Chilling out

It’s been a week since I updated the blog, so I thought I should, although there is not much to tell. This must be the long, boring part of the leukemia battle, no exciting steroid stories, no hospital craziness, just regular meals and mild physical insurrection. I can tell this is getting mundane because my family is starting to treat me like I am fine, which I am most of the time, as long as there are no stairs or hills involved.

Phase II of chemo is no problem so far. Two weeks of mercaptopurine means anti-nausea drugs, then 2 weeks of asparaginase means chills and fevers every fourth day, and the vincristine is numbing my fingers and now toes. We started the third week on Tuesday, so asparaginase and vincristine right now. The dropsy effect from the numbing is getting worse, meaning I can’t do the dishes, dang, and typoing is a pain, and I meant to say typoing. After 4 weeks, repeat and rinse! Every one of these drugs causes hair loss, nausea, fevers, headaches, etc., and I continue to have only mild problems, a little nauseous feeling but controlled by drugs, low fevers and chills controlled by Tylenol, and hair loss but who can tell? Speaking of which, I have been looking for some used wigs or toupees, anyone have anything that would look really bad?

Me with Mike’s hair



Me with Jack’s hair (Mike’s friend)



Me with niece Jenny’s hair, from a few years back. Jenny Rose is standing behind me, with her hair flipped over my head. Rock On!



I have been talking to the doc about the rest of treatment, and it looks like I won’t have to go back to Stanford for anything anticipated. The five spinal taps/methotrexate injections can be done here by a neurologist pal of the docs, they trade spinal taps for chemo shots I guess. He thinks we can get rid of the PICC line pretty soon, which will be awesome; it means I can get on some physical activity and maybe even surf if the blood counts are high enough.

One night a few years back I was sitting in my kitchen reading a book when I heard this scratching noise, not very loud. I listened carefully and eventually traced it to a light fixture over the dining room table. It was very faint and not consistent, just an occasional scritch scritch. I decided to explore further in the morning. In the morning I removed the plate that covers the light fixture wires and box, and inside was this – a Potato Bug. The crazy thing was, how could this bug have ever gotten in there? They are pretty big, at least as big as a quarter, and the biggest hole into the light fixture was less than dime-sized. Sucker must have been in there since birth? This insect scares the wits out of people, but it does nothing.


The Potato Bug (Stenopelmatus intermedius), is not the same as the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa undecimpunctata. The native Americans called it Woh-tzi-Neh or old bald-headed man, and maybe that is why I have an affinity for this creature. See http://www.potatobugs.com/.

Hence, today’s Eyebrow Lowbrow