SWEET 16

A fair amount of info, I'll try to be thorough (and brief).  Yesterday, you know, I did a buch of Lasix trying to pull off some extra fluid.  One unintended consequence of micturating every half hour for 10 hours is you make Swiss cheese of your electrolyte profile.  Cheesy electrolytes don't fly around here.  No sir, not a bit.  What you get is repletion, pronto.  So, sometime last night after a very good day, was watching a body surfing vid ("Come Hell or High Water [4stars]) with baby bro.  Repletion caused a harsh to severe reaction in your blooger.  Best way i can describe it:  being rolled up in an area rug and then dragged behind a truck.  Several micrograms of Fentanyl and brotherly hand squeezing later,  I emerged well enough to sleep.

Today I started out cannon-shot, feeling even better than yesterday (W: 2.91 almost a 3x kick, RBC: 25.5 small but certain increase, PLT: 15 small dip— plt production will be best and most certain sign that engraftment is complete) but as soon as the repletion transfusion began, out came the rug rollers.  They stopped the infusion immediately, hit me with some Fentanyl and sent me on a hospital tour for Echo-gram and chest CT.  Good news is echo was deemed beautiful.  Bad news: something funky with CT scan.  Definitely fluid, which is also heard through the steth but also some "opacities" which they cannot explain.  And these folks are not happy when they cant explain.  Most likely hypotheses: a)bacterial infection b)fungal infection c)consequence of extra fluid.  Good news of the bad news is I am symptom free, no temps at all,  feel pretty good, best in days.  Head Cheese says,"I'm not worried, but I'm always worried.  I get paid to worry"  My take having  known the guy a while now and being practiced a reading his words like tealeaves:  It's probably nothing or at the least a consequence of the low period.  OR it might be something, if it's something they'll figure it out an fix it.  Fair warning: long long shot it could be PCP pneumonia, high morbidity, hard to treat.  But unlikely as they have been treating it prophylactically for weeks now.

The  Upshot: more tests tomorrow.  Electrolytes orally in what is basically a nuclear gatorade (sans sugar)

There was talk of Sun or Mon discharge, still an outside shot, but that will likely be delayed.

BE KIND, NO BLAME, LOVE EVERYTHING.

FIFTEEN

big jump—Whites: 2.91    RBC: 25.5   Plt: 15

RBC and Plt of course can be misleading as they can be supplemented by infusion.  The real ballgame is whites, which cannot be  enhanced.  I mean, they can and are with a drug called Nupagen, but that's all part of the science/chemistry.  Point being, I am hanging on to them and they are populating a healthy rate.  85 more days and I might be able to eat in a restaurant.  Up and about the room today.  Hard to stay still on 40mg of Lasix.  My 6 furlong time is improving.  Bro Nate helping the hours shorten.  Really, a day about which I cannot complain.  A gift it is seeing the  horizon farther off.

FOURTEEN

First official not-simply-miserable-miserable day.  Still some hallucinations.  This morning for example I thought i was in a restaurant done up to look like a saloon.  I say again I havent left these four walls in a number of weeks. My mind must want out badly.  Still fair amount of mouth and throat pain.  Edema, Shreck feet.  Three or four kinds of rashes.  And I have the world's fatigue market cornered.  Still, not miserable.

Counts are up— White .9   RBC: 23.6 (plus a bag)  Plt: 21

a team of docs comes int to see me every morning.  They always say, "you look great!"  I always laugh and it gets more or less awkward from there.  Keep up the good work, kids.

Thirteen

Some memorial memories from the the last two days  Though my memory ain't (when are we gona make a spell checker that recognizes the word ain't?  You know, because it is.  A very important word.) so user beware. I'll do my best.

Spy Cookies.  Black, terrible tasking. People ask you if you have your spy cookies, show it them, put it back in your pocket.  No idea.

Guy with mustache and fedora, dark glasses and houndstooth.  I'd see him my eye opens, close them to make him go away.  He'd appear off my left shoulder and laugh to himself

smoke

ants

spider webs

the door to my bathroom was at various times the door to: a gym, a pool, a basement, an out door porch.  My surprise was great when i went to take to take the air.  Was alarmed even to learn this morning that I'd never really left my room at all.  I was sure I'd moved at least once.

400 white cells.  They say i'm making the climb out.  Right now i'l just have to take it as an article of faith

All turnedout in my turn out gear and I have driven it straight to the mayor's house (in the Fire Truck) where I had hoped to give him his next baby but wait, maybe we should fight the fire first.

Ice pinch-hitting, taking dictation and doing my best to translate muddled declarations into coherent blog notes...

