I had acupuncture with "Bruce" last week - as expected he is a hippie granola kind of guy (he has long hair but he had it in a french braid when I saw him, need I say more...). Anyway, he practices Japanese acupuncture (I didn't know there was such a thing). Its much more like acupressure - he poked around me a bit before inserting any needles. The coolest thing is that he sent me home with these bandaids that actually have tiny, tiny needles in them so that I can do my own acupuncture when I want to - so some of them are for these re-occurring hot flashes I still have from chemo, to make my tumour softer (it really works) and to help relax my neck muscles which are chronically tight from my previous spinal cord surgeries. Here's what they look like:
I also had an appointment with Dr. Craig as well as Dr. Beaulieu (surgeon). Dr. Craig was impressed with my resolve to stay on my diet and said I was doing pretty well if I feel guilty about eating a piece of toast or two at breakfast (I do eat a few carbs a day to try to put on some weight and actually feel full). Dr. Craig also changed all of my supplements - he said now that chemo is done, this was our opportunity to hit the cancer with as many supplements as we can before my surgery. I had quite a few general 'cancer questions' for him from the reading I had done in the past few months (by the way, if you want any recommendations on cancer books, I think I've read about 7 or 8 so let me know). As usual, Dr. Craig answered all of my questions very well and we left with a bag of new supplements and answers!
Then the same day we met with Dr. Beaulieu the surgeon. She was pleased with the effect that the chemo has had on my tumour (its about the size of a pea now - maybe 1 cm - it was 6 cm when I started chemo) but seemed a bit hesitant on what type of surgery because she wants to be sure that a lumpectomy is the correct choice. So, I have to have an MRI before surgery to confirm tumour size and location which means that I'm not 100% sure that it will be a lumpectomy but I'll know this before my surgery after my MRI.
Surgery is booked for January 13th (13 is my lucky number, no kidding). At first I was a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to have it earlier because January 13th is 5 weeks after my last chemo and the last doctor I saw at the Cancer Centre said they don't like to go past 5 weeks because they want to limit the opportunity for the tumour to grow back again. Also, I was feeling a bit apprehensive myself about this situation for the same reason but as you know, I keep track of this little tumour of mine measuring it everyday, so if it does seem to start growing again I'll know it! But after a few days of thinking about it, I decided that this is an opportunity to get back into shape and sort of do a little experiment on myself to see if these supplements that I take work (by 'work' I mean keep the tumour the same size or keep it shrinking). Wouldn't it be crazy if it shrunk the tumour!?! I bet everyone's minds would blow!
I just got home from an afternoon of bowling with my group and guess what? I won the prize for the worst bowler! Yes! I tried to claim that I had a handicap what with the cancer and all but it didn't really fly but it was fine with me because that meant I won a prize. This is what I won:
What is this you ask? Its a board that you can draw on with water and as it dries, it disappears. It is intended that you do art work on this board but I think it would be much more useful for Dom to put his complaints on it and I will read it later - haha.
A huge thank you to everyone to that has supported us these last three months, its not where I thought I'd be at this time in my life but I cannot complain with all of the love, support, positive vibes, emails, texts, phone calls, food and visits that you all have given us, its been very humbling.
And I think that's it - we are staying around home for the Christmas - so Ottawa friends, we are around if you want to hang out. Oh and thank you to everyone who has sent us Christmas cards - I've been saving them to open on Christmas day.
If you read my last blog I said there were no promises when it comes to Christmas cards and I have followed through on this - there are no Christmas cards because I tried to make one on Walmart's website a few weeks before Christmas, got really frustrated, then it looked like the resolution on the card was going to be bad so I only ordered one. Then Walmart did not live up to their 5-day promise so I just picked up the test card yesterday (the plan was to order one and if it looked okay to order a pile). So here is the card for everyone who is reading my blog - which is admittedly more people than I would have sent this card to, so in keeping with one of my favourite mantras 'it always works out in the end'. I don't need to say anything more, see you in 2015!
