Cancer Survivor

Looks like we’re out of the woods depression-wise! We’ve been weaning off pred for about a week now and no bad side effects like lethargy or excessive sleeping. Also, Cameron went to New York for three days and she was ok with it (!!!) which is new and exciting. When she was doing radiation she used to freak out if it got past 9 or 10 pm and cam wasn’t home yet – nights he worked were a real joy, and she’s do the ‘where’s daddy’ dance – pacing, whining, the odd howl, heavy panting, sometimes shaking – just a total freak out ‘oh god where is he’ situation. Nothing I did could calm her down, but we dropped him off at the airport and she wasn’t exactly thrilled, there was some watching out the window and then for the first day she would pull me towards the parking lot whenever we went for a walk, looking for him near the car, but last night she even slept in her own bed all night, which is unfreakingheardof. I worked from home (LOVE that my job lets me do that) Wednesday and Thursday and Cameron’s plane already landed, he’ll probably be home in like 35 minutes. Wish I could be there to see the festival of daddy has returned Honey’s going to throw when she sees him.

Her hair is almost grown in now, I’ll take some pictures tonight of the white-faced Hon. The coolest part, though, is that some of the hair is coming back in BROWN and we were assured that it would be completely white if it came back at all. Wunderdog! She also looks lovely in her new ‘cancer survivor’ bandana – which she is now, a bona fide cancer survivor. I think I even saw her breathing out of her nose a little over the last few days, and she seems to have more of a sense of smell. The only variable that’s still really up in the air is the tumor shrinkage – radiation kills the cells when they try to replicate, so they won’t die until they try and grow, so it can take up to 3 months for the tumor to shrink all that it’s going to. We finished on February 29th so today is April 18th – we have 40 days left until we can reasonable assume it’s as small as it’s going to get. The catch is this – if it doesn’t shrink enough for her to breathe out of her nose, we may have to have it debulked, which is a surgery where they would go in and remove the majority of the tumor so she could have a clear airway. The other thing that would go wrong is if it shrinks TOO much, because it metastasized through the roof of her mouth (that means it ate the bone that separates her mouth from her sinuses – her hard palate) so if it goes away to the point where there’s no tumor to form this barrier, she will have to have surgery to create one and keep her sinuses free of food / other stuff in her mouth. Please keep your fingers crossed for perfect shrinkage.

In new-place news, it’s awesome but our furniture doesn’t fit and Cameron still hates my grey Formica table, but it looks WAY too much like an airstream to throw it away. We’re starting to actually get some stuff settled and decorated decently, but ultimate ‘our house is perfect ness’ is a long way off. However, it is starting to look like a nursery, which I LOVE!