We Called Them Rinse & Spit Cups, Even Though We Never Did Either Of Those Things

This photo is for my sister, who is currently pacing a hospital waiting room while her daughter, my niece, undergoes emergency gallbladder surgery. You know, for kicks.

Yeah. It's kind of an inside joke. Which would ideally involve each and every one of those cups filled with shots of contraband Pinot Grigio. On Christmas morning. While huddled in the guest room under the guise of last-minute present wrapping. Which may or may not have actually happened. 

Anyway.

Between that and another week full of chemo treatments and bargain-basement platelet counts, I'm in a giddy sort of limbo where I don't feel particularly funny, nor do I feel capable of being all maudlin and introspective. I'm just sort of spent. Maybe I just need a drink. Or a hug. Or some kind of chocolate-y boozy drink that could be the equivalent of a hug. 

Come to think of it, those mini-sized Dixie cups seem like the perfect serving size for a pregnant woman to safely consume alcohol in moderation. Plus look! At the packaging! The cups have ARMS. I feel comforted already.

Meanwhile...

1) I am recapping Top Chef All-Stars this season at Mamapop. Unfortunately, several of my personal Top Chef All-Time Most Disliked Douchebags are back again. Fortunately, my hatred gives me strength. Delicious, bacon-foam-flavored strength.

2) New column up at The Stir, in which I pretty much guarantee myself an immediate whack in the face as the Quirky Behavior Pendulum swings back in the other direction and takes me out in the process. 

3) There's enough new advice columns up at AlphaMom to prevent you from making any stupid life choices, particularly ones involving being productive at work on a Friday afternoon. Heavens, no.

4) We have a winner in the Windows 7 phone giveaway thingie, and it's...Mrs. Q of Nuclear Momb! With apologies to those of you who tirelessly commented on that post each and every single day possible, Mrs. Q won with a single, solitary comment that she left without even realizing there was a giveaway involved in the first place. This tells me that during the next electrical storm, we should all either stand directly next to her...or as far away as possible. Definitely one of those two things. 

5) Once I accomplish a fifth thing, I will type it here. In the meantime, I'm going to eat the shit out of something unhealthy and high in butter content. Golf claps for me and thing number five!

Dad

The chemo isn't working. 

I didn't expect it to. 

He felt "better" after a blood transfusion last week. His numbers were "better."

I didn't expect that to last, and it didn't. At all. 

I talked to him on the phone on his 81st birthday last week. For just a few minutes. Then he said he had to go and hung up. 

This was also expected.

He is translucent. He is blue and grey. Like a cancer-stricken extra on a medical drama, wearing too much pancake makeup. He is immobile and helpless, short-tempered and miserable. He is a bundle of medical checks and balances, with one medication causing X but preventing Y and yet none of them having any effect at all on Z.

It's happening slower than I expected. 

That's not necessarily a good thing. 

Which is confusing. Guilt-inducing. Unexpected. 

The doctors are finally talking about stopping treatment, about making decisions, about being comfortable.

Because the cancer is too aggressive, because the chemo isn't working, because he is already much older than 81 and so sick and has no bone marrow and no platelets and no hemoglobin and no options. Because he is blue and grey and miserable and fighting for one last year as the desperate months go by. 

He doesn't hear any of that. He hears fight. Chance. Odds. Win. 

He is stubborn. Obstinate. Downright impossible. 

And brave.

I would never, ever expect anything less.  

Alive & Slobber-Coated

Isn't it crazy annoying when bloggers start a post with an apology for not posting? Like they automatically assume you EVEN NOTICED in the first place, and CARED in the second place, because they are self-absorbed egomaniacs who imagine that dozens of people are sitting at their computers terribly worried because they couldn't be bothered to sit down and grace the world with a few sparsely punctuated sentences? I know, right?

Anyway! I am very sorry for not posting there, for a few days. I went back up to Pennsylvania again, for about the millionth time, for a good old-fashioned terminal-illness-related family reunion with some of my siblings. Siblings I haven't seen in years. Like, before my children were born years. Family togetherness for the WIN. 

I kind of don't want to talk about it. I mean, it was fine. It was just strange and very...heavy with cancer. You know? I think I'll just post some pictures instead.

This is my brother's dog Jack. Jack is the dog for whom the phrase WHO'S A GOOD BOY? was invented. Because he is the best boy, yes he is, shnuffle shmoopy etc. Noah especially enjoyed riding him like a pony. 

