A long night :(

One of the worst parts about having a tumor in your leg bone is that it's pretty painful when your walking on it and at night time.  Thankfully I've mostly stopped walking on it (see Danny, I said mostly - my husband is the crutch nazi), but sure enough every 24 hours I hit night time again.  Back before we knew it was a tumor in my leg causing the pain, there was about a 3 week period when I would get home from work around 1-2am (my leg would be killing me), I would attempt to go to sleep (because I was exhausted), but I couldn't (b/c my leg would be killing me), so I would get up, sit on the couch, watch Felicity episodes (as to not completely waste my time) from maybe 4am - 6 or 7 or 8am, fall asleep on the couch once the medicine kicked in and the ache subsided, get woken up by the kitties who wanted to play, get angry at kitties and cuss them under my breath, get back into bed with husband just before he has to get up and start his day, sleep a few hours and then get up for work.  And if any of you out there know me, you know that when I don't get good sleep I get weepy.  Fast.  I was like a walking physical and emotional trainwreck for weeks upon weeks on end and it was miserable.  Coming up on the third week we found out that I had a tumor in my leg and with it, more appropriate medicine.  I have been managing it since then, but last night I had a little Felicity reprise (except I unfortunately finished all four seasons of that show and have moved on to re-watching The Office).    I no longer can keep my leg pain in check with Ibuprofen.  Which sucks.  The lor-tab makes me loopy and weird and sporatically really hot.  But I'll adjust, because I have to and I'm sick of not sleeping next to my husband (I'm equally sick of sleeping with/under the cats). 

All of that to say that I was a little weepy today.  Danny can tell when I'm having a bad morning because he says I put on my "muppet" face, which evidentally isn't very attractive.  Even though we got this incredible new kitty litter palace for the cats called the CatGenie (seriously check this thing out - it's like a robot) from my mom and Danny put the whole thing together AND did the dishes (bc I'm a puddle of uselessness), I still was in a poopy mood going to my radiation appointment.  Not like driving to the radiation oncology department on your not-so-local hospital is typically the bright spot in anyone's day.  The team there was really nice and went through the general info required for radiation.  My treatment will be 20 sessions long and each session will last about 15 minutes.  They will be shooting 3600 somethings into my leg to try and shrink the tumor, which is actually a pretty low dosage I'm told compared to a lot of the other cancers and other body locations they treat.  I shouldn't expect to experience any side effects really except for maybe a slight sunburn on my knee and stiffness in the joint.  I'm jazzed actually.  It would be SO great not to have this pain in my leg anymore.  Lymphoma is supposed to respond very well to radiation, so I'm hoping to be more mobile again sometime soon!  I have a follow-up appointment on Wednesday and then we will actually start the treatments on Thursday.

In other news, I've decided to try to get so popular on my cancer that Ellen will have to have me on her show.  Not that we have cable and get to watch her show on a regular basis, but from what I've seen, I love.  And she would totally go for this - cute, muppet-faced girl with an exceptionally witty disposition, newly married to a total hunk, has random leg bone cancer but makes it fun for everyone!  Let's see what we can do people!

You guys are awesome.  Sending extra special love to JULIE LAFLEUR, whose birth I am celebrating today.  Maybe sometime I'll write about my not so adventurous adventures in the Navy, where I had the great fortune of meeting Julie.  She made me life bearable and even sprinkled in some pockets of joy over that last year, which I will be forever indebted to her for.  Everyone shout out a "huzzah!!" to honor Julie and the great impact she has had on so many lives.