October 29, 2007
Autumn continues its beautiful ways far outside my fifth floor hospital room and I continue the struggle inside the hospital room. Now the gastroenterologists are studying the situation and I wait for encouraging words about getting to return home with a body that can function properly. One of the partners from the oncologist’s office stopped by and we went through the “What is going on? What will happen next? What do we know?” questioning and the problem appears to be that my body and the Vidaza are not dealing well anymore. The obvious next step is stopping the treatments and letting the bone marrow recover for a while. However, while the chemotherapy is stopped, the blasts begin to gather in their deadly little way, and there is no returning from where that is going. Over the top of this problem is the one with the shooting pains into my left temple, for which I am consuming great amounts of Oxycodone – this can’t go on and on either, and I haven’t even gotten someone to address that. The head pain is such that I want to pull my hair just to distract from it; when the drug kicks in, it is though I move from one reality state into another that wraps me in gentle waves and carries me beyond the pain. I can truly understand why one can become addicted to drugs.
Now it is evening and I am at home. All tests came back normal, so there was no real reason for me to stay hospitalized; the gastroenterologist said very nicely that if I got dreadfully sick again, why, we didn’t live too far away – we could just return to the emergency room and be readmitted. The doctors seemed pleased to let the head problem be dealt with here in Seward. So happily homeward we went, loaded down with drugs and advice and in the coming days, we will determine how we will go forward vis a vis the Chemotherapy. Since the recurring theme is not knowing, we constantly revisit how to live by faith – this starts out being more difficult, but as the props are pulled away, it becomes easier since it is all that remains.
Alphie feels the need to lay under my legs with my feet propped up on his body – Charles said that he was quite morose in my absence, and such joy at a person’s just “being” makes it very evident why dogs are so cherished by such a large population. Tomorrow the weather is to continue uncommonly warm and sunny, so it will be a lovely day to savor all the fine things that make up our Sanctuary.