Does anybody know what the hell day it is? All I knows is I'm going home in a few hours.
Now, of course, as soon as I finish typing that an Iranian drone built with a mixture of muesli and goat ligament will crash into the CityState and obliterate us all, or Obama will, in his lily-liveried pissing context with the great sub-genius across the aisle, decide that I am an enemy combatant civilian citizen and a really nice drone with cool decals and cross-flow anti-radar soft surfaces will buzz-bomb its way up the ever swirling East River and just paint my snarky ass against the side of the smokestacks on Roosevelt Island.
There was a dolphin in the East River yesterday. Dropped in from up by City Island, apparently. New York: takes all kinds.
So; I feel like shit.
Shit warmed up, smeared on some seven-grain and maybe spiked with steroids. But still: shit.
Enter Cytarabine. Also known as Ara-C.
This regimen (Augmented HYPER CVAD 1B for those following along in their hymnals) is a set of chemos and drugs I have seen before plus one I have not. When the Pegolated Aparagenase was polite enough to try and kill me by swapping my blood for Eggland's Best, I was pulled off that and put on an altered HYPER CVAD, a more 'normal' regimen, for the rest of the 5 months or so I needed heavy chemo. And it worked, buying me an almost 30-month remission.
So now I'm off the wagon and they just want to get me back into remission (systemic, meaning bone marrow, as they have already cleared my Central Nervous System) as quickly as possible.
That involved HYPER CVAD with a really big dose (what the Drs have spent million in research referring to as'Hogh-Dose-Ara-C). Can you hear the drying flesh of my smile crinkle as it creases? Hear the torrent of happy tears?
This CVAD come without the bit of Asparagenase that had been in it, and the addition of Rituximab.
Rituximad had been around for a while and basically targets a newer trait that my leukemia has grown in the time it was shoved into remission. Likely cause by high steroid use (and what isn't these days?), Rituximab targets CD20 cells ( I know; getting boring; thinking about sandwiches) and busts their asses while the remainder of the chemo hits the rest.
I come in for 4 days of the familiar-but-muy-poopy CVAD, then get turfed. I return the next day for Neulasta, a very strong blood-count-booster (Lance's lying whore scumbag ass woulda been tagged for this shit walking to the spot-a-pot).
I go home another day then return for outpatient Rituximab as well as the two parts of Augmented CVAD--Vincristine (the bitch) and decadron (the queen 'roid).
Then we wait a week--N prepped and prepping for any number of catastrophes like Julie McCoy on greens.
Luckily we'll spend that middle week between swats up here at a half-facility run by the CityState. You may recall from posts past that getting to medical care in urgent situations is not only dangerous for me but easily the most hellish period for N's astonishing ability to endure.
So that is the next week. Lovely people with whom I (used to and will once again) run may be putting together another marrow drive/donation. Others may come your way.
For those of you stymied by the age restrictions on BeTheMatch, a German equally capable group dkms.org goes up to 55 and ties into all the same databases. So; old farts, cut holes in some shiny new Spalding tennis balls, pop the feetsies of your walkers in there, and shuffle on down.
Thanks,
Holter
