Last week I had to the opportunity to visit with some close family friends…so close that we refer to each other as cousins. When I arrived at my cousin Krista’s condo for a visit with her sister-in-law and nieces, I was completely surprised to discover that the two girls had been busy making artwork for me to take home. You see, I have only met the two little girls once before, about a year ago, as the girls were born overseas and still live way across the Pacific, currently in Hong Kong. I was delighted to find out that they would be visiting Auntie Krista for a month this summer, and that I would be able to visit with them again!

Coincidentally, the night before my visit, Gord and I watched The Bucket List, and Morgan Freeman’s character had his grandson’s artwork on the wall of his hospital room. It made me think about the fact that I will be having surgery after chemo. Which made me think that it would be nice to have something to put on the wall of my own hospital room. Little did I know that Kate (10) and Sonya (8) were already way ahead of me!

I was also the recipient of two pieces of personalized jewelry – a necklace and a bracelet with my name in beads! They will be perfect in the hospital too, so the staff will always know my name…much nicer than a hospital wristband!

The long weekend was pretty low-key for me – spent some time with Gord and some friends for a nice evening at Amsterdam Brewery, followed by a trip to Bang Bang Ice Cream…yum yum! Of course there were some fun selfie shots…

And then I kicked off the week with a work night out at Real Sports Bar followed by watching the Jays beat the Yankees on Tuesday night…

But even better than the baseball game, was my consultation on Tuesday with my Oncologist. When asked how my second round went, I was able to say that the only side effects I experienced was more hair loss and a lot more fatigue. It turns out that because I wasn’t nauseous or vomiting means that my body is both tolerating the chemo, as well as responding well to the anti-nauseant pills. And in even better news…from the physical measurement of the tumour in my breast, the Oncologist believes it is now only 1 centimeter in diameter. This is awesome, as on June 1st the diameter of the breast tumour was over an inch. I appear to be responding really well to the chemo as far as the cancer is concerned!

Armed with this good news, I headed in to my third chemo treatment yesterday. I was really hoping that things would go a bit more smoothly than last time!… and everything went really well. That said, I was greeted by the assigned chemo nurse with “I remember you… you were Code Medical last time you were here!” It seems she was the supervising nurse when I had my last treatment, and was one of the first responders… I have apparently developed a “reputation”!

All joking aside, everything went great yesterday, as well as today with my Neulasta injection (the immune booster that I receive after every chemo treatment). Now I’m just waiting around for side effects to happen. At least I know that I have company while I wait…cause at the same time, you are all waiting for me to write my next post!