Day 43, Tuesday, March 12th, 2013

Happy Birthday, Mom!

On Mom's birthday, I packed up a bunch of my stuff and moved out! No, seriously, I did. It was while packing said stuff that the power went out in the building, and from inspection, the rest of the block as well. Luckily, we'd both already showered and dressed. We walked to the SCCA, caught the shuttle from there to UW campus, and by nine, I had arrived in my new digs at UW Medical.

It's a 10x12 room with my own bathroom, shower, and window from a glass (with a nice view). The bed goes both up and down, and has a built in scale, so I know how much I weigh while I am Homer Simpsoning the crap out of this thing ("Bed goes up, bed goes down, bed goes up, bed goes down."). I have a TV, which I am less concerned about, and an internet connection, which I am pleased with. Oddly, the sink is in the main area of the room, and not in the bathroom, so, to wash my hands without contaminating the door handle, I either have to pee with the door open, or use another appendage to open to said door.

Today's nurse was a very nice young lady named Sloane Quackenbush (Best. Name. Ever.). She took my vitals, I asked if she gets asked if she likes the band Sloan, she responded that more people ask her about Sloane from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. She's pretty rad, hope I get to see her again (I might not, with rotations and all).

It's just occurred to me that this stay in the hospital is going to be markedly different from my stay last August, but not for any medical reasons (that's different, too, but not that much). It's going to be weird because I'm not going to have visitors, not like I did last time. Further, it is going to be weird in that every time I take a dump, I am required to summon a nurse so that it can be hauled away for inspection.

It's the little things.

I set up in the room, unpacking what little I brought with me; it amounted to distractions and underwear. Then we killed time while waiting: Mom crochet'd (what is the past tense of crochet, anyway?), I hooked up to the internet as soon as I possibly could. It's a need not an addiction. You hush.

Then, after some vitals and such were recorded, Sloane hooked me up to a saline drip, using my handy-dandy Hickman line, in preparation for chemotherapy in the afternoon.

For anyone who has ever wondered about chemotherapy, but been to nervous/afraid/preoccupied/gassy to ask, when you get chemo, you go to a place/hospital/clinic/neighbour's garage, let someone jab an IV into you (in this case, a surgeon - Hickman lines are still IV), and then you park your butt into a chair next to a wheely medical pole with beep machines. Beep machines are sophisticated pumps that move liquids in very precise increments, but when something goes wonky, they beep, hence, beep machines. They attach you to said medical pole, and then you just sort of hang out for 2-6 hours, depending on the type of chemo you're getting, and the amount of pre-chemo medications you are being loaded with. I think I may have covered most of this before, in an older post. I can't be sure right now.

Chemo brain! It's a thing, a real thing, and it makes your mind a mushy, bouncy-castle-ish sort of place, but like if all the other kids in the bouncy castle are jerks or have been peeing in there. You forget things a lot: names, times, places, you name it. You have a combination of constant tip-of-the-tongue syndrome and a peculiar sort of whimsical amnesia, where it's just gone through and blocked things off at complete and utter random.

When they actually start pumping the chemo drugs into you, your body goes sort of warm and fuzzy from the inside out. I know that those are vague terms, but I can't really liken it to anything; it's an odd sensation. I always get pressure in the bottom of my sinuses - not the whole sinuses, just the bottom. And then, with the time depending on what course of chemo you're getting, at some point you start to space out a little. Everything feels far away, there is a serious lag between signal and response, and it's not so much that you can't concentrate, but rather that you don't.

Getting chemo is a lot like ordering an immense series of alcoholic beverages that you don't particularly enjoy, and then making yourself sit there until they're all gone, complete with the likelihood of throwing up everything inside of you and then going back for more, stopping only after you've thrown up your toenails.

However, they've gotten very good with the drugs for that sort of thing, these days. I only threw up the very first day of chemo last August because they didn't give me extra nausea meds when I asked for them, because they "wanted to see how I'd do" on the ones they had previously given me. After that, they gave me lots, and I augmented that at home. Problem solved. How many chemo patients do you know who gained weight during chemotherapy? Me. I did that. 

Also, please add chemo to your list of things that make your pee smell funny, along with coffee and asparagus.

Note: at time of this writing, approx 7pm Seattle time, I have yet to barf.

What do you call a sheep with no legs? A cloud.