Riding the wave

Here we are back in Harvard, Katy baking a cake to share with choir on Thursday, me blogging by the woodstove, trying hard to stay in Aloha. (Yes, I too, would happily sweep Susan's lanai if it meant we could camp on it!)

*Warning* Turns out this is going to be a long whine about medical complaints. A murmured "poor kid" and a skip to the finish is a rational response.

The first wave on this shore was chemotherapy #1 the day after landing. It was a long day, largely uneventful, with little or no immediate consequence. The tricky drug is the Rituxan (the latest & greatest for lymphoma), and they had to carefully ramp up the rate on that. At one point, I started feeling faint, called over the nurse, and my blood pressure had dropped to 60. "Over what?" Katy asked. "At that level, we don't bother with the other number," was the answer. So they quickly switched me to saline for an hour, then continued onward. The final round for the road was Adriamycin, a lovely red cardio toxin that there is a lifetime limit on. The 5-day, at-home component is Prednisone, a steroid that has *none* of the jollies that dexamethazone has for me. Felt fine. Next day we both did a normal-ish workout at the gym to no consequence.

The second wave was Katy got hit with a "flu" 2 days later, able to keep nothing down (or up). In a prime example of how easily medical communications can get screwed up, we ended up on Tamiflu for no good reason. Here's why: I called the doctor's office, described Katy's symptoms and asked, "So, is the the FLU everyone is getting?" and the nurse replied, "oh, yes." Then after checking the CDC website and finding that Tamiflu was possible, I ran that past the doc's. Our MDs gave the OK, our insurer gave the OK, and we got a therapeutic scrip for Katy and prophylactic one for me. (S.R, keep a civil tongue, you know medical terms.) Tamiflu makes you a bit queasy at first, but what the heck, we weren't tip-top anyway. Then a day or so later we took a closer look at the symptoms the influenza virus is supposed to have. Hmmm. NOT vomiting and diarrhea (isn't this a fun blog?), but respiratory stuff Katy didn't have. When light finally dawned on Marblehead, it was clear that Katy had a *gastrointestinal* virus ("flu") that is going around, which is what the nurse said "oh, yes" about. Which is NOT the virus that Tamiflu attacks. Oy.

The third and ongoing wave is this esophagitis, inflammation of the esophagus (throat down to stomach) that arose first in Maui after steroids gave me unstoppable hiccups that I had to go to bed with. The hiccups caused acid reflux overnight, which burned the esophagus. Now, I've had esophagitis before, and it was a nasty, progressive and long-lasting inflammation. This is showing every sign of being the same, getting progressively worse despite care, causing inflammation to cascade from my chest and throat to my face, ears, sinuses and eyes. There is practically nothing to treat it, and nearly everything aggravates it. Last time I landed in the ER on a weekend. This time, I'm trying acupuncture on an integrative therapies program from the hospital.

My big worry on this is that chemo is eventually supposed to, among other things, aggravate the mucus membranes of the mouth, throat, etc. anyway -- even without the reflux. If my inflammation response is anything like this, they'll have to give me morphine or something.

OK, the GOOD news is that Mr. Potato Head of Left Groin, Thighville is now Mr. Walnut. I see Dr. Dubois Friday, and I'm eager to see if this represents Great Happiness or simply Results to be Expected.

Sorry this post is not more decorative with Maui pictures and stuff. Can't get the furshlugginin pix out of my cell phone to my computer yet, despite appropriate technofiddling. Verizon appears to have made it deliberately difficult to get them out without sending them via the cell system. Can't imagine why. We've got lots of pix from the real camera and the underwater one, plus exciting videos. Someday.

Now the place smells of CAKE!! The Jeanne Weeks (and Hester Kay, it turns out) recipe with the fudgy icing variety, with Katy's special almond-flour treatment. Maybe cascades of saliva are the remedy for the flaming esophagus. (Hey, a new pen name for me -- the Flaming Esophagus.)

Today was busy with taxes and volunteering at HGRM in the AM, doing some actual paid work in the PM surveying trees in Framingham. More acupuncture tomorrow. We're on pins and needles here -- literally. (Wish it was litorally. Life's a beach.)

Thanks for sharing my whine.