Friday follow up

 I'm halfway done with chemo, woooHOOOOOOO!

Thanks for all the prayers, you guys. The port has been working well. All I needed was a position change at my last visit, meaning the nurse tilted my chair back so my feet were elevated and that turned the blood draw from "sluggish" to "there! That's better!"

Getting weighed at the doctor's office is a loaded issue for a lot of people, but it cracks me up every single time because my doc has one of those in-floor scales like a vet uses where you try to fit ALL of your dog's paws on and make sure you're not also standing on a corner and getting them to sit and STAY and so forth. Each time I step onto this rectangle, it goes CHA CHONG as if I were a rhino or a hippo or something similarly humungous. It's such an ego hit. I've given up worrying about which shoes will be lighter or that I'm wearing compression socks, a sweater  AND a scarf and all the other ridiculous layers. My port is about two inches under my clavicle so I have to be in a tank top so I can slide the strap down my shoulder for the nurse to access it. But it's February in Ohio, hence the sweater and scarf. A collared shirt of any kind won't work because the fabric will keep ramming up against the IV stuff, and I tried a button down shirt but that hitched up weirdly too. I much prefer my scale at home, haha! Oh well. This too shall pass. I suppose it'll keep me humble, even as it makes me think of Law & Order...

I'm still picking up the taste/smell of chemicals more than I would be if I were not having chemo, which makes some things a little weird- like sugarfree gum starts off tasting a bit bizarre until it softens and then is dreadful once it's lost its flavor- but my appetite is good and most things are behaving the way they are supposed to. 

Only six more chemo sessions left. I'm trying to stay healthy, though I've been thrilled to be able to sub some. I spent Wednesday with some energetic kindergarteners and we had a pretty good day! I even stayed awake during their quiet time, so I'll count that as a win. Heh heh heh.

Weatherwise, things have been rather disgusting and depressing... we've had two Thursdays in a row of cancelled everything because of ice. Thing Two keeps laughing about his chemistry lab not happening because that is Thursday afternoons. At some point this week, I'd checked the weekly forecast and just about had a fit when it said 7-9" of snow predicted for NEXT Thursday. They've since changed that to 0, thankfully. This is not the east side of Lake Erie. Been there, done that. Thing Three gleefully slides in his tennies down the ice rink that is our driveway whilst I follow along in my huge boots with arms out, penguin style. A friend mentioned falling and said, "years ago I'd have bounced. Now I just thud." I hear that, and what I desperately don't want to hear is the *SNAP* of any bones! 

Energy level is much better than it was during last autumn's AC chemo, and it leads me to moments where I have to talk to myself:

Me: Why am I so tired? All I did was XYZ.

Myself: Listen here, you had chemo on Tuesday. Your body still has to use energy to clear out all the dead cancer cells, remember?

Me: Oh yeah. I guess I AM doing more than I thought...

Myself: Yeah. Go crash on the couch for a little bit!

And I: And then we can bake cookies!