According to CJ:

Days 10 and 11 quite a disappointment to me as they are to you, I'm sure.  Bullet form will have to suffice:

• No bullets.
• Three cheers for Erin, the nurse extraordinaire.
• This will surprise many of you:  I've had a number of delusions.  Phantom visits, dogs scurrying by, numbers in vivid color, and my wife's favorite:  spy cookies.
• Last day of methatrexate (chemo), hopefully forever.  
• First dose of Neupogen to stimulate white cell growth.
• Small bump in white cell production all on my own.

Ice again.  Mid mutter, CJ started swatting at something and mentioned pills landing on his heart.  I'm thinking that means it's time to close.  In coherent moments, Chris asks that I read him your comments and they make him smile.  Keep 'em coming. Thanks.

ten

Worst day ever.  And my wife showed up.  That bad.  Keep the comments coming.  Tomorrow's 11.  

turnmeon deadmen turnmeon deadmen trurnmeon

Starting to rough in number 9 post, I thought I skipped a day. Then I thought I got it right, then I had to check the official box score, then I remembered a snowman is an 8, no NINE snowman is nine.  What the hell.  EIGHT.  Snowman is 8.  Almost had to call McCready at dinner to tripple check.  Something I feel totally entitled to do now that we've talked 3 times in the last 10 years.  A testament to either my sense of entitlement or the depth of our brohood.  ALAS,  It is, as they say in rehab, DAY NINE.  Don't know how in Dilaudid I messed that up 4 times before accidentally getting it right or having it right all along.  Whatever, nevermind.

Did you find a Heme-Onc text book?  How are you going to understand what is going on?  We cant ALL be calling The RICK.  Hemoglobin is the oxygen-carrying substance on a red-blood cell, what makes it red.  It is measured in weight per volume.  What's your Hemoglobin?  You Healthy stooges have 13-18 grams of hemoglobin per decaliter of blood.  At the moment I got like 7.6

Hematocrit is percentage of  total volume.  It is a cruder measurement, easier to make and eyeballs close enough for government work.  People who find themselves in or around the mean have Hematocrits of 39-54, I.E.: 39-54% of the individual's total blood volume is hemoglobin.  When i entered the twilight zone i was 39.7.  Today, I was 23.  My Mendoza line is 24.  Ergo, I got a bag of RBC's.  Tomorrow I'll let you know what kind of bump I got and, if I feel like it, deliver the platelet lecture.  If if I don't, dialectical materialism.

Elvis and Dick Nixon have their picture made.  Note the man's suit  Enormous collar, thick contrasting stitching on same, flared tail AND sleeeves if memory serves?  Sylish and ugly, bold and enslaved.  THIS is the particular band of cheep suit I feel like today.  Turns out you need be neither cheep or a suit to be a cheap suit.

Snowman

This is my son imitating me

My knee imitating HEATHER.

Today, I was informed, is Mass culture Tuesday.  My mind races:  Noon hours lecture by Lady GaGa?  A book signing by R0BERT CARO.  PERHAPS THE PREFORMING ARTS (TALK ABOUT A TOUG   ONE TO SPELL—NOT FROM THE DRUGS, but from UNDERUSE.) P_R_E_F_O_R_M_I_N_G A_R_T_S. WHEW. THE ARTS DON'T GET ENOUGH PLAY

No such luck: was was presented with extra-long swabs and likewise longswab-catches for said swabs.  Go tickle your nose, ear, throat, and—you guessed it—old stank eye.

MORE TO SAY, AS ALWAYS, BUT GOSH AM I TIRED.  Today, Someone you know was reported by a phlebotomist to have quote--monster veins--end quote.  Lost one of my Hickman central lines today. Turned out, aint no big thing, though the run up certainly was.  I'll look into a not creepy picture.  Creepy coefficient quite high because of degree of Man-scaping.

I like cats in principal, people who write poems and anyone on this silly (getting delightfully sillier) blog

HEMATOLOGICAL TRIVIA:  A HEMATOCRIT OF 35=HEMOGLOBIN OF___???  AMSWER IN TOMORROW'S BLOG WHICH WILL have the virtue of being todays blog as well.

seven

More of the same, some more of that and then some redundancy scattered about.  To mix things up I watched the woman from housekeeping mop the floor. I said good-bye, nodded acknowledgement that the floor was now slippery, put my slippers on and very aggressively did an impression of an ungulate on a frozen pond.  Finale: bashing my knee open, filling PJ pant leg with platelet-skim blood.  Had to explain myself to no fewer than 6 separate stethoscopes. Good news is no more fever.  Save the one Dr Girvin gives me sans stethoscope (unless playing doctor.)

Moral of the story: dont own slippers, do own stethoscopes.

We got each other and that's a lot for love—we'll give it a shot.  Post other excellent JBJ lines to comments.