Meal Coordination

We really appreciate receiving meals now, especially while Kevin is gone. To make this easier, Terry Jenkins has offered to coordinate meals for us. Anyone who is interested in providing food or meals can contact Terry (see below) and she will coordinate a schedule for us. (Thanks Terry!) She is aware of what Kelly likes to eat, but I am going to keep updating her food preferences and tastes on this website. If it feels complicated trying to figure out what Kelly can eat, we also appreciate meals for the rest of the family (Megan and Shannon will be back this Monday) and I will make something for Kelly. She often doesn't have much of an appetite for dinner, although her favorite foods will tempt her to eat. I'll keep updating what her favorites are! Popsicles, especially Dole fruit bars (orange and cream!), are a big hit right now. But she likes any popsicle - they feel good on her dry mouth. She loves the kids' beef and rice bowl with no sauce, from Flame Broiler a lot.

To contact Terry, email her at:
tjenkins44@yahoo.com If you'd like to talk to her, she'll email you her phone numbers.

Kelly's Food Update

Kelly's Tastes are changing quite a bit due to her chemotherapy, and even the radiation since that is making her mouth dry. She really likes fruit still, strawberries, nectarines, peaches, blackberries. Smoothies are still great.
Chicken is out, except in chicken rice soup..
She likes beef, like steak.
Hard tacos are out, but taquitos are still good. (texture is big right now.)
Everything else on the previous list she still likes.

Long, but successful Thursday

After a long day at the hospital, Kelly was able to come home after her surgery to place her Port-a-Cath. She started with radiation in the morning, then went to surgery. She was able to come home a few hours after she woke up and is resting and taking it easy here. She is sore, but this will make her life easier when she is healed. Luckily, the radiation lab is closed Friday and Monday to install a new software system, so she has a long weekend to rest (even though that means doubling up with two radiation treatments a day a couple times to make up for the days she is missing.)

Another reason the day was long for her was she started her day early at Mission Viejo High School registration. Although she won't be attending high school, she wanted to get her picture taken so she would have an ID card and be in the yearbook. It makes her feel more of a part of the school, even though she will be doing her classes at home. She enjoyed seeing some of her friends there.

One More Surgery

OK, this one should be easy compared to the last two. This Thursday, the 23rd, Kelly will have surgery to have a Port-a-Cath placed. This is a catheter placed in one of the large veins in her chest to so she has easy access for medication, blood draws, and transfusions. This will make her weekly labs a little easier for her. She is going in for surgery in the afternoon after her radiation treatment and hopefully will be able to come home the same day.

Kelly's Food Ideas

It is so nice having people offer to bring us food. Many of you want to know what Kelly can eat with her gluten free diet, so we came up with some ideas of food she likes that are also gluten free (wheat free) One thing to be careful about is soy sauce - it contains wheat. Soy is OK, soy sauce isn't. With new food allergy laws, it is required to list wheat as an ingredient now if it is in a food, so reading the ingredients makes it easier.
We'll try to update as her tastes seem to be changing a little bit due to the chemotherapy, but right now she really likes items on this list. These are just suggestions we thought of, I'm sure there is a lot more food that she likes!

*chicken wings (Costco has mesquite chicken wings she likes, I'm sure there are others also)
*Clams from Costco - (microwaveable)
*barbeque chicken
*steak
*mashed potatoes
*cooked carrots
*gluten free soup, especially chicken rice soup, vegetable, anything without noodles or wheat flour as thickeners
*She can eat brown rice pasta, (or anything gluten free) Trader Joe's carries some. Pavillion's is getting some also. I think Henry's does too.
Mother's Market in Laguna Hills carries several kinds. They also have gluten free pizza crust
* one of her favorite meals is pizza made with gluten free pizza crust - just sauce and cheese
*Tacos made with hard corn tortilla shells
*Taquitos
*fruit - strawberries, nectarines, peaches, blackberries,
*Low fat Vanilla Ice Cream
*Popsicles

Restaurant Meals she likes
*California Pizza Kitchen - BBQ chicken salad, no BBQ sauce
*Rubios - kids meal - taquitos with rice
- chicken nachos (she likes nachos from anywhere!)
*El Pollo Loco - chicken, rice. corn tortillas (the rest of us like flour!)
*Taco Bell / Del Taco - Hard tacos
*Quiznos - roadhouse ranch salad
*In and Out - plain hamburger wrapped in lettuce, no bun, french fries OK
*Flame Broiler (Marguerite and LaPaz) Kids beef and rice bowl, no sauce
*Smoothies - any combination that may have strawberry, peach, banana, mango, pineapple.... (yes, sometimes this is her meal when she doesn't have an appetite for a regular one)

We may add another food post as we think of more, but this is a start. Some of you have had some good ideas also!
Thanks for everyone who has generously offered to bring food over. It helps a lot right now with Kevin gone and going back and forth to Orange for treatments everyday.

