Tuesday 9.2.2008

Workday. I got up after a short night, got myself ready and left for Jackson. Kind of foggy this morning--heavy wisps would be a description. Kind of reminded me of the fake spiderweb stuff you can find at Halloween. I expected to see more (dead) critters than the few I did see. That was good.

I arrived, parked, went in. Both units open. Hm. Students. Hm.

It turned out that I had a very nice day on 4 West, with four adults, three babies, two students, and two staff.

The day went on, two of our couplets went home late in the shift, and we moved the other patients over to South, closing West.

I had a nice visit from Carianne The Beautiful today--she stopped up to bring me some of her new business cards for her new accounting business, and a tasty trio of garden fresh tomatoes. Yum! I have to say I was touched when she showed me her cards--very tasteful, professional looking, classy--and what's that? A small pink ribbon with the initials KJJ under it. Whoa. I am humbled, honored, and beyond words that she included me in this way. As I looked at it, and looked at it again, and looked at it again, my eyes filled. I'm not sure that I can communicate what I was feeling at that moment, but I tried to be open to it, and I hugged Cari and thanked her. Wow.

Our visit was brief, as she had children coming home from school soon. She is a remarkable woman herself, and I wish her the best with this endeavor. I'll post a link to her web page when it's available.

I had an uneventful drive home, and Daniel was home when I got there. We had had the Post Office hold our mail for the week we were gone, and it was delivered today. There was quite a bit, and we went through it, him showing me the pieces of common relevance. The evening went on, him watching tv, I wrote here.

I'm going to mention these hot flashes again. Sorry. I get so cold, like bone-chilled cold, that I feel like I'm not going to warm up. At some point, though, I do. The time interval is always different, and just when I realize I'm not freezing any more, I have the aura for a hot flash. This feels like oppressive heat in my face, and I find myself opening my mouth and taking a large breath of air. Then I get restless hot. My forehead "glistens" as my co-worker says, and I feel so hot like I can't breathe. I try to control my breathing, like a type of biofeedback, and not buy into the underlying anxiety, so the hot flash won't last so long. I take the Effexor and tamoxifen at about the same time every day; and if I missed it yesterday it didn't gave me pause on the hots. I'm hot for 10, 15, sometimes 20 minutes. It's quite disconcerting, and definitely on my list to talk with Dr. Bolmer about at our next appointment. She asked me to give the meds a chance, and I have. I hope she has other ideas for this...

I also noticed that a lot of the longer eyelashes are gone. I seem to have a pretty good crop of short ones, but the longer (older?) ones are shedding. I don't know if that's normal life cycle of the hair, or an affect of the chemo. Doesn't matter.

I have a haircut tomorrow afternoon, to trim up my head again. Definitely thicker, definitely wavy.

I've got to get to bed. Thank you for reading. Hugs.