Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to take some time to wish you all a Merry Christmas as I sit here in my living room relaxing with Clint, Buddy and Preston while listening to Christmas music... specifically "Santa Baby" the Miss Piggy version!  I just hope I can make it without having to hear the songs, "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" or "Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey" again.  Note to XM/Sirius Holly station: Please for the LOVE OF GOD, take those two songs out of your rotation.  They are really annoying!!!


It's been a very different Christmas this year.  I think it all started when me and Clint were both out of town the first weekend of December.  I've felt a little "behind" ever since.  We missed our High Altitude Bible class party, we missed seeing "Celebration" at Houston's First Baptist even though we had good tickets.  I even went home early from the Deep Trend Christmas party this year due to being extremely tired and run down from the Vegas Half Marathon.  I missed a couple of gatherings and parties that friends had - I even missed out on my bunko friends' Christmas party.  I think what was really strange is that my sister and her family stayed in North Carolina for Christmas this year.  I'm really happy that they got to spend some much needed down time at home, but I missed them very much.  


Even though it was a really "different" Christmas, it was still REALLY good.  Sometimes quiet and relaxed isn't so bad.  We still got to spend time with Clint's family on Friday evening...

This was the 12th Christmas without Clint's sister, Sheila.  We still miss her very much, but we know that she is celebrating Christmas in Heaven with Christ himself.  

We had Christmas lunch today with my mom and dad.  We had a great time and it was nice not having to worry about doing the dishes!

Like I said...my sister Rebecca and her family stayed in North Carolina, but I woke up this morning to a text picture from my nephew Chilton wishing me a Merry Christmas!

This is my 3rd Christmas in CancerLand.  I still remember my very first one where I wondered how many more Christmas's I would get to enjoy.  I was still in so much shock and everything was so new.  I was just beginning my FAC combo of chemo after 12 weeks of Taxol.  I still vividly remember New Year's Eve day when MD Anderson called to tell me my appointments with the stem cell transplant people were all canceled as the clinical trial was closed.  I was so devastated. Here I am two Christmas's later and things are so much different...so much brighter and filled with so much hope.  I'm looking forward to the next part of this CancerLand journey.  Where will it take me next?  It's all in God's hands which gives me plenty of reason to sleep at peace at night and have confidence that no matter what, he is taking care of me just like he takes care of each and everyone of you.  

Merry Christmas!  I hope you and your family had a blessed day!

Cancer rant about fellow Metastatic Survivors :(

What a great day!  I finished up work for the rest of the year and got to have dinner with Clint and my good friend, Joe Wheat.  I have to brag on Joe before I get into my blog entry.  We were celebrating Joe's newly aquired PhD status.  Now he's a "double doctor"!  LOL!  Congrats, Joe.  We are so proud of you.


Now we are back at home relaxing.  I was hoping to catch a new episode of our new favorite TV show REVENGE, but no joy... no new episodes until January.  It's killing me trying to figure out who Tyler shoots.  I'm thinking it's faux Amanda (not the real one, aka Emily).  Anyway, won't get an answer for 2 more weeks.  Ugh!


So here I sit with my blog.  I know I told you guys I would be back quickly to talk about financial controversy!  So here it goes...


Every now and then I go peruse a breast cancer message board on breastcancer.org specifically for metastatic/stage IV BC survivors.  I go there mainly to read about the various treatments women are on, etc.  Many times there are threads regarding financial and work related issues.  This is where I get a little frustrated with some of my fellow survivors.  Many of them find out they are Stage IV and immediately want to go on disability at work.  I'm not judging them, but I decided a long time ago that I would keep working until I just couldn't do it anymore.  I don't have children and I just think that I would go insane hanging out here at the house day in and day out.  I mean, what the heck would I do?  Most people who go on disability can only count on getting around 50% of their wages and then have to get on COBRA and pay higher insurance premiums.  That also doesn't sound very enticing to me.  I have great insurance and really don't pay a lot for it.  Yet another reason to keep working as long as I can.  I also really like my job.  Anyway, so keep in mind a lot of these ladies are on disability.  Then many of them decided that the "deserve" to get accelerated life insurance benefits.  Anyone familiar with this?  I find it kinda creepy.  Basically, if you have an illness deemed "terminal" and your doctor signs documents saying that you only have 6-12 months to live depending on the insurance, then you can collect your life insurance before you actually die.  Many of these ladies do this so they can pay off debt, take their families on once in a life time trips and vacations, etc.  What's weird is that these same ladies get really annoyed if people/doctors/friends of family say that they are dying, but yet turn around and make their doctors sign paperwork saying that they ARE dying!!!  I don't know about you guys, but that's just WRONG in my opinion.  


