Hair and therapy and computer embroidery and a magazine recommendation

First the good news: I can walk from the hospital parking lot to the clinic bldg without stopping and, even better, I am no longer being passed by people with walkers!! This is PROGRESS. And I can sign in for therapy without having to rest before signing. This is really PROGRESS.

Now for the fun stuff:
I have taken several sewing classes lately and I think I pulled a muscle in my brain. It isn't the sewing part but the computer programming in coreldraw to create embroidery designs that hurts my brain. I can work simple programs like Word and Power Point; can mess up Excel without even trying; and I can surf the web and buy from all kinds of invisible sellers. So why can't I remember where the icons are on the 4 levels of coreldraw? Those icons are in the same place every time, really they are!! So after the 3rd class in a week and half I felt this glimmer of light and actually finished the last project without screwing it up!!!  This week I will try to repeat the process alone, here, at home, unsupervised. Wish me luck!!

The current sewing project on the machine is a dress for Kasey, Great Grand Daughter. I'd forgotten how TINY dresses for 6 mo old people are!!! It is like doing a miniature patchwork quilt! I'm having fun though.  And when I get the dress put together I'll try out some of the fancy stitches to decorate it.

Hair today, maybe more tomorrow: My bald head has some fuzz. Fuzz is hard to see basically because it is this white color. My 12 yr old physical therapist called it platinum. Right......... that will be an improvement over the grey hairs that fell off. I found an eyebrow hair yesterday. Poor thing was all alone way over where the end of the eyebrow was in the old days. Of course it was platinum.

Radiation is a daily happening. So far I haven't burned or blistered; however the area being radiated is getting fairly pink in the front, not so much in the back.  I drive myself to the hospital and sometimes have both radiation and physical therapy scheduled fairly close together which saves time and more important - gas. Lymphedema is still a big problem. The fluid tends to settle in my shoulder and elbow joints which hurts even when I'm not moving. The massage techniques move the fluid out of the joints and toward the trunk for drainage. I did get a compression sleeve for night wear that is really making a difference in the swelling.  Even better is the fact that it is more comfortable than propping the arm up on multiple pillows all night to get the fluid to flow down hill.

I have a cancer magazine recommendation for you. Check it out at http://www.curetoday.com/ - it is free for cancer patients, past and present. I've found the articles very helpful and the research focus very good.