Dogs Just Sniff You To See What You Taste Like...

Today I did absolutely nothing.  Well I did take a nap and walk the dogs, but outside of that nothing.  Still not completely able to shake free of this chemo stuff, I am trying to develop a rhythm and a routine (no not gymnastics).  By the way, I was told that some may not realize that when I "walk the dogs around the yard" that the yard is five acres, so it is a little more than just standing on the porch holding the leash at arms length while they do their business.

This weekend though, I am hoping things will change.  I will pretty much be forced to do stuff and get into a decent sleep routine.  We will be traveling to my parents' with the dogs for an early Thanksgiving celebration.  To honor my still being alive, they are carving a turkey to look like a malignant testicle...OK, I am making that up.  But I do feel that this Thanksgiving will have a little more thanks than usual, even if it is only coming from me. There will be plenty to do during the day, like sleep while the girls shop, but that is not why I think I will get into a routine.  There will be five people and six dogs.  I try to make it a habit to never be outnumbered by dogs, especially when they can count.  And most dogs can count.  If you don't believe me, get two dogs together and give them treats, but give one of them one more treat than the other.  You will quickly see that I am correct about dogs and arithmetic.  So, there certainly will not be any sleeping during daylight hours, that is when the dogs will all be together and they can plot.  I do not think I can stop them or outrun them in the state I am, but I am getting well enough to knock down my sister when the dogs come after us, and that should be enough diversion for me to get away...and possibly my wife, she is on her own though.  At night time, we all retire to our separate bedrooms, where we will be at parity with our puppies.  Again, my sister will be the sacrificial lamb, but she is the one that let herself get outnumbered so I have no pity on her.

One of the activities my father and I have planned is a trip to some of my old stomping grounds, including one of my favorite stores.  Keep in mind, I have maybe gone into this store once a year for the past ten years, yet the employees still greet me much the same way they greet Norm when he walks into Cheers.  Don't ask how much money you have to spend to be remembered after ten years...seriously, please don't ask.  The only depressing part is usually I have money to haggle and deal with, even on stuff I don't want, and this time I won't.  Between being unemployed and the financial hit we took from cancer surgery and treatment, there isn't a whole lot of "fun money" to be had.  (It turns out that the great insurance that I had through my employer, kind of sucks.)  I thought about selling my body to raise some cash, but I was having trouble giving it away before the surgery, and now after the surgery I am considered "B-stock" or "irregular" and will have an even harder time.  Plus my wife says, she is not willing to pay me for that and even if she did, it is still "our" money anyway.  That just doesn't seem fair.  Because, this place just may have an American made Paul Reed Smith with twenty-four frets and double cutaways.  I wonder if they would be interested in trading one for an irregular body?  Nah, I don't think Phil nor Eric would be interested.

So, between avoiding the canine uprising, looking broke and pitiful at stores (but not so much that they kick you out), and eating turkey, I should get my sleep pattern back.  And getting out will help me to be less sedentary than I have been around here.  However, if my family really wanted me to be active and cared about my health, they would get me that PRS...

Chemo Countdown: 38 hours

Today, I made a few more rounds on my farewell, pre-chemo tour.  I also bought the last of my chemo supplies and finished my "Honey Do" list.  The only thing I have left is a haircut and enjoying my last full day pre-chemo.

We did have one set back today.  I went to pick up one of the prescriptions that will keep me from getting sick from the chemo and the pharmacy said my insurance was rejecting it.  I told the pharmacist that the doctor said sometimes insurance companies don't like to pay for particular drugs, when I was informed that was not the case, my insurance company said I was no longer insured.  That is something you don't really want to hear before racking up another series of medical bills.  Luckily the over-the-counter version of this particular medication is just as good, but obviously that wouldn't be picked up by my insurance company, if I had insurance.  So, my wife (that I fully admit is the money person in the relationship, I don't understand all that stuff) spent several hours on the phone talking to my former employer's headquarters benefit office.  What's funny is every time we call, which has been quite frequently since I have been laid off, they inform us that they have problems with my particular former office and that they are always screwing up.  If headquarters knows this and tells random callers that there is a problem there, why isn't it being addressed?!?!  Luckily, the people at headquarters are fairly nice, and the people they send us to at the insurance company are really nice.  Maybe it was because they wanted a big fat C.O.B.R.A. check, but they were still nice.  Thank God for computers.  Between the two of them, they saw that the paperwork for C.O.B.R.A. was sent in about two weeks past when it was supposed to, so since it was no fault of ours, they are retroactively giving us insurance.  The only problem is that we are already getting bills that are bouncing back rejected.  And again luckily, the doctors' offices have all been pretty understanding about it.  At least I think they are.  We will see what they do to me when they strap me down for chemo Friday.  They may lean over, whisper in my ear and say, "When the bills are paid, you get the antidote."  Let's hope that doesn't happen, that could be several phone calls before that happens.  

