Count your blessings

 I had a followup appointment with my Radiation Oncologist, Dr. Nolan, on April 12 to make sure all my burns were healed and everything was getting back to normal.  I filled her in on my “situation” with Dr. Younis and she told me she would do all my followups from now on and I didn’t have to go see him again…yippee. She said it only made sense since I was seeing her for the study I am participating in.  She also okay’d for me to have my portcath taken out…another yippee.

She also told me that based on the information I gave the nurse my “quality of life” was being greatly affected by the tamoxifen and since the side effects would last the whole time I am on tamoxifen (5 years), she strongly recommends I try another drug to help with the side effects.  I really hate taking medication of any kind but I finally caved today and got the prescription filled. The hot flashes during the day are not comfortable but are manageable, it is the ones during the night that are getting hard to deal with.  They are more intense and leave me shaking and chilled afterward.  Have 5-7 of those a night and you can forget about a “good nights rest”.  After 7 weeks without a full nights sleep I am getting a little cranky.

So instead of whining about having to take another mediation I am going to be thankful that there is a drug designed to help prevent a cancer recurrence and another drug to help with the side effects. Plus I’ve lost 10 pounds…bonus! Count your blessings.

Hello, is anyone out there.

I have been getting alot of grief over my lack of blogging and its starting to getting nasty.  People are starting to blog about my lack of blogging!!!(I won’t mention any names Kim).

Let me explain…Life got busy and I kind of got away from the whole blog thing.  Then once I was away for awhile it was hard to get back into it.  In fact, when I went to type this post I couldn’t remember where to go to start.

I started the blog to let everyone know what was going on in terms of appointments, treatments and results during my journey with cancer.  Then it kind of became a therapuetic tool for me where I could let out what was going on inside me.  I was housebound alot and it was a way for me to communicate especially when it took too much energy to talk on the phone or visit with someone. So when things started to get back to normal I kind of thought that maybe the whole blog thing had served its purpose.  I mean who really wants to hear the boring goings on at the Mullen home?

But I don’t want to offend all of you who travelled this journey with me via my blog.  I really, really appreciated all your comments and encouragement over the past year.  Some people seek counceling or go to support groups…I had my blog and the comments to help me.  So I will try to be a good blogger.  I can’t promise I will blog everyday but I will try to post something every now and then and let you all know how things are going.

I am feeling good now (well except for the whole tamoxifen thing but that is a blog for another day!) and life is returning to normal, meaning I am doing everything and running everywhere and fall into bed exhausted at night.

 Since this whole experience I am feeling this urge to purge (oh, that rhymes!!).  I want to de- clutter…get rid of toys the kids don’t play with,  clothes that don’t fit, just stuff! I only what to be surrounded with things that I really love. You know what I mean, I am holding on to “stuff” because so and so gave it to me or it belonged to someone or it was a wedding gift (almost 17 years ago) or my favorite is, “its still good, there’s nothing wrong with it”.

So since this “stuff” is still good I decided to have a yard sale on Saturday.  Well let me tell you its alot of work but we got rid of a bunch of stuff and made a bunch of money.  So I’m all fired up to have another one.  I’m going into every room and looking around with new eyes…hmmm what could I sell!

Randy and I are playing with the idea of moving and when I look around I don’t see alot that I would want to pack and move to a new house so stuff is starting to come down off the walls!!!  The next fine Saturday we will be setting our tables up again.

This time though I will be watching my helpers more carefully.  I had gotten these colored yard sale stickers with preprinted prices on them…50 cents, 1 and 5 dollars, etc. to make things easier.  I had gotten a few things tagged but  people started coming and I didn’t get everything done.  Andrew and Geoffrey really wanted to help and be involved so they set up the tables, lugged everything out and helped display things. I was so busy I wasn’t really paying attention to exactly what they were doing until a lady came up and asked me to hold two items for her while she ran and got $10.00.  The two items were a large fisher price tool bench with all the tools and a little tykes easel/chaulk board with the two chairs.  The boys had stuck $5.00 stickers on both items!!  Needless to say the lady got a great deal but not as good as the lady who got a Bombay Company mirror and matching shelf for 50 cents.  Needless to say the boys and I had a quick pow wow and they quickly ran around and took off all the stickers they had put on things.  I know they were just trying to help but from now on I will be doing all the pricing!