand sanitizer…..and I opened the door handle with my butt cheek (a perk of being 5’11″).

As I was picking up my prescription I picked up some of these:

Love these popsicles. They remind me of the pool snack bar when I was a kid. I think I’ll have another.

Well, I spent most of the day in bed yesterday….still recuperating from chemo.  Honestly I feel pretty good until I drink or eat anything……then my body feels like it’s shutting down. It’s crazy how the stomach can control everything! I slept from about 4 pm yesterday afternoon until this morning. I don’t really remember a thing from last night I was so out of it. My sister and her husband are still here and they have been awesome….entertaining Boo constantly:

My friend Jenn made us her famous mac and cheese last night…..I’ll try to share the recipe soon.

I was super productive for about 5 minutes and fixed Boo’s Bambi. Bambi’s eyebrow unraveled and it was pretty traumatic for Boo. I fixed it with a Sharpie…..shhhhh. Boo was so happy she cried.

Still here this morning! Every minute that passes is another minute towards being back to normal!

We’ve been testing a new forum feature for Lil Blue Boo this weekend.   I’m so excited to launch it this next week.  We are just working out a few bugs right now. It’s a great way for us to interact more and join in on discussions: everything from style, to cancer, to healthy living to DIY!

Second post of the day……before I start to feel too ill. Click here to see the one from earlier.

I’m usually not supposed to have visitors stay in the infusion center because the nurses need to get around……but today they let Perry stay. She kept taking secret photos though and sending them to me…..like one as I returned from the bathroom:

I told the nurses that the doctors will be glad I’m not there all day anymore…..since I am always having them take photos and check out things I’m writing about. I won’t be distracting them anymore.

Justin stopped by after caddying for our friend Meaghan in her first round at the Kraft Nabisco Championship:

I stayed until almost 6pm to get an extra bag of fluid today.  It was probably my longest day yet! But surprisingly it turned out to be my last day of chemo as long as I’m tested weekly for any signs of tumors remaining. I feel really good about Dr. L and my compromise on chemo and that I’ll finally get a break!  All the nurses got together and had a little impromptu celebration as I left. It was so cute. Bring on the sick days because I’ll be feeling better soon enough!  Only a few rough days ahead.

I went in this morning ready for a fight. I really just didn’t want to do another round of this chemo. My body was telling me: NO MORE! Dr. L was ready for me….the first thing he said was “well, you know how I feel about it.” Someone must have given him a heads up. I’ll find you! Ha. Anyways…….we compromised. I’ll do Cisplatin today and he’ll let me skip next week’s Methotrexate. That means: today is my LAST day of chemo. Finally a break after 23 weeks straight. I’ll still have to have weekly blood tests for a year to monitor everything closely and keep on top of any regrowth. We’ll monitor everything closely by CT scans too but at least there is an end in sight right now!

Perry came with me to see what goes on here. Everyone in the office says we look alike. I told Perry: at least now you what you would look like bald, right?

Why didn’t I want to come in today? Well, I thought another round might kill me. Seriously. Like it might do more harm than good. My body feels like it might actually reject the IV and spit everything out. Dr. L was doing his dictation and he said into the recorder “she is experiencing chemo fatigue” and I quickly added loudly over him “AND CHEMO ANNOYANCE”…..I hope that makes it into the report. It started a whole conversation about medical dictation bloopers. Here are a few of my favorites that I found online:

“The next patient’s name is Doe, John…. I’m not sure which is the first name and which is the last name, although I would imagine Doe would be the last name, unless it’s John.” Source

“This is an outpatient history and physical dictated by Dr. Evans. Date of proposed procedure is on Friday the…gulp… 13th!” Source

Between you and me, we ought to be able to get this lady pregnant. Source

Patient has left his white blood cells at another hospital. Source

She has no rigors or chills but her husband says she was very hot in bed last night. Source

*****

Perry used her ponytail to make me some hair to entertain Dr. L. It must run in the family that we try to lighten the mood and make everything not-so-serious. Don’t I look like Andy Warhol?

In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.
-Andy Warhol

I’m bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is “In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.”
-Andy Warhol, later

I already feel better that I’m hooked up to the IV. No chemo yet…..just hydration and pre-meds. I’ll start feeling back to myself around next Tuesday, and I know come next Tuesday that I’ll be so relieved that I did the treatment.

Update: Sorry, I forgot to mention that my numbers aren’t at zero. My HCG numbers have just been fluctuating between 2 and 3…..so Dr. L thinks that might just be my normal range of HCG production.  We’ll know for sure once I go off chemo….if the tumors start to grow back soon after we’ll know that 2 and 3 means the tumors are still “alive.” If not, we killed them!  Hope that makes sense!

At first glance it’s kind of hard to find my sister in this picture…..except for her hair. Perry and I made a day trip to L.A. today to pick up some fabric and do some shopping. I got a lot of hugs from employees and owners I see around the district….it was really sweet….especially because some of them can be all business and no chit chat.  Some of the big warehouses we go to are a little intimidating. Here’s Perry in the basement of one climbing up the stacks to cut a sample for me:

Here I am looking over some rolls:

We visited my friend Rafi at Avant Trims on Maple Street to check out some trims. He and his mother Lea also have a huge store Target Trim on the corner of San Pedro and 9th. Love them. Lea even calls me occasionally to see how I’m doing. Stop in and see them next time you are in the fabric district and tell them I sent you! Click here to view my post about other favorite places in the L.A. Fabric District.

I always comment on these funny little floral dogs in the flower district….I finally snapped a pic this time:

Oh, before we went to L.A. we stopped at IKEA. I love this picnic style table…..maybe for our patio one day? Perry and I ate IKEA hotdogs for lunch.

The coolest thing of the day…..passing a windmill blade. We couldn’t believe how big it was. It was bigger than a whale. Perry said it looked like a surfboard for Godzilla:

While one of our fabric orders was filled we stopped by Paul’s Kitchen for the best Chinese food. It’s on San Pedro and 10th. It’s been there for like 40 years. It looks like a hole-in-the wall from the outside but inside is really nice and great for sitting down for a meal…..there’s a great bar if you want to eat by yourself.

10 hours later we are home! I felt really good today…..but I still think my blood counts are really low. I could feel my legs buckling as I climbed stairs in one of the warehouses….they are so weak. Tomorrow morning I meet with Dr. L to see if I do chemo tomorrow. I’m kind of hoping for a “snow day”…..I feel like another round might kill me right now. It will be my 23rd week of chemotherapy but hopefully my last. I seriously contemplated not showing up this week.  Cisplatin yuck. Oh, guess what!? I have some hair growing back on my head……just not on the sides. I’ll have a mohawk soon. I’m losing my eyebrows though all the sudden. I haven’t had to shave anywhere else in weeks. Awesome.