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

Today's review

Amusing myself by writing film reviews; here's how today's started

"The Pink Panther, a movie delayed more times than a Tantric orgasm, finally hit the screens this week. And like a Tantric orgasm it made more of a splash than anyone was expecting"

I do amuse myself... just as well really

Red cells, white cells, platelette count all a-okay

Nausea a thing of the past

Fighting fit and raring to go here

DOLLYWOOD!

When Quokkaboy (I have no idea what it means and am afraid to ask - he's British) suggested that I head to Dollywood for a vacation he knew that I'd take him seriously.

I know that there will be bits of it that remind me that cousins shouldn't be forced to work in close proximity generation after generation and that there will be bits so sugar-coated it will be like being force fed donuts for a weekend - but ultimately the idea of visiting Dolly Parton's themepark is something that I can't resist.

And I will be visiting without tongue in cheek, eyebrows raised and with cynicism unplugged. I'll be there as a genuine visitor hoping to soak in some old style goodwill rather than there to gather some 'Dolly's second cousin is SO too fat for sequins' stories.

Don't ask me why I make an exception for Dolly - but I do and I will

So the job now is to convince Jude that a Xmas spent at Dolly's Tennesee Mountain Home (TM) would be an exercise in warmth, good heartedness and uncommercial Xmas spirit and not an exercise in my indulging in high camp at the expense of the people there for the spiced apple cider, acoustic singing and simplicity of it all.

The good thing is that I'm thinking about vacations in August and Xmas plans... two months ago I was thinking about whether I had the energy to make the bathroom or whether I should vomit into my dressing gown (bathrobe) pocket - again.

Blood work today - all was good again - now have 10 days to chill, feel good, visit friends and get ready for Chemo III (milking the formula)

Peace Out - as they still say in some quarters

Villa au hostellerie?

To (mis)quote Julian Clary 'Im strangely torn"...

Actually that would have been rather a fabulous quote from the man exiled from British TV for having claimed to have Fisted Norman LaMont (Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time) but already I'm off point.

So friends, family, casual viewers and disappointed Googlers (if you searched for 'fisting' or for 'Norman LaMont' I very much doubt you intended to end up here... try google images) here's the quandary.

We've settled on a vacation island - St. Barts.

It's famous for very little other than being the place where celebs get snapped naked in their villas (think JFK jr, Brad, Gwyneth etc.) but that-s what we want - not naked pics in OK magazine but beaches, sun and a break from the norm.

Our dilemma is this.

Do we rent the fabulous villa and spend our time sipping supermarket wine and badly mixed cocktails by the pool, pausing only to raise a towel above waist level when the maid service arrives

OR

Do we head for Hostellerie Des Trois Forces - a holistic hotel, run by a French astrologer with a penchant for the Buddhist. He sounds mad, his food sounds wonderful and the place is described as either 'basic but spotlessly clean' 'unlike anywhere else on earth' or as 'that dump with the junk yard car park and the mad old French guy.'

I'm thinking Hostellerie Des Trois Forces - a little yoga, some massage, some meditation, lunch by the pool, a great wine list and conversation with the Gerard Depardu meets Hermes owner. It's leaping out at me in a way that I seem powerless to resist.

But then you're my friends. It's your job to help me resist things that leap out at me, rendering me powerless if they look like a bad idea. The COMMENTS section is now open to all - you don't need to be a member of Blogger so feel free to weigh in on the matter... but hurry I feel my credit card burning a bigger whole on my wallet than the chemo is in my chest.

As filler to this and to prove that I still have half a brain I wrote my best intro to a film review since I said of Sahara

'Rarely has a movie been as aptly named as Sahara - an arid film, devoid of any real distinguishing features
that seems to go on forever'

This time I amused myself (if no-one else) with this opener to a review of hideous potboiler 'Firewall'

There are some people (of whom I'll admit to be one) who will see 'Firewall' as further evidence that Harrison Ford is coasting on autopilot toward an Indiana Jones IV payday that will keep Calista Flockhart in SlimFast for decades to come.

