Genes walking

Day 14 of induction, been here for 3 weeks. Looking pretty ragged, the hair is starting to depart. It doesn't lie flat but is actually trying to leap off my head. Eyebrows look like fishing line snag you find at the harbor. I had a good night sleep in spite of nurse torture. Dana will bring the trimmers today and I will be chrome by evening.

I walked all over yesterday, spent about 5 hours walking around, and when I got back in the afternoon it was time for a shower. However, the nurse came right in and hooked me up to potassium, which I keep coming up short of in spite of my daily banana and gatorade. Pretty common for chemo patients to burn through potassium. They were giving me these 2 horse potassium pills, and I must say they are the most difficult thing to swallow (I have swallowed 37 pills at once, a fistful) as they are dissolving before they hit the throat. So I end up hooked up to the IV pole for 5 hours getting slow-drip potassium. Jimmy S. comes by and we go get a decaf and chat.

I finish the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency and fall asleep at 11:30 after the long day of walking, and the night nurse decides that now they have to take vital signs every 4 hours instead of every eight, so she comes in and wakes me up at 1:00 to take vitals, all apologetic. I kindly give her hell, in a very gentle 1500ml of prednisone still stuck in me and more coming daily I need sleep more than food and my freaking vitals are better than yours go away hurry up are we done kind of way and if you are following my thoughts and the way I am sleeping through the vitals you can tell I think you didn't think this one through so hurry up. I am asleep again before she leaves.

I wake up at 5:00, so I got over 5 hours sleep, cool. My morning jangle is a little tuned down, the constant low-grade steroid jangle headache is OK. I am listening to Eric Clapton do Blues Before Sunrise and trying to research what they are going to stick in me in phase 2, I don't remember.

Rant warning - I have been thinking about the Earth lately, watching our candidates dance. If the American people are stupid enough to think that this election should be swayed by drilling for offshore oil that won't give us shit for a BushEon (eight years of horrible devastation), we deserve it. The Republicans showed their thinking on energy independence in the 80s when Reagan scrapped the goals foe energy independence agreed to under Carter, and Bushiot (W) scrapped them again after his Dad reinstated those goals. Don't be swayed by this knee-jerk reaction to gas prices. We have to figure out how we are all going to survive on this planet, and I am starting to stress on the general stupidity of everyone when they react to McCainiot plans to drill now and save the day. This tied him in the polls? Sounds like Attack Iraq. Imbeciles. Love your country, fear your government.

This is the gene pool I need to find. Too bad we can't just loop into those spots in time when we were so healthy and didn't know it, and snag a dose of that juju.

Dad and Leslie looking fabulous.

I have been missing my Dad lately, been wanting to sit and talk with him, just feel his presence for a while. There are certain photos that we have that just make you want to reach out and hug that person from that moment in time - I have a number of pictures of my boys like that, but this one of my Dad at 8 always makes me feel like that, like I wish I could go back in time and be his Dad and make things happier for him. Mom looks fabulous too.
The Fiore kids; Frank and Mikey are carrying some shared genes.

Here is my new jade window creation. I have been experimenting with gluing jade to wire and it works, so at 4:30 in the morning a couple days ago I started trying to get it all to hang somehow, and this works but gives me that dynamic feel, as I wait for some or all of it to come crashing down. I need clear glue too, this stuff is Gorilla Glue foamy.

I am starting to lose it a little; I feel very undirected, like I am just floating through what is left. Today is the beginning of week 4 here, new record thanks to those extra 3 days at the start. Way more bizarre than last time as I am almost completely healthy except for this annoying leukemia.

I cut back on the carbs in these meals, but I feel like they sewed a basketball in my gut. Steroid swell. I am swollen. When I walk by the atrium windows, they show this pear-shaped guy actually tipping over as he walks down the hall, and he has the general shape of my Dad in his later years, not pretty. I weigh the exact same as the day I arrived, amazing, I feel much bigger. I must have been hungry yesterday when I filled in today's menu request - breakfast was sausage, scrambled eggs and potatoes, an english muffin with jelly, a cup of oatmeal, an apple juice, a coffee and an herbal tea. I am still working on that part at 8am. Saved for tensies is a bagel, cream cheese, and fruit cup, plus a banana and gatorade for walking, and a yogurt for tomorrow 5am. As a sick tube I am working pretty well, pumping a lot of stuff through the system and hoping I flush out any crud in there.

Dana will come today and get me redirected back to the prize fight. We will spend some time figuring out how the next phase will work, and checking out apartments and stuff like that. I plan to take her to better cafes than those in the hospital.

And if you have not been checking the comments on this blog, make sure you check yesterday. I think Mac let his big dog out and that sucker rolled in everything in the blog so far, took some Owlsley Blue, went back home and talked to Mac and then Mac turned it into literature. I am going to be his agent.

Dana here...I just wanted to post this picture of Mike at prom this year. Yep, he and Uncle Frankie do look alike. Heck, they are even wearing the same vest!

(By the way, Nana, if you click on the pictures, it will make them bigger.)