Today was a bit challenging, Tom was getting sick again, and we were so anxious to get out of there so it felt like a very long morning and early afternoon. Here’s the trick with our last day – we know exactly, down to the minute, when we can leave because of the treatment cycle. Lucky for us, the nurses love us, and she was waiting in our room for the IV machine to beep and immediately removed all of his port IVs and got us out of there quickly. We already had gone through all the discharge paperwork, which I refer to as our medicine matrix, so we really just had to wait for that last drop of medicine before we could leave. At one point, Tom was shaking the tubing of his IV to help it move along; of course the nurse laughed and said that would do absolutely no good.
It’s hard to believe we are half way done with chemo, and by hard to believe, I mean Hallelujah. We have tried to stay positive, and Tom has been doing SO incredibly well. The doctors are surprised at how well his body is handling his treatment but don't get me wrong, we have some really really tough days. A "good day for him" is not having to feel like he is going to throw up all day, and being able to walk down the block and not feel like he climbed Mount Everest, but he has been putting mind over matter for a lot of this treatment cycle and just kicking it's butt.
The beautiful thing about going home is that it lifted his spirits. High spirits help as we go into a few of the hardest days of the chemo cycle so it is comforting to be home in his own bed, in a normal sized shower, and not be hooked up to IV’s. We hate the IV machine so much we took a photo of it turned OFF before we left. Anyway, we came home to a stack of cards – which he loved – they really make him smile and help keep his positive spirits into the post chemo days.
A month ago when this all began we had started the blog to keep everyone informed, and it’s morphing into more than that. First, a side-effect of Tom’s treatment is a mild amnesia, so it’s likely he won’t remember most of his treatment details – for which I’m actually thankful. They say he will be able to remember this period of his life, and that he had treatments, but not likely he would remember specific conversations, etc. I sort of thought that seemed odd, but it was clear this week he remembered very little about his first treatment and certain events of the past month. Part of this blog is a way for him to look back and have some sort of memory of this time in his life, all the love that was around us, and how many people were rooting for him. Second, it’s become a little bit of humor and therapy for us to try to think of creative things to post about that aren’t just about treatment and might help bring a smile to people’s faces. I’m glad people are enjoying it and using it as a way to stay informed; we were surprised to find out we are getting over 1K hits/week with an average of 400+ unique hits so we will continue on and perhaps get more creative as we go.
So perks of this stay?
- We are halfway done with chemo...
- I got another full loyalty card in the cafeteria - and an extra punch because the guy dropped my omelet on the floor...
- It will make chemo number three feel fast because we won’t have an extended stay...
- Tom watched a segment on Tiny Houses and tried to convince me that it would be a good idea to sell our house and live in a tiny house attached to one of our cars. (I'm chalking that up to his other Chemo Confusion symptoms)
- Multiple times we laughed so hard we cried...
- We avoided a hospital stay on a special day - we got home the day before our wedding anniversary...