Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Bits and Pieces

Mom is scheduled for a mastectomy on Friday. It looks promising that she may not need chemo, but we won't find out until they dissect the sentinel nodes during the surgery. The current plans are somewhat fluid, but most likely I'm going to be driving up to pick her up and bring her back here initially, and then either I'll drive her back home (she's having surgery three states over from her home, but only one from me), or Dad will come up and get her. She and Dad are sounding much more like themselves now that there's a plan of action. My father does not like having a medical crisis that he can't do anything about, and I think that was a lot of why he sounded so anxious when I first spoke to him - they got the biopsy results late on a Friday, cancer is out of his expertise, and he couldn't really do anything until the following Monday - cue an anxious, out-of-sorts guy.

Dad W's oncologist has decided she's unhappy with how fast he's rebounding from his anemia (I.e. very slowly), and has decided to add an additional treatment to the Procrit injections he currently gets once a week. The new treatment will mean going to the hospital twice a week. I hope I can talk them into making one of the visits concurrent with his Procrit, or that's going to be an awful lot of time eaten up - getting Dad W ready to go out, out the door, to the hospital, treated, and then back home and settled takes about two hours, even though the hospital is ten minutes away.

I learned the end of Urashi Bo tonight. I'm liking this one quite a lot, but it's going to cause problems for the April 10 tournament I mentioned last time. Urashi Bo is too new for me to do a really good job with it - but I went back and practiced Tokumine no Kun today, and Urashi has also done a good job of making me hesitant with Tokumine - they're so similar in spots that it's confusing my muscle memory. So now I have to decide (and quickly!) whether to work hard on bringing Urashi up to snuff, go back to drilling Tokumine, or try to work up Chatanyara no Sai, which has languished the last month and is nowhere near ready. Great - fried brain is in no condition to make decisions! Don't make me make decisions!

In kidlet news, Robbie continues to do well with his flute, having put his sights on third chair (he started at sixth and is currently at fourth). If he gets up to second chair he's going to have a dilemma, because first chair is the girl he's had a crush on for the last three years. To celebrate his increased flute facility, I got him a book of flute and piano songs, with the promise (reinforced by my organ teacher) that if he learns one well, we can play it together for the offertory at church sometime.

Aaron is still running straight A's for the year (and is adoring having better grades than his brother). We should get the results back on his ISTEP tests in about a month, but everyone including his teacher and him thinks that he likely did very well.

Unfortunately, Aaron is very grumpy with lots of semi-meltdowns today because his shoulder started hurting him over the weekend and it's still bothering him. We took him to his pediatrician just as a precaution (mainly because he didn't do anything obvious to injure it, so we're a little mystified), and she gave us the expected advice - ibuprofen, heat, rest. Aaron is quite put-out. He expected the doctor to be able to fix his shoulder, isn't that what doctors are for?

And I decided a bad week and no husband deserved a small treat. So I bought myself a shawl pattern - Heere be Dragones. The same seller makes several other equally stunning shawls, including patterns of a Chinese Dragon of Happiness, a Pegasus, a Celtic Dragon, and a bird in a bamboo forest. However, I'm not a huge shawl knitter, so I restrained myself.

And that's the news down in Wood territory.

4 comments:

Michele said...

I read your post and I can say I understand how difficult and overwhelming it can be. My Mom had a mastectomy Sept 2008. She did not need chemo after surgery. My mother in law had a portion of her lung removed last June. She needed chemo after surgery. They are both doing fine.

I wish your family members a speedy recovery.

Nicole Maki said...

Oh, Cindy. I am so sorry to hear your mom needs a mastectomy, but it is good that your mom and dad are acting like themselves again. I think attitude can help overcome the hard parts. ((((HUGS))) what a huge pile on your plate right now. I hope you are able to rest and take care of yourself with everyone relying on you so heavily.

Yay for Aaron doing so well in school That's fantastic. And congrats to Robbie on his progress on the flute.

Hope you are able to sort out the shoulder pain.

Felicia said...

Just sending some gentle hugs, Cindy. You've got a lot on your plate!

Nicola said...

Hi Cindy,

Thought I would just share this, having seen - about chemotherapy alternatives

http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/03/25/nanotech-robots-travel-through-blood-to-turn-off-tumor-cells/

All the very best wishes to you all too.