The Day After the Last Treatment

The last treatment of the first series of treatments, that is. Rick is lying down right now, because yesterday's instillation hit him hard and he's recovering from the effects. He looks tired and a little gray still this morning. So he went and got back into our nice warm bed, with a good book (Patrick McManus' novel, Avalanche, the second of his Sheriff Bo Tully mystery novels. This and the first novel, The Blight Way, are available at your local library. For Vashon Islanders: this is Patrick McManus the writer who lives in Spokane, not Patrick McManus the guy who lives on Vashon and has a little career as an Albert Einstein impersonator). The book is entertaining, but I think Rick will be asleep soon, if not already.
(pause)
Yup, he's out like a light.
He is glad that this first series of six treatments is over. Now he is free of the medical community until July 22, we hope, when he will return for a biopsy to see how things are going, and then another three weeks of treatments, if everything looks OK at that time.
We were told that each treatment would make more of an impact on him, and while that has not been entirely the case, I can sure see it this time. Rick has really been knocked flat. Of course, he was on call last week, so worked half days last weekend. On call weeks took it out of him before he started the cancer treatments, so I can see why he's in complete collapse today.
My part of this is trying to figure out how to pay the regular bills as well as the medical bills. What savings we had were pretty well tapped out over the last year – sound familiar, anyone? - so it's a challenge. But, hey, I really enjoy a challenge. Although I've decided I need to keep the nitro pills at hand when I'm paying bills. Stress causes chest pains, and I'm not good at dealing with challenges when I'm having angina.
All I'm looking for here is a little sympathy. I figure plenty of people have it harder than we do, but the crap we're dealing with is sufficient that I wish to acknowledge it. So don't feel bad if I don't answer an email or otherwise respond immediately to whatever. Life is a little overwhelming right now, and sometimes I need to step away from reality and watch the waves at the beach for a few hours.
I'm hoping to attach a photo or two to this blog – a picture of Rick in the waiting room, and a head shot of Theresa, the nurse who does Rick's instillations, among other things. Even though she hates Vashon Islanders, she and Rick have formed a cordial working relationship, and she seems like a nice kid.
Also, a shot of the orange fish in the aquarium at the clinic office. This fish spends most of its time trying to find a way out. We admire its spunk, and pity its frustration.
Thank you for continued prayers and good wishes – we feel blessed in friends and family, and so grateful.

More from the Tabletop Diary

This morning's tabletop diary entry:
June 7th, 2009 Sun
Yesterday I received a manila envelope-sized notification from the Washington State Department of Certification Services, serving me with a notice of polite businesslike intent to revoke my water worker's certificate if I do not complete my obligation to them to acquire 3.0 continuing education units (CTUs) by December of this year. My certificate #4199 will be invalidated and cast into the outer darkness by February of next year and my position as an unpaid government minion will be terminated and purged from the holy memory banks of the Washington State Department of Health data base. Amen. Forever and ever.
This governmental entity/appendage, an artifact from the draconian Nixon administration, was Federally Mandated in the early 70s as a reaction to the irritating re-occurrence of the Ohio River's tendency to catch fire and burn for days at a time. More importantly, Mr. Nixon was being caught up in an increasingly irritating incident known as Watergate and needed a diversion for the public more effective than simply announcing that he was not a crook. He therefore created the Safe Drinking Water Act and dumped the responsibility for its implementation into the lap of one John Ehrlichman, a son of the Northwest whom he did not trust, to keep him (Ehrlichman) out of his (Nixon's) hair.
Ehrlichmann took these federal riches back to his home state of Washington as a potentially huge feather in his political cap. He ended up going down as a Watergate conspirator anyway, a victim of political necessity, and 37 years later I'm soon to be out of compliance with the Feds if I don't get on the stick. Politics eventually victimizes everyone. A recent cartoon of mine bemoans this sad fact of life.
(P.S. I fed the dog.)

