Round 2 of Maintenance Chemo

Mark is on his second round of 5 days on chemo three weeks off (technically 23 days, since there's an extra weekend in there, but that's so annoying to say and it takes to long for my brain to figure out how long 23 days is, so I say 3 weeks).

The first round left Mark rather sick and nauseous most of the time.  I would love to say that it wore off after he stopped taking chemo, but he still wasn't eating (remnants from the thrush that turned into a gag reflex once the thrush was gone), and I'm pretty sure he got either dehydrated sick or one of those nasty empty stomach sick feelings, and was nauseous from that.  After all of that drama it was well over a month of Mark not really eating (a glass of milk or a yogurt here and there, a smoothie a few times a week, probably averaging about 500 calories a day) before he was finally convinced that it was worth trying to get past the gag reflex and try to start eating again so the rest of us didn't have to worry about him.  He was awesome and worked at overcoming his lack of desire to eat for my sake! :)

His stomach shrunk quite a bit in that month of not really eating.  He can now eat solid food most of the time, but he eats less than a normal grown male would before getting full.  An ear of corn and half a small red potato will fill him up.  And he seems to only really need to do about that much once or twice a day to be satisfied.

Round 2 of chemo started this week.  He took his first pills on Monday night, was sick all day on Tuesday, did really well on Wednesday and is somewhere in between so far today (Thursday).  He gets to take his last pills for this round tomorrow night.  Hopefully he'll start feeling better next week.

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Random other news:

Mark came in the bedroom a week or so ago.  I have not been feeling or sleeping well with the pregnancy (surprise!) and Mark has been getting up with the kids to get them out the door so I can rest in bed a bit longer.  So, Mark came in and informed me that he's worried that Annie (our 2 year old) is going to develop a drug habit.  

Now, I was a little tired and mostly out of it, so I was not sure I heard him right...  'A what?!'  

'A drug habit.' 

'What gives you that idea?'

'Well, I asked her what she wanted for breakfast and she asked for a bowl of opium squares.'

Apparently she had originally asked for Lucky Charms, but she just eats the marshmallows and wastes the rest, so Mark wouldn't let her have that.  He offered her some Oatmeal Squares and she gladly accepted by asking, in her cute mispronouncing way, for 'Opium Squares'.

[Mark was teasing, btw - just in case some of you out there thought the brain surgery had actually messed him up that bad.  Well, to be fair, it did at first, but he's much better now]

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Shelly and Jason started school.  They were both super excited.  I'm mostly excited to have Jason's teacher stop calling me with problems he's having (I appreciate the phone calls, I'm just excited for him to settle down and stop having so many problems).  Shelly is settling right in and doing well.  Jason is also getting into the routine of daily homework at home and even seems to like doing most of it.  He just seems to have a problem or two at school that needs to be worked out.

Emily is a cutie of a 4 year old.  She's my girly girl, and I have no idea what to do with a girly girl.  She loves doing her own hair (put a headband in it - often missing about 1/3 of what's supposed to go back, or having a chunk sticking straight out the front) and we often find her with random bows and flowers sticking out of her hair at wild and crazy angles.  She's not exactly good at doing her hair, but she loves to try.

Emily has also taken to bossing Annie around, now that Emily is the oldest one at home most of the day.  It's often funny to watch, but I'm trying to correct the behavior - not the best trend to get into.  I'm just too tired most of the time to be able to much about it.  Hopefully in another month or so life will settle down a bit and I can find all (or even any) of the energy I seem to be lacking at the moment.

Annie is a chatter box and is in the super cute early 2 year old phase.  She has some super strong opinions she is determined to stick to (at least for a minute or two until we can distract her), but she loves to have people laugh with her, so she tries to show off as often as she can.

I had my 36 week check up yesterday (and I'll be 37 weeks tomorrow).  The doc was going to set up an induction for me on the 4th - one week early, my first early induction ever - so I can make it to a Cousin Baking Retreat planned for the 12th (in my mother's house - scheduled for the day after my due date - either no one had any idea when I was due, or someone was being rude and trying to not invite me! Turns out the joke is on them, I'm coming anyway :) )

It's been a busy few weeks on the farm.  Mark and the kids and I have spent much of the last few weeks over at his mom's house helping get all the garden produce harvested and stored away for the upcoming year.  Sadly, neither one of us is as helpful as we usually are...  Mark has had to take over my job cooking corn, cutting tomatoes, running stuff through the juicer, etc. several times, and we usually show up after all the picking has been done (part of that is the kids late start with school, but not all of it - it takes a long time to get us out the door these days).  I'm just grateful for such an awesome mother in law!  If nothing else, I enjoy sitting in her kitchen and chatting about everything and nothing all at the same time.

I'm sure there's more, but my brain stopped working a few weeks ago.  It's amazing I'm even able to form complete sentences at the moment - that's not always the case these days.  :)