Steve had his first chemotherapy infusion session today. It took about 2-1/2 hours, and he doesn't seem to have suffered any immediate side effects from the procedure. It is finally the beginning of his outpatient treatment, which we have both been wanting to start for weeks now.
At the oncology consultation with Dr. Klein (which occurred right after the last blog entry), Steve was having trouble getting breath, so she ordered a chest X-ray and a blood panel: We could stop at Radiology and then at the Phlebotomy Lab for those tests, then go to the Emergency Room, where they would take care of the breathing problem.
The "solution" at ER was Steve readmitted to the hospital (something neither of us wanted). It took the pulmonologists, cardiothoracic surgeons and attending physicians a full week of tests and prodding and poking to all agree that it was wise and safe to place a chest tube into Steve to draw off the excess pleural fluid to help improve his breathing.
So, after being admitted on March 27, the procedure was done on April 2. He was released on the 3rd, and on the 4th we got to drive back down to Long Beach for a pulmonary consult so the doctor could show us how to drain the fluid and rebandage the site afterwards. All very straightforward and far preferable to having Steve trot down to Long Beach for a weekly procedure.
Hospitals are great places of curing, but not for healing. Home is where you heal. By the time Steve got home on the 3rd, his health, both physical and mental, was adversely affected by the hospital stay. It took a week at home to get back to normal and regain some of his physical stamina. He's now back to going up and down stairs, going out and picking up the mail, helping with the dishes, and I keep pushing him to keep expanding on that stamina: Spending four of the last six weeks in hospital beds can do horrible things to a person's body and spirit.
On the business front, I have taken some of this time to finish folding up the remaining 2,000 brochures from the printing I did last year when I started the business. They've been sitting in boxes under the dining room chairs, so I decided I should do something positive with them and do a little promotion: I bit the bullet and purchased a business-to-business mailing list online, then used it to set up a 1,500-name mailer list.
Last year, I sent out the brochure (a square) with a 6"x9" Post-It pad with the company logo. I had to put them in an envelope, since you cannot send out a square piece as a bulk mail item, only as first class.
I sat down and did the math, and realized that sending the square brochures as first-class mail was actually cheaper than going the envelope route with bulk mail charges. And, besides, the shape of the brochure emphasizes the shape of my logo, so it makes sense to send them that way. And how many square pieces of mail do you get?
So, we now have nearly 500 mailers ready to go into the post this week, and 1,000 more ready for stamps and mailing labels. I figure if I send them out in three batches of 500, it won't be too overwhelming. Hopefully, that will kick start the business, which is not stagnant now, but I don't have any really big projects ongoing at the moment, so income dribbles in here and there.
Whatever business does come down the pike will have to be worked into Steve's treatment program and retirement plans; that's a given. He's filed online for his Social Security and SDI and handicapped parking placard, so we'll be up and running in a couple weeks. And he already belongs to AARP, so we're all set.
On the personal front, I stopped smoking on March 7 (Steve stopped on the 5th) and I stopped the patches on April 5. I tried the gum for a day or two, but it really doesn't do anything for me, so I quit using it on Sunday. This means that I have been nicotine-free for nearly four days straight (the first time in 44 years).
There was one point, while Steve was in the hospital, that I went off the patches and smoked a pack over a two-day period. The upshot of the experience was actually positive, since I got no real pleasure out of the act of smoking; it was just another nicotine delivery system, so I was back on the patches the next day.
I'm getting "the urge" three or four times a day, but it doesn't translate into a desire to obtain cigarettes and smoke them; it's an abstract urge to "do something" (which is how 1,500 brochures got folded!). And if the cravings get bad enough, I can revert to the gum. I don't think that will happen, though: I just want the nicotine out of my system and out of my life.
On the health front, my blood pressure, both systolic and diastolic counts, have dropped 10-20 points, (now about 124/68 and my resting pulse is down from 86 to 64. I have gained back five or six of the 27 pounds I lost last year, but I can keep an eye on that: With everything else that's going on right now, I'm not going to throw dietary constraints on myself while trying to cook properly for Steve.
So here's hoping that the chemo will be effective as hell and that Steve will tolerate the regimen well and we can get really aggressive in managing this disease. As they say: So far, so good.
Because, to be honest, I want to get to some of that fun retirement stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment