Fabulous Genmai Cha Tea

At the suggestion of my acupuncture practitioner, I started drinking a green tea called genmaicha. It contains roasted brown rice, and some of the rice kernels are popped and look like popcorn, so it's sometimes called popcorn tea.

It is really yummy. Both Lou and I are drinking it because it is so tasty. It was tough to find. We closely examined like 200 boxes of tea in the tea aisle at the impressive Grand Asia Market in Cary with no luck. So I searched the web, and it came in the mail.

At work, for myself, I have a package of loose tea and a tea strainer, but I got tea bags for Lou. A lot of reviewers online complained that genmaicha tea bags make weak tea, so I ended up buying Lou some pretty pricey tea bags from Stash. These tea bags make a super cup of tea!  He's very happy.  But he has no idea how much it cost. Shhhh, don't tell him that it's 75 cents per cup.  He might flip.  (But he's worth it.)

Genmaicha is supposed to help with inflammation. I guess my inflammation is down-down-down because my pain is still gone-gone-gone. 

The pain virtually disappeared once I started acupuncture. (I have had three appointments so far.) This week, I did experience some mild, short-lived discomfort on a couple of days.  But, before acupuncture, I was in much more serious discomfort every day. So I am pretty happy about that.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to Duke for some labwork and an EKG that were required before I can start the new chemo. I still have no idea when chemo will start. The pharamacy has not called back yet (they said that they would) to arrange payment. I still don't even know what my copay will be. But I am fine waiting, now that I know I will eventually get the drug.

The only problem with so much time going by is that it will thwart our efforts to determine whether the new chemo is working. Like, say the next scan shows a little tumor growth. There will be no way to tell when that growth occurred, and if it was impacted by the new chemo:

• Maybe the tumors grew a lot till the chemo kicked in, and then they shrank a lot...
• Or maybe the tumors grew the entire time and just laughed at the new chemo... 

We won't really know if the new chemo is working till yet another scan!  Unless of course the next scan shows really good results.