Tag Archives: Eli

AC Chemo Round 3

It has been a bit since I updated the blog. The main reason is, this round of chemo kicked my butt. A week and a half ago I went in for round three of four. I was feeling pretty well and optimistic that I was halfway done with the “yucky chemo”. The infusion, as always, went fine. My labs all looked decent, but I was starting this round with the lowest starting white blood count when compared to rounds one and two. I was starting at around 6.5. While this is considered normal, round one was a 7 and round two a 13 so I wasn’t sure if that would affect anything. After the infusion, I went home and just laid around the rest of the day. Unlike most, I am always very tired on the day of infusion. Most are not because as part of the pre-need protocol you are giving a heavy steroid which keeps most up the night of treatment. Not this girl!

I slept off and on treatment day and went to bed shortly after Eli that evening. He goes down like clockwork around 8:00 every evening. Like me, he loves his sleep. The next two or three days I don’t remember much. I slept….a lot. If I had to guess, it was an average of 20 hours a day. I can vaguely remember talking to the kids and Chris. I remember him talking to me and feeling like my eyes were rolling back in my head. I just could not stay awake.

Once I started to be up a bit more I was more nauseous than I have been. I had to take medicine four or five times and didn’t even do that with rounds one and two combined. Like the previous times, I lost my taste and had the weird metallic all smell, but it seemed a bit more intense. Nothing at all tasted good to eat. I’m fairly certain I skipped several meals that first week from either sleeping through them or just not being able to eat due to lack of taste. My go-to items seem to be shakes from Sonic and peanuts butter. Not the healthiest of options, but I am working hard to stay hydrated with water and Gatorade and get calories in how I can, when I can.

I believe it was Monday I started feeling a bit better. I was still very tired, but able to stay up most of the day. Then the next symptom hit. Insomnia. I had this in round two as well. I went several nights, I believe two, where I didn’t sleep at all. I then would have to compensate by sleeping during the day. It’s frustrating but manageable. A lot of people do that when they work overnight shifts. During the nights I would binge-watch shows and play games on my iPad. I wanted to do things around the house, but wanting and doing are completely separate things.

Today I feel human. I finally got my body back on the normal day/night schedule and have slept well the last two or three nights. I woke up when Eli did, at 6:00 am….yes, on a Saturday. We cuddled in bed for a bit and have been going strong since. I plan to cook some dinner this evening for the family, work on the mountain of laundry that has piled up, and have already placed the weekly grocery order. I will try to make the best of this time before round four takes me back down again.

Round four was scheduled to occur on Tuesday. I wasn’t thrilled with this because that meant I would sleep through Thanksgiving and when I was awake not be able to taste any of the yummy food. We have some sweet friends who invited us over for dinner and promised to handle everything so I didn’t have to…I want so bad to be able to enjoy that time with family and our adopted family. On Thursday of last week, I got a call that there was a scheduling conflict and they would need to change my chemo date. She said she could get me in late Wednesday or would have to push me to the week after Thanksgiving. After discussing my options with her, it was best that we push it until after the Holiday. I will be having my fourth and final AC chemo treatment on December 1. I will get to enjoy the week with Chris, who is off work, and all three of my boys! I will get to taste Thanksgiving….and for a few moments forget that I have cancer. For that I am grateful!

We are bummed that we can’t do our normal Thanksgiving trip to Arkansas, but with COVID, it’s just not safe for me, really, any of us. I’m not scared of COVID, but it’s real and for someone in such a vulnerable state, it is wise we hide out here and spend time with only those we are close to here. In the short-term it stinks, but when we must focus on still being around next year and for many years to come!

Jordan will be coming home soon and will be with us through the new year and we are thrilled to have him home! The next month is sure to be exciting. Yes, there will be ups and downs, but we plan to focus entirely on the ups!!!

If I don’t get another blog up before Thursday, Happy Thanksgiving. I challenge you to look at your lives and examine how God has blessed you in 2020. There is joy in every situation. Even in 2020. Even during a global pandemic or a cancer diagnosis, God is blessing us. How has He blessed you?