I am not even slightly exaggerating. 

Jack is an incredibly patient Pillow Pet animal. Noah is now requesting that we get a "real dog." 

Ezra spent a lot of time in the closet playing peekaboo, but I think the poor little guy was mostly just trying to stay out of the Line Of Nonstop Doggy Kisses. The perils of life at tongue-level, unfortunately.

I took about 25 photos of the boys with their cousin. This is the closest I got to a "good one." There are six boy cousins/nephews/grandchildren in our family, and only one girl. (Who is now 22 years old and no longer amenable to pink frilly princess clothing or toys.) I cannot even tell you the amount of open, naked pressure my current fetus is under to break the streak. 

Speaking of that, my belly officially popped and rounded out during the car ride home from Pennsylvania on Sunday, which was not really comfy, what with my wardrobe choice of skinny jeans and all. I mean, I know that it's not the baby or anything...more like my intestines have been forced upward and outward to make room for things yet to come. Like limbs, I suppose. And another giant 95th percentile melon head. 

Anyway, I would have posted all of this yesterday, except there was Blogging-Excuse-You-Don't-Care-About number two, which is that I was supposed to have a big fancy sponsored post go up yesterday, but then...it didn't, for various Oh-My-God-There-Is-No-Way-Anybody-Cares-About-This reasons, and then I thought it would go up first thing this morning but I still haven't gotten the green light or the tracking codes or the logos or the pudding pops or whatever else it is I need. So I figured I'd rush in and post something else instead while I wait, thus pretty much guaran-goddamn-teeing that I will have to publish the other post FOURTEEN SECONDS after hitting publish on this one, because that is just how things like that work out.

(This scintillating look at the inner workings of corporate sponsored blogging is brought to you by the letter A, the number 4, and zombies.)

Impasse

A doctor flat-out told him to stop the chemo. An infectious disease doctor, there to discuss the team's inability to 100% identify whatever mysterious infection he has this time, with a side of brutal bluntness. "You need to stop this." 

He's not going to stop. He refuses.

A nurse told him it was time for a hospital bed in the living room. An at-home nurse, one he's known and trusted since his heart surgery, and her opinion was echoed by just about everyone at the hospital. "You cannot climb the stairs anymore."

He's not getting a hospital bed in the living room. Also refuses.

A transfusion brought his platelets up, a little. They are still lower than where they were after his LAST hospitalization and his LAST transfusion, and it's not like that was a good number either. They are trying to stop an ocean with a cork. 

He's going back for more chemo on Tuesday. 

I'm trying so hard to understand. It's not my body or my life or my fight. I'm trying to let go of anger at the toll this is taking on him, on my mom, on their relationship, on the entire family. Since he lost most of his voice to a different cancer over a decade ago, my mom is the one who schedules the chemo appointments she doesn't want him to go through, the one who struggles to get him up and down the stairs, and the one who is either the full-time caregiver...or alone in the house while he spends night after night in the hospital, knowing that she probably isn't going to get those nights back.  

I know he wants to be here when their house sells, for when my mom is settled in an affordable apartment, for every possible month where he can collect benefits that won't transfer to her. I know he has just as many reasons as anybody who has ever said, hell no, not yet, I'm not ready. 

I know he wants to be here in June. And that's the thing: I want him here too.

But I don't want this either. 

***

Wow, and I also don't want to end the week with an entry this depressing. It's like I whacked the keys with a sock full of bricks instead of typing with my fingers. So maybe for anyone who feels like skipping the previous bit (FLAWED PLAN IS FLAWED), here are some pictures from Ezra's birthday.

Peter doll from The Snowy Day, aka Our Latest Effort To Reinforce To Ezra That His Name Really Isn't THAT WEIRD WE SWEAR.

Awww.

Don't let the WTF expression fool you. Kid's been begging for his own toddler-sized broom and dustpan FOR MONTHS. He was thrilled with this one. 

A very long, gradual process...

Followed by open-mouthed, shocked realization...

And fist-clenching excitement...

DUPLO FARM DUPLO FARM DUPLO FARM 

In background: Extremely jealous brother banished to "go play with your Leapster or one of the bajillion birthday presents YOU JUST GOT FIVE MINUTES AGO or something."

