Tumor Marker

I can't believe that a week has gone by since I wrote here. This is good! Last thursday I dropped down from 20 MG to 10 MG of prednisone. I felt great. I have for the first time in months and months slept like my old self, and have even been sleeping in till the late hour of 8 AM. I am still pretty amped until 11 pm, but then I go to bed and sleep like a champ. I am loving it. No more sleeping pills. And the person in me that was afraid I was getting addicted to those darn things was totally wrong. It is just like the doc's say, if when you don't need it, if you are not wanting it, you are not addicted. I was so in need of those things for so long, that I started to question myself. But now that I don't need them, I totally could care less about them.
In about ten minutes I am going to take my next tapper to 5 MG, and will stay here for 3 weeks. I am still on the other anti-inflammatories but am hopeful I will be off them by summers end.
This week I took it slow from thurs-sunday to make sure my heart and lungs were okay. They were. So Monday, I took a walk with a friend in Kirkland. And Tuesday I did yoga and lifted weights. And then Wed I took it easy to make sure again my heart and lungs were okay. Today I will not do much again and will wait until Sunday to do some exercising. D and I are going to go kyacking (oh the spelling). I have been doing loads of massages, some days doing 6 in a day and feeling incredible. I have been gardening and doing lots of real estate at the same time. Life has been about balancing and learning how to open back up to mindless stress and letting it go. I still have moments of roid rage, but can now, thank god, recognize what it is. The 20 MG's just made me a mad woman!

The best part of this week was my phone chatt with my Onc last night. He said that indeed he did take my tumor marker when I got diagnosed, even though he said he didn't, ??? and it was 28. Now it is 8.8 which means I am officially cancer free! I asked can I assume I am cancer free, and he said, "Better than that, you can scream it from the mountain tops."
The other thing I talked to him about is that my entire body pigment has totally changed since chemo. I tan within minutes and its incredible. I have to be careful now. He said that this can happen to people and he said I can thank him for that. : ) So, I got one god thing from this, well besides the obvious of being cancer free, and learning lifes valuable lessons, is that now what would take me hours of oiling and flipping to either side to get the perfect tan, comes in about ten minutes in the sun!!