Wednesday: The Chemical Wedding

It got up this morning early, still exhausted from the doping the day before. If I can just make it through a couple of cycles of dex I can hopefully get past this horrible back pain.

We made it over to for the bone marrow. What with the holes in my neck, sedation was easy. I didn't feel a thing. I woke up and was pretty groggy -- but after about 45 minutes in recovery they decided I was okay to go over to the infusion center. Our schedule arrival time there was 11AM but we were there at 2:10! So I called the psychiatrist I'm scheduled to meet with at 2:30 for 4PM (knowing that would probably be a pipe dream). We figured I was out of the woods for nausea so we took 10 4mg tablets of dexamethasone. I feel neither irresponsibly rage-filled nor physically impressive. Phhhfft. Another mass media hype-job!

By the time they called us back, I needed a liter of something to combat my uric acid (now 11.3) and to bring down calclium (that was by a nasty subsutaneous injection). The good news is they thing the heightened kidney activity is a side effect of cancer cells rupturing and dumping calcium and uric acid in the blood stream. The Kidney's need help with that.

I also got another Velcade push, a shot in the belly (this one didn't hurt as much) for reducing risk of blood clots, and the final glory, being hooked up to the Platinum, Adriacycin, Cytoxin and Etoposide. Poison running through my veins, as Alice Cooper once sang.

I needed a bit more antinausea to combat all this so we've added a new pill, Ragazan or Ranmanazz or Rasputin -- can't remember which. Anyhow I'm support to take two pills per dose, four doses per day. And then cap it off with Thalidomide before I go to bed.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. Should be, in theory! :)

The lost Tuesday...

Yesterday was a blur. I went to the clinic to get something prescribed for my back, to pick up the thalidomide and tamiflu prescriptions, to get something strong for antinausea, and to have labs drawn. Then we went home around 2PM and I crashed. Woke up at 8PM, did Monday's blog entry, tried to watch a bit of TV and gave up around 10PM, went back to bed.

Up at 7AM today, pain in the back has spread and it remains very difficult for me to stay focused, type a sentence without fumbling over words, etc. Hopefully these are lingering side effects of something I don't need any more of...dunno.

I *do* know that today, I have another bone marrow pull, a small one, and they've already got a hole in my neck to sedate me. Hopefully it will go very, very smoothly with no barfing. I also hope that the oxycontin I'm taking actually works because my back is killing me. Then I'll go to the infusion center for more daily labs.

Hopefully, I won't be wiped out and can write more later.