"My" cat

Have I told you about my cat? She's not really mine, but she thinks she is. ... Sometimes.

Judy and I have been watching her for months, Rear Window style, because there's not much else to do when one of us is living through chemo and the other of us is taking care of the chemo patient, and we can't, for the life of us, figure out who her real people are. She's very friendly and goes in and out of several apartments in my little courtyard.

Every once in a while, she's on my doorstep when I come home or she follows me up the stairs and just waltzes in like she owns the place. (I love that about cats!)

Today, I came home from work and she was lying in front of my downstairs neighbor's door. As soon as she saw me, she came running, and then proceeded to follow me home.

I used to not think cats followed people, but this crazy girl has changed my mind.

After a grueling three hours at work this morning (I know that three hours shouldn't be grueling, but I'm more tired than I've been since that day that I woke up early to be at the airport and fly halfway across the country a couple weeks ago), it was a perfect day to have a furry little friend for a few hours.

There are few things in this world that make me happy in the same way that a purring kitty does.

I know that weird little cat isn't really mine, but this afternoon, she was. ... And then, at dinner time, I opened the door and she walked right out and I got to enjoy my fiberlicious spaghetti without an animal trying to get into my lap.

I have a cat, but I don't have to feed or clean up after a cat. It's the best of both worlds, for sure!

Life is just a bowl of cherries

I'm sitting in bed this morning, watching Covert Affairs (I'm in season five, so it's almost over) and eating a bowl full of of cherries, feeling a little upside down and inside out about this day, when I thought of this old Mary Engelbreit picture.

I'm going back to work this morning. It's very part time, and I'll be doing admin projects for the CFO rather than going back to my department and working with lending. I am incredibly grateful that the bank has been so supportive of me wanting to reinstitute some normalcy in my life, and I'm looking forward to figuring out if my brain still works. (Chemo brain is the bane of my existence. It's better than it was, but I still get surprised by my memory lapses and/or the inability to find the right word(s).)

I'm excited to go back to work. I'm also a little nervous about how my body will react to getting put back on a schedule. It's going to be so great to see my work friends again on a regular basis. That said, I'm a different version of me than I was just six months ago, and I can't help but wonder if/how things will/could be the same.

Like I said, I'm feeling a little upside down and inside out. Grateful, excited, invested, anxious, concerned, curious, committed. I am all of those things, and some more that I can't quite put a finger on. (Again, with the cursed inability to articulate.) But I am full of cherries and I am full of hope, and I've got to think that's a winning combination.

Did you know?

MD Anderson was a person! 

Not, MD, as in Dr. Anderson (though he was a doctor), but Monroe D. Anderson.

He was a person. And he started this amazing thing. (Well, him and some other awesome people started it.) But he was a person, and he wanted to help people who had cancer. ... I sort of love him.

I love him and his red brick buildings. They were gorgeous, and I SO didn't get enough pics to show you even half of what was the Houston MDA campus.

Both of these shots were taken from the pedway that connected the hotel (above) to the hospital itself.

Judy and I walked from the hotel to my Monday afternoon appointment, and when we turned the corner and saw this sign, it was... well... it was amazing.

A Sarcoma Center. 

An entire department, with multiple doctors dedicated to people with sarcoma diagnoses.

Here, I was not an anomaly. Here, I was just a patient.

(And I mean that in a good way.)

And, oh my gosh... the hotel. MD Anderson owns an adjacent hotel, on MDA property, specifically for the use of MDA patients and their caregivers, managed and operated by Marriott.

Hello! This is the view of the lobby, from the restaurant on the 2nd floor.

Also, can I tell you how much I love a hotel that has a self-serve frozen yogurt station that's open 24/7?

Uhm, no. No, I cannot. Because there aren't words for that kind of love.

And, hello! ... Best froyo flavor. 

Of. All. Time.

I seriously couldn't even tell you how many free samples I had of this stuff. It was amazing.

And there's a little restaurant across from the froyo stand that has a breakfast and lunch salad bar.

