I finally hit bottom, physically and emotionally. While at the doctors' office on Thursday getting a booster shot there was some minor confusion over my chart (again) and I had a nuclear meltdown and had to flee the office in tears. I didn't tell anyone I was leaving, I just picked up my keys to go. Where did I go? The office. Not home where I could boohoo in private, but to the office because that's where safety is for me. So, I thought I had myself all calmed down, and I called the nurse to explain where I disappeared to, and I broke down in tears on the phone. She really did have a set of antibiotics to give me. My white blood count was down to 1.65 on Wednesday and they wanted to have a run with the Levaquon this week as well to stave off possible infections. She also told me that this wasn't me, this wasn't the person that walked in the office last March, this wasn't normal. I had to agree with that, and further humiliated myself by explaining that I get paralyzed over things I need to do, rather than attacking them piece by piece, which isn't normal either.

So, I take Ativan now. Small doses for panic and anxiety. It's not for depression, but I think it's going to help. I have slept much better the last 3 nights. I went to bed at 930 pm last night, and woke up at 730am, turned over and went back to sleep until 11am. Which is absolutely amazing. I can't remember the last time I didn't wake up every 90 minutes, or at least once at 200am to watch TV. I had no night sweats ether—I discovered they start when I wake up, not that they wake me up. So the trick is to keep breathing. And sleeping.

Events are rapidly approaching. Hopefully the short acting Neupogen will have done its job and I can have Chemo on Tuesday. Wednesday I have a follow up with Dr. Bard, then Friday I have to get lab work done before I drive to Houston to start that mess.

Chris' transmission is bad, and I can't use his truck to haul things up here like I planned. I am going to have to revert to plan A, and rent a truck, might as well get ALL of it done up here rather than rent a storage place down there. I have things to do to sell the house, like find someone who wants to buy that dump, and me not take a bath on it.

D sent me a present, an optical USB scroll mouse that is pretty cool. I had to go buy a PCI card with 2 more USB slots on it, as I had the two in the mother board filled up with scanner and printer. The trick is to install it then switch it over to the USB. It's pretty sensitive, and I think it has a grudge against my black mouse back. Mouse blinks and flashed at me reassuringly too.

S sent me a present—A couple of books on Photoshop, Java and HTML and some copies of the entire Ton Lehrer's song collection. I'm going to be busy for WEEKS!

I also took on being part-time helper for an online archive. Basically remind them what they did wrong on the original upload and delete the bad and let them upload the new. I've been in charge for 3 days already and no problems. Whew.

You know, money helps. A lot. The cancer insurance policy has certainly had a nice dent in the budget, and its going to allow me to get this move taken care off. I may go and ask the property manager of there is a larger house available in the same area, though I would hate to move without buying. The other reason for possibly moving is that there was a major drug bust last week in the blue house 2 doors down and across from the ever-delicious neighbor. A. freeked out about it, but my reasoning is that the cops are all over the place, cleaning things up, it should be fine. Though the problem is that in the 80's Little Rock has a very bad gang/crime problem, and all those convicted are nearing the ends of their terms. Out on the street being possible recidivists. Not guaranteed recidivists, just possible.

Work was hell yesterday, and I need to go c in and clean up the debris. Lightning struck a substation a block away, The UPS FAILED again and then the power went out completely and the Generator didn’t kick on. I had to find the keys to the control panel, mark down the failure code, and then fire it up. I musta jumped about 16 feet—it was LOUD and coughed up HUGE black clouds of smoke. This is a BIG generator, its about 10 feet tall, 20 feet long and 8 feet wide. It has something in the nature of 4,000 gallons of diesel, and is supposed to keep the building running for hours.

Friday night something like that happened, too. The databases got screwed, and they spent about 36 hours this weekend rebuilding programs and restoring data to them. I had a bunch of hardware failures to deal with, and trying to get the 2nd floor cold room restored back to normal. It was a long long day. It's going to be a Jesus-Come- To-Meeting time with the UPS folks; I'm at my wits end over this. Fortunately the UPS to the DATA General machine held firm, the money stuff is good. I came home with Chinese food, at and went to bed and slept like the dead for 14 hours.

