Lugia's

It's open! Already! Drew tells me about how a friend of his just went to the ice cream place near our house. This year they have a super king sized ice cream cone that you can order. I cannot imagine how anyone could eat one. How would you keep it on the cone? There must be over a half gallon of frozen delight. Even the kiddie cones are too much for me to eat at one sitting.

Lugia's is a small restaurant that deals in soft ice cream in the summer months. Its our favorite soft ice cream store in the area. The cones are filled with wonderful smooshy creamy marshmellowy delight in several flavors beyond the basics. Besides the soft ice cream, they offer a bazillion flavors of regular ice cream and all sorts of ice cream concoctions. I've never actually ordered a hamburg or hot dog, but they smell great cooking when you are in line for the ice cream.

The squatty white building is surrounded by spacious lawns dotted with benches and picnic tables and shaded by old oak trees and such. People love to hang out and chat - a sort of neighborhood watering hole. On hot days, the lines are ten abreast all the way to the road. Parking has been expanded to the far side of the corner plaza near the pool store and clear around the back.

I thought it would be nice if both boys and I went together to kick off the season, but our schedules are out of sync. Drew and I go first. I order the smallest size of soft chocolate, he get a small vanilla with multi colored sprinkles. We lick happily together, letting the sweet goodness slide slowly down our throats and into our waiting bellies. Soooo good.

Kiel and I go later, and I get my usual while he gets a small vanilla with blue goo outlining the ridges of the mounds of cream. Ummmm-mmmmm. The cool goodness practically jumps into our mouths. Hey - I may have stumbled across a decent plan for getting ice cream. If I take each boy separately, I get to go twice! Uh-oh. That could be trouble. Still, it is Lugia's . . .

The Results

I keep my regularly scheduled appointment with my primary physician. She checks the results of all the tests I have had done in the last few months since last I saw her. We had agree to meet today before my maintenance chemo begins to make sure that everything else is doing OK. Somehow the clinic that did my mammogram and bone density scan haven't yet posted the results. She will check for me.

She reads the neurology report. Yes, the peripheral nerves show some damage, and she suspects it is residual from the Bexxar. I should definitely talk with my oncologist about it. Meantime, she offers me drugs to help with the pain should I need it. I decline. I have taken enough stuff. But I keep my options open in case this gets worse. I can tough out an hour or two of agonizing night time pain.

She also mentions that my Vitamin B levels are low. She wants to see another lab to make sure its not a fluke, but it might explain some of my tiredness. My idea is that my poor toxic liver is finally able to dump some of the poisons from my body, and this numbness is my system's way of complaining. The nurse laughs at my idea and tells me that if I say it with enough conviction, it might be so.

Meanwhile, the doctor looks at everything else, checks in about my levels of exercise, my diet, my mental health, my kids. She encourages me to get outdoors and walk as much as I can. It will help my tired muscles and maybe alleviate the numbness a bit.

She is upbeat and encouraging. So refreshing! Makes me believe that things will be fine after all. She is on top of my situation, and I know that if I have to call in for help, it will be the right intervention based on me. We agree to meet again in August and check in. By then I will have completed the colonoscopy and had an annual ob/gyn exam. Not to mention the chemo.

I sigh deeply as I leave. It is wonderful to feel as if you have a partner who knows the rules in this crazy game and comes along side you to make sure everything is going well. You can't ask for a better doctor to help you navigate the murky waters of cancer survivorship.

Shock Therapy

Take the silver elevators and follow the sign to Neurology. Wrong. What they should have said is that Neurology is right around the corner from the silver elevators. Never mind. I find it despite the bad directions. The office is small and crowded. People in wheelchairs sit scattered about waiting to be called. The check-in desk is so close to the entrance door that you can't make a proper queue.

I finally manage to fill out the required forms and find a seat seconds before my name is called. I follow a bubbly woman down a maze of hallways to a small room with a table bed and a machine in close quarters. She instructs me how to put on the gown, returning to glue little wires and sprockets to my legs as she warns me about the "little flashes of electricity" that she will be zapping me with.

She taps my leg with the probe and Zing! a bolt of lightning shoots down my leg, making my muscles jump and seize up. This wonderful exercise is repeated numerous times both in the same spot and elsewhere on my leg - front, back, knee, ankle, foot. Brother! I am sure the hair on my wig is standing on end and that anyone I touch for the rest of the day is likely to share in my energetic good fortune.

But that is not the end of this barbaric torture (really, it doesn't hurt - much. Why does the word "rack" keep coming to mind?) No indeed. The real doctor now enters and proceeds to stab my leg with sharp wire probes while telling me to flex my muscles. I get to "hear" my muscles complain - airy whiffly sounds and deep rumblings come floating from the beeping machine next to my head.

I do not have an appointment to hear the results, just the test time that someone else abandoned. But I hear her tell the technician that I have mild neuropathy. She doesn't seem very concerned. And I see that based on the mobility issues of the rest of the patients in the waiting room, a bit of numbness in my legs is no big deal. I take my bleeding legs home, once again fully exhausted, and sit in the comfy blue chair, swilling ice tea and watching mind numbing episodes of Psyche.

My legs, just to be spiteful, have stopped the numbness and burning. Maybe the shock therapy worked after all.