The three elementary school kids stayed home from school today. I still feel alright, but DH stayed home to help out with the kids. I've been taking my temperature throughout the day and the highest it ever got was 99.6. One of my visiting teachers brought dinner over which was very nice. We haven't been eating too well the last few days because no one feels like eating much. M&M had a concert downtown with her youth symphony group during school and when she got home she was pretty wiped out. I'm hopeful that a couple more kids will be able to go back to school tomorrow.

I haven't been eating great the last few days because I have a small sore on my tongue and the right side of my jaw is hurting again. I'm not sure if I bit my tongue or cut it on something, but it really hurts when I am trying to eat! My jaw was hurting back in the first part of December, before my surgery. I've been using the essential oil, clove, on it again and I'm hoping that it resolves on its own like last time.

My scalp has finally started feeling better. It is very stubbly right now with some hair growth and the pimple-like sores are finally starting to go away. My head is a little flaky right now though.

Well, we all stayed home from church today. I think this is the first time that our whole family has stayed home because of sickness. I had a meeting before church that I went to and then I went back home and changed out of my church clothes and helped take care of the sick kids - all 6 of them. I feel like I am giving out medicine like it's candy. As soon as one of the kids started complaining about being hot or cold or a headache, I knew that their medicine had worn off and it was time to give out some more. I was feeling fine until it got into evening time and then I started feeling really hot and my stomach started cramping up. I had DH come and take MJ from me and I went upstairs to eat something and then took my temperature. It was 99.6. I'll have to keep an eye on it. I think my stomach was just cramping up because I was hungry. After I got something in my stomach I felt fine the rest of the day. My temperature was back to normal by the time I went to bed - another late night thanks to MJ. I've also had a headache all day but I'm not sure if that is from the chemo or the sickness going around.

The kids are dropping like flies. Luke woke up feeling miserable and then the girls have one by one been developing fevers as well. So far DH and I are fine. My mom's stake was having a Relief Society luncheon today with Sister Wendy Watson Nelson speaking and she invited me to attend it with her. I had been waffling back and forth on whether or not to go and in the end finally decided to go. I'm glad I did. She was a very entertaining speaker and it was enjoyable to get away from the sick kids for a few hours. Thanks to DH for holding up the home fort for me.

After we got the kids to bed, about an hour or so later MJ and Kay both woke up and didn't go back to bed until around midnight. I'm just hoping that I don't catch anything. Unfortunately our family keeps getting these sicknesses when my immune system is at its lowest. If my temperature gets above 100.4 degrees I am supposed to go to the hospital because my body is not able to fight off infection during my chemotherapy treatments.

M&M woke up sick this morning. I think it might be the flu. She has body aches, headache, fever, chills and an upper respiratory cold. She stayed home today which meant that I had to change my plans for the day to help take care of her. She just laid around on the couch all day... By that evening Luke was coughing up a storm so he may be next. I feel fine so far so if it is the flu and all the kids get it and DH and I don't then this will be a case where the flu shot has actually worked.

I had to hurry to the bathroom a few times this morning, but after that I started to feel back to normal. Hopefully my bowel issues are over with for this chemo cycle. I also didn't have my pounding headache today. This morning I took the girls with me to the fabric store and bought some patterns and fabric to make the girls' Easter dresses. Kay is super excited. She mentions Easter just about every day now and keeps asking me when it will be here. My scalp is super sore today! I have little red pimple-like bumps all over it and it's not much fun. I'm not sure what has caused it, but I'm hoping we won't have to shave my head ever again!

Still some stomach cramps today and I am almost at the other extreme now as far as my bowels are concerned. I also wish this stupid headache would go away! Usually ibuprofen will do the trick, but I hate taking medicine and usually wait as long as I can before I will finally take something. Took the girls over to my parents' house to play while I went to Huntsman for my lab work. Things were uneventful there and then I went back to pick up the girls and go back home. After eating lunch I noticed some brown spots on my shirt. At first I thought that I had spilled some of my lunch on my shirt, but after looking closer I noticed that it was blood. I'm not sure when or how it happened, but apparently the bandaid on my port moved off of my port and it had bled a little onto my shirt. The bandaid was also saturated with blood. I've never had that happen before. I'm not sure if the nurse didn't put pressure on the needle site for long enough afterwards or I did something to cause it to bleed a little, but it was kind of weird. I guess I'll have to keep a closer watch on it next time. I've been a little foggy brained today but not enough to incapacitate me or make me feel like I can't do my normal activities.