More from the Tabletop Diary

This morning's tabletop diary entry:
June 7th, 2009 Sun
Yesterday I received a manila envelope-sized notification from the Washington State Department of Certification Services, serving me with a notice of polite businesslike intent to revoke my water worker's certificate if I do not complete my obligation to them to acquire 3.0 continuing education units (CTUs) by December of this year. My certificate #4199 will be invalidated and cast into the outer darkness by February of next year and my position as an unpaid government minion will be terminated and purged from the holy memory banks of the Washington State Department of Health data base. Amen. Forever and ever.
This governmental entity/appendage, an artifact from the draconian Nixon administration, was Federally Mandated in the early 70s as a reaction to the irritating re-occurrence of the Ohio River's tendency to catch fire and burn for days at a time. More importantly, Mr. Nixon was being caught up in an increasingly irritating incident known as Watergate and needed a diversion for the public more effective than simply announcing that he was not a crook. He therefore created the Safe Drinking Water Act and dumped the responsibility for its implementation into the lap of one John Ehrlichman, a son of the Northwest whom he did not trust, to keep him (Ehrlichman) out of his (Nixon's) hair.
Ehrlichmann took these federal riches back to his home state of Washington as a potentially huge feather in his political cap. He ended up going down as a Watergate conspirator anyway, a victim of political necessity, and 37 years later I'm soon to be out of compliance with the Feds if I don't get on the stick. Politics eventually victimizes everyone. A recent cartoon of mine bemoans this sad fact of life.
(P.S. I fed the dog.)

Offshore and Today's Entry in the Tabletop Diary

Rick wrote this morning:
June 6, 2009 Sat.
D-Day Europe, 1944. The beginning of the end for Fortress Europe.
After three weeks of heat, culminating in this week's temps into the low 90s, a transitional period blew into town on Thursday evening with hot high velocity wind events, "micro bursts."
This morning it's all collapsed like a soap bubble and clouds and rain have arrived with temps in the mid-fifties.
Yesterday, Friday, June 5, was the fifth and next to last BCG "instillation" and I'm also on call for the poor beleaguered Water District #19.
The heat has driven the treatment plant mercilessly, running both filters nearly 24 hours a day to keep up. Additionally, we shut the wells off for a month on May 10th as we do every year in order to monitor the aquifer levels. Usually this is okay because usually we don't have any serious dry weather until maybe a week or so in July and/or August, but this year we got ambushed.
This year is not a La Nina or an El Nino year it appears. I've heard it referred to as a once-in-a-blue-moon occasion which has to be called an "El Nada" year; that is to be presumed as a whole year when nothing is predictable, weather-wise.

Week Five

Second to last treatment of this series this morning. We have it down now: leave the house by 6:30 to catch the 7 a.m. ferry, because if we catch the 7:15 a.m. ferry every car in Seattle is on the road. My theory is that most people in Seattle leave for work at 7:30. That's the way I explain the guaranteed gridlock at 7:45.
We drive in on Spokane Street, get on I-5, stay to the right, take the Madison exit, and head up the hill to the parking garage for the Arnold Pavilion and the Nordstrom Tower, then head up to the urologist's office. I think I've given the details for what happens there in previous postings.
Up until now we have taken the 10:20 ferry home. Couldn't make that 9:25, so we'd stop and get coffee and breakfast (MacDonald's – we're not talking fine dining), or just coffee to drink in the ferry line on the dock. Today, though, we got in and out, and except for a delay on Fauntleroy where they are digging deep rectangular holes in the pavement and then filling them back in with concrete, had a pretty straight shot to the 9:25.
So now we're home, and I'm writing and Rick's cartooning. We're doing this as fast as we can before we both topple over from lack of sleep.
One more treatment, next Friday, and then 6 weeks off.
You know, when you hear the word “cancer” it throws you right off your feed and off your game. I've been pondering the power of that word ever since Rick went through this the first time, in 1998. What we've learned is that many cancers are very treatable these days, but you don't think of that until you've been through that initial feeling that the world has fallen away beneath your feet.
It's such a nasty shock – I mean, it's easy to say, “We're all mortal,” in an intellectual detached way, but when it hits you that you, personally, are mortal, RIGHT NOW – that's a whole 'nuther thang, and there isn't much detachment at hand.
But then you are in the toils of the medical system, and your life depends on and revolves around appointments and treatments and ferry schedules, all the rather mundane details of doing what you have to do to get well again. You do it all, you miss work and go places you never wanted to go and do things you never wanted to do, so you can go back to being detached about mortality.
I don't think the detachment is ever quite the same as it was before cancer, though.