Stories, Books and Life

April 2008--Kevin has a conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, next month so there are travel brochures on top of the chemotherapy research and the lab reports. I plan to explore the area a little while he is in meetings. My favorite book on perennials is pulled out on the bookshelf. Normally there would be a stack of gardening books out by this time in the spring and a list of what I wanted to plant and divide in the gardens. We downsized the collection of gardening books along with the gardening when I moved over in January.

The BoogeyMan

We had a strange phone call today. From the BoogeyMan.

He said he is coming to make a mess in our peanuts (and here I've been blaming the raccoons for the mess) and eat all our candy. Apparently the BoogeyMan is on a boogey crime spree--he called up Tante Kelly to say he was going to her house to eat her candy and her kitties. AND he left a message (the BoogeyMan apparently has good phone manners) for Aunt Gina saying he was going to eat her puppies.

I tried to scare the BoogeyMan. "I have a grandson named J-Dogg who will beat you up if you mess up our peanuts." The BoogeyMan was not impressed. He said he had already been to J-Dogg's house.

However, Joshua (aka J-Dogg) called soon after. He tells me that the BoogeyMan can be captured and subdued with M&Ms.

I was amazed that Joshua knows so much about catching Boogey Men.

The Best of Both Worlds

Quiet day. Kevin napped intermittedly and caught up on some paperwork in between. His headache lingers, his fingers are refusing to cooperate as much as he would like and he has a general flu-like ache and nausea. Hello, Chemotherapy.

By evening he was ready for a change of scenery but not up to a walk or even much of a ride. We headed for his favorite sunset spot out on Cowan Lake, just minutes away.

Ohio state parks are abundant, free and underused in this area. Cowan Lake is quiet and peaceful much of the time. I take a few shots of tiny wildflowers peeking up in the woods. We watch herons land lakeside and listen to ducks calling across the water.

Sunday evening is our typical catch up time for phone calls. We call his mother, careful in what we say for she still has no knowledge of his cancer. We talk to Paige and Kelly. We call my sister and hear about chicks being hatched, lightening strikes on the farm house, the escape and capture of an errant bull.

This is the best of both worlds for Kevin. He's sitting at a peaceful lakeside watching the sun set while chatting to friends and family via cell phone. Technology and nature combined. I know he's thinking it doesn't get any better than this.

Fluttering Moments

Kevin is pretty tired and achy today but he wanted to get out for a little while. We drove into Eden Park to visit Krohn Conservatory. The butterfly show is in progress there. It was fun to watch hundreds of butterflies flitting about and more fun to watch the people reacting to them. We got a kick out of one little girl who walked around nearly an hour with one butterfly perched on the front of her dress.

Didn't take long for the butterflies to wear Kevin out so we headed home.

Drove through the hills and valleys around Fort Ancient on our way and got a couple of pictures. Notice the road way below in the valley and the road sign indicating the switchback curve ahead of us.

The other shot is a little roadside antique place. Kevin doesn't have much patience with antiques and old things--he calls this the "junk shop" and thinks it's a bit of an eyesore. On spring and fall weekends it is crowded with a steady trickle of Cincinnati suburbanites crawling out to the countryside and shelling out their hard earned dollars for a bit of authentic country junk.

I think the junk shop owner is a genius.

THREE TO GO

Nine down, three to go.

Kevin got the infusion pump off this morning--you can actually see him relax and feel better once that's gone. He's a little more nauseous today but managing ok.

We had a nice surprise in the mail today from our friends John and Elaina Balser. John is one of Kevin's oldest friends--he pre-dates even me in knowing Kevin. The Balsers attended the Papal Mass in Washington D.C. last week. Today we received two special rosaries, made to commemorate the papal visit, which were blessed by Pope Benedict at the conclusion of the mass.

John and Elaina had emailed us earlier about the incredible experience they had in attending the mass and had let us know they offered prayers for us while they waited for Mass to begin and again during the blessing of the various religious items in the possession of those attending the mass.

John and Elaina remind me of those Mastercard commercials. You know the ones where the voice-over sums up the costs associated with some aspect of life. The commercial for John and Elaina would conclude like this:
Friends like the Balsers.............Priceless.

Same Day, Part Two

I love it when he feels better.

This morning he busted open a knuckle when he caught the bedframe while making the bed. (Don't judge me, cookie, just because my guy makes the bed. If you're keeping track, he also sweeps the floors, takes out the trash and kills spiders. Some people have a pre-nup because of financial concerns, ours was negotiated around housework. Point #1...The last person out of the bed for the day, makes the bed...Point #9 ...Kevin doesn't cook meals that require more than one pan. Bed making and floor sweeping fall somewhere in between.)

With his low platelet count, a scraped knuckle bleeds copiously, warranting a major bandage effort. He headed off to work with his hand bandaged as if there had been a chainsaw mishap not a scrape with the headboard.

Fast forward to this evening when he arrives home from work. We are sitting outside and I notice the bandage on his hand.

"You've bled through your bandage!"
"Hmmm," he says. And he looks at it more closely. He sniffs it.
Sniffs it??
I urge him to let me clean it up and put on a new bandage. Infection is an ongong risk with his lowered blood counts.
He waves off my concerns. I'm getting frustrated. Patients on a FOLFOX regimine are warned about taking care of their hands and feet.
A few minutes pass before he says,out of the blue, "It's chocolate."
"Huh?"
"It's not blood. It's chocolate. Chocolate chip. I might have been a little messy. I don't get to eat cookies all that often these days."

The Vagaries of Chemotherapy

Call it superstition. Or luck. Or planning. But it has generally worked well for Kevin when we maintain a pretty close routine especially during the week of chemotherapy.

Last time we didn't vary from the routine, though, and he had a miserable 10 days or so during and following his treatment. We chalked it up to the cumulative impacts we were warned about and he just sort of steeled himself to be in greater misery each time from here to the end of treatment.

Last night was a pleasant surprise when he felt pretty good, ate well, worked a little, rested a little. And he had a decent night's sleep which is very rare on the nights he has the infusion pump. He showed up from work around lunch time, hungry for a change. Still no cold stuff and he says room temperature lemonade is not all that good! But it was great that he felt well enough to eat--it's usually something he has to force at this point in a treatment week, especially the last time around.

After a short nap, he headed back over to his office for the afternoon. I think I saw him pawing around in the cookie tin before he left.

Who knows what goes on his body that changes the impacts of those drugs from week to week. We accomodate those things we know about, try to avoid what we can, prepare him for what we can't avoid. And then, from there, it just goes however it goes each time.

So we'll see what the rest of the evening, and the week, brings. And, once again, thankfully count our blessings for today!