I Brake For Exhaustion

I had to work on my car today. It started making a horrible grinding sound in its right rear quarter when braking, a problem that is pretty easy to diagnose as worn-out disk brake pads. Why the rears went first is beyond me, since the majority of braking effort on most cars is on the front pads and they tend to go first, but who know. Maybe Hyundais balance the braking effort differently.

Car work has always been something that's been relatively easy for me. Maybe not efficient, but it's rare that I've ever been physically bested by a car. I pulled the engine out of my old Pinto and had it back in within a single day, which isn't that great a feat in and of itself but it stands as a kind of indication of what I could do when I put my mind to it.

But not any more! Gee whiz, just getting the right rear tire off was almost more than I could do. I don't know if it's the chemo or the cancer that so saps my endurance, but I really don't have the ability to do much physical work these days. I managed to get the tire off, replace the brake pads and get the tire back on, but good heaven, I feel like I've been wrassling bulls all day. It's not a question of wind. I don't get winded, I just run out of whatever it is that makes one's muscles contract. Go-juice, motion-lotion, try, grit, vim, Vin Fizz, push-water, whatever. So I sit and stare and think "This moment of weakness brought to you by Adriamycin."*

It drives me crazy. But I have the answer for next time: take the car to the dang shop like I should have this time!

*Chemo drugs have ominous names. Bleomycin? Vinblastine?? Dacarbazine??? Yikes!

Almost Halfway

Today was my fifth chemo, or the first of Cycle III, as the oncologist puts it. Almost halfway is how I like to put it; it makes it seem less daunting.

The bad news is that my white blood cell count was a little on the low side so I got a pre-emptive injection of Neulasta. The drug clearly works and does what it's designed to do, but I'm one of the people who suffer bone pain as a side-effect and I'm a little annoyed at my bone marrow for once again failing to get the job done without reinforcement in the form of recombinant DNA. Rats. Once again I feel like general crap with aching legs.

The good news is that I can only feel one swollen node these days, and it continues to shrink. All the ones in my chest and neck are gone, and I've only got the original node, the Mode Lode if you will, in my left groin. And it is but a mere shadow of its former self, so that's good.

Funny to think that if plans had worked out, I would have been flying to Israel on Saturday with my mom and nephew. She's going to Israel for religious reasons and my nephew and I were going along just for the hell of it, but obviously I won't be going this time. My oncologist put the official kaibosh on that - noting my depressed immune system, a nonstop flight from Atlanta to Tel Aviv may not be the best thing in the world for me, and I'm sure feeling like warmed-over death in an Israeli hotel room is nothing more than a waste of money. So my mom, who was paying for the whole deal, managed to get a refund on my tickets based on my doctor's no-travel order. I feel bad enough that I had to back out without having cost my mom a good deal of money besides.

They're still going; I watch from a distance, and keep my puke bucket handy. In a strange way, the fact that I feel pretty bad makes me feel less disappointed. I would be more disappointed if I felt good but still couldn't go, if that makes any sense.

My mom and nephew are good travel company and I'll miss not going. But, it's not as though anyone made a conscious decision that led to this. I certainly never ordered Hodgkin's Disease from the a la carte menu, if you know what I mean.

Collection Illness

One of my worst weaknesses as a model-builder is my inability to stick to a single overall sort of collection. And a good symptom of that underlying illness is my habit of dreaming up mini-collections within larger collections. For example, the other day I was combating nausea by trying to recite (silently, of course) all of the major versions of the MiG-21 jet fighter and the distinguishing features thereof. This is actually pretty difficult, especially for Russian equipment. The Americans make things easy by using sequential letters. If you know the alphabet and know the least bit about, say, the F-105 Thunderchief, you know that the major versions are the F-105A, B, C, D, E and F. But the Russians? They don't use model letters in that way, or at least didn't, so with the MiG-21 you had versions like the F, PF, PFMA, MF, SMT and so forth.

Anyway, back to my point. I conceived in that moment of woozy nausea the idea of building a collection of MiG-21s, from the early MiG-21F up to the last MiG-21bis. And from that came other ideas, like "Hey, the Messerschmitt 109 exists in a whole bunch of versions too; why not build one of every one of them?" And having opened that floodgate, why not every version of the much-maligned and better-than-you-think-it-was P-40? And then, oh hell, why not Delta boosters, and Sherman tanks, and Fletcher-class destroyers?

