first light

here are a few pictures from yesterday's adventure. the handsome young man is my baby brother, jimnerd. at some point when i was in college he started calling me "liznerd" instead of "lizzard" and i added the nerd part into his name, too. it was great having him along yesterday because his sense of humor is stellar. he was referring to my taxotere as "tetrazinni" and at one point he and mom had us laughing so hard i thought everyone else would come to our room to see what was so funny. i'm sure the whole hallway could hear us, lauging about a hot air balloon that kept disappearing and reappearing over the skyline out past drexel university. i later found out that it was the observation balloon for the zoo. as you can see, i also got the upgrade to the "bed" room because the chemo ward on the 12th floor was pretty packed yesterday and my treatment keeps me there a while. i am one step closer to having those cabana boys fanning me with leaves, i tell you.

so it is kind of early this morning. the gorilla dog is snoring next to me, louder than most people snore. she knows i was feeling a little out of sorts last night and has been keeping watch over me all night, making sure i have as little bed space to work with. she knows that crowded spaces spell death to cancer cells. but anyway, i am debating taking my anti nausea pills again, but i think i am leaning on the side of taking them, because i am feeling a bit more woozy than last time, and i had taken one before bed the last round. they have a couple undesireable side effects, so i was hoping to get around it, but we'll see. i've been trying to no avail to fall back to sleep for about a half hour so i thought i'd do this, in hopes it makes me tired. instead, i think i am hungry. ew, food.

seriously, though, last night was OK. a couple of much welcomed visitors stopped by and brought snacks and smiles and mom baked a nice gentle dinner of chicken cutlets, mushy broccoli (not usually my fave but in this case what i need) and some risotto. and of course, a tiny scoop of mint chocolate chip to act as icing on the chemo cake. i gained three pounds between treatments and everyone was glad to see that, cheering me on. i guess it is tough to gain weight on the poison, but i was eating well, getting a little bit of exercise (you should see my HUGE muscles... actually they've all gone away), so that is probably where it came from. or from thanksgiving dessert.

so that's the story as the light begins to refect off the fog outside. i will try to snooze a bit more, then i will be up to scope out some sort of food product to ingest. and i'll get in the shower where i can finally rip off the tape from where my iv was; it is the most painful part of the process from yesterday and i couldn't bring myself to rip it off before bed. there's a lot of tape covering the gauze. ouch!