The plot of Indie 4 ' tentatively titled 'Indiana Jones - your grandfather's front room' has Harrison - now older than time - rediscovering an old box from his childhood, realizing through the medicare haze that it is the arc of the covenant and subsequently taking it down to a local filming of the Antiques Roadshow... just for insurance value purposes.

It's a surefire winner - and more tightly plotted than the Potboiler by numbers 'Firewall'

As I said it amused me


But enough of my old wank - blood tests then WORK tomorrow - yeh!

Fat Virgin

Have been whiling away the long weekend (it's president's day) looking at Villas in the Carribbean. We're planning on taking some kind of vacation once treatment is over and of course therein lies the rub. We don't know when / if treatment will be over.

Chemo should be finished in May. It's then quite likely that I'll do radiotherapy too. That could be anything from 6 to 12 weeks. Of course there's then a 50% chance that I'll be in full remisssion (can't clam 'cured' for 5 years as 80% of people relapse). If the flip of the coin doesn't go my way we start to look at weird and wonderful new treatments - like stem cell transplantation - which can take another couple of months (locked in a room)

All of this needs to be balanced with the fact that it's been a tough year, it's sub zero outside, Jude's been working 100 hr weeks and we're running on fumes. We need a break - and I think that we'll take one at the beginning of August.

The brief - warm, clean, close and absolutely no cruise ships. Having stayed in Nassau I have come to detest both the floating pollution chambers that are the ships themselves and the badge wearing locusts that disembark from them - devouring all tourist tat in their wake and believing that a country's culture can be found within a half mile of its Duty Free shops. These are the people who take their homes with them and believe that they've travelled the world; and they fill me with more hate and resentment than is healthy for a man who owns as many Buddhist books as I.

So we've discounted St. Martins and all of the US Virgin Islands and are now looking at the British Virgin Islands generally and Virgin Gorda (the fat virgin) in particular. A villa will give us some privacy and autonomy, our own pool and a saving over a hotel and might even mean that we can invite a couple of friends to join us. I miss taking a bunch of people to a sunny paradise island for the weekend.

To that end I'm also looking at Necker. 26 of us could take over an entire island for about US$1000 each. Staff ratio is 1:1, we'd have our meals cooked, our own boat and helicopter transfers to wherever we want. But do I have 26 friends? I guess when it's a cheap private island jaunt on the line I could find them.

Anyway the question - do I say 'screw it' and book for August or do I play sensible and wait and see how the chemo goes before doing anything? Decisions.

An aside... whatever I do, I won't be getting travel insurance. Cancer ridden chemo patients booking months in advance are a pretty high risk of no show apparently - who'd have thought?

Fiddler on the roof

It’s been a while since I posted anything on here. The reason? I’ve been feeling crappy. I’m not sure whether I caught Jude’s stomach flu or whether Chemo II (the revenge) wrought some revenge for the ease of Chemo I but it’s been a couple of days of nausea, knackeredness and the weak sipping of yoghurt based beverages.

Still all now seems fine as I sail I into the coldest weekend of the year bright eyed, bushy tailed and ready for the Barney’s Warehouse sale. Of course I still have clothes from 2 years ago that are still too tight for me – trousers that create the dreaded ‘muffin top’ effect around my hips but I’m telling myself that I’ve lost SOME weight and that new clothes and good health are conceptual bedfellows.

My ability to spend of course has been hampered somewhat by the medical bills that come in daily – another $700 demanded for some random treatment yesterday – and the fear of what my co-pay per chemo session will be (I still haven’t seen a bill). I’m reckoning that I have to be close to my deductibles (the amount I have to pay before insurance kicks in) but that’s complicated by treatments that started in December. You see deductibles run the calendar year – so I have $2000 for 2005 and $2000 for 2006. What this means is that I end up paying $4000 for treatment rather than the $2k it would have cost had I gotten sick in say Feb and had all of the hospital care in a single calendar year.

Handy hint – get sick at the start of the year

Mind I find that I’m spending less on treatment than I used to on lunch. I’d easily go through $25 dollars a day when I was at work each day – on lunch, the Starbuck’s run and then a supposedly healthful smoothie; and when I needed company for lunch you could double that. So I’m saving about $200 a week on food and coffee alone.

Enough though about the US medical system, things here are good.

