Still Holiday Shopping?

In case you are, I ask that you think about a couple of things.....

If you are buying at Amazon please consider going through the blog here to do your shopping at Amazon. I am an Amazon Associate and that means I receive a few pennies on each sale. Those small amounts don't affect your price or bill at all. They do add up for me and when I cash out I can buy the occasional book for me along with medical supplies for Sandi.

And, speaking of my better half, in addition to what she has available online at Tapir and Friends Animal Store Sandi still has her iOffer store should you be looking for a homemade teddy bear, walker caddy, chemo hat or something else with a personal touch. This is most likely the last holiday season her iOffer store will be available. As always, sales go to pay something towards her mounting cancer bills as there is much her insurance refuses to cover despite our appeals.

Thank you!

Holiday Shopping

If you are buying at Amazon please consider going through the blog here to do your shopping at Amazon. I am an Amazon Associate and that means I receive a few pennies on each sale. Those small amounts don't affect your price or bill at all. they do add up for me and when I cash out I can buy the occasional book for me along with medical supplies for Sandi.

And, speaking of my better half, in addition to what she has available online at Tapir and Friends Animal Store Sandi still has her iOffer store should you be looking for a homemade teddy bear, walker caddy, chemo hat or something else with a personal touch. This is most likely the last holiday season her store will be available. As always, sales go to pay for her her mounting cancer bills as there is much her insurance refuses to cover.

Thank you!

Via Lady Sandra: Men’s Whimsical Cancer Hats for Texas Oncology

Lady Sandra: Men’s Whimsical Cancer Hats for Texas Oncology: I have not made some men’s hats in a while; so, I took one of the patterns I used before. I was lucky to find the following sport fleece...

Via (My Wife) Lady Sandra: Donations to Texas Oncology

Lady Sandra: Donations to Texas Oncology: Well, I got total of 18 hats done for my Oncologist Office finished. One is what we call “Whimsical” hat which was made out of the small...

Via (My Wife) Lady Sandra: More Breast Cancer applique Chemo Hats!

Lady Sandra: More Breast Cancer applique Chemo Hats!: I finished ten more chemo hats with the “Pink Garden” fabric. I did two different appliques and two different styles. Pictures are be...

Via Tapir and Friends Animal Store--- Sandi's Chemo Hats and Walker Caddies

Sandi's Chemo Hats and Walker Caddies

Via Tapir and Friends Animal Store (Realistic Stuffed Animals and Plastic Animals): Very Special Teddy Bears

Tapir and Friends Animal Store (Realistic Stuffed Animals and Plastic Animals): Very Special Teddy Bears

Sandi Tonight

Nothing new to report as everything is pretty much the same with her. She does not see the doctors until Tuesday so she has signed up to go on the hospital shuttle to a local Target store tomorrow to get out a bit.

Her room is nice and all, but I think it is getting to her.

 

Despite the blood clot in her neck, they cleared her to go last Friday and she is looking forward to getting out somewhere normal for the first time in weeks. I think she wants to pick up a few things to make her stay a little bit easier as, for one thing,  she is out of yarn.



Sandi without yarn is not a pretty sight. I mean there is that whole green Hulk rage thing.......

Sandi is Fourteen Days In .....

Today marks fourteen days for Sandi since she was admitted and they did the Stem Cell Transplant. Overall, things have gone way better than anyone expected or thought possible considering how sick she was when she left here. Despite feeling pretty sick at times, she has made over 20 chemo hats.

The hats seem to be a major rage there because a number of doctors, including ones not treating her, as well as other staff members have made the pilgrimage to her room to see them. Some of the doctors have taken a few to their patients to help them which is really cool and the rest have gone to the donation box in the infusion room on another floor of the hospital.

During her stay, from time to time, she has done a little teaching showing others how to make them. Hopefully, some of those folks will keep doing them after she leaves as the hats very popular. Unfortunately, there is quite the demand for them. 

She also made a small lap quilt too with some of the yarn she had left.

I hesitated to say this as I didn’t want to jinx things, but since she went and announced it on Facebook yesterday I guess it is safe to blab here. Sandi was originally supposed to be in the hospital for three weeks and then go to the extended care facility for at least two weeks. The third week of the hospital stay has now been canceled because her blood work is trending up so rapidly and she seems to be doing so well. At this point they plan on moving her over to the extended care facility that is located on the hospital grounds sometime Tuesday afternoon.

She will still be rather restricted in the extended stay facility but will have a little more freedom outside of her room--with extensive precautions---than she currently does in the hospital. Just another step on the road to coming back home where she belongs.

Sandi's Latest Chemo Hats

While she was in Medical City Hospital Dallas last week, Sandi made 22  chemo hats. These are some of them......

.......as are these which are cashmere and natural yarns so they require hand washing.

This one......

 ....and this one seemed to be the favorites of the nurses.

They all will be donated tomorrow while we are there so they may bring a little comfort to her fellow cancer patients.

Sunday

While I spent most of this day writing letters to appeal denial letters from Sandi's insurance, sending more paperwork to the state for our food stamps and Medicaid, and writing cease and desist letters to various collection agencies, Sandi was able to sit up for awhile and crochet. When her vision was working, after she tagged the 22 chemo hats she made while in the hospital, she worked on making some more. She has been steadily working through the yarn bombs she received last year and there is not a lot left at this point.

