We had a long visit with Dr Block today who asked questions and reviewed the last 21 days with us. By ALL accounts I had an extremely difficult time. No surprise there. ?? He explained that my immune system, like the rest of me, I guess, has hyper sensitive antennae.

Usually this holiday weekend is one of my favorite of the year. I love fireworks and the warm temperatures of summer which normally means swimming and biking for us, times picking raspberries in the afternoon sun. This year it is the weekend that counts us down to round 2 of chemotherapy.

In all honesty, given the horror of the last round we approach this with a great deal of difficulty. Tuesday is day 0 of round two when we will talk at length with Dr Block and our medical team. We will determine if I am strong enough to go round 2. My gut is still very tender and painful at times. I'm still not able to eat normally. My skin is not all healed. We are trusting in God's guidance and praying for wisdom and clarity moving forward.

I'm learning slowly to try to take each day as it comes but I'm a forward thinker by nature, gifted with a great ability to imagine and project what is ahead. It has kept me out of a lot of bad situations but in times like this it is hard to keep focused on the positive if what lies behind is any indicator of what lies ahead. From what I've read, many times the chemo becomes cumulative and so it gets tougher. Changes will be made to my regime but we won't know unless we go forward. In a sea of conflicting information it is really hard to know what to do.

Next week is my birthday week so it seems pretty sad to think of feeling horrible and sick that day, but I'm giving thanks for this week when I have felt much better than the two before that. One day at a time, one hurdle at a time. I'm trying to live more in the now. I'm getting a lot of hard learned practice at this.

I am grateful for my dear family and friends and all the ways they are choosing to love and care for me through this difficult time.

Last night's sunset was beautiful. We give thanks.

The way you are stripped of your dignity and so much of your humanity in the process of dealing with cancer is insidious. It hits you in the face and then sneaks up from behind and keeps slapping you upside the head. It is discouraging and demoralizing.

In the midst of it all I recognize it is important to try to keep a positive outlook and focus on the good. Attempting to do this in an authentic way is a true challenge. Today I had to go to see a dermatologist because of the fiery skin rash the chemo caused. When did my life get reduced to waiting in doctor's offices and feeling like a piece of meat?

My hair has begun to fall out and it's disappearing fast. So now cancer is no longer an invisible malady but a sign I wear literally on my head announcing to all the world around that I am a cancer patient. One of the few things I've always been so grateful for, my beautiful thick hair, is gone and may never return as I know it.

Cancer treatment has made it impossible for me to spend time in the sun, to garden, to swim in the lake in the heat of the day. Impossible to eat the foods I love, to enjoy a day without pain. There are no easy platitudes to all this loss, I am being stripped naked. Left with very little of me and grateful that in the eyes of those that love me I somehow retain some element of beauty, some remnant of what is good about me.

Cancer doesn't define me, but it has managed to desecrate much of how I recognize myself. Is this a good thing in the end? Time will tell. Today it just hurts.

Some big wins today. Feeling a bit less like a toad today. I was even able to eat 2 meals and spend a bit of time in my studio. I made this bracelet which represents round one of my chemotherapy.

Completed post 6/21/16- Funny thing about us humans and how we learn. We often don't know how things work until they stop, working that is. I was assured yesterday by numerous members of my treatment team that this week's events would not be repeated. I had lost almost 10 lbs in 6 days most of it due to severe dehydration.

It's truly a bizarre sensation to feel as though I don't belong in my own body. Normally on a spectacularly beautiful June weekend I would arise filled with joy and have a day full of anticipated activities and expectations.

I was able to get up for a short while this morning and actually ate something. But staring at my image in the mirror I see gaunt reflections of myself with bruises, and scars that are unfamiliar and strange. I feel full of sorrow that my dear husband is strapped with this infirmity in almost the same way I am. Not that he shares that sorrow except that he hates to see me suffer. Illness is an alien experience in that I am removed from so much that I hold dear. I am reminded of my tears upon driving out of our driveway the day we left for Hippocrates Institute knowing that somehow all would be different from that day forward. With each death you experience in illness there is a desire that there will be a resurrection on the other side. I'm realizing that some deaths will remain losses forever, I can only pray they are deaths that are meant to perish. I pray that I can let them go with hands that can then take up only the resurrections I am meant to receive anew and freely release the old that is being torn away.

