Home Again, Home Again I felt like I was gone for months, but it was only four days. Two days taking my older daughter to camp, two days with Eric in San Francisco, and then the drive home. The trip was as perfect as could be. Hilary and I started at home and drove to San Luis Obispo, where we stayed in the Madonna Inn. Then we went on the early morning tour at Hearst Castle the following morning and drove the rest of the way to Santa Rosa, where her camp is located. I had always wanted to make this trek via the Coast Highway, and it was as wondrous as I had heard. Big Sur is almost mythical and deserves further exploration, I am sure, but the diversity of California's topography is overwhelming on this drive, as you travel from desert to woodlands to mountains.

The trip was made a bit more challenging by the fact that our car broke somewhere between San Luis Obispo and Big Sur. It didn't break completely, but the power steering, which is electronically controlled, conked out and the steering was no longer power. Not dangerous, but not fun either.

After dropping Hilary at camp, I headed for Eric in San Francisco. We went to Harvard together in the dark ages, and we hadn't lived together since the summer after my senior year, when he returned unexpectedly (this is another long, long story) from a trip to the West Coast. While two days cannot be truly characterized as "living together," the years between vanished and we settled in like family. I made chicken soup and my anti-flu concoction (recipe below) while Eric worked; we went to the gym at 6 a.m.; we went to the barber where Eric had his beard trimmed and I had my head shaved; in other words, we did really nothing except read and talk and laugh. It was the best.

Although while I was with Eric, the car was in the shop in San Francisco and ostensibly was repaired, I guess not. The steering kicked out again right before the Grapevine on Route 5. I still made it home in 6 hours despite Eric's questionable directions (I realized I was headed the wrong direction when I hit Richmond) and a terrible traffic jam almost the minute I hit the 405 in Los Angeles. As much as I loved my little roadtrip, it was great to get home. Now on to my second to last chemo on Tuesday, and then I only have one more to go. Yessss.

  ¶ 8:04 AM 0 Comments

 
The day I put my eyebrows on purple instead of brown. Oh, well - it was dark when we left in the morning.   ¶ 3:24 PM 0 Comments

 
With Eric on his front steps in San Francisco.  
  ¶ 3:22 PM 0 Comments

  This is not fun. . . . Every few weeks come into the life of a cancer patient a series of scans to assess you status. This was my week in spades. On Monday was a CT scan, on Tuesday a MUGA scan, and yesterday a PET scan.

The CT scan is short for a computed tomography scan. This is the test most of us think of when we think of scans, since you have to drink the disgusting, chalky barium mix and refrain from drinking and eating after midnight the day before the scan. Although they have new flavors of mixes (I prefer the mixed berry), it still is pretty gross. They tell you it tastes like smoothie - certainly no smoothie I've ever paid for. Then the next day, the insert an IV, inject a tagged (i.e., radioactive) solution, give you a little more "smoothie", and stick you on a bench that slides in and out through a donut shaped machine. If your appointment is at noon, as mine was, then you feel nauseous the rest of the day, since for many hours the only thing you have ingested or injected has been radioactive solution.

Next was the MUGA scan. This was a new one to me. I guess they find that the course of chemo I am undergoing (CHOP + Rituxan) causes damage to the heart in some patients. So to assess the potential damage, after six courses of chemo, they order a MUGA scan. MUGA stands for "multiple-gated acquisition". For this test, they don't just use plain liquid - they actually extract your own blood and reinject it with the radioactive substance mixed in. They then attach electrodes to your chest much like an EKG and take pictures of your heart beating to determine whether it has been affected by the chemo.

My MUGA scan turned into something of a fiasco. After the techs repositioned me several more times that I thought was necessary, I made a crucial mistake . . . I asked if something was wrong. "Well, actually," replied the tech, " we are having trouble getting a clean picture of your heart because your spleen is so enlarged. Do you want to see?" Well, I was pretty alarmed that my spleen was so enlarged that it was blocking my heart, and so I looked at the picture. I could see my heart filling and emptying and I could see a large balloon shape in front of it that she pointed out as the enlarged spleen, which was, in this picture anyway, larger than my heart. After wallowing in my fear for a couple of hours, my husband convinced me to call my wonderful doctor, who I always hate to bug lest he think I'm neurotic. But I did call, and he told me that the report on the MUGA scan didn't even mention my spleen, but he would follow up. The next day he left a message saying that my spleen looked "borderline" on the CT scan but better than before. Well, that's weird, since I had no idea that my spleen was borderline to begin with.

Then there was the PET scan. More on that later, as the story isn't complete yet.  ¶ 8:21 AM 1 Comments

  Time flies. . . Some of it has been fun, but some has not, like the chemo yesterday, which does get progressively tougher as the docs promised.

The good: two kids happily ensconced in camp, only two more chemos left, in remission and feeling pretty good today.

The bad: Yesterday. I haven't vomited and I haven't dug a hole and crawled into it as many chemo patients do, but I have started to have "physical memories" of how the chemo feel a day or two before my treatment. As busy as I kept over the weekend (went to Catalina Island for visiting day at one camp, packed my second daughter and delivered her to camp in San Diego on Monday, then stopped at a casino to play a little blackjack with Michael on the way back), I still had the physical memory all day Sunday and Monday. The first time this happened was with my bone marrow biopsy. Let me tell you - if you ever have to have one, let them knock you out first. It is agonizing in a very deepseated way. So for month after the BMB, my butt ached when I drove by the hospital. The chemo is more of a lowgrade nauseated flu feeling, with the mental spaciness and fatigue typical of the flu. I don't mind so much having it for one day of chemo (each treatment lasts 5 hours) but to feel that way before is so unfair. In any event, I will be done on August 16. Hopefully my mental acuity will return with my physical well-being.  ¶ 12:23 PM 0 Comments