Keeping it together

My therapist Gary told me this afternoon, "I'm not sure how you're keeping it together." This is what I pay him for. Gillian commented later this evening that reading the blog seems like only part of the picture. Surely I must be losing my mind off camera. I assure you, though, you're getting my emotions at the time. As I've told Gary, writing makes me feel better, so the act of writing it out makes things seem not so bad.

Today has been rough, honestly. As I talked to Gillian briefly, though, it occurred to me that it's the transitions that are hard just like for Ian.

I was trying to get work things done but I also needed to go check up on Rich. As I left Gary's, my tire pressure monitor went off. When I pulled in the driveway, I discovered a giant screw in my tire. I felt like Rich was being cranky but he assures me he wasn't. I know he was concerned about his tingling hands but I was losing patience helping him troubleshoot it this afternoon. Mostly I was having a hard time trying to be two people at once.

Rich was losing patience with Ian which was making me lose patience with them both. I just wanted to be left alone with a cup of tea. I didn't want to haggle over how many mini Reese's peanut butter cups Ian could have this evening. But in the end, it all worked out. We got the tire fixed so we can take the van to Richmond. I managed to bathe my son with seconds to spare before we rushed back to pick up the van from the tire center. We discovered Rich can drive himself places just fine so my days as the chauffeur for our household are numbered (thank you!). Rich walked twice today for a total of over a mile. Shilo walked our dogs. I had a nice phone call with Gillian and a nice car ride with my mom (as we raced back to the tire center). I'm sharing the couch with Shannon right now as we both peck away on our respective laptops in the wee hours of the night. Things aren't so bad.

Part of it is that I tend to write at the end of the day and it's my opportunity to gain perspective. All the things that were driving me nuts at 6pm have faded by this late hour. So I am keeping it all together. But that doesn't mean it isn't hard sometimes. I just appreciate the process.

A day in the life

Today I have: Packed Ian's lunch and dressed him for school. He had to put on his socks and shoes before leaving but could wait to change his shirt until we got there. We stopped at Wawa (of course). I got him to school and read him one Thomas the train story before peeling him off of me into the arms of his teacher. I rejoiced that there were no tears.

I met with developers and service folks. We had a few meetings. I approved a few development items and had some suggestions for how to fix a few things.

I went to Wal-Mart (against my better judgement) and scored more sweatpants for my husband, some sweatshirts for him and an entire new wardrobe for Ian where each item was $4 or less. I also found several high protein snacks to try to put weight back on my husband.

I left just in time to get to my nail appointment. I filled the shop in on our last two weeks as we struggled to get slime green nail polish off me. I now have "red pearl" nails for the holiday season. I also used Amazon Prime on my phone to buy my nail tech's Christmas present for my hairdresser, thereby blowing her mind.

I fixed Rich lunch and had a snack of my own. I worked on some emails. I wrote a custom search to show how to find borrowing overdue items to possibly block patrons and created a video showing how it works.

I hunted down the sour smell in my minivan. I think it was one of the seven cereal bowls hidden in various crannies of the passenger compartment. I brought the trash can in and started a load of all the clothes from Wal-Mart. I picked up the geriatric cat that was contemplating peeing in the living room and delivered her to a litter box as a better option.

I took the dogs for a brief walk to get some sunshine while Rich napped. I discovered and disposed of the cat poop the geriatric cat produced for us in the middle of the living room while we were on our walk. I worked on some more emails, talked to some co-workers and made some more notes about products.

I took Rich out to get him a 700 calorie smoothie to help put some weight back on him. I talked to my mom while driving through traffic to retrieve my son. I met one of his new teachers who says Ian is working on his listening ears, whatever that means. I let my son go outside without a coat and gave him a smoothie.

I emptied and refilled the dishwasher then brought the Wal-Mart clothes upstairs. I fixed plates for Ian and me of the delicious pork loin our neighbors made us. I had an in depth discussion with my son about trying to go potty before bed, only to have a tearful conversation in the potty about expectations and communication. I watched Busytown and nursed my son into unconsciousness. I carried all 42 pounds of him upstairs, all the while contemplating how much one of those banister chairs cost. I waited patiently for the geriatric cat to finish hacking up her hairballs so I could clean those up (thankfully off the tile) before returning dishes to the neighbors. I answered some more emails.

