Wow my new wig was itching my head today!!  I wore it for a couple of hours this morning while I was out and it was driving me crazy!  I almost just took it off, but I didn't have any hats with me to throw on my head.  Hopefully soon I will be at the point that I don't care anymore!

My eyebrows are about halfway back right now.  I still need to pencil in a few strands - mostly on the outer part of my brow.  It got me to thinking about how our eyebrows and other hairs like that know how to stop growing.  We typically don't see people with eyebrows or eyelashes or arm hair for that matter that is really long.  How do those hairs know to only grow to a certain point?  Or do they fall out and get replaced when they reach a certain length?  They certainly are different from the hair on our heads for some reason...

Here are some pictures taken of me this morning.  I have not penciled any eyebrows in at this point so you can see what I have now, plus the hair that is growing in on top of my head:

I have an update to add to Tuesday's post that I will cut and paste at a later date.  On Tuesday while I was preparing dinner (and trying to decide whether or not to go to our Relief Society activity), the vision in my left eye went kind of weird - like I all of a sudden had something partially blocking my view or it was blurry.  I couldn't even describe what it was like.  I wasn't too concerned at first but thought that if it continued I would stay home from the activity.  About 15 minutes or so later while I was finishing up my dinner my eye finally went back to normal and I haven't had any problems since.  I just want to document the issue in case it ever comes back (and I think I experienced it once before a few months ago).

Last Thursday I went to the dentist for the first time since my diagnosis of cancer. They advise you to avoid the dentist if possible during chemo treatments because of the added risk of infection with any dental work. This was just a routine cleaning, but my Huntsman doctor also wanted the dentist to be aware of the Avastin treatment that I am on and the increased risk of osteoneucrosis of the jaw. He made sure that they took x-rays so that he could look at the bone but he didn't seem too concerned with me developing the problem. He said that it is a problem that usually doesn't show itself unless some kind of dental surgery or tooth extraction has taken place and then for some reason the bone just doesn't heal. He said that I just need to be extra careful of my teeth and gums and make sure that I continue to brush and floss regularly so that we don't have to worry about any type of dental work in the near future. He said that if I do need any kind of work done, such as an extraction, that he would send me to a dental surgeon to make sure that I get the best, specialized care possible.

I wore my new wig to church on Sunday. This was the first time that I have worn the shorter wig to something where a lot of people that know me would see me. I got a lot of compliments on it and I think it will make the transition to my real hair a little easier and less drastic of a change. There was even someone who asked if I had gotten my hair cut and colored! I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that so I just said that I got a new hairdo... I also had a couple of people who said that at first they thought that I had just cut and restyled my original wig.

Today I put my shorter wig on to go somewhere and Kay told me that she wanted me to wear the other one because the hair was longer and prettier! I'm not sure how to respond to that! Some girls interpret longer hair as prettier hair, so maybe she is just expressing that feeling. I think I will stick with the shorter wig because it is a little cooler to wear since it is shorter and I don't want to be changing my hairstyle every couple of days. I am a little more nervous wearing it though because it is shorter and I need to pay special attention to making sure it is on correctly and that the hair is laying flaton my head. It also doesn't have ear tags that pull down in front of my ears so it is harder to tell if it is on straight.

And can I just say that it is hard putting sunglasses on when you are wearing a wig!! I have to use two hands to make sure that I get the sides on top of the wig, over my ears and that I pull some of the wig hair down over the sunglasses frame.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I have quite a bit to catch up on so here goes.  My Avastin infusion on April 25th was a lot quicker than the last time I went in.  This time they didn't need to do any lab work first.  One of the nurses accessed my port and then they just had to take my blood pressure and temperature and then they sent to the pharmacy for my Avastin.  It took some waiting before we finally got the drug from the pharmacy, but once they started it, it was a 30 minute infusion followed by some flushing with saline solution.  Then they de-accessed my port and we were on our way home - about 2 hours total.  My dad came with me again and my mom watched MJ and Kay for me.

