I've got good news

As previously seen on Nannypea's Nutty Noggin the ER Dr thought I was on drugs. He assured us everything was OK, probably just a drug interaction but he ordered some test just to make sure.

The nurses came in and took enough blood that I thought I'd need a transfusion. Then another nurse showed up and asked if I was ready for my CT Scan. She asked if I could walk the oh... 200 feet to the CT room. We walked over, did the test and I was back in my little room in 2, maybe 3 minutes. No one could believe it was already done.

So we settled back and started chatting about the Presidential debate. It was about to come on and we were trying to decide who would "win."

The Dr came in acting a little weird. He found the TV remote and the mute button, mumbling something about not getting distracted. He got a little stool and sat down in in the middle of the room. He then announced "I've got good news."

We all sat patiently waiting.... "Your blood test look great"..... "but you have a brain tumor."


Queue mass hysteria and me ordering a round of Valium for the room.

This is depressing

I had to send a letter over to Prudential to get my LTD approved. They wanted Dr's names, what they were treating me for, what treatments, how I felt and why I thought I couldn't work. It was 3 pages long and pretty depressing when I read it all. It was even padded, told the whole truth the entire time. :(


If that wasn't depressing enough the Pharmacy called to schedule my next chemo delivery. I'm still not eating and having a hard time taking meds and keeping anything down. I'm really not in the mood to even think about doing it all over again.

Remember to breath through your nose

If you're feeling sick on your stomach it helps to breath through your nose to ease the nausea. This is all fine and good unless the thing making you nauseous is a smell.


Chemo is kicking my butt. No matter what I eat, it gives me a tummy ache. I don't like food, don't care about eating. Anyone that knows me, knows this is not normal.

It better be my hair - I paid for it

I got some new hair this weekend. KJ picked me up and we meet Lisa P and her friend for a fun afternoon of getting me some hair. We had a great time and learned a lot.

• tracks are the pieces of hair that are braided into your hair if you get a weave
• KJ does not look good in short blond wigs
• I don't look good as a blond
• Lisa P looks really good with short hair
• I look better as a brunette with long hair
• KJ is a better blond and looks strange as a brunette
• None of us looked good as a red head

I learned how to put the wig on but not sure I can do it myself. Well, I can get it on but not sure it will stay on. I'll have to play with it and let you know.

PS > Back to Chemo so the stories might get slower.

PSS > I get asked a lot how much I sleep. It's generally 10-12 hours a night and then another 2-6 hours for naps. Max times is when I'm on chemo and the week after.

All Clear!

I had my first MRI since I completed radiation last week. I got the results yesterday and everything was great! No new tumors and the area is healing as expected. I'll continue on chemo for the remainder of the year (until Jan of next year actually) and get my next MRI in 3 months. Now we're just waiting for the all clear on Ronnie's blood work.

Funny for today.

We decided to hit a local burger joint for lunch. Having never been there we went in and read over the menu while waiting to place our order. When it was finally my turn, I ordered the Cheeseburger Value Menu. The girl kinda looked at me funny, I was looking at the menu and that's what it said so I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong. Ronnie finally stepped in and said I'd like the Cheeseburger Meal. Wow - that was a close one!

My Super Spidey Sense

I have a Super Spidey Sense; my sense of smell. Now this can be good because I can smell the smallest of odors and get us out of the house in case of an emergency. This is also bad because I can smell the smallest of odors and they make me sick on my stomach.

Smell in Point:

We had a BOGO (Buy one Get one) coupon for Ruby Tuesday. I tend to eat more/better at lunch so we decided to hit our local spot around noon. We walked in got seated in the No Smoking Section and sat down. I immediately got up and said - Nope. Can't sit here it smells too musty. I mean like something had been spilled on the carpet and had been never been cleaned up, just allowed to dry, eventually - over and over and over again. It was GROSS.

Ronnie just says, well walk around and find a spot that smells better or we won't eat here. As I walk off I hear him say to the waitress "She's on Chemo" cause you know that makes everything OK.

I walk around the restaurant and it all smells the same. So I walk back and sit down, tell them I"ll just suck it up. Ronnie knows this just means I won't eat and we'll be wasting food and money. The waitress suggest I walk over to the tables by the windows by the front door. She explains that they normally get more fresh air and normally smell better. I walk over there - it was by the bar so I had not checked it out. I had assumed they would smell like smoke. It was better there! It was still a little funky smelling but not overwhelming.

