2.5 weeks after treatment

First things first: I'm feeling great!! Hubby arrived Taipei a week after I was done with treatment. Since then, I've had a few doctor's visits - just routine stuff. My first MRI scan will be scheduled in the first week of September, and the dr. said the result of that is most likely to be a good one. My nausea has improved a lot: now I'm only nauseous if I'm in a foul-smelling environment. I also have a lot more energy to go out now. (That's why I haven't wrote anything in my blog for a while. I've been shopping and running errands with hubby~)

To all the people out there who care about me: Thank you so much!! I'm feeling great!!

So what is my next step? I guess it would be to become healthier: eat well, sleep well, exercise regularly, and be happy.

I'm doing OK in the eating and sleeping departments but I'm not exercising regularly yet. Right now I'm up to the level of having physical activity daily, such as walking for a couple of hours, biking on flat road for 15 minutes, swimming for 5 minutes, etc. Walking is easy - whenever we go out, we are bound to be walking a lot. Biking is much harder because I am terrible at it. I tried out my mom's really high-end mountain bike and it kind of scares me how fast it goes. Plus, I have no idea about changing gears and I don't dare go up or down hill at all.. The sheer size of the bike intimidates me.. LOL. So I think my next step is to get a suitable bike for me, a 156cm (sometimes 155cm) beginner rider who is afraid of little hills and anyone showing on my side while I ride.. lol. Once I have my own bike, I want to go ride with hubby in the evenings when it's cooler out there. We live in this beautiful neighborhood that's perfect for road bike. Of course it would be more beautiful to ride during the day when we can see the river and the green and stuff but it's really too hot right now. The point is, I want to go from having daily physical activity to exercising daily.

As for being happy, I'm happy that my treatment is over. I'm happy hubby is here, but I'm not happy that we're not with Evie. Us being here is already disrupting my brother's life so I don't want to bring Evie here and totally flip over his place. So we have to find jobs and sell our condo in Toronto so we can settle down in a place of our own and bring Evie here finally. Hubby's been here 1.5 weeks and we've already registered our marriage, he's done the required body check and received the report today. Tomorrow we are ready to apply for his permanent residency status! In the mean time he's working on resume and autobiography. I wonder if I should start working on my own resume and autobiography too.. Anyway. So we are moving towards bring Evie over, which will make me happy. Playing the piano also makes me happy. I've been practicing a few tunes I learned from friends in high school.. I'm considering learning German again because that always makes me happy too; I don't know why.

Phase 2 Week 6

Week 6 was relatively short because I had my last treatment on Thursday :) It is all done now. I'm no longer required to go to the hospital everyday!! So happy!!

I continue to be nauseous though. However, it is getting better slowly, and I am just happy that treatment is finally over. Next step is to get myself scanned again in about 1.5 months and see if i've rid of the cancer. If all goes well, i will not need further treatment. So let's hope that's the way it'll be!!

As much as I miss Evie, I am more scared of cancer. So I think I will wait for a while before I even begin to think about moving Evie over. The last thing I want is another come back of cancer..

Evie is almost 2 years old~ She just had her very first birthday party over the past weekend. Thanks to Ka, here are the pictures of the day: http://www.kaphoto.ca/pic/Evie2YearsOldBdayParty_StanHome_Jul2009/

Phase 2 Week 5

Sorry for the delay.. Last week had seen me super nauseous and a bit depressed than usual because of the discomforts. I resumed chemo on Monday as scheduled, which was a good thing. However, before I actually got injected with the chemo, I had a pretty bad episode of vomit and diarrhea. The end result of that was an instant weight loss of 1.5 kg even before the chemo.. When I checked out on Tuesday, my weight was an all time low of 41.5 kg. The next day I was 41.2 kg. It scared the hell out of me. Over the week I slowly pulled back to 42 kg. I had been very nauseous for the entire week so I only managed to eat a regular amount - not enough to be gaining any significant weight. (At least I didn't lose more!) Because of the nausea, I decided to devote my attention to TV. It seems when my full attention is diverted, I don't feel the nausea as much as if I were left to my own devices. However, when night came and I start getting ready to bed, that's usually when nausea hits me the worst. As soon as I walked in the bathroom, I had the urge to run towards the toilet and start puking. Thankfully I didn't actually puke too much - only 3 times that I can remember. A few nights I tried an anti-nausea med that simply knocked me off to sleep, which thankfully seems to work. Except that it makes my morning quite drowsy and then I missed my brother's breakfast time for a few days. Usually I can hear him in the kitchen and I would come out to say hi to him, try to have breakfast with him, and then watch him go out the door. The anti-nausea med made me slept through my little morning rituals and I didn't like that. And then at night as I fought with the nausea I also had to fight the feeling of helplessness. I know so many people love me and everything, but when dealing with cancer, I just feel I'm so utterly alone. I know I'm really not alone but sometimes I just can't help it with my sudden outbursts of tears. I feel ashamed that I am so weak in spite of whatever people keep telling me, that I am strong, whatever. I'm really not. I know for all the people who love me, I have to be strong, if not for me, for them. But it is really so much easier said than done. Of course I'm sure I'm only thinking like this because I'm physically not feeling well and it's getting on my nerves. You know and I know that I am just venting and this is only temporary, OK? I promise I will return to the self that you all like better, the much more positive one, in less than 2 weeks. My treatment is supposed to end at the end of week 6 and then give me another week to recover from the aftereffects of the last of the treatment.. Once I'm no longer nauseated I should be feeling much much better. I'm really looking forward to that. I also saw much less of my hubby and Evie on Skype this week because I was feeling too crappy to be sitting in front of my laptop.. I miss them dearly and wish they could be over here with me.. but at the same time I also know I don't have the means to have Evie taken care of here at this moment.. and the best arrangement is for her to remain there with her grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousin.. her daddy's spending a month with her there also makes her so happy.. I want my little girl to be happy.. it's bad enough that her mommy can't be with her.. but I can't stop my hubby from wanting to be with me. So he will leave Evie after her 2nd birthday.. A part of me looks forward to his return, but a much larger part of me wishes he could remain with Evie.. I want Evie's happiness much more than my own. But Daddy doesn't think the same way as mommy does so he'll be here after Evie's birthday. And he needs to be here to start getting his residency and etc to start a life here in Taiwan... I'm really looking forward to it. The future.