Something Evil This Way Comes

well, it’s the morning after the second chemo treatment and I am feeling pretty good. Though last time it took a few days for the full extent of the ickiness to catch up to me. I am cautiously optimistic that this time will be better.
A few things have happened to make me hopeful of that, all of which came about from meeting with the oncologist and the nurse on Monday.
For yesterday’s chemo treatment, they included Gravol in the meds that they give me to prepare me for the chemo. (There is a small whack of them that I get so I can handle the chemo better).
It really helped to get the Gravol before I started the chemo and it meant I finished up about an hour faster than last time (when I crashed and they had to stop everything and give me gravol and then hook me up again).

So, yeah, yesterday was pretty okay, nothing to complain about.
We switched things around a bit and I took Romey, one of my head shaving buddies, and left the Little Woman at home.
One thing that happened was they gave me the Gravol and some Benadryl in an IV drip as prep for the chemo and I could feel myself falling asleep within about 5 minutes of getting it. I quickly grabbed my discman and slapped the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in and sat there listening to it and listening to the nurse brief the other nurse on who was doing what so she could cover the lunch break.
All of a sudden, I woke up and it was 3 o’clock and the regular nurse was there and there was no sound coming out of my discman, and I realized I had been having a very very deep sleep for a couple of hours. Romey tells me I was doing some world class snoring in the room full of strangers doing their chemo, which is odd because I am not much of a snorer in real life. The women in the room avenged themselves by talking about their wigs for a very long time. God bless the discman!

Basically, I am pretty happy with how things went yesterday and so far today.

I am shocked at how busy that Cancer Agency is. It’s all timed as precisely as possible and people are there to take a treatment chair just as soon as it is empty and cleaned up and ready to go.
On Monday, we had to go to a waiting room at the Cancer Agency while we waited to meet with my medical peeps. We walked thru a small door way into a room that expanded out into a large square and had seating for about 60 people and the room was packed. It took us a few minutes to find a spot in the room where there were two seats together, that’s how crowded it was, and I assume, always is.
That’s what horrifies me. If this was some freaky little weird thing I had going on, that would be one thing, but it shocks me how many people are dealing with cancer, right now. And then there are all the folks who have already dealt with it.
It’s just so prevalent, I find that horrifying.
I don’t mean to sit around pondering the obvious, but I think we are doing something wrong as a culture if this many people are sick.
Cuz cancer is just one of the ways people get sick…
Anyway…there’s your cheery morning message.

I’ll go water the garden and drink my coffee, and maybe listen to the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy again, since I slept thru it yesterday.

Whoa… I’ve been feeling pretty good this week. Really, it’s been about 90% of what normal feels like, and for that, I am grateful.

I was visiting today with a friend who lives on the other side of the park by my house. I was walking back to my house and I remembered that two weeks ago I tried that same walk between our houses, less than a 5 minute walk for a regular person, and I had to turn back and go home because I just couldn’t walk that far.
And today it feels like that happened years ago.
But I have to be careful when I am feeling good, because it is easy for me to overextend myself.
Still, I spent some time working on the garden and put a couple more bedding plants in because the yard was not very colourful, and I was happy about that.

So, this last week is the 3rd week of the first chemo cycle and I spent the first couple of weeks feeling like garbage wrapped in skin, and now I get a bit of a break.
Of course, in the middle of feeling better, I have also become the professional patient. I ended up going to 3 different medical appointments just today and it was actually supposed to be 4 but some paperwork got lost in the shuffle. And I may just get a faucet head attached to one of my veins for the amount of my blood that they drain out of me. Still, the blood work is good and it keeps everyone aware of what’s going on, so I will suffer through that (with my eyes squeezed shut and my head turned the other way.)

Anyway, I have been feeling better and I have been trying to do some nice stuff for myself because I know next week is going to be a bugger.
I was fortunate enough to get plunked on the back of one friend’s bike on Wednesday and a different friend’s bike on Thursday. That was really, really really great. It has been really hot this week and it felt great to just go cruise around and have the sun shine on me and zoom around.
On one ride we went up the Sea to Sky highway and it was completely magnificent. It was postcard beautiful and the air felt amazing on my skin.
It was really nice to get out of the city, even for a couple of hours.
It was really nice to have that really clean air for a few hours.
It was all really really great.
I will say that it is completely weird and more than a little uncomfortable to have a hot flash while wearing a full face helmet and driving on a windy bit of highway, but ultimately it just adds to the memories.

I was also really happy that Elaine went and had a marathon massage and was all jelly-like when I went to pick her up. That was probably almost as relaxing for me as it was for her.

And now it’s late, and I should be asleep, but I felt like I should write something, and now I have, so it’s off to bed for me, amigos.

First of all, I want to say a huge thanks to the VWL and all the folks who went to their fundraising event, aka “Spike-Aid”. You guys are so sweet! A huge, big, enormous thank you to all the folks who went there and did something and had some big fun too (from what I hear ) and then thought about me and my situation.
I’m sorry we couldn’t make it. It’s always a balancing act in my mind now, before I go out in public, deciding how well I feel in that moment and weighing it all out. I wish I could have come to it, and I awfully happy that people were so kind and thoughtful.

You guys are the best!
Thanks.

I’ve been feeling better each day till now I feel, dare I say, almost normal, and I went out and bought a whack of organic produce and stuff.
I heard a rumour that we are going to be getting a delivery from SPUD soon. That’s cool, but I do enjoy going out and shopping for organic stuff when I feel up to it and it was fun to go out and get a box of produce this weekend.
We now have a rather enormous stack of organic produce and it is my hope that we consume it all by next week and start again.
That’s my plan.
I hear these raw foods are a good way of eating.