I’m not coughing, the stairs are no problems anymore, the dog is looking better exercised, I have a fresh perspective on work, a clear perspective on what needs to be done there and I’ve discovered that our friends here are very cool people. What more can you need?

Ah - that's better

So after a couple of days during which I felt as though I was being routinely tortured by an invisible hand inside my guts I woke up this morning with a passing fancy for a banana. And some toast. And a cup of tea.

The sense of smell is no longer turned up to 'bloodhound' either; which is a blessed relief as EVERYTHING made me feel like throwing up - from the smell of coffee through to the shampoo they used on the dog.

It's a good feeling.. sitting here, tea in hand, dog at feet, nausea pills in cabinet... so good I may even sing a little... la-la-laaahhhh

Yup - that good

Bleurgh

Not a great day today - spent 99% of the time feeling like I was going to vomit and 1% of the time vomitting.

Will check in with the hospital tomorrow re. meds that I should be taking but it's not been fun

Let's see what tomorrow brings

A quickie

Chemo II (the revenge) went very well. Of course the 'red stuff' made me throw up my cookies again but I was expecting it this time. Other than that all was smooth - took 6 hrs instead of the 10 and a half the first time and no real side effects yet. In fact not nuch of anything yet - yes I feel slightly queasy, yes I'm burping and belching for England (a disgusting thing to be doing) but more of a worry than anything right now is the snow that's falling at a rapid rate outside. We're looking at 18 inches by the end of the day.

Why is snow a worry? Well I love TiVo - it's a great system that manages to record every show I love and introduce me to some I didn't know I loved. There are other systems but none are as easy to use or as intuitive. Of course TiVo is only available on Satellite - so whilst the rest of the building gets their TV from underground cable I'm reliant on the satellite dish on the roof - and that dish can get buried in snow. Leaving me with no TV - on a Sunday. The day of America's Funniest Home Videos, Desperate Housewives, The L Word and best of all the finale of the Gray's Anatomy bomb in a man's chest cliffhanger.

So keep your fingers, toes, arms and legs crossed as we pray for clearer skies here

More chemo tomorrow

More chemo tomorrow - and a new nurse alas.

Still everyone I've met to date has been both efficient and empathetic; rare qualities indeed.

Have a final check in with Dr Hermann - the man who did my biopsy (for a mere $37,000) today. Hoping to get a final all clear from him, if only because it's finally cold here (-4C outside) and I don't fancy doing the trek out there again.

Short entry this one.

Nick went home on Project Runway yesterday - Daniel looked alarmingly blase throughout, midget asian woman was dressed up like a filipino mamasan, South African bird did another outfit that looked like 'last year at Gap' whilst Santino skated on ever thinner ice with a glued on jump suit that lost a sleeve on the runway.

Superbowl ads

Had some students over from the UK on Friday.

I set them a 'superbowl ad' assignment and had them come back in this morning - and boy were they disappointed.

For those of you who don't know - the Superbowl is the biggest advertising bonanza in the US. A sport game during which 1 minute of airtime costs $5m dollars. Accordingly marketing dicks are pumped, inflated and waved during the game. It's 4 hours during which America gives a damn about advertising and it's always a let down.

Superbowl extra large (40 - XL, geddit?) was a HUGE flop.

We had a diet Pepsi can using a Diet Coke can as a stunt double (the diet coke can gets crushed, haw!);

We had a Toyota ad so sickening I went looking for my left over Kytril

KID daddy why do you drive a hybrid
DAD for the future, it uses two types of energy
KID like you with Spanish and English?
DAD yes
KID then why did you learn English?
DAD (smug look into rear view mirror) FOR YOUR future

We had P.Diddy, we had Jessica Simpson, we had Jay Mohr, we had Leonard Nimoy, we had Fabio(!)
We had an avalanche of C list celebrity and D rate 'humor'

We had Dove campaigning for real beauty by begging us to send money to ugly kids (or a 'self esteem' fund)
We had Pepsi (again) informing us that it's brown and bubbly.

