Catching up

Here it is the end of September and I haven't posted since April.  I had a two month chemo break in order to take a trip to Thailand for six weeks in May/June.  It was a lot of fun and I relaxed a long time.  My hair did start to come back and before I started treatment again I had a little bit of brown hair showing on my head.  But back to Thailand...

I made a trip to Thailand leaving Missouri May 10.  I had problems from day one.  I found the weekend before I was to leave that my passport was missing so I made arrangements to delay my flight for a day so I could pick a new one up while I was in Seattle.  I wound up getting there after my scheduled appointment, but they told me I could get it the same day if I came in with a photo so I was able to get it.  Fortunately I had a scanned copy of my lost passport so I didn't have to pay a research fee, but the one I got was only valid for a year.  I got back to the airport later in the day and was able to get the replacement ticket for a flight the next day without charge because of a lot of work on the part of my brother and a sorry story that I gave the ticket agent when he told me the reduced price was $80 and I told him fine, but it would eat into the trip money so he didn't charge me.  I felt so lucky.  My flight from Seattle to Tokyo was uneventful, but it was nice that they took my by wheelchair through the security procedures because it was really hard for me to walk very far.  I was surprised that there was another wheelchair waiting for me in Tokyo and another when I arrived in Bangkok.  I took a taxi from the airport to the hotel my brother had booked for me and it was a pain getting to it because it was so far off the road.  The driver started to try to drive back to it then had to back up to where there was a security guard and I waited there until they had made contact.  I then was walked back to it with the guy pulling my suitcase and I was carrying my backpack purse and laptop.  I checked in and was taken to my room on the second floor.  It was pretty much the only time I was in air conditioned room.

I woke up the next morning and headed out asking how to get to the train station so I could buy a ticket on a sleeper train to get to Chiang Mai for the next part of my journey.  Unfortunately, my niece was on a visa run that day so I wasn't able to see her so I just hopped the first available minibus to Pai which was about four hours up a windy road in the hills.  It was not a fun trip, but I slept most of the time so it didn't matter. When I got there, I started walking down the street and checked into the first guest house I saw.  It was 250 baht a night (about 30 baht/$).  The next day I paid for another week which took me through the time until my brother and sister were to arrive.  I stayed there until after they were there then they found me a place where they were at and got me there.  It was a lot nicer place and the same price but it was a mile or so out of town and I wouldn't have been able to get there on my own.  I walked around town a lot and got massages and ate a lot of cheap and healthy food.  It was a nice break from chemo.

After we stayed there for a week, we proceeded to head south to an Island (can't remember the name right now) and spent a week there.  It was a lot more expensive since they had to ship all food in and the place he chose to stay was way far away from where the boat dropped us off.  It was nice to be right on the beach but everything else was a royal pain.  I was really happy to get back to the mainland.

We then went back to Bangkok because it was time for my brother and sister to leave.  My niece and I spent one night there and then headed to Kanchanaburi, made famous because of the movie "Bridge over the River Kwai".  In fact we walked down to the bridge one of the days she was there.  She had to fly back to Taiwan the same day I had to go for my visa run so we went back to Bangkok for that.  My visa run was somewhat uneventful but it took all day.  I went back to Kanchanaburi the next morning and checked into the same place I had stayed with my niece.  I bought a lot of fruit while I was there since it was so cheap (100 baht for 5 kilos) and it was fruit that I had read was good for fighting cancer.  There must have been some truth to it since when I got back to Missouri my CA-125 was actually lower than it was before I left.  That was a very relaxing two weeks for me, mostly sitting either in my room or on my porch studying about alternative therapies and trying to find a real way to heal myself.  I ate more healthy foods and tried to eat less meat and it did seem to help.

I had an uneventful trip back to the states and then found that I had no money available to move into a new apartment so I stayed in a motel for a week, then made a road trip to Colorado to see if I could find alternative treatments there.  My car gave me trouble there so I used the last of my funds to get it fixed and borrowed some money from my sister so I could get back to Missouri and then pay for another week at the motel.  I got back into treatment in early July and it was discovered that my CA-125 had gone up to higher than it had been before I left in May from just two weeks of eating Western foods again!  That was a wakeup call for me.  I need to get on a good cancer diet...and I am still trying to do that.  I was also panicking because I found that I was out of money totally.  My sister bought me a plane ticket for July 28 since I couldn't afford to live there any more with no kind of support and then my oncology social worker found a place that would pay for my room for the three weeks I would be there so that worked out for me.   My gyn/onc knew the gyn/onc in Anchorage so she had an appointment set up for me the week I got there so my treatment was only delayed a matter of days.

I moved to Anchorage and stayed with one sister for about a month and then I got into an apartment with my other sister August 23.  I am still in the process of settling in, but overall all is well.  I am in walking distance of the infusion center which is a good thing since we don't have a car most of the time and the bus doesn't go there without having to walk quite a way anyway so why bother.  I have lost my hair again (it had started growing back while I had my two month chemo break) and I only cover my head when I go outside because my head gets cold.  My treatments have gone pretty well, but I don't really know what the plan is since I don't see the medical oncologist except once a month or so and the gyn/onc even less often.  I also talked to a genetic counselor who suggested genetic testing to see if other family members were at risk and I hope to get that in the works soon.  I hope that turns up negative but information would be good one way or the other so that we can know if they are at risk in any way.

I am trying to become involved in activities here including the Red Cross disaster services again which I should be able to start doing next week and Let Every Woman Know-Alaska which is a group that tries to raise awareness of gynecologic cancers.  I don't know what will become of that, but I will see.  I am also looking into getting a service dog to help me with balance and other things as life becomes more difficult for me.  I will be training it myself so it should be easy once I choose the dog.  I hope that happens soon.  Have a great day!