Scattered Thoughts . . .

The grandkids stayed with us over the past weekend and it was a nice break from all this fun cancer stuff. We haven't had much of an opportunity to spend time with them since the lake house early in the summer so it was nice to spend a whole weekend with them.  Shortly after our time at the lake house, the doctors found Sheila's cancer and our life instantly and drastically changed. We've been at the hospital every weekday getting worn down and then trying to catch up on sleep on the weekends. We both feel as though it has been months and months of grueling nothingness.  There has been absolutely no socializing since the cancer was found except for when Sheila would get an occasional visitor although we haven't had any visitors in the past few weeks. Actually, we've been a bit socially deprived so it was nice to have the weekend with the grandkids. I think we watched about eight Christmas movies over the course of the weekend. And, we played about a bajillion

At this point, Sheila is most of the way through the final homestretch in her radiation treatment and she's quite excited... and fatigued... and burned... but mostly  experiencing subdued excitement punctuated by occasional outbursts of excitement! So, to quickly update, at this point she's experiencing some relatively minor pain in the tissue of her right breast. The burned skin and itching has been  mostly   soothed through the use of various lotions (including prescription). On the positive side, the Radiation Oncologist was happy to see in today's visit that Sheila is not showing any signs of blistering and there are only tiny signs of some peeling. So that is good news. Sheila already went through some peeling when radiation treatment first started. She is now quite red at this point though. Well... some areas are a deep, bright red while other areas are showing what appears to be a deep tan.  Sheila needs to endure only two more radiation treatments... tomorrow