In foreground: Portrait in smugness, ohhhhh yeah. 

(I do not have any pictures from his cake celebration, because we had ice cream instead. Also while I was setting up the camera he decided to put the candle out with his ringers instead. That too.)

Miracle Man

I've been waiting all day for more updates -- something more substantial than what I have pieced together right now -- so I could post something...well, MORE. But there's no nice narrative today.

The first text message I received from my mother after day two of chemo was a good one. No bad reactions. One more day of treatment and then three weeks off. He's amazing. He's a Miracle Man.

I put the phone down and walked away from it. When it rang during dinner I didn't even get up to check the caller ID. Shut up, telemarketers, we're all having a nice time over here.

Of course, it was my mom. The bad reaction just came later this time. Fever, shakes, a trip to the ER and another infection. Looks like pneumonia again. White blood cells and platelets have cratered. Chemo was canceled for today. Instead, a blood transfusion, perhaps. He's on a floor that's not quite the ICU and not quite the general garden-variety sick-level population. Maybe he'll go home tomorrow, or the next day.

And I don't know anything more than that. I don't think this is nearly as serious of a reaction as last time, but I don't know if it will meet his hypothetical bar of "bad enough to call it quits on chemo" that he set for himself. I don't know what I think he should do anymore. I don't know how I feel about any of it anymore, except for an oppressive and weary numbness. I don't know how many times I'll tell this same story without ever typing "The End." 

I don't want that, but nobody wants this, either. Fuck you, cancer, for taking away every good option. 

The Decision Is In

My dad has decided to try the chemo "one more time." If it knocks him down again, he'll quit. But not yet. Not yet.

They'll likely be removing one of the more hardcore drugs that was likely responsible for his bad reaction -- though that hardcore drug is absolutely necessary to fight a cancer as advanced as his, so at some point it has to go back into the treatment, so...

*rubs temples, sighs wearily*

(For the record, because it's been linked/emailed so many times, I have indeed read this article by Atul Gawande on hospice vs. aggressive treatment for terminal illness, and I forwarded it to my mom and quoted it to my dad and encourage everybody who hasn't read it to go do so right now, this second, even if you aren't currently dealing with end-of-life decisions. Which is kind of the problem. We don't want to think or talk about this stuff until we're in thick of it, when it's already past the point when we should have said "enough, stop.")

(Also, when I look at that picture I wonder if my 7-year-old self inadvertently invented the Snuggie, and whether I would have a valid claim to a few spare million blanket-with-sleeves dollars. Hmmm. INTERESTING.)

Here's to a happier post on Monday. Fingers crossed, but I really feel like we're due, you know?

Subplot

So let me tell you what else was going on last week, now that I can. Now that I'm no longer curled up in an unwashed little ball under the covers. I mean, I'm still unwashed, but it's still better because at least now I'm sitting upright, on TOP of the covers.

You may remember -- or not -- that I casually mentioned awhile back that Jason was sick. A weirdly persistent sore throat turned into the most vicious acid reflux I have ever had the privilege of hearing about over and over again. Having never even HAD heartburn before, he woke me up in the middle of the night to describe his symptoms to make sure that's actually what he was experiencing. I muttered something about having it for nine straight months, grarrrrr cranky smash, and went back to sleep. Since we were at his parents' house, which hasn't contained so much as a single Tylenol caplet since the mid-1990s, he had to go out in search of a 24-hour convenience store in order to find some Tums and Zantac. 

They didn't help, so once we got home he went to the doctor. By this point, he was having trouble swallowing and some mysterious back pain at the same time. His doctor didn't like this combination of symptoms and sent him off for an abdominal ultrasound and a chest x-ray. These were scheduled for Thursday, Noah's birthday.

He went first thing in the morning, but around lunchtime they called because OOPS, they accidentally did an abdominal x-ray instead of his chest. OUR BAD, LOL. Come right back. He did. Then I went to get my hair done.

When I came back, he was sitting on a chair in the living room. Ezra was on his lap, Noah was playing with his Legos and being AWFULLY patient for a kid who hadn't gotten to open his birthday presents yet. But judging from Jason's face you would have thought the boys spent the last hour and a half screaming non-stop and attaching fireworks to the dog's tail. 

He walked me to the kitchen and delivered the news: There was an abnormality on the x-ray, behind his esophagus. 

