I've been antibioticked.

Its the new verb I created for when you call the dr. and he puts you on an antibiotic. This has happened to me 4 times already this summer, so it officially a verb now. Somebody contact Webster's.

I am still battling with my headcold and since (sorry this is graphic) my mucus is yellow and not clear it is time for antibiotics. I am ok with this as I want to be healthy enough by tuesday to have my next chemo on time. I don't want this part to take anymore, even a day, longer than it has to.

My spirits are dramatically different. I have a new treatment regiment, I call it laughter-chemo. Its when your friends and loved ones send you the coolest emails, family updates, Julie Andrews "favorite things", funny links and cool cards that make you forget about cancer a few minutes at a time. My aunt Mary sent me the greatest box of hats today to add to my growing collection, and besides the bummer of losing my hair, I can't wait to start wearing them. She even included some Harley Davidson "doo-rags" that I love. Blacksburg is cold and I will get a chance to wear all my hats, even with a wig, I will likely need both once fall rolls in.

I've also decided to get out of myself as much as I can. I have contacted a girl I met with on campus last year to start meeting again for Bible study time and I would like to start meeting with another girl the Lord's put on my heart. I would enjoy dealing with other problems people have like boyfriends and bad grades, over my junk.

I have spent a lot of time on line following your links of humor and trivia, keep them coming! I also live on a website called Young Survival. org which has become my free psychologist in all this. It is a website dedicated entirely to woman with breast cancer under 40. It has a message board with all kinds of issues from how to talk to your young kids, to stupid things people have said to us since we had cancer. Jeff has started calling it my "group therapy" time, and he is so right. There are plenty of local cancer support groups for breast cancer, but as the leader of it told me, "we haven't had someone under 50 in this group in quite a long time ." I will end with just one story a woman told on this site that had me laughing so hard I almost cried.

Another woman had shared that the 50th person had come up to her and told her about their relative that had breast cancer (I will tell you so you know, we breast cancer survivors love it when other survivors come up to us, but are not too thrilled when people share stories of other people they know with Breast cancer because it is second hand information from someone who doesn't quite get what its like to be in the midst of this. ) Believe it or not, and this has happened to me, people will relay their detailed stories about someone who had breast cancer and died and long horrible death from it. [great, thanks for the encouragement] Anyway, this woman was in line at Wal-mart and the cashier told her a long detailed story of how her mom had died from BC and noticing that my friend was bald she said, "what kind of cancer do you have, is it a bad one?" To which my friend replied, "I have cancer of the ass, but I have had reconstruction, would you like to touch it to see how real the implants feel?" I am sorry, but this is so funny to me. My friend said the cashier couldn't tell if she was serious so she declined the offer and stopped talking.

Keep the good stuff coming, I love the family updates.

Kat