Vanities: function

Moving on to the next kind of vanity (part two of four)… Vanity about function: My body doesn’t do what it used to do.  One year ago, I jogged three miles with my sister and probably went for a walk later on in the day, too.  Back then I was doing interval training most days […]

Vanities: appearance

I’ve been thinking about vanity a lot lately. I seem to have a lot of it.  To me it settles out into some different realms: Vanity about body appearance: from taking steroids for so long, I have chubby cheeks and a more rectangular face without noticeable cheekbones.  My face really looks different from before.  I was […]

Welcome to lymphedema!

In England in late September my left arm started to swell up a bit–mostly it seemed like my hand.  This is the arm with the DVT (blood clot) under the collarbone, and thus the arm I’ve been wearing a lymphedema compression sleeve on since early April to try to prevent lymphedema from developing.  Lymphedema is […]

Quick update

It’s Sunday afternoon and guess what? I still have pneumonia.  (I have to keep reminding myself of this to explain why I am still so, so, so very tired and worn out.)  We came home late Thursday afternoon and I keep waiting to notice I’m feeling better, but I don’t notice.  I am doing much […]

My very first cancer hospital admission!

Woo hoo!  Off on another adventure.  (Stage direction: read that with great irony)  Tuesday morning when I showed up for chemo I asked the nurse to check my oxygen saturation level because I felt really beat and very short of breath again (since Sunday).  It was 89…when 94 & up is what you want to […]

Goings-on at the start of chemo cycle 29

I got good news today at my oncologist’s office—my brain MRI yesterday turned up no new spots of cancer (in 4 months—my last MRI was June) and the ones zapped in May continue to cooperatively die and fade away.  So that is really great.  I don’t need more of that right now.  Too much else to deal […]

Trials (and tribulations)

We always figured a trial (of a PARP inhibitor) would be my next step after Eribulin but with the headache & steroids I am probably not eligible for many trials–usually steroid use indicates uncontrolled brain stuff and researchers don’t want those patients in their trials.  I am tapering off the steroids but it will be […]

Day 7 of PE

I am feeling a bit better as of Friday–a bit more energy, a bit less out of breath.  I almost felt like I could try to take a short slow walk. But this is going to be a slow recovery.  Today I’ll try to start up with Qi Gong again and just take it easy […]

And the next complication is…

I am now the proud owner of a non-emergency pulmonary embolism event.  I have lots of small blood clots in my lungs, since Saturday AM when I woke up even more short of breath than usual and kept running out of energy when, say, walking down the hall to the bathroom.  Rapid heart rate too, […]