This week has proven to be an interesting one… For the most part, I’ve been feeling pretty good, despite having to run a dozen or so errands to get everything together at home and prepare for our upcoming trip.
Over the weekend, we got to spend a lot of time with our daughter, Anna, which was such an encouragement! Sunday night, though, I started getting rather severe abdominal pains, similar to the ones I got last Fall around the third cycle of treatment. Coincidently, this past cycle was also the third one since I started back up again in March. This time around, we had the right pain meds on hand (“right” means the ones that finally worked last time this happened after trying three different prescriptions). So by Monday morning, things were much better. Been fighting off a few lingering pains this week, and been getting tired from the busyness of a lot of activity. The doctor thinks it might be a reaction to a new shot I’ve been taking each night for post-chemo recovery. Last one of those is tomorrow. I’m happy that the next six days have very few things planned. I’ll take advantage of that to simply rest up.
At my doctor’s appointment today, everything was about the same on my tests. Blood platelets are still holding firm in the 50’s, so the “glass is half full” for needing to be at the magic number of 100. Platelets need to be at 100 to give me an option to enter any clinical trials for pancreatic cancer that are out there. None of those are open to patients with less than that count on their blood tests. So I still need prayer for those numbers to improve… dramatically.
Otherwise, we talked about the trip Christy and I have planned, and got the green light to skip the next round of chemo and fly away for ten days. If you haven’t heard, four years ago we planned a vacation to Europe in celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary. Then I got hired at a new job, and it was either cancel the trip, or not get hired. So we canceled the trip and just never got around to rebooking. With life the way it is now, we decided not to put things off anymore, and celebrate our “silver” anniversary… finally! So on April 19th we fly to Paris. No big agenda: just relaxing, away from all this cancer stuff — that is, with my big bag full of medications, shots, and clinical paperwork… “just incase” (as the doctor said). But we’re going, and that’s the important part. We plan to visit lots of museums, sit for hours in street cafes, visit at least one new park a day, eat gourmet food in the evenings, and keep things simple and stress free. If you want to follow, we’ll be blogging at AprilInParis.kravette.net.
Otherwise, I’m posting two pictures with this blog entry (and you can click on the photo to see a full size one). The first one above is from my son Josh, as he and Nicole continue hiking the Appalachian Train this Spring, Summer and Fall. This weekend, they were on the Tennessee and North Carolina boarder, about 250 miles from their start in Georgia. (You can follow them from links at kravette.net if you like.)
The other picture, here, is the first watercolor drawing I’ve done since grade school, way too many years ago to count. A dear friend from work came by yesterday with a whole basketful of art supplies, and said, “Let’s be creative and do something fun.” She knew my counselor had recommended numerous times to spend some time dwelling on things low stress and creative… a distraction from thinking about my condition and treatments. Kat took her up on that and we did some painting yesterday afternoon. It’s not a work of art to say the least… but that’s not the point. The idea is to get the brain to focus on other thoughts… or no thoughts. Just be creative. Well done, Kat! Thanks so much for the visit.
That’s about it for this week. More next time.