Final day of radiation

So it's been a while since I've posted but feeling a bit better right now and I'm pretty excited that I only have one more day of radiation left (tomorrow morning), then I get a break from treatment for a couple of weeks. Treatment has not been fun, as you know if you've been following this blog. I seem to get just about every miserable side effect you can get from radiation and chemotherapy. (Including that, for the second time, I've had to stop my chemo treatment due to a drop in my platelets below the threshold.)

Tomorrow we'll have our final meeting with our wonderful and kind and gifted neuro oncologist, Dr. Rembert, get final questions answered and solidify our plans for maintaining contact with him over the next weeks. We're firing my medical oncologist; so not happy with his care (if you can call it that). We've been doing some research to find out which oncologist(s) we might be happier with. We've got a couple of names. But really, oversight of my care gets transferred at this point to Dr. Susan Chang at UCSF, who's AMAZING, and we'll be meeting with her on 2/23 (after I get labs and MRIs done) to plan my care going forward.

Looking forward to this weekend. My dad and his wife are coming up to visit me; so happy that I'll get to see them! Since it's SuperBowl Sunday, we'll be hanging out at Jon and Christa's (brother and sister-in-law) on Sunday, where they'll be hosting SuperBowl festivities. Some of us aren't really big football fans, so we'll probably hang out in a different part of the house, at least some of the time, enjoying less raucous activities. And, knowing Christa, lots of yummy food.

As a side note, I've gotten so many sweet messages and gifts from so many of you over the past months. I'm endlessly touched by your thoughtfulness, your kindness, your generosity, your affection for me; it reduces me to tears (in a good way). One thing I'm regularly asked is if there's anything you can do to help out during this rather challenging time, and the one thing that I think we could use help with has to do with food. Keeping me fed is sometimes more than Kirk can keep up with. (That should get better as I get weaned off Decadron, but that's going to take some time.) So if anyone's got the time and interest to make a ready-to-eat meal (like a meatloaf or quiche or something where we can heat up a serving as needed), Kirk and I would not refuse the gift and would be so grateful for it. Unfortunately, the hard part right now is that I'm on this ketogenic diet of very low carbs, high fat (!) and protein, so while it's not a difficult diet to adhere to, there are "rules." (It's a modified ketogenic diet so Kirk and I can 'splain what works and what doesn't.)

I expect to be feeling a bit more like the old Alison once I'm off radiation and get weaned off the Decadron (although the weaning process is supposedly not a lot of fun for me or the people around me -- sorry Kirk!). If that's the case, I'll hope to do more postings during my break and have some time to talk to people, maybe see people -- although I'm also using the two weeks to get away to Palm Springs and to Monterey and who knows what else.

Love you guys. Thanks for your continuing support. /ab