Tuesday, March 10 - Wednesday, March 11: Junk Journaling

Lucia has been on Instagram for a few months now, and the algorithm has taken note, feeding her content fine-tuned to her interests and personality. It's evil/amazing. Anyway, she came to me last week and announced she'd seen something on Instagram and had a new craft she wanted to start doing: junk journaling. The pride in my heart! Junk journaling is something I, too, have had on my radar for a while now. We looped in Greta, who was also excited about it. And so it shall be. We never need to look very hard for an excuse to buy an ungodly amount of stickers and fun paper items, and to screech at Andrew in horror as he tries to put a piece of "garbage" in the recycling. "I need that for a craft!!!" is his favorite recurring instruction. 

Monday night, Lucia had what I can only describe as a junk journaling-related manic episode at 11pm. I went in to say goodnight to her and found her in a highly excited state, sitting in the middle of her floor, surrounded by piles of papers, stickers, boxes, and more. "LOOK AT THIS," she said, forcing me to sit down next to her. "IT'S PERFECT FOR JUNK JOURNALING." She walked me through about one thousand items, holding each one up. "JUNK JOURNALING! JUNK JOURNALING!" 

The girls and I have shared a few good laughs as we imagine what Andrew would say if we decided to bring a junk journaling "kit" on our trip to Iceland. They get two weeks off for Spring Break, and I think they are as excited about the first week--Iceland--as they are about the second week, which will be a whirlwind of junk journaling. We're already planning how to create a junk journaling area in the basement. 

Treatment update: My labs from Monday showed that my white blood cell count has plummeted. The nurse called Monday afternoon and said I have to pause the kisqali for one week and then get retested. If the count improves, I can resume at the current dose. If it does not, I'll resume at a lower dose. This is not unexpected and is a common side effect. Still, it's disappointing to pause. But, some good news along with this: on Wednesday I found out my CA-125 has dropped! This is very good news and suggests the new meds are working. I also got my fulvestrant injections. The wbc number is a wrinkle but not anything insurmountable. I'll be happy to restart the kisqali asap.