Doldrums

You've heard it before that chemo is a drag.  After Monday's "high" with accompanying good appetite, it was a steady slide down to jello-only as a necessary stomach buffer for taking pills.  This morning I woke to retching and gagging once again.  I actually looked forward to the infusion at "chemo lounge" so I can get the good drugs again.

I've been jumping between playing obsessive Freecell (electronic card game), reading an old French novel (Les Miserables) and catching up on New Yorker articles.  Today the latter won out for the majority of the day and I read about Bruce Springsteen and his incredible career.  He is still rocking like a 20 year old, dragging along his band of old friends who are feeling more their real ages and their respective performance-havoc surgeries.  I also managed to finally finish entering all my 2011 business expenses into TurboTax.

Abby made my day better by crashing the tax entry phase right at the end and coloring up the room of complaining, elderly, sick people (and tax-compiling fuddy-duddy dad) and telling me about attending the Michael Moore talk at Fountain Street Church last night, organized by the Grand Rapids Public Library.  I've already read the book "Here Comes Trouble" and I've heard Moore speak before so I knew it would be a memorable event.  The guy has real heart and I admire that he walks the walk.  He writes very well too.  If you judge Moore by his critics you'll find you are barking up the wrong tree.  The man has a passion for justice, especially as it relates to the middle class. 

Nurse Jana showed me my very excellent blood numbers at the very end.  My white cell count is back up in the normal range.  We talked about strategies for beating this nausea phase and we're going to do some extra hydration on Monday when I come in for my white cell booster.  (Yeah, I know I just said the white cell count was good but there is apparently about a 2-week delay for the effect of the booster and they are expecting a dive in the mean time.)

Marlee is having a teen sleep-over tonight and I whipped them up some killer home-made pizzas (toppings customized by the gals, of course).  I'll be making Belgian waffles with strawberries for them for breakfast.  I still love conjuring up food adventures and thinking about cuisine despite the fact that I am currently only managing to eat Campbell's pea soup and pineapple jello with mandarin orange slices.  I even tortured myself by watching Chris Freeman's 5-part video reviews of the Grandwich "signature Grand Rapids sandwich" competition in the Rapidian.  I do miss eating but a guy can dream.

Next cycle begins

Monday marked the first day in a new chemo cycle.  This one will be same as the first two except I will be taking the proper dose of Xeloda at home. (2 pills twice a day instead of the erroneous one pill twice a day I was taking. If you look at my previous post you can read it right there on the empty bottle).  So far so good.  Credit the good drugs they give you on infusion day.

3 devices which are capable of accessing the Internet

I went to the chemo lounge alone this time because I wanted fewer distractions as I attempted to do my taxes.  I keep putting them off, the deadline not being till October and all, but I'll just feel better to have them behind me and it looks like I will be getting a refund anyway.  Unfortunately, I am perfectly capable procrastination given all my tools of self distraction within an arms reach.  There were more interesting conversations going on around me including a woman celebrating her final day of chemotherapy.  Guests kept arriving to congratulate her, many bringing treats which were also graciously offered to be shared with me.  Taxes all of a sudden seemed less important.

I had yet another new nurse; Nurse Linda.  I'd seen her around a lot and she seemed like a hard-working, experienced and attentive nurse from afar and up close she proved all those things plus a friendly demeanor.  My blood results showed that my borderline white cell count had improved slightly but Linda figured by the end of a week of intense chemo I may be ready for a booster shot they can give you that will improve white cell production.  My friend Laurie had received it and she tells me it can make your bones sore.  I get the shot next Monday and then I'll know for sure.  In the mean time, avoid sick people and wash hands with anti-bacterial goop.

Linda also talked to me some more about my nausea issues.  We discussed the idea that it could be related to hydration.  A dehydrated condition could add to nausea.  This might also explain why I feel so good on infusion days because they hydrate the heck out of you.  And it is true when I'm nauseous that I also don't like drinking water.  I'm going to squirt extra water into my j-tube on a regular basis and the infusion center invited me to call ahead and get I.V. hydration any time I think I need it.  We also talked about halving my dose of the synthetic marijuana based Marinol.  I did not like the zoned out feeling I was getting from it and quit taking it a couple weeks ago.  Maybe taking half as much will give me the desired effect.

