Sidney report; windmill weeds and chemo 11 down!

Today went well. We completed chemo #11 today! Only one more Taxol! Then we go to Houston on the 8th and I’ll have appointments all day the 9th beginning my first of the last 4 ‘hairy’ chemo treatments. I think I’ll do fine with them. I may not feel so good, but that’s okay. I’ll be counting my blessings and bringing you all with me to give me great support. I’m excited and looking forward to the reunion and getting through this next stage. After the 12 weeks it will take to do the final round of chemo I’ll have a month off to rebuild my immune system and then the surgery. That’ll be the Christmas and New Year’s holidays and I expect it to be fun! I expect the surgery and radiation to be the worst parts of this adventure. The surgery will be major and I’ll be way sore and have to lie around. I’m not so good at lying around, but I know you all are coming with me (in my mind), so that’ll be the fun part. I’ll know that my mom and my grandmother went through it, so I’ll be proud to follow in their footsteps and do as well as they did. I was there when it was my mom’s turn and I don’t remember her ever complaining, so I’m not going to complain, either.

Reporting on Sidney: He has been on a ventilator and in a drug induced coma, but they are weaning him from the ventilator and expect to be able to let him out of the coma soon. Both his lungs are bruised. He has a cracked skull and a blood clot in the brain and another outside the brain. (How does that work? He aunt reported that to me, and we’re all lay people; we’re just reporting it as we get it.) Those are very serious things, but lots of prayers are being said on his behalf. They eased him from his coma a bit today to see if they could determine how much damage has been done and to see if he could handle it. They asked him his name and he answered correctly. They asked him his girl friend’s name and he answered correctly! They asked him if he knew what happened and he didn’t. That’s so common for brain-injured people to block out the offending event. It’s a gift from God, because don’t you know it would hurt all over again to recall it! He began to get agitated, though, as he found 3 IV’s in his body, and he was trying to pull it all out and they had to put him back into the coma.

We’re going tomorrow to OKC to see them. If I don’t sleep tonight, I can sleep in the car tomorrow. We’ll also run by and see Trish , Raynie and Grace. We’ll go in the morning, so we’ll miss the other kids this time, I guess.

We got home this afternoon and found windmill weeds blown up from the nearby farms. God is good to us. He knew we needed the chance to stretch our legs and count our blessings of being able to walk and bend and get them. I got to run the risk of sweating because we’re changing my bandage tonight. It was fun and I thank God for the windmill weeds and the ability to get some of them into bags. I also thank Him for my precious husband who helped and was willing to stop before we picked up every last one!!! What a breakthrough for him and for me. Used to we would have worked until every last one was gone before we quit. We quit today when we could use the doors. Count blessings with me! PTL!

Pictures tonight are me in my hat that I bought in Hawaii and Don in his Hawaii shirt; on our way to Chemo 11! The last picture is the windmill weeds.