Amazing, beautiful, GLORIOUS fruits and vegetables (and grilled salmon), by the pound. This was the first time I'd had oranges and strawberries since chemo. Oh, my. The agony and the ecstasy. (But it was worth it. ... Mostly, because I had a toothbrush only 6 floors up, and I could get that acid out of my mouth asap.)

Oh my gosh, Houston was awesome. (I say that like we saw the city. We so didn't. But the hotel and the accommodations - oh, right, and the medical facility - were totally awesome!)

Project Chia Pet - Week 1

I've had a lot of comments on my hair growth in the last week, and today I had the thought... "What if I documented how fast it's growing by doing comparison shots every week?!"

And then I picked up my phone and took a selfie to do just that. Don't worry that I'm wearing my pink flowery robe and my glasses instead of actual clothes and my contacts here, so it's not an EXACT side-by-side.

But still... Would ya look at that?

It's darker.

And it's longer.

This time last week, I could barely grab onto the hair on the top of my head. Now, it's long enough that I can actually PULL it! ... It's very exciting. (Possibly also a little masochistic, because I yank on it about twenty times a day (uhhhh... because I can!), but mostly it's just exciting.)

My plan is to do a selfie side-by-side every Friday so all thirteen of you who read this ridiculous blog can have a visual of my new Chia hair as it comes back in. You're so welcome.

*Answers to questions I get asked all the time:

Yes, it's super soft.

I can't tell yet whether it's curly or straight.

It's very close to my original color, with maybe a little more gray mixed in.

No, I'm not shampooing it. (Some things never change, right?) But seriously, it doesn't need to be washed. It doesn't get greasy or dirty feeling. At all. If anything, my scalp is still so dry that I feel compelled to rub moisturizer into the top of my head twice a week. It's so weird.

Flora and fauna

I've been home for almost a week, and I'm finally posting some pics from Houston.

 I've been tired. Too tired to open my laptop. (But not too tired to marathon Covert Affairs on Amazon.)

Don't judge.

Anyhoo... we didn't get out much (I'm tired enough here, in my own home, living on my usual schedule... you don't even want to know how tired I was in Texas after traveling and not sleeping in my own bed for days on end), but last Friday... we DID get out. My mom's cousin, Jan, came and picked us up and took us to lunch and then drove us around town for a while so we could see some of Houston.

It. Was. Gorgeous.

For real. How amazing is this house?!

And the trees.

Oh, my. THE TREES. Leaves growing on the branches and trunks of trees.

These next two pics were taken in the courtyard of the restaurant where we had lunch with Jan.

Do you remember the view from our cheap hotel? 

Suffice it to say... the view from the MD hotel was substantially better.

And these were the trees in front of the MD Hotel.

They were super awesome. Very delicate flowers, both bright and soft pinks. 

The landscaping was incredible. Lush, almost tropical. Not what I was expecting to see in Texas. AT ALL.

And then Judy and I took some selfies in front of the pink trees, because as much as the trees were super pretty... we think we might be even prettier.

We crack ourselves up.

I don't look like Voldemort anymore!

Behold:

The pic on the left was taken May 24th, the pic on the right was taken today.

My goodness, the difference a month can make (post-chemo, anyway) is astonishing!

Those are my real eyebrows and my real lashes. I'm not wearing a stitch of makeup in either shot. Which, as we all know, is not my usual MO when it comes to pics I post on the www (or even let people take in the first place), but I wanted a true side by side.

While I know my eyelashes will have a relatively short shelf life - they'll just fall out again the next time I restart chemo - I have a couple good months of mascara ahead of me!

Cancer's so freaking sexy

Some days (like when I have to get blood drawn, and the nurse has a guaranteed stick without having to try and hit a vein), I think my port's about the coolest thing ever.

And other days (like today, when I look down and happen to see the a vein literally popping right up and out of my chest), I think it's pretty vile that I have foreign matter imbedded in my chest, and a freaking tube stuffed inside one of my veins.

