life as we know it

Life as we know it, is hard.  Every one knows that, but what not enough people realise, is that it's all the hard days, that makes us truly appreciate the good ones.  I'm a glass half full kind of girl, and what I have learned over the past few weeks, is to really appreciate the life we are given.  Right now I'm laying in my hospital bed with a bad case of the shingles, but honestly I haven't been this happy in a long time.  Today I got up, had a full breakfast, brushed my teeth and did my exercises.  For most people that's normal and not a big deal, but for me just doing that was huge.  I'm noticing improvement in myself, even though I'm still really sick, I feel great because I'm trying my very hardest to get better.  Its all about your state of mind, I have been laying down in a bed, or sitting around on a couch for almost a year now, and I have lost all my muscle.  To get up and start moving again takes a lot of will power, and strength.  Yesterday I walked beside my mom for the first time in a long time, just walking, not limping or really struggling, and it was so nice.  The point of all this, is that things are truly starting to look up, I'm trying harder and I'm seeing improvement, and for the first time, I can actually visualise myself healthy and getting better.  It's the most amazing feeling in the world, and I plan on continuing forward.  No one should ever give up, no matter how hard it seems.

thoughts and prayers

Someone asked me the other day if I was religious and if not, does it bother me when people tell me they are praying for me. Just to clear it up, I may not be religious or pray myself, however when people tell me I'm in their prayers I really appreciate it.  It is a genuinely kind thing to do and they are trying to help, and hey its definitely not doing any harm.

big step

A couple days ago, I was finally able to go home.  Hopefully I will get a bit of a break from the hospital this time.  This has been the hardest month of treatment I have had to go through but I am now in pre-maintenance!  I've waited ten months for this.  It means that things are finally going to start getting easier on me.  I have gotten through the hardest part of my journey.  Hooray!

news definitely isn't always good

Unfortunately I received some really bad news a few days ago.  One of my friends from cancer clinic passed away.  She was only 15 and had a different type of cancer than I do, but it was really difficult and upsetting to hear.  This is a tragedy that I was most definitely not used to dealing with.  I'm used to seeing treatment plans go well, and yes the treatment makes you sick and sore, but you pull out of it and get better eventually.  It was really surprising to hear, because it was so out of the blue, she just didn't recover one time and I didn't really know that could happen.  So not only did I lose someone I care about, but it also makes me wonder if that will happen to me.  I never really considered death to be something that could happen, I just assumed that the treatments would work, but death is very real in any cancer situation, and that really scares me.

not my best Christmas...

So as I was saying before, these past few weeks have been really hard, and yet they have managed to get worse.  The first week I was put on high dose methotrexate (chemotherapy) and that took a lot out of me.  I went home hoping for a week of recovery time, but I realised if I did that, I would then be in hospital on Christmas. I was home for one night, and then I went to my uncles because he lives a lot closer to the hospital.  I went to the hospital everyday for an other week getting various chemo therapies, they were all very long days. Then I finally went home, to see my mom for her birthday.  After a couple nights at home, we had to go back to the hospital for a check up.  My counts were so low, and I was so dehydrated that the hospital said I had to spend the night there and get some transfusions.  They released me on Christmas Eve and I went home and relaxed with my family but I still wasn't feeling well. By the time Christmas came around, I managed to get out of bed and do presents but then I got a fever and my mom and I had to go back to the hospital :( I was only supposed to stay for 48 hours but they found an infection in my blood, and i wasn't able to eat or drink anything because I had really bad mouth sores and couldn't stop throwing up, so now I have to be here for at least 10 days. I have something wrong with my intestines so they're treating me for that, but I also have fluid under my knee cap and there is something wrong with my hip, so I can't really walk.  I still have pretty bad mouth sores and still can't eat so I'm on lots of IV meds, and they're giving me nutrition through IV as well. I'm hoping to get better and go home soon because it honestly feels like I haven't been home in forever, and I'm just really tired, sore, and sick of the hospital.

So these past few weeks have been pretty rough, and I've decided that until everything gets a little more regular, the Thursday blog post thing just isn't going to happen, however, I will try my best to write one every week.

schooling

A lot of people ask me what I am doing for school, so I thought I would just make a quick post about it.  I am enrolled at CDCI East, in cobourg, but technicly I am home schooled.  A teacher at the East provides me with work to complete at my own pace.  It's not like regular home schooling, I don't have any due dates, or anything like that.  Work has been really hard for me to do, and I don't do much of it right now, because when I'm really not feeling well I don't want to be sitting around doing work, but when I am feeling good I want to be out doing things.