No news is good news. We've been in Minneapolis the past week. I’m into my fourth week of IV antibiotics, which seems insane. It is insane. I hook up 700 mg of Daptomycin to run into my arm every day. My first and only (so far) chemo infusion was February 1. The side effects of chemo are long gone. I’m still bald, but a few sturdy follicles managed to withstand the poison, so I have a light fuzz covering my head.
I still have eyebrows. DON’T TOUCH THEM. Don’t even look at them. I want them to stay, if possible. I’ll certainly fuck up drawing on new eyebrows. Or once I get them on, I’ll undoubtedly forget and smudge them. Maybe I should go get them tattooed. Or just keep filling them in with Sharpie. That could work.
I don’t mind being bald. It’s chilly – which you’d imagine, but I’m still surprised at how much so. I wear a hat all the time; I sleep in a hat. Without hair, there’s not much to do in the shower. It takes me as long to get the sleeve that covers my PICC line situated (the dressing keeping it clean can’t get wet) as it does to actually shower. Get in, get wet, soap, rinse, think I must be missing something, get out.
I still have a special dressing for the hole in my chest from where the infected port was removed. At my wound care appointment at the hospital this week, I was told I could safely take it from here. I change the dressing every other day (on bathing day, usually). The hole is getting much smaller. I still cover it with a special anti-bacterial fabric and then a big bandage. The bandages have a silicone adhesive, as I can’t tolerate most other adhesives. They cost $16 EACH. Sixteen-dollar band-aids. I could have a nice lunch, or this band-aid.
My insurance is paying for those bandages. I’m very lucky to have excellent health insurance. They also pay for a home health nurse to come to my house once a week, draw blood for labs, and change my PICC line dressing. A new study in the American Journal of Medicine just came out saying that 42% of new cancer patients lose all of their life savings in two years (paying for treatment), and 62% of cancer patients are in debt because of their treatment. As we’re self-employed, Bob and I pay for our own health insurance. $1350 a month (total for both of us), plus we each have a $2,000 deductible/out of pocket max. That comes to $10,100 each for 2019. Knowing our track record with catastrophic health events, it’s been a good gamble to prioritize paying for excellent health plans. So far my medical expenses are over $55,000 for this year – and my hospital stay hasn’t been billed yet. That $10,100 is a bargain.
Wednesday should be my last dose of IV antibiotics. Then I have a week off, drug free, until March 27, which will be my second chemo infusion. I’ve been feeling pretty good. The antibiotics make me tired. Or maybe it’s the weather, the current state of the world, or our astounding twat of a president. I sleep 10-12 hours a day. My belly is a bit off, also from the antibiotics, I’d guess. I’ve been doing as much pro-biotic supplementing as I can: yogurt, kefir, kombucha, actual pro-biotic supplements. I’m not hungry for anything. I don’t have an upset stomach; just disinterest. This is an entirely foreign concept for me. There are only a couple things that actually sound good: Noosa yogurt, grapefruits, and the peanut butter bars at Butter bakery. We’ve never had ice cream sit this long, unopened.
This week when everyone in Minneapolis was experiencing flooded basements, our tactic was to not look downstairs and thus have plausible deniability that it was happening. This worked until we could hear the cats splashing and there was evidence of their wet paw prints everywhere. A flooded basement is really bad news for a hoarder. And after doing fuck all since November, it was a shock to my body to be down moving boxes around and running the shop vac. I’m happy to report that my foresight of hoarding into plastic bins has served me well, and nothing was damaged. We were able to find the cause of the problem – a gutter down-spout draining along the foundation of the house – and re-route it.
Scintillating news, all of it. No wonder I’m sleeping so much. I don’t even have a good Bob story, except that once we identified the downspout problem that was causing water to flow into our basement like a mighty river, Bob announced that he was going to work on some other things first, before fixing the downspout. I was able to help him see the benefit of re-prioritizing his tasks, so he continues to live.