Enough.

At least when the nausea lets up I'm lucid enough to realize this for the insanity that it is, and my scribbled MiG-21 collection notes slip into the trash can. But the collector can never be fully excised and he's still in there, cackling maniacally and waiting for the OEZ MiG-21 to be reissued...

The Worst

I think the worst part of chemo is that the side effects are never the same from one day to the next. Just when you think you've got the schedule worked out, it changes. As of last night, for example, I was doing pretty well and figured I'd have a few good days until my next chemo next week. But this morning I've gone totally to pot. Some new chunk of my colon has died, or so it feels like, and I'm intensely nauseated again. Intense. That's not too strong a word for it; I'm breaking a sweat from the effort of not throwing up. I'd let myself throw up if not for the fact that I'd lose the anti-nausea pill I just took; I hate to waste those things.

I'm such a joy to be around these days. I'm constantly sick and all I do is complain. I don't know if I can face four more months of this, frankly, but the thought of dying is even less palatable. So here I sit, sweaty and sick, about as socially appealing as a piece of burnt toast, caught between a rock and a hard place. Lovely.

Hoe-down Throw-down Big Damn Deal

We've been watching the Food Network a lot lately. I first turned on the Food Network for real in the dark days of mid-December, when I was first going into chemotherapy and had completely lost my appetite and was pretty much fixing to die. I figured that maybe I'd see something that would stimulate me to eat, and in any event is there any human activity that is as harmless and genuinely hopeful as cooking food? I may not like sea scallops or clams or whatnot, but the act of cooking itself is inherently cheerful, whether you're cooking burgers or Ho Chi Minh sandals.

There are certain shows on the Food Network that I really like. Anything Alton Brown does is liable to appeal to me. I enjoy his screwed-up sense of humor, his sense of play, and his intellectualism. Sometimes he is overly fussy and extreme, but rarely to the extent that it annoys me - if anything I'm usually awed to stunned silence by his extremism. I also like Ace of Cakes. It took me a few shows to come to grips with Duff, who at first struck me as a hirsute blowhard. And he is a hirsute blowhard, but a generally amusing and amiable one. And the cakes are amazing themselves. And I like the Neelys, who I suspect could fix a flat tire with a barbecue rub, and I never get tired of the way their pack of brothers always shows up in time to eat.

But there are Food Network shows that grate on me. Any kind of throwdown showdown challenge is usually lost on me, for the simple reason that cooking isn't a sport, let alone a spectator sport, and I find their attempts to whip up drama and pathos annoying. Poor Bobby Flay, every day is a throwdown challenge for him! That's so sad. Not. And while I don't have any specific complaint with Guy Fieri, I just see too much of him. It seems that every time I turn on the Food Network hoping to be amused by Alton Brown or the Cake Folk, I end up having to watch Guy Fieri eat in the kitchen of some greasy spoon somewhere. Is this the best we can do? Cadge for ratings by making Guy eat unhealthy food?

I'm blogging now, basically, because Ace of Cakes went off and now it's some Mega Super Duper Chocolate challenge, where people make replicas of famous sculptures out of chocolate. This doesn't amuse me, and it doesn't motivate my appetite, so it's really a loss as far as I'm concerned. Oh well. Time to go open a can of sliced peaches, one of the few food groups that never upsets my tender midsection.

Neulasta? Nay!

I'm not going to try to convince anyone to not take Neulasta if their doctor(s) recommend doing so. A low white blood cell count is no laughing matter, as it can lead to delays in one's chemo and even to illness and infection - perhaps even fatal ones. So don't misconstrue what I'm about to say as a rant against Neulasta.

I'm SO glad I didn't need Neulasta this time. My "numbers", as we Hodgkin's Folk sometimes refer to our blood cell counts, were good enough that my doctor elected to skip the Neulasta. Which means I got to skip the rather unpleasant ache in my bones, which means that other than my usual chemo illnesses, I feel pretty good. My digestive tract is even showing signs of starting to come back on-line today, though I personally wouldn't hold my breath - I've been down this path before.

One thing I really do hate about the Hodgkin's/chemo combination is the way it completely takes over your life. All I talk about is lymphoma and chemo. What about all the other things that interest me? All the other things that I think are funny or weird or strange? Nope, got no time for weird; we've got chemo to deal with.

