Finally! Some great news today! Praise God!

First we give tribute to the end of football season. This is Connor and his beautiful date Jordan about to leave for the Homecoming dance. You can clearly see how excited Connor is to be getting such attention. I believe there were at least three cameras shooting at this point. Oh well, your baby only goes off to his first dance once! I am sure Jordan's parents feel the same way. Someday the kids will understand what all the fuss is about.

Anyway, I saw my regular medical oncologist today for the first time in 5 weeks. This is a standard visit to see how I am tolerating the weekly taxol. This last week I threw up twice and fell twice - one of those times I hit my head on a fence post and have a boo-boo. Connor was home at the time and came outside when he heard the ker-THUNK. He found me crying, but I finally convinced him I wasn't hurt so much as embarrassed and just plain MAD. When I was telling my doctor about it today, he asked if I called 9-1-1 (like I was supposed to do). I told him "no - I called Kristi (my sister-in-law)" and he said that was just as good. We talked about why when I hit on one side of my head, the other side hurt. He said football players get the same injuries because when your head hits one side, your brain can bounce off the other side - YIKES! We also talked about the lack of feeling in my toes and feet and how tired I am. Since I am no longer working, I get to rest a lot. Go to the store, hang on to the basket, come home and take a nap. Go outside and water the plants, come in and take a nap. Make dinner, go lie down. You get the idea.

My doc gave me a bunch of tests similar to what police give suspected drunk drivers and I pretty much failed. It isn't so much that I am dizzy. I just lose my balance easily. We agree I would not wear my crocs anymore and would go barefooted around the house. We also agreed that I would see a neurologist. But between you and me, I don't really care what the neurologist says, if taxol is working, I am sticking with it!

Speaking of taxol working, my protein tumor marker 27.29 went down from 230 to 178. This is the protein that has always predicted tumor growth and why we changed my last chemo. Although the body scans showed tumor stability, the 27.29 was taking off, indicating that tumors were growing somewhere we were not monitoring. Now that it is dropping, that's an indication that the growing is slowing down as well. YAY!!

I really feel hopeful today for the first time in a while. IT was a good trip and now it is raining outside - God giving me more gifts so my seeds will spout!

Love you all!
Counting my blessings!
Kelli