zen.org Communal Weblog

The last two purple bags of this second cycle of chemo, each going for four hours with a four-hour gap in between, are actually done.  Now it’s a question of waiting for the next 2–3 weeks to see what happens with my cell-count numbers (which will be back at the start again).  Yesterday they gave me two blood transfusions to bring my count back up over 9.0; this evening after the last chemo bag I’m on an 8-hour saline drip to keep my fluids up.  All of my vital signs (sorry, my “obs“) have been doing great throughout these five days of chemo.  Hopefully they’ll hold up just as strongly in the coming days.

I get a one-day respite in terms of active treatment, then on Monday they start the growth stimulating hormone shots, one per day.  They’re meant to help increase production of neutrophils and thus, as described by head Dr M, in part to pull any remaining leukemia cells out from wherever they may be so the chemo can get at them.

Something behind curtain #1

My eyes are still improving, which is a great relief.  My right eye was worse struck than my left by the very beginning of this, when a couple of days into my chemo I had retinal hemorrhages in both eyes, with burst blood vessels on the backs of both retinas (nay, retinae).  Dr S told me the primary cause of this was probably my incredibly high white-cell count combined with the chemo trying to get rid of them, which could have blocked up the retinal veins.  (I may be wrong in terms of details here.)

Anyway, this made focus go all wacky and a big round blotch appeared in the vision of my right eye in particular.  Over the last few weeks, I’ve slowly been watching that “dot” as I called it shrink—a little at a time, but changing in a decent positive direction.

Yesterday, I told Elana how I could actually see *through* the “dot” for the first time.  Looking out the window, I could see the shape of the bottle of mouthwash (salt water, really) I’m supposed to use after every meal and before bed as part of my avoid-mouth-infection routine.  I also could see the shapes of the beautiful hand-knit and hand-crocheted flowers given to me by E’s incredible knitting friends.  Not clearly, yet, but I saw the form of the light in most of the “dot”, and shapes inside it.

Tonight, watching a football match on TV, I closed my left eye to test the right again.  This has always just had a grey blotch in the center of whatever my eye was trying to see, with plenty of blurry around it.  Instead, in a change which has happened within the last week, I was able to *see* something: the green of the pitch and the shapes of the players (with the colors of their jerseys) showed through what I’m now considering the remainder of the “dot”.  Looking at the wall across from me, I can see a little improvement in the surrounding focus, too.  Not tons, mind you, but I’ll take a little bit over the blur I know was there not very long ago.

Go, eyes, go!  Heal, baby, heal!  (I wonder if the hopeful growth of neutrophils will help this even more?)

Dynamic Duo

Elana and I took turns playing with wearing the duck mask today.  Well, not really playing, since we don’t have a choice, but still…she’s going to be wearing it while visiting for a bit over a week because she’s been hit with another bout of strep throat, her Spring-time arch enemy.

But, in a real treat for me, I put one on (when leaving the ward, which meant she could take hers off) and we went downstairs together so she could have some lunch.  It was really fun to get to hang out in one of the food areas—I’m sure there’s a better term for them—and just sit and talk in a different setting.  I got to browse around the shops, even talking myself out of buying a copies of The Economist and Newsweek because I’ve already got plenty enough to read.  (But maybe some other time.)

We even got to have a nice chat with Dr M, a student doctor who just finished his stint in hematology and has now moved over to focus on respiratory for three months.  He’s awesome, with an uncanny ability to keep patients calm and relaxed; e.g., he helped me by telling me what was happening during my second bone marrow biopsy, and answering my crazy questions into understanding the details of what was going on.  (I can deal with all of this much better if I have information about it—my mind doesn’t do well with the unknown, and really goes nuts with ambiguity.)

We returned upstairs after E was done with her lunch, exchanging roles again as her mask went back on before entering the ward and mine came off once we were inside.  We’ve reached a consensus which really didn’t take us very long to achieve: they’re really not that comfortable.

Kudos and thanks and everything else I’ve got to E for putting up with the silly mask when she’s visiting and unable to come in without it.