Oh, but I finally did get my tractor tire fixed today. I cut up a 4X6 to make cribbing for the jack from our F-150 truck, which lifted the tractor just fine. S&S Tires in Surprise fixed it for something like $14, which as far as I'm concerned is just dandy. Now the tractor's sitting on four good tires again, and I can actually do stuff. I'm not sure what just yet, but surely there's "stuff" that needs doing.

This is the first real productive outdoors handyman thing I've done since my diagnosis and it feels good to roll in the dirt, grunt on the end of a lug wrench, and actually do something.

Now, where did I leave my Percocets again??

One Good Thing

The one good thing about Chemo Wednesday is that I can wake up more or less on my own schedule. It's virtually a day off from that point of view - if I want a cup of coffee the previous evening, I can have one. If I want to lie in bed for a while and play connect-the-dots with the imperfections in the ceiling, I can. It's not like a workday, where it seems that I'm already behind schedule no matter how early I wake up.

I'm starting to think of chemo as a huge Wheel of Fortune kind of thing. Every time I have chemo, I spin the Big Wheel of Side Effects. I've already had nausea, no end of digestive complaints, bright red urine, hair loss, that peculiar "chemo smell", the odd taste in my mouth, drooling, and what I suspect is neuralgia in my lower legs. What's next on the Big Wheel? I hope it's "boss sound effects". I think chemo would be a lot more fun if it made the world sound like it was connected to a wah-wah pedal, or if it made everyone sound like Ozzy Osbourne, or if the music of the spheres suddenly got all grindy Bill Steer-style.

But no, I'll probably get something repulsive or at least highly inconvenient, like suddenly growing neon red nasal hair six feet long.

A Loop

I thought I had a handle on the timing and nature of chemotherapy side effects, and clearly I was deluded. I've come to expect the worst in the four days immediately after chemo, but all of a sudden I'm having the worst four days BEFORE chemo. That's an odd thing and it throws me for a bit of a loop. Mind you, these effects aren't that bad, but I confess, I'm growing just a tad weary of and depressed by all this illness. Yeah, yeah, it beats dying of cancer and all, but you try yorking into a trash can at work for five minutes straight and pretend that it's all good.

On a lighter note, I suddenly became interested in the so-called Winter War, when the Soviet Union invaded Finland in November 1939. The Finns put up a hugely spirited defense and inflicted horrendous casualties on the Soviet Army, whose mismanagement might have been called comical if it didn't involve so many useless deaths. The Finns were eventually exhausted by superior Russian numbers and, ammunition expended, were forced to accept a Russian diktat at what amounts to bayonet point, but to the end the Finns were never really beaten.

I don't know how my sudden interest in Finnish history came about, but it did. And I suddenly recalled that I had a model of an early Bristol Blenheim light bomber in my collection, the rivet-heavy Airfix one, and my memory was that it had Finnish and British markings. So I started the search for the Blenheim, looking high and low and sorting through heaps of dusty model boxes in the garage, getting ever filthier and almost convincing myself that if I was going to traipse around in such a favorable environment for Black Widow spiders I should at least wear shoes. But eventually I found the kit and - alas! Free French markings, not Finnish. Nothing against the Free French, mind you, but I was really looking forward to Finnish markings.

Not that it matters. Tonight I have to go to my mom's house so I won't be working on models anyway. It's a regular extended-family get-together at mom's. I'm not sure how many people will be involved - judging from the noise level, it could easily be three or four hundred people, but I doubt it's actually more than twenty. So even if I had a Finnish Blenheim, would it do me any good?

Nope. I'd probably just throw up on it anyway.

Heard it on the X

I was duly working away today when someone at work asked me if I'd received my card, or my money. "What card," I asked. "What money?" It turns out that the guys at work bought me a card and raised some money to buy me a gift while I was out undergoing the early stages of chemotherapy.

That was awfully thoughtful of them - but I have to ask, where's the card, and where's the money? Am I correct in surmising that they changed their minds and bought a couple of pitchers of margaritas instead? Looks like it! And the ones that weren't in on the pitchers of margaritas are probably thinking "Gee whiz, that ungrateful bastard didn't even say thank you!"