I liked Linda and, like all the other nurses, she told me that Lacks try to hook you up with a consistent nurse through all of chemotherapy so they can better follow your story.  Jana will continue to be my Friday nurse (I've had her twice) but Linda is going on vacation the next couple of weeks and so I'll be passed on yet again.

So taxes are not yet done.  The "being alone during chemo gambit" was a fail.  I'm still scrutinizing my credit card receipts for business purchases.

When I got home, I attempted to slice in half a Marinol capsule, only to discover that it was a liquid inside.  There would be no easy way to take a half dose.  Maybe freeze before slicing?

I made a nice dinner of burritos and salad and successfully ate most of what was on my plate and I still felt pretty good.  This morning I felt the nausea coming on slightly but the anti-nausea pills seemed to do their job.  I managed a whole container of Greek yogurt with fresh pineapple added.  Now I'm off to physical therapy where I will once again sheepishly admit to My P.T. (Cali) that I slacked on my stretches this week.  I hope she punishes me good!

How about another round?

Dilation number 6 went off without a hitch.  My swallow is back again.  Unfortunately chemo residuals are still hanging on so appetite is still small and food tastes are not yet back to normal.  My visit with Dr. Scott went well too.  The CT scan showed no new growth in the liver and no masses or evidence of lymphoma anywhere.  So he wants to continue the chemotherapy for another two rounds.

Here is another thing I discovered.  I've been complaining so much about the daily Xeloda chemo pill I've been swallowing and it turns out I've been taking only half the prescribed dose.  It was supposed to be 2 pills twice a day and I've been taking 1 pill twice a day.  It's right there on the bottle.  Take 2 pills in the morning and two at night.  So starting on Monday, chemotherapy restarts and I'll be taking the prescribed dosage.  Duh.

In the mean time, I'm hoping my appetite returns before I have to go back on.  My sister-in-law, Margaret dropped off some amazing looking Jambalaya and I can't wait to dig in to that.

I really miss eating food, a lot.  I had a brief conversation with my Nurse Navigator, Coralyn, to ask her some anatomy questions.  Specifically I wanted to know what I could expect regarding stomach capacity.  Will I always eat like a little bird or will that stomach stretch out to a pouch so I can eat a whole sandwich, for example?  Answer:  I'll always eat like a bird.  My wolfing food days are over.  A restaurant portion of anything should be good for a meal plus three extra meals in the doggy bag.  One slice of pizza will be enough. Half a beer if I want to skip a meal. I'll permanently be a real skinny guy. 

Scanned and ready

It is now 24 hours since my last dose of the chemo-devil Xeloda and I feel much better already.  Breakfast tasted a little more like breakfast.  No nausea medicine is required because I'm experiencing no nausea.  Physical Therapy this morning followed by two days of nothing medical! (Knock on wood.)  On Friday I submit to my 6th dilation procedure; stretching out the scar tissue in my pseudo-esophagus one more time in hopes that it will stay open wide enough so starchy globs of bread or pasta won't get stuck.  My cough has subsided to a great degree and I think that has meant less stress on the anastomosis.

Yesterday's CT Scan pretty much burned up a whole day.  They had me taking some pre-medication early in the morning to counter-act the allergic reaction I would have to the contrast dye for my afternoon scan.  My brother-in-law, Bruce, picked me up at 10:45 a.m. for an 11:00 a.m. pre-scan "hydration".

