ugh

The last three days have been bad. Losing my voice was just a precursor to the beginning of Mucusitis. Again, the chemo attacks mucousal membranes and my mouth is one of them. All that soft pink tissue that makes up the lining of your mouth ... it's under siege right now. It's certainly not as bad as it was in 2009, but the goal is to keep it from getting that bad. They had to admit me into the hospital then because I couldn't swallow. I was on an IV "liquid food" diet for two weeks. For now, I'm just on mush. Pastina, apple sauce, protein drinks and ice pops. The cold of the ice pop helps ease the sores on my tongue and the sides of my mouth. I can't even open my mouth wide enough to see in the back or to stick my tongue out all the way. So technically, I can't even see if there are sores, but let's be honest, I feel them. So I eat an ice pop, wear a warm beanie on my head and sit with the electric blanket to keep me from getting the chills.

Alright, enough complaining ... let's keep our eye on the prize: the numbers! My number on Wednesday continued in the right direction - dropping from 67 to 28! Boo yah! We ARE killing cancer! I was so pleased with that drop. It's the only thing that keeps me going. If that number goes UP for some reason, you can find me hanging from a tree outside. It's the only thing that keeps me focused on getting better and helps drown out the pain. So while the hCG # is nothing short of beautiful, three other numbers were nothing short of too low to be healthy. My white blood cell count, red blood cell count and my platelets (those damn platelets again!) are all too low to receive chemo. They wouldn't infuse me on Wednesday, just some booster shots and get back to bed. There's another thing (I use that word loosely because I really don't know what it is) some "thing" called Neutrophils and they are dangerously low too. That's actually a big problem. In addition to the blood levels being low, with almost no neutrophils I could pick up pneumonia if the dogs sneeze. It just makes me very vulnerable to germs and infection. Isn't cancer fun?!? Kill me now. I spend more than half the day in the bed - thinking about all the things I could get done. It's an inactive state of frustration that is driving me mad. But "the body needs to heal" and other such things my mom tells me to calm my fears and frustrations.

Speaking of my mom, she and Bruce came to visit for Easter. While I slept, they turned into little garden gnomes and planted nearly all of my pots, less for the two that Jeannette and Beth planted when I got home from the hospital. I called those girls my Garden Gremlins, but I feel Gnomes is nicer. It just doesn't have the actually alliteration sound, you know, because of that silent G and all.

Either way, here they are at work.

Doesn't my mom look bad ass throwing the mulch out of the back of the pick up truck! Hard core gardening at the Cooke House!

She and Bruce planted beautiful flowers around my rocks, give the place a little color. Marigolds in front and get this ... flowers called Cosmos in back! How appropriate!

All my pots are saying, "Spring is here. Meredith should be out to play soon!"