impatient admissions

I started the Yondelis/ Trebacktedin infusion at abut 4:30pm last Wednesday.

for all my fussing about the port...the permanence of it, the sensitivity, the possibility of hug abuse...those super bowl guys will have to bounce off each other's chests without my participation...the pump they sent me home with for the drug was in a fanny pack, and left both hands free. free, and without the sense of something delicate in my arm that could be messed up in a second.

and only for 24 hours, as opposed to going in each of four days. better.

it took us (meaning lisa) an hour to get from Colfax and 225 to I-25 Wednesday, another hour from there to home, in the snow. Thursday, going back to get the pump disconnected, took an hour to get home in no snow, just I-70 traffic.

the needle gong in and out of the port, though...much easier than for the scan the day before. better.

everything in this blog is going to say, better, better, better, with the sole exception of my attitude which seems stuck on comparing my present continuing situation with terminal health rather than terminal cancer.

I'd say I had about a day and a half of serious "down" time. and not as far down as Christmas, by any means. the girls say I didn't look as "grey"...better color.

I kind of stuck with my let's-see-what-this-is-like-without-additional-medications path. it's a different program/ hospital, but all the same coping drugs. Alexi, Decadron, Compazine, Zofran.

(Zofran. I'm taking an anti nausea drug named by a fan of J. D. Salinger's. high school english teachers have no idea what emotions they actually engender by forcing kids to read...)

food has seemed to be my friend this time around...body never got confused about what is nourishment, what is poison. better.

I got an email from a college compatriot, Jonathan Hutchinson, a year after me in school, who had had some heart stuff in his later years. seems this year, he was experiencing more heart symptoms, and ended up going in for a successful triple bypass surgery.

not sure what's heavier than that.

I never understood how people respond to, write about, loss and infirmity and suffering. I always thought it's hard enough to update a computer or do a gig or return a humidifier on a normal day, and that if I had to also deal with being blind or have MS, I'd just call the game on account of rain. the last thing I thought I'd choose was the great attitude, or holding on ever so much more tightly to the things I'd complained about the day before.

Jonathan said, suffering is the experience of healing, what it feels like.

he had a quote...if the only prayer we ever say is thank you, it would be enough.

I am not, not, not, not suffering. I'm the worst fucking amateur dilettante in the realms of medical horror stories. and I've gotten a major league all star never-believe-it-in-a-movie break about this new study I'm in. and real, if somewhat distant, hope.

here, as if the gentle reader could ever be in need of any such, is a model of the way I deal with a lot of stuff:

if someone were to walk up to me and shoot me on the street, I would try to walk erect, not show anything, maybe even smile, til I got around the corner. then I would collapse and writhe.

I am told, and pretty much understand why it's said, that there is no around the corner for this cancer.

I mean...I got the statistic of 11.4 months survival time from diagnosis from a study of 300 people. I am currently in a study of 3,000 people, of whom 1,800 have had at least tumor stabilization, some for as long as two years. and other therapies await when this stops working.

better.

but I may well feel like I felt this week one week every three. til it doesn't work.

oh, they will probably find an ideal lower dosage for me, and I'll learn to surf the side effects, and I can go back to the hot tub Friday, and I can still work on my worst days and be me on my best, and, and...

but it's not a rite of passage, a gauntlet, a street to walk til you get around the corner, the liver before the cherry pie.

it's tithing.

not one week out of every three...too much of that week of chemo feels not so bad to really count.

but, a tenth of every month, I'd say. of stubbornly familiar poopiness.

the bargain of all time for continuance. a game show deal, five bucks for a car, a hundred for a condo.

ouch, though.

maybe the most shocking realization I've come to about it is...tithing, cancer, poopiness...there is still, with it all, nobody I know, anywhere, with whom I would trade lives right now. I seem to appreciate me-ness more than ever. maybe no coincidence.

maybe Jonathan, hopefully suffering less and healing more every day, has some of that same feeling, even when he sees what is different now about his body and his life. maybe he and I can still pray the one important prayer...wow. God. this place of yours sure is the greatest. thank you for inviting me to stay here another day.