Back in the land of the Living...

My gosh…

Cancer Butt Kicking is HARD!!!

I remember the first day in the hospital

I remember the last day of being in the hospital

I remember it being so hard to breathe

I remember Bastiaan being there… always…

When you gain about 7 pounds in 3 days you look like a tomato. And no I don’t mean a cute little tomato  on a little green limb but a FAT, I do not feel happy RED ( called the IL-2 tan) I’m almost falling of off my stick tomato! Being like a tomato is not a good thing. Especially when you keep telling the doctor you are feeling “peachy”…

I got 12 treatments in. They (the doctor and very sweet nurses) say this is a really good thing cause the total you can get is 14 treatments in the first round. We started Monday the 17^th. Every eight hours they would give me the Inter Leukin, but by Thursday I had accumulated so much fluid that my heart had a lot of trouble pumping all my blood to my organs.

A little birdie told me once that it is pretty important to have your heart pump blood around too all your organs all the time...

So Dr Logan and his team stopped treatment and they focused on “fixing me up” quick so my heart didn't get crazy ideas.  Which I think was a super idea!  We stayed in on the Intensive Care Unit until Tuesday the 25^th instead of Sunday the 23th (like normal IL-2 patients) because they wanted to make sure I was all right, that my heart was doing fine, and the fluid was decreasing. Also I needed to get my strength back and get of off the oxygen, (like those little old ladies you see in the movies toting around one of those oxygen tanks… although I didn't walk at all at that time…) and start breathing normally.

I don’t remember very much of being in the hospital, only what my family tells me I did or didn’t do. But maybe that is better. It must have been very hard on them though….

Today I have been home for a week. I can shower by myself (WHOOHOO!!!), I can breathe, read and write again (Oh Yeah Baby) and I can talk walks outside and see Classic, Jones and the crazy cats. I have been to the farm for the first time yesterday and seen our girls...

Life is good.

But this was only part one.

In order to do the full Inter Leukin Treatment (and kill kill kill all those nasty cells) we have to do another round off 5 days Intensive Care…

And, well… we are not sure my heart can take another round. So this week were going to fuel up, get strong, get stamina back and learn to walk to the other side of the house and not be totally exhausted… (no, our house is NOT that big…) AND do a stress test. This stress test is to see if my heart can take another round. They are also going to draw some blood and we are going to see Dr Logan again.

In the mean time I just am overwhelmed (in a GOOD way) with your prayers, cards, gifts, presents, flowers, bears, cookies, socks, pirate games, monkeys in a jar, lollypops, crèmes and all the other goodies you guys sent me and continue to feel very much blessed and loved! You Crazy American’s really do things bigger and better!!! Haha!

THANK YOU!!!

...

I'll be back!

OK...
I think I'm ready...

I will see you in a week or so...!!!
Well...  Maybe sooner if you are up for a pajama party in the hospital.... ;-)

We will see how things go and I'll try to keep you updated! I hope you have a wonderful week and make sure you love every moment of it! And don't forget, I'll be thinking about you all!!!

Big hugs
Leontien




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Who's afraid of heights?

I am afraid of heights.

Not as much as I am afraid of spiders.

Well... maybe...

I went to Australia a couple of years ago, and it was an absolute wonderful experience. The country is just gorgeous. What I liked the best was the fact that about every two days we had a different scenery. One day we would be at the shore looking at the sea and see the sun go down, the other day we would be in the middle of a rain forest. Well at least I thought it was a rain forest, it sure was hot and humid!

We saw mountains and we saw cows (of course) and very very disappointing, I have to admit, only ONE kangaroo, and I don’t even think it was a kangaroo but a walibi (big difference)! But we did see some koala’s which made up for the lack of kangaroos.

Everything was just fantastic until the day we got the “genius” idea to do something different…

This something different  was us scouting for fun things to do on our way from one destination to the other,  we needed some exercise as well and since we already walked besides the shore (where we found out we really needed good shoes, walking gear AND drinking water) and  the desert (which was just HOT again with crazy amounts of flies, EVERYWHERE but at least we brought water that time) we were very pleased when we saw a sign that said “Tree Top Walks” and an explanation of what a three top walk was (which is a path in the top of the trees, man made, which meant the path was made out of metal with little see true holes  in the bottom and attached with cables and/or laying on TALL round posts and SWAYING) and... some stunning pictures.

Being a little naive and blown away by the great pictures (good advertisement on their part) I thought this would help me get over my fear of heights and so I said “Ok, let’s do it!”

I really should have known better.

The beginning was not so bad.  The “path” started out at “ground level”, but quickly the dirt was not there anymore and we were up in the air. Yes, as long as I would look straight forward and went from tree to tree, it wasn’t so bad… But of course that was NOT the only thing I did.

Nooooo I had to look down, see how those cables where attached to those trees, and because I saw the cables I saw us moving slowly from the right to the left and back, and I did a little calculation that those posts on which this metal path WITH SEE TRUE HOLES was attached too was defiantly not strong enough to keep us up there!!!  Doing all this math is not a good thing when you are up 60 feet (i don't know how high we were, it was HIGH to me) in the air and afraid of heights….

Half way true the “walk” I decided I didn’t get no air anymore… “Well, and that I really was afraid and never ever should have attempt something as dumb as this”. But of course it was a bit too late for that and I hurried on down the half mile path…  pushing everybody out of my way and yelling to keep following me!

Do you know how long half a mile is?

It's pretty far…

I got to the other end and just went on my knees and cried like a little baby. You should have seen the looks on the faces of the other people that came of that path, they for sure thought I lost my mind, but I just could not stop myself!  And just as a reminder, you shouldn’t believe the people who tell you you look lovely after bawling your eyes out for 15 minutes either.  Lucky for me the whole thing was a loop and so I didn’t have to go back over that path to get to the car and face more people. Which would have added more shame upon embarrassment…

We went for some more scenery seeing in the safety of our car… which was just fine with me! I didn’t need no more exercise anyway that day…

I really love trees, love them in my yard, besides the roads, in forests, in pictures or paintings, with leafs or without leafs, but I am never going to attempt to do a three top walk again, EVER!!! There are just some things a girl sound not attempt twice…

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Monday is coming closer and closer but I don’t quite know if that is a good thing or a bad thing… Guess we will find out soon! I did do some fun things (laying in the yard watching the cats play, called a bunch of good friends and chatted, went pantie shopping with my little sister. I worked at the farm, my little brother is getting really good at cracking those numbers. And read a lot of beautiful blogs, and i am soaking up all the LOVING you guys give me... Everything is going to be just fine...