Month: March 2007

Sophia is now playing on her belly, laughing, and, of all things, teething early. Yay!

In chemo related news, I am still not neutropenic from the A cycle. That should happen on Thursday. The gentle A crash is not so bad. Just means chilling out. Because my white count is still robust, we have tonight to go out for dinner before I am shackled to potatoes and chicken at home starting Thursday. Last night we had a great meal at Lolita, one of Philly’s finest restaurants. Mmmmm, yummy steak to keep the hemoglobin up with baked yucca. So delicious.

There have been very few comments on the blog lately, and I suspect that many of you are sitting out there in front of your computers with your jaws hanging onto the keyboard in disbelief. New baby. My dad’s death. Finishing chemo. Neutropenic fevers. Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.

I’ve even heard from a few of you who have wondered aloud if I am now feeling like Job, or that Jacqui and I must be crazy to maintain such an optimistic world view in the wake of all that is in our life.

Well, I don’t feel like Job, and I certainly don’t think I am crazy.

I am clearly not shy in sharing my deepest emotions on all that has gone on in my life these last six months. You all know exactly how I feel. You know exactly what I am going through and what lies ahead. And I am ashamed of nothing and glad that I have held nothing back from you. It has been cleansing to share all that I have gone through, and I am looking forward to turning this all into a book someday so that others who have faced tragedy and difficulty can perhaps take something from this.

But please don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t feel pity for us. Life can be rough sometimes. It can be messy. It can hurt. But it is still life. And I have an amazing wife and daughter and family. And the promise of a healthy life ahead, albeit with some potential speed bumps down the line, both as a lymphoma survivor and all that entails, and just by being a human being and all that entails.

So I am glad you are along for the ride. It is getting easier now, at least in terms of my health. Time will never completely heal the loss of my dad, but he is with me, in my heart and my mind always, and one day I will know just how lucky I am for that.

Hanging in there post-chemo.

Slept a lot today.

Tomorrow I should start bouncing back as the nausea and exhaustion start to dissipate.

Thankful for small things.

Just received the final chemos for my A cycle. Yay, no more A cycle.

We are out of here.

Time to go home and sleep it off.

B cycle in a few weeks and then sayonara chemo.

Coming home, however, was rough. Not physically, but emotionally. My father always called or I called him at the end of a chemo. I still talk to him all the time, and I hear his voice in my head, see his face in my mind, and feel his presence in my heart, but I want to reach and and touch him, tell him I love him, that I’ll be OK, and that I miss him terribly.

It has been a boring and uneventful stay here on Rhodes 6 for my final A cycle.

Hurray!

Not much to report. Just tired and cranky and I miss my dad.

Last week was my birthday. Not a particularly happy one, but Sophia and I did manage to have a nice moment together to celebrate.

Last night I checked back into Rhodes 6 for my final A cycle, number 4A, to be followed in three week’s time by 4B. And then that’s all folks. Chemo complete after that, although I expect a neutropenic hospitalization following 4B. Just par for the course.

I am again in room 6014, the room where I started this nonsense six months ago, but everything feels different now, in both a good and bad way.

The bad, I suppose, is fairly obvious. With the arrival of Sophia, hospital stays are much different. I spend most of the day alone (well, if truth be told, with Magnum season 5 or now the Office season 2), and I miss my nights here with Jacq staying over with her big pregnant belly. But I much more miss just being at home with Sophia, getting up to change her diaper and give her to Jacq for a nursing, and just holding her tight. And I miss when she wakes up smiling in the morning and we sing her favorite songs until she gets cranky and wants to eat.

I also miss the phone calls with my dad that were daily under normal circumstances, but happened several times a day when the chemo flowed. Even when he was getting sicker, the calls didn’t stop until he was too out of it to pick up the phone himself. The urge to pick up the phone to call him hasn’t gone away, and sometimes I just stare at my cell and wait for it to ring. I guess it would be really weird if it did.

Finally, despite being a trooper and making it through this crap relatively unscathed, save the strange side effect following the last B cycle that involved what I’ll call a painful “crack within a crack”, I am more worn down now than I was after earlier cycles. I know there is an end to this in sight, but it can’t come soon enough!

The good, of course, is that I am lymphoma free, and that the chemo now feels more like process than anything else. My doctor remains positive about a bright and long future for me, and his optimism makes me believe that I will, without a doubt, dance at my daughter’s wedding.

So here I lie, bored, but content; sad for what my family has been though, but confident in my future; and just glad that I can sit comfortably again now that the “crack” has healed.

Chemo starts again today, the final A cycle, to be followed by the final B in three weeks time.

By the end of this week I will have completed 7 chemos, and by the end of the month, we’ll be all done.

Hurray for something, right?!

Yesterday, while hiking with Otis and a friend, I was recounting the events of the last few weeks, and said to my friend that some day I’ll look back on this time and all I’ll be able to say is “holy shit.”

She is not, I repeat, is not from Long Island! Thanks for the awesome satin suit, Stu and Ruthie!

Thanks for the awesome wagon Seth, Jen, and Juliet!

Today was a little less painful, although I suspect as we head into the weekend, marking a week since we buried my dad, things are going to get rough again with lots of ups and downs to come.

At shiva on Wednesday night my Rabbi, who officiated at my dad’s funeral (“my dad’s funeral”–now there’s a phrase I didn’t think I’d write or utter for a long time to come), was explaining to me some of the Jewish mourning rituals. I am supposed to wear a torn ribbon over my heart to symbolize the loss of a loved one, literally a representation of the tearing away of the deceased and the tearing that goes on inside you. I am not supposed to take part in festivities or celebrations for at least the next thirty days, although more religious Jews do this for eleven months. And I am supposed to say kaddish–the Jewish prayer of mourning–for the next eleven months.

So far as forsaking celebration and festivity, I asked him if my final two rounds of chemo over the next 30 days would suffice?

Oye!