Deb's Update: January 17, 2007, 9 AM P.S.T.

Hi everyone... I'm finally into week 6 of my radiation & chemo. I have to finish the rest of this week and then all of next week... then I'm DONE (for now). I think that each week does get a little tougher in terms of the treatments but I usually don't feel awful, just a little more tired.

I spoke with Dr. Yu and Anne (nurse practitioner) yesterday in terms of the vaccine study that I am interested in doing. They have to wait for new IRB approved Informed Consent Document before I can sign it and make sure that I meet the subject criteria. They are actually hoping that I can screen the first or second week of February. I have a good feeling about this study, so I'm very interested in participating! As you can imagine, I decided to ask Dr. Yu about the DMV driving issues... He basically said that physicians do send info to the DMV when people should not drive for 6 months post seizures. The person it relates to is usually informed at the same time. So, the guess is that nobody has told anything to the DMV about my sensory partial-seizures (My fingers are still crossed!) I will be talking to my Radiation doc today about that just to make sure he hasn't told the DMV either! As you can tell, I want to drive again (at least locally) after these treatments are done next week.

I have also made my first appointments with an Oncologist and Neurologist here in Thousand Oaks so that I don't have to ALWAYS go back to Cedars-Sinai hospital (it's about an hour away and when I can't drive..... you know how tough that is!). Of course the driving thing is on my list, but I'm guessing that local driving will be okay :-)

I am really trying to figure out when I can get Radar back from Arizona. My friend Kimmie said she would help me and drive me out there if I needed her to. I'm guessing it'll be a long drive so we could stay out in AZ the day we get him and drive home the next day. Of course I would bring Nala with us too since she probably can't wait to see him! I cannot wait to get him back... Not sure if Joey will be excited to have him back, but maybe they'll play too! My wonderful next door neighbors also said they would absolutely drive me out to AZ to get Radar back... thank goodness I live in a pet friendly neighborhood!!!

Lisa left yesterday morning and Carrie arrived yesterday afternoon. It's not uncommon to just talk for the first day people are here because I'm so excited that they're here to visit and to help. So, of course Lisa was here on the first weekend that I didn't take my chemo so it was like I wasn't being treated anymore! Of course this wasn't true... we did stuff on Saturday (mostly errands) but I decided that we should stay home on Sunday to do stuff around the house. Lisa did the cleaning of the inside and outside of the cabinets & drawers with lemon and warm water. There are tons of cabinets so it was great that she decided to tackle that one! Of course she wanted to cook for me so we had a tasty Italian meal - Pasta with her sauce on Monday night!!! On Sunday she put together some furniture.... So, the living room looks great and is DONE now since she put the coffee table together. Carrie and I will be discussing the "LIST" of what to do after I write this blog update!

Thank you all for the positive thoughts and comments on this site! I love to go to the blog site several times a day to see what people wrote... As you can tell, I sometimes write comments on YOUR comments :-)

-Debbie