Chemo III - big bit done

Chemo went well yesterday

No vomitting! Yeah!

Pretty quick too, which was a relief as the i-pod REALLY needs updating with something a little more contemporary than 'Cyndi Lauper sings her old songs in a different key'... or whatever thealbum is called. Sometimes I just have to pinch myself to remind myself that the world already has one Nathan Lane - and that's one too many.

Drilled all about my cough - they were very doctorly.

My lungs are clear, I'm taking in more air, I haven't developed any classic lymphoma systems and I'm tolerating treatment well which means there are three possible causes for the 'Return Of The Cough'

1) Most likely. I have a cold

2) Quite Likely. It's a reaction to the chemo drugs (a cough is a common side effect)

3) Unlikely but possible. I'm not responding to the treatment, the tumor is growing again, I'm screwed


Option THREE will be discounted or proved after my PET and CAT scans (about then days from now, so results in about two weeks)

After months of optimism I'm firmly in camp three - necessitating new (unproven and dangerous) treatment (possibly given in a bubble for extra drama), an against the odds cure and juice for the narrative of the film sure to follow.

It's the classic Don Simpson 'Top Gun' structure; you need to have hopelessness in the second real so that you can have triumph in the third - that's why Goose died.

Anyway coffee done, Jude up and as I have no signn of nausea (yet)) I'm about to eat more than any man should. Pancakes, hmmm.


Steve

handbags at dusk

Feeling just a tad shirty today. The reason? Work, mainly.

Spent the week dragging my cancer infested carcass across town, on public transport, to the asbestos filled building site that doubles as my office- all in a bid to help come up with some answers for an important upcoming meeting.

This regime saw me manage to catch a cold, start coughing again and generally exhaust myself - but we got to a good place. I wrote up all my thoughts, quite nicely I thought and then reminded people that I have chemo Friday and Monday – so I wouldn’t be working the weekend or available before the Tuesday am meeting. Tuesday am would be tough but I agreed to drag my recently poisoned self there, downing steroids and anti-nausea pills as I went.

Of course nobody heard the last bit. Today has been a barrage of ‘you have to come in’ calls. Of coercing, pleading and emotional blackmail.

‘Hey’, they said, ‘why not come in at 6pm and we can work late?’

‘Because’ said I ‘There’s a very real danger that my dragging myself in through a snow storm, to work late, the day before chemo, might just kill me.’

‘You’ll be fine. We need you here. You said you didn’t feel THAT sick. If this goes well you’ll be able to take some time off, it’ll all be agreed’

‘F*ck right off.’

‘5pm?’

I really do think that if I do end up in the 50% of people who are killed by this disease there will be a move from my account management team to have my headstone wired for broadband – just in case they need help with PowerPoint charts.

$5493.01

That's what it costs for a single shot of Rituxin here.

Yep the first chemo bill came in and a single shot of the R in Chop-R costs close to $5500.

If I get that back against my taxes today I shall turn loop de loop and cartwheel through Union Square.

Thank god for insurance, huh? It 'only' cost me $550.

Still full of cold here, nose dripping onto the dog as I type. But a cold I can cope with.

Mail this week brought novelty wigs, sideburns, moustaches, fake glasses, lollipops and a bag of toffees (!) from my cousin Janet who is almost as mad as she is loud.

Wigs for the NY winter cold, lollipops for a Kojak impression should it turn warm, toffees because she thinks I can afford American denistry.

It is tax day today. That means heading into a tax preparation office, whipping out your pay stubs and answering lots of detailed questions within the hearing of 20 strangers - all of whom you have to think have the wherewithall to commit identity theft (I know I have, I lived as Liza Minelli for two years in the early 80s). Franky I hate sitting in H&R block having people tut at my lack of 401k and sigh at my lack of write-offable receipts., but to date they've handed me a cheque at the end of the inquisition and I've been happy.

Hoping to get a refund big enough to pay the hospital bills so I can get back to looking at mad (if unresponsive) Frenchmen on Caribbean isles

What are people expecting?

Was visited by a couple of old friends this weekend. They seemed surprised, perhaps disappointed, that I wasn't more fragile. Of course I don't feel fragile at all - the cough that started late last week persists but the lungs are clear and I'm coughing up nothing and the days of crawling to the bathroom to, quite literally, puke up bits of my guts are (I hope) way behind me.

So when asked these days

'How are you coping?'

I usually say

'With tremendous elan'

And people know to leave it be.

That's not to say that the whole thing is worry free, as I said I'm so suspicious of this cough I could be a hypocondriac Hettie Wainthrop but generally life goes on, the dog demands walking, the bills require paying and the clients - whilst sympathetic - demand the same value for their monies.

The truth is it's a bit like having a cold - but being told to watch for signs of bird flu. Your antennae is up but you just keep trucking along.

We hit Chemo Three (the halfway point) this week; a couple of weeks later it's scan time and we'll have an indictation of how I'm responding; and to what to expect post Chemo 6. The likelihood is radiation therapy, I had a big mass and standard procedure is to radiate, but who knows? It could be good news and May 5th sees me done with treatment or bad news and 2006 sees the world done with me. Such, as they say, is life.

Anyway enough early morning musing from me, I've breakfast to eat, a dog to walk and a wife to pack off to Albany.

Later

Mental Death Spiral

So having been at work all week I woke up on Friday REALLY late for something important. Naturally I reacted as any half awake drama queen might and flew around the bedroom grabbing clothes, swearing and generally enjoying the melee.

Five minutes later I fly out the of the front door and start on the three blocks to the subway station. And I cough. Then I cough again.

Immediately my mind turns to images of rapidly growing tumors, failed chemo, stem cell transplantation, a tragic end and a park bench with my name (and bird shit) on it.


Of course the cough gets no worse, my nose starts to run and I realize that I have a bit of a cold; a result no doubt that week at work - but I hope that this isn't a glimpse of the ghost of Xmas future - every minor ailment a mental crisis... 'cause I REALLY don't want to be that person