Good therapy for her. The nurses loved them last week. It is something when you walk into your wife's hospital room and nurses from other floors are hanging out because they heard what your wife was making while in the hospital.

Sandi took pictures today of the finished ones so when she is up to it I am sure she will send some of them to me so I can post them here. No doubt she will also soon have them up on her blog at http://lady-sandra.blogspot.com/

In the meantime we should hear tomorrow what time we are supposed to be at the  doctor's office on Tuesday for her lab work and her shot to complete the first round of chemo. Nausea has been an issue today, but the meds are helping some with that.

One Shot Saturday

Sandi was back at the doctor's office at Medical City Dallas this morning as required for her shot. She had the one today and will have one more on Tuesday to finish this first round of chemo. On Tuesday they will also do lab work and check various things with her blood.

As expected the chemotherapy side effects have started. Once again she is having the shakes and chills and much of today her eye sight was too blurry to crochet. The nurses were amazed at how many chemo hats she made while in the hospital. Once she can see well enough, she will tag them with her labels, and then they will be donated to the infusion room at Medical City Dallas. I have a feeling they will be a big hit like they have been out here at her cancer doctor.

A Sandi Update

I worked retail for more than twenty years and then I subbed for several years before being hired on staff in the local public school system (which in many aspects was just like working retail) so I get that some people are strange.  But, there are limits and the last month has not only made me question a lot of things but to seriously consider walking away from trying to do anything anymore.  Some of that is my worsening health and the strain of things here, but a large part is external.

I have never once written somebody and told the blogger he or she should not write about this or that. It never once crossed my mind to do such a thing. Yet, a number of people in the last month have felt the compulsion to drop me a note privately via e-mail to lecture and castigate me about writing about my Dad and his death,  and, among other things, Sandi and her cancer fight as “folks don’t want to read that” or “shame on you for exploiting your wife to beg for money” and other comments like that. My hands down personal favorite,  “You killed your dad, you are killing your wife, are you going to kill your fu**ed  up retarded ugly sons next?” These are not random folks that just stumbled across my blog. These are actual living breathing people from the various writing/reading lists I am on who have one face in public there and a far different face in private to me.

Really makes me wonder.

On the flip side of things in the last week Sand got two large boxes of yarn from folks who want her to use the yarn to make her chemo hats for donations to her fellow cancer patients.  She was absolutely thrilled to get the boxes of yarn and will do exactly as asked. 

Also appreciated very much were the few donations made by folks this month to hold things together a little bit longer for us. We appreciate it very much. As we do the several folks who e-mailed us over the weekend to ask about her and remind us both that they are praying for us amidst their own very significant troubles. 

For those who have asked in private or just flat out wondered the above is why I have not written much about her the last couple of weeks.  This latest round of chemo has worked her over pretty good. She has had the flu like symptoms nearly the entire time with only brief respites of a day here and there since she had chemo back early in the month. Beyond that, she has been incredibly cold nearly every day. Even on the days when we were nearly 80 here and I could sit outside in the sun while wearing shorts, Sandi was out on the porch in long sleeved outfits with her hat on and several heavy blankets. Several days, Karl and I took turns running blankets through the dryer to warm them up before putting them on her because she was shaking she was so cold.

Whether or not she has been so cold is a sign she is too anemic and will have to have a major blood transfusion tomorrow we don’t know. Round Five of chemo is scheduled tomorrow and Wednesday but I expect she will have to have a blood transfusion and the chemo will be pushed back a week to ten days.  Hopefully not. Hopefully the fact that everything was worse this time around is nothing more than what one expects as the rounds of chemo take a toll on her.

We will find out tomorrow morning…..

Kevin

Sandi's Thyroid---The Update Finally!

Very late yesterday afternoon we finally got the call we had been worrying about since we first learned the PET Scan had showed a new problem now with Sandi’s thyroid. Her cancer doctor wanted her to have a thyroid ultrasound to check some things and that was done a week ago yesterday.  Then the waiting for the results began.

Finally, late yesterday afternoon a nurse from the cancer doc just called and they think the thyroid is NOT a new problem. They could see it on the ultrasound much better than they could in the past because apparently some of the cancer that was around it is no longer there. Not only does this confirm that the chemo is making a little progress against both of the Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphomas that were everywhere in her body, the test seems to confirm that nothing has changed with her thyroid. Thankfully this latest scare is nothing more than the same issue she has lived with for more than a decade now.

To make absolutely sure nothing new has started they will do some sort of thyroid panel during her blood work prior to the planned next round of chemo later this month. Assuming that shows what they expect, nothing more will be done about this thyroid issue until she has finished chemo and stabilized a bit so she can do follow-up work with an endocrinologist. It is the best possible news we could have gotten on it and hopefully this won’t change later with new information.

That is yet another thing that makes this process so hard. Information gets updated and changes and just when you think everything is going one way, something happens and all that is out the window as things head in another way.

In the meantime, Sandi continues to make crochet “chemo hats” which are a huge hit at the treatment center. 

 

Despite having huge issues with her vision---another side effect of chemo apparently---she is able to keep making the hats in various colors and styles as she does a lot of the work these days more by feel than by vision. Depending on size (she is making adult and children hats) she can get 3 to 4 hats out of each skein on yarn. Folks love them! 

 

So, as long as she can, Sandi plans to keep making and donating the hats to her fellow patients. In the meantime, she has marked down things again at http://www.ioffer.com/users/sanditipple  to get some money so please stop by and take a look.

Kevin