How to Raise Active, Healthy Children, Cure Cancer, and Make the World A More Beautiful Place in 24 Hours or Less!

Monday! Swimming lessons! Treatment! Piano lessons! Group therapy! Dinner! Planting flowers! And I'm exhausted.
Kate is taking swimming lessons bright and early last week and this. She starts at 8:45 and goes till 9:15. I like getting her going early and starting her day with something that gets her a little exercise and a sense of accomplishment. She's already a very good swimmer and in the advanced class with kids a couple of years older than she is. She needs those swimming skills for the times Parker plays rough with her and dunks her in our pool, you know.
I got home from swimming with just enough time to put a little numbing cream on my port site, give the kids a few assignments, and be off for treatment, this week with my friend, Sarah Nokleby. We were on time, there was a parking space, there was a good puzzle to finish--the one Justine and I started a few weeks ago. Everything seems to go great on treatment day, other than getting the treatment and feeling sickly for the rest of the week.
I saw the nurse practitioner instead of the doctor today. I'm not sure if he was out or just busy. She's always very nice to me and empathetic and gives me a thorough exam. There's not much new to tell. She prescribed the same dose of chemo as last week, so I elected to keep the steroid dosage reduced. She felt sad that my feet are bugging me so much and encouraged me to take more Prevacid to keep the stomach acid at bay, and a fiber supplement to regulate the digestive system, etc. etc. This is why you should never take prescription drugs unless ABSOLUTELY necessary. They mess up your system so much you need to take all these other remedies to combat the side-effects of the drugs. That's why I used to be a 4 Tylenol a year girl. Those were the days!
Chemo was nothing special except for conversation with Sarah, a more quiet, laid back atmosphere because of the later starting time, and my pick of the chairs. It's always very cool to get your favorite chair.
Sarah and I enjoyed lunch at Red Robin after chemo--always a good old reliable, I think--and then got back to our homes and kids. Sarah's kids had called her about 8 times during our stay at MSTI, so I know they were anxious to see her. I had to get back to get kids places and make sure Kate got home safely from piano lessons.
Mondays are go, go, go days for me, and once I got home I had to get Parker to a group session he's doing at the office of the counselor he's been seeing. He's not very gung-ho about the whole group therapy idea, and today did nothing to change his mind. They had a giant slip and slide, but they did it with their clothes on and they all had to do it to the doctor's specifications, like all the kids had to slide all the way from one end to the other. This turned out to be very difficult for Parker, so in the end the other kids decided the best solution for ending group would be to drag Parker across. Parker didn't like that very much so he was a little chapped. The whole point of this group is to get kids to deal with adverse situations, lots of stimulation, lots of other kids and their hyperactive tendencies, and teach them to learn strategies to get through it all appropriately. For 12 to 14 year-old boys with a variety of social issues this is much more difficult than it sounds. So Parker needed a good long time on the way home and in the garage after to get himself balanced again. I am hoping all this helps him when he has to deal with a new school year and all the chaos that comes with it.
While Parker was decompressing, and Rachel was dealing with a troubled friend, I was trying to figure out how I was going to get dinner, plant flowers, pay bills, and write a blog. We ended up getting take-out from Costa Vida, I got the flowers planted, I'm getting the blog done, but the dang bills are going to have to get done tomorrow.
If you're curious, last week was better for me emotionally than the week before. I wasn't nearly as despondent. I am hoping it has to do with the lower dose of steroid and it will continue this week. That way I can enjoy the very full, rich life I have with a husband and 5 kids, a cat, a gecko, a bunny, and assorted friends, musical instruments, an XBox Live, and a pool.
Thanks to my mother-in-law, Dee, and her husband, Ron, who spent several days last week getting our overgrown yard trimmed and cleaned up and all the resultant debris and trimmings taken to the dump. What a huge job that was! They also entertained Tadman while they worked and kept him last night and today while I was at treatment. I think "thank you" is an understatement after all that. I'll just have to return the favor sometime in the future when I'm back in full contact gardening shape. You may have to wait until next summer. Thank you to Heather and my mom for picking up laundry again today. Heather fell ill last week and skipped a few of her regular times and I tried to do a few loads on my own and I'm already even more pathetic at laundry than I used to be. That is a great service to me! I got a card of encouragement today from my water aerobics instructor, I think because I've been skipping to take Kate to swimming lessons. It's so nice of her to be concerned about me. And thanks to everyone who brought meals in last week and cleaned on Friday morning. I know many of you have done 2 or even 3 meals now, and many of you have cleaned multiple times. I appreciate you sticking with me through the marathon this treatment will be before I'm done. They gotta make sure they kill all those bad cells along with the good, ya know. All the service you are doing certainly makes a difference to me. I will try to be worthy of it by being good to my family and by doing my best to endure this chemo cheerfully.