I am now more than a year out from my first CT scan after my last round of carboplatin/paclitaxol chemotherapy - so halfway to remission (which is two years from that CT scan).  It is humbling to see where I am today versus where I was a year ago.  I have been very blessed up to this point and am thankful everyday for every extra day that I have been given.  I feel great and have been fitting better into my clothes and my hair is growing nice and long!  At the same time I get a little anxious whenever I have another dr's appt or scan, especially when I get a phone call from the office that I am not expecting!  My constant hope and prayer is that I have beaten this cancer and that it will not come back!  I want to be here for my children and my husband, to help them out and to watch them learn and grow.  I enjoy being involved in their lives and helping to teach them.

It has been hard watching another family member go through some similar and yet different cancer experiences.  I remember very vividly the feeling of the first diagnosis and the fear associated with it.  I understand the feelings of doubt and loneliness, the feeling of hopelessness and total lack of control.  When I found out my diagnosis of Stage 4 ovarian cancer I started looking at everything as if it were going to be my last:  my last Christmas?, my last Halloween?, my last birthday?, the last soccer game for my kids that I go to?  It was so hard and is still hard to think about.

The chemo treatments were very hard, although I think that being young definitely helped me.  At the same time, being young and with a young family was a blessing in some ways and harder in other ways.  It has definitely given me something to live for though and a reason to get up every morning and keep going.  Now things are pretty much back to normal - although I still have routine doctor's visits and my maintenance chemo that I have every three weeks.  Other than my scars and the port I still have in my body, the kids I don't even think that I have cancer anymore.

A couple of months ago Luke came home from school and told me about a writing assignment that they had to do at school where they had to write about a wish that they had.  Luke said that he wrote that he wished that there was no such thing as cancer or that there was a cure for it or a way to prevent it.  I thought that that was very touching.  It's sad that these kids at such a young age have had to experirence first hand what cancer can do.

Another fairly routine doctor's visit at Huntsman.  It seemed more busy than usual today at the office and it took them a while to get to me and get my port accessed and labs drawn.  Then there was a new nurse in the port access room who accessed my port.  She didn't do a very good job, but I guess she is still learning.  There was one of the regular nurses helping her out and she had to fix the needle in my port because the first nurse went in at a little bit of an angle so it didn't engage the port...  It was kind of annoying and it is a little more uncomfortable for me.  My skin also turned bright red again but I think that was due do all of the manipulating that the nurses had to do.  By the time I made it to the infusion room it was back to normal color.  The doctor printed out my scan results for me and said that everything looked normal in the scans.  So we are still keeping our fingers crossed with that.

I was a little early for my infusion so I stopped upstairs and grabbed some lunch first.  Now I am just waiting for the Avastin to show up.  My blood pressure continues to be normal and I have lost several pounds from my last visit.  My clothes have been fitting much better lately and I am fitting into things that I haven't worn in quite a while.  I also have some of my regular clothes that are getting baggy looking on me - especially some of my pants.

My hair is getting super long.  I think it has grown quite a bit over the last couple of weeks.  I had many people in the clinic commenting on my hair today.  I am at the stage now where I need to decide what I want to do with it.  If I am going to keep it short then I think I want it a little shorter than it is right now.  The top is getting harder and harder to get looking the way I want and the sides are getting really shaggy.  My normal hairdresser that lives in my neighborhood just had a baby a month and a half ago so I haven't wanted to bug her yet about a haircut!

The Avastin just showed up - I think this is the quickest that it has ever been.