It Is The New Year.

Well, it’s been almost a month since my last update but I suppose we can consider no news to be good news, or at least not bad news? Since we last spoke, I had treatment 6 on 22 December and treatment 7 this morning. Counting treatments serves so real purpose, since as we understand it I’ll continue treatment until it no longer appears to be fighting the cancer, but it helps me to organize my days and weeks into more of conscious, purposeful series of actions than the chaos it sometimes appears to be.

 

Treatment on the 22nd was a little wild. I was at Lurie for 7 hours, and started off the cycle puking up my dinner and feeling really rough for a day or two. The evening of the 24th, Ruth and I watched a movie and my sister dropped off hot and delicious Chinese food for us for dinner. I wasn’t feeling well, but it still felt special. 

On the 25th, via the power of hot tea and pain killers, we spent the day at Ruth’s sister’s place for a small family gathering. I was a day of eating delicious food, drawing anime (who is the activity for? Me or nephews? No way to tell!), holding babies, and relaxing. We even returned the next day in our PJs for another round.

 The rest of the cycle was decent. The great part? Despite the busy season at work, I was able to take off the week after Christmas. It was cold so we mostly stayed in and watched movies. We received (too many!) wonderful gifts from our friends and family.

It was 100% chill until the 29th when I got a message from my work team that our JANUARY in person work event for 1000 people would be going virtual. All hands on deck to start prepping! Sure, no one likes getting called to your computer during vacation for work but I love my job, and want to put on a great event, and like the energy of an emergency. Plus I can still kick ass at work from the couch, so no major loss. :)

Back to treatment today, 7 Jan. So far so harmless. It doesn’t feel great to not feel great, but it could be worse.

The last cycle had a way shorter window of cold sensitivity/neuropathy so hoping for that to be true this time and maybe even a few warmer days so I can see the sun and try to get an exercise. A challenge of mine is that January is not usually my time to “start something new in the new year!” Because it’s smack dab in the middle of this work season. I usually wait til it’s over for the “new year new me” stuff until its over (this year it would be Feb 15), but I HAVE TO start building a muscle or two and gain some strength. Hoping to start will like ten mins a day like lifting soup cans. Gotta stay tough, ya know?

 

January 24th is my next scan. If 2022 could bring me some good news, I’d be thankful for it.

Xoxo

JD

Post script: these are the anime characters that my nephew helped me draw! I love them! 💖 (Full credit to neph Ridge for the sonic like guy at the bottom)