Tonight is High Holy Night, ie The Oscars.  It is one of my must see events each year (the Tonys and the Emmys are also up there along with the finale of SYTYCD, DWTS and AI).  I spent most of yesterday and today renovating the neglected back bedroom and turning it back into my mainfloor hang out until my doctor does something to make me feel better.  I have an appointment tomorrow, and I'll be finding out what the next step is, because I had to give in and move my computer back upstairs because I'm so fatigued and bloated.  (I hope he recommends getting this fluid drained again.  When they did that three years ago, I felt better INSTANTLY.)

SO, I have my little flat screen TV, my notebook computer, my portable CD player and my musicals, my afghans and pillows on my futon, and my crafts and stuff too.  My clothes are here too, so it's a great place to go when I can't sleep. I have a cute container for my sugarless candy, and basically, I'm happy as a clam.  It took a lot of cleaning up, but it was worth it, because no matter what happens with my treatment, I have my retreat

As for HHN, I really have NO preference who wins this year.  I'm only watching it for the clothing, the stars and (drool) Hugh Jackman........sigh.

Oh, by the way, I correctly picked the three finalists from group one of AI - I didn't post it here, but I will start posting after each group now.  Promise

Yesterday, as planned, my Mom and Dad came over for Sunday/Anniversary dinner.  I made a roast and potatoes and carrots in the crockpot, we had some yeast rolls, applesauce, and a delicious salad.  For dessert I had Valentine's cookies, lemon bars, pudding (desserts that people had made me for dinner this week ).  They stayed about three hours, we chatted about nothing of major consequence, they saw our new fish in the aquarium, looked at the hole where we had the basement leak fixed, and then went home.

None of that was newsworthy, was it?  But it was so NORMAL it was wonderful.  One of the things that makes me craziest about cancer is how abnormal it makes you feel.  You are loaded up with drugs, you lose all your hair, and end up redrawing some of it on your face, your body is compromised by fatigue and pain, and things that were easy really aren't.  But for a while yesterday, I felt like a normal, boring, middle class, middle aged person having her parents over for Sunday dinner.  I appreciated everything - from the relative cleanness of my house, and the way the meal turned out, to being able to get the table cleared and dishes in the dishwasher while still visiting with my guests, to Mike helping clear the table and take care of the animals.  It was so disgustingly average and - well - normal.

I used to pray not to be normal.  It's so interesting how things change, isn't it?

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY to all my beloved friends and relatives who read me on Xanga!! 

And of course, to my handsome hunny bunny, Michael, whom I love with all my lil'flamingo heart.

It's a low key day for us - we will clean the house and have a nice dinner tonight.  Then tomorrow, my parents are coming over for roast beast to celebrate their 56th Amazing Anniversary!!  They are my role models, because they still like each other a lot!!

This week was testing and chemo, even though we aren't sure this chemo is doing anything, until we are, which will be by my next doctor's appointment, we continue.

On the test retake, the numbers went up again.  Fortunately, it was just a little, but enough to prove it wasn't a mistake, and the disease is doing it's thing once more.  So, it's off to the CT Scan, and something called a MUGA scan, which apparently determines the condition of my heart, so it's appropriate to be posting about it on Valentine's day

The tests are to determine where the disease is, and if I can handle a different chemo protocol, which apparently might damage a weak heart. "I know I have a heart, because I can feel it breaking..." as the Tin Man said.  I'm just tired and scared.  If they find something out of whack with my heart, that's another doctor, and another series of tests/treatments/restrictions.  I just don't want to have to stop teaching under any circumstances.  Pray for a normal MUGA, please.

I still feel about the same, so apparently this is just another step in the controlling of this disease.  I really don't believe I'll ever be "normal" again - so this is another piece of that New Normal cancer patients talk about.  Happy Go Lucky is something I just used to take so much for granted.  But God is good, and I believe with all my MUGA heart that He is healing me.  In His time, not mine.  That's the hard lesson to learn, isn't it?

Okay, I can no longer keep my mouth shut.  You all knew it had to happen.  It's been two full weeks and I haven't said a thing.  I finally have to speak.  (I hear many of you saying to yourself, "Self, it's finally happened.  Robin has lost it.  She's rambled on for four sentences and hasn't said a thing." (However, if you add the three sentences I just wrote for you to say, and this one, we are up to eight.  Pretty good, huh?  (nine.)))

