Head and Feet

I can no longer brush this off as coincidence! Clearly, Sock Angels are real! It started out slowly, a couple pair in a cute bag, a couple more pair a few days later. One pair, one day. Three pair another day. Hmmmmm, socks? Well, people want to reach out and do something. Socks are great, comforting. But then they kept coming. Most of them were with a signed card and a few of them were anonymous. For the longest time I thought it was a funny coincidence, and I would say to a friend…Have I told you about my socks? Then, duh, I realized all the ones that were signed are showing up from my last little group of Salmon families, now big ole 2nd graders! Now I know for certain, that Sock Angels are real! I love the thought of one of my Sock Angels getting ahold of the other Sock Angels and hatching this plan. I have a big smile on my face thinking about this whole thing. These supportive families, their connections to each other and their care for me. Every pair of socks is an expression of love and I feel it! All the way down to my toes!! And for the record, I think there are 16-19 pair…I’m wearing them so they are not all clean at the same time to count! Thank you, my Sock Angels! I love you, too!

Socks, to hats…the hats are coming back out. This time it happened literally overnight and is so very intense. If I remember correctly in 2014 my hair started falling out slowly. I think I got away with wearing hats to hold my hair in for at least a week or so. Not this time. My hair is falling out at a ridiculous rate. I picture a cartoon character with hair that puffs up and then shoots out. That is how this feels. On Wednesday I had a hair or two fall, unusual for me. On Thursday I ran my hand through my hair and about 10 strands came along. I repeated this a few times on Thursday and kept hats on my head just to save our house from being covered with hair. Friday was awful. Since then there is no limit to the number of hairs I can manage to collect as I run my fingers, even gently through my hair. I feel like, if given enough time, I could easily get all the hair off my head, and I had a lot of hair!! When I change hats I use a sticky roller hair collector to try and empty out the one hat, then put on a new hat and I have to collect the hair off my clothes as so much falls out just in that simple process. Tomorrow Betty is going to take me to the Cancer Care Alliance in South Lake Union. They have a lovely shop next door, Shine. They sell a variety of things that might help support people fighting cancer and they also have a hair salon run by volunteers to shave heads. No cost, they are kind and generous people. I really don’t want to pull out all of my hair. I need to get it shaved. I was in a deep dark funk the better part of yesterday. There is something about the hair that is just plain sad. I have such an arc of emotions about the cancer itself, a huge range and strategies for being with and holding and handling those emotions. But when it comes to my hair, it just makes me sad and it makes me cry and I think that is a really good thing because I do not think I cry enough these days. I might be catching up on that deficit during these final days with hair.

Pain and Love

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that over the course of a couple of weeks, having not had any acid reflux for months, I finally got the go ahead from Dr. Kaplan to stop taking the Zantac one week and then I was able to stop the sucralfate the next week. It always feels like a small victory to go off any of the meds. I have not had “the pain” since before the hospital visit in September. So it made sense to let those meds go. Unfortunately in less than a week some pain started showing up. It started out in my ribs or along the side of my trunk and I did not associate it to the ulcer or the acid reflux. But within a couple of days it was spot on where my old pain was, right along my esophagus. I was so disappointed. So Wednesday morning, waking with some of the pain, I took a Zantac to see if it helped. Yes, it did. That afternoon the pain was pretty intense, I called the doc and got back on sucralfate as well. The pains have subsided. Here are just a few of the unanswerable questions: Is it the coil? Is it the old ulcer where the coil was living? Is it a new ulcer? Is it the taxol or the cyramza causing my gut some trouble? Was I on those meds too long and have an imbalance in my gut that needed support transitioning off the meds (a question for Dr. Standish!).  Right now I have to just leave those questions unanswered. The fact is the meds are treating it, relieving the pain, letting the gut heal…again…I see Dr. Standish this Saturday and I know she’ll have some opinions about the next time I get to try and go off those meds.

This week, I go in for my shot on Wednesday to boost my white blood count. I go in for my infusion on Thursday, this will be my third taxol and 2nd cyramza. Then I’ll lay my bald head down to rest!

Recently there has been a great deal of illness at Michael and Maggie’s school, so they have been staying  away from us for a while. On Friday the neighbors were having their goodbye pizza party and the kids wanted to see them to say goodbye. Neither of them were feeling sick, so they washed their hands a lot and wore masks when they were in the house. We had a great evening. I stayed away from the party, and hunkered down in our house, but you know I managed to get a little pizza out of the deal! We had time to just hang out and have a great visit with the kids.

Thank you Sock Angels and everyone else who is sending us your prayers and positive energy. We are soaking it up.

Love,

Janet