A toast to the safe choices

Bouts of nausea hit me yesterday evening, even with the anti-sickness meds, so to be on the safe side I asked for plain brown (wheat bread) toast.  I learned I’m a fluke here: no one else—and I mean no one—in the cancer ward eats brown bread for sandwiches or toast.  They’re all addicted to white bread.  Between this and not getting vegetables with their dinner, I really wonder how it is that these people heal up at all.

I learned I have this distinction in a conversation with Miss M, the cool food caterer for the ward.  For breakfast, I asked for corn flakes, some orange juice, and two pieces of brown toast for breakfast.  (I hardly ever eat bread at all because—long story short—after we learned Eoin, our 4 year-old, was allergic and we stopped eating it in the house, we also found our energy levels were really improved.  No afternoon drowzies.)  I noticed Miss M had to go back to the kitchen area, and then returned with my tray.  I asked which part of my order had made her have to leave the normal push-cart she uses, which comes loaded up with a big pot full of porridge, boxes of cereal, yogurts, and more.

“I had to get your toast!” she replied.

Eying the push-cart with its huge stack of toast, I was puzzled.  “Does nobody else eat brown bread for toast?”

She shook her head.  “No, all white bread.”

“Am I the only person in the ward who does?!”

“Yes—well, actually I remember a lady who was over in the ladies’ side of the ward who was here a while ago, and she did.”

I’m still not quite sure I understand why this is.

So, anyway, avoiding the heavier (actual dinner/tea) food really paid off.  Everything stayed down, and the nausea turned its back on me and walked quietly out of the room.

Why my legs hurt

Great Nurse Sh (distinct cuz there’s another Nurse S, also great but different name) explained to me that one of my chemo meds, Cyterabine, has a puzzling couple of side-effects which I’d been experiencing.  It’s the likely cause of some red spots I saw on the sides of my shins, as well as a shooting pain I was feeling in both legs from my ankle up toward my knee.

The spots (transient rashes) are gone, and the pain has eased up considerably.  This weird intermittent reaction crap is a little unnerving sometimes.

How real men knit

Today for my motivation to kill some time, I knit after breakfast while listening to a recording of Jimi Hendrix performing at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970.  My friend Walter, who loaned me an iPod with the music on it, was one of the 600,000 people who got to see the show, live.  I’m sure he was lucid and enjoyed every note. 😀

During the chemo later in the morning, John Lee Hooker kept me going.  Then tonight, watching the Manchester City v Manchester United FA Cup semi-final football match, I finished my practice.  I knit all of the second ball of yarn, knitting on one side and purling on the other, with considerably fewer mistakes than my first time through.  Not error-free, certainly, but I’m pretty proud of how it went.

My experiment was to see if it was possible to watch a sporting event while knitting—and not messing up.  Yes, it’s possible to watch it.  No, I’m not yet able to do it and avoid mistakes.  So I know I saw more yarn than football this afternoon.  Don’t mind, though; I finished it.

Tomorrow, I’ll start my first try on a real knitting pattern: a Mistake Rib Scarf (Chunky), using a pattern from This Is Knit, E’s workplace and a place I consider the hub of knitting in Ireland.  A pic of the result of the pattern is available online, though mine’s going to be grey, not pink.

Ambitious much?  Me?  Naw…

Less sleepy today, thank goodness.  We’re on Day 4 of Round 2, which means I’ve finished one of the chemo drugs (the one looking like Kool-Aid), and just have the other two for today and tomorrow.  The first dose was given in a 30-minute drip at 10:30.  Around noon I felt some of the requisite fatigue come in, but much less than yesterday.  I was still able to do things like knit, read email, and think about what to write here.  The fatigue wore off after a couple of hours.

I was even able to eat lunch and have it stay down.  This afternoon with the second dose going for about 20 minutes, my tummy’s a little less settled again and I’m getting a little drowsy.  They’ve given me some “anti-sickness” medicine which I’m hoping will do the job with dinner (dammit).

By the way, while I was eating lunch one of the nurses came over.  She asked how I felt while eating the food, and I said I was actually doing okay.

“Good man yourself,” she replied, and continued on her way.  I really enjoy hearing phrases common to Ireland but still new to me, even though we moved here more than 12 years ago.