My stomach is still cramping up and I will sit in the bathroom forever not having anything happen and then once I finally decide to get up and do something, within a couple of minutes I'm having to run back to the bathroom!! I also still have my headache that doesn't seem to be going away. I feel like I've got a little bit of the chemo brain where my head is kind of fuzzy and I can't think straight. My scalp also HURTS today. I have red blotches on it and it just kind of hurts when I rub my hand on it. I'm wondering if it is my sensitive skin finally reacting to the shaving that we did on Saturday. I've had some more tingling today in my fingers and also my leg muscles just seem sore for some reason. I'm not sure if it's chemo related or not...

My hair growth must not have died off completely because my head is not completely smooth like it was on Saturday. It is a little stubbly here and there. My stomach has been cramping up some today and I feel backed up again. This is one of the side effects that I have a hard time controlling. Hopefully it will resolve itself quickly. The kids were off school today and we spent the day doing some laundry and not much else. I've noticed a little bit of tingling in my fingers today. Hopefully it won't get much worse.

Tired again today and another headache. I wish the headaches would go away! The whole family went to church today. It's nice having everyone healthy again. There are a lot of sicknesses going around the ward and neighborhood though, so hopefully we won't catch anything else! It feels weird wearing my wig with such a bald head. My head is almost too slippery for the wig so I've been wearing a wig liner underneath so it has something to grip onto.

Slept a little better last night. Had my husband shave my head today. We couldn't believe how much hair I actually had! He started out by putting shaving cream on my head and then using the razor, but it was taking forever that way because of all the hair. So we washed off the shaving cream and used the hair clippers first. It went much quicker after that and then he did a really close shave with the razor and shaving cream. My head feels so smooth and looks so shiny! Last time we did this we didn't do a close shave so I still had a little bit of stubble on top. My head feels a lot colder now though! Hopefully I will get used to it quickly!

I did not sleep well last night! I woke up around 2 or 3 in the morning and was freezing so I pulled the blankets up around me and then realized that I was cold because my whole chest was dripping in sweat... After that I was up about every hour needing to use the bathroom - I'm not sure if I drank too much last night before I went to bed or it is all of the infusion/saline drips finally running through me.

Side effects today are just tired and a little headache.

I forgot to mention that I got a call from the clinic yesterday letting me know that my CA-125 number has dropped to 37! I am almost down to the normal range!! We got a printout of my lab counts from the last couple of visits and they had another CA-125 number in there from a couple of weeks ago that they never told me the results of. My number was at 83 back on January 25th. (Normal levels are 35 and lower.)

Felt alright today. Mostly just tired and a headache. Since I noticed my hair falling out at the doctor's office yesterday, I made sure to wear a hat to bed last night. It's a good thing because this is what I found inside my hat this morning:
(This is just a simple knit hat that I made myself a couple of months ago to wear around the house and to bed when needed.)
I'm going to ask DH to shave my head in the next day or two so I don't have this hair dropping off everywhere and sticking to everything. When I get out of the shower it sticks to me and I end up finding little hairs everywhere. For those that are interested, here are a few pictures I took this morning of my hair and some of my scars. If you aren't interested in seeing them, you can skip this post! It's hard taking pictures of yourself, but I wanted to get some taken so I can document everything that has happened. I also wanted to document how much my hair came back in before it fell out again. I can say right now that I never thought that I would be dealing with the hair loss issue twice though!
Okay, these next couple of pictures are of my scars. I've edited them slightly, but you can get a pretty good idea of how extensive the incision was. Right now it's healing really nicely - just one small spot where I have a small scab still. Also if you look on the left side of the picture you can see a dark circle where my drain was for the liver part of my surgery.This next picture is of my port. You can see the nice incision with the bump above which is where the port is. If you look closely you can make out 3 small bumps that are in a circle. The needle is placed in the middle of those bumps. Above the port you can make out a line which is the catheter line that goes into my vein. Contrary to what we were led to believe, this port sticks out like a sore thumb! I can even make it out under some of my shirts... Also in the picture you can see up on my neck where they had a huge I.V. sticking out of me while I was in the hospital. That's the I.V. that was used for the blood transfusions I was given. I've also got several other little scars on my neck from who knows what that they did to me in the hospital!
So there's the show and tell for now. I just wanted to give those of you who are interested a chance to see some of what I have gone through.

I had the hardest time falling asleep again last night. Once I was finally asleep though I seemed to sleep alright. I did wake up with a headache though which isn't a good thing. Things were super busy at the Huntsman clinic today. We got there on time but ended up seeing the doctor an hour and a half after our scheduled time! We discussed the treatment that will follow my next chemo treatment. I will be coming back every three weeks for the Avastin infusion (an experimental drug offered through the study I am on). With the Avastin (aka Bevucizamab), I will not need to have the weekly blood tests and blood pressure checks which will be nice and I will only have to meet with my doctor every other visit. I will have a CT scan after my 6th chemo treatment and a mammogram or breast MRI every 6 months to screen for breast cancer since I am at higher risk for that as well with my positive BRCA-1 mutation. My blood counts were reasonably good today and I didn't have any problems with the infusion - other than the ones I typically have - blurry vision & foggy brain, sleepy feeling with the Benadryl.

