Fingers

I started a new med today that is relieving the pain and numbness in my fingers. It is suppose to also make me sleepy...until I get use to it...It didn't make me sleepy...it made me excited to use my fingers so now I am awake and blogging, as in typing with my fingers. When I saw the oncoligist today, and she looked at my fingers (that have lost eight nails, the other two will go soon...same with my toes), she said "You had the most sever reaction to Paxil I have ever seen." I was suppose to do four rounds of this chemo, after two it was obvious that I couldn't take anymore. I never thought how it would be to have hands that don't work...I can't hold a scrubby in order to wash dishes, I can't remove old pictures from sleeves in albums (trying to make Adam his own album of pictures from when he was a baby...), I can't pick the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle off of the table, and when I lose the last two little nails, I won't be able to pick my nose or scratch an itch. And now I am just complaining...SORRY! The oncologist says she has never seen anyone whos nails don't grow back...I am trying to be hopeful...but it has been two months since the first one fell off and it has not grown a milimeter...I am still bitchings! SORRY!!

Today marks my half-way point through radiation! Hannah brought me a slice of chocolate cake from the Driftless, put a candle on it, and sang to me "Happy Half Way Through Radiation." What a sweet-heart...she also washes dishes! Going to radiation everyday (weekends off) is becoming a routine...not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The people there are so sweet. Actual radiation is only about 15 minutes and it is all made so easy. Park in the special "radiation" parking lot, scan yourself as checked in, go in your own little dressing room, take off everything from the waist up, get in you "gown", lay on your personal molded head form, get a warm blanket wrapped around you, do your breathing (the radiation is timed to your breathing so it is not radiating lungs or heart), listen to the machines whill, get up, get dressed, go on your way.

Tomorrow I will go to Madison and stay with Adam and Caleah and little OakAro for a few days. I will take my watercolors and we will paint the envelopes for the birth announcements that Adam made. I will bring them the photo album that Hannah and I put together, and I will take the wooly sheep hide that has been my special friend for the last few months to OakAro.

My brain is still in "chemo fog" ...it seems it takes me forever to do the simplist things...fortunately love is an act of the heart and my heart still works! I love you all...Thank you for being here!