This Kind of Mood

I feel... Kind of hyper, I guess... A bit chatty (you've been warned). Bouncy, yet stationary. I feel good.

Two days ago: Really. Lousy. Before that? It was basically a week of icky. Not enough ick to keep me home, but plenty to keep me company wherever I went. Words didn't come easy. I felt like I was having a hard time holding a conversation, concentrating, thinking, talking, and creating. It was pretty daunting. I wondered if I'd ever get any of it back. It didn't help that I had that super-saliva problem again (did I mention it before? It was like something inside me was going, "Hey! We can produce saliva! Ok, so if we can produce saliva, we should! A lot! And we'll just keep doing that, because it's fun!". You get the idea. It was really annoying. And the more I swallowed, the more my stomach was unhappy, and spitting got old after a while (especially because I had to haul around a bucket). So I got a Scopolamine patch, a little sticky dot that goes behind one of my ears. It works beautifully. But a few days ago it kind of stopped working for a little while.

Anyway. I had chemo two weeks ago come Wednesday. And felt fine for a bit afterwards. 
I can't remember when I started feeling the yuck. 

My feet! They were huge. All swollen and funny looking. I guess fluids shift, things like that. But man, they were impressive for a while. 

So I'd thought we had found an apartment, but it turns out that one had too much iffyness. For one thing, it was a second floor apartment, and we realized that having a flight of stairs between me and the apt. every time I got home might not be the best thing ever. It wouldn't have been a huge issue, but since we're only going to be there during my treatment, and I tend to have a harder time with long flights of stairs during treatment... Anyway, it also didn't feel quite right to either me or my mom, we decided against it.
Next hopeful is a cute little house somewhere near the lake. It has blue carpet, so we call it the "blue house", even though the rest of it isn't blue (in fact, there isn't even very much blue carpet, but somehow it stuck). =D I'd be able to paint that one too.

Today (Sunday... I have fun thinking about whether I should call it "today" or "yesterday", since technically it's Monday. It might be less confusing for you if I call Sunday "yesterday", but I still think of it as "today", and I'd rather confuse you than me. =P ). 
Right, back on my train of thought... Today was the Irish festival. Mom was accompanying the Kanack School fiddlers for their performance. And at the last minute I joined them too. It was fun. We played for ohh, maybe an hour. Standing and playing that long was interesting for me. At first (at the morning rehearsal) I didn't think I'd be able to. But then I kind of.... did. Yeah. Anyway, it was good to play with a group. I also did a "solo" thing with mom (short, just Frank's Reel two times through), like some of the others were doing.
I love being around fiddlers. And I love standing in a group of fiddlers, playing my flute, pretending to "be a fiddle". It's fun, 'cause my flute is very shiny, narrow, a bit pointy, and round, and fiddles are... not (though I guess the bows are pretty pointy).

After we were done I sat on the dirt and watched the Irish dancers (they were dancing on a dance floor, which was in front of the stage. The rest was hard, packed dirt). I used to take Irish dance, way back when. Just for a year or two... But I'd forgotten most of it. And I remembered it all, watching them. Realized that it's going to be a while before I can do anything remotely as bouncy as that. 
The hair is incredible! It's SOOO curly, and yes: Bouncy. And fun to watch. And as I was watching the shoes in the air and the lines of girls (mostly girls, one or two guys in some of the groups) bouncing all over the place (heh, no, they were pretty coordinated), I was imagining them without any hair at all, what that would be like. Because the hair seemed like a huge part of it. I couldn't decide if they were wigs or not. I guess you can curl hair that tight... When I did the dancing I tried, but it didn't come out too good. 

The festival was entirely under a tent. A really really really big tent. Like a circus tent, I suppose. There were some vendors, food and other stuff. I love looking at festival clothes. Cool skirts and dresses to admire. But I've already got my share, so I just looked. 
But especially I like looking at the metal jewelry and such. 

We stayed for a while, listened to the music, and sampled: "greens and beans". I was wandering past the food vendors, and saw that on one of the big menu boards. It was basically the only thing I could see that wasn't meat or fried or sweet (none of which I felt like having (except I was pretty tempted by some french fries, which mom and I would eat occasionally back when I was in the hospital, enjoying their wonderful blatant unhealthyness).
So I asked the guy sitting behind the counter (the one reaaaaally long counter that all the food booths were behind... It was kind of strange.) if they were "greens and beans" or "green beans". I figured it was pretty obvious that they were greens with beans, but I felt like randomly asking. So I did. And then he tried to describe what the greens were (some sort of green leaf (can't remember what he called it) that is bitter, except not bitter when cooked. Kale maybe. But I didn't recognize the name. Anyway, he tried to describe it some more, and then just said, "it's an Italian thing, it's good." 
So I tried to give him 5 dollars, but he said I had to get tickets, and he pointed. He'd already given me the bowl full of greens and beans, so I just left it there and went to get tickets. They were one for one, non-refundable. So you trade money for tickets and then go get food, and end up with say, two extra tickets that you can't sell back. But I knew how many I needed.

Annnnyway, the greens and beans were pretty good. For a while. (They were still good, but I felt like they were just the kind of thing that would upset my finicky stomach.) I made it through a bit less than half the bowl. Mom seemed happy to have the rest, though. She also got some potatoes (I'd missed those somehow). 

Alice (the director of the Kanack school, wonderful woman) passed by on her way out, and gave us two and a half extra tickets that she hadn't used. We hung on to them for a while but didn't use them either, so as we left we gave them to another fiddler.

Anybody who lives in the Rochester area should think about coming to "Journeys", a big event for TLC - Teens Living with Cancer. It's going to be really wonderful, and we're putting on a show. It's on October 17th, more info here:http://www.teenslivingwithcancer.org/2009/08/10/journeys-2009/

I'm finally starting to tire out. Fast. I got side tracked when I went to find a link to more Journeys info. Read some articles on the TLC website, really good stuff. =)

So anyway, I'm going to sleep, now that I've lost most of that hyper stationary bouncyness. =P

OH, WAIT. NO! I forgot about the yellow paint!!!

The yellow paint. I've started having to take this wonderful medicine every day to prevent a certain kind of pneumonia. For most people, the pneumonia (not just pneumonia, but I can't remember what it's called) is not a problem, but for me it is extremely serious. It was explained to us, but I can't remember exactly why it's so serious. Anyway, there are several different antibiotics that I could take for it. I started out taking Bactrim (I think that's it), a pill three times a week. But the problem with that one is that it can potentially suppress blood counts. And mine were definitely suppressed last cycle. So we had to change to the second choice. Yellow paint. That's exactly what the doctors call it. (It's really called Mepron.)
It is fluorescent yellow, and very much the same consistency as many kinds of paints (kind of runny, but goopy, with weird seperations). INCREDIBLE stuff. Incredibly... blechy.
I have to take 9 mL daily. But actually (I was very surprised by this-->), it's totally do-able. 
When I saw it (and even before I saw it, when I HEARD about it), I wondered if I would be able to keep it down, with all my stomach-upsettedness.
But it doesn't smell that bad, and sure, the texture is kind of awful, but the taste is only bad in a weak kind of way. So I make sure that I've got some kind of yummy food ready, down the 9 mLs in one go (though I have to scrape out the cup, so I can't REALLY do it in one go...), and go on my merry way with the yummy food.

Ok, now I can go to sleep. =D