We had Kermit whoring it for Ford (he's green, so is the hybrid)

We had an end of the pier with the Nolans and Dooby Duck type dancing 'spectacular' for Burget King - the woman dressed as a meat pattie drew the shittiest stick in a poo-ey pile)

We had men being stupid for Bud Light, women being busty for whateverthehell.com

We had Clydesdales (big horses) for Bud (hurrah!) and a pretty good sheared sheep as streaker gag

Worst of all the world's best agency ripped off JWT Thailand for a Hummer spot, knowingly or not

An total and utter waste of time, I told people at the office that my Grant Mitchell meets an un-touped Liberache look was the result of my having torn out my hair in frustration at the sheer waste of it all - and they believed me.

Thank god for Pizza Hut - pricking at Jessica Simpson's pomposity with a shot for shot remake of her 'this pizza with 26 additional cheese pockets is made for swallowing' (I kid you not) ad - starring Ms Piggy! Yes, Ms Piggy.

Maybe there's hope yet

This is me

after
Originally uploaded by stevenjude.

'30 minutes of frenzied 'Jude with a razor' action later... mess with me not face optional

This was me

before
Originally uploaded by stevenjude.

This was me at 10am - scalp itching, hair falling out faster than Leena Zavoroni's during a trip to Chernobyl

Hairless

Woke up yesterday morning with what felt like a sunburnt head. Touch it and 'youch'. Most odd, thought I, my head seems to be on fire and my pillow seems to resemble Captain Caveman (or perhaps Fatima Whitbred) - how can this be?

It turns out of course that the doctors were right, that it takes about two weeks for your hair to start falling out and that I am going to be bald here.

In truth the hair loss is quite comforting. I've felt so well during all of this that you do start to secretly suspect that perhaps you're uniquely immune to the drugs, or part of a placebo study or something similar. Evidence that this stuff is doing what it's supposed to do is very welcome - and the prospect of getting to shave my head is making Judith monsterously excited.

That's about it. After doing full days at work Thurs / Friday plus a couple of decent walks and stuff with the dog yesterday was a write off - an 18 hrs of sleep day. Much brighter this morning however and ready to take on the world

Crash

Watched 'Crash' on DVD yesterday. I''d seen it in the theatre, but Jude hadn't and so we ploughed our way through just under two hours of inhumanity, despair and general teeth grinding. It's all very well done of course, even Sandra Bullock manages to avoid any obvious pratfalls (didn't YOU expect her to play her fall down stairs for a cheap physical laugh?) but the whole thing ended up leaving me cold.

In fact my one take away thought was that the puppets of Avenue Q managed to get across pretty much the same message, in a fraction of the time and a much more entertaining way with their song 'Everyone's a little bit racist'

Maybe I am horribly shallow. Maybe I'm sociopathic. But I just can't find it in my heart to feel very much during movies that ought to be affecting. Brokeback Mountain, ho-hum. Love Story, whatever. Titanic, is it over yet?

Of course when they turn this Blog into a major motion picture Dakota will capture all of this - capturing both my Mercahnt-Ivory British reserve and madame Tussards like waxiness.

Ok, ok... cancer.

When my doctor first told me I had cancer I wanted to ask (regarding survival chances) - is it worth my starting to watch the new season of American Idol (the season lasts about 4 months)... I didn't ask but January is here and I am watching, almost despite myself.

Of course Idol has nothing on TV's best show 'Project Runway' - in which fashion designers compete in various challenges, one being eliminated each week. To date this season has brought us the classic lines

"Where the HELL is my chiffon?"

and

"Oh my God, it's a mother-f*king walk-off"

Last night the task was to make runway ready dresses using $100 worth of flowers. The remaining contestants (four gay men, one of whom is about 7 ft tall and balding fast, a chinese midget and a South African bird with no fashion sense and a surplus of testosterone) sewed up a frenzy before sending some very uncomfortable models down the runway. Michael Kors managed to comment

'It looks like the kind of dress that the town slut would wear to prom, if her mother was a bad home sew-er"

Ah, it's good to be alive.

Alles Gut

Went to have my blood work done yesterday.

Fast appointment - and all is good.

White cells, red cells platelettes - all where they should be.

Next five treatments should be easier, though first wasn't really hard and I do expect a backlash at some point - karma baby

But seems that I'm doing pretty darned well

Hurrah!

Steve