Forearm track

The chemo-lounge was hopping when we got there and I was assigned Nurse Jackie.  Now I was a little hard on Nurse Jackie in a previous post because I caught her on her first training day of work and my first day of chemo.  Her initial I.V. jab in my arm fried a vein that a month later still shows up as a dark line on my forearm that still hurts when I lean on it.  This may be normal and not her fault at all but I used poetic license to enhance my story and cast her as a less-than-ideal nurse.  But anyone who knows me well, knows that I love a good forgiveness story (The act of true forgiveness is powerful medicine) so I relished the opportunity to give her another chance.  And besides, I now have a port so what could go wrong?  I wish I could say that she turned into Florence Nightingale but in fact she still seemed  to lack the experience of the other nurses I've had.  She was obviously super busy and we watched her zip back and forth to numerous other patients before she got to me.  She's a hard worker.  When she finally applied the needle to the port, she did not offer the numbing spray as all the others had done and it stung a little more than usual.  She apologized and said something about it twisting a little when she put it in.  I forgive her.  She works hard and can only get better.

Jackie also drew some blood from the port and a bit later gave me a report.  All numbers looked good except white cell count.  She said it is time to stay away from sick people and enforce the hand sanitizer regimen with visitors.

After absorbing saline for an hour and a half and taking my ant-allergy pre-meds, it was on to the St. Mary's Radiology department.  They make you swallow 2 bottles of the Barium contrast beverage first.  I'd tried the Mocha flavor the last time and thought this time I would work through the other flavors.  Berry smelled like strawberries and Apple smelled like apple cider.  Like the Mocha flavor, both Berry and Apple were not unpalatable but they are also not delicious.  Next time I try the only remaining flavor, Banana.  Again, since my stomach is so small I cheated by injecting a few hundred milliliters down my J-tube.

I had a new experience featuring my recent hair style change to chrome dome.  The admitting nurses always ask for your birthday and when I gave her mine, she did kind of a double take.  I asked her what was up and she replied, "I thought you seemed much younger than that."  Without the ring of hair and the grey highlights, a bald man has the advantage of being more ageless.

Despite the pre-meds, I was still a little nervous about getting the activator injection while lying in the CT scanner.  My reaction was a bit milder but I still had one.  I got a bad taste in my mouth and I immediately had the urge to sneeze, which I held to the end of the scan and then sneezed 3 times.  They gave me some oral Benedryl afterwards to supplement the oral Benedryl they gave me an hour before.  This pretty much wiped me out for the rest of the day.  I was in a sleepy but non-sleeping funk.

They did a "double scan" of the liver so we'll know if that little spot is growing or receding. I won't know the results until Friday when I meet again with Doctor Scott.  I don't know whether I'll pick up another round of chemo on Monday or whether they'll give me a break or maybe try something else.
Until then, I'm going to enjoy lack of medicine for a couple days.

The dog days

We are officially in the dog days of summer.  Why are the called that?  I found this explanation:

In the summer, Sirius, the “dog star,” rises and sets with the sun. During late July Sirius is in conjunction with the sun, and the ancients believed that its heat added to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot and sultry weather. They named this period of time, from 20 days before the conjunction to 20 days after, “dog days” after the dog star.

The one thing I am enjoying about this long string of hot weather has been swimming pool maintenance, specifically, monitoring the solar heater output.  The high temp so far is 93 degrees and I wanted to try pushing it further but those who actually swim in it tell me that it is too warm.  That and the fact that the solar panel sprung a leak set me back some 10 degrees.  I was actually supplementing the panel by laying a long garden hose in a serpentine fashion in sunny patches on the deck, moving it as the day progressed, and occasionally turning on the water and shooting streams of hot, hot water on to the surface of the pool.  The leak turned out to be more of a problem.  What started as a drip became a spray and finally a stream.

My loved ones frowned on me climbing on the roof to try and fix it.  But since the leak was right at edge of the roof, I thought I might be able to manage a repair of some sort.  I started by slathering the leaky area with PVC pipe dope from the top of a ladder.  That seemed to make it worse.  The leaky area is at a junction of plastic and rubber and may be the fault of a corner piece of the solar kit.  I contacted the manufacturer about replacement parts but have yet to hear my options.  I snooped around in the Meijer plumbing "section", remembering the days when the plumbing section was like a plumbing supply store instead of the half an aisle that it is now.  I found a promising product for under 3 bucks; a rubber wrap that holds together by pressure.  Wind it tight and the leak stops.

