Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Catching up

Well it's been a fun January for all of us. Leslie has continued with her chemo treatments every other Thursday and that has kept her pretty well bed-bound from Friday through Monday afterwards. By Tuesday she's starting to feel better and is usually doing well by Wednesday afternoon.

On January 24th she was given her last dose of the horrible red Kool-Aid of Death stuff. You know, the one that has the infusion center nurses donning gloves and gowns when they hold the container. Yea, that's the stuff that they were pumping into Leslie to make her feel so awful for a week after each infusion. It's done now and I'm quite sure that Bob didn't do well battling it so it's another step forward in the Death of Bob.

Leslie has held up to all of this incredibly well. I gain new respect and admiration for her every day as I watch what she goes through and witness her strength and determination. I put her to a really tough test a while back though, just cuz I was sure she'd crumble like a dry cookie and apparently I was in need of some hospital hospitality. (This might also explain why the ol' blog hasn't been updated recently)

The night of January 9th my back had been hurting. I was pretty sure I was just sore from hand loading buckets of nails at work but since I couldn't get comfortable in bed I decided to go sleep on the floor so Leslie could sleep. She had chemo the next morning and I wanted to let her get a good nights sleep.

That didn't happen.

About the time I got to the living room to lay down I started feeling REALLY sore and nauseous. Then it got worse. When I could finally stand up again I went and woke Leslie and asked her to drive me to the Emergency Room. We took a nice drive through the streets of Cheyenne on our way to the ER. When we got there it dawned on me what was going on. As the attendant was asking me to describe the pain, I related that it felt like I was about to give birth and I had a flashback to 1982. The year I had a kidney stone. Yeps, this was the same thing as then.... no way to get comfortable, no way to make the pain stop and when it peaks it feels like you're about to foal out. (Do the physics in your head, this HURTS!)

I had to wait about 15 minutes to get someone into the room once I had done the paperwork and was in the process of doing the "OmygodthishurtssoincrediblybadIcan'tstanditanymore dance" and trying my very best to let Leslie know that No, in fact, there is NOTHING you can do to help when my two new best friends showed up. I don't recall names or faces but I do know that they showed up with really good drugs. Fast acting, pain killing, damn near coma inducing drugs. My favorite kind! I'm pretty sure I went through the same MRI picture taking tube that they put Leslie through to verify her cancer but I'm not entirely sure. (Did I mention the drugs?) I do know that the pain went away and the only coherent thing that I vaguely recall saying was in response to my new best friends asking me how I was feeling. I think I responded (in your very best Fast Times at Ridgemont High/Spicoli imitation please...) "I am soooooo stoned..."

Did I mention that Leslie was there?

She got to watch a very perverted version of the shoe being on the other foot. She was stuck in a corner, unable to help, and feeling very frustrated by all the medical people doing a lot that wasn't making a noticeable difference. (Except, of course, the drugs, don't forget the drugs!)

I felt very bad for her having to deal with me. I have been trying my best to make things easier for her so all she has to do is concentrate on killing Bob, getting better and staying healthy for another 50 years or so. This was certainly not the best thing I could do to help her with that plan. We finally left the ER at around 4:30 am. Leslie got me into bed and then herself. At 6:00am she was back up to get Jared off to daycare and get to the infusion center by 8:00.

Yeppers, after that exciting evening she still had to get up and be a Mom and then go kill part of herself. The woman is amazingly tough! She managed to get a couple hours of sleep in the infusion center but was she ever tired that night.

I managed to pass the itty bitty teeny weeny kidney stone the following Thursday morning and was back at work on Friday with no ill effects. I just had to laugh at people at work that thought I had been through a lot because of the kidney stone. Heck, I got drugs and new friends. Leslie has been doing her fight with the assistance of some very nice people that stick needles into her and then inject her with poison with the full intention of partly killing her. And she does it every two weeks! She wins the toughness award hands down.

So that's what's been happening in January. February 7th we get to try a new type of chemo medicine that is supposedly not as heavy duty as the Kool-Aid of Death stuff. We'll see and we'll let you know when we meet again.

Thanks for reading and letting me blow off some steam. Hope you get a giggle while taking an inside look at our life with Bob.