Monday, January 13, 2014

Long Overdue Updates

The last blog that I wrote was back in early December and I was just about to start my round of chemo while taking Z-pack as well.  I thought going into it that it was going to be the roughest round that I have been through in a while but it turned out not to be the case.  While I'm not ready to say that it was the easiest round that I have even been through but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be although Jenny ended up getting a stomach virus that week so we were quarantined to our respective parents' homes.

Christmas for us was fun.  We always hang out with Jenny's family on Christmas Eve.  We have dinner, look at lights, and then stop by my parents house.  On Christmas Day Jenny and I do our own thing at our house in the morning and then head to Jenny's parents to open gifts and then off to her grandmas for just a short while.  We then meet up with my family for lunch and spend the rest of the day over there.  It was a good Christmas this year.  We both got everything that we want and had a great time with all both of our families.

Steven and I made a trip in early January up to Chicago for a Bears game.  Unfortunately, Jay was still hurt and we didn't get to see him play.  We still had a great time up there despite the wild chill at the time of the game was -10.  I can honestly say that it was the coldest that I have ever been in my life.  We went up to the game with 6 other guys from Greenville and had a blast getting to know them and hanging out with them.

For New Years this year we went to Nantucket for dinner and then a champagne toast at midnight.  Jenny and I went with Steven, Haley, Fran, Ryan, and Natalie.  We had reservations at 9:15 but didn't get seated until close to 10:20.  Despite the delay in our reservation we still had a really good time.

My last visit with Dr. Edenfield was in mid December and we talked about the near future and my upcoming schedule around the holidays.  I was supposed to have a round of chemo that started on New Years Eve but Dr. E was nice enough to let me have an extra week off this time.  The extra time was great and made me feel normal again.  This was only the 2nd time that I have had over the one week break that I normally get in the past year.  The other time was when I decided that I hadn't been to the ER in a while and wanted to go back and check on everyone after I sliced my finger open.  One week extra is like a lifetime for me so I took full advantage of it, even though it flew by.  The round of chemo that I just had that ended last Wed was actually one of the easier treatments that I have had.  I think that the extra week helped me have a bit more energy this time.

Jenny and I both got flu shots back in Nov. hoping to avoid that in our house, but shocker we didn't.  Jenny was pretty sick last week due to the flu and finally started to feel better by the weekend although today was pretty rough for her.  We had a quiet weekend to help make sure that she got over it easily.

Back to the chemo side of things.  I am scheduled to stay on the same regime for the near future.  With my CEA counts not being 100% reliable anymore I will probably have another CT Scan sometime in Feb. to make sure that everything is still stable.  If anything should change then we have already discussed the next step which would be a drug in pill form.  Of the drugs that I have had over the past 4 years the pill based have their side effects but none that relay to nausea.

Jenny is back in school and "only" taking two classes while working full time this semester. It should be interesting though considering that she is taking Microbiology and will be working with staph and strep and other viruses in her lab section. She seems to really like her class though so hopefully everything will be smooth. We also have the house on the market and are looking around for our next possibility, hopefully something will happen sooner than later because keeping our house picked up and clean constantly is not an easy task, you don't realize how messy you are until your house is for sale.

Before I end this post, which is one of the longer posts that I have written in a while, I wanted to tell everyone that it is getting close to that time again.  The annual Tee It Up For Cancer / Brightlife golf tournament is just around the corner.  With Jenny starting school again, a couple of folks have been really great and offered to help me put it together for this year.  So, I wanted to thank Ali, Erin, Berkley, Megan, Alan, Steven, and Joe for all of their help so far this year.  We are off to a great start and will have some amazing things at the silent auction this year.  So please put Monday April 21 on your calendar so you can come.

I hope that everyone has a great rest of the week.
Tim

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