I went in for my lab work this morning and picked up my barium drink for my CT scan next week. Today was my last weekly lab work! Starting next week with my Avastin infusion I will just be going into the clinic every 3 weeks.

I've been trying to sew off and on when I have the energy. Easter will be here before I know it. Last night I stayed up late sewing together one of the dresses and it took me 3 tries to finally get the skirt attached to the top of the dress correctly. Then when I had Kitty try it on this morning it didn't look quite right. When I inspected it closer I found that I still hadn't gotten it right and had to take out part of the stitching and sew it once more... Other than doing that I haven't had the energy today to work on the dresses any more.

I just realized on the way to the Huntsman Clinic that yesterday was the first day of spring. So after I got home and ate some lunch I had the kids help me change out our seasonal decorations. I didn't feel too steady climbing up on the bar stool to put up the high decorations so I will save those for another day.

I have been completely exhausted today. When the nurse called to tell me that my blood counts were really low, Luke asked me what that meant. I knew what the low white blood cell counts meant, but not really what the low red blood cell counts meant so I looked it up. Here are some of the side effects of low red blood cell counts: fatigue, headache (which I still have today), shortness of breath, dizziness, increase in heart rate, pale skin. Now I understand why I have been so tired today...

My dad came by this afternoon to take Blondie and Kitty for the night. I just had everyone else eat whatever they wanted for dinner tonight. DH and Luke had some leftovers and the rest of us just had cereal. I wish there was a non-medical way to increase my blood counts! If anyone knows a way, let me know!

Did a little bit of grocery shopping this morning and wasn't too happy with the kids when I got home. (I forgot to mention that the kids are now off-track from school for the next 3 weeks!) I've been a little tired today so laid down for a little bit this afternoon. This evening I helped out with our ward's Blue and Gold Banquet for cub scouts. I think that it turned out well and the food was good and it looked like everyone enjoyed themselves.

I realized today that I am pretty much hairless right now. I have a tiny spot of eyebrow on the inner corner above each eye and then a few eyelashes (which seems weird because I lost them with my first 3 treatments). My arms have a few hairs here and there, but other than that there isn't much to speak of. My head is nice and bald and shiny right now. It looks much better than when we shaved it and I had all of those pimples on my head afterwards.

I've been struggling somewhat on my eyebrows lately. I have tried several different colors and brands of eyebrow pencils and still haven't found one that I love. My eyebrows are normally very dark and thick, so up to this point I have used a really dark color to try and blend it with the eyebrows that I had remaining. Now that I don't have very many to blend with anymore I have tried lightening up the color, but it just doesn't look right on me for some reason. It's also very hard to draw on my eyebrows when I don't have any eyebrows to use as a guideline - and it's hard ro get the two sides even and symmetrical. Hopefully I will be able to master it here shortly (either that or I hope my eyebrows grow back quickly)!

Today we had stake conference, so 2 hours of trying to keep the kids quiet and entertained while we listened to some speakers. I had the inspiration while I was at the dollar store the other day to buy some stickers and some notepads for the girls. That actually worked for a while and stake conference wasn't quite the circus that it has been in years past. After church I made some jello salad and some homemade ice cream and rested for a bit before we headed to my parents' for dinner. Unfortunately I had a chemo brain moment just before we left and slammed my son's hand in the trunk of the van and didn't even realize that he was yelling in pain for a minute or so... Thankfully there wasn't any damage done to his hand. We had him hold ice on it on the drive over to my parents, but he was fine after that.

My headache is back again today and I'm a little foggy brained again. Hopefully this is not the new normal for me... I have to keep remembering that even though I have had my last chemo treatment, it takes quite a while for all the drugs to work their way through my system and for my body to get back to normal everything. In fact starting about today and lasting the next week is when my blood counts are usually at their lowest levels. This afternoon DH had a stake leadership meeting and then this evening DH and I went to the adult session of our Stake Conference.

My birthday today! I am 36 years old today and thankfully I am through with my chemo treatments for the time being. I am feeling a little better today - my headache isn't quite as bad and I seem to have a little more energy. I spent the morning doing some organizing around the house - which oddly enough was something that I really wanted to do! It felt good to throw some things out and to clean up some things. After the kids' piano lessons I picked up a pizza and some breadsticks for them for their dinner and then they played outside until their dad came home from work. Then the kids went inside to eat their dinner and DH and I went to Olive Garden for our dinner. It was pretty crowded there, being a Friday night and one of our local high school's prom night. We had about a 40 minute wait and went to a store across the street during our wait. All in all it was a pretty good birthday!

