Day 323

These last days are turning into the longest. Every time I look at those pills or those needles I can't help but think "isn't this over with yet?"

I know....there's only 12 more days to go.....

I'm not feeling that bad really. It's just that the side effects are really wearing thin on my nerves. Maybe it's just the anticipation of not having to do this anymore.

I can't wait until the day comes that I don't itch....that I'm not tired from walking out to my car....I can't wait for the day my bones and joints don't ache and I'm not swallowing ibuprofen until my ears ring so loud that I have to have everyone repeat what they're saying.

Yes I'm whinning. It's either that or I'll explode.

You know it gets to the point, after tx has been so long, that you start to hate hearing yourself bitch about how you feel.....but most of the time you feel like shit so how do you not bitch?

I try not to. I try to keep it to myself. I imagine, even though he'd never say so, Jimmy has to be tired of dealing with how I feel also.

12 more days.

Just 12 more days.....

Day 321

14 days to go. Finally I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Yesterday was kind of ruff....I think last week has started catching up to me. Lot's of fatigue and joint pain. I went to bed early last night trying to escape it and I think that helped a little.

This morning waking up is slow and my brain fog is pretty heavy, but at least the joint pain is much lighter.

I did manage to finish setting up our TV and all of it's components. Wow was that a trip! What ever happened to plugging stuff in and having it work? Took me 2 days to set it all up correctly with brain fog. It's horrible when you read a manual 4 times before being able to comprehend what it's trying to tell you to do.

Now we'll have the Geek Squad come in with their computers to calibrate the tv and sound to fit the room and it will be perfect.

Monday....ugh....back to work. At least this is a 3 day work week. I'm off for New Years Day and the day after.

2 More Peg. shots to go.....56 more ribavirin..... 12 (plus whatever it takes to get my counts back up) more Nuepogen and Procrit shots.

I can't wait until this is all over.....

Day 319

Well Christmas is finally over. All in all it was a wonderful week!

Jimmy worked pretty much non stop for the past 2 weeks making 2 lamps for Nick, Jen and Amanda. I helped where ever I could drawing the patterns onto glass, grinding the pieces and wrapping them in foil....but still Jimmy stayed up night after night all night long to finish them. 75 hours of work in each lamp!

It was worth it.....they came out beautiful!

Christmas Eve Nick and Jen came over to hang out with us for a while and to exchange gifts. I loved the look on their faces when they opened the box! It was priceless.

Christmas morning turned a little ruff on me but I downed some Ibuprofen and a cup of coffee and got my body moving. I didn't exactly get my house cleaned as well as I would have liked but it was passable. I did get dinner together and that actually turned out pretty good!

All the rest of the kids came for Christmas Day along with my Father in law and Charlie (Crystal and Cory's Dad). It was a nice house full!

My kids and their Father actually found me a dish washer for the counter top! lol....it's a Great present for me....but it's also a nice present for the kids. They don't have as many dishes to do now! lol. I love it and it fits perfectly.

After dinner and after setting up the dish washer, we all sat down and played a couple games of UNO minus Jimmy who had to spend most of the day laying on the bed due to throwing his back out and having a hangover to top it off. Poor guy killed his back making the lamps and then he went out on Christmas Eve to celebrate completing them on time with his Daughter and a couple of friends. He paid dearly Christmas day.

Anyway, hanging out with all the kids and playing cards was so much fun.

Christmas Day was wonderful (minus my sweet husbands pain).

Yesterday Jimmy and I ventured out to go to Best Buy to find our Christmas present to each other. Started out to be the wrong day to go but then it turn out great! Traffic was a killer! People where everywhere. It was nuts! Best Buy was sold out of everything that we wanted and we decided to head back home to a closer local store instead. On the way home we ran across Rex's and almost didn't stop but then turned around and went back.

We got a nice big Plasma TV with a stand and a new receiver for our surround sound. We tried to get a Blue Ray player but they were out of them.

It was time to get rid of our old beat up big screen tv and it turned out to be a perfect present for the both of us.....although this morning I still have to finish setting it up. Oh what insanity that is!!!! What ever happened to just plugging stuff in and having them work? no no Now you have to run configurations and set ups on each component. Takes a Rocket Scientist just to get the tv to work with a receiver! lol

Last night was shot night and yep I'm paying this morning for having such a wonderful week. Everything hurts and fatigue is kickin' my ass. Thank God I have today and tomorrow to recuperate before I go back to work on Monday!

16 Days to go.......

Have a Beautiful Day everyone!

Day 317

Merry Christmas!