We were in the infusion room for way too long today! With us starting so late they didn't get my chemo drugs started until 1:30 and we weren't finished with the infusion until just after 7:30! A big thanks to my parents who watched the kids for us! My mom came over just before 9 a.m. and then my dad joined her a little later (he wasn't feeling great yesterday so he wasn't sure if he would be able to make it to help out). My parents also gave M&M a ride to the local high school for a bad concert tonight (which we ended up missing because my infusion went so late). M&M called us on our way home to tell us that she was ready to be picked up. Luckily we weren't too far and were able to pick her up on our way home. We finally made it home around 8:40 and were able to eat some dinner and then get the kids to bed. MJ amazingly seemed to be in a happy, good mood when we got home so hopefully she is getting over the whiny attitude. After eating dinner my stomach started hurting a little and I started feeling really hot. I think it may be because I ate too much a little too fast! Hopefully I will be able to get a good sleep tonight and will feel better in the morning.

And on a side note I noticed at the doctor's office this morning that my hair is starting to fall out. I will probably have my husband shave my head in the next day or two so we don't end up with tiny hairs all over the house and my clothes and hats...

Luke came into my room last night and woke me up at around 5:00 in tears because his ear was hurting so bad. He said that he had been up until around 3 a.m. but wasn't sure if he should wake me or not. I gave him some ibuprofen and then put some hydrogen peroxide in his ear (he feels like there is some water stuck in it). Then I rubbed one of the essential oils on and behind his ear and he felt well enough to go back to bed. Thankfullly his ear was feeling better in the morning, but we put some oil on it anyway to hopefully prevent a call from the school later in the day. Hopefully one of these days the whole family will be healthy again!!

I took MJ in to get her 18 month pictures taken today. I had originally scheduled the photoshoot for the previous week, but with us all being sick I had to cancel. I was hesitant to take her with how grouchy she has been acting lately, but she turned 18 months almost a month ago and I wanted to try and get her in before my chemo treatment on Wednesday. Even though she didn't cooperate too well, we did get a couple of good ones that I was able to pick from. I think that 18 months is one of the hardest ages to get good pictures at a photo studio for.

I made a trip to the grocery store this morning with the 2 little girls and it was quite the experience. MJ again didn't want me to put her in the cart but I wasn't about to carry her all through the grocery store so I made her sit in the front seat and buckled her up. She put up such a screaming fit almost the whole time we were at the store, it was embarrassing. She was crying so hard that she was causing herself to gag - luckily she didn't throw up at all. When we were almost through at the store I realized that she was hungry because I put something in the cart that she really wanted and once I gave her the box she started to calm down. I made her wait until we had started checking out at the checkout counter to open it and give her a few crackers but it was nice to finally have her quit screaming! Hopefully one of these days she will be back to normal!

Kay helped me make some Valentine cookies today while MJ was napping and then the kids and I decorated them after dinner.

Luke came home from school complaining of an earache. I've read so many things that say that the antibiotics that are prescribed for earaches don't resolve the earache any quicker than if we just wait it out so we are going to try some home remedies and see if we can manage the pain and symptoms until it resolves. Right now we are giving him ibuprofen to manage the pain and then trying out some essential oils on the ear along with a hot washcloth which is supposed to help draw out the pain.

Crazy morning today. I had DH stay home with MJ because even though she is mostly over the stomach virus, she is still super whiny and wants me to carry her around all the time. She also has a slight cold with a yucky nose and cough. I had sharing time in primary today and a meeting before church. I unfortunately didn't have a ton of time to prepare my sharing time during wht week with all of the sickness that we had going on, but I think it went well. I normally teach it on the 3rd Sunday of the month but ended up asking the primary president last Sunday if I could switch weeks with her in case I'm not feeling well after my next chemo treatment. After church I switched places with DH so he could go back to church and count the tithing. MJ was in bed sleeping when we got home. I have had several people in and out of church come up to me and tell me that I am such an inspiration to them specifically and to the ward in general with how I am so diligent in coming to church and fulfilling my calling. I'm not sure how to respond to these people sometimes because I don't feel that I am doing anything above and beyond what other people would do. I don't necessarily feel like I am really doing anything super special. If I am helping other people with the experiences I am going through and how I am dealing with them, then I guess that's a good thing. I feel kind of weird being singled out and praised all of the time though.