Well, I appreciate the thought, and besides, I can't have a margarita anyway. Red wine, yes. Margarita, no. The Good Doctor sets his watch and warrants on it.

Cardinalismus

The Cardinals are playing in the Super Bowl right now, and hometown patriotism insists that I watch, but I can't bear to. It has nothing to do with the Cardinals, or the Super Bowl, or this alleged "imposter syndrome" that Steeler fans insist that I should suffer from. Mostly it's because I am so intensely nauseated that watching anything that moves makes my guts roil and makes my lunch rise. It's awful. I was outside a little while ago, ostensibly searching for a tube of white glue but really just being somewhere where nothing moved, and I happened to watch a bird fly past. Just this head movement alone was enough to make me so dizzy I thought I was going to fall down.

So I came back inside and took my yeller anti-nausea pill. I think it's actually an anti-spasmodic, given to people who are prone to seizures. I like to think of it as an anti-schismatic, meaning that it'll help prevent you from forming anti-Popes and prevent you from setting up rival religious structures in Avignon. And in the process, it's not bad for nausea either.

And no, I'm not nearly as funny as I think I am.

So, Cardinals, you're on your own for now, because I can't watch TV. There are times, and this is one of them, when I get really sick of chemo. I know it's saving my life and all and I'm not ungrateful, but damn I wish I didn't always feel like an episode of some lame soap opera entitled On The Edge Of Vomit.

This Is Your Brain On Chemo

This is your brain on chemo. Well, technically, my brain on chemo. Note the general air of seediness and disrepair about my person. Note the hairline, which is racing up and over the top of my head and heading for the back of my neck with great speed. Note the complete absence of large swollen tumors on the side of my neck which made me look a bit like someone with a bunch of tennis balls stuck in his throat. Note the dull look in my eye, which typically sets in about halfway through the Big Fun Bag of dacarbazine. Not so visible are the increasingly pronounced cheekbones and chin that serve to highlight the fact that I've lost roughly 50 pounds since this rodeo started back in December. Oh, and my moustache is falling out too, just not as quickly as my increasingly wispy and insubstantial hair. And here's a curio: I haven't shaved in a week, yet I show no particular sign of stubble. Chemo is wild stuff.

Chemo happens. But not without difficulty, some of it caused by the blood cell counting machine at the oncology clinic, and some of it caused by getting authorization from the new insurance company to proceed. Once you add white blood cell boosters to chemo, it gets pretty dang expensive, and insurance becomes not just a good idea but an actual necessity. For a time it looked like it chemo wasn't going to happen at all, but Jean and the insurance billing coordinator at the clinic managed to get through to the right people in India (the insurance provider apparently outsourced its call center to India) who then approved of everything.

I guess the short story is that thanks to Jean and the insurance coordinator, everything got worked out, and my oncologist figured it was safe to proceed without a CBC so long as they dosed me with Neulasta again. My bones hurt already, a dull and apparently meaningless ache that Tylenol never seems to touch. I'm tired, but the ache in my legs and pelvis make it difficult for me to sleep. A fresh refill of pain pills later this evening should bring blessed albeit somewhat sweaty relief. Anyone got any idea why Percocet makes me sweat?

Better?

I guess it's a sign that you're getting better when small annoyances start to become noticeable again. For a long time most things didn't bother me at all. I simply felt too bad for the ordinary run of minor irritations to even register on me. There were a couple of weeks when I probably could have lopped off a foot with a Sawzall and not even noticed.

But not any more - little things are starting to bug me. Like this morning, when I walked outside to go to work and went down to the barn area where my wife was. I was standing there, minding my own business, when my coffee cup emitted a sad little tink sound and fell off the handle. The handle stayed in my hand, and the cup fell and landed on my left foot.

That's a bummer. A waste of a coffee cup, but even worse, a waste of a perfectly good cup of coffee, now steaming on the ground like deep-seated regret.

I've thought about this, and not surprisingly I've come up with a theory. On the one hand, one has a cup of hot coffee. On the other hand, one has the handle of the cup exposed to reasonably cold air. There was ice on my car, so it was in the vicinity of freezing. I think these temperature extremes caused uneven patterns of expansion and contraction in the ceramic cup that eventually caused the handle to shear off.

