We finally got a taste of the dark side of chemotherapy.
Jinni had her third and final (for this round) infusion of Epirubicin last Thursday and it's effects were felt. No nausea to speak of, but it certainly brought her down a notch or two over the New Year's weekend. She was very tired and lethargic.
Now Jinni is a world class napper, and her abilities to zone out when she needs to have always amazed me... but this was different. Her body said, "whoa... I need to stop.", and so she did.
She made a valiant effort to go with us to the New Year's party, but bugged out around 10:30. I stayed with it because the kids were anticipating an illegal blast or two with host-provided fireworks - the likes of which they have been lighting and throwing since they were young enough to flick a Bic. So to keep some normalcy, Jinni and I had a premature New Year's kiss and off she went to 'watch the ball fall' from the comfort of her bed. But not before she noted this was the first turn of the calendar we would not be experiencing together since our college courtship way over 20 years ago.
Saturday she spent watching football and watching friends and kids come and go from the comfort of her new neighborhood-all-pitched-in leather recliner and tried to eat some of the great food that neighbors and blogger friends signed up to provide via Rachael Rocamora - our scheduler extroidinaire.
Copious amounts of pasta, meatloaf... (excellent meatloaf BTW David... especially the next day's sandwiches), and babyback ribs have been showing up like clockwork here at the Hoggard abode. One word will tell you how good it all was... gone. Little of the victals went into Jinni's mouth, however. Her appetite was non-existent. Try as she did, she just couldn't eat much, which added to her feeling of weakness.
Yesterday Jinni was bouncing back and felt like a little meet and greet which was not hard to accomplish. Roch and his S.O. Kathy are looking at some 'hood houses and stopped by for a neighborhood tour and adult beverage. TK and Robert helped take the tree down and chipped away at the kitchen mess, and the kids were everywhere - mine and others - sometimes piled in Jinni's lap in the recliner - sometimes playing 'horse' on our basketball goal that graces the sidewalk leading to our house utilizing an old copy machine as a counter-weight (you'd have to see it to understand). By evening, Jinni was feeling like her old self again. (Her while cell count rebounded, BTW, as of her blood test on Thursday.)
All-in-all her lethargy gave us all a reason to chill out this past weekend. The only thing I accomplished was ridding my driveway of 'I'll-put-it-where-it-belongs-later' clutter. With the managerie of crap that had accumulated on our porch and elsewhere, the casual drive-by observer would have thought we were Kentuckians or something. Although no appliances were visible, we did have a super-market basket on the property - which my Jackson found elsewhere and pushed one of his friends home in over the weekend. It's all piled in the back of my trusty '71 Ford F-150, which stll graces the driveway in anticipation of a Jed Clampitt looking trip to the White Street Landfill two miles east of here.
This morning, she's back to being Jinni sans the hair, but sportin' some of the coolest caps and hats that ever crowned anyone's head.
Next up, in just under two weeks, Taxol. Be kind, Taxol.
9:58:52 AM 
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