Good news, folks. Tonight I took my third dose of my new medication. I spent some time on the phone last week coordinating with all the different players: my oncology team, the manufacturer, the billing liaison, the pharmacy and the insurance company. All of it was worth it though, because insurance is covering nearly all of the cost of the drug. Praise the Lord...

Today should be the start of a new chemo cycle, but that’s not the plan. And I have to say I’m quite happy for the chemo break — chemo, while marvelous for all its cancer-killing ways, is a doozy to cope with week after week, month after month, year after year. Last week, I had my regularly scheduled PET scan and it showed a mixed result. I had...

On Saturday night we decided to go out to dinner. We eat out more these days since I don’t have the gusto for planning/shopping/prepping/cooking/cleaning meals. (We all miss my cooking though.) Even though it was Father’s Day weekend, my family let me choose the restaurant since I really wanted to go somewhere I could get some yummy vegetables —...

Yesterday I started another chemo cycle. Let the cancer-killing commence! I am continuing to experience exhaustion as my primary symptom, and it makes for a lot of challenges with doing much of anything. In addition, walking and talking make me cough so I am thoughtful about how and when to do that also. And coughing is exhausting, so the whole cycle is repetitive...

Today I went and got a massage to try to get some relief for my back spasms. At the beginning of the session, I had to give an abbreviated medical history so the therapist had a pretty solid download of what’s going on with my body. At the end of the massage, she had the nerve to look me in the eye and tell me that my back, “would be a lot better off if...

I feel and I know has been my latest prompt with the girls when I want to hear something meaningful about their days. “I feel” addresses the feelings they are having:-I feel… sad that no one talked to me at lunch and it’s like I have no friends-I feel… worried I’m not going to make the project deadline-I feel… smothered by a...