Sunday Morning and it is all pretty much like yesterday! No appetite and painful hands to my elbows! I do wonder what all this means? and how worse can it get? Why is all this "normal" and why is it a "good" thing? My "road to recovery", away from this frieghtyard, won't really begin until after next Tuesday and not even then! I know that procedure by heart! The following two weeks will continue this downward spiral they call a "cure" and then my recovery will begin! I got to "here" in little steps, not like walking off a cliff, more like an escalator, always taking me down whether I wanted to or not! Soon I will be at the very bottom and then I can climb out of this mess I find myself in! That is what I will look forward to. It will be nice to change this blog from cancer to strength and recovery, get it back to gardening and art where I may have fewer "followers" but that would be OK with me!!! I'll show you what I look like! AND you will notice that I still have some hair!!!

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Saturday Morning. I am waiting for Tuesday, my last Chemo! My right hand is numb to my elbow! I am at the "penultimate" of all of this. I have always wanted to use that word! I am at the end time of this process and all I really know is that I am a lot sicker than when I began. In October of last year I had Cancer in most of my lymph nodes, in my spine, in my spleen, in enough places to be in "stage 3 and a half" and given a 60% chance of "survival"!!! My only symptom that I was aware of was a lump on my neck that "wouldn't go away". I was in Washington DC, visiting my daughter and walking 5 miles a day! I have worked in construction all my life and could easily put 200 pounds on my shoulder and carry it to where it needed to go. At 62 I was still very strong and looked younger than a lot of men in their 50's. But I had this "lump" that "wouldn't go away". So, after my birthday, in December I decided to wait until "after Christmas"! and then until "after the first of the year"! Finally, in January, I went to "My Doctor", a "real doctor", one who knew me as me and not just statistics from blood samples stored in his computer. My "15 minute visit turned into 45 minutes and without a blood sample or biopsy or any tests he said he thinks that I have Hodgskins Lymphoma! Just like that! Two weeks and $35,000 in tests and four Specialists later all this was confirmed. I was in no pain, all I had was a lump on my neck that wouldn't go away, and cancer that I couldn't feel taking over my body!! I could still work 10 hours a day, do all the welding and carry my share of the steel. Now, after six months with my last chemo to go, I am litterally a shadow of what I was. And it will be at least a couple of weeks to find out where I am. I am hoping my hands will heel. I can't pick up a pencil nor button my shirt. I am hoping my appetite will return. I have not tasted food in three months! And I am hoping the cancer is gone. That would be "the ultimate"!

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Friday Morning! I am rehydraded, got my steroids yesterday and Vicodine! My hands are still swollen and still hurt but the Vicodine helps reduce the focus on the pain. And, I am told I am very Normal. I am not sure that artists like to hear that but as cancer patients it is reassuring. My hands are normal, the pain is normal and both will get better once they quit poisoning me! My doubts are normal, most people wonder if they should continue with the "last chemo". This is a road well travelled so I just have to continue until the end, and I am almost there. I took a photo of me yesterday but don't want to show it to you. I am unrecognizable! I can go to any of my old haunts and people I have known you years don't know who I am! This could be fun! Maybe I will start talking about myself! "Do you know Jerry? Haven't seen him for awhile!" Next Tuesday and I will be leaving this frieghtyard. Oh that train may yet drag me a few miles along the track but I will be getting off. I have a lot of places I would rather be than hanging around here.

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Thursday today. Yesterday I slept most of the time. Today I will get the rehydration and steroids and talk to the nurses! The pain in my hands is unrelenting. I am back to eating tapiocca. I am so tired of this. The swollen lymph nodes were gone three month ago. Pain is unmeasurable from you to me. We can compare intellect and weight and numerous other conditions of being Human, but the scale for pain is always personal. What makes my hands bad is the pain doesn't come in waves, it is constant. I have become a complaining old man!

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Tuesday, early morning. I am not really sure what is happening to me. Today is the day I normally get rehydrated with a litre of saline because I am not drnking enough. And they would give me steroids to keep me going until next Tuesday for my last chemo. Because of the Fourth of July the schedule all changes and this won't happen until Thursday! In the meantime my right hand is terribly swollen, so much so I can't see the knuckles! No wonder it hurts. I went to bed at 4 pm and got up at 3 am and will go to bed again at 5am and sleep as long as I can. Nothing really helps. No pain, no gain? Finallt, we are getting Summer weather! It is supposed to break eighty degrees today and then over 90 degrees f. for the next few days!

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Monday Mornng! I slept through the fireworks last night. I have been reading about peripheral neuropathy on the net. It is interesting that they call this chemo stff a cure for cancer and it causes so much damage! Interesting and painful. If you can imagine hooking about 20 barbed fish hooks into your hand and then tieing the fishing line to that frieght train, and it is going by about eighty miles an hour, that is about what it feels like. There is no cure for this. It may get better with time...eight months to eight years! or it may not. Voodoo Doctors!

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Sunday, July 4th. Some days I could scream! These last days of chemo are terrible and no amount of possitive attitude is making them better. I mostly slept yesterday and waited until 4:30 when I could go to bed for real. Today will be the same! My appetite is gone again, I am "living" on ensure and juice. I can't touch anything, not even my hands. I am wondering what the end of this chemo will be like? So far the voodoo doctors have not really told me anything. I will be tested again with that contraption that is the equivalent of 420 X-rays. The math to all this is really simple. If the cancer is gone, then I can get back to my life and begin the process of healing and all this slow torture was worth it. And if the cancer is still there and all I have gained was this experience then I could have done without it. I could scream! One more chemo to go and they don't really know if I even need it. This is all statistics. Why can't I be done or maybe two more would do it? I think my month off in July will be spent mostly sleeping.

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Friday, July 2nd. Taking "a month off" is going to be a difficult challenge for me! I still have the one more chemo to do, and I won't go on and on about my hands, but they do limit what I can do. I won't begin healing until after that last drop of poison, so my energy level is close to zero. Television or going to a movie is out, I would just fall asleep! Reading is out for the same reason. What I am after is an activity, something to do. I can sit and appretiate the beauties of this world, wonder at the amazement of a flower or the precision of a butterfly only for so long and then I want to "make something"! I have gotten out of bed most of my life to finish what I began yesterday and look forward to a new project. This "relaxing" is frustrating to me!!! Like I have misplace my "things to do" list! Part of it all is how I feel at the end of the day. I am so used to reviewing the day and thinking "I did that!" and then listing what is necessary to finish it and then, my reward, dreaming about the next project! NOTHING on my list is going to be frustrating, indeed.

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