More un with chemo

Hi everyone. I’ve been good about keeping this thing up-to-date, so here goes. I been sick. Briefly a combo of extreme bloating of my abdomen, diarhea, and inability to urinate (sorry for the gory details) led me back to the hospital again, for 2 1/2 days. To be honest, I was worse coming out than going in. Today, a home health care nurse came by and was much more help. We are trying some new stuff and it seems to be doing something.

Sorry for such a downer post, but “How’m I doing" is the title of this blog, so sometime we get the bad stuff.

But --- I continue to try to br hopeful. I think this is all chemo-related and we go back to Houston next week for tests.

At any rate, prayer still works and I know my faithful readers will remember us.

trees

trees,
originally uploaded by tuscaloonica.

Here's the photo I didn't get yesterday. Not much of a pic, but it's nice to get out when I can. Not much to post, except my appetitie is better today and I think I'm slowly climbing out of this chemo cycle.

More later

Better

I’m always hesitant, unlike Margaret, bless her, to say I’m feeling better when I still feel this bad, but the fact is, I have felt better today, if you overlook a digestional deal that is a bit worse today. It gives me hope that I will feel still better tomorrow.

I laid down in the backyard hammock this afternoon and tried taking a picture of the beautiful view I was looking at to post, by my digital camera was acting up a bit. I’ll try again tomorrow.

A Morning Resolve

This morning, laying in bed before getting up I had something of a revelation. I have been focusing on my diminishment's, on my inabilities -- in short on how I feel instead of who I am. I am still Tim Cooper. I find myself looking back to the person I was before this chemotherapy began as though he were a thing of the past -- well it’s still me. I’m the same person I always was, I just don’t feel so good right now. But with God’s help, I will get better and better.

This resolve is serious. Less moaning about my weaknesses and limitations, but instead, looking for my strengths. There are better days ahead. Thanks be to God!

Thankful for

Okay, yet another attempt to post a hopeful post. The following are things I am thankful for:

1. Martin seems to be getting over his crud and I guess I’m not gonna catch it.

2. My wife is the greatest. Nuff said.

3. Canterbury Chapel has come through for us big time, bringing us meals, some of which I can actually eat. My goal is to drag myself to church tomorrow if at all possible.

4. China Buffet’s Mongolian Beef. I woke up thinking about this stuff and Marg brought me some for lunch and I ate a good bit (for me anyway).

5. Hope. Okay, this one’s tricky, because I’m so down most of the time, but I am grateful for hope when I really feel it.

6. Earthlink got my DSL service to work with my email -- on the phone no less. I was very impressed with their service.

7. My loyal readers. I don’t manage to respond to all the comments, but they are always appreciated and traffic seems to be up. Always thanks to my number 1 reader, Uncle De, who always manages to give me something to smile about.

8. Almighty God, who alone can bring me back up out of this chemo junk and back to some semblance of myself. As I have said before, faith is not always just a matter of feelings, but deep-rooted knowledge. I am thankful to know I have that grounding, even when my faith seems weak.

Feels better doing something

Friday afternoon and I’m feeling a teensy-teensy bit better. Having some minor work that I can get done for Randall is very rewarding, if frustrating until we get the high-speed connection. It is infinitely better to have SOMETHING to do, as boredom is a major problem. Not much to write about without going into listing symptoms, which I think is counterproductive at this point. Suffice it to say, I seem to have missed catching Martin’s crud so far, and feel as I said a teensy bit better if I set my mouth right.

Lots of folks have helped out with visits and food!

PS. I just got my DSL modem! No more busy signals while surfing the net (fast)! Yahoo!

A laptop from work

The folks at Randall had a spare laptop computer, so they brought it over and we’ll see if I can get any work done on it. I splurged on DSL the other day and we’ll see how that works out when the modem gets here.

I still feel awful. Martin has a bad cold and it’s probably inevitable that I catch it, but what are you gonna do?

Lack of appetite and sheer boredom are big problems right now. Sorry I’m not able to respond to individual comments right now, but, as always we are hopeful of feeling better soon, if I can stay out of the ER with a fever.