Frosty Friday

Two things I never seem to tire of: Sunsets (and sunrises) and the beauty of a frosty day.

The sunrise was obscured today, because of the clouds, so frost takes center stage on My Two Acres...

Frosty Amur maple

Frosty maiden

My favorite. The frost-cradled nest and the lone leaf.

Snow on the rooftop

It would appear that there is a little snow forming on the rooftop, isn't there?

What an adventure this is going to be!

Things I learned on chemo

As promised, today's post is all about things I learned on chemo. Some of them are silly. Some serious. All are true, at least from my perspective.

Hair:
Losing your hair is more liberating than you'd think. Going on a trip? No need for haircare products, or a blow dryer, or any other hair manipulating device.

'Tis better to shave your head and have photos taken of you in various "hairdos" (my favorite was, believe it or not, the mullet) than to worry about when the first clump of hair is going to come out of your head. Too much anxiety there!

If it wasn't for the fact that I thought being bald would be uncomfortable for those around me, I would have just been bald and happy with it. The wig I purchased looked dumb and wearing scarves can get tiring. In fact, the first thing I do when I get home from work is take off the scarf.

Getting ready time in the mornings? Next to nothing! I used to spend much more time on my "carefree" hairstyle than I thought. I have shaved (hee! hee!) my time to approximately 20 minutes, and that includes the shower and the time it takes me to decide what to wear....which brings me to...

Chemo brain:
It is real. I am more indecisive. (I wasn't that decisive in the first place, so you can about imagine how dire the circumstance is now!) I have trouble translating what is in my brain into something that makes sense coming out of my mouth. Now, people who know me well probably would say that I was ALWAYS that way. But BC (which now stands for Before Chemo instead of Before Children) it was because my mind went so fast, my mouth couldn't keep up. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Nothing tastes right:
I'm not sure, because of the afore-mentioned chemo brain, but I think for me the experience has been that everything has a salty taste to it. Except lemondrops. Throughout chemo, whether it was A/C (Adriamycin and Cytoxan) or the Taxol, lemondrops tasted like lemondrops. Lemonade tasted right too, but unfortunately, it gave me heartburn, which brings me to the effects of.....

Steroids:
I don't like them. Not one little bit. I know the steroids were probably what kept me going when I was doing the every-other-week A/C, because I was pretty nauseous and not eating very well. But once I started weekly Taxol treatments, the only thing I noticed was that the steroids made my heartburn worse, made me retain water and made me flushed and cranky. On the positive side, though, I haven't been nauseous at all during Taxol treatments, or nearly as tired. But I will really be happy to be done taking steroids.

Get me a drink:
Not so much with A/C, but with Taxol, I feel thirsty. It's probably more dry mouth than anything, but nevertheless, I drink a lot of water the first few days after an infusion. But plain water gets old, so I've taken to buying vitamin water to "mix it up" a little. I cut out the coffee while I was on A/C, but have slowly started drinking it again on Taxol. Two cups a day is my limit, though. I really like those two cups, I must say.

Laxatives:
Yep. If you tend to be like me (occasional irregularity) you will probably need to use them, because occasional becomes frequent and yes, sometimes downright painful. 'Nuff said.

Facial hair:
I shaved the other day. My face. It seems that some of us actually get a pretty good growth of fine fuzz on our faces when hair starts growing back. It's kind of like the fine hair babies have, I have read. But in the right light, I just thought I looked like a woolly mammoth. So I took an electric razor after my face. Most have said that once it's shaved off, that's it. Others say they have had to continue shaving. Since it hasn't been more than a couple of days, the jury is still out on whether or not I should buy stock in electric razors.

Pity party:
I won't lie. I have had my share of "woe is me" days; the "I can't do this another day," days, which always proved me wrong, because I always managed to do it another day. But I promised myself the day I got the "you have cancer" news that I was never going to ask "Why me?" because I figured the answer could just as easily be, "Why NOT you?" And really, I have been very, very lucky. I may have slept more, made more "prepackaged" suppers, let my house get a little dirtier, and didn't exercise like I should, but I only missed work because I was at the doctor, and still managed to do most of what I did BC. My family and friends and coworkers have made it all that much easier with all their support and amazing encouragement.

And when you end up getting stuck in an elevator on the fifth floor on your way to chemo, and your first thought is, "Wouldn't that be a bite? Dropping five floors to your death in an elevator on your way to chemo?" you realize that there are definitely worse things than having to go through a little chemo!

Back to normal wild

The last few weeks have been incredibly wild. As such, I put the blog on the back burner. But now that things have returned to normal wild, as opposed to "incredibly wild," I think I feel caught up enough to post again.

As of today, I have one more chemo session to go. Next Monday. Then I am chemo done. And when I am done, I get to ring the bell at the infusion center! I have been able to witness two people ring the bell while I have had my chemo treatments. The last one was yesterday, and we all clapped for her. It felt really good to clap for her. She had a great hat! And I will always remember the small smile she had on her face (I was in the infusion chair right next to the bell) when she rang the bell. It was almost as if she was embarrassed.

