Merry Christmas!!!!!

DECEMBER

December proved to be a busy month between treatments being every week and the holidays and other obligations.  Brady my youngest son is a member of the Bach Festival Youth Choir and had several performances during the month, which really helped to get us in the holiday spirit.  The first performance was actually at the Festival of the Trees in November.  The second one was Christmas in the Park, in Winter Park.  We had a great time at that one, despite the VERY cold weather.  We got blankets, wine and some food to eat and enjoyed the time with my friend Kelly, Jenn, Mehmet and Burak, as well as my brother and sister-in-law, Jim and Pam.  Oh and I can't forget Jenn's little guy Slade.  I don't have any pics of the concert in the park, but below is a pic from the Festival of the Trees, its of Brady and his best friend Abby, Kelly's daughter.

After a busy few weeks the week before Christmas seem to be peaceful and take its time getting there.  I was uber prepared for Christmas, all the shopping was done mostly online a month before, so I tried to enjoy the time with the kids and make the most of it.  It was also a little boring as my friend Kelly was in Turkey for two weeks.  I usually talk with Kelly most every day and that wasn't possible being half a world away.  Once Kelly returned on the 22nd everything seemed normal again, and then time flew.  Christmas eve was a busy day, we went to Kelly's to exchange gifts and see our friends and then off to my Mom's to spend some time with Grammy and Pop Pop.  We then rush home to do some cooking for Pam, Jim and Matt who came over for the evening.  Christmas day started out great, the boys seem to be pleased with all the loot they got and were surprised at the Ipod touches.  The whole day seemed to be great until about 4:30, then it hit me.  I got a slight "chemo fever" and was down for the count. Pat and the boys had dinner without me and I slept through till the next morning.

HERE'S HOPING 2011 WILL BE BETTER

December being over seemed to bring with it the hope that 2010 was gone and hopefully was bad news that came with it.  I started out 2011 with a slumber party, yep, a slumber party.  Though I was having some side effects, I was invited to spend new years eve with my friends Kelly and Jenn for a slumber party at Jenn's house.  Jenn was more than accommodating and we had a blast.  I rather enjoyed watching everyone get tipsy and silly.  While over at Jenn's house I called my brother and sister-in-law, Jim and Pam, who live around the block from Jenn.  Jim and Pam didn't have plans, so they came over and added to the fun.  We had food and drinks and the kids played and danced and I had a nice night.  At 12 we hooped and hollered and shot off fireworks. A good time was had by all.  We woke up the next morning and it was better than a bed and breakfast. Jenn had LOTS of yummy things to eat.  Eventually, we gathered up and headed home.

Onward

HERE WE GO AGAIN

I was so pleased that my first phase of chemo was over and was now on the cusp on starting a whole new regimen.  I was told by the Oncologist that this would be a breeze compared to the AC.  I would have 12 taxols at three week in a row spurts and then the fourth Friday would be Herceptin. Herceptin is special for tumors like mine that are HER2neu+. About 20 or 25 percent of breast cancers over-express the HER2 protein. Those breast cancers seem to be those whose growth is sometimes stimulated by this particular pathway, and Herceptin can interfere with this growth pathway. On December 10, 2010 I had my first Taxol with Herceptin and WOW that was interesting.  When you are given Taxol you are given a set of pre-meds in case of any allergic reactions or side effects.  They gave me Pepcid, Decadron (steroid) and 50mg of Benadryl. The Pepcid and Decadron went fine, but the Benadryl through me for a loop.  It was like an out of body experience and it was awful.  My legs were spasming and I felt so loopy.  My Chemo nurse Diane stopped my chemo and we waited a while for it to improve.  After about forty minutes the "weirdness" was manageable and we continued the chemo.  Diane contacted my Oncologist and requested for my dosage to be reduced for the next week.  Thankfully the Doc agreed and the next week was much better. In fact, I rather enjoyed the Benadryl as it made me sleepy and I got to take a good solid nap.