Outside of that, it was a good day.  One of the things I am told to avoid is touching my eyes, nose, or mouth.  The medicine I have been on for my tummy problems for the past nine years, dries me out a lot, causing me to frequently touch my eyes, nose, and mouth.  I thought the best way to combat this was to get hand sanitizer and boxes of Kleenexes and place them everywhere I may possibly be in the house.  Hopefully, they will be a very visual reminder that when my eyes or nose tingle from drying out, I can't just rub them like I normally do. I will squirt some alcohol, grab a tissue, rub, then toss the tissue, re-alcohol, until the twitch happens again, which should be about the time I finish with the routine from the first twitch.  So, I will probably be walking around the house for the next four weeks reeking of rubbing alcohol and aloe and have spots of white tissue dust all over my face, with carpal tunnel from all the sanitizing, rubbing, wiping, tossing, and re-sanitizing.  I guess it's a good thing I am staying away from people during all of this.  Now tomorrow, I just need to place all of my supplies.  I also need to restock my mini-fridge by shoving it full of all the healthy crap I am told I will need to keep hydrated.  Grape juice, low acid no pulp orange juice, apple juice, caffeine-free (even the words make me cry) Pepsi, and enough Gatorade to dump over the Cincinnati Bengals (provided they ever won a game that warranted Gatorade being dumped on them, but they do have more crappy reality show stars than any other NFL team, goooo Bengals!).  The food I have stockpiled is slowly being pilfered, which is funny, because I haven't been in the house enough to pilfer it.  I guess next time I bring in a truckload of Little Debbies snack cakes, I will have to hide them.

Finally, I finished the last of my crappy tasks that I had to finish before chemo (and I mean that quite literally).  My wife decided five years ago it would be cool to get these cute little turtles about the size of a bottle cap on vacation (we were on vacation, not the turtles, they were busy swimming, pretending to be cute, and acting like they wouldn't grow).  Now the turtles have grown to be just shy of the size of a dinner-plate.  Any bigger and the SyFy network would make a very crappy made-for-TV movie about them terrorizing some hick Midwestern town, and it would inevitably star Eric Roberts (he has the worst luck for running into giant mutant animals that eat innocent hillbillies).   I told my wife when she got the cute little turtles, that I was OK with her getting them, but I was not going to have anything to do with them.  I was able to stick by that even when they grew to the size that they are now and neighborhood hillbillies and paperboys started turning up missing.  Today things changed.  Somehow she conned a doctor into saying that she needs to stay away from them for a while, because they can be carriers of salmonella.  And, since my immune system is about to be knocked down to nothing on Friday, I had to clean their tank out today.  That was the grossest thing I have ever done, and one summer in college I had a job that involved me helping pump out outdoor pit toilets.  The smell of cleaning their filter was pretty close to that smell.  The only real difference it, I don't think that a whole summer's worth of State Park poo equaled what I found in the turtle filter.  Plus, the State Park toilets never had bones of drifters and turtle shell pieces in there.  When the doctor clears her to clean that tank again, I think I am personally going to leave a nice steaming present in that filter for her.  But at least my chores are done.  My eyes and nose are still burning.  I don't know if it is from all the dust I kicked up mowing and raking leaves for five hours yesterday, or if it is from being exposed to turtle poo, but my eyes are so bloodshot I look like I have taken up medical marijuana after swimming in a pool with a 50/50 solution of chlorine and urine (I am a former lifeguard, so unfortunately I know what that's like too).  

But all in all it was a good day.  Tomorrow I can rest and just do what I want to do the day before chemo.  I can eat whatever I want tomorrow and not feel bad about whether it's healthy or not (even my wife gave me permission to do that, and we all know how mean she normally is), and I got to say "see you later" to a few friends before I get thrown into the chemo gulag.  Thirty-eight more hours of freedom!  But I better hurry up and get to bed.  It is past my curfew and I don't want my wife to ground me on my last free day!