Yes, it's finally time to talk about American Idol.  AI.  The juggernaut that has no end in sight.  It's still as entertaining as it was in the beginning, although it is getting weirder and weirder.  Why?  Two reasons:  First of all, the new judge.  Kara seems to be Paula with talent and brains, which means that more often than not, the two of them are ganged up in the middle, with Randy dawgin' it on one end of the judge's table, and Simon harumphing on the other.  This makes for a new dynamic.  Plus, she isn't tired of standing up to Simon as much as Paula is yet, so she's still darned feisty.  I think it's recharging Paula's batteries, too, to have an ally in the ranks.  Secondly, the contestants are weirder in audition week, and more talented at Hollywood week than any other year I can remember.  On group night, I would have bought a CD done by the first group that sang!  There are some amazing singers/performers out there this year, most of whom seemed to come from Salt Lake City - except the poor Osmond Son, who didn't make it thru.  Now you KNOW it's competitive if a kid who was brought up performing and being performed around in a family like the Osmonds doesn't make the cut.  Bikini Girl, thank goodness, got sent home this week, and now we are down to about 40 kids that can REALLY sing.  I know a lot of people love the first three weeks of AI and don't watch the rest, but for me, it starts now.  They start getting names, and personalities, and backstories.  Stay tuned for more from me, RobinIdol, as the weeks wear on.

Since I'm no longer a Grey's Anatomy fan, I can now watch Hell's Kitchen without popping back and forth. I've always liked the show because it demonstrates REAL cooking skill and passion.  Last Thursday, Gordon Ramsay (if he didn't swear so much, he'd be my dream man) showed how to actually shuck a scallop.  Since it's my favorite seafood, I found it fascinating.  I also agreed with one of the chef contestants who said if the population knew how ugly it was, they'd never eat it.  But once it's shucked CORRECTLY, it's pristine white, round, meaty and succulent.  Okay, I just made myself hungry.  Anyway, there's still 14 chefs left, so I am not sure who my favorites are.  I think they'll begin sorting themselves out in a week or so as well.  Believe me, I'll let you know.

Last TV bit.  If you were EVER a fan of ER in the last 15 years, and you aren't watching this season, you should be.  Honestly, it's like the ER of old - not only are the regular characters now likable again, but the writing is crisp and original.  Add in that every single week is like a sweeps event with the returning original cast members and the super duper guest stars, it's back to being a show well worth watching again.  Two years ago I kept saying, "Why is this still on?" and this year I'm saying, "I can't believe this is the last season."  But what better way to go out, yes?

______________________________________________________________

I had a terrific doctor's appointment on Tuesday.  He said the tumor was dissolving, there wasn't any fluid on my lungs or belly...he suspected that my next count would be in the 60s.

Then yesterday when the counts came back, it was 249.  It went up 145.  How does this happen?  He doesn't know, I don't know.  All I know is I can't stop crying because I'm so very tired after three years of this.  He says we will test again on Tuesday so he'll see me Thursday before chemo.

It will be a long week.  Thank goodness my TV shows are back. 

This has been a long week.  Since it snows a bit nearly every day, Mike has to plow the lot before school.  And since he's my ride, and I'm his alarm clock, we keep the same hours no matter what.  So Wednesday we went in at 5 AM and Thursday we went in at 4 AM.  The good thing is that I get lots of school work done - what else can you do at 4 AM in your classroom?  The bad thing is that we tend to get home around 4 PM and crash.  Sometimes this week I never got up.  Mike wakes me after a couple of hours to see if I want to eat any of the food people send us three times a week.  Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.  Then I go back to sleep.  It doesn't help that I have SAD and as soon as it's dark again, I'm done (usually 6 PM.) 

I hate winter so much that this may be the best way to make it speed right by!  I do have to say that I'm still forcing myself to walk to the mailbox every day, no matter what the weather, and I haven't caved and brought my notebook upstairs, so I'm doing stairs a lot too.  Just keep plugging along.  March is just around the corner.

Doctor's next week and blood counts.  Pray for double digits!

From my friend Kathy, who has, by the way, escaped to California...

Okay, those of you now humming the theme song to "Carmen Sandiego" either have kids or ARE still kids....

SO, where have I been?  Well, we had a "cold day" on Friday, January 16, as did most of Michigan - but the staff had to report.  So I worked all day, and most of the night on grades, which were due on Monday (which they changed to Wednesday because of the cold day).  I graded 120 some thesis and literary analysis papers, not to mention homework papers, 50 Jekyll and Hyde final projects (which, by the way, were spectacular this year!!  I think many of the kids worked on them at home on the cold day.)  The good news is that all the seniors passed, although some were a bit disappointed by their final grade.  (When your exam, which is a cumulative exam covering 1600 years of Brit Lit, counts as 20% of your grade, the standard advice is you should study more than an hour the night before the exam.)  It's pretty standard that close to 50% fail my final, and I only got one A- this year.  They just don't study.  They can get A's on unit tests, but when you stitch all that material together into a final, they get overwhelmed and unorganized and there goes the grade.  For instance, in simplified terms, if you get an A both quarters, and an F on the exam, you actually end up with a semester grade of B+.  And unfortunately, even with all the warnings and a 12 page review packet, and two days of review, some don't study at all.  I just don't understand.  I NEVER got an F in anything.  I would rather have died.  The few C's I got almost killed me.  But that's water under the bridge at this point...report cards were mailed yesterday.

