Escape Uptown

I finally made it back to post about the wonderful day Sami and I had last Saturday. I treated her to a mini-spa day of sorts. I even managed to get some pictures! Since it's taken me so long to post this, let's not waste any more time - follow me to Escape Uptown and my fabulous stylist Stephanie as she treats my eldest daughter like a Queen for an Afternoon :)

We had an appointment at 11am Saturday morning, and we arrived a little early, Starbucks in hand, anxious to get started. Sami was started off with a new hair color. Fortunately, she already knew what she wanted and was able to quickly select a combination that turned out to be such a perfect match for her skin tone it was as if she was born with it! Color on!



After the color, it was time for shaping up her cut and thinning out her hair. Sami has very thick hair and it is very wavy/curly. She spends a couple of hours straightening it daily (why is beyond me!) so she wanted a good thinning to add some texture and reduce the time she spends on her hair every morning. The cut is beautiful!

Next, we both went in for a parafin manicure. Sami has never had a manicure and I've never had a fancy one so this was fun. You get your hands put into plastic bags with melted parafin max then wrapped in cotton mitts while the wax mositurizes your hands. The parafin bags just slide right off - it's a bit odd but it was a fun, silly thing I'm glad we did.

Finally, Sami wanted to try a tanning bed. Unfortunately, she had read up the night before about the dangers of tanning beds and kind of freaked herself out once she was actually in the tanning room. The noise of the bed, the somewhat enclosed space, and her gigantic fear that the bed was going to start on fire sort of ruined it for her LOL We're back to Jergens Self-Tanning Lotion!

At the end of our outing, I dropped her off at boyfriend's house - you can see by the smile here that the day was a success! A radiant beauty!

Oh yeah I almost forgot - my hair finally fell out where I had radiation so while Stephanie was waiting for the color to work it's magic on Sami I had her shave my head ...... I gotta say it feels better :)

Moving On.....

Hopefully this will be my last post for a while on this phase of my journey with IBC. I say that only because I make a point of not letting cancer define me and I never want it to be all-consuming of my daily life and activities. So that said, here's the plan for moving on :)

MRI/CT scans on April 27 to check radiation effectiveness, any tumor left, extent of sternum mets, etc. Barring any surprises, start weekly chemotherapy infusion of Avastin and Gemzar (about 2 hours once a week) on May 7. This will be ongoing indefinitely. I've done this combination before and it's not too rough.

Plan in place ~ time to get back to my fun life LOL

Watch out later today for a REALLY FUN post of my day today (or maybe tomorrow depending on my energy level later) ~~ I just can't wait - it all starts in an hour WOOHOO Don't forget to come back you won't want to miss it <3

Rad Grad Day!

Today is my celebration day *happy day* I finished radiation treatment this morning, had a check through by my oncologist, and will now have a month of "down-time" to let the radiation do it's thing. I'm starting to feel a lot more of the effects this afternoon - my head feels deeply sunburned and sore, my hair is starting to dry out some and my scalp is itchy around the radiation areas. My bones are hurting and I don't have much stamina. All that said, I just wanted to pop on and thank everyone for the uplifting prayers and special love you have sent me over the past two weeks and let you know I got through it, and tomorrow I'm hanging out in my PJs and doing some clean-up work on my laptops which have been crashing left and right hehe.

I don't know what my future holds, but I know who holds my future!

In His Hands,
~Sandie