I am so far behind here. I'm going to break up my posts this weekend, as best I can. For this one I'll just provide some general updates, for those who are interested. The humorous and/or deep philosophical posts will come later. I know, I know...
So, I'm only a few short days away from chemo #2 - I know what you're thinking...ALREADY? Believe me, I'm right there with you. But alas, it is true. In honor of this milestone, I thought I'd take this opportunity to answer the burning questions everyone wants to know but is afraid to ask. This is why you come here...right???

• I'm feeling good, for the most part. I've learned that I need to keep something on my stomach at all times but I've experienced nothing much worse than, what I would describe as, a sour stomach. I have at no point felt like I was going be "sick, sick". This is good.
• My energy level has picked up but I can still nap at will. I don't walk around in a haze or anything but I can, pretty much, sit down, close my eyes and be asleep in minutes. It's kind of nice.  
• My taste buds are going. It's a very bizarre experience. I don't have a bad taste in my mouth, or anything like that, it's just that there are certain foods I've eaten in the past few days that have no taste. Other than a texture difference, I could have been eating a napkin. Other foods taste completely  normal.
• Reflux is not my friend? If you read my previous post about my love of spicy foods you were in on the early stages of this. The problem is, the food doesn't have to be spicy. I'm going to talk to the doc on Wednesday but it appears, based on my research, that this is not an uncommon problem. I don't drink a lot of soft drinks but I can assure you that there will be NO drinking of soft drinks as long as this side effect is in play. Bobby treated me to an orange Fanta a couple of nights ago. I took a drink of it and it was like I swallowed acid. HOLY COW it burned. That's enough of that! Sadly though, that's not the only thing that aggravates it so I will be keeping to a more bland diet for the foreseeable future. Bummer!
• No, my hair has not yet started to fall out. If you know me personally, then you are aware that even on a good day (pre-diagnosis and treatment) I shed like a dog. No kidding, I could run my hands through my hair and come out with a handful. It has always been that way. My hair is pretty thick so it's just been a pain for Bobby and the vacuum cleaner. The weird thing right now is that, not only have I not started to lose clumps of hair, my normal shedding has slowed down...a lot. All of a sudden it just slowed a trickle. For a moment I thought "this is good...maybe the hair loss will be minimal". Now, I'm thinking "not so much". The visual in my head is that my body is trying to make some futile, last ditch effort to hang on to it but soon it will just give up and let go. We'll see - I'll keep you posted on the follicle situation.
• My first round of hats are on their way. I'm not going to do the scarf thing.  I'm a hat person...always have been, always will be. I'm building my hair options but, if it weren't for the kids, I probably wouldn't even mess with that. Gabriel is still having the most difficult time with all of this. He is very, very sensitive. He's not sitting in a corner sobbing or anything like that but he's uber affectionate, gets easily upset and frequently lifts my hats to check to see if I still have hair. We are following his lead on the whole hair thing. It seems to bother him a bit. I've asked if he wants to help Mommy cut her hair and he continues to say NO!
  Everyone handles it differently. Example, a couple of nights ago, Mattie asked me if it was time to cut my hair yet. I told her it would probably happen in the next week or so. Her response was "Good, because I want you to wear your wig." And there you go...