Day 8, Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

We were up a little earlier today, as I had an 8am pulmonary function test. I sat in a little glass booth, and the walls of the corner of the room that it sat in had been painted to look like grass, sky, trees, and water. I thought it was a nice touch, but I can't help but wonder if the imagery predates the tech's "enjoy the scenery" joke, or vice versa. Either way, she'd told that joke more than once. Pulmonary function is lung function, so in said booth I spent the majority of my time with nose clips on, breathing, in one manner or another, into a mouthpiece attached to a long hose with a panoply of mechanical tidbits, valves, and little brother hoses that were just hanging around. When I was exhaling, the pulmonary tech had this well-rehearsed verbal routine that she performed, with only minor variance in cadence and inflection, and it went something like this:

[when about to exhale with force]

"Inhaaale, inhaaaale, and, HARD, push-push-push-push, keep it going, keeeep it going, you can do it, push, push, come on, keep it going, keep it going..."

I'm not doing it justice, it was fascinating. I asked if she'd been a cheerleader at some point, she said midwife, which did explain some of her word choices.

We did several different tests, repeating a few of them more than once, so as to obtain consistent data sets, and by the end of it, I was slightly lightheaded and acutely aware of my lungs. My lungs, by the by, are somehow still in above average shape, for a man of my height and weight (apparently, I've shrunk down to 5'10"), completely in spite of my not-entirely-voluntarily sedentary lifestyle for the last few years. Further, I have a full 1.2 L of lung capacity more than standard. The tech gave me a score of zero, for "zero problems."

Then a meeting with part of my team: Doctor Till, PA Kerry, and a nurse whose name I have forgotten, but really should remember, given how well we know each other, or at least her me, after she swabbed my hoop. She let me swab my sinus. Different swabs, and the sinus swab preceded the hoop-swab (hoop means anus). I've never had my hoop swabbed before. While brief in duration, it certainly was a novel experience.

The team meeting yielded actual, non-hoop related, results:

•  From my lumbar puncture: no brain or spinal involvement, which means no brain chemo. That is a separate thing from most chemotherapy regimens, which are unable to cross the blood-brain barrier. This is a giant goddamn relief.
•  From my bone marrow biopsies: my bone marrow is clean and cancer free, which means that we may proceed with the autogenous transplant without complication.
•  The 9/10 match that was identified previously is, after going through 17 million people, still the best match available. The donor has said yes, and their availability is being determined.
•  Though the final decision hinges on the results of a few scans this coming week, the current plan of action is the original plan of action, calling for two transplants: an 'auto' followed closely by an 'allo', or allogeneic, transplant. The allo is likely to be what they call a 'mini' allo, or a mixed chimerism transplant, using an unrelated donor.

So: the forecast is still Seattle until September.

Also, for some reason, I'm really, really low on vitamin D. I start a high-dose, once a week pill regimen on Sunday. I look forward to fluorescent urine, which I find gratifying. It's probably got a lot to do with why I was eager to eat beets as a child - you pee pink. Don't judge me.

Later, we had two classroom-style lectures. The first was an hour on food prep for a post-transplant level immuno-suppressed patient - gotta take a lot of extra steps to keep me bacteria free (the dietician kept calling them pathogens, which was sort of a misnomer, but why should my minor annoyance get in the way of the message?). The second was about proper care - role of the patient, role of the caregiver, what to watch out for, home sanitation, that sort of thing. Nothing surprising to me, but definitely nice to have it all laid out, if only to reinforce the lessons of microbiology 214.

Afterwards, we met a few other patients, which was nice but sort of odd. I've never really been able to relate to anyone over having cancer before, and it was briefly pleasant, but after you've exhausted the topics of what you've got, how long you've had it, how you've dealt with side effects and tests, and what your transplant regime is likely to be, well, you're still very different people.

We finally got to try that Mexican restaurant, and, well, it was a solid "meh." I was so crestfallen. Upshot: Lavender soda.

"As I've often said, few things in life are as surprising as forgetting that you've eaten beets." - Me.