October 9

I'm now committed, but homeless. Which is to say, they want me to stay in the hospital now because my white blood count is down to 0.5, which we could for the sake of argument round off to zero, but I'm lounging in the day-use section because they havn't found an overnight bed for me yet.

So the way this blood stuff works is I think like this: The chemo I had last thursday wounds the cancer cells and the hair cells and the throat-lining cells, all the rapidly-dividing cells in the body, but doesn't kill them right away. They die an agonizing death a week and more later. That's why my blood counts are diving now, because the chemo has finally killed off the blood cells that are my friends (collateral damage) as well as the blood cells that are not my friends. And that's why the bad side effects often kick in about 8 days after the chemo (let's see, when is 8 days? HOLEY MOLEY THAT'S TOMORROW!!!). But meanwhile the stem cells that were reintroduced on Thursday are just starting to produce more friendly blood cells (it takes them a while to get going because they are powered by gelatinous macaroni-and-cheese and lukewarm instant mashed potatoes (see below)) so after a few days of flattened counts the numbers will start to rise again, depending somewhat on how warm the mashed potatoes are. It's all pretty amazing.

Appetite still depressed although I find that peanut M&Ms are going down well. Rice Krispies worked for breakfast, particularly when I imagined cancer cells imploding with each snap, crackle, and pop. For lunch they served mac and cheese and instant mashed potatoes. The phony potatoes didn't taste very good but at least I could play with them the way Richard Dreyfuss did in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". The macaronis were joined in common union by a brown, salty, congealed gel perhaps gathered from the axles of an abandoned D-8 Caterpiller tractor. I got half of it down nevertheless. Regina (remember....the Gallagher librarian?) has promised to make me some real mac and cheese so I hope I still have some appetite at the time.

Have just heard the news: I am being moved to room 567.

Have moved my stuff. The window is facing northeastish; there's probably no finer view of the parking lot anywhere in the hospital. But here is a stroke of karmic convergence: on the wall is a giclee print of the mountains west of Longview, the exact model that I gave Wendy for her birthday. They can't promise anything but they think I will probably be in this room for the duration of the crunchy period coming up.