Clean, but at the same time, really full of shit

And how, you ask, can something be both clean AND full of shit at the same time? Easy, when you're talking about my CT scan results!

"Clean" means that there are no signs of nasty icky cancer.*

*I'll explain what the asterisk means in a second. I realize that usually the asterisk means that you'll explain something later, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to be redundant.

"Really full of shit" means that my intestines really have only been doing half their job, and it would seem that they're holding onto about 93% of all the food I have ever eaten, in the form of waste.*

*That sentence is ALL about the comma, ain't it?!

SO, the first of those two things means that there has been no "significant" growth, change or multiplication of the little cancer nodules in my lungs. One node shows about 1mm of growth, which is not technically significant.

Looking forward, I'll have another scan at the end of October. Starting in September, we'll begin doing some low-dose maintenance chemo - low-dose Taxol, once a month/4 weeks. I absolutely do not mind this one tiny bit. These little lung tumors seem to be very slow-growing (which is a shocker, because the primary cancer was a ridiculously aggressive, speedy little fucker), but if they are growing at ALL, I would far rather deal with a few more chemo side effects to keep it slow than have them become "significant" enough to require major treatment again.

The second part of things, the being full of shit, merits some looking into - literally. I'll be getting a call to see a surgeon about a colonoscopy (yick) to see what in the world is going on in there. It's possible that scar tissue from previous surgeries has caused my intestines to become squooshed up and create some right angles and hair-pin curves in there, instead of the normal smooth loops that normal people have.

We all know how far I am from normal, so none of this is surprising either. If anyone's going to get strange things growing inside her to take up the space of all the piles of things that have been removed, it would be me.

And that, my dear friends, family, and assorted strangers who like reading about my private parts and internal organs, is about all the news there is in the world.

Other than that. . .

We're dropping Stella off at puppy camp for a few days next week, so she can have a little doggie vacation (no, seriously, they have commercials on tv about their doggie vacations!), running in the fields, swimming in the muddy, froggy ponds and getting some refresher sessions with her favorite trainer, Tai.

While Stella is off at camp, we're going to load the big kids in the car and wander off on some day trips to places that older, less spastic doggies will enjoy, and possibly even an overnight trip if we get really ambitious. Pea is starting to have more and more trouble getting around, thanks to her bad shoulder, AND she's sporting an absolutely gigantic hematoma in one ear which makes her feel fairly crappy too, so I want her to have some fun while she's able to really enjoy it.

And we're stir-crazy too. With the kids gone, we can't leave the house for more than 4 hours at a time, because Stella has to be crated so that she doesn't chew her way through a wall to go look for us outside.

That said, next week is our last week before the kids get home! This summer has FLOWN past, and all the cleaning-up and cleaning-out we swore we would get done while they were gone have largely been passed over in favor of sitting on our butts watching tv or reading.

This all ALSO means I have to get of said butt very soon and start getting myself together for my trip South to the beach with Anna at the end of the month.

I think that's it...there are gifts to be wrapped and shipped, craft project gifts to be finished so they can be wrapped and shipped, and all the usual little things, but most importantly, I had a good CT scan. I figure that's what you all wanted to read about the most.

So if you're expecting a gift from me, be patient, I'm getting there. ;-)