At present, I am taking it hour by hour, resting when I need to, doing when I need to, and putting my body's healing FIRST. I am currently in Houston trying to get back to a good balance, which is often difficult after any surgery. Any surgery is a trauma on the body and I'm just allowing my body to get through it. When I feel I can think clearly about all I've been through this week, I will update with details. For now just know that the surgeon was happy with the outcome, I am alive (which is no small deal at this point), and what I need is to just wait for my body to do what it needs to do. I hope to be able to travel back to my home, my boy, my parents, and my piggy by the weekend but I'm also allowing for flexibility just in case. Godspeed.[...]

A few days ago, when I was trying to explain this week to someone else, it occurred to me that the truth is this: we usually live month to month, scan to scan. When we get news like we got last week, we have to adjust and live day by day. Once I go to check in for surgery and through the end of my hospital stay, we will be living hour by hour. I think this is the absolute best way to describe it. One day, one hour, one minute at a time. Anything can change at any moment. Yesterday's appointment with the surgeon serves as testament.[...]

This week has seen some ups and some downs, but it's all good when there's an effort to live each day as fully as possible. Let's start with the upside, shall we?[...]

On Saturday we left our boy with his Nana and Papa and headed on down the road to Houston. Sunday Jason, his dad, and I went out to Galveston to Moody Gardens to see the holiday lights, ice sculptures, and other attractions because we obtained some promotional tickets and it was the last day for the holiday displays. If you haven't been there, you should go, even if it's not the holiday season. Year around the aquarium, rain forest, and other attractions are always open and a whole lot of fun! I need to give a shout out to our local NPR station for hooking us up with promotional tickets. We were a bit stressed out because this is a big week for me, so the fish, animals, and holiday festivities were quite soothing.  The next time you write your check to your local NPR station, please keep in mind that stations do a bit more than educational television and radio, they help people in so many ways![...]

I've had two checkups since my October appointments. First off, the radiology report from the October spectroscopy MRI agreed with what Dr. No Naps said, stable and indicative of post treatment effects. Just take my word for it that this is a good thing. I also had a scan (a regular MRI) in December, that came back inconclusive. Now, hold your ponies and don't freak out. This isn't anything new. We've been down this road and know how to navigate it. So...hear me out. I had my first surgery February, 2016, followed by radiation and chemo. "Post treatment effects" can show up for months to a year after that. Basically, if the radiation and/or chemo kill cancer cells, the dead tissue can sit in there. Since they are dying or dead, they are "leaky" cells and show up on MRI and other scans in a manner indistinguishable from tumor. In late 2017, there were a couple of indeterminable scans, so we did the spect MRI and it said mixed treatment effects and viable tumor. Fast forward to September, 2017, and that's when we decided to do the second surgery, which showed mixed tissue (Thus, verifying the interpretation of the spect MRI). After that there was more radiation and chemo. I'm still taking the chemo 5 days per month, followed by 23 days with no chemo. I actually finished day 5 last night, it didn't go as well as I prefer, and I'm still looking for the driver of the truck that apparently ran over me again and again while I slept. I'm fortunate to have both Jason and my mom to take care of me. They don't even complain when cleaning up my vomit in the middle of the night. Every time I go through this I think and then say aloud, "I don't want to do this anymore!" But then in a few days I always feel better and take it like instructed after 23 days off. [...]

On Tuesday afternoon Jason and I started out on our 8 1/2 hour drive to Houston. Shout out to Pam for watching over our furry boys as well as our relatively hairless one. We got to Houston around midnight only to go straight to bed and get up very early for my 7:30 AM mri on Wednesday morning. Last month the radiologist said that we needed to go with a spectroscopy mri because it's too hard to tell with a regular mri if we are seeing treatment damage or active tumor in the trouble spots. Therefore, I had the fancy one first thing Wednesday morning. This type of mri takes a little longer to do and it requires two doses of contrast dye. If you've ever had gadolinium rushing through your veins, you know that it's cold and makes everything cold as it rushes in (arm, arm pit, etc.) and can make your stomach a little upset. After the scan, we went to the blood lab so that they could do my regular blood panel, which tells us white blood cell count, platelets, and other general health markers. In general, the blood work is meant to test what treatment is doing to my body. After we left the blood lab, we went home to have some lunch because I wasn't scheduled to see Dr. No Naps until late afternoon. I was assuming that we were scheduled late in case the radiologist needed more time to read the fancy mri. We had some lunch and then the double dose of gadolinium caught up with me, requiring some serious bathroom time. [...]

