No News Is Good News

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June 16th, 2010

Chapter 1: The L-Word Chapter 2: Having Fun With Cancer Chapter 3: Blue Evening Chapter 4: Departure Terminal Chapter 5 (today): No News Is Good News “Did you use a Sharpie to make that smiley face? You shouldn’t be breathing those fumes,” said our family friend Tony as we wandered around the cancer ward. “What’s […]

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Chapter 1: The L-Word

Chapter 2: Having Fun With Cancer

Chapter 3: Blue Evening

Chapter 4: Departure Terminal

Chapter 5 (today): No News Is Good News

“Did you use a Sharpie to make that smiley face? You shouldn’t be breathing those fumes,” said our family friend Tony as we wandered around the cancer ward.

“What’s it gonna do Tone, gimme cancer?”

And with that, we’re back.

All yesterday we were waiting to hear how my little bits of bone marrow were growing. They were popped out of my hip with a corkscrew contraption that Napa Valley would’ve been proud of and set in a glass dish to multiply, divide, conquer or just party. I’ve never known what goes on in petri dishes except for those awful science fiction movies were you see little Zac Efron heads grafted onto Selena Gomez bodies. But maybe that was just a YouTube video of their latest date I just saw. The chemo has me a bit befuddled sometimes.

It turns out my marrow is just taking a little while longer to grow and become mature. Cough, cough, gasp? Mature? MY MARROW IMMATURE? No way.

My mother with portable phone in her lap watching Obama’s oil spill report and my wife at her computer were both shocked to hear what we’d been waiting for all day would have to wait even longer. So I made sure to use their anxiety as a cover for my own when Good Doctor Momin strode into my room.

“Look, I tell you again and again, you are fine. Didn’t you meet another man today who had this far, far worse than you?” he reminds me.

“Yes doctor, and he’s helped my wife and I find tons of resources already.”

“Resources. You don’t need resources. You just need to sit here, get bored and get cured.” I think I offended him. And like in those old commercials I hoped he wouldn’t pull one of those, ‘It’s not nice to offend Mother Nature.’ (Just go with me on this one, I know it’s fool Mother Nature, but you get the drift).

I explained we were just exploring all monetary avenues to help pay for stuff our co-pays and COBRAS and cohorts can’t cover and that seemed to assuage him. But the takeaway I got from him, loudly and clearly was, “Hey, this will take a while but you’ll be better.”

By us pinning our hopes on how early they caught the disease or if I have to search for bone marrow or even if I won’t be through with this until Fall, Winter … none of that matters. Right now they are hitting me with such hard doses of chemo because I am healthy and active. Therefore my cell count is lower than the Greek treasury and so my risk of disease just shot through the roof.

“Look at this as a season,” said another one of the incredible nurses who choose this ward as their calling. “Stay here and relax. It’ll be over soon enough.”

Maybe I need to sink into this as a gift and spend time getting in touch with me.

Well, me and my family anyway. Yesterday a fantastic Pizzapapalis dinner, along with all our teen hanger’s on arrived and we ate like kings right here in this hospital room. Jon, another of our solid family friends even took it upon himself to scarf down my normal hospital dinner so the nutritional staff wouldn’t feel sad. They all played with the iPad, we related wonderful stories about how Taylor was asked to the 8th grade dance, we saw Marci’s Google ranking jump up precipitously after a butt-load of work and for a moment or ten it was just like we were back home, in our kitchen.

Except there were no dogs. And that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The results will come. We’ll deal with them and move forward. I am sitting here after another great night’s sleep, (brought on courtesy of a slight injection of Avatar, Aveeda or Adavan for sleeping). And I am awaiting my daily Cappuccino Blast from Marci who will sneak one in for another day or two until I can’t stand the sight of food.

And all is well. Remarkably and totally illogically, I am fine.

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