Therefore we were able to have lunch and satisfy my super spidey smell.

Chemo is here!

This is the last week of my chemo cycle. That means I feel as good as it's going to get. I'll start the next round of chemo next week so things will go down from there. The UPS man showed up again today and dropped off my next round. Here's how it looks:

It comes in a big UPS Express box:

Then wrapped all up in Bubble Wrap. At least I get to pop all the bubbles!

Inside the bubble wrap are 5 bottles, each marked Day 1 through Day 5. Just in case I couldn't figure that out.

Inside each bottle is 3 pills; 3 normal sized pills.

All this packaging for 15 pills that would have fit in a bottle 1/3 of the size.

Be Very Quiet, I'm hunting Rabbits

Ronnie's hunting season for the Evil Deer Overlords had been absolutely ruined by his cancer and surgery. He had been conspiring with friends on how to save the season before he even went into the hospital.

They figured out he could hunt in the afternoon after bringing me back from my radiation treatment. It worked perfectly because I slept all afternoon. The only change he had to make was to keep his mobile phone on vibrate so IF I had a problem I could call him.

One afternoon he's waiting for the King of the Evil Deer Overlords to show up when this happens:

buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz
Ronnie: (whispering) hello
Lisa P: (whispering) Hey, it's Lisa P. Why are we whispering?
Ronnie: (whispering) I'm in a tree
Lisa P: (whispering) Um, then why are you answering your phone?
Ronnie: (whispering) Just to make sure Nannypea is OK
Lisa P: (whispering) I was just calling to make sure Nannypea was OK

Evil Deer Overlords!

We are safe from the Evil Deer Overlords! Hank has made sure our house is protected from any invasion.

What this actually means is that I got no sleep last night because Hank wanted to play outside and bark at deer all night.

Here is our Protector keeping a sharp watch over our home.

Well Yes I am on Drugs

Here is how I start my day. Everybody always thinks I'm kidding when I say I start with a handful of pills but I'm not. OH yeah, eat something before you take them too or else you're going to get very nauseous.

Another tip: Brush your teeth before or it's not happening due to nauseousness.

Here's how I end the day. Of course after dinner, gotta have something on your stomach.

If I'm on Chemo, it has to be taken on an empty stomach. That means I get to take all these at least 2 hours before the chemo. Makes life kinda difficult when you don't want to eat.

Note: These are all prescribed and/or recommended by a Dr. There are no vitamins or extra stuff shown. This is also the minimum I take. I may have to add more stuff if I have issues.

Are you on drugs?

The day of "the seizure" KJ and I were on the way to meet some friends for dinner and drinks. The seizure hits, the ambulance shows up and off to the ER we go. Well, off we go after KJ tells the ambulance which ER we wanted to go to. I'm not sure why that is even a question, duh, the closest one!

We get to the ER and eventually the ER Dr. shows up. He starts asking the normal questions with a few different ones scattered in. Stuff like: have you taken anything different today? Have you eaten anything different? Sure you've not taken anything else? Over and over.

I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out if I had taken something different today. I do remember I had taken some sinus meds and told him about that but he keeps up. Finally he asks the question: "Do you take recreational drugs?" That was an easy one : NO!

It was so obvious that when he walked out KJ looked and me and said can you believe he keeps asking you about drugs? He came back and started again! I finally told him I wish I had taken drugs so he'd stop asking me about it. He kinda let up after that.

I thought I heard the last of my "drug usage" but when Mom and Philip, my Step-dad, showed up he looked at them and said, "Don't worry, it's probably just a drug interaction."

How I look now

Here's what my head looked like about 3 weeks after surgery. It was nice that the neurosurgeon didn't cut off all my hair, just enough to do the surgery. But you can see what i mean by my head looked like it had a miniature rail road track running in it. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/qHbyizn8VbxzXFg0FWJXHQ?feat=directlink



*I decided to link in case some people didn't want to see

Now here's how my head looks now. After Radiation, chemo and 4.5 months after sugery:
This is the left side where the radiation caused my hair to fall out:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/0jaAEoRb1gdCsYsJKHTrJw?feat=directlink
I didn't realize that the radiation went in one side and comes out the other, here's the other side:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/moS59Cip23NVwyKboNrwsw?feat=directlink