I'll try to do this in order.
Wednesday was uneventful. I didn't feel great but I didn't feel horrible. The dry-gagging trick was a recurring nuisance, but it didn't stop me. I finished the audiobook, using the words and the performance as a way to hide from how bad I was starting to feel as the day progressed--just tired and unable to escape the churning stomache. But I got through it and suspect there might actually be a good performance in there of the last hundred pages or so because my focus had an aspect of survivalism to it. We'll see.
Mom arrived Wednesday night to help N through the next Dr appointments and whatever would come of them.
N has been battling a sinus infection and fatigue--gee, Cap'n, I wonder why?--and it has culminated in her being on Cipro--the Muhammad Ali of antibiotics--for a lovely, stomach-scraping ten day stretch to try and rid her of the baddies that have taken advantage of her concern for and care of me to attack her.
Thursday morning we all hied our way to the Hospital. My blood was taken and we waited.
My numbers were not high enough to continue treatment. Good news/bad news.
I pretty much went to the bad news side of things first: shocker. N and Mom were more positive.
All this means is that my White Blood count was not quite high enough to justify hitting me with the second month of Phase II just yet: they give me a week to get healthier before they beat the shit out of me again. There's a sadistic medical logic to it.
My platelets and hemoglobin were in great shape, and the Protocol actually marks Day 29 as a possible hold for recovery, so non of this was out of line. Just a negative result in terms of everything going perfectly from stem to stern.
And I didn't miss by much; everyone seemed happy with my progress, if that's the right word.
And in fact, I was not all that bummed to put off the Cytoxan for an extra week, because I have been feeling the long-term drain and weakness of Phase II rather severely of late.
That's all well and good, but to me it just read as "your prayed-for exit date just got a week further off."
I had this Christmas-present idea in my head, counting the 8 months from diagnosis. Not super-specific, but still a nice time to shoot for. N has been more realistic and less married to dates and just says 'January' when talking about all of it ending.
And, hell, we all know that it could pop earlier or later and I could need to go the bone marrow route and all that, so any date is intensely arbitrary.
But still, grasping at straws beneath a brave smile has become something of a sad, tiring habit.
So I am down in the dumps, even while I understand that I have a week without new chemo to take advantage of.
And that's what we do. Friday mid-morning, before the July 4 traffic gets hyper-stupid, we take the Escape and...well...escape. N drives, I sit in the passenger seat trying with all my might not to hurl, Mom sits behind me, and up we go to Harriman State Park an hour or so outside the city.
The West Side Highway traffic is pretty tough, and the stop-and-go pushes my capacities to the limit, but I do not throw up.
Once out of the city, on The Palisades Parkway, the smoother flow decreases the nausea, and I put in a CD I dug up for the ride. I do not tell N what it is, and it only takes three songs for her to recognize our wedding mix: we over-planned our wedding to a ridiculous extent, and made five Cd's of compulsively/scientifically planned songs for the reception: the level of overkill was hilarious, and we only used two of the five before it got too late and the party ended. But the Cd's are still pieces of work.
Second or third song is Lyle Lovett, "Flyswatter/Ice Water Blues." I am weeping like a soap opera starlet in her retirement scene. Trying to sing quietly, tears streaming down my face and into the Baltimore Ravens blanket cushioning my head from the passenger window.
But it isn't roids, it is just emotion. Some of it is the beautiful wedding memory, some of it is just that it is a gorgeous song done just right.
But a lot of it is connected to why I haven't listened to music much. When you are fighting like this, when each day tests something, the emotions just don't get a chance to settle back into their normal channels, away from the surface. And for somebody who loves music, who is moved by music, it is, frankly, too dangerous and too tiring to strum the heartstrings like that all the time.
But this was my mom and my girl and a trip to the country, so fuck it, lets stay a little raw-nerved and see what happens.
And as a side-effect, the music and singing along and trying (sometimes horribly) to find harmonies all serve to banish the nausea for at least the duration of the ride.
We get to the park, and I find the little lake-side parking area I remembered, and we eat some homemade sandwiches and have some chips and seasoned avocado and other tasty sundries.
I am still pretty beat up, but Mom and N take good care of me, and N and I take a bit of a walk, spend some time watching a goose family preen themselves to sleep (which seems so beautiful and like something I would kill to be able to do these days).
We all rest a bit on our own, we spend some time together, we pose by the water--see above--and a good time is had by all. I am never fully free of how bad I feel, but feeling bad out there in sun and shadow and with frog-song and lake-smell is so vastly superior to feeling the same way in the apartment that I consider myself lucky the whole time.
I am overcome by emotion and frustration once or twice, murmuring or clenched-teeth-growling "I just wish this were over. I just wish I didn't feel this way." But those moments of weakness are outnumbered exponentially by a beautiful afternoon I am cherishing as I experience it, and am cherishing still.
We stop for gas and gum--gum helps with carsickness because it stops your mouth from freezing in the not-gonna-hurl pose--at a store right outside the park. I freak out three kids playing catch in a field behind the gas station: one gets sent long for a pass and, as he pulls in the ball and hurtles past the dumpster at the corner of the field, he almost runs into me having a nice little dry-heave in the shade. An odd "Sorry," "No problem" ensues, and then he hurries off and I head back for the car.
Traffic is very light as we are reverse-commuting from the July 4 hordes, and we are home in good time to watch Jeopardy as a family and eat something, I forget what. But I kept it and everything else down that day and each day since.
And each day since have been riding the trainer a little bit while watching the Tour De France coverage--I have been waiting for these DVR'd trainer-viewings for weeks now and am very happy they are here.
Mom and I went to Best Buy to see if we could get the DVD-burner I broke fixed...and we did! How's that for strange in this modern, expendable culture? The Geek Squad guy took a few minutes, fixed it, and sent us on our way. No charge.
We walked through a street fair to get home and I got a roasted corn on the cob on the way back--thoughtlessly not calling N to see if she wanted one; and she would have.
Mom got an earlier bus home Saturday so she could get back to Jim who has been patiently loaning her out, and I think I slept 12 hours last night.
I have yet to feel 'good,' but it is slightly less 'bad' each day. And it is just the stomach, just the semi-permanent nausea I am, sadly, kinda getting used to.
But I have more strength. The 30 minutes I did on the bike during the Tour Prologue through Rotterdam was the hardest I have 'ridden' yet, and there was sweat pouring and my legs actually ached a bit afterward, and I think I am doing OK. We'll see what hurts in the morning, but it is really nice to be tired because of effort and not just the treatment.
Hopefully very little will happen over the next few days, and it is extremely likely that this Thursday I will be back on track and fire up the Cytoxan and Ara-C and 6mp and the whole party will start again.
But today is America's birthday--at least for selfish white people. So I will place my face into the sun and look forward, to America's next birthday.
And mine.
Forward. Just forward.
Happy 4th.
