A week later, the rollercoaster continues

It's been a week and a day from my last chemotherapy session. :D

When I think of that, I feel almost giddy. It's such an incredible feeling to know that I am done with that portion of my treatment. It's like being on the fun part of the rollercoaster. Is there a fun part? I really do not like rollercoasters in real life. Still, it's coming off a big hill, without seeing the huge rise to the next one around the corner.

Yet, here I am now. I'm wishing the ride was over bc I sincerely want to get off this thing.

I took Rachel out yesterday. We visited another dance studio. I do like this one, but she'll have to cut back on the number of classes. There are no back to back classes available for her and she'd end up going more days for fewer classes. But, it's owned by one of the most well known ballerinas of our generation and all the teachers appear to be top notch on paper. She'd get a strong ballet experience here, but not nearly as much in jazz. Decisions, decisions... Anyway, after that, we went to the mall for a movie and lunch. I was completely exhausted when we got home at 2pm. As if we had been out all day and all night. It's a very small mall and we didn't even walk 1/3 of it. We only went to Pottery Barn Kids and Williams Sonoma (I have a weird kid.. she spent a good 5 minutes looking at the knife display in Williams Sonoma and then mooned over the new Thanksgiving dishes). I want my energy back. I wanted to keep going. This was all I could handle. I thoroughly missed my normal daytime nap and was exceedingly crabby by 6 or 7pm. I am so tired of doing nothing all day but doing much of anything is exhausting.

Another hard part of the ride is recovering my immunity. My counts have all been pretty good but it is still slow going. I'm relatively anemic, but nothing outrageous and not enough to require additional meds to boost my RBCs. My WBCs have stayed in fighting range and I did mount a response to this initial upper respiratory tract infection. I STILL have that cough and a little bit of a sore throat. The thrush is now starting to disappear. So, yes, things are getting better, but they are still ongoing. I have 5 and 1/2 weeks for it all to go away. Sounds like a long time but not when it's been going on for a good 3 weeks already. I'm becoming religious about carrying and using Purell, the hand sanitizer. I used it before, but now I use it constantly when I'm out of the house. I cannot afford to catch another thing. In reality, I need to have this cleared by the 14th when I go for pre-admission testing. That testing includes a chest x-ray! Yikes. A little too soon.

I'm letting Miss Rachel sleep in this morning. She's had a tiring week at dance for 8 hrs a day. She's loving it, but it is hard work. It's amazing how much she's learned in just the first 4 days. She has to demonstrate everything she's learned at night when she gets home. I can see the difference in her ballet technique already. And the hiphop and break dancing- it's amazing! She can pop and is already spinning on her HEAD! If I could just harness a fraction of her energy, I'd be in great shape! Today, we are going to take it easy (at least I am). I want to spend a little time working on getting the worst of the house picked up. Howie is running a 20 miler this morning as part of his NYC marathon training, so it'll be just as girls most of the day. Then tomorrow, Rachel and I are going to see "Grease." I did say I was taking things easy, right? I really am. I'm going to take things in little bites (umm... that's literal and figurative in the post-chemo world) and I'm going to get that nap in if I need it. :D

Almost 8 am.. time to start the morning meds. If you're keeping track, I think I'm down to 9 (Pepcid, aspirin, Flonase, Advair, Singulair, Mucinex, Colace, fluconazole, and Avelox). :D