Hope everyone had a chance to celebrate the holidays with family and friends! I know I had a great time visiting the Yakima Valley and hanging out with extended family and friends and missed those that were out of town. The holidays were good to me and with the constant food eating I was able to put some weight back on. I know plenty of you out there were dreading this inevitability for yourselves but I was looking forward to it after my weight dropped a bit last round. It only took eating plenty of Cougar Gold cheese, homemade pumpkin pie, steaks, and whatever other goodies were available.
The chemo treatments are starting to hit me a bit harder and it took me another day to crawl out of my "hole" this last round. When I was feeling half normal I headed south to visit Vancouver for a few days. To my luck, some object bouncing down the freeway popped up, skipped across my hood and bashed into the passenger side of the windshield. I never saw where the object came from and it definitely freaked me out. There were even small pieces of glass in the cabin of the car. I didn't need to stop for coffee after that, so much for an uneventful car ride down I-5. The good people at Progressive did manage to get the car fixed and ready to go as quickly and painless as possible and I can't even tell where the dent was on the hood.
Damage of the object on the windshield with bits of glass on the inside.
Work has a tradition on the last day before the holiday break of having a breakfast potluck and enjoying skits produced by your coworkers making fun of the year of events. I dropped in on the last day and had a great laugh. I don't know how they managed to squeeze in time to do them between the trips to China and long hours. It was good catching up with coworkers and letting them know that I'm making progress. Of course they are all curious when I will return, as am I.
Right now the plan is to finish chemo in January and scan again. Then we will assess the situation for surgery. I still haven't talked directly with a urologist surgeon but from what I gather they will give me a few weeks off to recover from the chemo then I will go under the knife. My guess is that the extent of the surgery and recovery will vary widely as to how well this last half of treatment beats up on the cancer. I'm hoping to be feeling good by the end of February but something tells me that is a bit wishful and March would be more likely.
Here are a few pictures of the last few weeks of activity:
After Vancouver I headed to the Yakima Valley for a white Christmas (yep it snowed). My nephew got to go sledding down the same hill we enjoyed as kids.
My brother and I tried to be a little artistic in turning mom's glass cake dome into a snow globe, complete with snowmen. After making a gallons worth of jello, marshmallow snowmen, and a gummy bear Christmas tree (a sticky mess) we ended up with what you see below. Turns out we didn't dilute the blue jello near enough and the globe was a bit foggy. Better luck next time I guess.
The nephew must not have gotten all he wanted for Christmas as he was still looking at magazines. Or maybe he was getting hungry :-)
Enjoy the holidays! I plan on being in Seattle to ring in the New Year. Today marked the end of Round 5 drugs so there is only one more Round left! So far I was feeling well enough today to go see The Hobbit after I rested up with 3 naps :-) it was worth it.
