Wet Mess

This has been an extremely difficult week. On Monday I was hit with such extreme exhaustion that I could not read, if I got dressed I had to rest in bed for an hour, I could barely get to the bathroom. I could not cope with anything and just lay in bed pretty much weeping. And that horrified and terrified me - I define my self as the coper, the challenge taker, a person that can.....and the more I panicked, the more I got anxious, the more exhausted I got and it was one huge downward spiral -- I turned into Big Wet Mess Lori - and the "real" me seemed to have been erased.

Thank God for Gene - He said all the right things - this is a temporary setback, it will get better, and we need to call the doctor.

So, we did - and I am going to start taking antidepressants - and although they tell me that it will not reach therapeutic levels in my blood for a while - It is going to get better - and knowing that made the wet panic pass and stopped the spiral. PHEW! I just have to wait -- and it will get better and I won't spend my days or decades as Wet Mess Lori. Thank God we live in a time where there are chemical supports for depression and anxiety and I am so glad this is available to me.

Now, as to the cause - I told you all that we were tapering off the steroids for the tumors - Well, what is supposed to happen is you very gradually taper off (dangerous stuff, steroids) and your body is supposer to start making up the the stuff naturally -- and my body isn't or can't or what ever - so I had a huge crash. So we are back at the original dose and will do a super, duper, extremely slow motion taper so this doesn't happen again.
And today is better.

So I had the oncology meeting - I am not going to be participating in any clinical trials. Any trials out there that involve my type of cancer will not accept what we are describing as resolved brain issues. That means brain tumors - even gone - complicate the studies too much. So that is done.

We went through a huge list of chemo options. Here is my thinking on that - If it combined the phrase - No documented longevity (That means no extra time) with anything like, perforating, ulcerating, or coughing up blood - NOPE - I want to live days or decades as real Lori not Wet Mess.

So we are going with Taxol starting on April 9th and again on the 30th and evaluation.
So on the day of the brain MRI, I will also do a complete Cat Scan of the body to set a base line for the tumors in my body.
And it will be sets of 2 chemos - with a 3 week break in between and then an evaluation.

So we are off to the next adventure. Right now, in slow motion or on pause.