Not much new

This week, I have had a lot of appointments - wound care, acupuncture,physical therapy, therapy, and home visits with two of Eddie's middle school teachers.

The hone visits went well. It will be hard forEddie the first month or so, but he eventually get the hang of it.

The arm radiation wound is leaking a lot, but part of that may be due to the fact that physical therapy is working to move the lymph fluid upmyarm. If it drains out, that is fib with me. She is also streching my right arm and I started some strength training. I think that is why my right arm hurt more yesterday.

Constipation is an ongoing problem, but my acupuncturist, Brodie, gave me some more herbs that will helpfully help.

I think I have made the decision. To go with COBRA until the end of the year. Then I will move to OMIP(Oregon Medical Insurance Pool). OMIP doesn't cover acupuncture and has a $1500 deductible on top of the premium, so it ends up being a few hundred more than just paying COBRA and getting reimbursed for acupuncture. Acupuncture is very important to me and would like to keep insurance for a few more months to get me over my current pain/constipation/energy hump.

Hope everyone is well!

Update - Vaccine Side Effects

I woke up Tuesday morning with more swelling in my lymph nodes in the left arm pit. They'd been painful for a couple of days. I decided to go back to taking Ibuprofen and after a day, the swelling went down to where it was last week.

My sleep had been interrupted with hot flashes, which I attributed to 1) rationing this one Chinese herb I was taking (Blue citrus); and 2) not eating an Anticancer diet. I went back to the normal dose - luckily I saw my acupuncturist yesterday - and have been doing fairly well with the diet: green tea, tofu, curry, veggies, and flaxseed on my cereal.

I had itching at the vaccination site for a couple of days - and the area was red until this morning. It's now almost normal.

I had fatigue on Tuesday and part of the day yesterday - I went to Bunco, though, with an old high school friend and some of her buddies. I won $5! (Well, I won $10, but I chipped $5 into the pot.) That was fun.

Today, I met with an incoming grad student and then we went to lunch with her and my Ph.D. student, and then had a meeting at the Longhouse. So, I didn't get any writing or research done . . . but building and maintaining relationships is a good thing.

This evening, I met with colleagues for a glass of red wine and visiting. That was fun! (Red wine is on the anticancer list!)

Tomorrow, I meet with my Ph.D. student again - then I have a parent-teacher conference with Eddie's teacher, then a faculty meeting, and then a committee meeting. I *hope* I can get some work done. I need to call an elder to schedule a time for an interview.

It was beautiful and 67 today - sunny - and that made it hard to think about working and more conducive to visiting. I had good energy today. I felt normal. The sunshine helped!

Thanks to everyone for being a friend!