Donate, Donate, Donate

Today for the first time I went through the blog posts in early March which were made by Elana because I was too out-of-it, and because my eyes had just gotten messed up and I couldn’t use the laptop anyway.  It’s amazing to see the experience from another person’s viewpoint.  There is also no doubt the experience (thus far, anyway) of this round of chemo is remarkably different from my first.

One thing that really struck me in E’s writings was the note that one of the bag of platelets was dated just a week before it was being given to me.  As these bags of blood and platelets come in to me, I haven’t really thought about the fact that another human being actually took the time out of their day to stop, sit, and donate this thing which is helping me get better.

So little effort to help make someone else’s life better—or be part of why they still have their life, period.  Holy shit.  (Insert emotional flood here.)

Funny Coincidence

On February 23rd, I had the fun experience of being interviewed for a popular public radio show in America called “The Story with Dick Gordon“.  They were interested in talking about my experience having survived a really bad car accident in 1993.  The host Dick Gordon was physically at the station WUNC in North Carolina; I spoke with him from a (tiny tiny booth-like) radio station studio here in Dublin.  In our chat, I shared what I could about how it felt to come out of aphasia, find my memory remapping itself, and lots of other things.

Less than two weeks later, I was admitted to the hospital on Monday March 7th with leukemia.   And my interview of “The Story” was broadcast and released for online listening the very next day.

I’m interpreting this as an incredible coincidence laden with good, positive karma.

Day 3 of Round 2 is showing the more clear-headed me all sorts of things about the side-effects of getting chemo.  Last time, I wasn’t quite as with it (aka much more sick), but each thing I told Elana today about what I was experiencing solicited a nod of recognition.  Fascinating, really, how much I didn’t really retain.

In no particular order, today has presented me with all sorts of things which are perfectly normal to accompany my treatment:

• A couple of places on each of my shins have areas which hurt like a bruise, without the visible spots…they send a line of pain up the shin when I walk.
• Amplified fatigue in comparison with yesterday.  I did far less than normal today, and usually just lay down with my eyes closed.  I took a 1-hour nap in the middle of the day, and also slept for a bit while E was here.
• Bodily function decides to get its chance to fool around, with the age-old cure of prune juice not really helping resolve it—nor has a bit of medicine, either.  I wonder why I’m hesitant to actually use the Other-‘C’-Word?  “TMI” I think is the explanation.  At any rate, it’s a current side-effect.
• Seemingly early compared to last time (I think), bits of the remaining hair on my head and/or in my beard are starting to flee seeking their missing family members.  I haven’t got the heart to tell them the absent ones were cleaned up in the shower ages ago now.
• While my mouth is ok so far (fingers crossed), my lips are becoming chapped.  Even with the Burt’s Bees Honey Lip Balm.  Go figure.
• Breakfast went ok, but I had little appetite for lunch, eating only half of what was actually on the plate and didn’t even touch the soup.  An interesting contrast to the last week and a bit.
• But then, just to make things a little more black-and-white, dinner didn’t go well.  Add nausea to my new list of side-effects.  I don’t know yet how much of a recurring problem this one’s going to be.

It’ll take a good week, as I understand it,  for me to be able to start heading back toward the much healthier version of me.  The napping will make the time go by, I imagine.  As such, there may be a gap or two between blog posts, depending on (a) how I’m feeling physically, and, more-so, (b) how coherent I am to be able to write about what’s going on.  During the chemo and up to a week after it, at least—Elana knows better than I do—it also seems to slow my brain down a bit.  I’m betting the fatigue is behind that one.

But I’ll still find little parts of the day when I feel well enough to keep working on my knitting.  Might as well go with something that’s naturally relaxing, right?

P.S. The two people across from me are competing on how loud they can get their TVs.  I want to find a way to introduce them to the headphone jack on the wall next to each of their beds.  I’m open to suggestions. 🙂

While the nurse was doing his job (cool mix of male and female nurses) giving me one of my three doses of chemo this afternoon, I noticed something on the label of the container of the Kool-Aid liquid:

Cytotoxic!  Use with caution!

