Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Wildlife Experiences; My Sister

I had an interesting day observing wildlife yesterday - first, a blue jay (which are a new arrival here in Colorado) landed on my foot while I was sitting in my sister's back yard, observing nature.  While I was waiting for the bus to take me back home, I watched 7 mule deer does eating in the 5 acre meadow across the road from me, and just before the bus arrived, they all trotted across the road and passed within 5 feet of me.  Yesterday afternoon, the red-tailed hawk returned to our back yard - I thought I saw something large with light-colored feathers go by the window, and Lovey went "on point."  The hawk had gone to my neighbor's birdbath, in the next patio alcove.  When the hawk flew back east, to the fence, Lovey and Nedi followed it.  That scared the daylights out of me - this hawk was large enough to take either one of my cats.  I took a couple of photos, but haven't yet down-loaded them.  I'll share them later.
   My sister had a follow-up visit with her surgeon on Monday; he stated that she's an incredibly fast healer and that he's more than satisfied with her progress after the mastectomy.  They also discussed and planned the placement of the access port to a vein on the left side of her chest for her various therapies.  The port will be placed under flesh and skin, and she'll have a local anesthetic applied when she has treatments and/or blood drawn.  The port placement will happen on Friday, December 19.  Then Kathy had a session with her oncologist - they decided which chemotherapy treatment would cause the least harm to her, and she will start having chemo treatments the day after Christmas.  Kathy will take the A-C-T cocktail for chemo; for the first few sessions, she'll receive two drugs, adriamycin and cytoxan, then taxol will be added to the other two.  Taxol's main side-effects are tingling and/or loss of feeling in the extremities.  After the chemo is finished, she'll have radiation therapy, and that will be followed by hormonal therapy...  It's a long haul ahead for her, and for all of us who love her.
   If she doesn't have a horrible reaction to her chemotherapy, she will start back working the first week of January.  Her treatments are scheduled for late Friday afternoons, so that she'll have the weekend to recover in time for her to work again on Monday.

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