And I took a picture of Rich and me on the couch, just so I could document us together this day. It's low light and grainy but we're both smiling. It was the one where he looked the heaviest and I looked the lightest, so win-win.

I'm going to strip the bed upstairs shortly since my son wet the bed last night (hence the potty discussion). And then I'm going to have a cup of tea. Or possibly a hard cider.

Good news! My husband has especially organized mucin

After driving eight hours round trip for a three hour doctor visit, I just spent an hour writing an email to Drs. Hausner and Hanna. To say that I'm tired would be an understatement. But I'm also very excited. We had a very great conversation with Dr. Hausner this afternoon and things continue to look up for Team Stryker. First, I have to take a moment to mention how Hausner's accent is positively adorable. I want him to be my GPS voice in the car or maybe read my grocery list to me. When he left the exam room, Rich said, "I could listen to him say 'cream' all day."

Ok, back to the matter at hand. Dr. Hanna removed some staples and did a very professional and pleasant version of saying "take it away, Dr. Hausner!" Hanna's job is to cut people open and remove things and when that no longer became the task at hand, he deferred to his esteemed colleague.

Dr. Hausner then came in and told us all kinds of good things. He doesn't think that Rich will need chemotherapy. Instead he wants him to get the monoclonal antibody therapy (mAb) to slow/stop the growth of the mucin. The good news is that the mAb therapy doesn't have all the icky side effects of chemo. The primary side effects are a skin rash that can look like pimples (treatable with steroid creams in a Czechoslovakian accent) and mild diarrhea. Hausner also mentioned that patients tend to get longer eyelashes. My already very hairy husband found the one cancer treatment that makes more hair. And if you haven't seen his lashes lately, they're already pretty long and luxurious, so he's going to become a walking mascara commercial.

The other good news is that we're not really in a hurry to start this. We're still waiting on the K-Ras test results which will probably take another two weeks or so. And then we can just work up to scheduling the mAb therapy when he's ready. The mAb therapy will go on for a few months at least so we can see if it's helping. The odd thing about that is we really only have one CEA tumor marker to see if it goes down and the rest is just seeing how Rich feels. Hausner actually talked about measuring Rich's girth on a regular basis to make sure it doesn't grow, which would show the slime was spreading. But it didn't show on the CT scan, so it's all we've got.

Hausner had several great phrases today. I wish I could just record him with my iPhone and then Songify him, because that would be ideal. But to paraphrase, he said that Rich has "especially organized mucin with collagen fibers" versus the green slime others might have. He also said that Rich's tumors were "completely bland" but "good looking" so we shouldn't worry about them getting out of control. His tumors at least have a great personality.

We learned more about the appendix today too. I know several folks have asked why they didn't take out Rich's appendix while they were in there since it supposedly started all this mess. Since we're crowd sourcing Rich's cancer, I made a point of asking about that. Hausner said that when the appendix duct got blocked, the appendix continued to produce mucin. It didn't spring a timid little leak out the side. It swelled up to the size of a Vienna sausage and then ruptured. So the only thing remaining of his appendix is the sad tattered remains of tissue there. What happened, though, during that rupture is it spread those mucin producing cells all over Rich's abdomen. They're still doing their job to produce colon lubricating mucin, but instead of within the closed system of Rich's digestive track, it's all over his organs. We've had a slime containment breach. And as Hausner and I said, going after the appendix now is futile because the proverbial horse is already out of the barn. We now have to deal with all those little slimy horses that have gone out to pasture all over Rich's perineum peritoneum (oops).

Rich is feeling moderately better this evening and I know I am. We don't need to start chemo (or only a very small chance of it if the K-Ras result comes back as mutated which we don't think it will). And Rich's slime is "especially organized", "bland", "good looking" and "well-behaved". We really should get his slime a Match.com profile. We even have photos from Dr. Hanna to use.

Hausner said that Rich can just continue to heal and go back to work and go back to all his hobbies "that are so dangerous!" Our medical oncologist had only one concern, that Rich's chosen hobbies look very dangerous. If that's the worst thing our oncologist is worried about, we're doing pretty great.

Most notable today is that when we were getting out of the car in our driveway tonight, Rich stopped me and said, "thanks for everything today." And then he smiled at me. It was the first smile I've seen since we entered the hospital for surgery two weeks ago. I hadn't realized how badly I've missed it.