October 8

No news. They're still sending me home for overnights. I still don't have much appetite. They promise I will get sick by this weekend. Whew, what a relief.

October 6

Let me add two more supporters to my previous list: my ex-wife and the head honcho of the local myeloma support group, the latter of whom came to visit today. I am getting so many calls and visits I can't keep up (so please don't be offended if I don't call/email back right away!).

I'm back home again. Went back to the hospital this morning to find they put some emergency patient in my room while I was out on the weekend pass. So I was put in the overflow section one floor down, which is day use only. So not only did the doctor say I COULD go home again if the blood counts weren't too down, the nurse said I SHOULD go home because I didn't have a bed. Fortunately Lou and I have practiced all our adult lives sleeping in unusual and uncomfortable places on Acme trips (like the roof of the picnic shelter south of Kanab and the raised rim of the water well in the middle of the Sahara Desert-- which Alicia still hassles me about), so if tomorrow they want me to sleep on the treadmill or in the patient refrigerator I won't think twice about it (other than this is ralph klein's fault for imploding the General Hospital).

Blood counts starting to fall but no really bad side effects yet.

Vanessa, one of my grad students, brought me the desert-scene painting she has been working on for me. It's beautiful. Wherever that is, I would like to be there.

October 5

I've temporarily escaped from the Big House, but only because they let me. Time off for good behavior. Since nothing much happens for a couple days after the transplant and I wasn't puking or feverish, they let me out on a weekend pass, provided I had a caregiver* with me at all times. So i took my creamed-corn b.o. out into the lovely autumn world (but it has passed by now). Wendy would have given care but she's come down with a cold/sore throat so she's staying away. Chanone and Kristyn took first shifts and tonight Cathy is looking looking after me. I don't feel that great; kind of a slight queasiness/stonedness and my appetite is down to 50% or less. The doc said that was probably was from the preservative that the stem cells come with. Just a little taste of things to come. Kristyn and I went for a walk along the river this morning and it was maybe the most beautiful day of what is probably the most beautiful fall I have ever seen in Calgary. Despite feeling a bit crappy I was so happy to be out there with the wind and leaves blowing over my face instead of in my hospital room.

*Let me tell you about my support system. I mean, I already knew I had good family and good friends and good students.... but the amount of support I am getting showered with is stupendous. My kids and Ma and brothers and niece and nephew and cousins, Wendy, present colleagues and friends and students, past students and Gallagher librarians, Grand Canyon alumni, book clubbers, Acme gang members. If I weren't the tough-as-nails, leather-skinned, gun-barrel-hard, honed-to-a-razor's-edge guy that I am, I would get kind of misty-eyed when I think about all the time Alicia is taking off to take care of me. I didn't know there was that much love out there in the world.

October 3

The second of the two main events happens this morning: The Return of the Stem Cells, the actual transplant. These were extracted from my blood a few weeks ago and are frozen in a couple of ziplocks somewhere. They will be the basis of my new blood. I will be as a baby with a brand new immune system, with all childhood vaccinations wiped out. I get revaccinated in several months. Possible effects during the infusion: nausea, fever, and most interestingly, a strange taste in the mouth that also shows up as a body smell that lasts for a day... described by different parties as corn-like, tomato-soup-like, garlic-like, or metal-like. Fortunately no one has described it as olive-like or asparagus-like. Alicia and Chanone will be observers. Stuff
has arrived. The rolling freezer withe stem cells. A rolling computer. A cart carrying a bunch of stuff. Two registered nurses and two helpers. A nurse is now thawing the bags out and syringing stuff out and then into an IV bag. Bag is hung. Here goes.... They're infusing. My cell phone is ringing. One bag is done. Blood pressure check and temperature check every five minutes. No symptoms yet in my senses, but the other people in the room smell The Smell. One says corn. One says garlic. Alicia says it smells like going into a cafeteria. It's done. Benadryl now going in. I never got the taste thing. No fever. A bit of spaced-out feeling. Paperwork being filled out. It was all pretty anti-climatic, considering what an epochal event this is in my life. One of the nurses says I was a boring patient (no side effects, no Code Blue) except that they've never seen real-time blogging before. They're all gone now. Back to hydration solution. I'm sleepy.