Happy Halloween!

This post is going to be a fun one!

2020 has been a year of cancelations and disappointments, but yesterday, Halloween, was the most normal it has felt in a while.

I woke up feeling decent. My major complaint over the past week has been fatigue. I have always loved sleep, but I have slept so much it’s not really enjoyable anymore. I am sleeping a good 16 or more hours a day. Most of this at night where I will sleep from 8:30 pm to noon or after only waking long enough to take Eli to daycare in the morning. Chris has been awesome through it all picking up the slack and allowing me to sleep all I need, but I can tell fatigue is taking a toll on him as well.

Thankfully, I was able to enjoy the Halloween festivities with my family. I got worn out and headed back to the car before Chris and Isaac, but I managed to get about 3,000 steps beforehand. The exercise felt great and the weather was close to perfect.

Enough about cancer, let’s talk about our fun Halloween! Our Saturday was uneventful up until time to go trick or treating. There was a lot of uncertainty as to how the community would react to COVID restrictions. Whether anyone would be doing the traditional handing out of candy.

Our fabulous church had a drive-through trunk or treat that started the evening off with a lot of laughs, waves from great friends, and tons of candy!

From the church, we headed to Sonic for dinner. It’s hard to pass up fifty cent corn dogs. We then went to a parking lot to wait for some friends and eat our dinner in a COVID picnic fashion.

Some great friends met up with us and we decided to go to a new spot to trick or treat that had a great reputation for good participation and tons of candy. This is where things felt normal. There were so many houses decorated and people walking the streets laughing and having a great time. Of course, everyone was trying to follow the rules. Candy was being given in creative ways to allow distance from the candy giver and the trick or treaters. Families were waiting for their turns to approach and moving aside to allow passing on sidewalks. Everyone had a wonderful time and the kids came home with millions of candy calories in their bags.

I am sure you are wondering about the costumes! Isaac had his mindset months ago that he wanted to be T-Rex. You know the one. The six-foot inflatable one. He had to hang his head out of the car at the church and gave us a ton of laughs trying to get candy with his little T-Rex arms. Here are a few of our favorite pictures of him

Hanging out of the car!
T-Rex wanted a bite of the full moon!

Eli was our “Baby Clown”. He wasn’t sure what all of the excitement was. Our first stop every year is across the street at one of our favorite neighbor’s house. In the picture below Eli was trying to figure it all out.

That is one of my favorite pictures of the night! This specific costume carries great memories and emotions for me. This costume came into our home 16 years ago when Jordan was about 17 months. He wore this costume. We attended Boo at the Zoo in Little Rock, Arkansas where Jordan won the cutest costume.

I kept this costume in my dresser for years. Not really knowing why I just couldn’t get rid of it. Then Isaac came along. When he was roughly the same age, 23 months, he wore it for Halloween. Again I kept it. Two kids had now worn it. It would be something I kept forever. We had no idea another baby would get to wear it. When we found out about baby number three and that it was a boy, I knew he too would wear this costume. So at 22 months, Eli became “Baby Clown” number three!

What I didn’t realize during all those years was that when I was roughly the same age my parents had dressed me up as a clown! Mom posted a picture a while back showing me as the original “Baby Clown”.

For your viewing pleasure, here is a collage showing all four of us! If you look closely at my picture, you see my hat had the same kind of hair. How cool! Also, this picture shows how much my boys look like me.

I hope your Halloween was nice and that the upcoming holidays bring much love and joy to your families! Halloween starts my absolute favorite two months of the year!

From Left to Right- Top: Me and Jordan. Bottom: Isaac and Eli

 

Am I Old or Not?

Before I get to explaining the title of this post I will provide you with an update. I am five days post-chemo and for the most part holding up well. I have had fatigue and in the last few days some nausea has set in. I have lost some taste, which is for sure a bummer when it comes time to eat. Things I love no longer taste good such as my beloved Dr. Pepper or Whataburger. I don’t need those things anyway, so maybe it is a blessing. I pray this is how each infusion will go, but I am fully prepared for the symptoms to increase as I continue to receive treatments. This is my off week of chemo. I will go on Tuesday to have blood work done to make sure everything looks good and then next Tuesday will receive cycle two of four of the AC chemo.