Or maybe it was just a crappily-made cup with a built-in manufacturing defect; who knows? But it's a banner day when a broken coffee cup becomes the worst thing that happens to you in any given day!

These 32-Hour Weeks Are Killing Me!

Well, I've reached the end of my first week of work after chemo. It was pretty gruelling, I have to say, but it got a little better with each passing day. Monday was dreadful, Tuesday was kind of dreadful, Wednesday was merely difficult, and today was only interminable. Tomorrow is a normal day off where I work. I was thinking about working tomorrow just to accumulate some hours, but I think I've changed my mind. Though I'm stronger and fitter now than I was at the start of the week, I also think it's important to rest and not overdo things.

I'm continuing to improve. My leg is lots better than it was. It isn't quite back to normal, but it won't be long, and I find that I can do just about anything I need to without too much difficulty. If I have to get out of a chair many times in a row my leg starts to tire out, but things like driving, walking and getting dressed don't bother it any more. My oncologist is quite pleased with the swiftness of my body's response to chemotherapy, and believe me, it doesn't delight anyone more than me.

My only complaint (for today) is that I've developed a few sores in my mouth, which can happen. Compared to what I've been through in the last month or so they hardly qualify as uncomfortable, but they do make it difficult to eat tortilla chips, Cap'n Crunch cereal or certain species of hard candy (I really love those Valentine's Day hearts made by Necco, the ones with the little slogans like "Do me!" (not really) stamped on them, but they seem to drive my mouth sores nuts. They may be why I have mouth sores in the first place).

Today I feel almost normal, for the first time in months. My leg is almost normal. I have almost no chemo side-effects going on. My tumors are all shrunken to the point that they don't impact my daily activities. I feel... normal. And it's good.

So normal that I'm strongly inclined to work on a model. This isn't a particularly world-shaking announcement in the greater scheme of things, but it's a pretty powerful indicator of how good I feel, because I always seem to give up model-building the minute I start to feel bad. My main difficulty now is that I have about eleven different models in various stages of construction and I can't decide which one(s) I should make progress on. Should it be the S7-class torpedo boat? Or the Wells-Fargo stagecoach with four-horse team? Or the SA-2 antiaircraft missile?

It's good to finally have to confront a nice inconsequential problem like what model I want to work on. Personally, I'm sick of confronting much more serious problems, and I'm sure everyone else is too.

Back To Yon Grind

I went back to work today after a month off, half of which was an alleged "vacation" (try to convince yourself that it's a vacation when you've been diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma and you're waiting for chemo to start) and half of which was just me feeling too awful to work.

Work went okay, by and large. I started to get a little over-tired in the afternoon so I left early, fearing that if I stayed much longer I'd run the risk of falling asleep in the car on the way home. And by then my leg was heartily sick of standing up and sitting down. But it didn't go badly, all things considered. Other than being tired in general and my leg finally giving out, I didn't feel too bad, though I had to deal with a million and one interruptions from A) my adoring fans, and B) people who didn't even realize I had been out of work. Yes, both groups exist.

The fun part was sanitizing my cubicle and phone because of my low white blood cell count. How often do you get to play with Lysol disinfectant wipes at work? Not nearly enough, I aver.

Tomorrow's another day. Given a decent night's sleep tonight, I should be able to make the full nine and a half hours. I don't see why not. I just wish I could figure out why the Ambien the doctor gave me don't work worth beans. I swear they make me nervous instead of putting me to sleep, so maybe I'm better off with warm milk or a half a fifth of spiced rum...

Successful

I was successfully chemotherapied today. Is that a word? My blood counts were acceptable, though my white blood cell count was deteriorating and they saw fit to give me an injection of Neulasta to increase my body's production of... can I remember? Neutrophils? I think that's right. My legs seem to ache just a bit, something that I attribute to the Neulasta because I haven't had that particular sort of pain before. My red blood cell count is also slightly low, but it was slightly low before I even started chemotherapy - there is a family history of anemia in the men in my family, and apparently I did not escape that bequest of the past, though I'm sure my lack of appetite lately has something to do with the anemia as well.