On Tuesday I had an appointment with my surgeon.  The nurse-practitioner did most of the exam and then the surgeon came in to visit for a few minutes before we left.  They both think that I am looking really good and everything looks and feels normal to them.  I asked the surgeon if I am considered in remission now and she said that technically, no.  To be considered in remission you need to be free from any cancer that they can detect for 2 years.  If the cancer is going to come back, the chances are greatest that it will come back in the first year or two.  She said that after that we can begin to breathe a little easier.  Then if I make it to the 5 year mark I would be considered cancer-free because the chance of it coming back after that point is very, very rare.  So now I have some goals to reach for because I am going to do anything I can to beat this cancer!  The surgeon said that the CA-125 blood marker will be a good, reliable test for me to monitor if the cancer is coming back.  (The CA-125 count from my latest lab work was 21.)  I also need to watch for any warning signs, mostly in my abdomen area - persistent pain or discomfort that doesn't go away or a bloating feeling that doesn't go away.  If the cancer does come back, it will most likely come back in the abdomen area.  She did tell us of 2 women that she just saw recently that she had treated about 4 and 5 years ago for Stage 4 ovarian cancer and both of them are still cancer free.  She said that both of them had the cancer a little more widespread than me and up into the fluid in the lungs before treatment.  It's good to hear about cases like that because success stories are hard to find...

My hair is pretty fuzzy now and I am almost to the point where I would feel okay walking around with nothing on my head.  My husband is always laughing at me because I love to run my hand over my head.  I've switched to my shorter hair wig and I'm trying to get a good feel for it.  I've already clipped the bangs a little in the front because they were hanging down in my eyes and driving me crazy.  The only problem with doing that is that that hair will not grow back so I was hesitant at first and then very cautious in how much I cut off.  I am debating cutting a little more but I will wait a few days and see if it is still bugging me.  I noticed last night that my eyelashes are almost fully grown back.  The only hair that seems hesitant to come back are my eyebrows, so I keep penciling them in for the time being.

Got a lot of sewing done today. Hopefully I have given myself enough time and I will be able to get them all finished in time for Easter. The weather is nice again so I have been trying to get the kids outside more and they are pretty good about watching the younger kids.

I tried taking a bunch of pictures of myself today so I can document my bald head and no eyebrows, but I'm not too happy with how most of them turned out. My eyes were looking super puffy today. I'm hoping it is a side effect of the chemo and not a permanent look for me. So anyways, here are a few of the better ones. I took some with no hair and eyebrows, then I tried drawing my eyebrows on so you can see me with the bald head and some penciled on eyebrows, then I took some pictures of me with my wig on. (Oh, I finally found an eyebrow pencil that I think I like - but it is still hard to get my eyebrows on symmetrically!)
I actually have two wigs now. I bought a shorter wig about a month ago. The company that I bought the first one through had a really cute one on sale for really cheap so I decided to try out a new look. My thought was also that it would be a cooler look for when it gets hot out and it will be an easier transition from a wig to my natural hair once it grows in long enough. I haven't worn this one enough to figure out exactly how I want to style it. The coloring in these pictures is not quite right, but it gives you an idea. (The first wig has some red color in it and the second wig is a little more blonde.) So here is a picture of the second wig:

Okay, I think my posts are getting pretty boring lately. I feel fine (other than a bit of a headache off and on) and the kids are finally getting over their sicknesses as well. I went to a ward baptism this morning and then spent the rest of the day doing a little bit of cleaning and running some errands.

Now onto some more interesting stuff! Lately I have been thinking about some things that I should blog about, but when my kids are around, blogging is hard to do. When I have my ipad out and I am trying to use that, MJ and Kay both think that it is a toy and want to play with it. Whenever I get on our desktop computer to blog from there, MJ wants to come over and sit on my lap and then she ends up trying to play with the keyboard or mouse and I am not able to get anything productive done. Sometimes I try and blog during MJ's naptime, but sometimes I would like to just lay down and relax while she's napping or sit and watch and kid show or two with Kay. Well, enough about my difficulties in blogging, here is what I have been wanting to blog about: my head gear.

It is amazing to me how cold my head can get with no hair on it. I'm not sure if men who have gone bald, or men who choose to shave their head just get used to it after a while or if my hormone changes has affected me as well. Sometimes I will walk around the house with nothing on my head, but when my head starts feeling cold I will quickly put a hat on to warm me up. I have several hats that I will wear around the house and several that I will wear if I am going out somewhere. Most of my "house hats" I do not wear out in public because I think that anyone who sees me in one of these hats will know that I have cancer - and it's not something that I like to announce to total strangers.

