Avoiding the false positive and being too negative

I was really happy not to have chemo today and spent much of the day hoping that my fever was gone. Unfortunately, my temperature was up (99.8) at about 6 pm tonight. I have been feeling okay, if I was pretty tired after work yesterday and have decided that I need to leave a little earlier to make sure I'm not too wiped. Yesterday it took me a good 5-10 minutes to marshall the energy to walk the 3 blocks home.

I did find out why they take blood cultures from two sites. It isn't that bacteria levels might be different from different places in my blood stream - its because sometimes bacteria from the skin could inadvertently make it into the sample. We all have bacteria on our skin but shouldn't have it in our blood - so this way if one test comes back positive they can figure out if it is from an area that maybe wasn't cleaned enough or a contaminated site or whether you really have bacteria. (Thanks Holly, it helps to have doctor friends.) I am just happy to again believe in the continuity of my blood stream.

I was excited to see Michele Obama visited Miriam's Kitchen, a local food (and more general service) provider for DC's homeless population. This is a great program, that I used to volunteer for. The early hours (volunteers need to be there before 6am) and the fact that certain activities like cleaning the pots and pans was hard on my back has meant I've substituted money for time but feel like services like this and food banks are providing help to so many and are so important right now and receiving less support to provide even more services and it was great to see the people at Miriam's highlighted today.

In these tough times I think its important to realize and help those that are having an even harder time. I'm hoping this might even make me a little less cranky in my day to day life. As part of this I've decided I need to rename taxotere so it doesn't sound like taxol. I might be psyching myself out thinking I will have a negative reaction - so from now on taxotere will be referred to as Fred. Maybe its a little pedestrian as drug names go but if I give him a chance (and clearly given what they are doing to me - all chemo drugs are male) maybe he'll be okay for a couple of dates.

All right - you all had to realize I was losing it a little bit with the naming of the wigs - so why not go ahead and anthropomorphize my chemo treatments too? BTW - Jackie is currently locked in my trunk.

Kim

I'm generally okay - my parents are driving down from NY on Sunday and my friend Ellen is coming in today