This is some magical liquid which would hurt your skin, but can be inside your veins with no worries at all.  The nurse wears thick blue gloves and a clear plastic eye shield.  I get a thick piece of gauze to protect the skin on my tummy.

Sure, it’s all fun and games until someone gets cytotoxic fluid on their flesh.  Luckily, I’ve got a fleet of highly skilled nurses taking care of me. 😉

Hey Buddy, Remember Us?

The silly version: A couple of the more minor side-effects of the chemo came by this morning just to remind me they’d been here before, when I was much weaker.  Their capo famiglia, Mr. Leukemia, was concerned about noticing some armed chemo being around.  I feigned ignorance and let them go away.

The more descriptive version: I actually woke up feeling fine, but just after my shower (done solo without E having to be here to help me out, like she did for the first month+ I was here—woo hoo!) I realized my tummy was feeling a little upset.

About an hour later, around 10 in the morning, it was like someone put a thick winter jacket on my shoulders to weigh me down—fatigue came flying in and hit me with a wallop.  The nurses gave me some Motilium which settled my tummy, and as I relaxed and chatted with Elana, I recovered a bit of my energy for the rest of the day.  My ability to be sitting up typing this right now, and not crashed out to bed early or done a nap in the late afternoon, are evidence enough to me that something let me get past that, at least for today.  I know the fatigue in particular will hang around a bit more forcefully as the next week or so goes by.

Culture Differences Abound

Each day, we’re asked what we’d like for our dinner (lunch!) and tea (dinner!) tomorrow.  I’ve learned some key tricks, many thanks to Miss M the amazing person who does the catering service for our ward.  When she’s out for two days, you really notice her level of skill when her stand-ins make mistakes wide and varied—admittedly, I can only know they’re mistakes because I’ve had five weeks of experiencing the whole process.

She’s taught me some ways to manipulate the system to the benefit of the patient.  Just two of these secrets:

First insider hint: say “please add ‘with veg’” for every entree you select—for either meal.

More than 50% of the time, unless you’ve asked you will not get any form of vegetable with your meal.  Seriously.  You’d think a place like a hospital would want you to have a nutritious meal.  Sometimes the food’s decent enough, other times it’s excessively starchy with little else to hold it up.  But at the center of it all is the fact that they don’t think vegetables matter.  And, to boot, if you’re specific—perhaps, “with peas”—then you’re screwed completely.  Apparently if not enough people ask for a particular vegetable, the kitchen staff effectively say “feck it” (a phrase regularly heard on the radio in Ireland) and not only don’t give you peas, they don’t give you anything at all.

Exhibit 1: tonight’s tea—dinner–supper–er, “Hamburger with gravy and mashed [potato]”

Anti-Veg Exhibit 1

Second insider hint: don’t be foolish and mess with what everybody naturally wants.

First example: We get offered tea (the drink this time) repeatedly during the day.  Or coffee—instant, water-bathed, not-really-dissolved, I-think-it’s-leftover-from-a-meeting coffee.

Just to mess with the system, I spoke pure blasphemy: “Do you have any decaf tea?”

The nice man running around crying out, “Tea?”, reminding me of accordion-playing beggars on a commuter train, froze and gave me a look of sheer contempt.  I was a foreign being to him; something he’d never seen before and could not decide whether or not I was a threat.

“Um, no, I’ve just got tea,” he replied, and quickly fled down away from our group of beds to seek a safer place with patients who aren’t as abusive to him.

Second example: Ireland has a serious sugar addiction problem

Every list of choices for dinner (lunch!) includes a couple of offerings for dessert.  Something like rice pudding, a mousse, or (on very rare occasions) a piece of fruit like an orange or apple might be choice.  Second is always a pairing of something and ice cream—maybe jelly, aka gelatin without the trademark symbol for what most in America know, maybe some canned chopped fruit (again, rare), and always a little thing of vanilla ice cream.  (Which is bland and, if Miss M is not around, often melted because they put it in the fridge instead of the freezer.  Oopsie.)

Again, to screw with the system, today I told the nice man-who-is-not-Miss-M, “No thanks, I don’t think I’ll have any.”

