Chemo and a Tornado

You want to feel loved?  Let your little town of Ooltewah make CNN Headline News because a tornado was reported and watch your phone light up with messages.  :)

In all seriousness, there’s nothing funny about what happened here – and all across the southeast – on Friday.  While we were at chemo in downtown Chattanooga, a tornado did devastating damage to our community in the burbs, turning homes into sticks and leaving behind piles of mangled rubble in its wake.

One of our neighbors who lives about 15 houses uphill from us took this photo at 12:45 pm on Friday.  My best guess is that the twister was about 2-3 miles (as the crow flys) from our home at the time of this photo.  It continued in the direction of our subdivision and passed within 1/4 to 1/2 mile of it.  We were that close.  It still makes me shiver to think about it.

Several neighbors have ALL said they heard the “freight train” sound and saw debris flying through the air.  It was the real deal.

We heard on the radio that there was damage in Ooltewah, so we were anxious driving home.  We had a pretty hard time getting to the house because of traffic.  With each emergency vehicle that passed us, our anxiety increased.  I wondered about our cat and if he was ok.  About two miles from our house, traffic came to a stop and just inched along because the roads ahead were blocked by trees and debris.  I can’t tell you what a relief it was to turn into our neighborhood and see the homes still standing!  That relief was short-lived, though, when I realized how much others had lost.

Those of us who have grown up in the south are no strangers to tornadoes.  But the damage they can do in such a short time never ceases to amaze me.  Let’s hope this is not a warm up for what’s to come this Spring.

On a more positive note, the CT scan that I had last Wednesday came back with a good report!  Yay!!  My doc can’t (or won’t) say definitely that there is no cancer there, but it looks good and the “thickening” in the kidney is even less than it was in November when I had a scan.  I’m happy with that result.  I’ve known that it is not likely to completely go away, so I think this is very good news.

My first maintenance chemo session went very well, too.  Over the weekend, I felt tired, but had only very, very mild nausea a couple of times.  It was nothing at all like the treatments before when I was also receiving Treanda.  I think Rituxan and I can be friends.  :)  Which is good since we’re going to see each other at least 11 more times over the next two years.  ha ha!

Hope your Monday gets off to a great start and your week is a beautiful one!
♥ Rachel

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