October 2 Part II

Still sucking on ice chips, have to do so for 6 hours. Alicia is off finding an ice cream cake because it's my birthday today. She is such a sweetheart, being the dad of Alicia and Will is such an honour. The chemo was my birthday present; considering my situation it's probably the best present I could get. Who gave it to me? The taxpayer I guess.... thank you. I've had two staff visitors since the chemo: the physiotherapist and the spiritual advisor. The physio is assigning me a series of leg and upper body theraband exercises, and 6 5-minute walks per day. Well, that sounds pretty pishy-tosh right now, but i guess when i'm feeling crappy in a few days getting out of bed to do a 5 minute walk is going to be a real effort. In fact he wanted to know how many stairs there are between my front door and my bedroom, I guess it may be dicey getting up those stairs when I first get home. Krista the BMT nurse said this procedure is about as hard on a body as open-heart surgery. The spiritual counselor or whatever he is is a young very nice guy. He said "you have that look" (of someone who's not too worried). We established my lack of religious tendencies right away, and talked about the desert as spiritual guide, He seemed quite intrigued.
One of the mega-diuretics, which must have been formulated for Superman or WonderWoman, has worn off, yay!! I can now go 25 minutes between pees. I'm going to go check out the treadmill.

October 2

The first of the two main events starts in a few minutes: the CHEMO!! Yes, gentle reader, 5 minutes of infusion of a poison that will kill off those bad plasma cells and also kill off my immune system and my hair and make me nauseous and inflame my throat lining. Otherwise it's pretty harmless. I'm sucking on ice chips and popsicles as a prelude because the colder the mouth during and after the infusion, the less the drug effects the mouth and the lesser will be the mouth sores next week. Only two minutes to go!! Anticipation is building!! Blood pressure check! Temperature check! Almost ready! 30 seconds to go!! Cool washclothes ready!! The nurse is fiddling with the switches...... HERE IT COMES!!! IT'S GOIN' IN!! So far no sensation.... now, maybe a teeny bit of light-headedness... the IV pump is beeping, too much resistance in lumen in the catheter, switching to a different lumen... first syringe done, onto the second... the described metallic taste is not developing... but getting hot on the sides of my head... feeling light-headed/dizzy.... like being stoned but without the dope... head is very hot, really weird! OK, it's over, head is cooling off, getting less dizzy. No nausea.
Whew, that was fun!
Now they're feeding me diuretics to make me pee out the drug.... what irony.

October 1

I've just arrived at my home away from home, Unit 57 in Foothills Hospital. I'm in in room 571, a palatial suite, normally reserved for kings and diplomats I presume. Alicia is here with me, delivered from the airport by Wendy and her friend Leila. The service here is pretty amazing: the nurse was grilling me about any history of infected hangnails, etc., when two people come in to "take pictures". Mug shots in the hospital? No, they take pictures off the wall and put on new ones, so patients don't get bored with the pictures. Being here only 30 minutes, I wasn't bored yet. There are two TV lounges and some DVD players (they can be kidnapped into individual rooms whenever) and a kitchen stocked with food that patients can remove whenever, or cook in. And a treadmill and an exercise bike. One floor below is a gigantic and very complete exercise room. I'm waiting for some doctor or another to come and inspect me and then apparently I can get a day pass for a few hours so Alicia and I can go out and walk in the yellow leaves. And what is my mental state you ask? Well, although i'm not looking forward to feeling sick next week, on the whole I don't seem to feel any differently than if i didn't have cancer and was sitting in my office at the U. Equanimity. There were scary times at the beginning.... like when my GP read out the radiologist's report, on Valentine's Day... it looked like either myeloma, or an organ cancer that was rapidly spreading. My first thought: I'm going to have to revise my will, quickly. I still felt pretty calm when I told Wendy over the phone that I had cancer, and I still felt calm when she walked in the door for the Valentine dinner I was going to cook her, but when she put her arms around me I burst out crying, there was some stuff in there waiting to come out. I cooked the dinner. I also got a little teary-eyed when I told Kristyn and Chanone, before I knew what kind of cancer i had. Kristyn went with me on my first visit to the Tom Baker Centre and I had the biopsy and diagnosis right then and there: myeloma. Of the possibilities suggested by the radiologist, that was by far the best of the bunch. Since then I havn't felt particularly bothered about having cancer... although it's terminal in the long run, so is life without cancer. Emotions in general are a little keener now, my connections with my friends and family are keener, I love them even more than I did.

It's a beautiful day. Alicia and I are going to go for a walk.