Chemo 2008, Session 2, Round 1 (Sep. 26)

Well I did my first chemo of the month today. It's crazy. I went to the hospital yesterday just to confirm that everything was ready for me to start chemotherapy today and found out that I wasn't even in the system, so they contacted my doctor and put me in the system and gave me an appointment sheet as proof.

This morning I went in and they took blood and started an IV and took me to my room. I sat there for 2 and 1/2 hours until I got the chemo because my doctor wasn't around to sign the order sheet to get the medicine. Anyways, after I kept bugging everybody to get the order through (I didn't want to have to reschedule and take another day off school), a resident doctor named Deb came by and tried to tell me that I had a PET scan scheduled for October. I asked her the results from the one I took in August. She told me that I didn't have a PET scan in August. I kindly smiled and told her the opposite. She told me well, it wasn't ordered by us, it must have been a CT scan. I thought about it and said no, I had a Positron Emission Tomography scan on August 26th and that it was ordered by my doctor. She left in a huff.

She came back 10 minutes later and told me that she got the results from the PET scan I took in August. I said the one on August 26th, right. She looked at the date, said yes, and gave me the results of that and all the other tests I've had in the past month. I tried to make her feel better and told her that I've been to the hospital a lot in the past month and it's probably confusing to look at my recent rap sheet... then I was glad to get her to smile. The employees there are pretty busy sometimes. The way I see it, they're all basically caretakers with different numbers on their pay stubs.

Anyways I met a man who seemed to be in his 80s. His name was Dan Bennett and his son was there to take care of him. Another man was in the room and his name was Gary. He was there with his daughter and his wife, Doris. Dan is from Elkins and Gary is from Fairmont.

Dan was diagnosed with colon cancer 3 years ago and was in remission when they recently discovered a large brain tumor that they couldn't surgically remove. He slept a lot today during treatment. Gary was about 60 and was in remission with bladder cancer, but it spread to his lungs recently. They tried to do radiation on his lungs and burnt them bad so now he is constantly hooked up to an oxygen tank. He was very cynical so his whining came with a smirk. It turns out that he was in the 459th ENG BN out of Clarksburg and knew Jim Green, the General Manager of MUB (the guy who gave me a job), back in 1971 when he joined. Jim was a platoon leader then. He's a retired light colonel now.

It ended up that I was there until 6 o'clock and Michelle came and we went to the trail and walked 4 miles. My leg hurt a lot but I can fake it pretty well. Then we came back to my place and I cooked fish and rice with broccoli and salads. I snagged a couple diet cokes from the cancer center so we could drink these at dinner. I cooked the fish in a lot of butter that I mixed with some canola oil, so I could cook the butter a long time without burning it. I diced a clove of garlic and simmered it in the butter and threw in some black pepper and cooked the fish in this while I cooked the rice with cumin and diced broccoli. The rice was really tasty with the butter sauce from the fish. I feel like I ate too much though because the salad filled me up before I even got to the heavy stuff.

For dessert I cooked some blueberry muffin mix. I used nonfat dry milk and it still turned out great. Couldn't find the muffin pan so I just sprayed a pyrex dish and poured the batter in the bottom. Mom came home right before it was done and I cut squares out and they were good. Mom went to the movies and the Cracker Barrel with a singles group from the local megachurch. She looked nice.
I hope she met some good people.
Now it's time to recharge for another revolution.