Good morning! Today's number is 760 which means I get to go home tomorrow (God willing and the creek don't rise). It's very funny after being here in this alternate universe for so long, to start saying goodbye to people. I'm going back to my real universe now. I've been saying thanks and I'll see you in a few weeks to people for a few days now; they're going on a two week vacation, in all likelihood I'll be home by the time they come back, but now it's everyone practically. My intern has tomorrow off, so I will not be seeing her potentially ever unless she makes an effort to come see me during one of my consolidation chemos. It's very weird to be on the receiving end of this, after all the patients I have re-launched into the world.
One thing that is incredible to me is how many questions I have. I recognize them as kind of dopey--there's all this specific do and don't eat this for the neutropenic diet (and I'm not even neutropenic anymore!) and I was lying in bed this morning thinking, ok, what does my count have to be to eat peaches? what about raspberries? what if I freeze them before I eat them? How healed does my PICC site have to be before I can stick my arm in the ocean? When do I go for blood work? which med will I go home on? etc. I think it's all an expression of the discontinuity between my safe little life here where everything is decided and packaged for me and all I have to do is cooperate and put up with things and the big scarey real world. It's been nice being almost a juvenile again, just bobbing along, not really responsible for much: walking, eating, cooperating, telling them when it hurts, "o, you brought me a bag of something to put in my vein! How lovely." Now, much of the whole dizzying array of the world will be available to me again. I can see the appeal of being cloistered.
More isn't always better. Me, you, appealing, scarey, overwhelming. The world looks surprisingly different after being out only one month
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update #1
(warning--may be TMI for some who are uninterested in bodily functions)
My colon has never been my strongest organ, but has decided to complain about chemo followed by three weeks of antibiotics by refusing to digest even cooked milk any more. I wish I had known that before I had a bowl of clam chowder for lunch yesterday. When this happens, there is nothing to do but wait and when one is waiting, it is really best to just sleep. So, they gave me benadryl at 3pm to go with a blood transfusion and I woke at 6, said "Wow, this is uncomfortable" and went essentially back to sleep til the morning, with a brief round of complaining to my nurse in the middle. Not the funnest last night in the hospital one could imagine, but I guess if they only wanted fun patients, they would run a clown hospital.
I was awake long enough to note that there was a 200 ant or so infestation in my bathroom at one point. I didn't really wake up when the maintenance people came through with ant traps or to check on ant traps or, evidently, to put in more ant traps. Hopefully, none of the ants think the SeaCoast would be a better option than the mountains. There are, like, 28 oncology rooms. Guess how many got ants? Clearly, I'm kinda special.
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