1 more down, 3 to go...

Hey Guys,

I'm SO CLOSE to being done! Only three more treatments left!!!!

Today went really smoothly - my nurse, Anne, is the same one I had last time, and she's fantastic! Everything got started within about a half hour of our arrival (amazing) and she was so prompt at changing my fluids and my meds so that I hardly had ANY wait time - actually, I'm pretty sure that I didn't have any time where I was just sitting around waiting for her. The only time we really had to wait was when my last bag of fluids was finished and we had to wait for a different nurse because Anne had to sit in another patient's room for the first half hour of something. If the kids have bad reactions to a drug (like my little brother - his throat closed up after he started one of his chemo drugs) or if they're taking something particularly dangerous, the nurse needs to stay with them for a a bit to make sure nothing awful happens.

I slept most of the day, which was unusual for me - generally I stay awake and talk with everyone a lot, but I just couldn't keep my eyes open today! I was feeling a little nauseous in the hospital - the flushes that they put through my port after chemo makes my mouth taste like rubbing alcohol which always makes me feel like I'm going to throw up. So far, so good, though! I'm definitely going to bed early tonight - I'm exhausted after a busy weekend and then going out with James and his work buddies last night. That was probably a bad idea, but I never get to see James and his friends from the Playhouse are a lot of fun!

I also ran into a fellow "adult" patient on the hem/onc floor at Children's today. We didn't talk - he was in a wheelchair with a mask on and I was getting weighed - but we exchanged those little "what's up" nods. It's strange to see another big person amongst the sea of little bald kids (which can be really, really depressing - especially since Brian was one of those little bald kids at one point...)

I got an email yesterday from a girl (young woman?) named Tiffany - she lives pretty close to me in another suburb of Cincinnati (Fairfield, for you all in the area). She had Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma six years ago, and was treated at a local hospital. Now she's involved with the local Leukemia Lymphoma Society chapter, and gave me some really cool information. She told me they're trying to start up a Young Adult group, which I'm really excited about! Lots of other cities have big YA support communities, but Cincinnati really doesn't. Hopefully that will take off and be something I can get involved with, especially when I move back to Cinci after I graduate in May.

She also told me about the First Connection program, which is a one-on-one support network for survivors to council/help newly diagnosed patients. From what I can tell, the pairs are matched up by age, sex, and diagnosis, which sounds really cool. There's a training session on October 24, so I'm really hoping that I can attend and help someone out (or even be paired with someone to council me!) I'm also in contact with a woman at Children's Hospital about their Children's Champions program, which is something similar, plus much more. I'd love to be able to volunteer at hospital events and even be on a committee to be a patient (or family) consultant. I'll obviously be gone for a few months in the spring, but it's most likely that I'll be back in Cincinnati for at least a while, so I'm hoping I can get more involved with things when I have some more time, and get started on them now!

To all of my fellow Cancer-Havers (I hate saying 'patient' because it makes me feel sickly), do you guys participate in any programs like those? If so, what kinds of experiences have you had? I'd love to hear!

Lots of Love,

Lauren

Guess Who's Back

Hey Guys,

I'm back from my jaunt in Cleveland, and it was really, really fantastic to see everyone! I spent most of the weekend with Tyler & Katie, with a little bit of time having some delicious brunch in Oberlin (of course! where else am I going to eat brunch?!?) and got to see Matt & Marina, which is always a good time...

My mom says Winnie cried a lot while I was gone - I'm worried about what's going to happen when I leave her here for spring semester (so she doesn't have to be alone in my apartment all day...). I also brought home all of my winter clothes, which is nice (because I haven't worn them in months) but also sucks because I hate winter! Fall is beautiful, but I'm NOT a fan of cold weather at all... At least I'll be in Cincinnati for part of it, which is good because it doesn't get nearly as cold as Cleveland (even though they're only 4 hours apart)

Anyway, I go in again tomorrow for another treatment (always lots of fun). Only four left, though! I can't wait to be done - it seems so close now!

I should probably go to bed now, since I have to get up so early! But I'm watching Knocked Up on E!, so I'll probably be up for a little bit longer...

Also, I wanted to thank everyone who's sent me emails in the past few weeks - it's really great to hear peoples' stories and get to know you all. Thanks so much!

Lots of Love,

Lauren

Last-Minute Echo/PFT

Hey Guys,

At the beginning of the week, Debbie called me and told me that Dr. Adams wanted another set of tests done before my next cycle - An EKG/Echo (for my heart) and a Pulmonary Function Test (for my lungs). Well, you all know how much I LOVE the PFT (not very much...)

If you've never had one before, basically you're in this little room (remember the picture I posted last time? It looks like a phone booth!) and it's vacuum sealed shut, and you have to do all this weird breathing stuff through at tube. That's measured by a computer, which is checking different things about how well you can breathe. The worst is when you have to blow out for an extremely long period of time. I always feel like I'm going to pass out and/or wet my pants. Neither of which I really want to happen.

Anyway, the good news is that my heart and my lungs are still normal, which is fantastic! It doesn't look like the chemo is affecting my lung capacity/function or my heart walls, which can be a problem. I wasn't really too worried, though, because the amount of chemo I'm getting isn't really too high...

Also, Kaylin from Cancer Is Hilarious had her six-month scans today... Go wish her luck with the results!

Lots of Love,

Lauren

This Weekend!

Hey Guys,

I wanted to let everyone up in Cleveland know that I'll be in Berea this weekend! I'll be up Friday in time for dinner, and I'll probably be in town through Sunday afternoon. Tyler will most likely be up with me for Friday night! Let me know when you're free and I'll visit you!

Also some good news - I got MORE bloodwork done today, and I'm finally out of the woods with that! I'm back up to relatively normal - 1,200! Woohoo!

