Finishing Up Round 3

 This is starting to get old.

I’m ready to be done with all of this. There are so many other things I’d rather be doing this summer, but here I am, doing this instead.  I should be grateful that I’m getting the help I need, but man, this is a slog. I’m just about halfway through the DA-EPOCH-R treatment cycles and when those are done, I’ll have two more shorter 3-day hospital stays for the IV methotrexate therapy administered to stave off the spread of my disease to the central nervous system. That puts me into September, before things start to get somewhat normal again. Sigh.

I try to make my room look homey.

The collage on the wall is made from
cards I've received from friends.

My friends have been so great through all of this.

Several days after I was home from my Round 2 hospitalization, Bonnie organized a 2-day back yard clean-up event at my house. Ten of my neighbors came over for a 2-hour marathon clean-up effort one very hot afternoon and another six came the next morning to finish the job. They power washed the screened-in porch, deck rugs, and furniture, strung lights, mowed, weed-whacked, stacked wood, planted flowers, and carted off trash and donations.  I was still feeling the effects of chemo so, aside from answering questions about where to find or put things and fetching things they needed to get the job done, I sat around and watched and just that was exhausting. This was a huge effort made much lighter with many hands. It then rained for a week straight, so I haven’t really had time to fully enjoy their efforts, but hope to have a gathering back there in the near future. As summer approaches, it will be nice to soak up some rays, light up the grill, and sit by an evening fire.

   

Cancer-survivors have reached out from far and wide.

Over the past month, many friends who have kicked one kind of cancer or another—sometimes even two— have reached out to me with words of wisdom, products they found useful during treatments, and stories of hope and survival.  It’s been a good reminder that there is another side to this journey and that cure is still within my realm of possibility. Sometimes that hard to see from where I'm sitting.

As my symptoms started to subside and I regained some energy, I got busy getting my dad’s house ready for staging.

I brought a carload of boxes containing the last of my parents’ important documents, pictures, and slides back to my house to go through. In one of the boxes, I found my dad’s mother’s death certificate, confirming that she’d died of “Lymphosarcoma”, which is an outdated medical term for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, the over-arching category for the many variations that now exist. She was just 60 years old and died the year before I was born. I knew that she had lymphoma, but seeing it in black & white, on a death certificate no less, was a bit shocking. In that same folder, was a pile of bills from her last couple of months spent in the hospital.  I was also shocked to see how inexpensive it was to be treated and hospitalized for this disease in 1966, although I’m sure it seemed pricey to them at the time.  Let’s just hope that all of the scientific breakthroughs and new meds developed over the last 60 years work in my favor.

Dad’s house sold in just 2 days!

Now that the house is under contract, I’ll be devoting some of my next home days to getting the rest of it cleared out and trying to sell most of the furniture, artwork, and housewares that I spent the last six months purchasing for what I thought would be a furnished rental unit.  Best laid plans…

I enjoyed visits from out-of-town family and friends before I headed back for Round 3.

Two cousins from San Antonio, Judy and Justin, came for a 5-day visit the last week I was home. My sister drove them from her house to mine, so she stayed a night as well. That was a lot of people for my little house, in my current state, so Bonnie came to the rescue again and hosted them up the street at her house. The chilly rainy weather was not great for their visit but we got out and about anyway. We saw a play at Live Arts, went thrifting to get them some warmer clothes, visited the Swords to Plowshares civil war statue “recast and reclaim” exhibit at the African-American Culture and Heritage Center, toured Monticello, had a game night and saw some live music at the Batesville Market.

Game night with Judy, Justin, and Bonnie

Traipsing around town

I usually spend Memorial Day weekend at a music festival down near Martinsville, but since that wasn’t in the cards for me this year, we were also able to attend the Batesminster Dog Show, a farcical and fun canine event arranged by some of my closest friends and their furry sidekicks.  Friends from Philly, Priyanka and Sid, came down to attend and some other local friends and their dogs joined in the fun. It was a delightful afternoon.                                            

Wylie, Best Dog on Wheels

  

At The Batesminster Dog Show

  
  

 

Dilly, Best Midfield Pooper

Best Wig in Show ;-)

Judy and Justin took the train back to DC last Tuesday to spend a couple of days in the city before heading back to Texas. I spent the next two days swapping out furniture and bringing more boxes home from dad’s house.

Texans on the train

Then, the Sunday Scaries set in.

Have you ever experienced the anticipatory dread and anxiety that occurs when the weekend winds down and the workweek approaches? I seem to get this feeling a couple of days before heading back to in for treatment, knowing that I’ll be confined to my hospital room and hooked up to Ivan for another 6 days then feeling all the things that go along with toxic excretion for the next week or so. It really puts a damper on those last few days at home because it counteracts the upswing in my physical well-being at that time. As it turns out, the Sunday Scaries are not limited to Sundays.

Round 3 was riddled with delays and some added medications.

My pre-admission oncologist appointment last Thursday was delayed a couple of hours because the nurses, including the port whisperer who eventually had to be called in, had a hard time accessing my port. This meant that I got placed at the back of the line as my doctor’s other patients snuck in front of me. Then, my room wasn’t ready until late in the evening, setting the stage for an unfortunate IV schedule that had me up at all hours of every night as they changed bags. As the dosages of my chemo increase with each cycle, we added a new drug to the mix to prevent bladder damage from the increased cyclophosphamide. This new drug requires an 18-hour infusion.  Despite the hiccups and delays, I will be getting out of the hospital this evening.  I am so ready to be home and to get some solid sleep in my own bed. I’m also excited to see another cousin who's driving in from Saint Louis this week.  The weather looks fantastic for his visit.