Lymph Journal #12

1/18/2012

Well you may have noticed there was no blog entry yesterday.  Yesterday was a wipeout.  I just felt plain old crummy.  Sleep was elusive, food was offensive (until late in the day when Diane fulfilled my strange desire for French toast), mental effort verging on the overwhelming- welcome to the roller coaster ride of chemotherapy.  I was able to recall the German for rollercoaster (Achterbahn) when speaking with my doc following the first of this weeks two blood test draws – thanks German 2!  The doc shared more information regarding results of my bone marrow testing – extensive “infiltration” crowding out the good stuff.  These were “sobering” words (which is a more polite way of saying “scary”) on the face of it but the medical theory goes – if the chemo kills the lymphoma then the bone marrow has room to come back and thrive.  Certainly the level of invasion into certain bones explains the earlier (now gone, praise God) excruciating hip pain I was suffering at the time of diagnosis.

Today I’m feeling so much better.  Just got back from a morning walk.  A good night’s rest, keeping well hydrated, and an appetite.  Today’s craving was a fried egg sandwich – yes, with ketchup – and I was feeling good enough to prepare it for myself.  Ate the whole thing and it stayed there!  We also had an early morning call with our daughter Hannah who is attending Azusa Pacific University (studying nursing so she’s quite interested in my condition on the personal and professional level).  Friends of us here are friends of an official at APU and had contacted this guy to keep a watch out for Hannah.  Good thinking – wish we’d thought of that.  One unexpected upshot is that the school has given her additional aid in the light of our circumstances – way cool!

OK, so here’s one aspect of  the roller coaster I’ve never heard or read about before – the world of dreams.  The last few nights I haven’t had much to remember but those first days after the heavy-duty chemo – whoa! 

Night one was one of those dreams that seemed to go on all night (despite the bathroom breaks that come built into a night’s rest on chemo).  I was on an island.  It was a beautiful island – beaches, streams, inviting forests, grottoes and hills – populated by a wide variety of people (no one I knew, however).  But I was trapped there.  There was absolutely no way off.  No boats, no planes, too far to swim – I was stuck and so was everyone else.  They were all occupied with pointless tasks or busy doing dumb things.  One family somehow got hold of a newish car and promptly bashed it into a building on the first drive.  The only “industry” of the island was dismantling a former amusement park.  I woke so absolutely frustrated by this dream.  It probably doesn’t take a psychology degree to make application of it.  The next night I couldn’t help but wonder where my dreams would take me and whether or not they might be a bit more encouraging.

They were.  In this set of dreams I could actually act, effect things, make decisions that resulted in results.  I cracked the remaining secrets of the JFK assassination (I could tell you but then I’d have to….), cared for the child of friends of ours (Micah and Heather – Ezra is a heck of a lot of fun to hang around with), ate oriental style octopus, and (my favorite part) drove my famous brown “87 Toyota 4WD pickup from Point Judith, RI across ten miles of open ocean to Block Island (where I did have to moor it offshore to avoid paying for parking).  Oh the delight, the freedom, the joy of being one who acted rather that the previous night’s role as trapped victim.  Again, you probably don’t need to have that PhD to get it.

To close off.  Feeling OK beats the heck out of feeling crummy.  I’m growing in my sympathies for those in chronic situations of discomfort.  Knowing, really knowing that the love and promises of God are real beats abandonment.  Along with that knowledge, having the partnership of friends, family and a fabulous wife can carry one through so much.