Day 315

Tx gave me a birthday present....a day that feels pretty ok. Outside of the cracked ears that I have again and some fatigue, I don't feel half bad!

The day outside is turning out to beautiful as the sun comes up and I think it's actually going to get a little warmer out. It's been hanging out at around 5 degrees and it's headed to the upper 30's today.

The day at work shouldn't be bad. We have our company Christmas lunch and it's not really a big work day because most other companies that we work with will be doing the same.

Jimmy gave me a gift certificate to a local golf course for my birthday. Part of my "after tx to-do list" is to take golf leasons. Last year for Christmas I got a set of really nice golf clubs and I haven't gotten the chance to use them yet because of treatment. I figured that when I do I wanted to learn the game a bit better....thus the golf leasons. By Spring I'll be all ready to put both the clubs and the certificate to good use!

20 days to go! :) I can't wait!

Enjoy the day!

Day 314

Each weekend I find my self bracing for the Interferon side effects and weekend after weekend they come. But every once and a while, for no particular reason, the sides decide to take it easy on me.

This was one of those weekends. Ibuprofen killed off most of the body aches and my fatigue level was low enough to ignore most of the time.

With Christmas this week Jimmy and I needed it! (I'll tell you why later....shhhhh...it's a secret)

Boy would it be nice to have the remaining 3 weekends turn out like this past one. I won't hold my breath....but it would be nice.

This is a 2 day work week and I can't be happier to see it come. Today will be nuts since I have only one day to complete payroll instead of the usual 3. It should make the day go faster.

Tomorrow is our plant Christmas party so that should make tomorrow go fast also.

Oh yeah.....and tomorrow is also my 43rd birthday. This will be the very first time in my entire life that I've had to work on my birthday. Usually when it falls on a work day I'll take a vacation day for it. This year I can't see waisting a vacation day while on tx. I'd rather save it for after I'm finished and use it for something fun.

21 more days to go!

Have a Beautiful Day!

Day 311

How can a week be long but the Fridays seem to pop up back to back? Makes no sense I know.....

Yep It's Friday again!

I'm feeling pretty good though. That's a good sign going into the weekend with a Peg. shot due tonight. Maybe this weekend won't be so bad. Other than that same ole brain fog and slightly hung over feeling...the rest of my body seems to be somewhat happy. My fingers are crossed for the weekend.

I haven't heard anything from Hershey yet on my Lymphocyte count from Tuesday. I won't hear about the CD4 count until early next week. I wonder if they'll call today, knowing that this is my shot night, if my absolute count is still below 500.

24 days to go.....

Have an Awesome weekend!

Day 310

Thursday. I woke up this morning feeling pretty ok. It's kind of nice to wake up in the morning and not have body aches for once. Brain fog is hanging around a little but hey I can't have everything!

Ribavirin has been playing with my mind again I think. I'm getting aggravated at the little things again. Things that would usually just get a second of thought are really irritating me lately. It's like PMS on steroids!

For instance, my morning ritual is to go online and read our local newspaper. In the paper there's always an article called "Dear Dr. Donahue". This mornings headline for his article is "Hepatitis C often has a positive prognosis".

It reads:
DEAR DR. DONOHUE: Please save my life. I was diagnosed with hepatitis C five years ago. Tests now say I need treatment. I am scared to death of treat­ment, about which I have heard horror stories. I have an older husband who will not make it without me. I feel great and have terrific energy. I am 59. Is there something other than the standard treatment I can take? – S.D.
ANSWER: Infection with the hepati­tis C virus leads to chronic liver infec­tion in 85 percent of patients. However, illness doesn’t appear until 10 to 20 years after infec­tion. At that time, about 20 percent of infected people develop liver cirrhosis, and 1 percent to 4 percent come down with liver cancer. That means 75 percent of patients do not develop serious liver disease. Treatment is necessary when evidence of the virus can be found in the blood and when the liver shows changes that indicate cir­rhosis will be a likely out­come. Most of the time, that’s determined through micro­scopic examination of liver tissue obtained by a needle biopsy.

Who has given you the horror stories of treatment?

It’s not a picnic, but it isn’t as terrifying as it has been portrayed to you.

Ribavirin is one of the drugs used. Its worst side effect is ane­mia, a drop in the red blood cell count. Stopping the drug just about always returns the count to normal.

Peginterferon is the other drug used in treatment. Its most common side effect is flulike symptoms: headache, muscle pain, fever, nausea and vomiting.

Appropriate medicines can control these symptoms.

