Really starting to lose my hair....Why Now?....Mark's Surgery......

I have my school final this week and a two med chemo week. On Saturday we have the ward breakfast and Sunday we have the progressive dinner. I hope I feel better so I can go. So as you could tell in my pictures I’m losing more of my hair. I don’t want to even touch it for fear more will fall out. I even asked the nurse last week if she thought it would still come out at this point. She said no and now it starts. My head is so itchy also. I wonder if the stress of school and Mark having his surgery added to the problem. I have only 3 more chemo treatments!!!! Then I’m done. They will check me quarterly and if they find something or suspicious about something then they will do a scan. They will continue to monitor the cancer marker called CA-125. If it goes up then there’s something to look at. If it stays down then we’re good. They want the marker to be below 35. I am now at 29! When this all started I was at 59. I went to see the GI doctor. He put me on a stimulate stool medicine because he doesn’t want any bowel sitting inside my intestines. He thinks the medicine and time, along with finishing chemo will help the ulcers to heal. I think it might actually be helping.

            Well Dad had his surgery on his broken ankle and both hammer toes one on each foot. We’ve got pictures, they’re gross so be prepared. When Paul looked at them he said that it looked like a bagel dog (big and puffy). Most everyone gets grossed out when they see his toes, especially Chris and Austin. He is doing really well. He hated the crutches so we had them bring out a knee scooter and he loves using that. It has a basket in front for him to carry stuff with him. So far he’s done ok with being non-weight bearing on his right foot. He keeps saying, can I really do this for 6 weeks? His left foot is in a Velcro shoe thing that’s long in the front to help protect his toes. There is a big wire coming out of the middle of his toes and then the end of it is bent. It’s not held in by anything so he has to be careful not to walk too much so it won’t come out or get bent. If it does then they have to go back into surgery and repair it. They had to break his toes in order to fix them. The surgery for his ankle was displaced (meaning there was about a 1/8 of an inch space between the two bones). So they had to do a bone graft to fill in that area. They took the bone from his foot. Normally they take it from your knee but with having his knees replaced they couldn’t take any from there. The doctor said his foot was out of alignment so he was going to straighten that out as well. After 6 weeks he’ll start physical therapy.

            It has been a Godsend to have Ryan out of work at this particular time so we will be able to use him, Austin and Mike to help run the business while Mark is laid up. He committed to work at least until the end of December. Ryan is good to work with Austin. The ward and family has been so great to help! With dinners cleaning, running errands etc. Craig even came up and he and Austin put up the Christmas lights outside.