WE GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS

I have introduced you to some of my friends along this journey, new and old, however, the next group of friends that I will talk about are quite amazing.  For those of you who don't know, a few years ago I got interest in a hobby called Geocaching.  It sounds crazy, but you use a GPS to go out into the world to find Geocaches.  There are over 1 million worldwide and its is continually growing.  Geocachers have "handles" or nicknames, mine is foley44. Over the past few years of geocaching I have made friends.  I first met thelanes (Allen)  he lives close by.  Then one geocacher named imtomcat (Tommy) contacted me to see if I wanted to me he and his wife and we instantly became friends.  Flatouts (Vince and Janet) who are always there with words of hope and encouragement. Over the years I have met soooo many others along the trails and mostly at geocaching events.  At the events we eat, we talk, we have raffles and just enjoy the geofellowship of each other.  Two of my friends are Dale n Barb (Dale and Barb).  Dale and Barb started the Space Coast Geocachers Association (SCGA) and have a Geocaching store on Merritt Island and I met them for the first time at an event that they held. When I started my blog I put it out on Facebook and got immediate response from so many including all my geocaching friends. As time passed from my initial "coming out" I got lots of moral and Facebook support from the geocaching community.  I wasn't prepared for what came next.  I was checking my email and got an alert from Groundspeak (the Geocaching site) that a new event was coming up. I went to the cache page and found a link to a Facebook page as well.  The Facebook page gave it all away, the event was for me and my family and was the idea of Flatouts (Vince and Janet and Dale n Barb (Dale and Barb), I am still overwhelmed to this day.  They had special SCGA pink t-shirts made to sell, Dudewithjeeps (Dane and Anne) made BBQ sandwich's and they sold meal tickets and they had a large raffle of items. Oh, I forgot Barb made REALLY good chocolate chip cookies.  Below are some pics of the event.  These are some of the most amazing people that I know and I value and love all of them very much.  I am listing them here too, by there geonames of course.  Dale n Barb, Flatouts, Dudeswithjeeps, imtomcat, BeckiQuilt, Plunder Cats, Jackie and Bob, Bojab, kleetus, YankaBucs, 10ecmtgrl, cyclspin1, Beeortoise & LovelyLisa, Margarena, parkhoppers, familycachefinders, pjavellana, RonC, Ozzie321, kindbus, efrodo, jim32809, thelanes, KacheKlowns, SharrowFamily, Smeagol!, grubbsterscott, poosu, FirefighterSta24, War1man and Mimi, fegan, loxmudprincess, Clan Riffster, jerann, DRDM and Raider, skeletor10, Tony's Girl, Varelitt09, GrizzSteve, seastar255, the1acwright, The Jailbirds, stashseekers, loxahatcheekid, Sweetly_Broken, Possumme, kdog44.

Geocachers Galore

Riff and Janet

Bob and Paul

The Family

Me and Vicki



Tommy, Dale, Dana and Anne







A THANKFUL TIME

THE BIG SHOW

I love thanksgiving, it is actually my favorite holiday, event more so than Christmas.  So, needless to say, I was hopeful that because my last treatment of the AC was to be the week before Thanksgiving, I figured I would be in pretty good shape for the the big show.  The day before, I spent the majority of the day baking pies, cutting veggies and even cleaned house.  I woke on Thanksgiving morning feeling about as well as can be expected, a little tired, a little nauseous.  My mother in law sent me an Edible arrangement of fruit, so we made that and some homemade cranberry bread our breakfast.  Brady and I sat in front of the TV and started watching the parade and I got up periodically to work on the dishes for dinner.  All seemed to going well and I was looking forward to eating this glorious meal.  The meal, contrary to all past years, was just okay.  It was actually not up to my high standards and was disappointing.  Besides the food not coming out how I would have liked, everything tasted like crud thanks to the chemo. We ate and cleaned up and relaxed for a bit, then things went south really fast.  At about 6pm I started feeling VERY sick.  I had about a two hour episode of everything you can imagine (that's all I will say on that) and was done for the rest of the night. At about 9pm the doorbell rang...........Brady shouted up to me, "Mom, its Miss Heather", what??? Yep, my good friend Heather and her family were in town from Merritt Island for dinner with her husbands family and decided to stop by.   I hobbled out of bed and went downstairs, I really wanted to see her.  Ten minutes was all I could take, so I bid my farewell and went back to bed, it was soooo good to see her.