1/30/2012 - Happy belated New Year. It's been quite a while since I posted a new entry for the SpeedWalrus blog. After returning home from New Orleans in November I spent the rest of the month and most of December in just hanging out at the house. The chemotherapy drug I was on kept me pretty run down most of the time. It also started wreaking havoc on my white blood cell count. This made me mildly paranoid about leaving the house because I didn't want to come into contact with germs which would make me ill. It also meant that I had to start giving myself injections of a medicine that would boost my white blood cell count. That drug made me feel even worse.
We were very excited about our Christmas holiday because Laela, Miranda and I were going to go on a five day Caribbean cruise starting on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately the day before we were to leave I had some kind of reaction to something that was being pumped into my system and both of my legs swelled up. It looked like my thigh extended from my groin to my foot. We went to the emergency room on December 23 (that's two years in a row if you are counting) and they admitted me because they were afraid that I had a blood clot. Needless to say the doctors weren't too keen on me flying and we ended up having to cancel the cruise. Carnival Cruise lines have not been very helpful thus far and it appears that we are just out of luck with regard to the cruise. No money back, no cruise vouchers....just a whole lot of nothing. It has been really disappointing dealing with them but I guess they've got they're own problems since their captains in Italy seem to be running their ships aground. Anyway, I was released on December 26.
In early January went back to the oncologist and we decided that I would take some time off from treatment. The last scan showed no disease progression nor did it show any tumor shrinkage. The time off is so that we can see if it is the drugs holding things in check or if the cancer is going to start growing again. Meanwhile, my energy has returned and I'm feeling somewhat human again.
Tomorrow I'll be travelling to Boulder, CO. My uncle Dick invited me out to stay with him for a week and take in some of the winter time sites of the Rocky Mountains. Delta was kind enough to issue us vouchers for the flights we didn't take for the cruise so it was kind of a no brainer. My camera is all charged up and I'm eager to get out west again to enjoy what it has to offer.
