With the news that my chemo was delayed, it has slowed everything down a bit. My life was moving along on such a fast pace and then I was forced to slow down. I do believe that most things in life happen for a reason and that there are still many lessons for me to learn from this little adventure in my life - but taking the time to slow down and realizing that we aren't as in control of things as we think has been a hard one for me.
As with the last two rounds, this round was different. They asked me to start with some of my anti nausea medications even before I got the chemo and they gave me a large amount of fluid at the end of my treatment. Also, because of the week delay in starting, my blood counts were much higher than at the beginning of the last round. Whatever it was that made the change, I found myself feeling a lot better sooner and that was a very welcome surprise! So welcome, that I overdid it a bit on Thursday, getting ready for the arrival of my brother (Chad) that night and my parents the next day. Which then left me spending Friday on the couch.
The mornings have been a bit rougher than I have let on to my family. The nausea, fogginess in my head and overall fatigue has stayed with me throughout the whole week, but something about Christmas and family, makes it more beareable. Although Ryan and I said a year ago, that we were going to spend this holiday in Calgary for the first time, we now don't have an option. The doctors want me to try and be within a 1 hour drive from the Cancer Center throughout my chemo treatments. So, my brother and parents graciously came to us!
As with every holiday, there has been way too much food, an abundance of presents and lots of unexpected fun! Those of you who know Chad, know that we are pretty competitive at some things. The one time of year we come together to create something great is when we build our gingerbread house. This year, Tricia also agreed to help us, which we definitely did not pass up - she is crazy artistic and nobody can pipe icing like her! With all of this confidence, I decided that we needed to step it up a bit and bought us a Fairty Tale Cottage Cake Pan, instead of our regular gingerbread house. We bought the chocolate cake mix and all of these great accessories for our house, what we did overestimate however was that we could put a regular cake mix in the special pan. So, instead of spending our time decorating the Fairy Tale Cottage, we spent the better part of one day trying to get the cake out of the pan once it was cooked. When we finally got it out...well, let's just say that it didn't really look much like the beautiful picture on the pan.
With the holidays starting to wind down around here, life will unfortunately get back to normal. What is it about Christmas that makes everything seem so magical and perfect? I wish I could hold onto that feeling forever!
It's now time to get ready for week 2 starting tomorrow, which means that my counts will drop and I have to rest, rest, rest. This is especially important this time to ensure that I am not delayed again and my counts will get back up to the levels that they need to be to start Round 4. This will be the last round of my A/C regimen and then for the next 4 rounds I will start a new set of chemo medications. I have heard different viewpoints on whether it will be worse or the same, so I think that it's another way of telling me to just "slow down, concentrate on the now and stop trying to control everything". I guess that lesson will just take a few more rounds to sink in.
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