The job required that I loosen some bolts holding the supply hose taught and jamming a brick adjacent to the leaky section so that I could manage the whole 360 degrees around the pipe.   It sure looked like it was going to work.  I used up the whole roll just to be sure.  It did fix the stream but only reduced it to a trickle again.  The problem is not yet solved.  Mary thinks I should not use a solar panel with a leak but i just cannot bear the thought of all this sun not heating up the pool.  So I'm wasting a bit of water instead of wasting the heat.  Them is some wrong priorities in a heat wave, eh?

The "other" dog days oppressing me are the dog days of chemo.  Monday morning (tomorrow as I write this) will be my last dose of Xeloda, my twice per day chemotherapy in pill form.  I've been describing my experience with Xeloda like this:

 I force myself to eat a little bland food just before a dose, as "take with food" is required.  This has typically been in the form of egg custard, cottage cheese, pea soup, jello, yogurt or applesauce.  I suppress a temporary urge to gag and the pill goes down.  Then for the next 6 to 8 hours I experience an agitated feeling.  Social interaction is the last thing I want to do... well, the 2nd to the last.  Eating food or drinking a beverage would be the last thing I want to do. Towards the end of the 'grumpy" cycle I start to think about cooking food.  I fantasize about delicious food.  I've caught myself saying out loud that I'd trade a year of life for a slice of pizza that tastes the way it looks.  Sometimes I actually start cooking but it can only be for others because textures and tastes are not right and I have no desire whatsoever to put anything down the gullet anyway.  Then it is about time for my second dose of Xeloda.  Mary comes home from work and I try to suppress my proverbial half-empty glass of negative, impatient, mean-spirited things to say.  I'm not always successful.  I'll strap on the food pump for a 12-hour liquid food infusion and read or watch a movie and eager anticipate bed time when I can sleep and take on nutrition and perhaps wake up energized and positive and write sentences like this one before I have to take another Xeloda.

So I am quite excited counting down to the last couple of pills rattling around in this lonely bottle.

On Monday I will also have a CT scan that will evaluate the effectiveness of my chemotherapy regimen. Dr. Scott has been playing it close to the vest so I have no idea what to expect.  Good news might mean I get a break or it might mean that I double-down on chemo.  I guess bad news would be they have to try something different.

I am visioning that the spot on my liver will be completely gone.  

Avoiding the singularity

The name I'm giving this experience I am about to describe is "singularity".  The word popped into my mind, giving me a fright and then it just stuck there and repeated. This will be an odd blog entry and you may think I am losing my marbles.

I've experienced the full-on singularity experience just two times in my life and I don't want there to be a third.  I have coping techniques and can also sometimes get whiffs of it coming and therefore avoid full-onset.  But if it hits me square in the brain, I know I'm in for some really stressed out pacing and obsessing.  Giving it a name is even somewhat scary because I do not want to risk accidentally calling it forth.  It is best hidden from me.

Intrigued?  Before I reveal my new observations, let me try to describe the symptoms:  It is a creeping sense that I will soon be unable to think, except maybe obsessively about one thing only, ultimately ending in a state where I am pacing around, trying to get my brain to jump out of the rut.  The two times it happened were both pretty scary.  I thought I had lost my mind and had no idea where to turn.

At least one of those experiences came at the end of a long road trip.  Coffee was involved as was pushing fatigue to the limit.  The paranoia and confusion set in just before the fear.  It took finding a television, of all things, to talk me down.  I just needed to surrender to a force, unrelenting in its capacity to place willing ideas directly into my head.

I mention "singularity" now because I've been sensing it in the room for the last couple of weeks and then last night I had a short term engagement.  I've sensed that it has been my new drug, Marinol that has brought it up close.  I take this medicine every 8 hours to help with nausea and stimulate appetite.  I notice that it has an anesthetizing affect on the center of my gut (probably its anti-nausea characteristics)  but an unwanted side affect is the "buzz".  It's a sleepy buzz and one that makes it harder to concentrate.  I feel like I'm in a battle to stay alert all the time.  I prefer to feel energized, not incapacitated.

