Dick Foster - My 2010 Challenge

Love, hope, joy are powerful healers.

Happy Birthday Joe!

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Our son, Joe, celebrates another birthday today! Happy Birthday, Joe! I hope you, Tiffany, and the “kids” have a great time today. We will have another “party” when I’m feeling better 🙂

It’s been a sleepy day today. Not much energy to do anything except lay around and watch television. Mary and I did see a couple of very good, old movies on Turner Classic Movies channel – “Midway” and “The Best Years of Our Lives.”

A bit of dry mouth today, and my tongue is getting a white coating. I believe they call that thrush. Fortunately, there’s a pill for that!

One more night of sleeping in my recliner with my IV pump, Perley. I’m looking forward to getting a good night’s sleep on Sunday night.

Round Three, Day Three, and Family Night

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It’s Friday, so it must be family night. Terri, Mary’s sister, prepared a delicious spread of baked chicken, creamed corn, pasta salad, mixed fruit, Caesar salad, and rolls. This has become a nearly, weekly event of alternating cooks between Mary, Sr.; Mary, Jr and Dick; Lois; and Terri and Mike. Unfortunately, Friday nights are not a good night for Joe and Tiffany due to work and taking care of their dogs.

I’m feeling pretty good today. Fatigue continues to be the major side effect. I contribute this to both the chemo drugs and not sleeping well at night. I was able to work much of the day today. I’m able to each solid foods and full meals without difficulty. I do have periodic burning sensation in my throat and esophagus, but it does not last very long, fortunately.

After dinner, we watched the movie, “Facing the Giants” which was very good. It was written, filmed, and edited by the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, GA. One of three movies they’ve created. Highly recommended.

Round Three, Day Two

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Perley, my IV pump, is doing his thing slowly delivering my third chemo drug. Modern technology continues to amaze me. Home treatment of chemo drugs!

I did not sleep too well last night, so I’m a bit fatigued today. Drinking all that water to flush my kidneys had me up and down several times during the night. No other side effects.

I was able to work much of the day, although I did get in an afternoon nap that was quite refreshing.

That’s all for now!

Chemo Round Three Starts Today

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I’m sitting here in one of the very comfortable infusion rooms at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center starting my third round of chemotherapy. We get started around noon and Alicia is my nurse today. First, I receive about an hour’s worth of four different medications and fluids to prepare my system for the chemo drugs. Of course the medications are not all compatible with each other so Alicia has to properly sequence them.

Mary fixed a delicious lunch of chicken salad with grapes, pineapple, and water chestnuts. Hummm, humm good! Plus a cranenergy drink that is new to me, quite good. A soft baked oatmeal cookie for desert and I’m good to go. Ed, a volunteer, arrives as we finished and offers us snacks and water. We accept two waters and two bananas for later.

My white blood cell count dropped a bit this week, which is to be
expected, to 9.0 from 12.3. Red blood cell count dropped also to below normal of 3.89 so I will be getting a B12 shot tomorrow. Hopefully that will help.

BTW, I’m using my new iPad to capture today’s experience. I guess tweeting would be more immediate, but I don’t have a Twitter account yet.

It’s 4:15 and the last of the IV medications are finishing up. Debbie, the RN with the portable IV pump and the third chemo drug took about five minutes to get me hooked up and ready to go. So for the next 96 hour “Perley, my pump” will slowly dispense my final drug of the induction phase of my treatment. Then on to the radiation phase in 3-4 weeks.

That’s all for now here at Vanderbilt. Im getting hungry. Mary and I are going home, where her Mother will have a pork chop dinner waiting. Family is great!

I’m feeling fine. Life is good.

Fountain or Stagnant Pond

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During the past month or so, I’ve been taking time each morning to read, think, and meditate. I guess that’s one of the benefits of having a life-threatening disease – you realize that life is precious, and limited. I’ve been very fortunate this lifetime and have always expected my life to flow smoothly, without serious challenges that other people face. But is smoothly flowing through life enough?

We all make choices every day that determine the shape and outcome of our life. As Mary quoted Dr. Norman Vincent Peale in a previous post, “The secret of life is not what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you.” I believe that I’ve made lots of good decisions in my life, but I’ve also suffered through the consequences of some not so good decisions.

A recent reading compared water to our life. Water can be trapped in a pond in the woods and become stagnant. Or water can dance down the face of a beautiful fountain in the city square. One is barely alive and the other is vibrant and inspiring, just as with our lives.

I’m not there, but I choose to live the rest of my life like the water in the fountain, full of energy, flowing freely, and maybe even inspiring others.