Platelets rising

And after a week off from chemo, the verdict is in!  Platelets rebounded from 74,000 last week to around 165,000 this morning.  Now their big concern is my white blood cell count, which will leave me more susceptible to infection and sickness but they went ahead and gave me the final chemo this morning.  I am very relieved to have this final dose administered and also very happy that my chemo treatment is now finished.  It should be an interesting couple of weeks now that I have had my final chemo and am about to finish up radiation.  I am now taking my pain pill every 4 hours or so and then my nausea medicine will be every 8 hours.  The silver lining with some of this pain business is that I can't feel my neck since the first surgery and I think that if I did have feeling this pain would be exponentially worse.  Gnarly neck seems to be getting worse and the pain in my mouth is also increasing in magnitude.  The mouth issues are making it increasingly difficult to eat and it even affects my ability to intake liquids.  Liquids irritate the sores that are currently in my mouth, mostly on the left side of my tongue.  Talking also irritates it, so I have to keep that to a minimum (which totally goes against all the fibers of my being).  I spend the majority of my days laying in my bed and dozing in and out of consciousness.  Fatigue is a constant these days and it is a difficult side effect to ignore.
I got to ring the chemo bell today surrounded by the nurses that were there when I finished up.  It is was a great feeling to know that I will not have to go back there (not for now, at least) and my treatment is complete.  They make a big deal out of finishing and it helps makes the end of the process special.  If it wasn't for that ridiculous mustache and mangled neck and shoulder area, I would probably feel really good about the whole deal.  After chemo it was off to grab a bite to eat and I was able to power down quite a decent amount of food.  
The best part of the day came at about 7 pm, when UPS delivered my final day t-shirt.  I will be the first to report that it does not disappoint.  WOW.  I may be a little biased based on the simple fact that I picked it out, but I feel that I have really nailed it with this shirt.  It really ties the process together.  Not sure exactly yet on what bottoms I should pair with it, but regardless I think the shirt speaks for itself.  My plan is to take a sharpie and have all the people that have been involved with my treatment sign the shirt and really have something to commemorate the event.  Time to sign off for the day and try to get some rest, but I don't know how well I will sleep.  The steroid I get tends to keep me up the night of chemo and the pain doesn't let me sleep much anyway.  Good times are ahead.