Usually when I go out in public though I will wear my wig. It's taken me a little while to get used to seeing myself in it, but I am fine with it now. Some people that I know that haven't seen me in my wig still have a hard time recognizing me at first. The wig is super easy to wear. I have gotten pretty quick at just throwing on my wig and making sure that the hairs are in place and then I'm ready to go. I don't have to brush or style my hair everyday - it just pretty much stays the same day in and day out. And it only needs to be washed every couple of weeks - super easy maintenance. I am fine with people seeing me bald, but I would prefer it be people that already know me and my story. What I don't want is to go out in public and have people - complete strangers - feeling sorry for me because they can tell just by looking at me that I have cancer. The truth is that I feel completely healthy at this time and don't want people that I don't know treating me differently because of what they see.

Now, there are also some downsides to wearing a wig. My biggest fear with wearing a wig is that it will blow off in the wind. It can be quite windy here where we live and there have been several times in the last couple of days where I have been concerned about this while walking outside between my car and a store. I also have this fear when wearing a hat - especially one of my wide=brimmed hats - but I don't feel weird putting a hand on my hat to keep it from flying away. I do feel weird about putting my hand on my wig to make sure it doesn't fly away!

One of my other fears is that one of younger kids will pull my wig off. This especially concerns me when I am at church in Sacrament Meeting and they are crawling all over me. I try not to take my wig off when MJ is watching because I think she might get it into her head that she can pull it off too whenever she wants. Then there's Kay who just likes to see my bald head and is always fascinated by it and my wig. In fact there have been several times where she has tried grabbing my wig and saying something like, "I want to see your bald head.

When I first was losing my hair, I always had the fear that I would forget to put a hat on when someone came to the door. I don't really fear that anymore, but I still like to have something on my head when people stop by.

I very rarely wear my wig around the house. Usually when I come home, I will go up to my room and take it off and put a hat on in its place. Partly it is so that I don't ruin it or get it dirty when I sit on the couch or cook in the kitchen or clean. Also, MJ has always loved to play with my hair and when I wear the wig around the house she will pull on the hair when I am holding her and I am afraid that she will pull the hairs out of the wig if she tugs too hard.

For bed I will usually wear a really light-weight hat made out of a knit fabric. I have found that a lot of times my head will get cold because of what my head is touching - like the couch or my pillow. Sometimes I will wake up in a hot sweat from being too hot (and the wonderful h ot flashes of menopause). Because of this, sometimes I prefer not to wear a hat to bed - but then I have the problem of my head being too cold on my pillow. I finally tried putting a fleece blanket on top of my pillow and that is much warmer to sleep on then my cotton/polyester pillow case. So lately I usually just sleep with no hat on and a fleece blanket on my pillow and my head is fine at night. Although sometimes I don't realize how cold my head is until I put a hand on it and feel how cold I really am.

I met with my oncology team at Huntsman on Wednesday and we have decided to start my chemotherapy sessions up again on Wednesday (provided my surgeon gives the okay at my appointment on Tuesday). Just three more session and then hopefully I will be in remission for a LONG time. Everything seems to be healing well and all of my lab work came back in the normal ranges (well, except for my CA-125 number). Someone from the oncology team called me yesterday to let me know that my CA-125 number was at 131 which is about where they expected it to be (my number was at 396 right before the surgery). The number should continue to go down as I continue to recover from the surgery and as I start up the chemo again. I asked if it would get back down to the normal range (35 or lower) and she said that it might, so that is what I'm shooting for!

My right arm is still bothering me, some days more than others. I think I will ask my surgeon about it on Tuesday and see if there was anything that happened during the surgery that might have strained my arm.

I'm down to just three more shots of the blood thinner injections. I can give myself the shots, but I prefer to have my husband so it, so I finally decided to just have him do it at bedtime instead of trying to take care of it in the morning. For some reason it hurts less when he does it. I'm not sure if it is because I don't have to watch it when he does it and so I am more relaxed or what.

