Relaxing Week

So I had last week off from school and from doctors! I didn't do any of the school work I brought home, but I did have some exciting adventures.

Last Sunday Keith and I killed some time on a rainy day by looking at cars. You see, after driving everyday for two weeks to San Francisco, I decided I'd rather be driving an automatic (I never ever would have thought this would happen, but between the traffic and the hills...). After realizing that my golf was still worth quite a bit of $$ we decided we could do it and we bought a car (another golf). The car isn't here yet- the dealer found one in San Diego so it needs to be shipped up...but hopefully I'll pick it up in a couple days.

I thought I'd treat Red to daily trips to one of my favorite off leash dog parks in the area (Point Isabel) during the break. On Monday, I made the mistake of going at low tide and Red went mudding (and got a nice bath afterwards!). On Tuesday, I made sure it wasn't low tide, but just as we rounded the corner to head back to the car he stopped hunting for ground squirrels when he saw a duck out in the water. Off he goes swimming after this duck (completely ignoring me). He swam out so far a concerned crowd was gathering and I was wondering how I was going to explain to Keith that I just watched the dog drown in the bay. Thankfully the duck finally flew out of Red's sight and he turned back to shore (right around this time a curious sea lion poked his head up not too far from Red). Ugh, I am sure I sprouted some new gray hairs from that! Needless to say, Red and I aren't doing any more off leash adventures until we work on recall even with tempting distractions!

Keith and I had a nice Thanksgiving. We ate too much and were pretty lazy. At 9:30pm or so we went for a drive to check out the lines at some of the big box stores nearby. You wouldn't believe (well some of you probably would) the line at Best Buy!! There were people with tents!?! There were also lines at Toys R Us and Target. We didn't do any shopping, just some staring.

Oh, I almost forgot...When I went in for Herceptin on November 18th my port wouldn't give any blood. So after being poked and repoked and assuring the nurse that the saline was indeed going in (I can taste it as soon as they push it in) I headed down to radiology where they did a little investigating and found that the end of the catheter is right up against the wall of the vein. What this means is that they can send things in, but when they try to suck things out they just end up sucking on the wall of the vein. Actually, what this really means is that I need a new port. Not the biggest deal in the world but one more thing that will need to be done eventually. There is no big rush since I'm not on any IV chemo at the moment, but I'll probably try to get it organized before too long. The upside is that I will be getting a bigger port (not good aesthetically), but good in that it can be used for scans.

I hate to say it, but I'm sort of looking forward to getting back to work. A week off means I've had a lot of time for my thoughts to get away from me. I'm worried that after 3 months of no treatment my cancer is roaring back. I'm not a fan of this 4 week wait between radiation and the start of the trial. I know the reality of the matter is that a week or two won't make any real difference in the long term, but it really fucks with your head to know that there is cancer growing inside you and you're not doing anything about it. I should be getting scheduled for a barrage of scans and other tests prior the start of the trial. Just getting that ball rolling will make me feel better. It's strange how much of a difference doing something (even if it isn't a treatment) makes on your state of mind.