I keep hearing hopeful reports that my drug addled stupidity and fractured memory (both short and long) is really temporary, and it will bounce back after chemo.

Oh yeah. Chemo. I have 3 total more to go. I misunderstood the orders, which was 2 pre-op and 6-post op. At the time they presented it to me I took it to mean 6 total chemo. *sigh* so, two more. I am going to call the insurance company on Monday, and see if I can't get a guarantee that the Neulasta will be paid for, and that the can give this to me again—then I can get back on the 21 day schedule, and GET THIS OVER WITH.

Aha, chemo therapy. Who would have thought that someone could be happy to have 900mg of toxic chemicals dumped into them? Heh. All things considered I feel good, despite 3 hours sleep.

The steroids kicked in about 200AM, or the Benedryl wore off, I and have spent two hours of the early morning downloading songs, finding lyrics, burning CD's. I got my Smallville DVD today—I had to order it from Canada, as it's not released in the USA because of syndication rights. But, it's fabulous. It's absolutely gorgeous.

I also got the DVD of "To Kill A Mockingbird". This is one of the hallmarks of my youth. I vividly remember watching this in the den at J's house when we were teenagers, and I was fascinated, enthralled. It was a singular Saturday afternoon out of nearly 25 years. This adaptation stands on its own and does a great job of evoking the emotions and visuals of Harper Lee's novel. Even after some 30 odd years. I've my eye on Dr. Zhivago next. S's copy of "Lord to the Rings" should arrive any day now.

I didn't do chemo on Thursday, as my WBC was even lower than it was on Monday prior. They scared me on Friday morning—I got a call from the lab at 800am and they asked me to come back in and give them some more blood, as the sample they had drawn on Thursday AM had hemolyzed and the red cells wouldn't precipitate out. I'm still trying to figure out what that really means.

J and I talked at lunch on Friday and she hooked me up with the name of something that will support the immune system (the lymph and white blood cells) MGN3 that is made out of rice bran and Japanese mushrooms (Shitake among them). The studies seem well done, and it has been used to treat cancer in Japan, too. I'm willing to give anything a whirl at this point.

I need to stop living in my head. It's getting to be a boring place.

I had an interesting encounter with a guy on Thursday. I went to mail a box, and the clerk asked me very nicely if I was a survivor. I told him not yet, as I had two chemos left to go. He allowed as how attitude was more than half the battle, and that he wished me luck and hoped to see me at the run for the cure in September. It's not like I try to hide it very much, as I have no eyebrows and no eyelashes to speak of left. I'm almost getting used to the shaved scalp, too. I don't scare myself in the mirror in the mornings anymore.

That end of life crisis is getting worse. The more I read the worse it gets, and I can't decide if this is good, or bad. I've made it my lifes' goal to not live in fear, but I may have met my match. You know they don't actually cure ovarian cancer—they treat it as a chronic disease. The question is not what can I use to treat this with, but what can I treat it with that isn't going to prevent me from being able to treat the reoccurrence of the disease. They only measure success in the amount of time before the reoccurrence. Everything they use to treat the disease into the first remission has to be reconsidered when the next set of tumors comes up because of their toxicity. The cells that survive the most toxic chemicals platinum (carboplatin) and Taxol are resistant to those drugs for about a year, year and half. The good news is the longer in between relapses the better they can treat the disease.

So. The 64$ question is, can I overcome the fear of living with this so that what I have left isn't completely overshadowed? Is that even possible? Am I left with being virtually ruled by the fact that every opportunity passed on is probably passed on permanently? I don’t like the sound of that very much.

An idea has been percolating in my head, and I'm trying to decide if this is something that I can pull off or not. After I read Lance Armstrong's book I thought that Central Arkansas would be a great place for a bike race. Lots of things for the tourists, interesting terrain for the cyclists, and I see a lot of cyclists around, though mainly casual amateurs. At any rate, I'll probably go volunteer for the foot race in September, depending on when it is. So much is up in the air I feel paralyzed whenever I try to accomplish anything. It's all decided for me by circumstances outside my control.