I think the kids are finally pretty used to seeing me however I choose to walk around - with a hat on, my wig on or with nothing on my head. I try and be careful around MJ and not take off my wig when she's watching or she might just try and take it off herself sometime when we are out in public. I don't mind walking around the house with nothing on my head, but it is amazing how quickly my head gets cold sometimes. I still struggle at night trying to keep at a comfortable temperature.

I washed my wig today and am waiting for it to dry. Hopefully I will be able to style it easily afterwards. It's actually been pretty nice to just throw on an instant hairdo when I need to leave the house and go somewhere!

Mailed off my Christmas packages this morning! That felt good! This is by far the earliest I have ever done that! There were just two people in line at the Post Office when I got there.

This afternoon I had to drive the Jordan Youth Symphony carpool for M&M and 4 other kids from her school. I drive them every other week. Today I wore my wig and a couple of the girls commented on my new hairdo. One of the girls asked if I got my haircut. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that so I said that it was a new hairstyle. Then on the way home two of the kids (siblings that live a couple of doors away from us) were asking M&M about my new hairstyle. She said she was trying to explain to them so that they could figure it out for themselves, but they didn't quite get what she was saying until she came out and told them that it was a wig! She got a good laugh out of that! She said she was trying to explain that I was going through chemo for my cancer treatment and that hair usually falls out... Then I got my hair cut, but my hair has still been falling out... It was funny to hear the story afterwards. Emily's first comment when she walked in the door from being dropped off was, "Well Mom, your wig works!"

I've been battling a sore tooth/jaw that started hurting on Saturday. I hope it is not something serious that I am going to have to go into the dentist for. Hopefully it is just a slight irritation or infection that has been made worse by my low blood counts. I am monitoring my temperature and then trying to take better care in my brushing and flossing and mouth rinse. I'm also trying an essential oil called Clove on the area. If it starts feeling worse over the next day or two I should probably go in to see the dentist... Other than that and a headache that comes and goes, I feel fine.

As a side note - I have been participating in another clinical trial where I call into a phone helpline each day to answer questions with an automated system on the side effects of my chemo treatments. Sometimes there are some helpful tips that they give during the call to help deal with the effects of the chemo. Usually around this time in the calls they start advising you to not floss your teeth for about a week to minimize the chances of getting a cut in your mouth that will then get infected by bacteria from food or other causes. I just think that's an interesting piece of advice - to not floss your teeth because it could cause an infection instead of it helping to clean out the bacteria. I think with this recent mouth problem it has been me notflossing my teeth that has caused the problem...

Yesterday I wore my wig out in public for the first time. I've been wearing it around the house a little to get used to it and to try and style it more the way I want. Then yesterday I had to go to BestBuy to pick up something and then run a few other errands, so I decided to try out my wig. When I got to the store and got out of the car to go around and get the kids out, I saw someone from my neighborhood who had also just gotten out of their car and was walking towards the store. I saw her and looked straight at her to say "hi" to her, but she didn't even look at me or acknowledge me at all. I just started chuckling to myself because I think the wig is a very different look for me and this lady did not recognize me at all!

My CT scan was scheduled for later that afternoon so I found someone that could watch the two little ones for me for about 30 minutes until M&M got home from school. MJ was quite sad when I left her. Hopefully one of these days she won't cry when I have to leave her at someone's house... I had to get my blood drawn first for my lab work and then they left my port accessed as we went to another part of the building for my CT scan. I had to drink the Barium drink again and I had a hard time getting it down this time. Nasty flavor and aftertaste... I had the mixed berry flavor again, but it just tasted gross this time around. It was a pretty quick procedure - I think I was away from DH for less than 10 minutes. Afterwards we were supposed to go over to the U of U Hospital Imaging department to pick up a copy of the CT scan to take to my surgeon's office. First I had to go back downstairs to have my port de-accessed and then it took us several minutes to get over to the University Hospital and apparently the imaging office closes at 5:00 which is when we got there and there was no one around to help us. Luckily my surgeon was just able to have her office call over there to get a copy of the scan couriered to their office before my appointment the following Tuesday. We had dinner brought over to us that evening again which helped a lot since we didn't get home until around 6:00 again.