Thanks to bridge player, film buff and wine fancier Mike Silverman for coming up the best description of the condition I'm in on Thursday after I clumsily tried to explain it to him -- woozy and wobbly.
Yes, the brain and the legs have become unreliable again, but not so much as to discourage what's turned into a full day. That's included trips to the post office and the car wash (yes, it's warm enough for that, finally), plus chipping away the remaining ice on the path to the back door at home (a six-foot long stretch, melted to a thin crust on the far edge by another day of glorious March sun).
And now, after a nap, I'm at work.
Nor did it discourage my bridge game. Maybe it was because partner Florence Boyd and I were on defense most of the day. At any rate, I made fewer mistakes than usual and we came in first North-South.
As for the chemo at Roswell Park Cancer Institute on Wednesday, it was more easily endurable than last month, thanks to a few discoveries that we've made along the way.
First of all, you can request (and get) an expert phlebotomist in the Phlebotomy Clinic. Result: She hit the vein with little pain.
Second, you can request (and get) one of the better vein-finders in the Chemotherapy Clinic. On Wednesday, after chemo nurse Katherine didn't spot one, it was Doreen. She found one halfway down my right forearm on the first try.
And third, you can request (and get) saline solution in combination with one of the chemo drugs, Gemcitabine, which reduces its vein-burning characteristics.
There's still some confusion about #3. We asked the chemo doc, Dr. Saby George, if he needed to approve this, as the chemo nurses had told us. He replied that he doesn't need to and that he doesn't like to micro-manage. Then we got a contradictory answer from the nurse in charge in chemo. Oh no, she said, the doctor usually has to approve.
At any rate, I got the saline solution and the requisite veins are happy. Happier than the veins on my left hand, which are still sore from the Gemcitabine four weeks ago.
During the Cisplatin infusion, which came before the Gembitamine, I felt no effects at first and wondered when they would kick in. Halfway through the two-hour process, I found out. The fatigue enveloped me and I could no longer stay awake to read.
Later, after a hearty dinner at soon-to-close Torches on Restaurant Week specials (beer & cheese soup, mac & cheese wrapped in porchetta and a dessert -- I'd fasted on water, tea and crackers all day), I could hardly stay awake at all. I was in bed by 9:30 p.m.
My day also included a sit-down with a new (to me) member of the Roswell Park team, the social worker. By his request, it was without my health proxy, Bill Finkelstein.
After asking me how I felt about things, he got to what seemed to be the real purpose of this conference, the picture-taking of me and a health care worker last month, the one that prompted a sit-down with a hospital security officer.
I told him that I had consulted with a lawyer about this (didn't invoke his name though -- your anonymity is safe with me, Mickey) and we have every right to take pictures as long as the health care worker doesn't say no (which she didn't) and that I would fight this if they tried it again. The social worker then suggested that Bill was abrasive and that we would get better results if he was more diplomatic. He then showed up for the conference with Dr. George, but said nothing. Apparently just an observer.
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