These last 3 weeks have been rough to say the least.  Being at work has been great and Kiaan has been taken care of well by our amazing parents.  Unfortunately one of the side effects of my chemo drugs is early menopause.  What that means besides a slow metabolism is also a unpredictable emotional state.  I did not realize this would affect me as much as it has.  What happens is if someone disagrees with me on anything or questions what I am doing, I lose it.  Not usually at them but emotionally, I just end up going on this rampage of tears that I can not stop.  Its been hard because I have never been a person affected by others and I used to rarely cry unless we are watching a sad movie lol.  This is all been such a new experience as everything else and I am slowly learning how to control it.  One good thing that has helped me recently is knowing that I only have 3 chemo sessions left!  I started my new drug cocktail of Taxol last Friday and it has had such a different response on me than my first session.  This drug has a history of 5% of people that have been on it to have an allergic reaction where you go into an anaphylactic shock.  Because of this statistic every patient is given 50mg of Benadryl to control the reaction in turn making my chemo session a snooze fest. During my appointment my Oncologist confirmed again that the tumor was gone based on palpation, wahoo!! She did also go over the new side effects that I could experience with Taxol.  She stated majority of patients experience numbness and tingling in their fingertips and toes and their nails feel brittle as if they are about to break off.  She said I should respond just fine considering I barely had any side effects with my first chemo drugs.  Another aspect of life I have been working on is to be grateful.  In order to get more in life you have to be grateful for what you have.  Gratitude towards everything only offers you more abundance for more things.  So this year since its Kiaan’s first Thanksgiving I decorated our condo with gratitude in order to remind him and ourselves that even though we have this hardship to get through there are always amazing things to be grateful for.  Also I LOVE the holidays so any excuse to get festive, I am game!

We also celebrated a Thanksgiving with our friends and I baked an apple pie from scratch for the first time.  This is a tradition we have been doing for the past 8 years and its so nice to keep it going which again helps keep the ‘normal’ in my life.  Actual Thanksgiving was also such a fun time because Sadhna, her fiancé Rishi and Mitesh (Bar’s brother) flew in from LA and New York to be with us which is always so great to have everyone together.  Our younger sister, Gargi hosted the dinner and had made everything and anything.  She is always such a great host and it was so fun to see the babies (Ariaan and Kiaan) interact.  It had been so long since they have been awake together.  Oh babies and their schedules!  Also a couple of days before Thanksgiving my sweet friend Kyle (who is also a Chiropractor) and has been helping me with increasing my supplements dropped off a home-made juice.  It was such a sweet surprise to come home too and it was oh so delicious and refreshing.

Even with the fun holiday food and hang-outs I have been very good with my paleo diet and trying new recipes.  I made spaghetti squash for the first time and turned it into a vegetable chow mein.  I also made cauliflower fried ‘rice’ and it was a hit with my meat-eating sweet husband.  It has been really fun to try new recipes and change the way we eat, it has definitely helped minimize my weight gain that was expected with the chemo and not to mention it has helped me maintain or exceed my normal energy levels.