It also can produce a drop in both the white and red blood cell counts. It has aggravat­ed depression and given a few people thoughts of sui­cide. Hair-thinning is anoth­er possible side effect. The list of potential side effects is long. Most resolve when the drug is stopped. And most patients complete therapy without having to greatly modify their activi­ties during treatment. Peginterferon is injected under the skin once a week. People learn how to inject themselves. There are no other effec­tive treatments.

"Appropriate medicines can control these symptoms"??? Yeah really? And by the way I think he missed a few side effects (like Brain fog and Major FATIGUE!)... not to mention that the few "Appropriate Medicines" that they do give come side effects of their very own.

"And most patients complete therapy without having to greatly modify their activities during treatment." - What? I'm sorry but outside of my dragging my ass to work, which is a very difficult thing to do on tx, my life is about laying on the couch or going to bed. I have no life and I don't know anyone on tx who does. "Without having to greatly modify their activities"? - What the hell ...my whole life is greatly modified!

Oh yeah, and I don't think that he mentioned that tx can last up to 48 weeks.....or even 72 weeks like Teah, for some Geno Types.

Don't get me wrong....Tx is do-able. But when someone just blows it off as no big deal it makes me want to inject their ass with interferon and feed them ribavirin for a couple of weeks just so they can get a feel for it before they nonchalantly blow it off as no big deal.

I realize that Doctors try to sway patients toward tx and not scare them off. The more that people get treated the less people there are in the world carrying this virus around and spreading it. When asked a question like this, I just don't understand why they try to pass all of the side effects of tx off as no big deal.....had I gone into tx thinking that, I would never have made it past week 2. Being informed and prepairing myself for what I was going through made me not panic when I started feeling like hell fell on me.

Is tx do-able? Yes

Is it worth it? Hell Yes.

Is it even slightly easy? F*** No!

Yep.....that's my Riba-rage session for the day!

Tune in tomorrow.....same bat time....same bat station!

Day 309

Hershey went ok yesterday. It'll take a week before I hear back on my blood counts. I should hear back from them by around next Tuesday. My Research Nurse is still leaning toward my tx being stopped before the 48 week mark. I think everyone is waiting for me to end tx so that we can find out if my counts return. They say that I would never have made it this far in tx without the Nuepogen and Procrit....but at the same time they don't really like that my counts have run so low even though I've been taking the Procrit and Nuepogen. While taking them, my counts should be much higher. So the question is - Will my counts be able to bounce back when I stop tx?

I'll be on Nuepogen and Procrit until they do. I'm sure they will. I have a resilient body. It's bounced back easily from everything else life has thrown at it.

I didn't have to do the interview with the quality of life research doctor. He filled his quota for information before I got to Hershey yesterday. Still I'd love to know where he'll go with the research.....

It's Wednesday and I think the brain fog is much better today then it has been. I took Nuepogen last night and my bones ache a bit, but it's nothing that good ole ibuprofen won't settle down. This will just be a slow moving day that's all.

Everyone is right about the last few weeks being so hard. I'm not sure if it's because all of these drugs are so built up in my body that it's wearing me down....or is my body just simply starting to scream out for the end to tx.

26 more days to go....

Enjoy the day!

Day 308

Can you believe that Christmas is next week already? I got almost all of my shopping done....online of course. All I have left to do is to grab a few things for stockings. That's going to require going into a store. At least it'll be a short trip.

Today's a Hershey day. Gotta make sure my blood counts are still holding their own.

I'm also going to spend some time talking to a Doctor who is researching the quality of life for a Hep C patient. I can't help but wonder what he'll do with his research....

It's probably not a good day to talk to this guy....brain fog is thick and my brain doesn't want to work it's way through it for some reason today.

Maybe by the time I get to Hershey it'll be better...

Have a Good Day Everyone.

Day 307

It's MOnday already and the weekend was a total washout.

Outside of drawing some patterns on glass and wrapping some Christmas presents (thank God for online shopping), I spent the whole weekend on the couch.

4 shots and 29 days to go....I wonder what it will be like to have my weekends back again. I miss them.

Last night I felt the worst and I wound up in bed at 6:30. I took a sleeping pill in hopes that the sleep would bring me a better Monday morning. I think it helped a little. Maybe if I get my body moving I'll shake some of it off.

Have a nice Monday everyone.

Day 304

It's Friday again isn't it?

Yep.....it's Friday.

Good news is that I'll be one more shot down. Bad news is that I feel like crap.

My body aches don't seem to want to go away this week and now with another Nuepogen shot under my belt from last night my bones are aching in unison.

