Twenty-three

So... when I said Spacey Casey was accepting donations to be produced in 3D, I never imagined...

Spacey Casey gets to go to Cape Canaveral to see the Space Shuttle STS-119/Discovery launch on February 12th. I get to see it from inside the compound in a VIP area that is the closest civilians are allowed to get to the launch (6 miles away, which sounds far but keep in mind everything involved is HUGE and the places most sightseers go are about 10 miles away).

I'm so excited, about all I want to do is hold onto stuff and jump up and down and squeal. Must be left over from the little girl in me who wanted to be an astronaut for as long as she can remember. Every time I close my eyes I can hear the flowing roar I hear on TV, and imagine the rumble of all that fire lifting the shuttle. This has mostly been #1 on my "bucket list" forever but have never gotten around to it.

Spacey Casey owes it all to the Queen of Kahn-doh 48, my love Sandra. She found a budget way to do it and arranged the finances. She's very much too good to me.

Cancer and wound stuff continues as before. It shouldn't be too hard to travel since it will all be planes, shuttles, and possibly a wheel chair. Half my bag will be wound care shit though. The wounds continue to get a teeny bit better the every couple of weeks they're evaluated. I'm getting used to taking care of them, but what's getting more and more on my nerves is the smell. A mix of sweet BO and old blood. It's disgusting. Luckily, most people can't smell it because it isn't strong enough, but I'm only a foot north of it ALL THE TIME and I definitely can. Nothing masks it.

Enough whining. I get to go to a launch! /squeal

Cheers

Twenty-second

Woot! Two pints of energy coming my way tomorrow. My crit is 26, I'm down a few pints of blood and anemic, so I go in tomorrow for a fillup. I want to thank all of you who donate blood, for whatever reason you do it.

The little brother hole is looking better, not draining as much and I'm feeling a little better having that junk out of my system. It turns out that some of it was infection, but a common bacteria and I'm now on antibiotics that will clean it up quickly.

I had chemo again yesterday (the Gemzar). We decided to give this new chemo another month even if the cancer appears to still be growing. The doc explained how, if you can picture it on a graph, the cancer continues to grow over time, and the chemo at this low dose may take a little while to overtake it. A higher dose would not be helpful - my bone marrow is so beat up from all my previous treatments that a higher dose would totally tank my blood counts and put me in the hospital. We try to avoid that =P I've seen enough of the hospitals, thank you.

Cheers

P.S. Spoiler Alert! Well, more like bummer alert. I don't know what's going to happen if this chemo has no effect. There's pretty much nothing in the line up so I may be done. Any other chemo tested on this type of cancer has had little or no effect. And the ones that have had little effect - the people on placebo treatment had the same rate of "effect" so if you know anything about scientific testing, that negates the little effect. Still have our eyes open for experimental stuff and all that, but just thought I'd give a heads up.

Twenty-first

Really nothing new to report. Oh wait, yes there is. My wound has a baby brother. Dealing with weird fluids bursting from my skin on a regular basis has apparently made me blase about the whole thing.

This new hole is a couple of centimeters to the left of the big sore. The big one is a result of the tumor pushing up through the skin, this little one just broke open out of smooth skin - no discoloration or other warning at all.

It's only about half a centimeter in diameter, and doesn't have any tissue poking up through it. It just burst and drained lots of fluid and necrotic tissue (kind of like the one in Oct 07 but on a smaller scale). It doesn't seem to have any physical connection to the big one - there's a definite division between the two on the inside.

I went to the wound clinic and they tested for infection, cleaned it, and now I have two holes to pack with gauze every day. It also continues to drain so it has to be kept open. Yay! I'm glad my body provides me with these little projects to keep me busy everyday.

On a much happier note, my sister's all knocked up and I will be an aunt again sometime in July. She wants a boy over the emotional trauma of raising a girl. Her husband wants a girl because he thinks they are sweet and quiet and easy to deal with. They'll try and find out the gender in a couple of months. One of the many exciting things about this pregnancy is that due to the miracle of modern medicine, this little parasite growing in my sister has tested negative for the breast cancer gene that runs in some members of my family.

Some of you know we lost my mom to breast cancer, and her mom, and some great-aunts and other relatives, and that my aunt is a survivor. Before you ask, no, my cancer's not related - I've been tested for all known (breast cancer) mutations and I don't have them. I just had to be different. I don't really understand that, you all know how much I live for conformity. ;P

Cheers