One Month Post Final Chemo (PFC)

It’s nice to know that friends near and far are thinking about me.  Over the past few weeks I’ve gotten quite a few texts, emails, and facebook messages checking in on me.  I sit here each Saturday wanting to post something, but not knowing what to say.  Either I’m too exhausted to think straight or I just can’t come up with words.

It’s been a month.  Hard to believe.  What have I been up to in the past month?

First, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work.  I am teaching 4 different courses this year and one of them is totally new to me and not even in my area of expertise so to say.  I was offered the chance to teach Introduction to Marketing to keep me at a 1.0 FTE.  I took it to keep my salary the same.  I’ve done marketing.  The only challenge was that I never used the vocabulary associated with marketing.  So far it is going well.  The students are fantastic.  It is making me be a more prepared teacher.  

I also took on the challenge of starting a floral shop at school.  This was totally self directed.  I wanted to make the floral design class more fun and give it a real-world experience opportunity.  If you walked in to my 3rd period class on any given day your brain might leak out of your ear.  My assistant and I feel like that every day.  After the 2nd or 3rd week of our “experiment” we looked at each other and said, “what the hell was that?”  Whatever it was, it was working.  The students work in groups on a 3 week rotation schedule.  One week they do floral shop duties, the next it flower identification and the next is design techniques.  Then they rotate.  We teach the same thing for 3 weeks then switch to a new topic/set of flowers.  You could walk into my classroom and see students cutting floral foam in one area, students on the floor making posters in another and students drawing flowers in a notebook in another.  It’s crazy.

Finally, my advanced horticulture class has been insanely busy.  I have 12 amazing students and they work their butts off.  We’ve been cleaning the horticulture center, making more plants and doing business planning.  The class is more organized than it has been.  I ocassionally look at our greenhouses and the list of plants and seeds that are coming and think, “hmm, we may not have enough space.”  However, my students are up to the challenge of marketing the heck out of our plant sales.  We are going to make this year’s sales the biggest and best Interlake has ever seen.

That’s work.  How’s the health?

I weathered my first illness like a champ.  All three of us got the back to school cold and I think I won the got better fastest award.  

I’m steadily working on increasing my stamina.  My goal is to walk up to the main building of our school at least once a day.  My classroom is a bit of a hike (up a hill) from the main office.  This week I’ve made two trips on two separate days.  That’s progress.

I have a bit of cording going on in my left arm.  There are days when I can’t straighten out the arm at all.  I see the physical therapist on Tuesday.  The appointment is for lymphadema measurements, but I am going to talk to her about the cording too.

I haven’t started radiation yet, but had the simulation appointment on the 29th.  The update from the radiation techs is they have a treatment plan ready and it is going to physics for approval.  Once that is done they’ll have me back in for a verification appointment then radiation will officially start.  I’m scheduled to have 28 treatments over the course of 5 1/2 weeks.  I’ll go over to SCCA Monday through Friday for daily treatments.

Now the question you really want to know… How’s my hair?

I know it’s been on your mind.  Be honest.  You wake up every day and ask yourself, “I wonder how long Elle’s hair is today.”  Well let me share.