Finishing Up Summer Projects

Karen had the third dose of Opdivo earlier this week and some of the effects seem to be accumulative. She’s sleeping more, and generally more fatigued. There are a lot of things in and around the house that she’s like to do before the holidays, and sometimes the desire to take up those tasks exceeds her ability, but we’re doing our best.

As far as treatment goes, we are happy that all the test results are coming back optimal, except maybe her glucose levels, but we’re seeing her endocrinologist about that Monday. The blood test results aren’t able to tell us if the medication is working, but they do at least indicate her body is tolerating the treatment well. Or perhaps the phrase “as well as can be expected,” might be more accurate. If I boiled down what the doctor has told us about the low energy levels, I’d end up with “it is what it is.” Or perhaps, “cancer sucks.” But sometimes I interpret things differently than others, so if you want a more accurate reporting of what the doctor says about that, you might want to ask Karen.

One thing that we do keep hearing is that low activity breeds low energy. Toward that, Karen has been forcing herself to do things, even when she doesn’t feel up to them. And that seems to characterize holidays pretty well when you’re sick anyway.

There’s always stuff to do when you have green things outside your door, so we’ve been working on a lot of projects in the yard between downpours. We did get our mulch taken out earlier this week, and managed to get some help with it, just before we had committed to doing it ourselves. The flower beds weren’t maintained very well, and the mulch became a breeding ground for several different molds. I’m thankful that Karen and I didn’t have to do that ourselves, but it’s still a bit of a sore spot for us, since that leaves us with another unfinished landscaping project moving into the winter.

Since our landscapers were able to take care of some of the other projects, Karen and I built a really neat firewood rack for the Forum (our bonfire pit). We made the rack from trees that I cut down earlier this year, and can hold limbs about three feet long. And it will hold a lot of them. There is still some work Karen wants to do with the landscaping around the Forum, but it’s pretty much done. Our landscapers have to replace some of the grout/joints that didn’t quite set right, but that doesn’t keep us from using it in the mean time. We had a really nice fire going the other day.

I don’t have any pics of the wood rack yet, but will see what I can do.

It’s a rainy day, so I’m not sure if we’ll make it outside, but we’ll try. I’ll make sure to post if we have anything new, but for now we’re in rinse/repeat mode with the treatments. The fourth round/dose (the last dose of the second round) is coming up in about a week. I’ll post if we do learn anything new before then, but also try to do so even if we don’t. <3