Must not Fear: Merry Christmas...

Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas...

...to those of you who celebrate the holiday tomorrow. May your day be filled with happiness, family and fun. Be safe, and be mindful of all the love in your life.

Nancy's going to make vegetarian lasagna for us, tomorrow. I'm not sure what else is planned. I've been eating fine, for a few days, now. The burning is definitely dissipating, although it woke me up last night. My herceptin treatment of yesterday went without a hitch. I actually went to a European Herceptin site on the www today, and saw that it's been pretty effective in stomach cancers. Let's hope it's EVEN MORE effective in Esophageal cancer. ;)

There are days I wake up and think I can't possibly have this cancer. I feel fine... mostly. :) Some days it does all seem rather unreal. How can I even have this? How could it have been growing there and gotten to Stage IV without SOME indication? At least with the breast cancer, I could feel a lump. I wasn't even having a hard time swallowing, even though the tumor was taking up 60% of my esophagus. Oh well, I think cancer is mostly the luck (or lack thereof) of the draw. Life is weird.

And so tomorrow is Christmas, and for some reason I keep thinking about Uncle Ed and the time he bought us a real tree, then decided it was too small, so he bought us TWO of the same size. Yes, we had twin Christmas trees that year. And daddy had the train set going around them. We were very traditional when it came to holidays. I think because my dad didn't have a very happy childhood, he insisted that we have traditions. It was good for us.

Still, of course, my favorite Christmas tree was the aluminum one with the cool light wheel. It went so well with our Turquoise vinyl sofa. Damn, I loved the sixties. ;) I tried to get an aluminium tree once, but they wanted a bloody fortune for it. Instead, this year we have the skinny, silver Charlie Brown Christmas tree, only for us, it's the Winter Solstice Yule tree. It's cute.

Next week, I have to go do the blood draw, pre-chemo, on Wednesday, then see the Medical Oncologist on Thursday and then hit my chemo. So not a bad week ahead. Very doable. ;)

Merry Christmas, folks, and make sure you give extra hugs to all your loved ones.

3 comments:

AnonymousDecember 26, 2010 at 8:30 AM
Hey Girl
Merry Xmas to you too.
Cancer to me seems to be a bit of a lottery. Seems it does not matter how well you take care of yourself, somehow it finds you.
My sis died 4 years ago, she was only 51 with her first grandaughter not even a year old. She was so excited to get that baby, she learned to walk on the cancer ward.
Anyway, she was due to go into hospital for routine thyroid surgery, a 5 minute job and all that and home the next day. Geeze it was the start of a nightmare. Chris said to me (this was on 4th July), "you have a lot of emails from Susan (my younger sister), she wants you to call this number. Man, that call changed my life. When they opened her up to do the surgery they found a huge cancer wrapped around her windpipe and also her vocal chords. they said it was too deep seated to try to take it out, they likened it to an octopus. They put her in hospice care with no chance of recovery. She was on a ventilator and they said that once it was removed she would probably not be able to breathe on her own as the tumour was so big and was blocking everything. She did manage to breathe and that is where I found her a couple of days later after flying to Scotland to be with her. It was strange but over the course of the next few days she seemed to buck up. We went downstairs for coffee etc, but she was freaked at being in hospice care. They found out from the biopsy that she had Non Hodgkins and said that she should make a full recovery after treatment. That sadly was not to be, she died 10 months later. The worst day of my life so far. So yeah you can have this disgusting disease for years and not know anything about it. It is so predatory and does not distinguish between rich or poor, young or old etc. It is just a creeping loathsome disease.
My darlin, there is new stuff coming out every day, something has got to stick to the wall so to speak. I do so hope that this drug works for you. I would love to meet you and have a coffee and a chat. Hopefully that will be so.
On a different tack, we are expecting snow here in far flung PA. 15" has been forecast by end of day today. Hmm, we shall see, it is very overcast, but no sign of snow as yet at 10.30 in the morning. Soooooo, we did the supermarket run just incase. Pathmark was mobbed, everyone had the same idea, all of the shelves were empty, and only 2 checkouts open, the lines were horrendous.
We have tons of food, booze and logs for the fire. My son and gson are supposed to come to us today for Xmas dinner and pressies, not sure if that will happen now, he may not be able to get home again, oh well, he could end up in worse places than here with us I guess.
So for now I will sign off, got a big rib roast to throw in the oven and veggies to peel.
You keep safe and warm and rested
Fay in the family room ;)
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Tequila SepulvedaDecember 26, 2010 at 8:54 AM
Fay, I often wonder what the gastro who found this evil tumor said when he saw it. He's gone in to see if I might have Celiac, or an ulcer or something of that ilk.

He's barely got the scope down when ... HOLY CARP!... a 4 cm tumor and we haven't even gotten past the esophagus. I wonder, did he exclaim in unprintable expletives? Did he think to himself, "wow, this lady is doomed?"

It's been my experience that sometimes, it's the treatment that kills us. My friend, Evelyn, whose picture is on the blog somewhere, had been fighing cancer for 26 years. Finally, after using an experimental drug, and having been deemed terminal, it was all gone from her chest, liver, brain, etc. All gone! But the drug had caused a heart valve problem, so they went in to do surgery.

The surgery was a succes, but she died the next day from an infection. I still start to cry when I think about it, but Evelyn would only want me to remember the happy times. She was my inspiration. :)

So, I was happy when my Oncologist sent me to the cardiologist to make sure I'm not getting any heart damage along the way.

Well, honey, keep warm. Enjoy the yummy eats, and have a great day!!
T
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AnonymousDecember 26, 2010 at 8:26 PM
We got a looooooota snow. I am dreading getting up in the morning to look out the window.
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Must not Fear

Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas...

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