Sunday, June 30, 2013

Swimming thru Life.....with floaties on

THE GUEST ROOM
 
 

 
 For those who don't know it...we sold our Urbana house in Mid-June to a student couple from Virginia Beach, VA and could not be happier. They are delightful and they just love it. We are so glad after 2.5 years on the market and having moved 3.5 years ago to have it off our radar.
This is our modified guest room as it looked back in Mid-May.
 I changed a few things so our daughter Sarah could spend a few weeks with us.
Today it looks much like this again as she has now left to go back home and I miss her already.
Sarah graduated from Eastern IL Univ (EIU) with a Bachelor of Science degree on May 4th.
She had a breast biopsy on May 8th when an aspiration of a suspected cyst failed.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer on May 10th and after seeing a nurse navigator, an oncologist, a radiation oncologist, a general surgeon, a plastic surgeon, a physician assistant, and a social worker (not necessarily in that order) she had surgery at Carle on May 24th.
She has done fantastic these past few weeks. She had surgery on a Friday and came home on Sunday morning. She felt pretty good, and napped as needed those first few days. She had two drains in and had to have injections in her stomach every day for 10 days, so I was glad she was with us where I could take care of her rather than worry about her. Now life marches on. She'll return to work Monday, July 8th (the 4th anniversary of my father's death) and will start chemotherapy on Thursday. From there she'll have radiation 5 days a week for 6 weeks and 6 months after that she'll be able to think about reconstruction. That will probably be at the end of next summer. She's been a trooper so far and I know she will sail thru the rest of this just fine...but right now my competitive swimmer needs a little help, so I'm suggesting she swim thru life with some floaties on.
I LOVE YOU CHILD #1!!!!!

Saturday - 07/13/2013: Sarah started Chemo on Thursday. She's currently getting Adriamycin and Cyclophosphamide. Nasty stuff, all of it. This will be four treatments every other week. (Next round should be 12 weekly treatments of Taxol and Herceptin since she's HER2 positive). She had a private room this first time as there was lots of teaching as well as drug administration going on. Since I work in the room right next to the chemo room I know all the chemo nurses and techs and the research pharmacist is an old friend of mine from our bear research days in Medical Research. He came and visited with us a while which helped pass the time and one of the sweet housekeepers on our floor came by with well wishes as well as my boss who has been down this path herself a couple years ago. I sat with her during the infusion, but we'll see how that goes from here forward. Five hours later we were finally done and out of there (11a-4p). So far so good with the way she's feeling. A little dizzy until she was up and going the next morning, but she put in a half day at work and then was back to the cancer center for a bra fitting and prosthetic and a shot of Neulasta. Oneward and upward. 

Saturday - 08/10/2013: Sarah had chemo treatment number 3 on Thursday and the time seemed to sail by. She had visitors which helped pass the time for us.