He stared at me.  “No sweets?”

“No, thanks anyway.”

“But—you could have the rice pudding, perhaps?”

“Nope I think I’ll be fine without them.”

It took him a moment to compose himself before he could continue on to the patient across from me and actually get his job done.

Knit hacking

Elana has taught me how to purl (the opposite of the standard knitting stitch) and how to rib, which is a mix of the knit (K) and purl (P) maneuvers.  I’m still practicing, and finding I’m now trying to figure out how to correct my own mistakes instead of waiting til I next see E to show me where I’d skipped a step or let something slip by.  I’m not so ambitious as to try a scarf or hat or sock or, hell, a rag, yet, but I’m still having fun with my practicing—primarily because I can see I’m making little bits of progress from each time I try.

I’ve also signed up with Ravelry, the place to be for knitters, apparently.  A free  website which is a gold mine for anyone who knits, Ravelry is run by four people who have created the ultimate resource for anyone interested in knitting, whether they’re learning like me or they’re doing it as a day-job.

I’ve got no projects set up, no patterns in my queue, and my stash noting the exact collections of yarn I’m going to use is a big bare virtual box of nothing.

So far. All in good time.

In the left corner: the remaining leukemia cells which think they’re too bad-ass to go away.  In the right corner: my next cycle of chemo treatment, a bit stronger than the first (“induction”) cycle.  The bell for the fight will ring sometime this afternoon.  I was told yesterday (Monday) afternoon about the results of the most recent bone marrow sample and their plans because of them, but needed to let my own mind process it for a while before trying to write about it.

The treatment will reportedly be a combination of three different chemo drugs done in parallel: two of them will be for 5 days, and the third will be for just the first three days.  Then on Monday, they’ll start injecting the growth stimulation drug which, as described to me, is to get leukemia cells to where the chemo can kill them.  (I don’t know the detail beyond that—and don’t think I necessarily want to!)

Because it’s a stronger—and different—treatment, the side-effects can be different from what I had during the first cycle.  Don’t know what if any I’d be susceptible to, aside from being (again/still) very open to infection.  It’s also the same sort of thing as the list which appears in incredibly small type on a bottle of headache medicine: there’s a chance these could happen, but who knows which?  So I’m staying focused on the reason they’re doing the treatment, not on what I could experience as part of it.

As you might expect, hearing I wasn’t out of the woods yet was pretty hard to process.  A couple of people from the team came by to talk to me about the decision.  Elana was also able to stay at the hospital much later than normal, directly thanks to our great friend Doug from the US, who was able to visit over the weekend on his way back on a work trip; he was happy to get the boys fed and into bed so E could stay for a while.  Amazing.

I think it’s sometimes hard to really understand, to actually see just how lucky and how fortunate you can be with the people who are in your life.  Your family and your friends make up part of who you are, whether it’s clear to you or not.

After the last 5 weeks, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind.

Today was my followup bone marrow sample; the result of this sample decides the next step in my course of treatment.

In contrast to the two previous times, this version was only half the effort: the doctor did the first step, getting the liquid bone marrow (a “bone marrow aspirate“) and put it on the microscope slides.  He saw (and showed me—I have a picture, but as with the biopsy photo, I won’t post it for the queasy) a nice grouping of the cells on the slide, an indicator he got really usable samples.  The previous ones looked kind of like a flat liquid, meaning there weren’t any “particles” (doc’s term).  This made them have to do the biopsy—getting the physical marrow sample.  (My post before was technically incorrect because they’re actually two different things: in each of the previous two, they did a aspirate first then the biopsy second.)

Don’t know if we’ll hear the results of the sample today or tomorrow—we’re assuming tomorrow (Tuesday).  Today’s bone marrow exercise was half the time with almost no pain at all.  Amazing!

You know, if the US gives you the equivalent to a couple of beers with your local anaesthetic, I’ve been seriously considering convincing Ireland to let you clutch a hip flask of good whiskey as your way to make it through the experience.  (Instead of your pillow—a childhood habit reappearing as an alternative to clutching a piece of wood between your teeth.)   That way, each draw they make of my hip bone’s liquid marrow is matched with a hefty shot of Belvenie Doublewood 12-year whiskey.  I’m sure there are more such procedures in my future, but two in a week is enough for a bit, I hope!  And by then I’ll have forgotten about my booze solution.

