I started today with a visit to the lab vampire to have my quarterly blood work to check for side effects from the cancer drug that I am taking – Femara. I have been having a lot of muscular and skeletal pain which gets better when I get up and move. When I get up from sitting for a while, it is difficult to stand and my legs and feet are very stiff and I can barely walk. I had checked some medical sights for these symptoms and didn’t really find anything. Then I stumbled across a site: askpatient.com where you can log on and list your unusual side effects from drugs. I was utterly amazed. Almost every single woman taking Femara had the same symptoms that I have. If you go to the official site for the drug, it does not list this as a symptom. I also found that most had gained 15 pounds – like me and were having difficulty losing it.

My new oncologist thinks I  do not need to take this drug and has been waiting for my records to arrive from California. They are here now. I will see him in September. I also got the results of my blood work this afternoon and all the numbers were at the high end. They have always been right down the middle before this. So, I am not waiting to see the Dr. I am not taking this drug any longer. There is too much of an impact on my quality of life. The good news is my cholesterol was 186 with high hdl and my fasting blood sugar was on the low side.

I came home and started fusing the piece that I am working on. Here is how it looks when I start interlocking the sections:

Tonight I finished fusing the sections together. Here is the back:

Here is th front:

Tomorrow, I will tear off the paper and fuse the whole thing to batting. I used cool colored batiks and hand dyes for the rectangular shapes and warm colors and blacks for the circles. Does it look too muddled or does the design hold up? It is what I had in my head when I started it. Now I have to figure out how to quilt it. And do I want borders?

This afternoon, I walked down the street past Reed College to a home where they are selling bunches of Zinnias for $3. Aren’t they pretty?

How about this fabric that I am thinking of using to make curtains for the kitchen – too much?