Now to the title of the post. This will require some back story, but it is something that has brought a laugh to me over the last few weeks.

Eli, who will be two in December, was a complete and total unexpected blessing to our family. When I became pregnant I was a young 34 years old. At my first appointment with the OB she informed me that since I would turn 35 while pregnant that I became a bit higher risk. In the state of Texas, a “geriatric pregnancy” is defined as anyone pregnant over the age of 35. I remember thinking, man, I thought I was in prime child bearing years at 35. Who knew that made me high risk. Throughout my pregnancy my age was talked about on numerous occasions. They continued to use the term geriatric, which absolutely cracked me up. The pregnancy was fairly routine. I did end up having gestational diabetes and high blood pressure. All this combined with my “old” age meant I would be induced and have our beautiful baby boy at 37 weeks. No complaints from me as that meant three less weeks pregnant and it put him coming in just under the wire to be able to claim him on our 2018 taxes.

Fast forward to today. I was diagnosed with invasive ducal carcinoma breast cancer roughly a week after I turned 37. From the very first visit with the surgeon to the visits with all the other physicians who would treat me, my age was again a factor. This time for the opposite reason. You are so young. It is not common for someone under 40 with no real family history to get breast cancer. Actually, the median age of a woman diagnosed with breast cancer in America is around 62 with most diagnosis being those age 55-64. So I am a good 20 years too young for breast cancer. This just proves that cancer does not discriminate or follow any rules. We know that my genetics are not the cause of my cancer, but we may never know what did cause it.

You often hear that God works in mysterious ways and His plan is perfect. I truly believe this. At the time we laughed at the thought of “starting over” with a new baby. We had a junior in high school, a third grader, and a newborn. Who does that? Now, two years later, I know exactly why Eli came along. I feel God put him in our lives for three specific reasons.

First, simply, our family was not complete. God knew we needed the little firecracker to keep things exciting! Both of his brothers adore him so much and the feeling is mutual. His best friends are his big brothers. his dad and I are pretty fond of the little dude as well. He brings so much joy to our home.

Second, I do not believe I would have found the cancer had he not been born. I breastfed Eli for roughly 9 months. I would like to say i am fairly in tune with my body. When I stopped breastfeeding I noticed that things on my right breast felt different. I don’t know how to describe it, it was just not normal. I brushed it aside thinking it was my body trying to dry my milk up and that the harder spot was a clogged milk duct or something. When that lump began to become larger and more uncomfortable I questioned if it was related to breastfeeding or something else. I still put off talking to my doctor for longer than I should. Hindsight is always 20/20. I have learned that tumors like mine take years to be able to be felt by hand. This mass could have been there while pregnant and while breastfeeding. I have no idea if feeding Eli caused it to grow faster or if it just made me more aware of what was going on in my body, but thanks to breastfeeding this beautiful baby boy, I found the lump. It was still nearly a year later before I brought it to the attention of my physician, because, again, I was making excuses for what it was. I mean, I was too young to have breast cancer, right? When a few other things had been ruled out, I knew it was time to speak up. So glad I did!

And third, God put Eli in our lives to get us through this fight. Not that my other two boys aren’t worth fighting for, they absolutely are, but having another kid, especially one so young, makes you want to fight harder. I want to see all my kids graduate high school, start college, get married, and have their own kids. To do that I need a good 20 more years in my own life. God gave us Eli, so full of energy, to help fight the fatigue that chemo would bring. It is hard to sit idle when you have a 22-month old terrorizing the house. It is hard to be sad and down on yourself when you have an innocent little guy giving you “cheesy grins”.

Look at the cheesy grin!

While one speciality might think I’m too old for babies and another that I’m too young for cancer, I know that God has a perfect plan for my life and I trust Him. The path may not always be clear and straight. There will be detours and obstacles, but we must trust in our Lord to get us to the end of the race.