Jennifer Goodman Linn You Fearless

Monthly Archives: October 2010

10.31.2010 Posted 11:38 am

Dave and I never Did Like Roller Coasters

Despite our outgoing, fun personalities, Dave and I have never been ones to love carnival rides.

We are always the ones encouraging our nephews or nieces to try the “gentler” rides rather than the upside-down roller coasters or free fall rides. Perhaps this is because we didn’t realize we would be getting so much practice on “up and down” rides in our personal lives.

This past week can only be categorized by lots of good and lots of bad. Since I always have on my rosy shades, I will start with the good:

After what seemed like years of suffering, I finally got in to meet with the pain management team at MSKCC and they seem to have really helped with my quality of life these past few days. They took me off a lot of the “short-acting” pills I was taking and focused more on “long-action” patches that stick to your body and dispense pain relief continuously throughout the day. What a great decision! Don’t get me wrong, my pain …

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10.24.2010 Posted 9:18 pm

Searching for that Light at the End of the Tunnel

Hi everyone. Sorry that I have not written in a week.

I will try to write more often but no promises given how challenging the days have been. Perhaps I will just get comfortable writing much briefer blog entries so that way I am not as intimidated by writing.

The last week has been tough to say the least.

I started on the 2nd drug of the Phase 1 Trial this past Tuesday. The first few days were fairly challenging in terms of side effects (heavy nausea, strong reactions to food smells) but by Friday, I felt like some of those symptoms I had under control.

My abdominal area has expanded to about 35 inches so I look about 7 months pregnant. I haven't been able to get out much due to the pain but I am thankful that no one has made comments yet such as

Congratulations, when are you due?

Do you have a name picked out? or the worst possible comment I can imagine

I thought you were …

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10.16.2010 Posted 3:03 pm

Hoping for a Home Run

Hi everyone. We’ll do our best to keep this short and sweet, yet informative.

Given my distended belly and back pain, it has been very hard to sit at the computer for very long. You probably noticed that I haven’t returned many emails or written lately in my blog.

The past week has been extremely trying for us. We have been at the hospital almost every day treating intense pain, getting blood transfusions, administering drugs to build up my blood deficiencies, and managing fevers. The tumors are pushing on many of my organs causing me to have severe back pains, stomach distension and significant water retention (I haven’t weighed this much since putting on my Freshman 15 at Duke!)

Trying to find some humor amongst all of this pain, we joked that this was the week that everything really had fallen apart; our oncologist caught pneumonia, our toilet broke and our cleaning lady quit with no prior notice. When it rains it pours (and it has been raining a lot …

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10.3.2010 Posted 5:34 pm

Even the Bunny has “low energy” Days

I am sorry that I have not written sooner but it has been a very tough week for me.

I started the new medical trial on Tuesday and it has really wiped me out. To be honest, I can’t tell if it is the chemo or the fact that I am still very much recovering from surgery but I am very zonked.

I have been sleeping a ton and trying to take short walks and eat to get my energy back. I am hoping that the more I recover from surgery, and the more my body gets used to this new chemo, I will start feeling a bit better.

It’s hard to hold the Energizer Bunny down but this week I have been a bit of the “anti-bunny”. Dave joked around that he was going to take a video of me snoring in bed all day and send it to the Energizer folks telling them that my win was a big hoax!

The highlight of the week was that my parents …

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