Still the chemo brain today, but I just try to work through it and carry on as usual. The headache kind of comes with that as well. I definitely had a chemo brain experience yesterday and today. Yesterday while my mom was at the house I was telling her that I needed to go to the fabric store to buy the pattern for MJ's dress and it was going to be on sale at the store close to me, starting today. Well, I pulled out the ad to look through it and make sure that I was right and I couldn't find the patterns on sale in that ad until March 25th. I looked through it more than once and I was a little mad at myself because I had been planning on doing this for a week now and now I found out that I had planned incorrectly. Well, my mom mentioned that she thought she saw in another ad that the patterns were going to be on sale at another fabric store, starting tomorrow, but that fabric store is a little farther away from my house. Well, no big deal, I would just go to the other fabric store in the morning and get the pattern that I needed.

So this morning I drove out to the fabric store that is farther away, bought the pattern and then I had to stop at the closer fabric store to buy some more of the original fabric that I had bought for the dress. After I got the fabric cut, I was waiting at the cash register to checkout and I had the ad in my hand and was looking through it to see if there were any coupons that I could use on the fabric and there was the ad for the patterns on sale, starting today for 99 cents, instead of the $1.99 that I just paid for the pattern across town at the other store! Boy was I ticked at myself!! (The only positive to this story is that I saw a new dollar store that I went in and found some things that I had been looking for.)

Well, the rest of the day went fine until this evening when my husband and I went to our precinct caucus meeting. Even though I haven't been able to serve as a delegate so far (mostly because of my young kids), I like going and voting and knowing what is going on politically in our neighborhood and state. I have gone ever since we moved to our home here and wasn't about to miss it this year because of chemo brain. Well, we showed up at the middle school where our precinct was meeting and I looked on the precinct map that they had and I thought I figured out which precinct we are in (they recently redrew all of the precinct boundaries) so we headed to the cafeteria of the school where our precinct was meeting and when we got there we didn't recognize anyone in the room. Then we realized that I had read the map incorrectly and we were in the wrong location... We did finally figure out where we were supposed to be meeting and it was quite an interesting caucus meeting - the most people I have ever seen there. The precinct chair counted about 90 people there from he said 300 that are registered in our precinct. I think the most I have ever seen at one of our precinct meetings before tonight has maybe been 25 people. I'm hoping next time I will be in a position to be able to run for either a precinct position or a delegate position. There is something about politics that I find fascinating. I think it was also the longest meeting that we have been to because we didn't get home until around 9:30 that night.

There were a lot of people there that I haven't seen in a while that were curious how I was doing and feeling. Unfortunately with my chemo brain I wasn't feeling entirely there or super talkative either.

My parents came over to watch the girls this morning while I went to the clinic for my lab work. There was a new nurse who accessed my port and after that experience I think nurses need to take a class on small talk before they get their nursing degree... I've had some interesting questions and conversations, but I think this one takes the cake. The nurse started off by asking me if I have any family that lives nearby (usually they ask if I live nearby because some people travel from out of state for the care they receive at the Huntsman Cancer Institute). I responded that my parents don't live too far so it is nice because they have been able to help with the kids. Then she asked how many kids I have and I responded that I have 6. Most people are caught off guard by that answer because they think I look too young to have that many kids. Then she asked me if I was married... Hmmmm. Let's see, no I am a young mother of 6 kids, wearing a wedding ring on my finger, but I am not married... Let's think about that for a minute... I just thought the whole conversation was a little odd, but maybe that's just me and I am assuming too much.

After I came back home, my mom stayed at the house for a little bit helping out with cutting out the Easter dresses that I will be making for the girls. Later that evening Blondie had her first soccer practice (I'm not ready for soccer season yet!) and then I cooked hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill for dinner. Unfortunately I've had my headache again today and I feel like I still have the chemo brain. It makes me feel like my response time is really slow and things aren't quite as they should be. Last night while I was trying to sleep I was laying in bed and I knew that my husband was right there next to me, but for some reason I had the feeling that I was far away, looking at him from a distance. It was a really weird feeling...

I feel like I would be alright if I could just get rid of this headache... I've been liberally taking the ibuprofen lately so that I can get better control over it, but as funny as it may sound, I don't like taking medicine unless I feel that I absolutely have to. Other than that things have been pretty low key today. DH has a deadline at work this coming Thursday so he has been working some later evenings and doing some more work after he gets home. Thankfully the weather has been nice so the kids have been able to go outside and burn off some of their energy.

I did not let MJ take a nap today because her sleep schedule is so messed up because of Daylight Savings Time. She was up until after 11 p.m. last night... Thankfully she went right to sleep when DH put her down around 8:30!

