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Thursday, January 8, 2009

Look, suddenly 3 posts in two days....

Can one or two of them count for Christmas week, when I dried up? :-D

I went on 2 bike rides today, totaling 34 miles, on fat tires. It wasn’t supposed to be that way……. First I did the Arlington loop with a newer slower biker; that’s why I started out with the old bike. However – she biked more slowly than I had expected, & it took almost 3 hours to finish the loop (18-19 miles) That's fine for a new rider -- I just didn't watch the time when I was a new rider and didn't realize, now, that the time would run short. Meanwhile, my ride, as enjoyable as it was, was more like a visit than a workout, and I was desperate to meet Joan for a more challenging ride so I could get my wiggles out..... I've been having trouble sleeping unassisted lately, and it's long past the steroids, and long past the fatigue, and time to get tired the way I usually do!

So -- by the time I got back to Bluemont it was 12:45, & I was late to meet Joan and didn’t want to waste any time going home to change bikes, put on padded liners, clip on sandals, and two more pairs of socks… and talk to my mom and get that look on from Pinky that says “another bikeride, instead of taking me for a walk, again?”

Gawd, what am I going to do when Mom leaves…. Tomorrow!? Never thought I’d see her strike up a friendship with a dog, but we had the backyard fenced in in the last month, and now when my mom goes out for a cigarette she takes Pinky with her. She calls Pinky her smoking companion. Pinky goes out and runs around, checks the compost for rodent activity…. pees…. I can get away with taking her out for way fewer walks if I have, uh, been out biking half the day now, and know that she’s been outside. (Know what's funny? I think one of the things Mom and Pinky bonded on is fear of dogs.....Pinky happens to be one herself, but she seems to be afraid of other dogs, not just protecting us, though that's important to her too. I wonder what happened to her in her first 3 years. Mom thinks she was put outside on her own a lot -- because when Mom takes her out she goes out first (Pinky I mean) and then looks back to make sure Mom's coming too......)

Anyway, back to this morning..... early afternoon, actually. I met Joan on fat tires and suddenly the shoe was on the other foot.... Even though Joan was on her hybrid I had to struggle to keep up with her. She didn't complain; I just empathized with her position all too well and made a mental note not to use my old bike with Joan apart from biking to appointments, when I have to, because I will need to lock it up.

And then I got hungry..... Well no -- first I came home from biking with Joan (just as Em was getting home), had a snack, picked up Matthew an hour or two later, got my blood test results (only a little abby-normal this time -- white count high normal as per neulasta, red a little low but not even as bad as during pregnancy, & platelets just below the low end of the normal range. (I think this is the platelet nadir time, so they should start coming back up. ) ANyhow after all but Alan were home we decided to do Chinese takeout for mom's last night here. We ordered it, and got it, came home just as Alan was arriving, and suddenly Mom and I were starving.

I ate like a pig. I feel like I'm about to give birth to a third child..... I was doing so well with eating little meals and now I really have no one to blame but myself for my present bloat, and probable ensuing gassiness....

Oh but on the bright side, guess what? I tasted it all -- every last bite. I may not be able to taste oranges, but no problem with CHinese food. (CHocolate either..... :-)

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Damaged Taste Buds

Taste. When I was on AC (early summer) it was water. Or maybe it was taxol (late summer.) or maybe both. Water tasted bad. I ate a watermelon every 2-3 days to stay hydrated. I was grateful, given the season, that it wasn't mangos.

However, this time it IS interfering with some of my favorite seasonal fruit -- naval oranges and apples. I've been making applesauce, which still works -- but I can't anymore, because the applesauce I like is made with cranberries and apricots, and suddenly there are no cranberries anywhere. I think they're seasonal here. I swear this was NOT a problem in Massachusetts. My mom says her stores (in MA) stop having them after Christmas, but I don't think mine when I was there (bigger stores) did. It does stand to reason that cranberries would be available longer closer to where they are grown...... ANyhow if anyone knows where to find them in VA now I'd love to know.

I wasn't SURE about the navel oranges til just today. I kept thinking that maybe I was getting tasteless oranges. They LOOKED like they should be really good, but sometimes it happens that they look good and they aren't. But I just wasn't getting ANY really good ones. SO they I shared my orange with Emily, who has a discerning tongue (otherwise known as picky.) She said it was a particularly good orange, so I knew I was in trouble...... Then this evening I shared an orange with my mom and the same thing happened...... I told her to eat it because it was wasted on me.

It actually feels like the taste buds down near the tip of my tongue (but not quite at it) are a bit burned or something. They aren't -- and i think after the last two dosesof chemo this happened and got better before the third one. SO maybe I will taste oranges again before inauguration. I hope I don't miss the whole season. Not that it matters compared to the bigger picture.......

Week after chemo

This time I got my energy back on Tuesday, having had chemo last Wed. Alan said it was about a week, but he's wrong because I don't LOSE the energy til after the steroids wear off. So maybe 4.5-5 days. However ... no bikerides since last Friday when I went to get Neulasta. It's crappy outside. It's winter. Not serious winter like in Boston or Chicago -- there is still hope of biking tomorrow, because it only rained today. So that's a good thing.....

It’s not so nice being bald and having chemo now as it was during the summer. Then it was about not burning my head… how do bald guys do it all year round? I saw a bald guy on the bikepath recently wearing nothing on his head but one of those earbands I used to wear when I had a full head of curly hair. The rest of his head was exposed! I started at him from under my two hats and wondered…..

It’s just one of those things I notice now. The other one is eyebrows. So many people have such nice eyebrows! And since mine are so thinned out I like them fuller and bushier -- in addition to nicely shaped.…… which really brings into question the idea of plucking them. I did try drawing on nice plucked-looking brows at one point – but it didn’t look right and I went back to drawing them the way they used to be – which is something between Matthew’s and Em’s. My kids have such great eyebrows. Matthews are a bit more straight across, and Em’s are nicely arched. Alan’s I have no hope of drawing on ever in life; they are big and bushy like Mike Dukakis’s. (Once he went to get a haircut and before he saw what was happening the hairdresser was shaving them short! He had to let her finish then or he would have had just ONE shaved brow…….Afterwards they looked normal, but they felt stubbly!)

Speaking of stubbly, my head hair is still growing. I shaved it when it started raining hair, but I guess it wasn't ALL going to fall out like it did on adriamycin. It wouldn't make a full head though.

I knit myself a hat yesterday. The one I knit around Christmas decided it wanted to be EMily's. I mean it really looked better on her, and was too small for me. This one is better -- though not exactly the way I had meant it to be. I used this cotton chennile yarn I bought in Cambridge over a decade ago, which goes from green to orange. It was on sale, no one else wanted it. But I love those colors...... :-)