Coming up on Number Five

Tuesday will begin round five of the clinical trial chemos.  Blech.  Funny how you can make yourself do something that makes you so sick.  It's the promise of cancer redemption that keeps you going.  I'd like to think, too, that doing this trial is helping other people as well.  Stage I of this trial helped define the dosage tolerances.  I'm not sure what Stage II is doing, but whatever it is, we're doing it!


I had a dream last night; Jane had a weird screen saver on her computer's display.  I told her it was creepy because it was exactly like an ocular migraine.  Then I woke up... and was having an ocular migraine. :P


Having read about my cupcake cravings, Jane and Nancy came home with ingredients and made a batch of red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  And of course, I was done with my cupcake cravings.  But did I say NO to those pretty little things?  Heaven forbid!  Must eat those things made with love, you know.  Just don't eat five of them. :)


Last night saw a deluge of rain.  My sister-in-law, Julie, had called to say they had hail, really high winds and their power was out.  Julie lives ESE of us, and while we were on the phone, our house had blue skies and a light breeze, but you could see, off in the distance, a lot of dark thunderheads.


About an hour later, we got the deluge; no hail, plenty of wind and so much rain you couldn't see across the street.  It lasted probably fifteen minutes, and when I put the dogs out around Nine PM, my back yard was dry.  We really needed that rain!  I think it's still considered part of monsoon season, here, and it was quite a show with all the lightning.


So, I'm approaching Tuesday with trepidation, since the toxicity of the chemos is building up and it's taking me longer each time to start to feel human.  But I can't stop now; I'm in the home stretch!  I'll just learn to nap more.


Now it's time to hit the hookah (my pet name for my nebulizer) because it's humid and I have a hard time breathing when the air feels like a sauna.  Funny, when I lived in California, the spa my mom and I went to every day after work for our exercise regimen had a sauna, and I LOVED it!  Of course, I hadn't been diagnosed with asthma yet, back then.  Who knew I'd move to Arizona and get to experience wide-spread sauna-like conditions? :)  Luckily, we're USUALLY a dry heat.


Alrighty, then.  Have a fabulous week, all.  Kiss a puppy, or a kitty, or your spouse. :)

We Topped Out at 114

And we were thankful.  I have lived here long enough to have experienced the 120 degree mark, and I have to say, I don't care how dry the heat is, 120 is disgusting. In any event, the monsoon is beginning to move in across the valley, and though temperatures will cool, the humidity will rise, and the dust storms and thunderstorms are coming.


I had King Crab Legs for dinner, with artichoke hearts and spinach.  I am SO spoiled.  And excitingly, I slept in until 6:55 AM!!  The curtains Nancy got me yesterday seem to be blocking out that early sun pretty darned well.


Cabin Fever is striking, but this is my low white cell count time.  Yes, we have my chemo cycle all figured out.  By tomorrow, though, the counts should start coming up.  I don't know where I'd go anyway.  It's too hot. :D


Frankly, I'd really LIKE to go to work.  I missed a colleague's retirement celebration, and he was a good person, so that made me rather sad.  Lots of people are leaving of late.  I just read on Facebook that one of my ex minions is going back to Texas.  I'll miss her very much, too.  Hope is so full of life and energy and happiness.


I wonder if my hair will ever grow back.  I seem to still be bald as cue ball, and about the same hue, as well. :D  Alas.


Robin, if you are reading this, and I know you do.  Come get some squash!!!


Ok, have a lovely Sunday, folks.  Be well!

Albuterol, dear Albuterol

I am SO tired of coughing... quite literally.  I finished working (at home) and went right to bed for a nap.  I fell asleep yesterday before 9PM, and slept through to a little after 6AM.


Yes, I did go into the plant yesterday, but that was a huge mistake.  I didn't realize how hard that trek from my car to my desk was going to be.  My utmost gratitude to our company's paramedics for getting me stabilized enough to go home; driven by Hope.  My friend Michelle followed her to take her back to work.  