Don't worry about how my coping skills sometimes include taking a picture of the stuff that grosses me out...

But seriously, how nuts is that vein that pops up/out when I am in a reclining position?!

I'm grateful that it doesn't pop when I'm sitting/standing upright, and that it's only when I'm at an incline that I'm reminded that I'm sort of part robot now, but still... it's like my body couldn't get any weirder if it tried. 

Friday

So... there's good news, semi-good (which is actually sort of bad news, but I'm choosing to call it "semi-good") news and totally awesome news.

Good news: the tumor wrapping itself through and around my large and small intestines is roughly unchanged since my last scan in May (side by side above - left is my May CT, right is the CT portion of the PET/CT done yesterday)

Semi-good news: there's a spot in my back that lit up hot in the PET. That it's hot is a fairly good indicator that the spot in my back is de-differentiated. So, I have two different stages of cancer growing in this body right now. Awesome possum.

Totally awesome news: the hot spot was graded as 4.9, and they don't officially recognize de-differentiated liposarcoma and begin treatment until it's over a 5. Soooo... yesterday's scan just bought me another 2-3 months chemo-free. Wahoo!

Dr. Z will get me scheduled here in TX for a scan in two months. She wants to bump my every three month schedule up to two, so she can watch what's happening between rib #9 and #10 very closely. As soon as that little dude hits anything higher than a 5 on a radiologist's report, or breaches any major systems, or starts causing symptoms, we'll talk chemo. Until then, my hair and my lashes are greenlit to keep growing!

Thursday

It's been a crazy morning, buuuuuuut...

The PET is happening. Today. Woot!

I check in at 1:00. I'll be injected with radioactive matter around 1:30, and the scan itself will happen at 3:00. And since 3:00 is before 4:00, this should give Dr. Z enough lead time that she'll be able to prep my case to present it to the board for additional opinions tonight. 

Halle-freakin-lujah!

I don't have my follow up appointment with her scheduled as yet, but her scheduler has assured me that they'll figure out a way to squeeze me into her already full day tomorrow.

*Deep breaths.*

It's all coming together. Last night, even though I knew there was still time, I was in a little bit of a panic. (Don't believe me? Ask the friend and cousin I was texting, frantically.) But it's all falling into place, with basically perfect timing.

Once again, I have been shown that there is A Grand Design for my life. Especially when the things that matter the most to me are completely and totally out of my control, and they still fall miraculously into place, I am aware that I am loved and watched over. 

Today is going to be fine, and tomorrow I'll have some answers.

Wednesday

So... this is what I did most of today.

Yeah, that's my very fancy view of the parking lot through a rain streaked window.

It's been raining off and on all day. Judy and I had been mocking Hurricane Bill's "heavy rain and strong winds" (listen, we've lived in Taylor, where 50 mph winds aren't all that rare, and we've weathered many a crazy monsoon storm in the great state of Arizona), but then we went for a walk this afternoon and saw this.

So maybe there is something to these tropical storms after all. Or maybe we could insert an analogy here about how the Arizona trees don't fall in a mere 20 mph wind because their roots have had to grow deep all their lives. Either way, consider our mocking of this storm retracted, because it turns out 20 mph winds can cause all kinds of damage when the ground is soaked. Those upended trees are downright scary!

Meanwhile, back at the hotel... I'm still waiting for an insurance approval before MD can schedule my scan OR my followup appointment. Ugh.

I know it can take time for the insurance approval to come through. Please. It's wrecked my schedule more than once when I'm on my own home turf, so I'm not surprised that it's taken 48+ hours. But still, I am bugged. Oh, well.

There's still time for an approval and a scan tomorrow. The doctor will need to have the scan done by 4:00 for her to get the results in time to present my case at the board meeting tomorrow night, but I have hope that it'll all work out for a round table discussion Thursday night and a treatment plan to be presented on Friday. And if it doesn't... then I'll look into moving the return flight and extending my stay through the beginning of next week. That's not what I want to do, but it's in the realm of possibilities, and it's not really all that bad of a worst case scenario.