The Cancer Chronicles Part IV – Which is Appropriate since I Just Came from My Bone Chemotherapy IV Infusion

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

 

Chapter One – Wherein I Delight my Oncologist

Sunday, July 25 – “A day like all days filled with those events that illuminate our times and YOU…ARE…THERE!”

Sunday afternoon is a quiet day usually, a nice breakfast, a visit with the kids and grand kiddies and then home to watch some telly – especially Wind Tunnel on the Speed Channel – maybe a little PBS. My rash mild, except for my nose (pizza-nose, pizza-nose), my stomach settled.

I took my Tarceva at 10PM as usual and an hour later the Doxycycline and settled down to watch the news and whatever, I mean, it was Sunday. About twelvish my stomach starts acting up and I start sneezing. I mean big ah-CHOOOOO’s. They hurt my ears. All this while my stomach wants to return what ever it had. After about eight or more sneezes, in which mucus flows abundantly,

 I went upstairs and no sooner got to the bathroom when all hell broke loose.

(And once again Rudy Turchuk prays at the porcelain altar – only without the benefits of too much alcohol, once again.)

Now, I don’t know what contortions my face went through whilst I was, shall we say paying homage to American Standard, but it  felt as if the skin on my nose had burst asunder. Then I noticed that there was a little red mucous floating on the font. (Very little came up – all fluid, probably the Doxycycline.) I slightly freaked wondering what my ex-beautiful nose looked like. I looked in the mirror and my face was absolutely beet red – crimson – and my nose was not pretty, however not as bad as I feared.

But – WHOA NELLY – my entire head and face and ears and behind my ears was now covered in an angry RASH. The rash. In spades! Yes! I finally got the rash. Oy! Do I have a rash.

I have naches in my tsoris. I am farmisht. [trans.: I have joy in my suffering. I have mixed emotions. (“Like watching my mother-in-law driving over a cliff in my new Cadillac.” – Alan King, comedian)] I sleep the sleep of the farblondget. (Ed. What’s going on? First French, now Yiddish?)

Monday, July 26 – “Meanwhile back at the ranch”…

I call and see the APRN, Nurse M. (They all refer to her as Karen, but I think she deserves a title.) First they draw a little blood to see if I have any and what proof it might be. On the way to see Nurse Martin, I pass Dr. S in the hallway. He looks at me, smiles broadly and loudly proclaims: “You have the rash! I am so delighted! You’ve made my day!” And as he continues on his way: “I am so happy.”

Here I look like I have the worst case of adolescent acne ever, and he’s delighted!

Nurse M, okay, Karen, (it’s easier to type) is also delighted but much less exuberantly and with a touch of sympathy – she is a woman, after all. She looks closely and says it’s early grade three, but a little later upgrades it to borderline grade four. (Grade four means cut back on the Tarceva, but I’m not there yet.)

She prescribed Hydrocortizone for the rash and recommends cutting back on the Doxyshitcline for a while to see if that’s the problem. (There is no connection with the sneezes BTW.) And there’s a word of hope – this is probably the peak of the rash and it should start to subside.

Blood work suggests a regimen of 4 doses of Vitamin D 50,000 units once a week.

 

*****

Chapter Two – Wherein I Delight my Oncologist Again and I Get a “Very Good”

Tuesday, Aug. 4 –♬ “…cause he’s got high hopes. He’s got high hopes. He’s got pie, apple pie in the sky hopes….”♬

Today I had a scheduled meeting with the onco, and some more Zometa.

The blood lady drew blood. And three pages of Mozart’s biography later we’re called to see the Doc. He reiterates how delighted he was to see the level of the rash on Monday, and says he’s happy with the effects of the hydrocortisone cream, as the rash, the scourge, has indeed subsided. We talk the usual check-up Q&A stuff, a few recommendations, we swap a few jokes, and I’m off to the Boom-Boom Room at the Chemo Lounge.

Holly, my infusion nurse (she’s a sweetie; she was also Toby’s IV nurse) sets up my three bags of juice – Decadron, saline solution and Zometa – sticks the needle to me, and I’m off to the races.

[Okay, okay, so you’re saying: “What’s with the Decadron? You never mentioned no Decadron.” (You really ought to watch those double negatives.) Well, remember after Zometa One? When I got all kinds of sick and all? And I told you that next time I was going to take it like a woman?

So the next time, like the manly man I was, I asked if there wasn’t something they could give me for the nausea and all. I mean, Toby had these pills. And I thought maybe something like that. Well, for Zometa Two, they add a bag of Decadron, short for Dexa something, something, something. It’s a steroid of some sort that amongst other things is good for calming down the Zometa effects. So, the next day, instead of wishing I was in Cincinnati, I was full of “piss and vinegar”. I had lots of energy. I did things. I could have hit home runs. And Thursday too.

On Friday, the Rabbi Slept. No wait! That’s another book. On Friday I slept, but I felt good.
Somehow, I, uh, forgot to mention it. Just like a woman…. I mean man, man! (Oh, no!)]

So, I’m sitting there, sipping a dark roast coffee, nibbling on a granola bar and reading my biography, when the Doc walks over to me and starts probing my neck around the jugular vein and down into the clavicle and it’s getting slightly uncomfortable (but I didn’t complain; I didn’t complain. I didn’t even wince) and I says: “Did I do something wrong, again?” And he says: “No, not at all,” but he’s still probing. Then he says: “You had a lymph node, but I don’t feel it anymore.”

Then he smiled a big warm smile, looked me in the eyes and tapped my cheek twice the way a grandfather would to a son or grandson and said quietly: “Very good,” and walked away. Toby smiled and felt very relieved.

I think I just moved the Dr. to the optimistic side of professionally neutral. But he’s not going to make any predictions until the CAT scan after 12 weeks of Tarceva. This Sunday will be week 4.

I, on the other hand, am still caustically optimitious, uh, optimitiously caustic? No, cautiously optimistic.

 So that’s the news from Lake Woebegone, where the men are all handsome, the women have handfuls, and children had damn well better get all A’s or there’s hell to pay for the teachers.

Hugs & Kisses

Rudy the Beardless

PS. Oh, I forgot to mention I clipped my beard and hair so that I could get the cream on to the rash. I attached a pic. Ain’t I cute.