I thought that maybe the sleeping pills where starting to cause me to feel hung over in the morning so I didn't take any last night. It was a big mistake because I couldn't fall to sleep until almost midnight. So here I am this morning still feeling that hang over feeling along with the lack of sleep on top of the body and bone aches.

whaaaaaaaa

Instead of the sleeping pills I'm starting to think that I simply may not be drinking enough water again. It's sometimes something that I forget to do at work when I'm busy. I'll have to make a conscious effort to count how much I drink.

There is always that "tx sides do what ever they want to do" thing. But I still have to have faith that there's something ....anything that I can do to make myself feel better especially since tonight is Peg. night.

For now I'll down a cup of coffee along with some Ibuprofen, take a shower and make my very old feeling body start to move.

34 days to go. Iris and Terry are right the end of tx is starting to feel hard again.

I hope I snap out of this.....

Have a Wonderful Friday Everyone.

Day 303

Yesterday was just another day of aches and pains .....nothing that Ibuprofen couldn't tackle. Although I have to try to not take it so much. I try to take one at a time to space them out. When joint aches combine with bone aches it becomes a little hard not to take too many ibuprofen.

This morning the bone aches are gone and the joint aches are tuned down a few notches, so hopefully today will be easy on me.

The weather outside is horrible. They're calling for major ice. It's been icing on and off with rain pretty much since around 2 am but hasn't really hurt the roads yet. The rain and salt seems to be washing the roads free of the ice so far. Hopefully if the roads are going to get nasty, they get nasty before I have to leave for work and not while I'm at work. I've been stuck there once before and I had fun waiting it out at a close by bar.....but I can't drink now and really don't want to hang out there drinking soda. lol

Have a Nice and Safe Day everyone!

Day 301

It's Tuesday and the body aches and pains are still hanging in there along with some major brain fog.

It's not so bad that I can't function. It's just bad enough to make me feel like crap and trying to think straight is a fight.

Because it is Tuesday I would have thought my little drummer boy would have let up by now...but nooooo the little jerk has torment me for as long as he can.

I'll grab the ibuprofen once again to shut him up. The brain fog I'm sort of stuck with.

One nice thing about it being so cold out right now is that the crisp cold air temporarily snaps me out of the fog. I wish I could just keep a bucket of ice water next to my desk at work.

Yesterday I was almost faced with having to calculate a few very long lists of numbers....it struck terror into my head! It was all over a spread sheet being off by 16 cents. I knew why it was off....I just could think clearly enough to reason it out. It was a frustrating half hour of sitting there and talking it out loud before I was able to make my brain cooperate. Thank God because the last thing that I needed was to try to run long rows of numbers through a calculator! I would have been there all night starting it over and over again and in my head I knew the Exel was calculating on the spread sheet right....the total was -16 cents for a reason. Brain fog was just blocking me from the explanation.

There are times when a work day is really ruff. I am so thankful that I work with an incredibly understanding friend who I probably drive nuts sometimes with my rambling. But Susan is always there helping me through it. I couldn't have made it through work without her support.

Tuesday...Nuepogen night....with and hope and a lot luck, I'll be rid of the body aches and pain before the Nuepogen brings on the bone aches. It sucks to get both at the same time.

Hey! I broke 300 days! 34 more to go....

Have an Awesome Tuesday everyone!

Day 300

On Saturday I got a call from my Hershey Doctor checking to see how I was doing with the restart. That's a first.

For whatever reason this shot sent my little drummer boy thumping up and down my body. Aches and pains everywhere. It was an ibuprofen weekend.

This stuff is so unpredictable. I would have thought it would be easier on my since I hadn't taken the shot for 2 weeks. You can never tell what it's going to do....

I did manage to help my son get the tree up on Saturday night and on Sunday I took the morning to decorate it. Christmas Tree and stockings are the extent of my decorating this year....Simple, Pretty and easy to put away.

Other than a few loads of laundry, I stayed couch bound for the rest of the time.

This morning the little drummer boy is gone but the hangover and brain fog have taken hold. I'm sure that it'll get better as the day goes on.

Oh yeah......and I got a lot of Christmas shopping done online yesterday also. I'm actually almost done.

Have a Nice Monday everyone.

Day 298

Yep it's Saturday morning and I know I took Interferon last night.

Outside of getting the Christmas tree up today, I think this will be a couch weekend.

On a positive note, after more than a full week of having a gigantic painful abscess lump on the back of my head, it finally decided to relieve it's pressure yesterday (trying not to be gross) and this morning it feels more like a sore spot than an angry little drummer boy with a pick axe. Thank God I was actually able to sleep on my back last night!

