Cancer free!

Just got out of a meeting with the doctor, who told me I am tip top, good as new. Woohoo!

I danced out of there wanting to shout to everyone, "I AM CANCER FREE!" Funny though, I looked over at Mathilde and she was crying! I told her it wasn't fair if she acted the same whether it was good news or bad.

I have to confess, I was pretty nervous going into this one. In many ways, I feel great now, more healthy than I have felt in years, but there were a few things that have been bothering me. I started getting night sweats last week, and I found a lymph node under my jaw. The night sweats weren't too bad and the lymph node not that big, but they were enough to worry me considering the circumstances.

The night sweats went away the last few nights when I made sure I didn't eat anything before going to bed, and the doctor checked the lymph node and said it was a normal size. He showed me a picture of my PET scan and we could see I was spot free.

I go back again in three months. But as I said in my last post, that will be a different story. This one was the big one - the fight is over and WE won!

Thank you to everyone for your wonderful support through a rough time!

PET scanned today

I went in for my after treatment PET scan today. The PET scan is the thing I bitched about several months back because my shoulder hurt. I won't bitch today, but it still was pretty friggin' painful. Next time I am going to stretch days in advance, like Mathilde said I should, and I'm going to remember to take Advil like my Mom said I should. I guess I should listen more to the women in my life.

I have to wait until August 28th to get the results. I called to hear if I could find out earlier, and they said probably not (which means no). I have to say I am pretty nervous. This is sort of the deciding moment. I realize I am going to be having similar moments every third month for the next couple of years, but I think this one is a bit more stressful. The future scans will check to make sure the cancer hasn't come back - this one today is checking to see if the cancer really went away, or if it somehow managed to weather the chemo/radiation storm unleashed on it during the last 9 months.

My fingers are crossed

A theme song for me

A very nice birthday package arrived today from Scott, Lauren, Madeleine and Aiden (thanks guys - I love my Ninjas :-))

Included in the package was a letter from Madeleine that she made for me back when I finished chemo.


So cute! And I love who she addresses the letter to.

THANKS Madeleine!!

Paris responds to the white haired guy

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

80 days

It has been about 80 days since I started taking daily pictures of myself, thats 80 days and 2 weeks since the last chemo. Funny, it doesn't seem like it was 90 days ago.

You'll notice in the beginning the video is pretty jumpy. I wasn't careful enough about finding the same position and lighting - sorry about that. I actually stopped taking pictures on July 14, but I decided to take a few more today just to finish it up.

The quality in youtube was pretty grainy, so I have uploaded it here instead.

Little miss big mouth

I am having trouble getting myself out of vacation mode. I've fallen out of the blogging groove, and discovered that when you're out of the groove you don't just naturally stumble across interesting things to blog about. In fact, sometimes subjects smack you right in the head and you still don't notice. In hindsight, there have been a number of funny little tidbits I could have shared these past few weeks. Here's one of them.

I have been noticing that the loss of chest hair from radiation is actually pretty significant. I don't know know if I just haven't noticed before, or if hair has continued to fall out even after radiation ended. But basically, I have a D shaped semi-bald spot in the middle of my otherwise long (and pretty thick) chest hair. I'm not sure how noticeable it really is, but I notice - particularly when I step out of the shower right in front of the big bathroom mirror.

So anyway, this Saturday afternoon when I stepped out of the shower, I decided that if I trimmed the long, think chest hairs a bit, the bald spot wouldn't be so apparent. I grabbed the electric hair trimmer, adjusted it to what I thought was a suitable length, and got busy.

It took me about 3 passes with the trimmer to realize the length I chose was not so suitable. I had intended to go from "thick wool", to "light-weight cashmere". Unfortunately the setting I picked was more like "nearly naked". In a foolish attempt to avoid ending up with a completely bare chest, I decided I would sort of trim in a haphazard, unsystematic way - believing naively that this technique would just thin it out a bit.

I stood and looked at my handi-work and thought it actually looked okay. But I realized the hairs on my stomach were now considerably longer and darker than the hairs on my chest. I decided I had no choice but to continue down to my waste-line. It was about this time that Anna knocked on the bathroom door and told me dinner was ready. I said I would be right there. She heard the trimmer grinding away and asked what I was doing. I said I was shaving. I finished up as quickly as I could, got dressed, and went down to dinner.

So, we were about halfway through dinner, with Mathilde's Dad as our dinner guest, when Anna took advantage of a moment of silence to ask, "Daddy, why were you standing in the bathroom, naked, shaving your belly?" The little shit had been looking through the keyhole!

Mathilde cackled with laughter and looked at me with a big question mark on her face. Her Dad kind of cleared his throat and pretended he hadn't quite heard. Emily perked with curiosity and said "What? What did he do? What did he do?" That of course gave little Anna the chance to repeat her question, and then elaborate, happily watching me squirm with each little detail...I love kids.

Anyway, once the cat was out of the bag, I was kind of looking forward to showing Mathilde to see what she thought of my new do. Later that night I took my shirt off for her. She couldn't tell me what she thought right away because she really couldn't talk while laughing that hard. Apparently my haphazard technique didn't have quite the effect I hoped it would.

I got out the trimmer again and cut off all the mangey little patches I had skipped the first time. It looked better, but I still looked a lot goofier than I had before I'd started trimming at all. I now have a light, five o'clock shadow thing going on on some of my chest, with a MUCH more noticeable bald spot smack dab in the middle.

When I was done, Mathilde studied my new chest for a few moments, then patted me on the head and said in her most patronizing voice, "now we won't be doing that again will we?"

I guess not.