Returning to the hospital, even to go to a different wing and floor to meet with my Dr about progress and moving forward, is very odd. I got quieter and quieter (and more quiet, I guess) as N and I winged our way up the 1 line to Lincoln Center and then across town on the M66--a route she mastered in spades during our month inside where she was the one who had to go home and get the mail and keep our real lives going and stuff before coming back up to her cot. It turns out my car-sickness trumps the speed of a cab unless really needed, so this route may become somewhat familiar. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
So I am making less and less noise, just sort of clutching my water bottle and trudging to the far East Side, until N asks what's up in the elevator bay, and I tell her it is just bad coming back.
I realize that, to some extent, everything in this building was either painful, boring, or nauseating.
Not really, to be honest. We made odd prison-pals and met phenomenal Drs and Nurses and Nurse's Assistants and Physician's Assistants and the Pharmacologist on the cancer ward is somewhere between savant and savior in terms of her knowledge, willingness to share it with us, and empathy.
But all that positive is very very easy to drop out the back of your mind as the huge city-state that is the hospital looms out the bus windows and swallows you in its multiple elevator bays. Seriously: if they took the elevators out of the hospital it would be three row-houses full of sick people, and maybe a dumpster. Granted, a dumpster named after a generous Jewish benefactor and his wife, but a dumpster nonetheless.
OK, Jesus, I am even whining here, and the news is good.
So...the news is good. They bleed me the old fashioned way before we meet the Dr--no need to pop in a new rattlesnake when I won't get any chemo today--and we get the numbers while in with the Physician's Assistant, who is our main contact, a runner for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, and a great broad.
My numbers are...normal. I am, blood-wise, just a regular schmuck. Just some plain John Doe who maybe could use a little iron in his blood and maybe had a cold recently. Otherwise, regular regular regular.
Which was followed by this between N and the PA:
"So, is he in remission?"
"Oh yeah."
"..."
A long pause as we took this in. I think we knew it--officially I have been in remission since the marrow report. But still, to be in the Drs office and have her just toss the 'yeah' at us like that: a blithe indicator of Phase I's success. Neither one of us knew quite how to react. I think N had the brains to say something like "good" eventually. I just sat there, feeling very positive but stunned.
Now don't get us wrong, we have our priorities in order: we needed to know certain extremely important things right away: when can we make out and when can I have salad?
Turns out now is fine. Neither the mouth of a loved one nor the microbes in (washed, clean) lettuce are concerns with my current numbers. So N took me out to steak and salad--SALAD!--right after our appointment, and the making out...well, you know...shucks...c'mon.
But we got down to business soon thereafter, because the machines of the Medical establishment have their schedules and their thresholds, and it is important to the cancer-killers to get me into Phase II as temporally close to the normalization of my numbers as possible.
So I start Chemo tomorrow. Which is fine by me:
A--getting started means getting closer to finished.
B--No rest for the mutated; I have no desire to let any cancer cell get a foothold because I wanted three more days to nap and eat.
I would like to take time during this pause to thank all the friends and family who have, in whatever way specific to each one, supported me and us in the battle so far. The hardest times were easier, and the longest stretches were shorter, simply because of the knowledge of everyone out there pulling for me, supporting us. For me, even trying to get better so people I care about will stop worrying is a positive push towards improving.
All BS aside: thank you. Thank you.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming:
Phase II is structured differently but still ends up looking like chemo once a week. But it will be predominantly outpatient, meaning from home. There will be small stretches in the hospital because of scheduling more than anything--the clinic at the Drs office where most of it will happen this time around is closed weekends, so if I want weekend chemo I have to be admitted to get it.
It looks like, chemo-wise, Wednesday will be Thursday for this phase, which is about 2 months. That allows me a couple days to feel bad into and over the weekend, but then the beginning and middle of each week to hopefully feel good enough to go back to work, which would make me feel about as good as anything on earth psychologically right now. There are no steroids in this next Phase, which means my voice should stay my own.
But let's stop for a second on that little tidbit: NO PRED NO PRED NO PRED NO PRED NO PRED.
In short: yay.
There's still either residual pred running through me every once in a while or home-made roid rage being created by a confused adrenal system waking up now that the pred is gone, but I have been assured by N's dad and the Drs at the hospital that I am near the end of that, and I take them at their word.
Chemo was horrible. May be horrible again. But honestly, putting the pred behind me,at least for now, may be the best thing to happen so far. I would cry with joy, but I am getting back to my soulless emotionally flat-lined self, so instead I will just be very very pleased.
So the long and short right now is that a new frame for the fight starts tomorrow. I will go through specifics later, but for now I am resting up and getting ready for tomorrow; happy to be there, happy to take the next poison, happy to have the opportunity to have 'responded very well,' as the Dr said today.
I have tried this whole post to not use the beaten-to-death 'Once more into the breach...' quote because, frankly, it's too easy.
But for today, I'll take easy. Easy's good.
