"Today:" my wife's skin

So it’s now yesterday. Oops. My great plan to finish it off fizzled after my usual post-dinner fullness and I’m kicking up my feet on the bed to relax my overtaxed stomach then deciding, hey, why not lie down on the bed and sleep? Around ninety minutes to two hours of sleep later and I’m ready to take a shower and return to bed. So here we go now with “today.”

This “today,” Friday, was the blackspot on the week for me I couldn’t think around, couldn’t calm down about. Those hospital tentacles were going to drag me back into his gaping maw and I’d land in the Paramount bed (angel choir) pit of its stomach. Also the blood test. Well, it wasn’t only the blood test but the blood test plus the CAT scan with the ten minute IV drip to fill me with that gut heating medicine. I figured they’d find one spot to tap eventually, but two? The blood test had to be perfect. I was encouraged when I got there and they were already aware of the CAT scan and wanted to get the blood test done on my left to save space on my right for the IV people. And the blood test was perfect too, smack dap in the middle of my arm like everybody else. The nurse found the vein, not something everyone does and out slid my blood with a single prick. Boom. Yeah. Oh so perfect. The CAT scan wasn’t. We tried, meaning I pointed out the usual best spot on my right arm and today's nurse (a nice enough guy) tried to find the vein as the nurse had last week. But where the nurse last week was able to manipulate the needle painlessly towards the vein once inside my skin, this one couldn’t. Man it hurt. He did apologize a lot. Like the nurse last week he really wanted to do right by me, but I kept wishing he'd give up on this spot. Finally he did and tried the same spot on the side of my left arm, which is just below my wrist. This time I hardly felt a thing. Got it on the first try. Yay. Oh yeah, they had to move the whole IV apparatus around the table, but who cares, it wasn’t a problem, they got the whole thing attached to the ceiling so they simply slide it around. So everything went fine, I survived, and now all I had to do is wait for the thing I was really worried about. 

Here my wife left me (left me!) for awhile to make an appointment with a skin doctor for a third opinion. I was called in to the sonogram room while she was out. Y sensei was there and soon showed me the abscess still remaining from my original cavity. He talked about the infection level (or was it swelling level?) from my blood test and how it was too high. Oh this started the worry juices flowing. They might have to drain it, he said, but he still wanted to try medicine. It seems the abscess is near the spleen so they want to be careful about not puncturing it. It’s a very bleedable organ apparently. So I was starting to get worried about those hospital tentacles but he said they could do the draining on an outpatient basis. Oh thank fucking God.

And then I got the best news since maybe this whole ordeal started. I mean I guess it’s old news because I’ve actually been off chemo as long as I have been on it, about six weeks. So we're talking about chemo, which means that it is working. Working? Shit, that’s the best news I would’ve hated six weeks ago, my priorities were so messed up. Seriously, I would’ve hated to hear news like that. I couldn’t think past the chemo bubble then, which served me well in some ways because I rarely thought about the cancer and dying from it, but I guess it also made me forget that I’m going to die without it. All I could think about chemo was I wanted no more chemo, I wanted it to stop. Now, I’m healthier, a little more sane. And hearing that the chemo is working, or was working, is just the best news and I want to hayaku (hurry up) and get better so we can get started again. Hopefully I’ll meet the chemo healthy enough it won’t fatigue me so much, hopefully I’ll meet it healthy enough it won’t Hulk out on my guts this time. Lots of hope, lots of unknown in there, but still, we’re on the positive side now.

But I’ve gone over 700 words and besides a passing reference we still haven’t gotten to the title part of my post, my wife’s skin. Her face. A lot of people are suggesting stress and it’s probably true, I don’t even know what the skin doctor’s diagnosis is, he seemed to be too busy bashing the previous doctor’s diagnosis that it was a steroid infection (while she did a lot of bashing of the first doctor’s diagnosis: skin doctors seem to be an angry bunch). It sounded like he was offended anybody should slight the good name of steroids like he's going to be camped in front of the Hall of Fame till they let Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds in, and threatened not to give her the medicine if she didn’t apply the steroid cream to her face. My wife left his office in tears, telling me she was in a panic because of this. Motherfucker. At least by the glance I got of her face this morning she doesn’t seem to be any worse. Not any better either. One way or another my wife is going to have to dig up some patience. If we could only find a way to relieve her stress, but that goes for all times.

You know, it was the first time I waited in the hospital for her. It was a good experience because man, all the times she's waited for me it just can't be easy. It was nice to get the tinniest tinniest feel for what she is feeling, time and again. You think of everything she has to go through for me and maybe it's no wonder this is happening to her skin. I wish I could do something for her... something big and dramatic and could save her from all this. Save her from her job. 

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You haven't finished it yet. Right, better settle for getting better, reducing her burden. But still, remember remember remember. When it comes out...