August 12, 2006: Catching Up (Bounce Back Week #6 and Chemo Treatment #7)

So, after some frantic work, a crazy vacation, more frantic work, and a couple of nasty e-mails from Stacey, we have some catching up to do!

Bounce Back Week #6 went fairly smoothly: some generalized crappiness, muscle aches, and stomach distress (more on that later) but also a lot of working, blueberry picking, gardening, and hanging out.

Floyd is INNOCENT, by the way. Apparently, he does have fairly high testosterone levels, and there was something funky with the test interpretation (has to do with the ratio of testosterone to peritestosterone, which might have been very low for some reason, making the ratio look wonky) and the Tour only sent the first sample to one lab, and sent the second sample to the same lab. Besides, you can’t take testosterone for a one-day advantage, you take it over time to build muscle mass, so if he tested fine just before the race, and incidentally had a rotten day just before he won, then he can’t have been using testosterone. Floyd is a good lapsed-Mennonite boy who has been training for this race for fifteen years: he won, and that’s that.

On to Chemo Treatment #7, which was atually preceded by a visit to TFDJ for a phull physical. The verdict is that Stacey is basically pretty healthy (except for the cancer thing.) Dr. J wants to start Stacey on something to keep her blood pressure down, just to head off any problems, and ordered a skillion blood tests. (Since she was going in anyway, she just had the techs at the Chemo Cafe draw a few extra vials while they were in there.)

The next day, back to the lovely Cafe, where Stacey didn’t even have time to crack a book before she was called in to see the nurse, and then just a short wait to see TFDB. There was just not that much to talk about with TFDB (which is good!) so she went straight on to the Cafe for her Chemoccino (grande, double toxins, nutmeg.)

Stacey did report to the nurse that she had been having sort of a stomach ache, “the kind where it hurts when you press on your belly button, which prompted a lot of people to tell me not to press on my belly button.” Ooh, so helpful! The nurses reminded her that she is supposed to take her Decadron with food because “it can burn holes in your stomach.” Fun! So she got an extra pre-med for the pain (which got a little better but still lasted for the day) then Taxol (cancer poison) then Herceptin (hormone whacker-outer).

She was out of there by 4:30, then went to acupuncture, then home. She felt like she had a few gallons of chemicals in her body (funny thing!) but otherwise basically ok.

We are now heading into Bounce Back Week #7, and Stacey seems in good spirits and good health. Her skin, by the way, looks fantastic! We both have that wonderful Bancroft skin (which Grandma always told us would keep us wrinkle-free when we get old) and Stacey also has trouble with roseacea. So now, her skin is clear and smooth, not oily at all, and the roseacea looks like a tasteful application of blush. “Hey, I should have gone on chemo years ago!” OK, maybe not.

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