Rotations, just like on TV

Today a bunch of student doctors and nurses changed as they finished their previous collective rotation and moved on to the next.  A really nice Dr M from my team of doctors is moving on to radiology, I think; haven’t seen/met his replacement, if there is one.  More fun is the switch in the student nurses (that’s not what I meant, you prude).  There are a few 4th-year students joining some of the student nurses who are just 1st-year.  The 4th-year nurses are a little more polished, a little more clear in what they’re doing.  And, most interestingly to me, they want to help the 1st-year compatriots, doing the equivalent of teaching their younger counterparts.  Very impressive.

Wake Up, Soldier, It’s Already 05:50 Hours

The schedule I’m expected to maintain in the hospital is a little extreme.  Most people crash out at a reasonable 10 or 11pm, and don’t have to rise until 7am or 8am in the morning; maybe 5am or 6am if you have to be in for an early start.  At home, we’d set our alarm for 7am during the week to get the boys to school.

I’ve learned something while staying here: the nurses and caterer—all very nice people, mind you—have a masochistic idea of what a “wake-up time” should be.  I’m usually asleep 9:30-10:00pm.  Get a few hours of rest, then—WAKE UP!—around 2am the nurses have to check blood pressure, pulse, oxygen, and temperature.  Ok, fine, back to sleep by 2:30am—WAKE UP!—and back awake at 5:50am so they can take like six separate blood samples.  (Pretty quick with the Hickman central line.)  Again, checking blood pressure, etc., and just to press the point, they also have to check our weight.  By then it’s just about 6am.  Fine, all done—WAKE UP!—no, just before 7am is the breakfast tray, with breakfast following about 15 minutes later.  Drink your tea or juice, eat your porridge or cereal or toast or yogurt.  Then you can crash again, if you’re able to pull it off.

Not very likely. 😉

I had to reinstall Firefox 3.6.15 on my laptop (3.6.16 and 4.0 both crash when presented with a weird SSL certificate from the hospital’s Cisco wireless box).  As I went along trying to figure out a way to avoid the bug, I went with a fresh user profile.  I got my bookmarks via Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks… -> Import, pointing it at old profile under

C:\Users\Brendan Kehoe\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ngg032uh.default

But I still had to redo all of my Add-Ons and such.  And later, when I decided I wanted to use Firefox 4.0 most of the time (much faster!), I needed the same list.

My list of must-haves, written down here so I won’t have to make as much of an effort next time I have to do this:

1. FlashBlock
2. AdBlock Plus
3. NoScript
4. QuickProxy
5. BlockSite (to block the hospital wifi server at 1.1.1.1 which has a bad SSL cert causing versions other than Firefox 3.6.15 to crash; this way I can use Firefox 4.0 and keep 3.6.15 independently installed solely to authenticate on the wireless)
6. GreaseMonkey
7. GreaseMonkey user script Allow Password Remembering, which overrides ‘autocomplete=”off”‘.  That attribute appears in the HTML of the hospital’s wireless server authentication page. Without this, I have to manually type in the username and password required to be able to use the hospital’s wireless. This great hack makes it possible for Firefox to retain both and free me from having to type them in constantly.
8. Better Gmail 2
9. DownloadThemAll! (batch downloading)
10. Add to Search Bar (so I can easily add www.google.ie)
11. F.B. Purity

I wonder what I’ve forgotten? 🙂

Are there any I should definitely add?

After a really great weekend at home, I’m back in the hospital for the next steps in getting better.

The weather in Ireland this weekend was spectacular—a very nice bonus. 🙂

Home til Sunday!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

It’s a few days into my fifth week in the hospital.  Kind of surreal, the idea I’ve been here for that long—much less the concept of still being here for a still-unknown length of time.  Despite the little change in my surroundings (and discounting the first couple of weeks when I was feeling much worse), I’ve managed to keep myself occupied.  Whether it’s by spending time with Elana, doing puzzles like Sudoku, reading a silly novel, or listening to lots of music, I’ve been lucky enough to have found ways to make the time go by.  Add to this my plunge into learning how to knit, which is one of the most relaxing and enjoyable choices.

