Thank You For the Good Vibes!

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I published this post yesterday with the title "Send Good Vibes to My Platelets!" and have since learned that I 'passed' my bloodwork today and will be able to get my 4th treatment tomorrow, so THANK YOU, because your good vibes helped me believe that I would pass this test that I had very little control over. :)  

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As I suspected, it has been a lovely week full of long walks and time to enjoy my last few quiet days before summer break without any bad chemo side effects. I do have some growing anxiety about my blood test tomorrow; I have no way of knowing how much my platelets have recovered (or not recovered) and do not enjoy that feeling of helplessness. Finding the bright side of the situation helps, but that doesn't mean there isn't also worry. The delay in my treatment means that if my platelets have recovered and I get the green light for Thursday I will be at my pinnacle of shittiness for Miriam's graduation. It is not something I can change or control, and I WANT to get the next treatment done this week, but I don't like that the timing means I will be pretty useless that day. 

Since starting my treatment I have tired very hard to make sure I am eating well. We eat good, healthy food in non-cancer times, but I have been more aware of how important it is in the last few weeks. The day after my second treatment I didn't eat much fresh fruit/veg and my digestive system did not respond well to that. Since then I have just been a little more mindful of the balance of foods I eat each day. I am walking lots (averaging 50km per week lately!) so my appetite has been good other than the week right after treatment when my body doesn't know what it wants. Here are a couple of food pics from this week. Colourful and full of vitamins to help me grow some platelets! And a picture of my Monday bread. I don't bake bread every week - it has been 3 or 4 weeks since the last batch - but these are lovely. :)

Walking by the lake continues to be a great way to start the day. Martha and I have had lots of adventures and I'm burning through audiobooks faster than ever before. :)

Beautiful but very windy day on Friday!

Exploring the shoreline yesterday.

Yesterday I received my 'goody bag' from the Look Good Feel Better program I participated in a couple of weeks ago. Lots of skin care and makeup products - probably more here than I have purchased in the last 10 years put together. The projects are donated by the companies. I'm not much of a makeup wearer but maybe I'll have to start doing my face before I sit down to weave? ;)

Craft update...

I finally finished knitting the time-suck socks. I love them but am SO happy to be able to say goodbye to this project which has been on the needles for about 14 months. My reward is that I get to start some new socks! ;) Our new #yearofstitch embroidery sampler was launched this week, and I used some of my hand-dyed, hand-spun yarn to create the lovely large woven wheel 'statement' flower. The new sampler will take less time than the previous one (with the filler stitches) which will mean more time for knitting and weaving. I've got my loom set up to make some dish towels; I have made one but there should be enough length in the warp (vertical strands) to make 3 in total. The photo below is from the day I initially set it up. The cotton for the dish towels uses much finer fibre than my other projects, so there are LOTS of strands here and so far I'm finding the weaving challenging but fun.

The socks. I will enjoy wearing them more than I enjoyed making them!

Start to the new embroidery project:

Setting up the loom for dish towels:

Wish me luck tomorrow! I feel great and am hoping my blood is too. :)