Aloha Megan and Shannon

Megan and Shannon are on their way to Hawaii today to see my dad. For those of you who don't know, my dad has been working at Camp Smith near Pearl Harbor with the Marines since June and will be there until January. He did come home for my surgery, but then he had to go back to work. We were all supposed to spend most of August in Hawaii with him, but I can't leave right now because of my treatments. I have to be here for them. So Aunt Denise (Dad's sister) took just Megan and Shannon today and Mom is here with me. We are hoping I can go with Mom in late September or early October, when I have a break in my treatments.
Kelly

Thank you Trailmates!!

I had such a great surprise last night. Our friends, the Spencers, came over with a gift from our Trailmates group. This is a group we are involved with through the Y for dads and daughters, an older version of Indian Princesses. We have been with some of these families since we were 5 years old. These families pitched in together to get a wonderful gift for me. They gave me an iPod already loaded with several audiobooks (thanks Tammy!) and an iTunes gift card. They also gave me portable speakers for it. Now I will never be bored in a waiting room again, since I spend a lot of time in them. I was so overwhelmed by their kind thoughtfulness! Arielle and Shira also gave me some handmade gifts. I took the pillow you made to radiation today, Shira. It was comforting. I love the cross stitch you put in the frame, Arielle. It is on my dresser where I can see it. The slinky dog is so cute. I love the milkduds too - I can't believe you guys remembered. Thank you to all the Trailmates for your wonderful generosity. I can't believe what an amazing gift you got for me! It is going to make this year easier to get through. Kelly

My Last Haircut

Today I got my haircut and highlighted. This will be the last time in a while since my hair will probably start falling out within a week or so. We decided to do something fun with it for now. My friend Katie's mom is a hairdresser, so she did it for me. I have never had highlights before - I like it! I wanted to have layers cut since my wig is cut kind of like this.
After a week of treatments, I still feel pretty good, I just need to take naps in the afternoons a lot.
Kelly

Chemoradiotherapy begins

I have had three radiation treatments so far, and they have all gone very smoothly. They have taken me right at my appointment time and the doctor, nurses and therapists all treat me very nicely. My doctor (radiation oncologist) even gave me a box of chocolates on Saturday. I started my chemotherapy Friday also, and so far I feel pretty good. I was worried about swallowing the pills, but they are not as bad as I thought they would be. Since I am doing chemotherapy and radiation at the same time, it is called chemoradiotherapy. The worst thing this week is my radiation therapy is at 7:45 am so we have to get up early to drive to Orange, which is too early to get up in the summer. Next week they are moving my appointment to 10:30, so that will be easier. Thanks again for all your messages! I love to read them.
Kelly

First Day of Treatment........Or not

We were all set for Kelly's first day of treatment today, but it didn't quite go as planned. First, she had an appointment at the Oncology Clinic to see an Oncologist and have blood drawn. After a two and a half hour wait in the noisy waiting room, we finally saw her doctor and had her labs done. Her radiation appointment wasn't until 5:45, so we went to the Block in Orange instead of driving all the way home and back. We saw a movie and had dinner (if you can call Kelly's smoothie dinner.) We got back to the hospital for her first radiation treatment, and after waiting some more - by now Kelly is the only patient left - they came out and told us the X-ray machine was broken and since this was her first treatment, they had to do X-rays first. We waited for the technicians to come in and fix it, but after another hour, we were ready to give up. So we had to make an appointment to come in Saturday since she has to start with at least 2 days of treatment in a row. Normally, she will not have radiation on Saturdays. By now it was 7:00 and my sister Jenny's plane had already landed at the airport and we were anxious to go pick up Jenny, Bob, Kylie and Ryan who flew out from Florida to visit us. So after all that waiting around in Orange, she never did get her radiation treatment. We sure hope today is not going to be our typical day. Thank you so much to Linda, our stand in dad, for spending today (and many other long days) with us! It makes it so much easier.

Kelly's New Hairdo

"Real Hair is overated!"

This was Kelly's reaction when she tried

on her new wig. She has already picked

out a wig to wear when she loses her

hair.She likes it so much though that

she likes to wear it now over her own

hair! This hair is just a little bit darker

than her own. She actually had so much

fun trying on wigs, she would like to go

backand get a second wig that is a little

bit different.

She looked great as a redhead!