Cancer Update: Improving

I had scans this week, after 2 months (3 rounds) of chemo. The doc reports that the smallest liver spots are gone, and the rest are shrinking. It's a bit early to tell any difference in the bones. But it's working! So I'll continue chemo for another 2-3 months and then check again. My chemo is an oral pill called Xeloda. A "round" of chemo means I take the pills daily for 2 weeks, then get a week off to recover. Ideally, my body will respond beautifully to this chemo and completely eliminate all cancer in my body.

Possible challenges to that plan:

• the cancer stops responding to the chemo
• the side-effects of the chemo become to much and I have to stop. 

The main side-effects are:

• hand-foot syndrome: my palms and bottoms of my feet get really red and tender. It feels like a sunburn or numerous blisters on the inside of my skin. During the 2nd week of chemo it gets hard to walk or do things with my hands like opening bottles or chopping food or washing dishes. And it gets hard to sleep because of skin irritation. But it resets during my chemo off-week.
  Positive-side of this: my loving husband does all the dishes and my amazing sister does all the cooking and I've taken up swimming as exercise much to the delight of my children who sometimes accompany me.
• upset stomach: it reminds me of pregnancy where nothing looks good to eat, but if I don't eat regularly I get miserably nauseous.
  Positive-side of this: The "bad news" of cancer in the liver caused me to open my diet up a little bit to include some new foods, like granola cereal, turkey sandwiches, and a monthly treat (pizza!, ice cream!), which have given the last few months some rediscovered fun food wise.

So far so good. And my back pain has been steadily improving too, which has been wonderful!! I'm still working hard on the mind game of cancer. Hoo-ee, that's a doosey. Hopefully I'll get around to posting about that sometime.

If you want to throw some positive vibes in my direction, pray for the chemo to keep working and for me to manage the physical and mental stress of cancer and chemo. I was recently blessed by my stake (and especially my wonderful ward) including me in a stake-wide fast. Whatever other blessings come from that, at the very least, I received a big "hug" from Heavenly Father telling me that I am remembered and loved!!