As I prepare to leave for my October visit at MD Anderson, it occurs to me that I should write about a health update. I did not have a scan in August, but there were no weird symptoms or anything to be overly concerned about. However, the night before/ morning of August my checkup with the oncologist, I woke up in the middle of the night needing to pee so badly that only a little girl on her first road trip with dad can understand the level of discomfort. I tried to see if I could delay for a minute because I was clearly still more than half asleep. At some point I must have struck up the energy to get up and walk toward the bathroom. I woke up on the carpet with blood everywhere. I had no idea where I was for a moment and in the dark the blood looked like black liquid. When I figured out what was going on, I then crawled over to where my phone was charging and called Cassie, who was down on the first floor. When there was no answer, I started to crawl back toward the bathroom because I still had to go in the worst way. By the way, stone tile is hard and cold when you are crawling to the toilet. By the time I crawled back to the bedroom and to my phone, it was ringing. Cassie had woken up and saw that I'd called. I said, "I must have gotten up and fallen and I've cut myself." She ran up the two flights to check on me. She later said that she figured it was just a scratch or something. However, it was actually a gash in my chin that was so alarming to her, the three people at the front desk of the ER, and the doctors. If you'd only seen the horrified look on all of their faces! I'm pretty sure the medical staff aren't supposed to greet you with a gasp and mouth and eyes wide when they see your injury.[...]

I have had so many inquiries about why I've not updated everyone in a while, so I've decided to just do it in bits. It occurred to me after the 97th request that perhaps my readers are concerned about my health when they don't hear from me. Surely they are not concerned because they enjoy reading my thoughts that much. Right? Well, I'm still doing well. So well, in fact, that the state of Texas issued me a brand new shiny driver's license! And it has a photo that's not ten years old. It actually looks like me NOW because they took a new picture. It's the darndest thing...turns out you can actually drive with a visual impairment but not without a whole lot of hoops to jump through. Also, by visual impairment I mean I'm STILL missing most of my left visual field, but apparently that's just fine for driving.[...]

I guess a lot of people facing a serious life challenge spend time reflecting on their lives, fortunes, misfortunes, etc. I know I have. I've discovered that I have very few misfortunes, if you don't count the brain cancer. That's a real bummer. However, and I've written about this plenty of times, it's AMAZING how a calamity can lead a person to notice and appreciate the real fortunes in life. Since my last post I've been focused on work (I know, I can hear some of you telling me to slow down, but I get a lot of pleasure out of working) I'm continuing to adapt to my temporary Peli glasses and continuing to focus on self care in order to live every day as fully as possible. [...]

I just came off of 5 nights of the chemo pill and it was no fun at all. Now I get 23 days off before having to take it again. This is the second 5-day maintenance dose I've had since going back on it after the most recent round of radiation and it wasn't the easiest I've had but also not the worst. I did have a few nights of hanging out in the bathroom and luckily, Jason and I were in the same house. Hence, I had backup when I needed it. Next week we will have been married for 17 years. I bet when he married me, he didn't envision patting me on the back while I threw up or driving me 9 hours and back to my doctor appointments. He says he's learning to just accept that this is the life we have. I also told him today that I'm feeling "over" the chemo since all the research says it does little to nothing for my type of tumor. He agreed that he feels similarly to me. We are a little scared to discontinue but also a little pessimistic that it's doing anything but making me feel worse. If I can just wait a bit, get this out of my system, and feel a bit better, I think I will be happier and more energetic. Today was not that day, unfortunately. One thing has remained consistent: chemo hangovers are worse than tequila hangovers (by a lot). [...]