Saturday, April 4^th we had an amazing Easter Egg Hunt at our house. This is a tradition which I started with my daughter and this year, I expanded it to invite even more of her friends. Instead of the usual 5 kids and their families I upped the ante to a few more of her close friends (from different parts of her life – 3 kids who she was friends with before preschool, her 2 good friends she made during preschool, her 2 good friends from kindergarten, her 2 good neighborhood friends, and her 2 good friends from Daisies). Our garden was in full bloom. The sun shined (I wore SPF50 and a hat!). There were a zillion eggs. The kids had a blast.

After everyone left I cleaned up quickly with my husband and then collapsed to rest. Sunday – ah Sunday a mini-cold grew a little in strength and I was exhausted. I stayed home while my husband and daughter attended a brunch of one of my daughter’s friends at school. Oh how I wanted to go….but yeah, that just wasn’t going to happen. My family stayed out all day so I could rest. I called my oncologist’s office and spoke to the on-call doctor – worried about my cold. I didn’t have a fever at all but I definitely had a slight sore throat and an obnoxious runny nose. He called in a prescription for an antibiotic and told me to be very careful and if I got a fever of 100.4 or higher to go straight to the ER. I had heard this before. I was already checking my temperature a minimum of 2x a day.

Monday, April 6^th the cold continued without fever. I continued to panic about the whole 100.4F thing but figured I was ok. I felt off enough I opted to work from home and stay away from colleagues. If I just sat on my couch I felt fine and was functional. Then, while speaking to colleagues on the phone I noticed an odd bump around my ear – a slightly swollen, tender to the touch spot. Cripes!  I called the oncology nurses. “Better come in,” they said. I did. They ran my blood and I saw the doc (lucky someone had canceled!).  This was my second time visiting the office unexpectedly. The first time was less than a week before with a similar small, viral cold worry. They’d taken my numbers, warned me about hitting 100.4F and sent me on my way and noted that next time, 24 hrs after my next chemo treatment that I’d get a magic injection to help shorten my nadir period and also keep my counts a bit higher.  This time my numbers were half as much. They’d dropped further (proof the chemo was doing its job wonderfully!).  Looking at my odd bump that had brought me to them for a visit– I was issued another antibiotic. I asked the doc about work – being anywhere near people. I’m still new at being a cancer patient – what’s a good decision? What’s a bad decision? Work suddenly sounded like a bad idea – I was scheduled to be meeting with folks from out of town to help with training them. Ugh! A cancer patient’s nightmare – PEOPLE packed in a room for HOURS!!  I let him know my job was amazingly supportive, and that even with my planned schedule, they’d be able to accommodate me working from home and I’d still be able to deliver my contribution to the trainings. He recommended that I stay home for 2 days – and give my counts some time to get back up. So I did.

Again – so grateful for my amazing support network at work – a boss who understands, colleagues who are flexible and will work with me to help me get my job done as effectively as I could.   I’m not certain everyone at work really gets how massively important that was to me today – many of them still don’t even know about my situation, though they’ll likely figure it out once the hats and scarves start making an appearance.