There's nothing to exciting to report today - although I think today was the coolest day we've had in a long time! I'm not too thrilled about it - I'm not much of a winter person! I like it to be cold and snow around Christmas time, but I'd be more than happy if it stayed warm all the way through Thanksgiving!

I went on a long walk tonight with my mom - I haven't done ANY kind of exercise in so long, I can't believe how out of shape I'm getting! My legs are already sore just from walking a few miles. I can't wait to get back to my pilates classes in the spring. It's probably going to kill me though! I'll have to keep going on walks so I can start slowly getting back into shape - and maybe riding my bike since I brought it home from my apartment...

Finally, I've been reading about this book all over the place! I might see if I can find a copy of the library, since my taste buds change for a couple of weeks each cycle. It'll be interesting to see if the recipes really work!

Lots of Love,

Lauren

Professors are Cool

Hey Guys,

So today was my second day back to school after my week-long involuntary hiatus, and I really like my German Song Lit class A LOT. The professor is so knowledgeable, and it goes really fast because we never really take a break from note-taking, and there are musical examples interspersed. I feel like I've learned a lot, and I've only actually made it to two classes so far!

My professor is so nice about me being out of class. He's hooked me up with another kid in the class who he knows is a good student and takes good notes, so I always have someone to go to if I've missed class and need some notes. I'm especially thankful for that because there's SO much information and I don't want to be relying on someone who might not write down everything I need to know!

I had my first piano lesson today as well. I was kind of nervous because I haven't had a piano lesson in almost two years (or really even played piano much more than plunking out melodies to learn music). It wasn't so bad - I'm REALLY rusty, but as the lesson went on, things started getting a lot better.

I've had a lot of congestion the past few days, so I called Debbie this morning because I was worried about getting a cold or flu and not being able to go visit Cleveland this weekend (or worse: not being able to get chemo on Monday). She assured me that since I don't have a cough or fever, it's probably just allergies... I'm hoping that's the case, and I'm a little less sniffly than I was this morning, so we'll see what happens! I'm going to try a different allergy medicine and see if that helps!

I'm also going in on Thursday to have another Pulmonary Function Test (remember - the one where it looks like I was sitting in a phone booth? haha) and an EKG/Echo before my next treatment. I hate the PFT because it's so time-consuming and all the extreme breathing always makes me feel like I'm going to either burst out laughing or wet my pants! The EKG/Echo only takes about 15 minutes, but it involves the ultrasound gel, so it's a huge mess...

Finally, Winnie has been helping me with this post by sitting on my lap and occasionally batting at the screen when the mouse moves too much. She's growing up to be a pretty well-behaved cat (unlike the maniac she was as a kitten!)

Lots of Love,

Lauren

Back to School (Again...)

Hey Guys,

Celebration! I got to go to class today! Unfortunately, though, my counts were still a little low this morning (around 350), so in order to go to class, I had to wear this lovely mask. In case you were wondering, yes, it's from Children's, and yes, those ARE flying band-aids printed on it. It matched my outfit SO well...

Anyway, it was really good to be able to get out of the house and back to school. Basically things seemed like they had been pretty uneventful when I was gone, and I had kept up with my reading, so I wasn't confused. I had a French quiz to make up, but I took it while the professor went over the graded quizzes with the class.

I felt a little foggy all day, but I'm pretty sure that's because I got up at 7am so I could make sure to be at the clinic by 8 (when they open) to get my blood work done to see how low my counts were.

I also got to meet up with my friend Andrew for a little bit - it was nice to see him because we haven't gotten together in over a month because our schedules have been kind of conflicting. Hopefully we'll be able to get together again sometime soon, because I miss all of my friends!

Time to go do homework! (is it bad that I'm actually getting excited about that??)

Lots of Love,

Lauren

Weekend Fun!

Hey Guys,

Well, it ended up being a pretty good weekend, despite the fact that I'm not really allowed to leave.

Yesterday I pretty much just hung out around the house, and finally motivated myself to finish the last couple of essays I had to read for my Thesis research. I still have to type all of the notes onto my computer, though... that's going to take awhile...

Last night Arielle came over with some chips & a bottle of wine and we spent the evening watching movies featuring the one and only Johnny Depp - Chocolat and Secret Window - two VERY different movies! When we were in middle school and high school, we used to have groups of girls over all the time and have Johnny Depp nights. We'd rent as many of his movies as we thought we could watch in a night and then stay up as late as we could eating nachos and gossiping. Unfortunately, Arielle and I (and Megan, but she was out of town) are the only ones still in Cincinnati, so it ended up just being just the two of us. We made the nachos, and my mom brought us some DELICIOUS special-edition Hot Chocolate flavored ice cream. SO GOOD!

This morning, my mom made an AMAZING brunch - quiche, goetta (a sausage-like breakfast meat, for those of you not from the Cincinnati area), coffee cake - and my grandparents came over. My mom got out her good china and made Kona coffee (my dad ordered it straight from Hawaii for her) and mimosas, and my grandma brought some berry trifle that was so sweet it was like dessert. It was super fancy, and we ended up eating and eating for about two hours, and still had enough food left over for the next few weeks! We're going to be having delicious breakfasts for a long time now...

I'm going in tomorrow EARLY to get more blood work done, and I'm crossing my fingers so hard that my counts will be high enough to go to class. Not only am I starting to be bored out of my mind, I'm also really worried about missing so many lectures - especially orchestration, because I know absolutely NOTHING about what I'm doing in that class. Even with reading the book, I'm still confused - some things you can only learn by demonstration. It's kind of like math in that way... yikes.

Anyway, they just redid a house at the end of our street that's been empty for... I don't even know how long! There's an open house going on right now, so of course my mom and I are going to check it out...

Lots of Love,

Lauren