There and Back Again

I feel like I've been on a journey these last 4 days. Some of you know about
this and some of you don't. I'm sorry I couldn't let everyone know, but my
phoning abilities were limited, and I was cut off from the internet (even
worse!).

The saga began last Thursday night when I was having trouble breathing. I
couldn't lie down or sit all the way up and breathe well enough. Lounge chair
position was the best I could manage. When I went in to get my blood counts
done on Friday morning, they immediately put me into the hospital because my
oxygen saturation level was so low.

So there I was in a tiny, but two person, room, only able to breathe shallowly
and not able to eat much because I had no space, due to the buildup of fluid in
my abdomen and chest. The pulmonologist came to visit me and drained 1 liter
of fluid from around my right lung. What a relief! Suddenly I could breathe
deeper and eat more.

The pulmonologist said he didn't think I'd had pneumonia, just that the fluid
buildup around my lungs had compressed my lungs so much, especially the right
one, that they looked thickened, like you can get with pneumonia. He said the
draining is only a temporary measure. The fluid will come back. The real
solution for the problem was to get on chemo ASAP and reduce the size of the
nodes so the fluid can drain instead of building up.

They kept me at the hospital til yesterday (Mon) afternoon. I was able to get
the new chemo pills, after lots of bureaucratic red tape and loophole finding
(thanks to David Lipschutz's persistence) and I started the new chemo regimen
today. I'm taking VP-16 daily for 14 days. The first 5 days, I'm also taking
prednisone. I'm told hair loss happens around 3 weeks from now. I'm thinking
about getting a short, punk haircut in the meantime so that there isn't as much
to fall out.

I'm due to go in for counts again on Thursday. In the meantime, I am tethered
to an oxygen-making machine that's parked in Erin's room with a 50 foot tube.
That allows me to go anywhere in my apartment without having to move anything.
I just have to be careful not to trip myself up on the tubing. I also have
small tanks on wheels for going outside. They last for 7 hours, so I can do
quite a bit of boogying in that amount of time. I'm going to test that out by
taking David out for a birthday lunch tomorrow. Well, he'll drive. I'm
grounded from driving because of the meds I'm on.

So that's the story. I am glad to be home, oxygen, hospital bed and all. It
sure beats the tiny cubical without a window I inhabited at the hospital. And
I have my computer here, so I'm back in business.