I finished my second round of chemo on Friday night and didn’t get nauseous the entire time. Is that amazing? No, that’s God. I did have one small issue on Thursday night where I didn’t drink enough water to get the temodar down, I think. I ended up burping temodar and that was quite unpleasant. I didn’t make that mistake Friday. Now I have 21 days before I have to take anything.
I was hoping to walk more than every other day, but it just hasn’t worked out. The gel pads are really helping my heel, but I can tell it is sore. I’m hoping to do my walking outside a bit more, but the weather hasn’t been cooperating.
I’m golfing this next Saturday for the first time since last year. It should be interesting. Clearly someone else will have to watch where my ball goes. Fortunately we’re playing a scramble. Maybe we’ll use one of my putts. I’m just hoping for a headache free day. I am definitely driving the cart. My friend Dan is usually the passenger, though he may have misgivings this year. I’ve almost killed him a few times when I had good vision so he’s used to it 
I’ve had increased pain these past few days and it could be due to my cut back on decadron. I’m now down to .5mg twice a day and hope to stop altogether this Wednesday. If the pain goes up and stays there I’ll know I still need to take it. Pray that it doesn’t. I really want to get off that stuff.
It may have been true before, but it is definitely true now. I am officially full of crap. This comes as no surprise to many of you, but I think I have good excuses. The decadron and temodar are incredibly constipating. However, I’m sure many of my friends will pooh pooh that (get it? :-)) Yes, you can tell me “I told you so” the next time you see me, though I’m hoping to remedy the situation before then
One of the great things about staring your mortality in the face is being reminded about what is really important. You are also reminded about how potentially limited your time is to focus on those important things.
“Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath. Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.” (Psalm 39:4-7)
Living for the important is hard, but not doing so is foolish. By the grace of God I’m becoming less foolish each day.
Saturday we went to visit our friends from college, the Martin’s, and had a great time. They introduced us to a new game and it was a lot of fun. It’s called telephone pictionary, I think. Here is how it works. We had nine people playing so each person has a stack of nine small sheets of paper. Think 3″ x 4″. Each person starts by writing down some random sentence on the top sheet. I wrote, “Eileen will not be getting diamonds for Mother’s Day.” Clever, huh? You then pass the stack to the next person. They read the top sheet, place it at the back and then draw a picture of what they just read. They have one minute!
The next person looks at the picture, places it at the back and writes a sentence to describe what they saw. And so on until it is back to the person who started it. You then take turns showing your “story”. It’s pretty funny. You hear things like, “Oh, that’s where the little egg came from” and someone else will say, “What egg?” ‘m thinking Wendy will like this because she won’t have to lose.
Sunday I walked before church and I’m glad I did because I haven’t felt that great most of the day. Unfortunately Eileen was really sick this morning and couldn’t even go with us. It didn’t end up being a great Mother’s Day for her so I will have to figure out how to make it up to her.
We had a guest speaker for Mother’s Day who was pretty funny. Julie Barnhill is a speaker and author on Motherhood and had a great message. She used one of her book titles, “Motherhood: The guilt that keeps on giving”. I know my sister Anita loved what she had to say and I could see it affected many of the women.
One of my friends, Beth, from high school is a good friend of Julie’s, so we had that in common. I also talked with her about writing a book. Until I started blogging I hated writing, but I have had many of you encouraging me to turn this into a book. I’m still very skeptical, but am pursuing input from people who know. We’ll see.
While walking this morning I listened to Andy Stanley from NorthPoint Church in Atlanta share his first message in a series on Faith, Hope and Luck called Better Odds. He talks about the fact that all of us have our faith ladder resting against something. Is it something that changes over time or something that will stand the test of time? How about stage four brain cancer? I highly recommend it and hope many of my friends will take the time to listen. It’s only 40 minutes. I can’t wait to listen to the other two messages in the series, Betting On Hope and Beating The Odds, which he’s already delivered. You can subscribe to their iTunes feed here.
I need a miracle, God specializes in them, pray BIG!