***

Usually, I'm good at times like these. I'm good at staying positive. That bad things aren't going to happen because bad things aren't going to happen. Because they aren't! They just. Aren't. I won't let you dwell on the what-ifs. I won't let you talk about how bad the general prognosis for esophageal cancer is because...SHUT UP, that's why. 

This time I just sat down and cried. 

***

We took Noah out for pizza and cupcakes, as we'd already promised, trying so very very very hard to focus on his birthday and block out everything else. A simple "How's everyone doing tonight?" from our waiter made me laugh, right before I fought the urge to slide under the table in a pile of boneless goo. 

How were we doing? Which disaster do you want to hear about first? Or can I just order the pepperoni?

***

The next morning, Jason got up and went for a CT scan. He came back and I hadn't moved out of bed. The sitter was with the boys, I was supposed to be working, but I couldn't. He didn't want me to write about him until we knew more, so I just laid there, occasionally fielding text messages from my mom about my dad. Still in the ICU. More tranfusions. It's pneumonia again. Antibiotics aren't working. Diverticulitis in his colon. Congestive heart failure causing too much fluid in his stomach. 

She needed me up there, but understood that I needed to stay put. At least until we got the next phone call. We should know something by noon, I told her.

***

I gave up on working or doing anything remotely useful or productive. I fought the visions of doom and death and widowhood as hard as I could, but I failed most of the time. Cancer was officially coming to decimate my entire family, to trample everyone I loved. It was unstoppable and it didn't matter if you were a good person or a bad person or young or old or had babies or dreams or plans or someone who needed to not ever be left behind. It didn't matter, it was fucking cancer, and it was goddamn everywhere. 

***

Noon came and went. No phone call. Jason called his doctor, then the radiologist. Then we waited another hour before he called again. 

"The worst," he said, "will be if we have to wait until Monday to get the results."

"Your worst is better than mine," I thought glumly, but did not say. 

***

Finally, at 4:45, the phone rang. It was neither the doctor nor the radiologist. It was a random receptionist at Georgetown University, calling to let him know that some radiology lab was faxing over his medical information to a doctor that no longer worked there? Over and over again? FYI, and stuff. You should probably call them and make sure they have the right fax number.

"WHAT THE FUCK?" we both screamed in the general direction of the ceiling fan.

***

A few frantic phone calls later, the doctor had his results. It's a cyst,, she said, a congenital thing that's just gotten really big all of a sudden (six centimeters!) and is pressing against his esophagus and causing all these weird problems. It will need to be looked at with a scope and removed and all that, but. BUT. It's just a cyst, nothing more. 

Jason looked at me and gave me a thumbs up. I decided it was okay to leave his side for the first time that day and take a shower, finally.

***

The next morning we were packed up and in the car, back on our way to Pennsylvania to visit my dad again. During our visit, he stablized, moved out of the ICU and was given hope to go home either today or tomorrow. He's doing better, save for...you know, the dying of cancer bit.

Yesterday was their 35th wedding anniversary. 

I don't know what he'll decide to do about chemotherapy, though we had a long, good talk about it and why it's okay to stop. He asked me to promise to take care of my mother and burst into tears, right before his heart went into tachycardia simply from the thought. I held his bruised hand as hard as I dared and crossed my heart with the other. 

Boom

I am getting REALLY sick of being so goddamned right all the time.

I knew chemotherapy would be rough on my dad. I knew his doctor was pumping him full of horseshit by saying crap like, "You're gonna feel better after just one session!" My vote was hospice, not chemo, for better, more peaceful time, not more-at-any-miserable-wretched-cost time. 

But I also knew that someone else's cancer is not a democracy. He wanted the chemo. The more. So I just hoped it wouldn't be as bad as I feared.

It was so bad they had to halt treatment just hours in because his reaction was so violent. They tinkered and restarted, but it was still so bad that by the time my mother picked him up (she couldn't handle staying there, because HER reaction to seeing other people going through it was also pretty violent, in its own way), he was running a high fever and covered in vomit. 

Within hours he was running a fever of over 103 and in an ambulance, headed to the ER. 

"Huh," his doctor said, when my mom called to find out if she should call 911. "Yeah." 

His platelets were down to 10. His hemoglobin was at 7. He was bleeding internally. He was given a private nurse IN THE ER, and it sure as hell wasn't because they were lacking patients elsewhere. 

