This and That

You know it was a very busy week when you are actually looking forward to the natural down time provided by your upcoming chemotherapy treatment...

It is California Mission time for Lindsey, so we have been helping her refine her paper and, most of all, complete the detail work on her mission mosaic. She could do the big areas herself but did not have the steady hand needed to get the glue brush into the small areas once there were materials already on the perimeter. Therefore, I personally smell like all the different kinds of spices we used to create the image of Mission San Fernando. As it turns out, red pepper flakes, coffee and cumin do not exactly form a tantalizing odor when combined. I can only imagine what the classroom is going to smell like when all the projects arrive tomorrow!

Coinciding with Lindsey's final mission weekend was the last weekend to complete Sam's Pinewood Derby car for Cub Scouts. The whole house smells like bondo (overwhelming even the combined spice smell) and I'm pretty sure I will never get the fine sawdust out of the cracks in the patio. But the Indy car design looks great, and Sam and Jay are both pretty proud of the work they have done. Let's hope it's as fast as it looks.

You may wonder why, if this was the final weekend for both projects, we did not complete one or the other ahead of time. Well, for one thing, we are procrastinators who really need a deadline to spur us into action. But that aside, Joey had a report on the Loma Prieta earthquake due Friday that consumed the week before. Needless to say, I am looking forward to a little "no project" time.

On an entirely different note, tomorrow's treatment is my third, so it is the last one I will receive before my next PET/CT scan. I don't have any scheduled treatments after this, as all decisions will be made based on the results of the scan. It should happen in the first or second week of February and will tell us a lot about how this medicine is working, and far more objectively than my own observations can.

After the scan I will know if I will continue on the study drug and perhaps have a better idea of how long. I will also know more about when and if a mastectomy is in my future. I am looking forward to the scan but am also a little nervous about it, as it is very easy for me to be positive right now while assuming that a cure is in process. If the results are not as good as I am hoping they will be, I will have a little adjusting to do. But adjust, I shall, to whatever the outcome may be.

Speaking of outcomes, I would like to say an enormous THANK YOU to all of you who clicked over to the Relay for Life page and donated to the Saints and Spirits Take Flight team. Virtually overnight your donations doubled our funds raised to date and we are now the leading team for the event so far. I am very excited about this and thank you all so much for your generosity and kind notes.

So, wish me luck tomorrow. May the cancer be horrified to see more of that T-DM1 arrive in its neck of the woods!