Numerology Has To Count For Something

August 8, 2008

Because today is 8/8/8, O Best Beloveds, and as you probably know thanks to media saturation, 8 is a lucky number in some parts of the world, and thus today as fortuitous as 7/7/7 last year. Thus it surely has some significance that today, this very 8-centric day, I commenced my 8th kind of chemo.

And to kick things off merrily enough, Dr. W. had some surprising news about my series of scans (PET, bone, MIR of liver); it seems that despite those high tumor marker numbers, there has not been as much increased cancer activity as one feared that indicated. More in the bone and lymph nodes, “which is okay, lymph nodes don’t do anything, and bone doesn’t do anything except cause pain and you aren’t having pain,” as Dr. W. put it, nothing anywhere new (phew!), and best of all, no more and possibly even a little less in the liver, where it counts. It seems that one big lesion is actually as much as a quarter smaller than it was back in May, so it seems that poor maligned and benign Navilbene did do some good after all. Let us salute the empty IV container as it lies on the pile of other plastic discards! Navilbene, we hardly knew ye, but thank you!

Yeah, you are right, Beloveds; writing while looped on Ativan is always a fraught proposition. I’ll try to keep it together for a few more lines and then take my groggy self off somewhere I can’t embarrass said self.

So this did start Doxcill off on a high; things are not as deeply in the neighborhood of dire as we had feared and they swear that Doxcill will be well tolerated. Nausea remains an issue, especially since my hitherto rather cooperative insurance company rejected paying for the strong anti-nausea drug I usually take, because Doxcill doesn’t have much nausea inducing properties. But that’s not if the patient’s been having chemo on and off for eleven years, particularly the last three, and seems to throw up after yogurt. (Maybe it’s the yogurt? Should check.) They gave it to me anyway, along with extra Ativan (hence groggy email), some other stuff, and tomorrow more stuff to help with white blood cell count which is already low. I’m to stay away from sniffling people, especially children, because I’m prone to infection.

Otherwise, it’s too early to tell if Doxcill will be my pal, but no reason to think otherwise at this early (hours) stage. Meanwhile, plans for Plucky Survivors See America continue apace, so check in on PluckySurvivors.com and see how it’s shaking down, come hell or high tumor markers. And I really am having trouble keeping thoughts in my head–thanks Ativan!–so I better stop before I descend into soppy sentiments of love for you all (entirely heartfelt if poorly spelled and constructed) and or engage in some other kind of amnesia-induced action.

I forget what eight was for*,