Things have been so busy here. We had the follow up after my cancer surgery. All information was good! The tumor was removed, it was much smaller than expected, good clean margins and everything was encapsulated. The lymph nodes were clear, too. That was great news! The cancer itself is gone. A month later we met with the medical oncologist about chemo options. What we learned there was the size of the tumor was right on the line regarding treatment. For tumors smaller than 5mm there is no difference in 5 year outcome with or without chemo. For tumors 5mm and larger the chance of it returning within 5 years without having chemo are about 25%, with chemo the chance of return drops to 5%. So the doctor left it all up to me. I decided the 20% difference was too much to play with, so opted to go ahead with the chemo. So far, so good with the treatment. Having the port inserted for treatment was no fun but it's necessary. I haven't noticed any side effects after the first treatment and hope that will continue. I'm trying to stay positive and hang in there for the next six months. Things are good.
Now for the fun stuff. Between the surgery and starting chemo we were able to take a little trip. My DH daughter and her family have just moved to Leavenworth, KS. Her hubby is at Staff and Command school at Ft. Leavenworth for the next year. We had fun with the grands and spoiling them while we were there.
Sitting in the combine wheel
Saw lots of rain and humidity! Such a difference than living in a high desert area! We were with them about a week then headed to MO to see my youngest sister. We had fun there visiting a Woolworths store checking out their fabric and visiting an antique/junk store. I didn't bring anything home, but we had fun looking. Next stop was my 50th high school class reunion. 50 years, how did that happen!!! There was a great turnout for the reunion and we enjoyed visiting with lots of old classmates. Then a quick trip home to get back into taking care of health issues. It was a great distraction for me, not having time to worry about anything.
On the quilting front I have a few BOM blocks to show off. Here are the next two gnome blocks:
The top one took a long time, the second one was pretty quick to finish. I love these little gnomes!
Here is the next Buttermilk Basin block, it is still in progress.
I'm going to take it to chemo this week and work on finishing it there. I have to sit for several hours, so this will be fun to work on.
My son, daughter in law and granddaughter came for a short visit, too. We went to see dinosaur bones at the museum.
Running from the T-Rex
DGD is enthralled with dinosaurs and knows a lot about them for an almost 4 year old. One evening DS and DDIL had to run an errand, so DGD stayed with us. To keep her busy she crawled up on my lap and watched me stitch the gnome block with the Christmas tree on it.
She was very good, really interested in the stitching but not trying to get her fingers involved. She might be ready to start her own project in a couple of years. It would be so much fun to teach her to sew.
That's about it for now. Lots of fun stuff happening to keep me distracted from the chemo. Hopefully everything will continue to work like the first one without any nasty side effects. I have lots of stitching to do. I have picked out a pattern for my grand daughter who is due in November. I have to find the right fabrics and it will be fun to work on a new little girl quilt.
You all have some wonderful projects you are showing, keep up the quilting!