But all in all, it was a pretty positive trip to the oncology clinic. The bone marrow biopsy suggests that I have no involvement in my bone marrow, though they can't be entirely definitive because they only got a partial sample when they did the original biopsy. They want two sorts of tissue to test. First, they suck (or "aspirate") a small volume of frothy red marrow out of the bone, and then they want a little core sample of bone material itself. In my case they got the aspirate with no problem, but my hip bone was so hard the core sample portion wouldn't come loose and stayed in the bone. So, technically, without both samples to test, they can't say my bone marrow is clear, but the aspirate tested negative, which is a jolly good sign anyway. It means I'll have to have another bone marrow biopsy in roughly five months, which is about as welcome a thought as digging up the septic tank, but it does tend to rule out the possibility that I'll ever have to have a bone marrow transplant.

The oncologist was also pleased with the speed with which my nodes were responding to treatment. I used to have a big icky thing under my chin, but it is now almost entirely gone. I can hardly tell it's there, and if you didn't know what you were feeling for, you'd probably miss it entirely. The nodes in my neck and behind my ear are definitely shrinking (some faster than others, notably the ones on my left side, which are at this point practically gone) and my left leg continues to improve as the deep nodes in my groin shrink. The sensation of strange surface numbness and hypersensitivity (what an odd contrast in symptoms) has largely vanished. I'm not ready to start full-scale rehab on my leg, which is weak as a collection of wet linguini at this point, but I can definitely walk, drive and work, and that's enough for now. A certain amount of rehab will happen by default as I walk and do things.

I myself am pleased that the chemo didn't really knock me on my keester today. I get four drugs: DTIC, bleomycin, vinblastine, and Adriamycin. The DTIC (also known as dacarbazine) comes in a fair-sized plastic bag that takes about an hour to empty into my port. Both times now, I've suddenly felt myself get old, tired and slow about three quarters of the way through the original blast of DTIC. It feels a great deal like suddenly realizing that you're coming down with a cold - you become aware that your limbs are suddenly heavy, you're suddenly very tired, and you really want nothing more than to lie back and sleep (to the detriment of those who sit through chemo with you, as it makes them think that they are uninteresting). But other than that one attack of the DTIC Malaise, I didn't feel too bad, and I only slept for an hour or two after I got home, after which I felt pretty good, all things considered.

So I feel pretty good tonight. No nausea, a sense that I'm making progress, a sense that my body and chemotherapy are going to win the war against cancer, and the realization that I'll be ready to go back to work on Monday - that's comforting, all of it.

CBCs

Today I go in for another dose of chemotherapy - if, that is, my blood cell counts are good enough to qualify me for the championship round. I didn't realize they could count blood cells that quickly; I only had it drawn yesterday and they'll know today if I'm robust enough for treatment. What I find amusing is the notion that it is somehow my fault that my white blood cell count is too low, as though I've been somehow slacking. Yeah, you got me, I was deliberately not making enough white blood cells...

I'm pleased to say, though, that most of my chemo symptoms are gone. The pain is all gone, or at least nothing that a few Tylenol can't deal with, so I've weaned myself off the Percocet entirely. This is good news. My leg continues to improve. The swollen thing under my chin continues to recede. So viewed from that perspective, my treatment has been a whopping great success thus far.

I just wish I wasn't STILL nauseated. It usually sets in around noon and it stays with me all day. It isn't always intense, though sometimes it can send me scuttling to the bathroom where I gag and retch uselessly for a few minutes. But it's always there, always, and it serves to depress my appetite, which I'm sure has something to do with potentially low blood cell counts.

My appetite is a funny thing. Certain foods appeal to me, like tomatoes, grapes, canned peaches, lean beef, soup, salad, cheese and, curiously enough, tacos. Other foods gag me with a spoon, like sausage, bacon, anything with gravy, fried chicken, anything with a cream sauce and pork. The idea of a full cup of coffee makes me retch; the idea of a half a cup of coffee appeals to me. A banana makes me uneasy; canned peaches sound infinitely comforting.

Well, we'll see what the blood cell count stakes have in store for me. I'd just as soon get the chemotherapy over and done with without any postponements or rain delays, but I'm not in charge, am I? Time to go drink apple juice and try not think about my stomach.

Chemo

It's been a while since my last post, mostly because I've felt like crap. Let me count the ways!

Nausea. Yes, there's been some nausea, but it hasn't been too bad. It started for real about two days after the chemo treatment, and lasted for maybe three or four days in declining potency. I only threw up a few times in total, but I spent a few days thinking I was going to throw up. Still, the yellow pills provided seemed to help, and I can't say that nausea was ever much of a problem.

