So Far, So Good

I don't want to jinx it though.

I went to dinner last night with my Mom, Sean, my Aunt, my cousin and two friends to celebrate my Dad's birthday. We went to Harpos. It was an excellent meal, despite my not feeling too great. I had the onion soup, salmon fillet and cherry cheesecake.

The side effects of this treatment are starting to kick in. I woke at 2 hour intervals all night last night. My face and neck are quite red. My mouth is tingling, though I'm being very religious about brushing and rinsing with the prescription strength mouthwash after every meal. My mouth feels much like how it feels after you've burned your mouth on coffee of hot soup. If I can keep the mouth sores away I'll be a happy camper.

My legs and back are aching too. I've got my percocets but I'm rationing, my oncologist thinks Tylenol 3's should do the trick...I don't know though. I took one before dinner last night and it didn't do squat. The problem is the percs make me loopy. Can't win for trying.

But again, so far, the side effects of this are a hell of a lot better than the side effects of the red devil so I'll take it.  I'm just a little edgy.

In my effort to purge my house of all that is clutter we had to address the issue of Mary's stuffed animals. Mary had upwards of 100 stuffed animals that she was having a hard time parting with. I didn't want to insist she just dump them off at Value Village and we could have freecycled them but I wanted to find a way of making it more meaningful for her. So I came up with a plan.

We made up bags of 10 stuffies (Webkinz and Build A Bears) and posted them for sale online. We offered each bag for $5 each. Mary will then take the money she gets for those stuffies to buy toys for the local toy drive. I posted the ad yesterday morning and she's already sold all of her bags (plus a few people donated without actually buying and stuffies) and she's raised $55!! So next week when I'm feeling better I'll take her out to buy a load of toys to drop off at the fire hall. I'm so proud of her (and she is so proud of herself too!) 

And though she's got the reward of knowing she's done something remarkable,  paid it forward and done some good in the world, she's still young and I don't want her to go unrewarded, she did, after all, purge over 70 much loved stuffed  animals. So I matched each sale and she now has $50 of her own to spend in anyway she wants. (after her birthday and Christmas of course!)

My post is a little jumpy today, my apologies. I'm fogged by chemo and percocets but I'm here, I'm doing pretty good so far and hoping it doesn't get much worse.

Happy Saturday everyone.