Hey Everyone,
I added a gadget to the main page so that you can follow the blog by email. If it works as it says it will, you should get notified by email whenever I update. Let me know if it doesn't seem to be working.
HB gave me a great idea to put a needs/wants list on my blog. I feel weird asking for help with things, but I've always been that way. I'll add that to the front page as well. I'm going to do some more editing of the layout in the next few days as well, to spice things up and get things a little bit more organized.
I'm heading to Ann Arbor today to get drained again. I called Dr. Khan's clinic the other day to try and get the draining moved to somewhere a little more local. They weren't very helpful, and told me that I'd need to get that done through my primary care physician. Well, I don't have one. I haven't been in Kalamazoo that long, and I haven't had insurance either, hence, no treatment before all of this started, and no primary care doctor. Grrrr... At least they're hooking me up with the paperwork for a handicap permit. I kind of hate asking for it, and I probably won't use it much, but on days when I just don't have the energy to do things, it will come in handy. I've got a call out to the West Michigan Cancer Center here in Kalamazoo to hopefully get all of my treatments moved here. They've run trials on the same cancer and drug combo I'm on currently, and since Dr. Khan is leaving in a month, I think this change makes the most sense. Sorry Ann Arbor friends, I'll probably be over there less frequently. I think my Urology stuff will still be over there though, so maybe I'll be around a little bit.
Spring is springing (finally) and it's getting me really excited to grow some of my own food. My brother is coming in a few weeks to help me put in a couple of raised beds. If any of you have any experience in this, I would appreciate any advice you could give me. The soil out here isn't very good with all of the walnut trees making the soil acidic, and I don't have a tiller, so I think this makes the most sense. I haven't done anything with a garden since I was a kid, but I remember how awesome it was to have fresh vegetables on hand all the time.
I've been reading a ton on cooking, especially charcuterie, and it's got me excited to do that as well. I don't know how HB will feel about random hunks of meat hanging for a few weeks at a time in the house though. That may be a tricky one to explain. :) I think all of this is just a tremendous case of spring fever. I've been feeling good because I've been off the cancer drug for a few weeks to let my body catch up. Today is the last day of that. Tomorrow I start the Sutent again, both with encouragement and discouragement. I'm hopeful that the drug will continue working, and maybe even start to shrink things, but it does sap my energy level a lot. I get pretty fatigued while I'm on it. When I started it, it took a week or two to start feeling that way, so with some luck, I'll have a few more weeks of good energy levels. The other thing that may (read most likely) have contributed to this increase in energy is finally figuring out what my body needs in the way of protein and calories. I do kind of feel like I'm just cramming food in my face all day. It's not all bad, but does feel like a chore sometimes. I'm eating 6 or 7 times a day. I kind of feel like the kid who gets caught smoking and the parents make him smoke the entire pack.
Oh, in great news, I finally (I've been waiting for a month now) got an appointment for the consultation for the shunt, which will hopefully help stop or limit the fluid build up in my abdomen. I go for that on Tuesday. Hooray.
Ok, now that this quick post is a becoming a novella, I'll leave it here. I'll post again when I get the changes to the blog the way I want them. Thanks for reading!
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