Anyway, many times I've felt like chiming in trying to convince these ladies not to go on disability until absolutely necessary or that taking accelerated life insurance benefits is just plain creepy and wrong, but I don't want to get into petty fights with them.  Just this week, though, I saw a thread entitled something along the lines of crazy, wrong fantasies with cancer.  I looked at this thread and became just so angry and sad at the same time.  A stage IV woman was really mad and angry about her situation.  She had been diagnosed Stage IV years ago and immediately decided to go on disability.  She now makes 50% of what she once made and is now on Medicare since her Cobra ran out.  She has high out of pocket costs with her medications, etc.  She also took out accelerated benefits a while back and has gone THROUGH IT ALL!  She is now broke and can't make ends meet.  She now is thinking about taking out all kinds of credit cards running them up and buying a new car with no intensions of paying it back since she is Stage IV and may die soon.  She also stated that if she continues to live and can't pay any of it back then she will just declare bankruptcy.  REALLY???!!!!!  I wonder if she realizes that even if she dies, someone has to pay that back.  It may be taxpayers, but someone pays for all that.  The lady is really angry and unhappy even though she went on trips and bought stuff with her accelerated benefit money, but still thinks that a new car and credit cards will bring her happiness.  Never mind that she is still ALIVE!  She even complained about that.  AND get this...she has only been on anti hormonals for the last few years.  That's right folks, she hasn't been on chemos in a long time but complains that the side effects from each and every anti hormonal has been so hard on her.  WOW!  I feel like I'm in heaven on an anti hormonal and Afinitor.  Yes, I have joint pain and other side effects like this lady, but it's not that bad.  


So there's my rant.  I just want to know how some of you feel about this.  Should people with "terminal" cancer get to go around and spend $ willy nilly and take out accelerated benefits?  Do we "deserve" fabulous once in a lifetime trips even if we can't afford them?  What do we "deserve" from this world or society?  I guess I'm just a raging lunatic for thinking I deserve nothing and have been blessed with so much.  Am I losing my mind?  Is anyone else frustrated, angry and annoyed at this lady and others like her?  I know I talk a lot about cancer bringing out the best in people, but I will say that it often brings out the worst as well.  I really haven't talked much about that.  I will talk about it more in future posts.  I've been meaning to blog about "Competitive Cancer in CancerLand" too!  That's a whole other topic that's pretty amusing.  


By the way, I wanted to post a pic of me and my clinical trial oncologist, Dr. Jennifer Wheler.   I have talked about my breast oncologist, Dr. Litton, but haven't written much about Wheler.  She is pretty amazing just like Litton.  I see her once a month in the main building...many times waiting 2 hours to be seen.  She is super busy trying to save those of us who need answers and treatments sooner than later.  Also, she is SINGLE (FYI for you eligible bachelors out there)!

Until next time!!!

I Have Finally Realized that I Have Been on an Emotional Spending Spree for Years and I am now Emotionally Bankrupt!

My little furbaby, Buddy (aka Budmuffin).  It's such an appropriate shirt for him, by the way!  Preston has one too, but wouldn't sit still long enough to get a good pic.

My friends, Laurie Earls and her sister Charlene, came into town last week for Laurie's CT scans, MRI's, and 3 month visit with her oncologist here at MD Anderson.  As some of you know, Laurie actually lives in California and I met her at a local restaurant back in February while she was here for treatments.  I'm so happy that Laurie got to go back home finally but I have missed her.  It was really great to hang out with them.  They actually stayed with us at the house for a few days.  

I have to tell you what dear, sweet Laurie and her sister pointed out to me during their visit...I am emotionally in debt, maybe even bankrupt, due to poor choices in spending emotional energy over the years.  What?  Did I really say that?  Is there even such a thing as being emotionally in debt or bankrupt?  As some of you know, I've always been pretty good at keeping out of debt financially.  I don't go willy nilly spending $ on crazy things (OK,  every now and then but nothing too crazy) and I have many good choices when it comes to finances.  Not so much on the emotional side of things.  Let me explain!  Many of you have pointed out that I can be emotional...I have that figured out, but what I didn't know is that I need to be more selective on who and when I spend my emotional energy on.  I'm not saying that some people, things, situations are not worth it, but I need to be more careful in the amount of emotional energy I expend and prioritize where I spend it.  A lot of it has to do with timing as well.  I may have a big CT scan coming up the following day... guess what, I may not have a lot of emotional energy for anyone that day.  Why am I explaining any of this to you guys?  I just need you all to know that I still care about my friends and family.  I love you all so much.  I just may not be able to emotionally invest in certain people, things or situations at certain times and THAT'S JUST GOING TO HAVE TO BE OK!!!!

