Sometimes no good deed goes unpunished. Sometimes a rough time is alleviated by a good time.
And sometimes you just mess up, make a mistake, and pay for it: nice and simple.
The day started with a reminder of the Rock-Star hour. The past few days have had their chemo hangovers, but every morning there's an hour like back on the ward where, lying in the bed, I feel like pretty much everything is as it should be, or as it used to be.
On the ward I often got up and walked my mile with that verve. Here I just feel nice and stay in bed.
Today I tried to gather it up, because I had a journey ahead of me.
I am the Local President of AFTRA: The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (it's a union). I'm a National VP. My National President and my local staff and board members have rallied around us in this time of sickness like champions of the highest order, and I have been able to stay in touch and stay involved through a great deal of kindness, generosity, and time spent by people at AFTRA. It is a family in many ways, and I owe them one. Or many.
AFTRA's National plenary is this weekend here in NY. Normally I would have been at a half dozen committee and leadership meetings as well as the plenary itself. They have been wonderful in getting me into many of the meetings on the phone--I may be the only member to have ever made comments on a strategic discussions while simultaneously getting chemo dripped into his arm and then swapping tubes for a bag of blood. But maybe I'm not.
But today, as my medical needs left a hole in the schedule, and the plenary was winding down, I had the opportunity to swing by the end of the meetings and see people from all over the country I have worked with for years. Some of whom are very dear to me, and some of whom are complete frigging dipshits. But the fools are outnumbered; it is one of the strengths of this union.
Everything went well: subway trip was uneventful, met at the door to the hotel by staff members willing to take care of me. Sequestered outside the meeting so as to not be a distraction, and the allowed in to say thanks and hello to a good portion of the gang. I did not get to address or broadcast/journalist members because their last meeting was somewhere else, and that pained me because the broadcasters and the freelance actor-y types need to stick together through everything, but I know they understood.
I got to see good people I had not seen in a while, and I got to get totally wound into a strategic huddle with some of the leadership that made me forget the illness for a second or two here and there. Precious, like rhymes to poets and acid to batteries.
Then I was smart enough to say goodbye to my comrades and come home before I used myself up.
Mom and Jim were here,and N and Jim watched over me as I did my first-ever self-administered chemo.
The Drs and N and I have been trying to figure out how to avoid getting admitted over four weekends during this Phase...just for two little chemo drips.
Turns out that this particular chemo--Ara-C or Cytarabine-can be administered subcutaneously, which is a mildly fancy way of saying you can give yourself a shot of it.
During IV chemo yesterday I was 'trained' in self-inflicted 1 inch needles. Pretty straightforward, and any diabetic will roll their eyes that I am making such a fuss.
But, as I never went through that wacky 'heroin's a hoot, yeah?!' phase, I have never jabbed myself with a needle, so it is kind of a big deal to me.
Mom would rouse herself if needed, but with two others willing to oversee--one of whom injected her grandfather when she was younger, and the other who injected himself last year with a different chemo--mom felt it OK to not watch her kid stab himself. I get that.
So with the US tie against England in the World Cup as a backdrop, I popped a tiny little hole in myself. A The US team and I did not embarrass ourselves this day.
Long story short, I didn't take the anti-nausea pills before my jab. The jab went fine--a little shaky on the stab, but no big deal, and I was stupidly proud of the whole event. N tried to get me to take the Zofran, but I had decided on the ward that Zofran didn't work on me. I am a macho fool and rejected Zofran as not for me.
I was, how shall we say, wrong.
While I still felt actively not-good some of the time, I had never thrown up. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 48 days since initial admission to the hospital and I had not hurled.
Well, check that bugger off.
I will not go into the details--why stop now? you may ask, but, frankly it is still a little fresh in my mind--but 6pm to 9p weren't much of a party.
While Mom and Jim were riding the Bolt bus to Baltimore, I was driving the porcelain bus through the parishes of Misery, Tissue, and Drool.
But between N's calm use of her experience as someone with a less-than-iron stomach, her dad's advice and two calls to the great NP who didn't mind being bothered on a Saturday night, we got some Zofran (my favorite drug ever; did I mention that?) into me and now it is 11 and I am slurping soup and dreaming of dreaming.
So, some good and some bad in a day. And a lesson learned. The hard way, but those are always the ones you remember the best.