I've definitely had more of the chemo brain today and just not too interested in doing anything at all. I've mostly laid around the house today reading or watching T.V. with the girls. After driving M&M's carpool to orchestra this afternoon I came home with the girls and just let them play around outside until their other siblings got home and then we stayed out for another hour or so. It was nice to just sit out there in the sun and watch the kids run around and have some fun. They have definitely been getting stir-crazy inside lately. I think that MJ is going to want to live outside this summer.

After dinner I ran to the grocery store (so I could go without taking any kids). Last night I didn't sleep too well because it was just too warm for me in the house and my intestines were all churning around inside. Hopefully things will straighten themselves out here shortly...

I DO NOT LIKE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!! Does it really save us anything??? (Okay, enough about that.)

I took a little bit of a nap after church today and had a primary meeting to go to after dinner. Things went well. I feel a little foggy headed today with a headache again. I don't quite feel like I am firing on all cylinders today. It also makes me more short-tempered and irritable... I don't like using the term chemo-brain, but I think I have it this time around...

Mostly just dealing with a headache and a little more tired than usual the last couple of days. My bowels aren't quite working right, but that seems to be status quo with my chemo treatments. I've also had a little bit of neuropathy - this time more in my feet so far. I've been sleeping alright although it has been getting warmer which has been keeping the house a little warmer at night. This morning I was able to take M&M to the fabric store to pick out some fabric for an Easter dress. Hopefully we can pull it off and she ends up liking it in the end. I will keep you posted on my family blog.

Headache city today! Other than that I have felt alright. I think my bowels are a little stopped up right now, so I am slowly taking some Senokot so that I hopefully won't go to the other extreme like last time. I tried to run a few errands today but after going to another fabric store with the little girls I didn't feel like I had the energy to go to the grocery store with them as well. After lunch I was able to cut out some fabric for one of the girls' Easter dresses and then after dinner I went to the grocery store without any of the kids.

Well, the nurse from Huntsman called this morning to tell me that my CA-125 number has dropped to 26! So I am down in the normal range now! Yea!! I didn't get a chance to talk to her so I'm not sure if that means that I am officially in remission or what. I guess I will find out for sure in 3 weeks when I go back in to meet with my oncologist.

I'm not sure what's up with MJ's sleeping schedule but it has been completely messed up since she got sick the last time. She didn't take a nap Tuesday or Wednesday of this week (just stayed awake in her bed for an hour or two) and today she played in her bed for an hour before she finally fell asleep. Then once the kids got home from school they woke her up before she was ready so she was completely cranky for a while. When I put her down for bed this evening she has been playing and crying off and on now for the past hour. Hopefully we will get back on a regular schedule here pretty quickly!! I got a facetime call from my oldest sister today and it was nice to talk with her for a few minutes.

I forgot to mention yesterday that on our drive up to the Huntsman Institute, I realized that I had forgotten my purse at home with my I.D. in it. Unfortunately we were almost there and it didn't really make sense to turn around and go back for it. The Huntsman Clinic has a policy that each time you go in for an appointment you're supposed to have an I.D. and your insurance card with you. We decided to just take a chance and hopefully they would let it slide this time. Plus it is usually the same receptionists working there each week I go in so I was hopeful that they would recognize me and not worry about the I.D. Well, as luck would have it when we got up to the clinic there was a man working behind the receptionist desk that I had never seen before! He asked for my I.D. and insurance card and I mentioned that I had forgotten my I.D. at home and he said that that was okay. Whew! DH had his insurance card with him so we used that and then DH paid the copay for me. DH and I have discussed the I.D. policy before and have wondered who would want to go in to a cancer clinic to have lab work done or receive chemo treatment just for fun, masquerading as someone else??

Last chemo treatment was today! I woke up with a headache which always starts my day off on the wrong foot... My appointment was earlier than my last few so the office was less busy and we found a parking spot with no problems. I can't believe that this is my 6th treatment!

Things went well with my appointment before the treatment. There were some changes in the study that I am on so the person over the trial studies had to review the changes with us and I had to resign the the consent form. It mostly changed the list of side effects for the experimental drug - Avastin (or Bevacizumab). One of the added side effects (which apparently doesn't occur very often) is a condition called osteonecrosis of the jaw - which is the deterioration and death of the jawbone... I mentioned the two times now that I have had my lower jaw hurting and they said to keep an eye on it and mention the treatment that I am on when I visit my dentist next so he can watch for signs of the bone disease. If it appears that I am developing this problem I will pull myself from the study (and my doctor will probably not allow me to remain on it anyways.

I also mentioned the headaches that I have been having and some stuffy nose/bleeding nose issues I have had since starting my chemo treatments. There was a medical fellow doing most of the appointment today and he said there was some inflammation in my nose which could be associated with a sinus infection. I'm not convinced that that is my problem, but I will look into more info on it.