Last night about 1:30a.m. singularity briefly jumped from a slightly paranoid feeling into a full-on head resident.  My head became a single cell.  I kept feeling my skull with my hands to make sure it was not larger than the room.  I was aware of a single, non-moving point in the middle of my brain.  I seemed to have lost the ability to oscillate between brain hemispheres.  Making a decision would be impossible.  The word "singularity" just kept rolling around in my mind.  This is singularity.  Rather than get up and pace or watch TV, I began to feel objects around me.  I squeezed my head; my feet; the cat; the pillow.  I established that they were external. I somehow managed to focus on the notion of being sleepy and eventually I drifted off with my head at the foot of the bed.

My epiphany from this experience is the whole idea of oscillation of the brain.  Our two hemispheres serve as counterpoints and allow us to think.  We require the pulse back and forth to be functional thinkers.  Even basic logic requires a minimum binary code, ones and zeros, yeses and nos.  By being either on or off, a binary code can store all the data in the world.  Why would logical thinking be different?  Poles seem logical to me.

Anyway, probably other thinkers have thunk this but it came honestly to me in a state where I became aware of non-oscillation.  And that's why I am writing about it.  I'm fine now, really.

I meet with Dr. Scott today and I'm going to suggest getting off the Marinol.

Meanwhile, back in the lounge

Abby was my Chemo-lounge buddy for Friday's infusion.  We had great fun (right Abby?) playing cards and figuring out what we could share to eat from the coffee shop with the unhelpful, patronizing attendant.  But our greatest entertainment was the overheard, too loud conversations from our fellow "Infusion Center" patients and their guests.

One guy had traveled far to get there but it was apparently the wrong day so we got to hear about all about it through a long, overheard conversation with an extremely patient nurse who was trying to find him a solution of a better travel day or a closer travel destination. We heard his broken-record jump the groove about six or seven times.

Slightly more annoying and yet at the same time entertaining was the voice of the lady directly behind us.  We couldn't see her due to a half-wall that divides the spaces but we could hear every word that came out of her mouth and pretty much non-stop.  At some point, I made Abby get up and surreptitiously ascertain whether the voice came from a cancer patient or a "lounge buddy".  It was the latter.  By looks, Abby guessed it was the cancer patient's sister.  Why would she bring such a annoying talker as a guest?  Poor, sick lady probably has few options.

I attempted to make "lemonade" by listening to her manner of speech as a scriptwriting exercise but her voice was like a scrub-brush and I kept devolving from listening to miming along for Abby's amusement.  But to give you a small sample, it sounded a little like this:

"Oh, yeah, and then so I went to Dress Barn and I saw the same ones that they had at the second hand store.  But I needed a slip because you know my bra shows right through and they only had black.  Can you believe it? And with the size of my bra, you know, that's not just something I can take for granted.  What are you going to do?  Find a whole new dress?  I just don't know.  What are you going to do?  And then I walked over to the next aisle and they had dresses in red and green an white; and the shoes.  I don't know how anyone could wear them!  I just don't know!  Well, what are you going to do?  I like them second hand stores but you can't always find your size. Did you hear about the sale they have at Targets?  I don't know, I just tell ya." 

 This went on seemingly for hours.  I barely heard the other woman speak at all.

Duren likes to think he is taller than me.

Eventually, we brought in our own annoying, loud guest which really helped drown out the bedlam from behind.  Stephen's brand of annoying is great fun (for me) plus there is the added benefit that between us, he looks more like the cancer patient.  The awesome nurse Jana played along as "the straight man" and we had a pretty good time, I'm sure at the expense of all those around us.

There are some really nice "regulars" there too.  Mainly we share a smile and a wave and maybe a sentence or two. Maybe the trick is to find a corner of the room with minimum access to crazy.

We also had short pop-in visits from Amy, the very helpful nutritionist who keeps me on-weight and always has great suggestions for alternatives; from Alena, my Lack's Center counselor; and even a brief appearance from the elusive Dr. Scott, who made a "Michael Jackson" reference to my hair, which I believe I correctly interpreted as a "Michael Jordan" reference. 

