Hello blogosphere! You’ll be happy to know that I am back amongst the living and feeling great! I’ve been home from the hospital for 11 days and each day I get stronger and feel healthier. Yay!

Thank you to all my visitors at CPMC (Bobby, Ami, Emily, Kellen, Shannon, Esther, Nina, Josh, Dr. Smith, Lisa, Valerie and Jordan) your company cheered me up SO much. And a huge thank you to everybody for all the virtual love from near and far. Your notes kept us going through that crazy week. I have my follow-up appointment with the infectious disease doctor later this week. Hopefully, she’ll be able to finally tell me the source of my infection — though we are all nearly positive it was my port. I got better almost immediately after that thing was taken out. In any event, I’ll let you know what I learn at my follow-up appointment.

Last week marked my official return to life. I had chemo on Wednesday and everything went well. No drama to report. On Thursday, my cousin Ruchi flew into town for the day. We hung out at the house for a bit…

Then we went and got mani/pedis and had lunch at Tacolicious. The mani/pedi is HUGE news people. I hadn’t had my nails done since OCTOBER. I figured mani/pedis were off limits during chemo. I thought that I had to keep my nails pristine in order to monitor how weird and black they were turning. As it turns out, I was wrong. This is actually sort of a funny story….

When I was laid up in the hospital, Dr. Smith came to visit me. I was probably 4 days into my stay when he came by — so I was lookin’ pretty broke down by that point! While he was there, a nurse came in to check my vitals. I have to have the blood pressure cuff put on my leg because my arms are now off limits (my left arm is my surgical arm and my right arm is still healing from the Adria leak). So, I whipped my legs out from under the covers so that the nurse could put the cuff on — and I wasn’t wearing any socks. My nasty-ass non-pedicured toes were revealed in all of their grossness! But, as I said, I was 4 days into my stay at this point, so my “give-a-shit” was WAY gone. A few minutes later, after all the other doctors and nurses had cleared the room, Dr. Smith went to town! He was joking around with me and said something to the effect of “between your crazy, mis-matched outfit (I had on dark multi-colored striped fleece PJ bottoms, a hospital gown, a grey robe, my purple neckwarmer/hat and not a lick of make-up) and your disgusting toes, I have expect to see you pushing a shopping cart around out there on Fillmore.” LOL. OMG. Did my oncologist just tell me a look like a bag lady? Yes, yes he did!

It was the perfect bit of levity and came at a much needed time. All of us in the room, had a really good laugh. Then, Dr. Smith went on to tell me that I can indeed take care of my nail “situation” so long as I don’t let them cut my cuticles — everything else was just fine!

So embarrassing! I’m happy to report that I’m sporting my signature Essie Wicked once again. Phew!

Since Ruchi was here for literally one day, we had to pack a lot in! So, I took a quick cat nap after lunch and then we went down to Burlingame to have dinner with Bob, Sarah and Grace. Paul was able to join us too! Here are a few more pics from that day:

You know I’m feeling like my old self again when I want to head out of the house (as opposed to Paul dragging me out!). This past weekend, I suggested that we head over to the farmer’s market at the Ferry Building. We had a great lunch…

And walked around all the stalls — where picked up some lavender

and six bunches of delicious smelling freesia (my new favorite)!

With all of our treasures safely tucked away — we went home and I nested for the rest of the day! Once Paul tucked me in at home, he headed down to Half Moon Bay to squeeze in a round of golf. I am proud to say that he shot a 78. He birdied 18 and all the people sitting in the adirondack chairs at the Ritz Carlton fire pit clapped for him. So proud of my bubba!

This week is going to be equally as fun. I have a ton of lunches and dinners planned. I’m not letting chemo stand in my way anymore!

O.M.G. I forgot to report the best part of my visit with Dr. Smith in the hospital. This is such a great way to end this post! You all are going to LOVE this!

I asked him what happens once I’m done with all my chemo. Do I have some final test that confirms whether or not I’m cancer free? — or as they say in the medical world “NED” which stands for “No Evidence of Disease”. He responded that there will not be a magic test at the end of all of this and that’s because I am already NED! Wha? Yup. You read that correctly, I’ve been dancing with NED ever since they cut the tumor out during my bi-lateral back in November (where we got clean margins and no lymph node involvement). Holy shitballs. AMAZE.

See, I told you it was a good way to end this entry! Yay! Have a great week all!

xoxo