I have not had any chemo for a while and there are a lot of things that I forgot about. The first one yesterday was the jaw lock when I first start eating, numbness and sensitivity to cold and worst of all, the incessant peeing on the first day of treatment. I think it is because of all the fluids that I take in on the first day, but I need to pee every hour all night long and then it gets better. Yesterday was great in that I did not have to nap and I was diligent and did my mouth rinse every time I went to the washroom. It feels much better now as I was worried as I had a bit of tingling in my mouth. This port feels much better than the old one and I do not feel the fluid as much as the initial one. Every time when I was at home it was a lot of discomfort for two days as I could feel the fluid flowing and it was a bit painful. For some reason this one I can not feel it as much. The downside is that the muscles are super tender and using the arm is difficult and quite tender. I have resorted to using my left hand for most things. When making dinner tonight though I grated cheese with my right arm and the constant motion fatigued me a bit. The placed the connection this time a bit more towards the center as opposed to off to the side so that may be a reason why it is a bit better. I ended up working from 3:00am to 4:00am as I had thoughts in my head and then I was up again at 5am and during breakfast I did more work. By 4pm I was quite tired and decided to take a nap before I started dinner. Dinner was great, but after I ended up throwing up mucous as I was moving around quite a lot. Normally after I am done eating I do not move around much and I rest and make sure to conserve energy for digesting.
I had to drive Xavier to his BJJ training sessions and had to go in to pay for his Gi. His godfather had told them that they could just charge it to my card, but they had to make sure. I said in the future he is allowed to buy whatever he wanted. They said he might need to buy a rashguard so I got him one as well as an extra Gi online and some targets so he can practice punching at home. I am sure that he will be able to convince his brother to put them on so he can hit him. I think that Mel will help him out with it. I do not think that right now I would be able to stand it. I am not suppose to lift anything over 10 pounds and I am pretty sure his punch strength is far better than that. Last night we were chatting and Mel relayed a story that when he was young he would always want to show off his muscles to us and there would be this small bump on his arm. When he does it now it is rather large and his chest is starting to develop muscles. His muscle definition is really starting to show as he tends to wear athletic shirts. It was a sad day for me as Mel gave him most of my athletic shirts, I did not realize how many I had and I was explaining to him some of hte benefits of all the different shirts. I had a lot that had mesh backs and things to help keep cool and he thought it was great. And he loves all of the red shirts i have. The colour scheme of my clothing align with what he likes as well.
Olivier is interesting that he had wanted to purchase a video game and I had reassure him that I would happily buy him a video game that cost less than 10 and I did not care if he ended up not liking the game as it was such a minor amount. He has friends whose parents are more conscious about spending wrecklessly but the way I see it is that we spend thousands of dollars on Xavier per month for his activities and Olivier’s combined spending of things he asks for in a month are less than one of Xavier’s sessions. I told him that he can ask or tell me when things are not working or if he wants something and we can discuss it and I will get it for him. He loves that he has Minecraft realms now and plays it with his friend. He was trialing a new game and I told him if he likes it we can get it. If he wants a controller for his PC, I can buy one. He thinks money grows on trees and spends his money like water because he knowa his grandparents will give him more of it, but he is hesitant to approach me for money. Mel thinks that him and I have not bonded as much as Xavier and myself and his memories of me are far more skewed with me being sick for most of his life and living with limitations. Xavier has memories of what I was like prior. Olivier treats me carefully because of all the things on my body and how delicate I am. He hugs me softly now compared to before when we would try and squish each other. Something that is quite endearing with Olivier though is that he will randomly come up and say I love you.
Energy wise I have been getting better and in the last couple of days I have not had to rely on the electric wheel chair, I think though in Toronto I might err on the side of caution and use it at the malls. We plan on taking the kids to the Pacific Mall so tht will be quite the interesting experience. I do not think that Mel will be able to keep on sustaining all of the work that she is doing and I will need to either try and do more around the house which will require me to gain more energy and weight. Right now she thinks that I am coping better because I am eating more and it makes things a bit better. Hopefully this keeps on improving and things go well enough that I can do more around the house. The other option though is that we hire someone to come and help clean the house every once in a while. I know that there are a lot of people that would come help out with various things, but having a regularly scheduled housekeeper may help out Mel a bit with chores. My parents bring food at least a couple of times a week and Mel’s parents and our friends are always willing as well. We also have tons of gift cards, so I will think of things to try and help Mel out a bit more. She has taken care of herself a bit more scheduling massages, manicures and pedicures. She is still concerned about perception about spending money on frivilous things as we raised a ridiculous amount from the GoFundMe. We have always lived below our means so we had disposable income for random spending. The thing that impacted our savings last year was the renovations that we were doing, as that had quite a major impact on the amount that we cold save. Right now she is quite stressed about doing all of the laundry in preparation for us leaving on Saturday morning. We will be packing extremely light though as we are only gone for 1 evening, so it will be packing like we are having a quick sleep over. Since my parents have decided to come along now we will have less room within the van so packing needs to be a bit lighter. The wheelchair takes a lot of space and we plan on taking the Yeti cooler with us to bring back deliciousness. We do not really need much deliciousness so it will all be randomness. Besides the minor throw up today things are getting much better. I hope this trend keeps on improving. Small strands of hair on my head are coming off still so I may try and take my razor blade and shave it clean to the skin. I just need to be careful that I do not cut myself. I will start with a reverse mohawk and see how it goes.
Q