Happy Sweetest Day!

Since I can't send a Hallmark card to each one of you, I thought I would blog my good wishes to you instead. I think it's very sweet that all of you check in here from time to time to see how I am. And on a gloomy Saturday in October, it's especially nice to remember all the many sweet people who touch our lives.


Yesterday I had labs, saw Dr Kumar, and had a treatment. The labs came back showing my red blood cells have taken another dip. I may end up going in for a blood transfusion early in the week. We did not check the tumor marker number, but will do so in two weeks. That's the number we WANT to see drop! White blood cells look fine which is always good.

When I saw Dr Kumar we talked about a number of different things I've been experiencing, the strangest of which are the blood clots in my mouth. Three times I have had it happen where I taste blood and then discover a clot. Yes, it's as gross as it sounds. They are about the size of half a peanut. It is most likely caused by one of the meds and I am now taking one Bayer tablet each morning to prevent clotting. Brian said he is going to have to build me a bigger shelf for all of my medicine bottles. We also talked about this pain in my right thigh/femur. For now we're going to monitor it and see if it becomes more of a constant thing, but it could be a side effect of some of the radiation I had to my back. If it gets worse or is problematic on a daily basis then we may do an x-ray or scan. I sometimes walk with a limp because of it though.

The treatment itself went well enough. The nurses were friendly and wonderful as always. No surprises or changes, except I got the Zometa this week also. I haven't had that for six weeks now, whereas it used to be every four weeks. Chemo pills start up again tomorrow (she says dreadfully).

Last night we had a visitation at the funeral home in Oostburg. Afterwards Brian and I came home and had a conversation about our own funerals/burials. It was not a conversation either one of us has wanted to have, but the evening just lended itself to finally sitting down and discussing some things. It certainly isn't anything anyone wants to talk about or think about, but it was important. And it seemed to lift another weight from my shoulders. Next step is to actually follow through with making some of the plans. Like I keep saying...you take care of all of these uncomfortable things, and then you just file them away for safe keeping until they're needed---no matter how far down the road that may be.

Hug all your sweeties today that you can!