Nurse Jana is really on top of my nausea issues and has been concerned about getting me on to a regimen that works.  They finally pulled the stops and ordered me the the big, expensive, last resort nausea handler, Marinol; the first three letters hint at the semi-legal substance from which it is derived.  Take an easy to grow weed, clone the effective substances that stimulate appetite and diminish nausea, and sell it as an expensive pill.  Fortunately my insurance co-pay is only 1/82 of the price of the pills.  Crazy!  I'm told it may take a couple of weeks (3 pills a day) before I will get the full therapeutic effect.  So far, it is not as fun as you might imagine.

At home I am on a cooking tear.  I miss food so much that I've been resorting to cooking for others in hopes that I can eat a little myself.  But Chemo-week always leaves me disappointed in the food department.  I can make it look good but not taste good to my palette.  I usually have to resort to cottage cheese and melon and ice water to make the pills go down.  The blueberry scones I'm making for breakfast this morning I'm sure will be a hit with family or anyone else who happens to drop by after 10:00a.m.

Bullet-head

It had to happen sometime.

I was beginning to leave a mess.  Pillows, bathroom counters, dinner plates; all had the tell-tale signs of a man with one-inch hairs falling out.  A couple people got to witness the parlor trick of me grabbing a pinch of hair from the back of my head and pulling out a clump effortlessly and painlessly.  So last night, Mary set up a chair in the kitchen, put on a Chrissy Hines mix on Pandora, and set the hair-clippers to stunning.  Afterwards, I called my friend Darius (who has sported this look successfully for a long time) for grooming tips (electric or razor?).  I took it all down to smooth skin.  Marlee didn't even notice when she walked into the room and even exchanged some words with me.  I think it works as a look for me as look as long as I can keep my wild, fly-away eyebrows for counterpoint. And I have to work on the sidewalls... where there was hair, there is now pale white skin.

A neighborly day in this beautywood

Channeling Mr. Rogers this morning, I guess. Yesterday (Monday) was a surprisingly great day.  It didn't bode to be such, but it was.

Sunday was marked by neighborhood fireworks displays. (Thanks, Governor Snyder)  These were the kind that go BOOM with no warning and send you flying out of your lawn chair with ice cubes in your lap.  The birds and the squirrels are freaking out and the cats are hiding in the closets.  Even the new City ordinance, which limits fireworks to the days book-ending the Federal holidays and the holidays themselves, plus all the warnings of dry conditions, did not dissuade our neighbors from across the street from expressing their patriotic feelings.  And then their was the personal knowledge that tomorrow (Monday) I was off my chemo holiday and back on the drip.

The chemo holiday had not been as great as I expected. Not taking the horse pills was great but the nausea and occasional vomiting kept reminding me the poison was still in my system and I needed to stay on the anti-nausea drugs regardless of the holiday. And the pièce de résistance was that we noticed that my hair was beginning to fall out.

Now. losing hair has not been such a stress for me because I got used to the idea back in 1981 when it was first quite devastating news to a young, handsome man living in a world where bald was definitely uncool.  I have joked in this blog that losing my hair was no big deal for me and would probably go unnoticed. So it surprised me on Sunday when Mary first noticed the hairs between her fingers after stroking my luxurious band of follicles that ring the back of my head.  Grabbing a pinch of locks myself, they came out quite easily.  A bit later on as I contemplated shaving down to bullet-head, I got quite sad.  I'm in no rush to do that!  It was another cancer reality-check.  It's a visible symbol that telegraphs the suggestion of illness, especially to people who know you have it but are surprised at how good and normal you look.  And then I thought about Michael Jordan.  Maybe I should carry around a basketball.

So that was Sunday.  Monday morning I woke up and cooked myself a 1-egg cheese omelet, checked the weather report and grazed on Facebook until Mary woke up.  She had taken the day off to be my chemotherapy lounge companion.

We arrived promptly at 9:00am and it did not take long to be called in for the blood sample drawing.  It was a poke in the arm and not a draw from my new port.  Dawn was not there but her substitute had a musically, British Isles accent and a winning personality, and the poke, while not up to Dawn's standards, was pretty darned reasonable. And Mary did her job of distracting me perfectly.