My chemo treatment went pretty smoothly. For some reason my husband wasn't able to get his laptop connected to the free WiFi offered at Huntsman and he was planning on doing a lot of work there because he has a major deadline coming up. That put a pretty big crimp in his day so luckily I had brought some movies with me and we ended up watching a movie. (This was the first time that we turned the T.V. during my chemo treatments.) Unfortunately it didn't help at all with my husband's work deadline so he will have to work even harder over the next couple of days.

The nurse that was administering my meds today was really concerned when she started me on the Carboplatin. She said that the effects with that drug are cumulative and that you really have to watch for reactions, especially with the 5th and 6th cycles. She said that if I experienced any itching anywhere on my body or felt that my mouth was swelling up on the inside to call her immediately. She was quite pleased when we got to the end of the infusion of that drug and I hadn't had any of those symptoms.

This week my Avastin infusion was just over 30 minutes and the nurse said that my future Avastin infusions will only 30 minutes as well. So from here on out my infusion appointments should be pretty quick. After I was through with the infusion I mentioned to the nurse to keep an eye on my port after she removed the needle to watch for bleeding. She put some gauze on it and had me apply pressure to it and then put a larger bandaid on it. When we checked the gauze there was only a tiny spot of blood.

I got a copy of my last three lab tests and the interesting thing was that my white blood cell counts were at their lowest 2 weeks ago, not 1 week ago and that my red blood cell counts were at their lowest today - but still well above the minimum that they allow for the chemo treatment to proceed as planned.

I've had a lot of people ask me if I was excited with this being my last chemo treatment and I haven't been quite sure how to respond. While this was my last chemo treatment today, I will still be going in every three weeks for infusion of the Avastin drug. This is not a chemotherapy drug and will be a much quicker infusion and shouldn't have nearly as many side effects so on that hand it is good to be done with the chemo side of it.

Over the next month I have a CT scan scheduled and a mammogram to check for any signs of cancer. And hopefully I will get a call tomorrow from the nurse telling me that my CA-125 number is in the normal range and I think that that will hopefully mean that I am officially in remission!! Stay tuned!

I want to send a big thanks out to my parents for spending the day at our house watching the kids again. It's nice to know that they are in good hands! Thankfully we made it home a little earlier today - we got home at about 5:40 and dinner had been brought by a few minutes earlier from a family in the ward. Thanks! It's nice to not have to worry about dinner when you've been gone all day!

I ran some errands today and got some more fabric that I needed to make the Easter dresses for the girls. Thankfully MJ and Kay were both fine for me at the fabric store. It always seems to take a lot longer for me to get what I need there than I anticipate. I also spent a good portion of the day trying to do some more housework, finishing up the laundry and getting it put away. My last chemo treatment is tomorrow! Wish me luck!

I stayed around the house today doing laundry and trying to get caught up on a few things (like housework). Other than that, not much going on.

We all made it back to church today! MJ still has a little bit of a cough and stuffed up nose so I kept her with me instead of sending her to nursery. Other than that things are fine. This morning while I was getting ready for church, Blondie came into my bathroom to ask me something. I was getting ready to "draw" my eyebrows on so I asked her if she liked my eyebrows. She looked at me and said, "But you don't have any." Then she proceeded to watch me draw them on with a brow pencil and she thought that that was pretty interesting how I could use what looked like a colored pencil to draw eyebrows on myself.

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.

Luke stayed home once more today and M&M was off of school so I had the majority of kids at home today. I feel fine and Luke was finally starting to feel better by the end of the day. I think he will be well enough to return to school tomorrow. I got some cleaning and organizing done today that I've been wanting to do for a while. There is just so much to do at my house always!! Hopefully one of these days I will be able to get on top of everything. (Probably not while there are kids in the house still though!) It's hard having sick kids because it completely changes what I can get done during the day. Usually it means I can't go anywhere and when MJ is sick and whiny, I can hardly do anything because she just wants to hang onto me all day long. My stomach muscles have been sore by the end of the day the last couple of days because I have had to carry her around with me so much.

Luke stayed home from school today again... His stomach was hurting him last night and he has thrown up a couple of times today. I'm not sure if it is the same sicknesses that he had at the beginning of the week or a new one. I feel fine once again. I think my skin got irritated by the bandaids that the nurse put over my port and/or she put the bandaids on way too tight because that area around my port was killing me in the shower this morning! Every time the water from the shower hit it, I almost wanted to yell out in pain! It also doesn't help that MJ isn't feeling well and flops her head around on my chest all day long - and sometimes hits my port with her head... My jaw is feeling much better today and the sore on my tongue is almost completely healed. It looks like the clove is helping once again.