Some Updates. Some Thoughts.

It's been awhile since I have wrote on here.
Mainly because I don't know where to start.

As many of you know, I changed to a more aggressive treatment plan at the beginning of July. This decision was unplanned and quick. After talking to a friend of mine about my doctor's treatment plans for me, she asked if I would consider getting a second opinion from her doctor. And within 2 days, I got that second opinion. The treatment I was doing before was proving not to be successful, so we decided to cut out a couple steps in my actual plan to get where I am now.

I started a chemotherapy known as R-CHOP. I go in once every two weeks for a long 8 hours. Once we do several rounds of this, we will do scans to see if there is any progress. If there is, then praise the Lord that we have found something that is working! If not, we will begin our preparations for a bone marrow transplant.

This new chemo has proven to definitely be more aggressive. After my first round, I slept for an uncountable amount of hours during the three days following, and had a hard time eating anything but mashed potatoes for 2 weeks. I just had my second round yesterday, and some things are opposite! Some good news is that we found a nausea med that is working better than others, but it is $150 a pill! The doctors have been kind enough to keep giving me "samples" of this med, which has allowed me to feel a bit better than before.

As for the opposite side effect though, I am beginning to experience insomnia. Last night I slept from about 10pm-12am and then 2am-4am. And I have now been awake ever since other than some extremely short cat naps here and there. My body is aching with exhaustion.

When I woke up for the third time at 4am, I was exhausted and upset. I wanted to sleep. It was so silent and I laid there in the dark and soon began crying. Before I was so upset that I was always sleeping, and now I am upset that I can't sleep!

Although not sleeping is definitely not ideal, I can't help but be thankful for the time I got to spend in solitude with Christ. After realizing that I wasn't going to fall asleep, I turned on some worship.

Through lyrics, I was reminded that He promises us that we are not alone.

He is there to bring healing to the hurting.
He is there to bring comfort to the worried.
He is there to turn my mourning into dancing.

As I spring forward to what tomorrow holds for me, I was reminded that although I may be weak, His Spirit is strong in me. And although my flesh my fail, He never will.

Tomorrow evening I will be getting branded by the "cancer stamp" if you will. Because my hair has continually starting thinning a lot more than usual and today my head has started feeling a bit tingly, I will be shaving my head.

I have avoided thinking/talking about it because although I have been battling cancer on and off for a year and a half now, I have not had to deal with people knowing unless I told them.

With a picc line in my arm, and no hair on my head... I won't have to tell anyone. This is a big step in my journey and I am blessed to have a huge group of people to be here to join me in making this a milestone in my journey.

I am nervous and definitely not looking forward to tomorrow, but I continue to tell myself these four things.

1. God is good.
2. I am not alone in this.
3. This is another step to health.
4. #baldissexy