I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe.
Call me when it’s sunny, cause I’m over this dreary weather! I’m so ready for spring and sunshine, because it’s so hard to have any motivation right now.
With the crazy inflated real estate market right now, we opted to rent rather than purchase. We found a lovely 2 bedroom/2 bath apartment that’s almost as big as our first home, complete with granite countertops, LVT flooring and a master bedroom bigger than our last!
And what’s even nicer is that if we want to pick up and leave town for a weekend (or a week) all we have to do is lock the doors and go.
Plus, we are 5 minutes from Brian’s Mom and 15 from his brother. We’ve spent a lot of time together with lots of laughs. I can’t wait for the weather to warm up to be able to take some day trips with the niece and nephew and do some fun stuff! We have City Museum, Grant’s Farm and The Butterfly House on our to-do list.
Ethan went to in-person school for the first time in almost a year! His new school only has 12 kids in attendance so they’ve really been able to social distance. Aaaannnnddd he was still exposed to Covid! Argh!! Oh well, it happens. And it was a risk we were willing to take with such a small classroom-4 kids!
Based on the pic they sent me from his first week, he’s having a good time!
And right when we were one day from being out of quarantine, guess who spiked a fever?
Fortunately our little Covid faker was fine the next day, and has been fine since, so who knows?!?
He can go back to school next week and they’ve had 2 inclement weather days plus a no-school day this week so he’s not really missed much. We are making daily phone calls to nursing companies with ZERO luck. We were actually put on a ‘waiting list’ for our area with one company. Brian will eventually be going to work and I am gone at least 2 full days a month for appointments in KC, so we need to secure someone before that happens.
Before we left KC I was having awful pain in my left butt cheek-where my biggest metastatic lesion is. But my latest CT Scan showed no new disease there and my tumor marker is back well within normal limits! I have to believe the pain is weather related, because once I started really keeping track of the pain in my journal, I realized it was always worse when we had precipitation. More so with rain than snow-but still some dull aches when it snows.
I am still really struggling with notable fatigue on a daily basis, which is really frustrating. Even though my counts are all really high and good, my Onc had me take an extra week off my meds before starting another cycle. Since that didn’t really seem to make a big difference in my level of fatigue, they are thinking it’s a Covid side effect. Yay! I’m well on my way to being called a Covid ‘Long-hauler’. Not the title I ever wanted. We are trying to coordinate me getting the vaccine on my off week between med cycles, but it’s not available for me just yet at the Cancer Center.
I have passed one full year of treatment for metastatic breast cancer-actually 13 months since diagnosis! Woo-hoo!
Hitting that 1 year mark is a victorious but bittersweet feeling. Knowing most MBC patients have about a 5 year life expectancy, I’m thrilled to have hit 1 of those years, and scared I only have 4 left.
But my Oncologist is so optimistic with my treatment, and being that I have a low burden of disease, that I refuse to let it consume me. Now that I’ve passed a year on treatment, I’ll keep getting my labs done every month, my CTs every 3 months, Bone Scan every 6 months but I’ll only see my Onc every third trip/alternating with my Onc NP. But we communicate a lot through my patient portal-and I get answers to my questions quickly, so I’m kind of relieved to have one less standing appointment on my calendar every month.
I met with my new Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Butterworth with KU, before we left KC also. I really like him and he’s already got me on the schedule for surgery for my lymphedema-it’s not until September 1st, but that’s ok! He’s going to do a lymphovenous bypass AND a lymph node transfer to help with my lymphedema. Nothing he can do is considered curative. What’s done is done. The goal is to keep it from advancing any further to the point of limited use of my arm, and to give me a little relief. I am still using my ‘Michelin Man’ pump 2x daily, wearing compression sleeves 24/7 and seeing my PT for manual massage every trip back to KC. All of these things do help, but I’m looking forward to not spending the majority of every day working on my arm.
Hailey is back in Texas and doing well. She’s planning to come visit us over her next break from PT school in May.
Parker had 2 roommates move in after we moved out, and is doing well-thrilled to be on his own finally. Though he has called and text me quite a few times since we left-sometimes just to chat and other times with recipe questions. At least he’s cooking and not eating out for every meal! His company has shut down for the next few weeks due to Covid production problems so he’s going to come spend some time with us soon! I think he misses the bald kid more than anything.
I don’t even want to comment on the Super Bowl, but I believe our KC boys will be SB contenders for many years to come, and in the meantime the city will be distracted by Baby Girl Mahomes before we know it. That, and Royals Home Opener is only 50 days away! Bring on baseball!!
Just a quick update about the latest in our lives.
We are currently loving the Discovery + network and I’ve got to catch up on my Good Bones, Restoring Galveston and NEW Fixer Upper episodes, so back to my besties Chip and Jo I go....and to help Brian put together our new small writing desk with eleventy hundred screws.....
Love, hugs and prayers,
K
