Halfway Home

Hey everyone....thanks for reading. Well, this weekend I'm officially halfway between chemo sessions 4-5, which is also the halfway point for the entire chemo therapy process...yes!!! A week ago was my 4th session and my good buddy Brian Jolly joined me (thanks dude). Unfortunately at and around this session I was pretty sick with a head cold. It's ok to be sick when you're on chemo therapy, but only if it's a head cold. If it becomes something more serious, then that's not good. Nothing viral. This is the first visit that I had where my doc and I didn't have a consultation prior to receiving chemo. But because I was sick, I did briefly talk to him and tell him what I was experiencing. At the time, I was starting to come out of the head cold and the doc thought that was pretty positive and that was pretty much it. The session went well. I switched arms to receive the IV, because my left arm had been super sore for the last week and half. I take the IV on the top side of the forearm about 3 inches up from the wrist. Well, I had taken the first three sessions all in the same spot (my left arm). The spot was always sore for the first few days, but it was really sore the entire time between sessions 3-4. The doc said it might be a possible infection, but then he found out that I had got all 3 session in the same spot, he said...duh!...swich spots...of course it's hurting. So I switched to the right arm. I currently have no soreness in either arm. Ok, so maybe I could've figured that out on my own...but hey, I'm paying the good doctor a lot of money to guide me through this process.....(oops).

That night we went over to my bro's house for Carter's birthday. I felt ok, but as the night went on I started to get a little worse. It was a combination of a little nausea and a little tiredness. There were a lot of kids running around (8-10 or so), it was loud, it was bit hot, and I really felt as if the walls were closing in on me. It was kind of like...."Meg, maybe we should go?" Then as 5 minutes would pass, it was more like...."Meg, lets get the heck out of here!" It reminded me of that scene from "As Good As It Gets" with Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear......the scene where Jack and Helen Hunt are running for a cab on the street and there's a class of 6 years or so on the street running with them yelling exactly what Jack is yelling....finally Jack turns around and waves his hand in the air and yells..."SHUT UP KIDS!" And....that's when I knew it was time for us to leave!

I've had a couple of nausea moments since then, but the real trouble has been that my cold has come back as a bad cough. After about 5 days of this, I finally called my doctor and he immediately prescribed a drug called Benzonatate. It's comes in the form of a small rubbery ball that when dropped can catch about 3 feet of air. Earlier in the year both Meg and I caught Walking Pneumonia and this dry cough I have is eerily similar. With my depleted immune system, Pneumonia would be a bad situation for me. So I've been on the pills for about 2 full days now and I've been very good about taking one every 8 hours. I'm not messing around with this coughing business. Plus it's just really annoying.

I want to give a special and big THANK YOU to the Arnold Family, the Missoula Chapter. They stayed with us in one form or another for 3 weeks following Kenzie's birth. It was amazing, from Judy not letting anyone even change Kenzie's diaper or rock her to sleep even in the middle of the night, to Kedra cooking and cleaning at all times, to Jon mowing our lawn (and filling up the gas can), to Fred taking Riley on daily walks. Honestly it was amazing. And when they all left, and we were on our own.....it was a bit shocking and we could really see how good we had it for 3 weeks.

Well that's all of I've got. I'll try to do a better job of updating this blog this next time.

Talk to y'all later,

Steve