Two week recap...

It's been a little while since Chandy has posted. I thought I'd take care of it so she can rest.

She's actually been doing surprisingly well since her first chemo. She did have some stomach issues. It bothered her some but she seems to be reacting well to the anti-nausea medication.

She has never been one to sit idly in the house and vegetate. She's got to be up and going. Part of the problem is that she felt relatively well and wanted to be out doing her mother, primary president and wife stuff. Well, she got a pretty nasty head cold and cough because the chemo beat up her immune system.

After an early morning call to Dr. Nibley we found out that she can take any tylenol over the counter product for the cold symptoms. They also had her begin to take her antibiotic that they gave her just for these purposes. That helped her a lot and she's feeling much better.

She is a trooper and is really amazing. I have people tell me constantly how well she looks and how she always seems to be happy. I certainly agree. You probably wouldn't be surprised to find out that that is exactly how she is at home. She rarely puts up a front and isn't just "acting brave"!

I'm so glad that she was feeling well enough to experience the Super Bowl Extravaganza at the Horman estate. You may recall that there are two areas where I wholeheartedly indoctrinate my family...Church and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I've been a huge steeler fan as long as I can remember. A number of years ago my son Dustin wanted me to buy him a New England Patriots jersey! The horror! I told him that there was only one kind of NFL apparel that I would allow in the house and it was black and gold. I realized it was time for drastic action. I ordered the 3 DVD Pittsburgh Steeler History Set. It was required viewing daily for a week. It did the trick and now our entire family bleeds black and gold.

Cookies from the Jensen's in our ward. They brought us dinner Saturday night and this was dessert!

Chandy and I went to Super Bowl XL 3 years ago and got to see the steelers hand it to the Seahawks in person...what a blast! It's a good thing they won because I spent $2,300 for each ticket. I figured the boys should pay for their own college anyways.

You can imagine our delight on Sunday when the steelers took the game in hand with a touchdown drive in the final two minutes. The world is as it should be.

We had so much fun at Chandy's parents for the game. We had a lot of friends over and her entire family and it was great to hear it from the Cardinal fans (they were the vogue team) the entire second half. I don't mind saying that I was sweating it in the 4th quarter. Thankfully, Big Ben took care of business. Chandy's parents really know how to throw a party. It's always great to forget about Chandy's situation for awhile.

Our friends, Rob and Jen Lund and Amy and Guy Hardcastle. They came over for the superbowl party!

This past Tuesday, Chandy went back to IMC for her NADIR appointment. In between each chemotherapy treatment she goes in and they take a blood sample to see how well her white blood cell count, among other things, is bouncing back. Her blood looked fantastic, as well as could be expected. All the important long words which describe different aspects of her blood which I have no understanding of were back in their "normal" ranges. That's great! Her white blood cell count did drop in half but was still in the normal range. Her iron is the only thing that is a little low, but nothing to be concerned about. Her "NEU" which I guess fights infection has rebounded well because of her antibiotics.

The other night it was our 5 year old son Matt's turn to say our family prayer. He's just getting to the point where he feels comfortable trying to say the entire thing on his own. In his prayer he said, "please bless my mom that she will be able to fight "the cancer", and please bless my dad that he will be able to take care of my mom while she fights "the cancer", and please bless my mom's doctors that they will be able to take away "the cancer" with the chemo. A smart and perceptive kid.

By the way, Matt lost his first tooth on Monday night. He was leaning on the new coffee table that I got for Chandy and lost his balance and smacked his chin on the top of it. His fairly loose tooth was now very loose and he let me give it a yank.

The past couple of days have been tough for Chandy. Her hair is starting to go. A few days ago we found the first strands and it is progressing pretty rapidly. She was particularly mortified today when Dustin found a hair on his Popsicle.

Even as prepared as she seems to have been, this is going to be difficult for her. She has enjoyed being able to look and feel normal (as much as possible) to this point during her treatment. Once her hair is gone it's going to be pretty obvious to everyone what her situation is. There have been a chorus of voices telling her that she's pretty enough that she'll pull it off without much trouble. As you may have read, she has a couple wigs and every imaginable color/print combination of every scarf/hat/cover that has ever been published in any magazine.

We're expecting that tomorrow may be the day for the head shaving party where she, along with the rest of the family, will rid ourselves of the need for shampoo. It ought to be fun and sad. Chandy is glad that we didn't need to do it today because she is going to read books to Dustin's first grade class tomorrow.

We had to take pictures today...her last full day with a full head of hair for awhile. Damn she's cute.

The above picture is the view I had of her almost 17 years ago when I realized I wanted to get to know her better.

She can still be silly when she's faced with difficult situations

We'll post again over the next couple of days. Thanks again for everything.

G