Well, it's been a month + since I've been back here...

Things have been busy... took me a week or two after Christmas to finish Christmas up... I was running a bit behind... Then I discovered a new craft. Button jewelry... FUN!!! Made a set for my niece's birthday... granddaughter #1's birthday, and two necklaces and a bracelet and earrings for sale. Just have to find a buyer, or they'll end up gifted down the road, I guess. Fun to make tho!

Unfortunately, just after Christmas, our Happy Cancer Bubble got burst... or maybe just pricked... They ran Joe's CEA at our December 29th visit... Oh... we were sooo hopeful! Just before Joe was finished with his treatment, we finally tracked down the results... 390? 490? I can't even remember at this point (I'm thinking it was near 500, so musta' been the 490)... Doesn't matter, really. They were going the wrong way! We'd been a 117 or something (can you tell I'm losing my mind? haha...). Well, we walked to the exam part of the Center, and saw our doc standing there... Joe told him about the new #'s. He was surprised... concerned... Said he'd look into it before our next appointment. Well, this is where I, again, get torqued... They run these labs every two weeks. If WE know what they are before we leave, THEY can know what they are too. If they're looking at something like his cancer markers, then it seems to me that they could find/take the time before we're back in two weeks to LOOK at the results and have a plan in hand BEFORE Joe takes a day off work and we drive down there for treatment... Only to be told what we already knew. CEA was high... not going to treat today... Gotta' get you set up for a CT, then come back next week and we'll proceed. CAAA-RAP! In two weeks, Doc or the PA should have looked at the results... called and said, "CEA is up, let's get you in for a CT..." Joe would have gone and had it done BEFORE the two weeks was up, and when we went in, we'd have been set and ready to go. Instead, it puts us back a week...

Our lives revolve around Joe's cancer and treatments. Anything and everything that we do, and don't do, depends on Joe's treatments, how he's feeling... He misses work due to his side effects sometimes... those days have to be made up, or we're out $. Add in a wasted day and wasted gas going down there, and we're out more $$. We get ourselves set in a routine that we adjust everything else to, and then because they can't take a few minutes in a two week period to look at Joe's #'s... We're all upside down. They just can't seem to get that through their heads. Oh well...

So, Joe had the CT. While it still showed some shrinkage in the tumors, there also appeared to be a couple new growths. I guess they error on the side of caution, assuming the new growths are malignant, so... It seems that the treatment we started in June/July has stalled out... too... So, we're on treatment #4. Vectibix. I have always been anxious with starting a new course of action, but now more than ever before, because it's looking like we're running out of options. Every treatment thus far has started out like gangbusters... getting in there and kicking cancer butt... CEA going down rapidly in the first few months... then blah. Knowing that we're nearing the end of the road in things they can do... I'm just all over the place with this. I am so nervous, edgy... stressed to the max. I can't focus, can't function. I know Joe's worried about how he'll do with the new treatment, but he knows that I'm spazzing out, even tho I try to keep it under wraps around him... I'm just holding my breath, hoping against hope. In our 3rd year of treatment here, and my nerves have just stretched so tightly... I'm really about to snap. I try not to dwell, but it's hard when it's just always right there... riiight there!

I'm so thankful that I've had this time with Joe that I might not have had otherwise... but it's so hard... all of this dragging out... getting our hopes up, and then... I'm just slap worn out. I really try hard to maintain a happy, smiling facade of normalacy, but sometimes my "happy" slips.

I've got my neighbor calling over here... I KNOW she has depression issues... she gets depressed over anything and everything... I've gotten to where I have to avoid her, because it's all about her, her, her. I know that's the way her mind works, and I try to knock her out of it sometimes, just by trying to draw a parallel between her life and mine, and show her, she really has nothing to feel depressed about. Yeah, it's bad for everybody right now, but she's so blessed in so many ways. Not that I'd trade my life with Joe for hers, but sometimes, it'd be nice to only have to deal with the things she has to deal with. Some people refuse to see how good they've got it, even when they have others suffering all around.

Well, now to go and try to occupy my mind with other things... Thank goodness for laundry and dishes and dirty shoes! LOL! Hugs, Susan