Start chemo tomorrow

I start chemo again tomorrow morning. Tim Jr is taking me to the hospital to begin the never ending blood work that they have to do prior to my Oncology appointment.

I felt pretty good yesterday and have not been having much trouble with the stomach over the past few days. I've always had trouble during the withdrawl phase of chemo but it seems to get better and better as each phase comes and goes.

Hard to describe barfing a little bit as "better and better" but when it is related to the amount of trouble I had in the beginning, a little bit sick is a whole lot better than a whole lot of sick.

My big brother is coming to stay with me for two days while I'm going through this phase. I have Tim Jr, Leland, Kristin, Phil, The Dupe-ster and Joey on standby cause when it gets bad, it gets really bad.

Have sorta decided I won't tell Kristin if I get sick again until I'm well enough to clean up my own mess. She's performed above and beyond the call of duty and I don't want to be any more of a burden on her than I already have. Sometimes it gets messy especially when you're so sick you can't do much more than crawl to the bathroom to be sick.

In any event, I'm pretty much at the end of my chemotherapy phase and I'm damn glad to be there. It's been really tough on me and I'm not in denial about the after effects. Losing 40 pounds is one thing but being forced to the bed and couch for this much time has made me a pretty weak puppy. I weigh a tad over 190 pounds right now which is 40 pounds off of my weight when I started. Compared to the picture I have posted here of my days in Vietnam, 190 is okay. I weighed 155 when I came back from Cambodia.

Joey brought me some dumb bells and I try to do 20 reps of 5 pounds each bell, a couple of times each day. I can do that on the couch without any trouble. I can already tell a difference in my arm strength. I can roll the big blue garbage can on wheels out to the street for the sanitation department to pick up every Monday.

I can pick up stuff like several plastic bags full of groceries but my legs wear out before my arms do. I have a plan to get the leg strength back and in pursuit of that, I've walked the 4 houses distance to the corner twice a day. Sometimes I walk that twice or a total of 16 houses before I'm too tired to walk anymore. That may not sound like much but 16 houses long is a long way from "maybe I can make it to the bathroom".

Gettin' closer to that "survivor party". One more 5 day battle with the stomach monster and we'll see who the bad boy is!!! Ooooorah!

Sr.