where exactly does our story start?

So, for the last five days, I've had a nagging fever. Tylenol has been able to keep it fairly tamed, but only if we obsessively watch the clock for each 6-hour dose. Adding to the fun, we lost a tree in that raucous storm Thursday night (or, rather, it decided to visit/festoon the neighboring condos) and our basement flooded. Between the steroids they give me with chemo and the fever that followed, it all seemed a little dreamlike to me. Because we've been told repeatedly to take any fever over 100.5 seriously, and mine spiked to 102 on Sat a.m., we spent hours at Urgent Care Saturday, only to be sent home without any advice and pretty much resigned ourselves to just getting through it.

Went in this morning for my 3rd round of Taxol, and after a couple of hours of testing my blood and asking me to breathe and stuff, some bright boy decided I was too sick to get chemo.

Weirdly, this cheered us up like crazy -- they're finally seeing/admitting that I'm really sick (remember this is after 5 days of constant fever, and a hematocrit of 25). We let them do a bunch more tests -- no real information gained, but at least it felt like they were trying -- and then started the first of two units of blood infusing, which should provide some relief from the anemia that has plagued me for many weeks. I've never had a blood transfusion before, but cripes, it takes forever! Ultimately we were at the hospital ten hours today; I think that's a record for a day that didn't include surgery at some point. Here's hoping the new blood does me some good and I feel up to dancing a little jig tomorrow, or at least am able to walk up a flight of stairs without gasping for breath. And I won't have Taxol this week at all - not until next Weds at the earliest, so my body may actually have a chance to recover a bit. I honestly don't know how we'd be getting through this without the great support of friends and family; in the midst of all the crises, we continue to feel very blessed.

Further updates: The tree has been laid down on the ground and sawed into thick slices (at ruinous expense); the basement is more-or-less dry, but the carpet are a complete write-off and the stench is fairly overwhelming to a chemo-sensitive nose, so Brie's taking the brunt of the clean-up effort. (Lucky Brie!)

Note that the post below this is new, as well. Due to technical difficulties too boring to recount here, I didn't get it posted when I intended to. With luck, I'll have both the energy and the technical good fortune to post here more often - but I certainly hope the posts are boring accounts of uneventful rounds of Taxol.

Imagine it's December 8th, when I meant to post this...

Boy, has it really been two months since we posted? Sorry. That's rather rude of us, after asking you all to use this to get updates. Well, we finally reached the end of A/C (and my first quarter of grad school), and we're exhausted.

I'm trying to be optimistic about Taxol, since we are frequently told that "it's better tolerated by most people," (whatever that means), but actually I'm apprehensive. A/C has been horrible, but by now, after weeks and weeks, it's very...orderly. Virtually every day of the cycle, we had specific symptoms (and be clear, many of them quite trivial), even during "good" week. We knew what to expect and could, in some ways, prepare for it. Now, Taxol is a mystery, and currently, I've lost my taste for new and changes and experiments and whatnot.

A bit of logistics: I'm on a clinical trial, which gave me A/C infusions every other week for 12 weeks, and which has me getting Taxol infusions weekly for twelve more weeks, starting now. After chemo, it's just about 7 weeks of radiation, and then we're nearly done.

Brie and I did celebrate the end of A/C with an indulgent breakfast at Salish Lodge and a hike to the base of Snoqualmie Falls. It doubled as our anniversary treat this year, and was very life-affirming.