The lounge was quite empty and I seized a green lounge chair with a view of the courtyard that I had coveted from previous visits.  Mary only gets a regular chair, and this for a woman who is not a morning person.  She looked exhausted and uncomfortable and I kept telling her she could go back home and take a nap and I would be fine.  Bless her, she stood (or sat) by her man.

Despite the fact that I had been told I would always have the same nurse for consistency, I had a yet a new nurse.  Fortunately, Nurse Joyce was oozing experience and authority.  She was in a zone.  She worked so fast and efficiently that she put me at ease right away; and my vitals showed it.  I had the best blood pressure reading (118 over 85) since Doc Hazle took me off blood pressure meds a month and a half ago.

The moment I had been waiting for finally came.  Hooking up to my new power port.  The area was still bruised and a little sensitive and I wondered how a poke in the chest compared to a poke in the arm.  Joyce prepped me by having me take a deep breath (uh-oh) and count to three. The needle assembly goes in much like pressing a snap on a piece of clothing. a minor poke and it's done.  She taped the tube to my shirt and got the saline flowing.  The reports from my friends were correct.  It was way better than an arm I.V.!

Saline was followed by all the "good" anti-nausea prep drugs and Joyce thew in a syringe of Ativan for relaxing good measure.

My pal Stephen popped in after an early morning fly-fishing adventure and shared his story and some positive vibes.  After he left, Mary picked up some food from the Lacks Center Coffee shop and we shared a sandwich while the dreaded Cisplatin slowly dripped into my veins.

After lunch I started on my "homework".  I've discovered that having a constructive project helps make the time fly.  The WMFVA, whom I do some volunteer website work for, has been patiently  encouraging me to prepare documents planning the next site update.  There are some big changes and I knew it would take a day to write up everything for our web-coder, Jordan.  I love doing this particular work but it taps into an obsessive part of me and once I start, I can't stop until it is done.

I was forced to put the work down for the final stage of the treatment, an Epirubicin push.  It takes just a few minutes from a manual syringe.  It's bright red and makes your pee turn pale red (you are welcome!) and this is also the one that makes your hair fall out.

Mary drove me home and I felt strangely energized.  Maybe it was the "good drugs" or maybe it was my body stepping up to take on the poisonous ones, or perhaps it was the obsession to finish my homework project but my spirits were high.  I had another red pee and the best-bowel movement in four months (you are welcome again!) and I finished my remarkably obsessive web notes to Jordan in time to cook dinner for Marlee before an evening outing.

Grandpa Bob meets Colonel Sanders

That outing was a sad occasion; a funeral visitation for the father of my friend, Teresa (of chocolate pie fame).  Yet I was looking forward to it because Teresa has such good stories and she had promised a great one.  Her dad was Grandpa Bob and you have met him if you ever ate at the restaurant "Granny's Kitchen" in the 70's or 80's. He was the friendly host there for decades.  He was a real charmer and an eccentric nice guy.  His death was a good one... if I can say that.  He died in the middle of a kooky phone conversation with Teresa; kind of instantaneously.  This conversation had followed a remarkable recovery from a recent health downturn and his last few days had been stellar and upbeat.  The full story was quite great but it is Teresa's story and unless she writes it down and I can link to it, you'll have to hear it from her yourself, which is quite possible with a little effort since she speaks about humor and death on occasion in a theatrical setting.

After the visitation, we stopped at a unremarkable little Chinese restaurant nearby for some late dinner.  Mary and I split an order of noodles, which we both thought tasted delicious despite the presentation.  I ate a little more than I thought prudent for the size of my stomach but had no negative repercussions.  I was a little tired but otherwise still felt fantastic.

I swallowed the first of 14 doses of my horse pill poison (Xeloda) without much trouble and we watched HBO ("Veep" episodes) until we fell asleep.  No Fireworks. Relaxed cats at the end of the bed. No nausea. Satisfaction.

Would you be my, could you be my, won't you be my neighbor?