So I've been working my butt off, and we have a 60 page deadline for Yearbook Monday, and I had chemo Thursday and Friday, and feel like I was run over by the truck that the steroids on Thursday and Friday allowed me to lift up in the parking lot (I have one amazing day every chemo period, when the steroids take over and I'm Wonder Woman.  Shame it doesn't last...).  That brings us to this morning, and an update.

Blech.

There it is.  My update for the week.  In a word, Blech.  This time around is much harder on me, as I've said before, and I'm hoping this third round of chemo drops my numbers into the 70s, and my bloating totally disappears, and the pain starts to reduce.  These would all be good things.  I also wish I didn't have this constant nausea this time around.  It's very disconcerting, and since I DON'T throw up, I'm just sick all the time.  Right now I'm drinking sugar free hot chocolate, calcium enhance, of course, and eating some sugar free coffee cake.  Hopefully my stomach will settle down.  It's funny.  If I nibble all the time, I seem to be okay, but if I wait and eat meals, I'm sick before I eat, and sick after.  I was never pregnant long enough to get the full morning sickness thing - is this normal?  It's the only thing I can think of to compare it to - all day long morning sickness.

Fortunately I don't have to go back for shots until Tuesday, which is a good thing.  It's nice to go home at a regular time on Monday.  I'm just hoping I feel well enough to get up and go to church in the single digits tomorrow.  It's been weeks, and if I didn't have chapel at school daily, I would go nuts without regular worship.  Mike has been a couple of times without me, bless his heart.  Oh, in the midst of all the busyness last week, my Students for Life gave a very successful chapel on Thursday, which was the 36th anniversary of the Roe V. Wade decision.  One of our members was not there because he was with his church at the huge Right to Life rally in DC.  Wonder what Obama thought about THAT?

So, prayers for double digits and less nausea are my request this week.  I would like to feel like a person for more than the ten hours I'm at school - but unfortunately, when I step away from my students, I seem to deflate and need my bed.  But they are the most important things in my daily life to keep me going, so they get my best.  My husband, the most wonderful husband in the world, does understand that, and sees the results since he works with me.  He knows how important routine and my kids are to me, so he becomes Mr. Caregiver when we hit the front door, although I've insisted on walking the dog to the mailbox down the road every day but twice since the new year started, so I'm making some small strides.  I've also resisted the urge to move my computer back upstairs, because it's good for me to do stairs.  I need to keep what mobility I have, and try to build some stamina.  My hope is that once winter ends, my numbers will be back in manageable ranges, and I'll be walking the dog for more than just a mailbox run.  I'd like to do a Relay for Life this spring or summer, but stamina, stamina, stamina.  So the mailbox walks and the stairs are my humble beginnings.

Love to everyone who reads.  I'd appreciate a comment back so I know who still checks up on me regularly, even though I've not been great about visiting all of you.  I'll try, now that the pressure of end of semester is off, and I have a couple of weeks before the build up of papers becomes unbearable LOL.

Your not so faithful, but always thinking of you correspondent,

Robin

not 147, but 104!!!  Hooray! 

God is good, all the time!

(I wanted 99, but I'll take 104...I'm such an overachiever.)

It's been an amazingly emotional and topsy turvy week.  Mike and I celebrated 27 years of marriage Thursday, but even that wasn't the highlight.

First of all, I found out that my CA125 went from 17 (beginning of radiation) to 40 (we knew this already) to 147 AFTER the first chemo.  My numbers haven't been that high and scary since I was first diagnosed.  Today's doctor's appointment confirmed what I think happened.  (I love my doctor.  He listens to me and then says "I concur with your diagnosis." and we all laugh.)  I was feeling VERY ill.  I knew I was sick again.  I was bloated, my weight shot up over 15 pounds while I wasn't eating anything because I felt so bad, my ankles and waist disappeared from the bloating...all classic signs of ovarian cancer, by the way, ladies.  Don't just chalk anything like that up to menopause.  GET CHECKED.  (This has been a PSA.  Now back to our program.)  Anyways, my assumption is that during the screwy time period between ending radiation and starting chemo again, my numbers probably went higher than that, and the 147 is a reduction.