These are difficult things, all dying is hard, and I pray I cling only to the life that is meant for me. I pray that God will renew the "years" the locusts have eaten. Grateful for my dear husband and precious family and for those who will read these words and remember to pray for me again.

It's just so easy to question whether or not this is the right path when I feel SO horrible. The oncology nurses remind me that this is a short term difficulty for a long term goal, I pray that it might be so. I need courage. To life anew!

After a short 3 hours stay at Block Center today I was able to return home. My poor body is wondering what the heck I just did to it. Today I am grateful for anti-nausea meds, for my beautiful peaceful home, for amazing support in my dear husband and good friends and precious family.

A shot of the first hour of 9 hours of infusions yesterday. I got the whole regime yesterday including both of the cancer eaters that currently have me feeling a bit low. I go back today for day 2 of vitamin and white blood cell enhancers.

This is what they call today in my chemo session. We were at the hospital this morning at 7:30 for surgery

The plants for our beautiful newly renovated vegetable garden went in yesterday in spite of the rain. Always an organic garden, this year we solicited the help of our friends Jeanne and Verd Nolan of THE Organic Gardener to help us repair our fences and get the best garden ever. We will be helping them trim and remove some trees in exchange.

Years ago, after losing my best friend to breast cancer I read a book called Mourning into Dancing, by Walter Wangerein. I read it again after losing another best friend. I think it is time to re-read it. It is a book about grief.

I have realized on my cancer journey that I was taught very early in life about grief. Unfortunately, what I was taught was untrue. As a young 3 year old I lost my closest in age brother to an institution because he was severely mentally disabled and partially physically handicapped. Just two months after that I lost my 36 year old father to a massive heart attack. In all the grief, I then lost my mother who like many surviving parents, just shut down emotionally. I share this because what I was taught was that my grief is not allowed, unjustified, and minimal. I don't blame my mom, who was doing the best she could.

While in therapy in Florida at Hippocrates Institute, however, I was asked what would I say to my three year old self? At first, I didn't know what to say. Then as I imagined what I would say to my precious grandchildren age 3 and 5 it all came to me.

I would say it is ok to cry, and I would cry with her, and it is ok to be really sad, and it is ok to be angry about the hurt, and it is ok to just hurt. I would say I loved her and that I would stay with her and that we would be sad together, until we could be happy together.

I find myself saying the same things to my present day self because this 50 something adult still really hasn't learned that it is OK to grieve for herself, and for her losses.

In any serious illness, cancer being one of the big ones, there are so many deaths you LIVE through. So many losses and today I am trying to give myself permission to be sad.

I am sad about the "loss" of another summer, my favorite time of year. Sad about the prospect of another surgical procedure to install a port in my body. I'm sad about the prospect of losing my hair. I'm sad about restrictions on travel due to chemotherapy schedules that make seeing my kids and grandkids so difficult . I'm sad about the extra burdens on Gilbert and my staff with a reduction in my productivity. I'm sad about not being able to walk freely in the sunshine. I'm sad about the prospect of many months of treatment. I'm sad about feeling that for the moment all the fun is being sucked right out of me. I'm sad about the feelings of isolation because folks don't know what to say or what to feed us.

Will you forgive my somewhat public grief as I learn how to be sad.

And remember when you don't know what to say, just calling or texting to say you don't know what to say is the perfect thing to say.

Thanks for standing with me, grief shared is less painful, I think...this is what I am learning.

When it comes down to it, where the rubber meets the road, if you will, it is about who I am placing my trust in. Last summer, exactly one year ago this week in fact, Gilbert was driving me to the ER with severe abdominal pains that had kept me up all night. Our anniversary night in fact.

Took a walk in the woods this morning and was grateful for beautiful weather, the new green of spring leaves, for a doctor I feel like I can really trust. Giving thanks for (big gulp) drugs that will help me put cancer in my rear view mirror. Grateful that diet and exercise are still a critical component to my treatment.

All week I have been struggling with this news of next steps. I wasn't expecting that the integrative MD was going to recommend what he did. All the more reason that I feel I need to trust him and his 32 years of experience working with cancer patients.