Wellst, I was hoping to make it at least through the weekend where I cold catch up with my friends at RE/MAX Advanced...BTW, Kathy Mahaffey, you fiiiiiinalllllly made the move to the best damn RE/MAX office on the planet! Oh, soooooooo congratulations to you!...who in an undetermined large part give me the strength and the attitude to slug away at this thing called cancer, a.k.a. Multiple Myeloma.
And I'd hoped {There's Hope Here For Us Alcoholics}to get around to a few church basements and catch up with some of my alkie buds that I haven't seen for a while.
Thenst Sunday morning I was hopin' to pop in to the Evangelical Covenant Church and see some of those folks that I didn't see last Sunday/Tuesday when the most tense episode of chemo-brain yet led me there for the 9:00 service...go back a blog or two.
Cuz the plan when I came home Sunday, cast in Play Doh, was that I'd more'n likely be home a week or maybe even a few days longer, I came down Monday for labs and to set procedure for getting labs done in Fort Collins...which entailed Cindy learning how to do flush my port...the tri-fusion, a.k.a. Trifecta. No blood involved but there was some nervousness, a.k.a. shaky hands when she got to flush one of the leads...so that I wouldn't have to drive to Denver every day for something that takes 10 minutes and is "so easy a caveman could do it."
I came down Tuesday for another set of labs and to help determine the one day of the week I could go over to Front Range Cancer Specialists in Fort Collins for Labs, a.k.a. drawing 4 or 5 vials of blood rather than having to come down here.
I came down Wednesday with Doug, who amongst other things is my Dr. Lee interpreter, to meet with Dr. Lee and more labs and developed a "plan" where I would come back down Monday and check into collect more stem cells and begin the whole rest of the 'process. There was also a conversation about the heart biopsy that was tentatively scheduled and he blew that off saying, "Need to take care of Myeloma 1st, then maybe have to deal with heart. He also 'splained that it seems last go-round the only corralled bout 6 million of those critters and they need between 12 and 14 million. he also said, and gave me written instructions to give om Dr. McFarland, my Oncologist in Denver, that I was to go in daily for some Saline and some Chemo.
I can live with that and that'll maybe get Cindy of the "flushing block", too.
So I be gonna come back down next Monday to re-start the process all over again. I left without asking the question of whether or not I had to go through 4 days of 24/7 "Red Bag of Death" (My declaration as when they come in to change he bag they have to suit up in yellow paper haz-mat suits...and their puttin' that stuff in my body?!?!?) and 10 days of Neupogen shots before we did the collection.
Or so I thought...
I came home comfortable that I'd be home 'til Monday cuz we had
I said , "No" and she told me that Dana, one of our UCH contacts told me that I had to come down and get admitted today and they had a room for me on the 11th floor!
Huh?
So I grabbed my cell and checked messages.
The 1st one was, "This is so-and-so from the University of Colorado Hospital and we have you scheduled for an urgent appointment with one of our Cardiologists at 3:00 or 3:30 today."!!!!!!!!!!!!
Doug was also involved in this cluster-mess and I can't remember whether it was Cindy or Doug who told me that Dr. Lee still wanted me to go the the Saline and Chemo at FRCS (Front Range Cancer Specialists).
Well, I've had lots of chemo there and it takes 60-90 minutes.
I putz around the house, pull out a suitcase (Cuz I'm coming down for the duration, probably 6 weeks or so.), do and start some laundry.
Thenst I head over to FRCS. I get there at about 10:30 and was told they had made an appointment for me at either 10:00 or 11:00 but I could wait and they'd try and fit me in!
Heck-o-fire, nobody told us I had an appointment! Best of my knowledge I was told just to go on over!
Well they did get me min at about 10:40 and while getting me all IV'd I asked how long this would take, expecting 60-90 minutes as Cindy had volunteered to help me pack and I could meet her at the house.
Well when I was told that with this batch of chemo and the amount of saline they needed to give me it would be 4-5 hours!
My jaw and a few other things hit the floor and my mouth hit the fan..."AAAAARGH! This ain't gonna work! I gotta be in Denver @ 3:00 to meet with a Cardiologist and then check in to the hospital!"
My IVist just said, Well that's all going to have to wait, but I'll go talk to Dr. McFarland (F.t Collins Oncologist Oncologist) and maybe he can call down there and see what other arrangements can be done for you.) and left to, I assume, walk down the hall to see Dr. McFarland.
I thenst sit there gettin' IV dripped and my blood pressure rising to catastrophic levels. I prayed, pondered and read a bit and calmed back down.
I can't remember exactly how this came down, whether I called Cindy or for some reason she called me but I told her what was going down and she said she'd go over to the house and pack up what she knew to as she had floor (Sales talk for the person who handles incoming land line phone calls and walk-ins.) from 1:00 to 4:00.
I'm resigning myself to this all being a combination of what my recent lab results have shown, more (which is less) lack of communications and am reading along when Cindy shows up because she wanted to say, "So long, Pawdner." as she knew his adios from home was gonna be a long one.
I appreciated that and we were chatting and the IVist came over (it's 12:45ish by now) and the subject of me not making my 3:00 in Denver came up and she said, (Oh, I haven't talked to Dr. McFarland yt and I haven't called down either.)
I freaked.
Cindy calmed me down and said as she had the number for the Cardiologists office in Denver she'd call. So she walked over and around the corner to where the refrigerator and the out in the open stash of cheddar cheese 'n peanut butter crackers (yuck aw-mighty) are kept and made the call.
She came back and told me that the call had already been made, probably by Doug, the appointment had been cancelled and the Cardiologist would see me after I got here.
Whew.
So the rest of the day went smoothly of sorts, Doug drove me down here, he/we did what needed to be done and now it's now.
I had actually completed this last night at about midnight when they finally got me hooked up to the Red Bag of Death and went to Post it, but when I did about 1/2 of it went off into cyberspace and I wasn't able to retrieve it...and I so hate to re-dos. Do-overs are wonderful, but I hate re-dos.
Twas not with hate that I re-doed this though.
It's given me something pleasurable to do while I wait to be whisked away for a bone marrow biopsy!
and BTW, I ain't seen hide nor Drs. gown of that pesky Cardiologist yet.
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