Winding down 2011

Well, Happy Holidays belatedly to you :) It was a weird one this year for me, hard to explain. I did the drive up from Florida on the 22nd and bam, Christmas was on. My Aunt Shelly and Uncle Butch put on a nice dinner and it was good to hang around the family for a bit on Christmas eve. My Moms was nice too on Christmas day. I kinda felt like a zombie on both days though... I recently switched up taking my pills from the evening to the morning and have been exhausted during the day lately. I wanted to try something different as before, when I took them at night, it was almost impossible for me to get up before 11-12 in the afternoon. I started getting a little freaked when the days started getting so short, I was only seeing daylight for 4-5 hours, not cool. So, the switching to the morning has resulted now in me being able to wake up earlier but being really tired during the day. So the new experiment is one in the morning and one at night. We'll see how it plays out.

As for my Mom, I got a bad phone call from her today. Apparently her doctor and her team dragged their feet in getting her tested for HER2 and when they did, they had a screw up on the spelling of her name or something idiotic... The end result is she didn't get an additional drug today (Herceptin) with her conventional chemo (4th infusion) that dramatically increases the efficacy of her treatment. This means apparently that she's going to have to get an additional 4 treatments. This is hard to believe and I'm at a loss as to what to say. Such an incredible appalling mistake. Why there's not a check and balance system there I have no clue. Good Lord. You can't buy back that time but the hope is that the Herceptin has great effect and all of this is just a bad memory.

Good time to change the subject I think...

Even though it's really cold here in Michigan, I had a pretty nice experience tonight at the park behind me where I let Chili fly around without her leash. We went out tonight for the first time in a while as the park got flooded with the warmer temperatures the last few days. Tonight was below freezing (30 degrees F) and the ground and the water froze. It was pretty neat walking on the frozen ground, kinda like a hard sponge and with the lights around the park, the frost on the ground was literally sparkling, quite beautiful.

I had a scary experience earlier today however... I think Chili has been getting a little cabin fever. I let her out earlier today but forgot to lock my gate and found later that she decided to take a stroll down the street on her own which she never does. It's always her standing at the front porch barking letting me know I left the gate open, no big deal. Today she scared me though because like I said, she never runs away and it was pretty damn cold out. My mind of course went to all of the worst scenarios and I was a little freaked. I had to run out and yell for her 8-10 times before she came running out of someones yard down the street. I need to make sure to lock the gate for now on, can't afford any more drama!

So, in the spirit of relaxing, I plan to do a good amount of it along with some early new years resolutions like going back to yoga (bought a $25 groupon for 25 sessions, not too shabby ;) I've also just changed the strings on my guitar to these nice Elixirs which were a Christmas present. Those things are buttery! Anyway, I'm thinking of taking a few lessons to try and learn some new skills. I've been stagnant in my playing for so long now... I want to learn how to play some slide or some bluegrass or something fun. I've got lots of other things I want to get into but going to wait to see how this fatigue thing plays out so as to know how much I can take on in addition to working on these two houses and my other projects.

I've also got to work on trying to put on some weight! Funny, most people are trying to lose weight after the holidays. It was a little scary getting on the scale yesterday and weighing under 16lbs. I won't say how much under except I need to get busy eating, don't like being this light. I feel fairly strong but don't like the way I look and how cold I get. I wish I had the cash for a personal chef, that'd be sweet! So, I've got to start forcing myself to eat more (I skipped a few meals down in Florida working my butt off on my place). I've also been dealing with these mouth sores which makes it pretty painful to eat. I think I also have to start eating some things I've been avoiding lately, trying to adhere to an anti inflammatory diet. Once I get back up to closer to 170, I can get on the healthy diet again and just work to maintain it.

I guess one of the advantages of having cancer is that I never have to worry about getting fat, haha ;)

So, I think I'm going to check out here, just realized it's almost 3:00 in the morning, yikes. I took a long nap today, thus the long night I guess.

Starting to look forward to the new year and with it all of the great things that will hopefully happen in 2012.

Cheers!

Chris

BTW, RIP Mike Reed, I'm happy for you now that you're in a better place :)