The good news is that after two rounds of chemo, my ankles are back, and downright sexy first thing in the morning, my gut is back to just being overweight (my soft underbelly is soft again) and I feel nauseous all the time, but better in terms of the cancer pain.  My weight is down to "normal" again, and I even lost a few.  Doc and I both concur that the blood tests he took today will show quite an improvement, because physically, the chemo has kicked in.  I mean in other ways than being the Bald Chick again.  (By the way, since this is the fourth time bald, my students didn't even bat an eye when I showed up in hats this week.  I had warned them, and most of them have been around for Bald 2 and 3.)

Now on to other news.  If you look one post back, I asked you to pray for a Christian bureaucrat to come through for me.  Some of you know I've been struggling with grad school and certification for three years.  I swore I took the proper classes to fulfill my Professional teaching requirement, and 21 plus years of teaching are certainly enough to fulfill the teaching requirement - yet Michigan State University only recommended me for a Provisional renewal in 2000, which expired in 2005. NO one could tell me what other requirements I needed to fulfill, and I was taking grad credits in an online program up until my cancer diagnosis, just so if need be, I could reapply with an additional teaching area. This week I wrote long, detailed, plaintive letters to the entire State of Michigan Board of Education certification department.  I received a phonecall, and three emails back in less than a day, to their credit.  One gave me the name, email address and phone number to the head of certification for Michigan State University.  What was interesting is that it was a name that I had never seen before in my several years of fruitless attempts at information and certification.  In fact, the other gal that wrote me from MSU was a new name too, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  The bottom line is this:  The email I received said that I was recommended for PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATION and just had to fill out the paperwork, pay some money, and I'd be done.

>thud<

What?  That's it?  I'm done?  I even got a letter from the head of the department apologizing for the twisted road I had to take, and the illness I've been through.  She told me they had good news for me, though...the news that will save my job, keep me from having to spend thousands of dollars that I don't have on classes I don't need, and if that isn't God's goodness speaking through answered prayer, I don't know what is.

GOD IS GOOD, ALL THE TIME.  If you don't believe that, message me.  I'll give you nine gazillion examples, and do a happy dance on your head.

We seemed to begin and end the year in about the same place this year - with a new diagnosis of another tumor from the Ovarian Cancer Tumor Mill (aka me...)

I have to admit this third occurrence has been far tougher emotionally for me.  I seem to need more help, more down time, more patience - I think I'm just plumb worn out.  Of course this being the second year in a row of the Revived Michigan Winters of Our Youth hasn't helped.  After ten years of wimpy winters, to have two blockbusters in a row while being not exactly physically at your best isn't fun. 

So while Cancer hasn't been my friend this year, I have continued to learn, and grow and be blessed by its many side effects.  The biggest blessing is finding out who your long term, good, Christian, loyal friends are, and I am so very overwhelmed by my blessings in this area.  Besides my family, who remains incredibly supportive, I have my school and church family, and my amazing internet family.  Hubby Mike remains an amazing source of joy and strength and comfort to me as we enter our 27th year this January.  He and I are both still employed at the Lutheran High school across the road from us, and that brings innumerable blessings, not the least of which were obvious when gas was approaching five dollars a gallon!  We have managed to hold on to our little trailer up north, and our little condo, and our little fur family.  Our bills are paid, our house is warm and our tummies are fed.  We do just fine, thank you, God.

My internet family is amazing because people keep popping up from my past - Millie, Susan, and others from the old Weight Watchers boards on AOL - and the Big Four that have been in contact and with me the entire time:  Enola, MJ, Maria and Risha.  Because of Enola, my husband has his black belt in karate.  Because of Maria, I had a tree last year when I was too sick to have a tree.  Because of Risha, I have MagicalShooz.  And MJ...always vigilant in watching out for me, just around the corner.  Thru many connections I've added Judy, Marcia and many others to this list, and the danger of listing them is leaving someone off, so forgive me in advance. 

My school and job continue to be the one thing in my life that keep me going when all else fails.  I love my students and my administration and my parents and my faith filled life there.  When God put me there, He truly worked a miracle in my life.  Now this year, because of my health issues and putting things off too long, I'm going to have to work a few miracles to renew my certification and keep my good standing there.  I have everything I need, I just need some Christian bureaucrat to figure out how to package it so the state of Michigan accepts it.  Prayers, please

Spencer the luxury cat will be 8 this year, Spanky the indoor barn cat will be 7, and Stormy, the black spaniel who would be a blonde bombshell with no brain if she was a people will be 6.  As I said on my birthday - I had surgery when I turned 50, chemotherapy when I turned 51, radiation when I turned 52 - this year could I just have a party?  We have until October to make that happen, folks

So while not a lot has changed, or so it would seem, we continue to live in the shadow of the cross - Only Christ, Only Grace, Only Faith.  Thanks be to God.

Happy 2009!