Chemo Pain. Yes, there was a lot of that. The chemotherapy stopped my digestive tract dead in its tracts. I don't want to dwell on this in any detail, for the details are horrid, but suffice it to say that about a week after my chemo treatment I developed a most painful sort of intestinal impaction. Heavy use of laxatives finally brought relief to this problem, but only after a few days of significant pain.

Cancer Pain. Once the chemo pain let up, it was time for the cancer pain to start up again, that horrid pain in my side, lower back, hip and leg that I had just before my first chemo treatment. The treatment for this pain is more chemo, which happens on Wednesday, but for now I can do nothing about this pain save take lots of pills and scowl a lot.

Right now I don't feel too bad, but that's mostly because I've beaten the pain back with four Tylenol and the trailing edge of a Percocet. I decided to post a brief update while I felt halfway decent, because halfway-decent states don't last long.

So, what have we learned? Mainly, that one neglects the digestive tract at one's own peril. And that lymphoma sucks. But Wednesday I'll get a fresh dose, and I fully expect for things to get better. We now know what to expect and how to treat the digestive issues, and I think the chemo will help with the cancer pain. So my main strategy at this point is to stick it out till Wednesday.

Mix Muddle

I got up this morning and found myself once again blessedly without a pain. Well, that's not quite right. I had a mild headache, which demonstrates that my pain receptors and processors are working, but that there is simply no real pain input from my body. It's still too soon to celebrate, but can I be permitted a moment of hopefulness that the chemotherapy has done something good for me?

So I thought this being New Year's Day and all, I'd listen to "New Year's Day" from U2. Normally I'm not a huge fan of U2, though in the sense of "I don't listen to much of their stuff" rather than "I can't stand the poser bastards." Once you become roaming ambassadors to the United Nations and are presumably powerful enough you've gained the Sinatra-like power to have anyone silenced with a mere telephone call, you are sufficiently elevated above the hoi polloi that their cries of "Poser knuckleheads!" or "fruity artistic blowhards!" are meaningless.

But I do like "New Year's Day", a song I've never evaluated in terms of lyrics, but I do like the way it sounds. Or sounded. Because in the world of iTunes, odd things have happened to this song. There are about ten different mixes, and none of them sound like the one I'm used to. They bear relatively unhelpful labels like "War remix" and "Kevorkian Remix", neither of which sound aupicious to me, and when sampled, none of them sound right. All of them seem to have screwed with Edge's guitar work on the side. They all have the evocative piano doodle and the bass track, but why must they always step on Edge and squash his guitar like a stinkbug? In some, it's gone entirely; on others its been made mushy and indistinct. And unless I'm greatly mistaken, none of them are an improvement.

Maybe that's the curse of being successful. You find yourself having to remix your existing music to suit a variety of powerful but niche audiences, and you find yourself with enough money and spare time that all that remixing becomes fiscally rewarding, or at least painless. This leaves your casual fans scratching their heads and saying "How come I can't find the radio version of New Year's Day on iTunes?" But since I'm not liable to sink more than 99 cents into U2 over my lifetime anyway, maybe I'm a market segment that can be safety ignored.

But it does make you (me, anyway) wonder if one of the reasons death and black metal tends not to be remixed is because black and death metal bands never have enough time and money to screw with the existing oeurve. One imagines the conversation taking place in the Bunker-like confines of the basement beneath the Norwegian Mother Record Store:

"Dude, we should remix the song Funeral Fog."
"What?"
"We should remix Funeral Fog. Pop it up a little, maybe get some play on AOR stations."
"We're going to have to pawn your boots for food money as it is; how do you propose we buy the studio time to remix anything?"
"I could sell a kidney..."

So what I'm saying is that I've bought two various mixes of "New Year's Day" and neither of them is the version I'm used to, so I'm calling this U2 expedition off before it turns crazy.

But, for whatever it's worth coming from my U2-impaired world, Happy New Year!

A Trip to the Oncology Clinic

I had my first chemo treatment this morning.

