“Scorched Earth.”
Those are the words the Doctor used to describe my bone marrow after the most recent biopsy. Almost nothing left. No good cells, no bad. Believe it or not, this is exactly what we were hoping for. For seven straight days, the chemo dripped killing off my bone marrow indiscriminately. It did what it was supposed to do, and now I have “clear marrow.” A blank slate means that now we wait, and we hope. We wait for my counts to recover and hope and pray that all of the good cells come back and none of the bad. The good news is that despite entirely lacking an immune system, I continue to feel strong and healthy. Thanks to generous donors that I will never meet, I have plenty of red blood to carry oxygen and plenty of platelets to stop bleeding. A huge thank you to the many people who went to donate blood in the recent weeks – it is the only thing that keeps people like me alive in times like this. I feel so good in fact, that it’s exceedingly hard to spend day after day in a 12-by-10 foot hospital room waiting. Without an immune system, I can’t so much as go in the hallway without wearing a mask. Today is the 18th straight day being tied to an IV poll – all day every day. Walking, sleeping, eating, showering, my IV poll comes everywhere with me to continue a steady drip of antibiotics. This is a challenge for someone whose sanity is tied to spending time outside and getting plenty of exercise. Boredom has become the single-biggest enemy. While it’s no Glen Alps trailhead, I’ve been combating the boredom by hiking laps of my hospital floor. Pushing my noisy IV poll along with me I go around and around and around the 1/5 mile lap, as many as 20 times a day. I’ve dubbed this hiking “hamster-wheeling” thanks to the mindless repetition. My nurses claim they have never had a patient walk as much as I do. Thus far, I’ve written this post in the first person, but that is a mistake. Jenny has been by my side day-and-night since we first learned I had appendicitis and she jumped on a bush plane back to Anchorage from Bristol Bay. I am eternally grateful for her being next to me. At no point have I felt like I am going through this alone. It has always been “we” and never “I.” So for now we wait. We play cards and dominos, we read, we listen to the radio. We daydream about floating down the Kenai, hiking Crow Pass, listening to bluegrass at the Seaview and feeling the tug of fish at the end of the line. We wait and we hope.
Dick Lamers
7/6/2015 04:44:07 am
Sammy,
Nelli
7/7/2015 12:05:05 am
Keep hiking those laps! The scenery will improve soon;)
ras
7/7/2015 07:42:37 am
Hi Sam, Comments are closed.
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