I attended the Worldwide Leadership Training Broadcast this morning broadcast by the church. DH was supposed to come to but he wasn't feeling well again when it was time to leave so he stayed home and ended up taking a nap while I was gone. A little later in the day I ran a few errands to get some Valentine stuff for the kids to make Valentines for their classes. After that I helped the kids make their Valentines and then gave DH a quick haircut.

My mom came over in the evening to watch the kids while M&M was at the school play and DH and I were out. My neighbor who went through breast care treatment a few years ago invited me and DH to attend a cancer support group dinner with her and her husband. It is a support group for women diagnosed with cancer in their 40s and younger, called the Young Survivor Sisters. Right now the group consists solely of women with breast cancer so I felt a little weird there. While I have gone through some similar experiences as these women, a lot of it is also very different. There are also several of these women that have the BRCA-1 gene, so that is one thing that some of us share in common. I saw two women there that I actually know personally. One of them (one of the founders of the group) lives in my stake and was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 26. The other women is M&M's Language Arts teacher this year at school. We talked for a little bit after the dinner and she expressed her concern for M&M and wanted to know if there was anything she could do for her. I got a little choked up talking to her. I think whenever my kids are mentioned I have a hard time keeping it together. That and the fact that I kept thinking about how my experience that I am going through is so different than so many of these other women. The keynote speaker/performer for the evening was Hilary Weeks - an LDS singer/songwriter. She was hilarious to listen to and had some very inspirational songs as well. It's nice to hear how similar kids and parents are, no matter who you are. It was a very nice evening and dinner and it was nice to be invited by my neighbor. Right now I am trying to decide where my place fits with this group. On one hand I think it might be nice to join and use this experience to educate these women about ovarian cancer, and on another hand maybe I need to look into starting up my own group that focuses on ovarian cancer or BRCA-1 positive women. A few of the women in the group had made some necklaces for everyone in the group that had the pink ribbon on it and the letters YSS (Young Survivor Sisters) underneath the ribbon. I was reluctant to take one, but finally did after the urging of several people there. I honestly can't see myself ever wearing it because the pink ribbon is specific to breast cancer and I am not a breast cancer survivor. Each type of cancer has its own color and the color for ovarian cancer is teal. I've been looking online for something specific to my type of cancer that I can buy and wear. So far I've found a necklace, bracelet and hat that I like but haven't ordered anything yet.

I seem to finally be sleeping better at night. DH wasn't feeling too good this morning so he ended up working from home once more. Hopefully he didn't get anyone at work sick yesterday.

I went to a couple of stores this evening after dinner. I took Luke, Kay and MJ with me. MJ threw a screaming, crying fit when I tried putting her in the shopping cart so I ended up carrying her through the store... Not exactly my idea of fun... MJ and Kay still have a little bit of diarrhea, so maybe she is just not feeling 100% yet.

DH went back to work today. He was feeling alright when he left and had lots of meetings that he needed to be at today. All of the kids went to school and except for MJ being more whiny than usual, the younger two are finally getting their appetites back and appear to be feeling better.

Slept so, so last night. I've had a lot of diarrhea with this sickness so I've had to keep close to the house (and the bathroom). Thankfully no one threw up last night during the night. Luke and Kitty both said they weren't feeling well when they got up in the morning so I let them both stay home. I've feeling quite a bit better today and Blondie decided she was feeling well enough to go to school (I just hope she isn't sick and has to come home early from school). I also hope that she doesn't pass this bug on to anyone at school. M&M also went to school. She is the only one so far that hasn't been sick at all. DH isn't feeling great today so he is going to stay home again. My dad called to say that my mom is sick and can't come over to watch the kids so I can go to Huntsman for my lab work. That's fine though since DH will be here.

The lab work was super quick today. I think they are finally figuring out what to do with me when I come in. The clinical trial that I am a part of needs my blood pressure checked each week in addition to the standard blood work and each week it seems to take forever for them to get to me and take my blood pressure. This week though they took me right back when I got there, the nurse took my blood pressure and then sent me to the room to have my blood drawn. I think I was back there for 15 minutes max. On my way home from the clinic I stopped at the grocery store and picked a few things that we are low on (like laundry soap that we have been using a ton washing sheets, bedding and clothes).

While I was at the store, one of the nurses from Huntsman left me a message on my phone telling me that my blood counts were really low today so if I get a fever at all I need to get checked in to the hospital.

M&M is involved in the tech crew for a school musical right now. Today after school they presented the musical for the parents. I was feeling well enough to go to it. It was really cute and I'm glad I was able to attend.

Kay still threw up a little today, but luckily no one else has. Blondie and M&M both made it through the school day without feeling sick at all. I think Kitty could have gone to school without any problems but with this bug I think it was better to play it safe. I think all of the kids will be well enough to go back tomorrow.