The Summer I Turned 28

The summer I turned 28 was a summer of change for me. I had just spent the year from hell recovering from surgery and steroid type drugs to counteract the symptoms of my girlie affliction. That was not fun. I was working in a “nowhere” sales clerking job, bored to death and hating every minute of it and paid nothing to boot.

I decided to return to college that fall and finish my program. It was a long hard year of being a full-time student and my poor husband managed to work himself into a stomach ulcer from the extra stress of being the sole breadwinner.

Well, I did it and it paid off 100 fold for us.

Shot 28 was completed on Friday evening and I am trying the injection pattern suggestion that came from the forum by treating the stomach injection area like the face of a clock. I am sorry that I didn’t heed that suggestion at first. It works and my frantic itching has been manageable since I’m not injecting in the same six areas. I also use copious amounts of moisturizer several times a day to ease the alligator skin that has formed around this area. This tx is brutal and my once OK skin is so dry and rough that I probably could hang a sweater on it. Also, I look like one of those wrinkle pups as I have lost so much weight along with not doing exercise the muscle tone is nil so it just hangs there.

Yesterday, I did some major furniture shopping. MAJOR. I’ll take pictures and post them once the pieces are delivered over the next few weeks. A couch, chair, antique white table and sideboard and black vase will complete some of the empty areas of the house. We dragged one table and the black vase home. I haven’t the energy to wash them down today. They will have to wait.

My husband and I also met up with friends who haven’t seen me since November 2007 and they commented on my weight loss. Also, my friend is a hairdresser and, well, you know…my hair looks like crap (what’s left of it).

I was also into my old workplace last Thursday and it has been weeks since I was there. Several co-workers commented on how exhausted I looked and that I had better get out of the secondment as it’s too much for me. Little do they know. Along with that one co-worker squawked about my eyelashes and how long they are…can you imagine! I couldn’t believe that she noticed it. She will rant on about that and send people down to look at me when I return in a couple of weeks.

My days of working full time are numbered. I feel like I have taken it to the chin long enough. Time to look after me. I would have taken more time off this past year, but because I have the 72 week tour of duty I have to hang in these days as long as I can to keep my sick time for the last 36 weeks of treatment. I don’t think I’ll make it to the 36 weeks working full time. I’ll have to worry about those days at the end when the time comes. I’ll hardly care I’ll be so happy if I make it to the 72 weeks.

As terrylee8 suggested …keep repeating the mantra…”I’m undetectable, I’m undetectable, I’m undetectable…”