You show up and sign in, and then you're encouraged to sit wherever you want. There is a large open room with about 25 black leather recliners arranged in it, each one with its own IV stand and portable cabinet of sharp stuff. You can bring in whatever you feel like - blanket, food, book, iPod - but this time I mostly read what they gave me, a set of extremely ominous articles about the drugs in question (one of them, did you know, is chemically related to mustard gas? Two of them were classed as "irritants" and the other two were classed as "vesicants", AKA "blister agents", and all were said to cause gross damage if they got out of the vein...

But not to worry, I guess; it's just more of the boilerplate. They hook up the IV to the port and flush it out with a snog of saline, then they run a little bag of some anti-nausea drug and some steroid that's apparently helpful in a general way. Then comes the first chemo drug, a large bag of toxicity that takes about an hour to run. After that comes another bag of saline, then they push two small syringes of two additional chemo drugs in. Then comes a large syringe of some red fluid; it's plenty toxic and they actually time how long they take to push it in; too fast and it can get nasty.

Then there's more saline, a final hosing-out of the port with heparin, and you're free to go. Total elapsed time, about two hours, not even enough to nibble my caramel popcorn.

I didn't feel a thing the whole time I was there. I didn't know what to expect. Immediate retching? Burning heat in my veins? A sudden desire to belt out songs from Oklahoma!? But really, I didn't feel anything at all. Side-effect-wise, the worst thing was having the tape ripped off my chest when the IV came out.

I went home and took a rather long nap, and when I awakened, I felt for all the world like someone was sitting on me. Someone fairly big and heavy too, Magnus ver Magnussen or someone of that sort. The sensation was very much like waking up and realizing that one has come down with something without knowing what it was. I felt heavy, slow, lethargic and drained, and since that's how I've felt for the last month, well, it's hard to say that I felt any worse.

Now, about 12 hours after the chemo, I detect the first leading edge of nausea. I was watching LSU destroy Georgia Tech in the Whatever-It-Was Bowl (I'm bad at remembering bowl names) when something somehow made me very queasy, and it was obvious that the TV was making it a lot worse. So I downed a nausea pill and got the hell away from the TV, and thus far my nausea is tolerable. I don't think I'll be eating anything for a while though...

Now here's the interesting observation. By far the most bothersome symptom I've had, far and away worse than just "feeling bad", was the agonizing pain my left lower back, left groin, left hip and left groin (left kidney to left knee, roughly). It was for this pain that I was taking Percocet about as fast as the instructions permitted, and it was this pain that made me think "Oh my God, how am I ever going to go back to work? This is impossible! This is going to require either a medical leave or unprecedented quantities of painkillers, and neither one is really good!"

But for whatever reason, that pain is gone. Not reduced, but gone. Did the steroid tamp down some inflammatory process associated with the tumors? Are the tumors themselves shrinking, or "debulking", as they apparently like to say? I don't know. All I do know is that if this is really a lasting consequence of chemotherapy, I'm going to have to put chemotherapy down in my book as a legitimate medical miracle no matter how fiddlesome the process is.

That's the news on this, the last day of the year.

Time to end this year and move on to a new one unfreighted by bad omens, bad luck and bad karma. And what more fitting way to do that than to have the year go out kicking and screaming in my first chemo treatment?

I don't know what to expect. I will be under the drip for roughly three hours. They suggested that I bring a blanket, a book and something to eat. Imagine that! A medical procedure so long you have to pack a lunch! I don't think they really intend for me to bring lunch, necessarily. A few crackers or something. But still, nobody said I couldn't bring a picnic basket with fried chicken and cole slaw, did they? They also said that when (not "if") the nausea started, they would supply me with drugs to control the vomiting. With that in mind, a fried chicken picnic basket maybe isn't the best idea in the world. Maybe just an apricot or something.

Anyway, it sounds like I'll be under the drip for three hours, and from roughly the halfway point on will start to "feel tired". I interpret this to mean that from the halfway point, the chemo drugs are going to work me like an Army mule. Is the blanket for warmth, or to dampen the sobbing and whimpering? :)

Actually, I think the blanket is mostly to mop off my corpus. These lymphoma sweats are truly impressive things and the odds are that if I'm there for three hours, I'm going to have one, and I'll need the blanket so I can exploit its large-scale absorbency and thus (hopefully) not look like I just crawled out of the pool.

Maybe I should take nothing but an apricot, a bucket, my iPod, and a Sham-Wow. Write down another use for that thing!