I will not be embarrassed.

Yes, it's going to be nice to be done with chemo, but there are still 33 radiation treatments to go before the  "killing" phase is done and the reconstruction phase starts. I won't know exactly when the radiation starts until I meet with the doctor again, but it's going to be five days a week for six weeks and three days, so I will have a pretty strict schedule to adhere to. That's probably going to be the hardest thing for me. I don't seem to have a day that is ever the same as the day before. Usually, that's a good thing. When you have to be at the doctor every day? Not so much.

But my hair is growing back, albeit with a lot more white or gray than I remember having (because I COLORED it all the time)! I didn't lose my fingernails and I will be done with steroids, which will THRILL me! Not only do they make my face red, they make me retain water, give me heartburn and sometimes make me slightly less patient than usual! : )

Tomorrow, I have decided I am going to post all the things I learned about chemo while being on chemo. I hope it helps someone get through their chemo experience, even though every person's chemo reaction is different.

Today, I'm just encouraging anyone who is starting chemo to relax. Yeah. Easy for me to say. But the doctor said it and I really believe it now. Anxiety is one of the worst things to bring to chemo.

As I have gone through each chemo session, my husband has given me a charm to put on a bracelet. The last one was of a chair, to remind me to relax. That is probably the hardest lesson I have yet to learn. If I am idle, or doing something strictly for me, I still feel guilty. Right after I had surgery a dear friend gave me a book to read. I read the entire thing the week I was recuperating.

I read another book during my weekly chemo treatments. (Actually, I read it in four or five of treatments. It was a really good book.)

Before that, I hadn't taken the time to read a book since before my kids were born, and they are 15 and 12.

So in a convoluted way, I had to have cancer surgery and chemo to learn how to take some time for myself. Here's hoping you don't have to do the same thing to learn to relax; at least back to normal wild!

When you don't have hair

When you are used to having hair, and then you don't have hair anymore, do you bump your head more often?

I have noticed that I seem to be misjudging the distance between my bald pate and the thing that I often run it into, on a semi-regular basis.

Mostly it's cupboard doors. (Yes, I spend WAY too much time in the kitchen!!!)

I haven't seriously hurt myself or anything, but it is annoying to think you have all this space between your noggin and the thing you are knocking your noggin on, when you don't.

I often wondered what the point of having hair is, but after not having it, I'm starting to think that maybe the purpose of hair is to act as a guide -- you know, like cat whiskers or something. When you have hair on your head, you feel the sensation of something coming close and you are able to stop yourself. Without hair, you don't have those extra "feelers."

I wish I would have been keeping better track of head knocks since I became bald, so I could do a wildly unreliable study on how being without hair impacts head bumps, but since I'm now starting to grow hair again, I fear the opportunity has been lost.

Well, actually, I don't fear the lost opportunity. Not a darn bit. I'm cheering on those little follicles, especially since those little white and gray hairs are visibly starting to sprout anew.

No way am I sacrificing those hard-earned sprouts for science.

Wordless Wednesday: Beautiful big skies

Sunrises in North Dakota never fail to inspire!

Silky smooth feet: The upside of chemo

Who KNEW that chemotherapy drugs would actually make my feet softer?

Well, they have. In addition to losing all my hair, I have been losing the callouses on my feet.

It all started weirdly enough. The bottoms of my big toes were achy. I figured it had something to do with the callouses and chemo, but I kind of put it out of my head as a pain to deal with.

Then, about a week ago (yeah, I've been doing this since July and only NOW do I look at the bottoms of my feet) I noticed a big chunk of dead skin at the base of my big toe coming off.

Wow. I never realized I had such a huge callous on the bottom of my big toe.

So I cut it off. The dead skin, I mean, not my toe.

Then I looked at the big toe of my other foot. Same thing.

So I cut it off too.

Then I lotioned (meaning to apply lotion) them profusely. A few days later, a little more peeled off, so I lotioned again.

I must say, this is the nicest the bottom of my feet have been in a long time. Of course, no one else sees them, so it's really just something for my benefit, but I'm taking every little bit of positive I can get from this deal.

I guess it's true. There is an upside to everything! Even chemo! (Well, I mean in addition to the fact that chemo is hopefully killing all the little, nasty cancer cells that may be invading my body!)

And I am starting to grow a little bit of salt n' peppa peach fuzz on my head too.

So I got THAT going for me too, which is nice!

Another day to advertise

So now we get to watch, hear and read political ads on election day.

I'm curious to see how many political advertisers will take advantage of their new election day advertising opportunities. In fact, it would be nice to have a radio on and sit in front of the television all day on Monday AND Tuesday, so I could compare the frequency of the "traditional" last day and the "new" last day.

But alas, I have chemo on Monday and a job to go to on Monday and Tuesday, so I'll just have to rely on the insights of others.

Can you tell I don't really think we need to have yet one more day to hear about how bad somebody's opponent is?

Thought so.