Today I had some fun new experiences which added a bit of variety which I hadn’t realized I really needed.   Elana asked a nurse and got permission for me to go for a walk outside!  I had to wear a duck mask, which appeared to be a stranger experience for everyone else around me, in comparison to how I felt.  My current theory is that many of the people who glanced up at me as we walked around were more convinced I was wearing the mask to keep them from getting exposed to some mysterious and horrible disease, as opposed to the real reason of protecting me from exposure to the germs of others.  The mask itself looks kind of absurd anyway, so it wouldn’t take much of an imagination to come up with all sorts of reasons for it to be there.

While walking around, I saw that people can get different kinds of coffees from the shops downstairs.  It’s been about 6 weeks since I had a cappuccino or latte—and there they were.  But because I’m still neutropenic, I assumed it wouldn’t be allowed cuz of potential exposure to who-knows-what.  Well, Elana trumped that one.  She spoke with the head nurse and it was OK!  (With the qualifier, “Only one, now…”  I told her after about age 30 I found more than one coffee in a day usually makes my heart rate go up, so I’ve held back from the seemingly limitless consumption in my 20s.)

Elana went downstairs and got me a large cappuccino.  I drank it slowly, enjoying every sip.  I even used a spoon to carefully get the last little bits from the bottom of the cup.  What a delight.

Body picking up all your waves of positive karma

My doctors (it’s a team, with one as the lead, so I think I’ll start using the plural) had planned for me to get a blood transfusion today because they’d noticed my red blood cell count had gone down slightly yesterday.  This morning, they saw it went back up over a 9.0 borderline count, meaning my body’s generating replacement cells and they could cancel the transfusion.  Cancel it!  Holy crap.

There was also a meeting this morning with the radiologist, analyzing my CT scan results compared to the initial one done shortly after I was admitted.  In the first one, they saw a chest infection.  In the second one, analyzed this morning, they only saw what was described as “a few residuals”.  The doctors who spoke with me this morning said they’re happy with how things went, describing it as having been an acute viral infection which they dealt with immediately with antibiotics.  They toyed with the idea of putting me back on an antibiotic to deal with whatever little “residuals” are remaining, but decided it wasn’t necessary because of the good state of my health overall.  One of the doctors this morning said, “You’re doing brilliantly.”  I know things change from one day to the next, so I’ll happily tuck that one away for today.

To add to this list, which I really find hard to accept in terms of trusting signs of real progress, I tried something different with my eyes today.  The skies of Dublin were overcast for much of the day, meaning light was more subdued than recent really bright sunlight.  So we tried drawing up my window blind, which I usually keep all the way down because of how quickly I can get a headache from the bright light.  I did two ranges of time with the blinds up, a bit around lunch and then most of the afternoon.  No headache.  We both think part of the sensitivity to the light is caused by the fact that I’ve been consciously avoiding the light since my eyes first having trouble during the chemo in early March.  I’m going to try out having the blind up each day, at least a little bit even on brighter days.  (I’ve also got a great pair of sunglasses on loan from a friend, which I’ll use on those brighter days to keep trying to increase my level of comfort.)

Stitching with rock ‘n roll

I spent a lot of time practicing my knitting this morning.  It’s still quite amusing to others around me—the nurses, doctors, even the guys who come and wash the floors with bleach mops twice a day.  A bunch of time was spent knitting my nice happy rows of 20 stitches while listening to rock music on Radio Nova, a Dublin radio station which plays great tunes (which you can hear via an online stream, too).  I choose to listen to AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd while staying proud how I made it through more than a dozen rows without a dropped stitch or yarn over, so I figure I’m plenty secure in my masculinity.

On any given day, I could be sitting in my bed or in the chair next to it. The sun will come pouring in the window, my really cool-looking sunglasses protecting me as I succeed in another properly-knit row of yarn, all of this accented by rock music pouring out of my headphones.  Normal image, right?

Perfectly good with me.