I have to stop pushing myself to try to be normal.  But I want that so badly.  Yet, yesterday gave me a pretty severe wake up call; I am sick.  I am not 'normal.'  I told my friend Paul that I was scared that what I am today is my new 'normal.'  


Well, I will go see my PC doc tomorrow and hopefully, he can figure out a way to make me a bit more comfortable.  I am cold; I've had a low-grade fever, but not high enough to call the oncologist's office.  The goop I'm coughing up is clear and slowly lessening in volume.  And I have a weird pain in my left shoulder.


As for the Albuterol, I'm sucking on my nebulizer even as I type.  Thank the deities for this med and this medical equipment; it keeps me out of the big house, and after a treatment I can get more goop out.  I posted on Facebook the other day that I needed a phlegm exorcism.  Maybe my PC can get me fixed up with a really good expectorant.  I like to try to go naturally; hot beverages, soup, garlic, chilies, onions, but that's not doing enough.

Happily, though, it's warmed up beautifully!  It was 83 while I was watching the evening news.  Tomorrow will hit 90 they say.  While some folks may cower in terror at those numbers, we Arizonans find it very, very comfortable.  


That's not to say I enjoy anything beyond 110, though.  And that, sadly, does happen quite a bit in summer here.... but remember, it's a dry heat, until the monsoon hits, then you feel like you've entered a sauna that doesn't quit.  But I'll take it over the hellaciously cold winter we've had.  


This picture is one I took years ago right after a monsoon blew through.  


Sadly, our saguaro fell one year.  Luckily, it only took out my eaves, not the room in which my mother was sleeping that morning.

It had rained hard and the cactus had absorbed so much water, it could  no longer hold its own weight.  The neighbors who heard it thought our house had exploded.  The removal squad estimated it weighed more than 2000 lbs.

They cut it into slices with a chainsaw, but still could not lift the slices.  After quartering each slice, they finally got it removed.  Oh they also said it was over 27 feet high.  I loved that saguaro, but its time had come.


The main thing is that no one was hurt; Mom didn't even wake up, but then she was quite hard of hearing by that time.
And thank heavens for homeowner's insurance. :)

Bright Sunlight

On June 3rd, 1985, I moved from the land of my birth, Los Angeles, California, to the Phoenix suburbs of Arizona.  I don't think a day has passed since that day, that I haven't marveled at how beautiful the sky is out here in the desert.

That first week, my mom and dad and aunt were here, helping me move, and it was bittersweet.  I lived at home until I moved here, and while I knew where I was going career-wise, I never really wanted to be away from my family.  But you have to severe those ties, eventually, and begin making your own way, even if you do make lots of mistakes along the way.  My little sister moved out here with me, so I was not alone.  She was 18, and ready to begin college.  We had so much fun, figuring out life with only each other for support instead of that HUGE family back in California.

Arizona has stars.  It's true!  You can see them at night; bright, sparkling like Swarovski crystals against midnight blue satin.  L.A.'s skies were so saturated with artificial light at all times, you never got to see a star.  It became a ritual for me, when heading out to work in the morning, to greet Orion, because I could see him up there, stable, and always on the hunt.

I remember the first taste of summer monsoons.  The wind would come up, the sky would turn yellow-grey, and the dust would shroud everything.  Then the thunder would roar and it would rain so hard you couldn't see across the street.  It was frightening in its intensity, but then in its aftermath, there was a break from the summer heat, and there is nothing like the scent of wet desert; it's comforting and homey and wraps you in calm.

This is such a primal world, the desert, and although we have all the modern comforts and conveniences, this primal world still struggles to dominate over it all.  The scorpions continue to try to invade the house every year; the black widows and preying mantis keep watch over vegetation that always seems to have thorns of some kind.  And I can deal with them all, except those darned Wolf Spiders... just something about spiders with hairy legs that gives me the willies. :D

Anyway, it's a crazy-bright morning again, and I think I'll head outside and get myself a little Vitamin D to kick off my day.  I'll be seeing the radiation oncologist today, after zappage, and I need to tell her that I feel like I'm getting acid reflux or something, and it's interfering with sleep.

Be safe and well, all.