But yeah, every day I am feeling a little better and I am basically feeling like I am back to my regular self for this week, though I really have to exist in a state of modified ‘regular-selfishness’, because I could run myself down really easily and because I still have to be awfully careful about being around big groups of people. (I’m still trying to figure out how to do Pride this year.)
So I seem to be getting a bit better every day. I even spent about an hour working in the yard yesterday! That was pretty exciting for me.

I did get to see the new Harry Potter movie this weekend.
That was fun.
I liked it, but I think I need to see it again when it comes out on dvd.

So, as far as I can figure, I have this week to enjoy and then next week I do chemo again and we start the cycle all over again.

For me, one of the weirdest things about my life changing so fast and being sick, even if I don’t always feel sick, is trying to find some balance in things.
At first I thought about cancer all the time, all the time, all the time.
Then that started to mellow a bit, but I’d be lying if I said it was anything like how normal people think about it.

Right now, I think Elaine and I are still learning about how to balance the timing of everything in our lives.
Just a word of endorsement for my lovely g-f now…
See, my g-f used to have a lot more free time, she used to be able to have a whim and follow it, she used to be able to leave the house without arranging for a sitter, she used to get a minimum of about 50 hours a week of time without me crashing around the house in another room.
She says she likes me being in the house, and that’s pretty lucky for me because it would be cold standing around outside in November when I have no hair.
Anyway… Elaine has had a huge balancing/juggling act and I just want to make sure everyone understands what she has been doing lately.
Because she has been trying to do lots of work so she can have balance out the chunks of time when all I can do is lay on the couch and have her look after me.
She’s been looking a little crispy around the edges and I hope people are being kind and understanding with her.
So, just because I am feeling better, please realize that Elaine is still under a rather enormous strain and may or may not be able to hang and chat or whatever.
S’cool, eh?
And also bear in mind that in a week, it will all be different again.
And so on, and so on.

I have to go get some bloodwork done.
I start another treatment next Tuesday, the 22nd, so we will be going underground again around that point.

Roger Dodger
Over and Out

Right… it was a bad day.
Bad day. Bad.

Anyway, if anyone knows someone who does auto bodywork….
I haven’t actually driven my truck since before my surgery, which is why my battery died.
And it’s pretty likely that I won’t be needing to drive my truck anytime real soon, though I did have this idea that it was important to keep my truck on the road.

Yeah… so, if you know of anyone who loves to do bodywork type repairs to trucks, and works cheap, do put them in touch with us, eh?

Finally, here is another picture from the headshaving event last Sunday.
It was pretty fun. I wasn’t really looking forward to shaving my head, but these guys came over and we just talked and did it and it was really good.

More Pictures from that day can be found here

So, thanks to my friends here who had their heads shaved.
I heard rumour of some friends in America shaving their heads as well.
Wow.
Thanks, everyone.

It’s been a whole week since my first chemo treatment, (and, I am happy to say, two whole weeks till my next treatment) and I seem to have made it thru the roughest part of the ride. For this round of treatment.

The last week has been really strange and unpredictable for me.
I feel like a whole lot of my energy went into wondering what might happen next. There were days when I would alternate between feeling fine and feeling bad every half hour. And then, as the week progressed, I felt worse and worse, until finally it broke and I started to feel fairly human yesterday.
So, that’s been kind of strange.

I spent a lot of time medicating myself, either with some sort of pain killer so I could feel a bit better, or with some sort of anti-nausea medication, or, more often, a combination. I would then try to make a mental note of what helped and what didn’t.

Yesterday, Sunday, was the first time I felt okay in a week.
And really, in the greater scheme of things, a week isn’t very long to feel sick. A bad flu can take you down for longer than that. And it’s easier now that I know I won’t feel *that* bad every day for the next 6 months, because I wasn’t really sure about that for a while.

Also, yesterday, a few friends came over and we shaved our heads and stuff.
It was really good.
But you are going to have to wait till tomorrow to hear the rest of those details, because it’s late and I had a big day (and I even left the house!)

In the meantime, if you are missing the old, wild,
high-flying Spike, go here.

More later.

Well, here it is Friday and I thought I should let people know what’s up.
Mostly there isn’t a whole lot to say except chemotherapy totally sucks.
It’s like having the worst hangover of your life for 5 days straight. Actually, that doesn’t really do it justice and besides, I have no idea how many days it will suck for. But so far I can’t recommend it as any kind of party drug.

Monday I had my mega-dose of chemo and Monday night wasn’t too bad.
Tuesday was kind of okay but I was starting to go on a bit of a slide.
Wednesday I came off the steriods that they give me to make me feel okay and I started to crash quite a bit.
Yesterday, Thursday, was rough. Today I feel like I am starting to climb out of the great big pit of feeling lousy.

I do have to say that people have been totally fabulous to me and to Elaine and I sit and cry about that at least 3 times a day.
Fuckers..
You are all fuckers for making me cry.
Fucking fuckers.
And thanks.
Everything that everyone is doing and all the support being are giving us really make a huge difference and I have been blown away by how many people have just jumped in and helped. Shit, there are people being sweet to us that I have never met.

Anyway… it’s been a week.
I am hopeful that I am starting to slide up into a higher level of feeling better. It’s all uncharted waters right now, but I am feeling better today than I did yesterday, and I am happy about that.

I know it’s going to be a long, hard ride.
It matters a lot that people are being so kind. It matters a lot that people are doing what they can to help.

Sunday I get my head shaved and a few friends are coming by to shed their butchly and/or manly locks as well.
See, *that’s* support.

Anyway, the Little Woman is gonna feed me some grub here soon, so I am gonna wander.

Lots of people have e-mailed and I haven’t had time to answer everyone. Sorry about that. I am doing what I can, when I can, and I seem to be falling behind.
I do like hearing from folks, so please stay in touch.