Update

Early Friday morning God blessed me to set foot in the gym for the first time since around mid October. I have been doing workouts at home with adjustable dumbells as strength, energy and food intake allowed and while challenging still not like being in the gym. i had a good workout-stuck to weights only. When I went God arranged it so that there were few people there at that time too. Then I was blessed when when I arrived at work as God opened a door for me to share with one of the security guards who had noticed that I had cut my locs. He asked my age and commented about my being so young to have cancer. My response was that the doctors had also run a test to check to see if I'm a carrier for breast cancer and they found that I was not, the conversation also included sharing that God takes us through things in life to develop our faith and that this was my "thing" but that God had been blessing me through it and in the midst of it and yes I was still smiling because I had no reason to be discouraged. After talking for a little while I was like, "man I'd better get on to work." As the conversation ended he smiled as one who was encouraged in the Lord and not one that felt sorry for me. When I got to my desk I had to thank God-it's a blessing to be able to share with others, and speak confidently with a smile on my face about my current but temporary condition without having to say in my head, "hold it together" and without having to fight off tears-To God be ALL the Glory for I know it's Him and only Him that has given me that kind of assurance and faith in Him. Those 2 things just made my Friday:-) Friday morning was also my last dose of meds for the side effects and by Saturday evening I my body was flushing out food eaten since then. Yesterday I thought I had hit a stopping point with the flushing drinking carrot juice and eating a special kind of pretzels that are dairy free, egg free, gluten free, nut free and soy free but that last serving of carrot juice seemed to set it off again. Even while I'm dealing with my digestive system being out of whack due to coming off my 3 days of meds, I can look forward with a smile on my face and with grattitude because this is the second to last time I will have to deal with this on this side of the surgery (just one more chemo treatment left). This weekend and today for the most part were stay-in-the bed type days, but over the weekend while I was on the phone and even while on the phone today, God worked it out so that I wasn't having "issues"/an episode that required time on the porcelain during those times. That too was a blessing. I'm up now with stomach "issues" but prayerfully God will bless me to be able to ride without any problems when my dad comes to pick me up later on this morning so that I can celebrate Christmas with the fam as well as his birthday. Like Thanksgiving, I won't be able to partake in the traditional holiday foods but I'm sure looking forward to some more of that homemade chicken broth :-)