Happy New Year

Happy New Year to our group of special friends and family.

It has been a busy few weeks:  Christmas was relaxed and very nice.  Mary and Colleen had a sleepover at our house Christmas eve.  We had a good dinner thanks to Sue and worked a puzzle for a while, watched tv and enjoyed sitting in front of the fire.  Christmas we cooked another dinner and Kim and Lin joined us as well as Cathy who is our cat's visiting nurse.  More work on the puzzle with completion late afternoon.  More sitting by the fire and more eating.  We enjoyed the two days.

I managed to have Christmas week off from chemo, not sure how I managed that but we enjoyed the time off.  The two month tests took place on Monday the 28th and 29th.  A CT scan which was marred by three attempts to get an IV going.  And blood tests on the 29th.  Met with Dr Dan on Wednesday with the expectation of getting chemo.  Unfortunately the CT showed tumor growth, less than 20% but enough to feel like the chemo is not working.  And the cancer marker that went down a bit last month went back up.  Chemo was cancelled and options were discussed.

Not what we were hoping to hear and emotions are still all over the map.  There is a next chemo, harder on the body with more side effects but hopefully a bigger kick to the cancer.  I have to have a port put in, no more IV's, and will have a pump for two days of at home chemo after the infusion at the clinic.   Chemo is every other week, there are two levels of the chemo I can choose from but I am anticipating that I will choose the one with the extra punch.  On the upside--no more daily shots, the trial shots were related to the the old chemo regimen.  It is harder to be positive after a let down but we are working on getting back on track with that.

Found out yesterday, quite by accident, that my health insurance ended.  Had not heard from Hamline or their processing company that they had changed companies  Spent the afternoon online and on the phone in order to choose between individual insurance with my old insurance company or the group insurance with a new company.  Given all the activity I already had set up for next week I went with the old company and individual coverage.  Thanks to the laws that let me continue to be covered even with a pre-existing condition. Thanks Obama care.

On the fun side, basketball continues, though our teams are not winning, we went to the movies yesterday, saw "Carol" which was a beautiful film and love story, dinner after at a hamburger dive was good.  Deb and Jim were here for the afternoon today and we had pizza that Jill had sent us from Chicago-Lou Malnati's and we have both been enjoying massages.  We have snow on the ground, Nancy thinks that if it is to be cold, there should be snow.   The other night we had a beautiful vibrant sunset.  My brother comes back January 11 for the week.  He thought he was coming for chemo but now it is an off week.  That will be better. My hair continues to grow as does my hat collection.  And I have a crocheted Minion from Poland, what could be better.