And so it goes...maintenance is boring

I had the second of what will be many maintenance chemotherapy treatments yesterday and feel pretty good today.  I need to feel this good tomorrow when we have a sales rep from a major library furniture vendor coming to present a new line of furniture.  Usually, after-effects from chemo are felt the second and third days after treatment.  Maintenance therapy, though, is supposed to have a much less strenuous effect on the patient.

Good news yesterday was that all the blood work (including those naughty platelets) was normal.  So, I sat in the recliner re-reading Moby Dick and waited for the 2 and a half hours of IV to finish dripping in.  That’s much better than the old four-hour IV drip (though I would have made more headway on Melville).

Nurse Maggie, my IV nurse, is a wizard with needles and always manages to get the IV in with the first thrust.  Much different from the male nurse at my gastroenterolgist’s office who jammed the needle through the vein and quoted Rick Perry (“ooops!”).  That attempt oozed for three days before stopping.  Nurse Maggie is one of a platoon of fine nurses working in the treatment room (AKA Cancer Ward) and responds, in a nearly Pavlovian way, to the beep beeps when an IV bag empties itself into the vein and then rushes over to attach the next bag.  I get four bags a visit now:  two for chemo and two to flush the vein.  Before maintenance I had six bags full (Baa Baaa Baaaa).

And so, it continues.  I do have a cough, but the Docs Onc say the cough is not caused by the cancer and are referring me to a different Doc to see about that.  The ENT Doc couldn’t do anything but prescribe Benzonate (didn’t work) and, so, we’re trying a trip back to the pulmonologist this time.  Doc Rafael is the doc who first caught this thing, these things, whatever.  So, maybe he can do something about my waking up coughing at night.  We’ll see.

Anyway, it’s a beautifully brilliant day here in San Antonio and I am in my office instead of being out in the sun’s rays swinging long sticks at dimpled balls.  Three more weeks before the next chemo treatments and a bit more than a month before I head to Chicago for the national meeting of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.  That last should be great fun.