Where it all seemed to dawn on me was when me, Clint, Laurie, and Charlene were at El Tiempo (where else would I be?) and Laurie was really trying to help me solve a problem.  Laurie started doing the pros and cons thing with me with Equal packets being the pros and Splenda packets being the cons.  I'm always pretty good at listing the pros and cons of situations,  I think my dad started teaching me that the moment I came out of the womb.  Unfortunately, there with Laurie I couldn't even get past one Equal packet to one Splenda packet...I couldn't even come up with the actual pros and cons!  It was like I didn't care one way or the other.  It's like it didn't matter but I know that it should have and I should have come up with way more sweetners either way.  That's when it hit me.  All these years I've been saying that I wish I had on "off" switch for me caring so much about things.  That "off" switch is called being emotionally in debt, empty, or bankrupt.  I've now decided that maybe an "off" switch isn't what I need, its more like I need one of those sliding dimmer switches.  Am I making any sense what so ever?  What do you guys think?  This is probably common sense to many of you and I'm just late to the party on this one.

Anyway, I would like to give you guys a quick update on Laurie's visit to MD Anderson.  She got some good news.  All her tumors/lesions shrunk on Nexavar except for one.  She has numerous tumors all over her body so having all but one respond is really GREAT!  Her eye is doing a lot better (she was having problems because of the tumor on her brain stem).  The radiation seemed to help.  Her hair is growing back and she seems to be in good spirits.  She is in a lot of pain so please keep her in your prayers, especially that God would lessen the pain in her leg.  She is now in Tuscon, Arizona staying with Charlene and her husband.  Yay!  We are all excited that she will be celebrating a lot this Christmas.  

I also want to update you guys on my friend Lindsey, the one decorating my house that I have talked about on previous blogs.  She is my friend who has metastatic cervical cancer.  Since I have last talked about her, she has been in the hospital dealing with horrible pain in her back.  I was getting really worried about her since I had not heard from her in a week or so.  She has had a surgical procedure to get a pain pump.  That seems to be helping somewhat, but she still is in pain.  It's all from her FOUR fractures in her pelvis.  OUCH!  I just saw her a couple of nights ago and she says she is getting her MOJO back.  She looked amazing as always.  Please keep her in your prayers.  

I will actually be back blogging in a couple of days.  I have something else I want to blog about that's been on my mind relating to cancer...but this time the financial side to cancer.  Might be a little controversial.

I Survived Vegas and the Media Mayhem!

Viva Las Vegas!  Yes, I survived the Vegas Rock and Roll Half Marathon at night.  It was fun running the strip at night, but it was an EXTREMELY crowded run the whole 13.1 miles.  Nothing like running with 44,000 other crazy people.  At least I got to run with a few of my friends.  In the pic above is Heather Keister, Laura Kopytkiewicz, Ashley Paulsen, me and Martha Aguilar.  Let's just say Ashley left all of us in the dust and finished in 2:12.  I finished with a 2:34... I did really well until I got to mile 10 which was coming back to the strip at the Wynn Encore.  Oh well, I still got the Houston Half coming up in January.  I'm just glad we had a really fun girls weekend.  I also need to give a shout out to my friend Ellie Bane who gave me the absolutely fabulous pink sequin skirt to wear in the race.  I also started out wearing light-up glasses and necklace, but they weren't made for running. LOL!  Here's a few other pics of us having fun in Vegas.  

I came home late Monday night and barely had time to recover before my liver biopsy at MDA on Tuesday.  This time, it wasn't as "fun" as the last time.  They were running 3 hours behind due to difficult cases before me.  We arrived at 10 am but didn't walk out the door until 7:15 pm.  Don't feel bad for me...feel bad for Clint.  I actually slept for an hour and a half before the procedure and then slept the entire 3 hours afterwards while Clint got to sit around and read a book.  Again, just like last time, my blood pressure was low and the alarm kept going off on the monitor but I didn't notice since I was fast asleep.  This biopsy was a little different than the one I had last year.  They decided last minute to do it MRI guided instead of CT guided.  They also went in at a different angle.  It was definitely more painful than last time as well.  However, this time they wouldn't give me more meds as my blood pressure was "too low".  NEWS FLASH MDA:  my blood pressure is low normally!!!!  I was frustrated, but I survived.  I hopefully will find out more information on the results of the biopsy next week at my next appointment with Dr. Wheler.  


