The Chemo Doldrums

Well, here we sit like flies on…  You can guess how that little rhyme ends and it really doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on, it just always comes to mind anytime I’m waiting on something or for something. It’s like this, from my perspective (and we all know a little about perspective) the first few days of chemo we are waiting to see if any nausea sets in.  After a few more days we are waiting to see if any diarrhea rears (sorry) its ugly head.  A few more after that and we are anticipating low white cell count time and steer clear of any germ factories.  After that it seems to be a low energy period when resting rules over excitement and fevers spike routinely.  A few days before chemo begins again, there is an antsy anticipation of starting it all over again, so we live it up before we head down that familiar road again.  At this time we are hoping that her white blood cells are beginning to multiply like rabbits and waiting to see if Miki’s energy gets a boost.

Between ending radiation a while back, dealing with residual side effects and other ancillary surprises, for me it seems to be hard to identify any patterns in Miki’s chemo routine and subsequent days that follow, because nothing seems to be routine other than three days of IV drugs and the chemo doldrums that follow.  On the other hand, Miki realizes that when something unpleasant begins to repeat itself, she knows like a quarterback about to be hit after releasing the ball, that the unpleasantness, the pain, and the discouragement will be there to let her know that it ain’t over and it will happen again.

But that doesn’t stop us from creating excitement and surprises of our own.  If you have kept up with Miki’s blog, you know that we can now look forward to physical therapy (PT) visits, a follow up eye appointment to see if the “natural tears” recommended have helped clear up the shooting stars and streaks Miki has recently experienced, and a trip to a cardiologist to get some answers to her high heart rate this Friday.  Gail the PT will be back this week to share more than her good vibe we got on her first visit last week.  Keeping her eyes hydrated seems to have cancelled Miki’s private fireworks show in her eyes.  And my biggest question, after how could all this have happened to the most health conscience woman I’ve ever met in the first place, is how can she have the heart rate of a humming bird while having the activity level of a three-toed sloth.  Okay, I exaggerated a little… some data shows a humming bird’s resting heart rate is about 250 bpm.  While Miki can still aspire to that number, hers reaches half that without much effort and I am nervous of her head popping off if it gets much higher.  The last and newest encouraging addition to our arsenal of things to help in Miki’s physical comfort is an oxygen machine.  We can now manufacture our own almost pure O2 at home (with portable options if needed) and she has no problem huffing it as much as she wants.  In general, so far, it has been better with it than without it.  It helps her not get as winded with physical exertion, a pain in her back is not as painful with it, and she has a 50 foot tube that follows her all over the house if necessary, so it is relatively convenient unless you are one of our dogs and won’t go passed anything new in their environment…yep it’s great!

On a completely different topic, the tree-like posts that you may remember from the last posting, where Miki was atop them as if a conquering hero, are now vertical and awaiting a permanent concrete base.  David and I dug the 18” diameter by 36” deep holes for the posts Saturday.  What’s a little posthole digging among family?  Not much until you hit rock!  I can only relate this to Usain Bolt running a world record pace and then the track turns to liquid tar the last 50 meters.  It’s going to slow you down.  It did, but we persevered and the holes were made ready.  I then recruited 3 unsuspecting brutes to raise them today.  Shannon, Matt, and Cole had a 9:00 donut date in our backyard, not really knowing what they were really in for.  At the last minute, Cole had to back out due to some story about his car getting stolen the night before.  If I only had a nickel for every time I’d used that excuse to not get a hernia!  Shannon and Matt summoned their inner Cole and mustered the strength without him to move them into position, raise them vertically (the herculean part), and then hold them level while they were staked down.  Now remember, they are SIXTEEN FEET LONG.  When you see them, you will understand our exuberance when they were all in place and no one had blown their intestines through their lower abs!  Good job boys!  Not as strenuous, but just as important, Alice and David helped position the post’s supports that would be staked to the ground to hold them in place and other worker bee responsibilities.  Figuring.  Calculating.  That stuff is what David is good at and what gives me mental hernias.  So all in all it could not have gone smoother, but Cole now has any abdominal protrusions Matt and Shannon may exhibit on his  hands!

David dug the holes...I played in them!

Out popped a lucky Leprechaun that granted me a wish.

I wished for someone to raise the posts instead of me!  Here they are.
 Good job little Leprechaun

The erection crew, I mean wood raisers, I mean big loggers...
you know what I mean.

Double checking diagonals for square, triangulation, the hypotenuse of the
dangle, and the vertex of the rhombus of the onomatopoeia...perfect!

The inspection passes!

If you are going to have a dream come true, you probably would want to witness as much of it as possible and that is what Miki did today.  She positioned her massage table in her office, so she could lie down in a comfortable position and watch out the window to supervise the raising of the posts that will support her tree house dream.  When it was apparent the columns were squared away, Shannon and Matt were inching toward the back gate to leave, and we were finishing up…guess who called and I put on speaker phone for her worker bees to hear and in tears told us good job and thank you?  You’re right.

My Zen from Home:  You know when you have done something long enough and it becomes evident that you are ready to move on to something else or something new?  I had that epiphany today.  While cleaning up a little in the kitchen, shutting the window and closing the curtains for the day…out of the blue…I made the comment to Miki, who was on the love seat watching me, we probably need to wash these curtains.  It was one of those moments that you wish you could reverse your words and draw them back into your mouth as if they never came out.  That phrase, “we probably need to wash these curtains,” is probably one of the last things I ever expected to come out of my mouth, other than “let’s go shopping.”  Not that I am a total chauvinist, but it will be a great day in the neighborhood when Miki resumes control of the galley and relieves me of my concern for the condition of our curtains.  We all have our strengths and weaknesses!