What do I have.....5 more shots to go......37 days.

I'm getting closer.

Have a Nice Weekend everyone.

Day 297

Herrrrrrre's Friday!

Time to jump back in the Peg. saddle again. YeeHaw!

I'm not going to think about it. It's time to get back to finishing this off.

Not that is does me any good to know, but I think I've figured out that it's the Ribavirin that dries my skin and scalp out so very badly. A week into restarting it my scalp has gone right back to needing the Hot Six oil again. Dry itchy scalp is not good on the sore as hell lump that I have on the back of my head. I'll try to keep the oil off of the abscess. Not to mention that I'll try not to scratch!

The kid's will be here over this weekend and I'm hoping that they'll help me get the tree up. I can't believe that Christmas is only a few weeks away!

Time flies when you're having fun. lol

Enjoy your Friday!

Day 296

Thursday already! What a strange week this has been.

At least the abscess on the back of my head is slowly starting to go down a little. Maybe the hot compress helped some last night.

I can't believe that the first week of December is already almost gone. I have yet to get started Christmas shopping!

I'm thankful for Christmas....it'll make the time go by faster.

Have a Nice day everyone.

Day 295

With 40 days to go I'm restarting the Peg. on Friday as per Hershey.

While my Absolute Lymphocytes are below 500, my T Cells are holding their own just above 200...so onward we push.

I'm not looking forward to restarting the Peg but I will make it to the end of this thing.

It's funny because with so many people being pulled I was beginning to except that I may be pulled also. Somewhere in my brain I began feeling a little relieved that maybe it was all over....I was excepting that since I cleared the virus by week 2 of tx that maybe 40 weeks of tx was enough. I was talking myself into it.

The news yesterday became a double edged sword. On one side of it I'll be able to put the last 6 nails into my Dragons coffin.....on the other side of it I'll be back on the Peg.

This morning I've had enough time for it to sink in. My mind is turning back to getting into the battle. By the time I take the shot on Friday night I'll be ready for the fight.

40 days...6 injections of Peg, 23 more injections of Nuepogen and Procrit (plus whatever it takes after tx ends to return my Platelets and Nuetrophils back to normal levels) and 160 more Ribavirins to go....

I've come this far...I'll make it to the end.

"Hang in there T Cells, we're almost done."

Day 294

I spoke to my study nurse yesterday and she has my CD4 count back but hasn't spoken to my doctor yet. She has to get the orders from her before she can pass them on to me.

The good news is that she was able to tell me is that my CD4 cells have come back just barley over 200. They're still holding their own.

We're waiting to hear from the Doctor that I'll be restarting the Peg. probably on Friday.

In the mean time I have an appointment with my family physician this morning to look at the abscess on the back of my head. Damn thing.

I don't know if the abscesses will have a bearing on what my Doctor decides.....I guess I find out today.

Waking up this morning is a little ruff again. I can tell that I've restarted the Ribavirin. My energy level has fallen back down to a slower pace. It feels pretty much like yesterday morning...waking up was slow but after a while I started feeling better. I'm sure that today will be more of the same.

So thats it for now. That's all that I know.

I wonder what little dramas today will bring.........

7:15 am
lol, not 10 minutes after publishing this post I got a call from my family doctors office. He's off sick today and can't see patients! What Luck I have!
There is a Doctor that's covering him but I don't like her at all.....he said that I could go to the ER here to have it checked out, but I don't ever plan to step foot back in that place again.
I'll talk to Sandy today and see what she says.
It's never ending isn't it!

Day 293

I can definitely tell that I re-started the Ribavirin, my energy level went from very high to a bottomed out.

On Saturday I finished cleaning the art studio and by early evening the fatigue kicked backed in. Yesterday was spent on the couch and this morning isn't much better.

I also have to call the doctor this morning. Last week I had what I thought was just an ingrown hair or something that abscessed and then drained (gross I know...sorry). Now I have another one on the back of my head. It looks like a huge lump and it's painful as hell. This one doesn't seem to want to go away.

I know it's from my low blood counts.....I'm getting infections.

I should hear from Hershey today about my Lymphocytes. Because I'm having infections back to back now I'm thinking that they've gone too low and that they'll probably pull me off tx.

At this point, after 2 back to back ear infections and now 2 abscesses....maybe it is time to stop. My body is painfully beginning to beg for an end to it.

I guess I'll know later today.

Have a Nice Monday everyone!