Monday Not so Bad

I had alot of trouble falling asleep last night even though I was in my own bed for the first time in 6 days. It felt like a medicine thing-maybe too much decadron from the pre-meds for chemo. Dunno. Once you're home and in your own bed, you assume you'll rest really well, but it doesn't always happen. Oh well, all of those meds are slowly making their way out of my system. I like to think about my liver detoxifying all of that goobly-gook that got infused twice a day. Of course, my bone marrow and any stray leukemia cells are also reacting to the meds. The marrow is dumping off the ability to manufacture those precious platelets, red blood cells, and infection-fighting white blood cells. Fortunately, that is temporary.

When I got home yesterday, I had a few packages and nice notecards waiting for me. My pal Peggy, the potter, and her partner Naomi sent me a belated birthday package with a cool book about Max the dog and a new ceramic mug. I took a photo of the mug to put here on the blog. I plan to have my morning beverage in it everyday- you know the one that mixes Carnation instant breakfast drink with Ensure to fatten me up. I haven't actually gained any weight, but at least, I didn't lose more this last go round of chemo. I also got a book from my pal Billie in Asheville ("Full Catastrophe Living") and a hand written letter from Karen Nelson who did internship with me at UVa all those years ago. It's nice to come home to real mail and packages and notecards because believe me the bills and other unwanted mail accumulate too. Funny how I'm trying to just get done with chemo and get this leukemia thing behind me, and all the regular rigamaroll like bills continues on unabated. Well that really is how life is. It just keeps marching on. I know that I am exceedingly lucky. I am surrounded by people who love and support me. I have good doctors. I am relatively healthy if you exclude the leukemia. But most of all, I have a positive spirit that takes me beyond all of the here and now to a better future.

Tomorrow we do the twin switcheroo. Becky flies back to Atlanta after being here with me 12 days, and Beth flies in not a half hour later to help me for the next week. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have all of this support and sacrifice from everyone getting me to and from appts, helping me with meals, groceries, and all the household duties. I simply couldn't do this alone. Thank you all for helping me with every step of this.

I did run this morning. Boy I had one rough patch where I was so out of breath that I had to walk a bit. But I kept going after that, and it made me feel I'd accomplished something. It's hard being out of work, feeling like I don't accomplish anything (except trying to beat this leukemia but you know what I mean). So running gives me an accomplishment to better myself, to move just that much closer to being over all of this and back to my old life.