ONE MORE MONKEY JUMPING ON THE BED...

Chemo #7-- check.
You may remeber my "8 Little Monkeys" blog title after my first chemo. Apparently, however, I didn't, because Carol and her sister Colleen kept giving me all these stuffed monkeys with numbers on them and I had no clue why. (In my defense, I thought one of them was a dog). So now I have 7 stuffed monkeys. Rock on.
Yesterday morning before treatment I was feeling as well as I've felt in months (extra day because of memorial day-- apparently, cancer doesn't work on holidays). I called to confirm my appointment time Tues morning and was told that I was actually scheduled for the next day. Wha??!! I couldn't believe how upset I got about it. It's just so frustrating to be bopping along thinking that I have things under control and then have something so small and insignificant throw me completely for a loop. I don't really like this new freakazoid person. Ah well. It all got worked out (because, I am, afterall, my parent's daughter) so I guess the new "get what you want and take no prisoners approach" has some advantages. I felt a lot better when they ultimately told me that it was the their scheduling mistake-- Good to confirm I'm not going crazy (in that case, at least.)
I can't believe I only have one more to go. (reallyicanbuthey) Well, actually, seems more like 1.5 since I haven't felt the full brunt of the effects of this round yet, but still. I find it amusing when people say, "You're almost done! wow, has time gone by quickly!" Umm, yeah, maybe for THEM... that's ok though, time is indeed marching forward at whatever pace, and hopefully soon this middleplace will be a distant memory. (Ok, likely not distant, but a memory at least).
Some random side-effects I hadn't anticipated: although I still have some hair (including eyelashes and eyebrows (sorta), (a digression-- Every night my friend's almost-3 year old daughter prays for what she's thankful for. Her mom told me the other day that eyelashes and eyebrows have been high on her list as of late...I hear ya, sweetgirl.) sometime during the last few weeks I seem to have lost all the body fuzz I didn't really knew I had-- on my upper arms, back, face... The result of this (besides being slick and fun for jim and the boys to pet (hey, we only have fish) is that my clothes tickle. It's very odd, but not unpleasant. I wonder if this is how babies feel? Does this (at least partially) explain why they wiggle so much? Also, (and this isn't quite as fun) I've got these blisters on the bottom of toes that has let me to wrap them up in athletic tape a'la turban style. That's the chemo pedicure, I suppose. (Actually, it's probably due to the fact that I mostly wear flip flops, but I'm going to continue to blame it on chemo, so there.)

A few more things to be happy about:

• My sister Lisa is participating in the 39 mile (!!) 2-day Avon Walk for Breast Cancer June 24th and 25th. Originally, she had hoped to raise $2,000. Due to an overwhelming response she is currently less than $1,500 from her revised $10,000 goal. If you would like to read about her effort and possibly contribute, please check out her letter and/or web page.
• Remember way back when I wrote about my colleagues donating their vacation time into my sick leave bank? I recently checked in with HR to see where I stood, given the likelihood of the follow-on surgery. In any event, over the past 4 months or so I have used about 280 hours (7 weeks) and (get this) I have over 420 hours left. That means that people at my work donated over 17 weeks of their vacation to me (in at most 20 hour chunks). I can not tell you how much of a difference this has made. How lucky am I?