Tranfusions. CAT scan. Up to ICU. Chemo session #2 was canceled, though he continued to insist that he wanted to keep going, because he continued to amaze everyone around him by not being at all as sickly as someone as sick as he is should be.  "Okay, we'll call it postponed, then."

Then, after all the little firecrackers that startled and alarmed, the bomb dropped: His spleen is enlarged, which means the cancer is officially Stage 4.

It was Stage 3 last week. LAST WEEK. 

That was the week I talked a good game about better time, instead of more. 

Cancer is calling my bluff. 

This Post is the Blogging Equivalent to a Set of Shiny Keys

My dad started chemotherapy today, the first of THREE all-day, 8-hour, super-intensive sessions he'll have THIS WEEK. Then he gets a couple weeks to kick back and relax before the next round. Maybe play some football, drink a few beers, go see a death metal concert or something. 

In other words: DEFLECT! IGNORE! LET'S TALK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD. 

Ahem. Continuing on with some random things that are slightly more amusing:

1) Toddlers with the ability to accessorize.

2) Jason stopped at the grocery store yesterday and purchased the special nut-free store-bought birthday-snack cookies. We only needed one bag for Noah's classmates but he bought three. 

3) Magnum!

4) So far, I've flushed four (4) stinkbugs down the toilet today. I know that wouldn't usually be a check in the "YAY!" column for me, but I guess it speaks volumes for just how wildly I'm grasping for purpose these days.

5) In other insect-related, the-wine-glass-half-full news, I'm actually pretty jazzed that the baby no longer looks like this:

 

Yeah, YOU try telling people at the playground that it's a "mosquito bite on his eyebrow" and see if any of them believe YOU, either. 

6) In two days, I'm going to be in possession of a five-year-old child.

7) And that five-year-old child will be in the obnoxious possession of a Leapster 2, aka One Of Those Things I Used To Sniff Dismissively At Because That Is Just A Handheld Video Game & Preschoolers Should Not Own Handheld Video Games, "Electronic Educational Learning System," My Ass.

8) Now I Am All, "Here, Have A Handheld Video Game, Whatever, I'm Tired." 

9) Don't tell him though. IT'S A SURPRISE.

10) Dammit.

11) I didn't have a full 10 things, as usual.

12) But I hate ending lists at four or nine.

13) Or fourteen.

14) DAMMIT!

Down to the Bones

So I have no intention of trying to fake it for you guys. I'm sad. I'm miserably, terribly, fucking-ass sad. Something inside feels like it...kind of cratered last week, so I have no defenses against even the mildest, stupidest everyday sort-of bullshit. I'm getting a zit! I can't find the nail clippers! Ezra only wants Daddy all the time and it hurts my feeeeeeelings. A kid was mean to Noah and I'm the one who burst into tears. Folding laundry dissolves into a fit about gaining weight and clothes not fitting and WHY BOTHER, MAN. WHY EVEN BOTHER. 

I wish they sold Xanax or something over the counter, because I can't even deal with getting my ass in to see a doctor. I had a mole removed last week and the effort nearly killed me. I'm supposed to get my hair done in a couple days and I'm all, "I don't want to goooooo, the receptionist is always so chatttttttty." I'm supposed to be planning a birthday party for the boys like, RIGHT NOW but instead I've decided to downsize the current goal to: "Get to the store and buy a package of cookies to send to school on Noah's birthday."

His birthday is on Thursday. I have like, two-and-a-half more days to make the cookies happen. I CAN DO IT. I BELIEVE IN MYSELF! AND IN MY ABILITY TO OUTSOURCE THINGS TO MY HUSBAND.

But I know nobody wants to hear about how sad I am. (SPOILER ALERT: Pretty sad!) Sad is boring! Sad is such a bummer! Sad is just begging for someone to come around and whack me with a dose of I-HAVE-IT-WAY-WORSE-THAN-YOU style perspective, like a sock full of pennies. Plus I sense that this whole "grief process" thing has yet another violent mood swing in store for me ANY MINUTE NOW.

So instead, I'm just going to try to post about the little things that manage to cut through the sad and make me rethink that life plan of going back to bed with a bottle of Syrah and a bendy straw.

Today's thing: Glow-in-the-dark skeleton jammies. 

 

 
Also, maybe you can include the kid wearing the glow-in-the-dark skeleton jammies.