Hi everyone
Sorry for not updating this sooner but we have been on vacation and our new addition (Joey the Wonder Dog) takes up a lot of time too. Carol and I just got back from a week at Sanibel Island and it was everything we hoped it would be! We had a condo right on the beach and we spent the week looking for shells, looking at birds, fishes, alligators, manatees, osprey, dolphins and all kinds of other wildlife!! As you can see from the attached pictures we also found time to relax and enjoy some down time J (Remember you can click on the pictures to make them bigger for easier viewing)
On the health front everything is doing very well. I feel great and all the side effects from the chemo are gone!!! My mouth sores were the last to go and they went away a couple of weeks ago. Getting my stamina and energy level back to normal is still coming along but I started back to work full time this week and so far so good. I don't have one single thing to complain about which is a new scenario for me. I now need to start focusing on all the good things in my life and leave all the negative stuff behind me. When you go through something like chemotherapy for such a long time you tend to focus on all the things that are going wrong and all the side effects that are wearing you out. And that’s ok, but at some point you have to move on and I am making a big effort to do that. Not having anything to complain about is helping out also
On a slightly humorous note I did find one new side effect that I hadn’t even noticed before. During the chemo I was always cold so I wore sweats and sweat shirts just about the entire time. I didn’t go outside very much either so I never got dressed up or paid much attention to how I looked except to watch for any hair falling out. Well while I was focusing on the fact that my hair was thinning out on my head, I totally missed the fact that most of the hair on my legs fell off during chemo. When I went to Sanibel last week I wore shorts for the first time in at least 7 months and I noticed that my knees looked and felt strange. As I looked more closely I realized that about 90% of the hair on my legs was gone and I was pretty much hairless there. The other thing I noticed was that almost ALL the hair in my armpits was gone!! This had to have happened in the last few weeks of chemo because I am sure I would have noticed THAT! So right now I am feeling like a hairless Mexican Chihuahua.
I hope that isn’t “too much information” for you all but it was such a shock my first reaction when I saw my armpits was to tell Carol “I need to blog about THIS!” (LOL)
So now you know way more about me than you ever wanted to know and I hope I didn’t scare anyone too much. I was going to take a picture but I figured that would be too much. You will have to settle for the pictures of Carol and I at the beach!
Take care everyone and I will update this when I get the results of my next CAT scan. Please keep us in your prayers
Peace and Love
John and Carol and Joey