Now, on to all the media mayhem.  Many of you noticed that I was on the news, in the paper, on the internet, etc last week.  I found out about it all so last minute I didn't get to tell all of you about it.  I had an interview with NBC nightly news which also was on the Today show, an interview with Channel 13 locally, an AP phone interview, an AP video interview, an AP photographer shadowing me at the Vegas Half Marathon.  It was absolutely crazy.  Let's just say that there was a lot of interviewing, filming, photographing and its hilarious to see what actually comes out of it.  It was really fun, but I felt like a big GOOB doing a lot of it.  Acting natural while there's a big camera in front of you is really hard.  Anyway, if you did not see any of it, all this media excitement was due to some exciting Afinitor breast cancer data coming out of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium last week.  MD Anderson got me and my friend Suzanne Hebert to talk to the press about our experience with the drug.  I was really excited to tell everyone how great this drug has been for me.  Dr. Jennifer Litton, my breast oncologist, was also featured in an interview with ABC nightly news and Channel 13 here locally.  It was a big media week for us all.  Here are some links to some of the news stories:


http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45590165#null


http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/health&id=8458492


http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Big-promise-is-seen-in-2-new-breast-cancer-drugs-2373366.php


http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Therapy-combo-shows-promise-in-breast-cancer-cases-2376796.php




Thanks to all of you who have emailed, facebooked, texted, called, etc to let me know you saw me in the news.


On a final frivolous fun note, I do have to say congratulations to the Houston Texans on securing their first ever playoff berth as the AFC South Division Champs.  It's been ten long years!  YAY TEXANS!!!

Thanksgiving just FLEW by!!!

Well, Thanksgiving came and went in the blink of an eye!  I had such a great time visiting with friends and family and just enjoying my great scan results.  


It all started with a fun dinner out with our friends Les and Ann at El Tiempo.  I think that is my favorite place to celebrate good news!

Thanksgiving day started bright and early with me doing the Turkey Trot down in the Galleria and Clint coming along for moral support.  I actually did the 10k this year in preparation for my half marathon.  I did great and had a lot of fun.  

After that, we packed up and headed to College Station for some good ole Aggie tailgating and the A&M/UT game.  Let's just say the game was really a stinker, but we still had a really good time.  I haven't been to a game in years and I almost forgot how amazing AggieLand is on game day.   I really miss the good ole days!  Here's some pics.

Parsons mounted Calvary - they were right next to where we tailgated!

Our hosts and Clint tailgating!  Thanks to Cameron for the tailgate party.

The Aggie band marching in

Clint and friends!

Me and Clint - his orange shirt is so UGLY!!!

I had some pictures of Coach Sherman and the football team marching in but who wants to see pics of our ex coach.  DRAMA, DRAMA, DRAMA!

The next day we drove down to our little ranch near Sequin for a quiet weekend.  Clint's parents joined us out there for the day on Saturday.  It was so nice to get some peace and quiet away from the hustle and bustle of Houston.  We even heard coyotes howling at night.  Yikes!  One night me and Clint went out to a deer blind to hog hunt (we have tons of hogs on the property and they are tearing everything up).    This was my first time to ever be in a deer stand!  Woohoo!  It was so exciting I actually fell asleep about 15 minutes after we got in it...and it was only about 9:30pm.  I'm becoming such a snoozer.  At least Clint couldn't complain about me being noisy and driving the hogs away. 

So now I'm back here in Houston preparing to go to Vegas tomorrow for a fun filled weekend with some girlfriends and a little half marathon on Sunday night.  Am I ready for 13.1 miles in the cold Vegas night?  Ummmmmmm...not really but we will definitely have fun trying!  We are booked for a couple of nice evenings at good restaurants and Friday night we have tickets to see the Jaberwakeez (go ahead and laugh, I know you want to).  I just can't go to a Cirque de Soliel show.  I will fall asleep in record time.  

I come back home Monday night and get to have my liver biopsy on Tuesday at noon!  Exciting!  Before the biopsy, a camera crew and reporter from a local news station will be interviewing me for a news story.  I can't tell you about it yet, but it's BIG...I think.  We'll see what comes of it.  Supposedly if all goes to plan, the story will air next Wednesday night.  I will get back with you on Tuesday about the details.  Don't want to spoil the surprise.  

Well, I'm signing off for the evening.  Wish me luck in VEGAS!