Landfall

Jim died at home with his family on 13 September 2008.

Many heartfelt thanks to all those who gave Jim so much love and support.

for frequent trips to the hospital to manage fevers.  The shortest time out of the hospital was two hours.  I started the SpryCel drug this last week.  The next few months will be kind to the budget since I graduated to Catastrophic Care.  If I’m still extant after Christmas the cost will be outrageous.

Dizziness rules the early morning. A liter of saline, two units of red cells, one unit of platelets and other assorted fluids and a day on my back pretty much sums it up.

Chemo continues. This morning started with a liter of saline over two hours to bring my blood pressure up to above zombie level. An injectable chemo capped off the morning. I came home and slept as I will for the next week while I burrow into increasing fatigue. Mouth sores are intimated but don’t materialize.

I’m going to try to do the second week of chemo through the Infusion Center. Hopefully I’ll be able to stay out of the hospital and sleep in my own bed each night as they drive my numbers down. This morning’s CBC reports everything going as expected with some platelets due on my plate. I’m surprised by the low count of eleven since I feel pretty energetic. I expect to be home by noon.

On the thirteenth we celebrated my 72nd birthday ( which really occurred on the eleventh ) with a great bunch of people. Such an event would not have seemed possible a year ago.

Sasha and I sailed out for an overnight near Jamestown Island on the sixteenth and the seventeenth praying for wind and found more than we needed. We ended up sleeping with no covers or screens and no mosquitoes found us. I was exhausted but not unusually so.

I felt chest pain for most of Friday but it was not intense enough to make me concerned until late in the evening. Saturday morning I called Danny B. who was on rounds and asked him to authorize a CBC so we could remove the feared remission from the list of threats so I could get on with the day to day and also avoid the dreaded ER process.

I was admitted later on Saturday with a platelet count of 10 of the normal 140 and started antibiotics. Monday John D. formed a plan consisting of two weeks of chemo in hospital and following with an oral “somewhat like Gleevec” pill.

Yesterday I got a new Hickman in the same procedure as the one a year ago except that I didn’t crash this time. Today I repeated the Spinal injection of Methotrexate of almost a year ago. Tonight I had my second session of Chemo but I still feel pretty good.

The closest to good news is the the blog is alive again and I’ve been jared out of the complacency of “sailing west” or “circling the drain”

If this is as good as it gets, I won’t complain.  I forget to post here because, while my life continues to be filled with extraordinary events, illness and suffering are not dominant and I expected this blog to be largely a story of suffering.Soon after my last post, Adam joined me for a trip to the Small Boat Meet at Cedar Key. We trailered “Heart of Gold” to the event and used the newly finished “Pandory” as our tender. I had a great time in the company of folks whose madness matched my own.Back in Virginia I recognized that my boats had become too large for my reduced strength and that single handing them was no longer practical. I resolved to actively try to sell them but “opportunity knocked” and I bought another boat. It’s a Dovekie, the same model that I sold to pay for Sasha’s college expenses twenty five years ago. It draws four inches of water, weighs six hundred pounds, sleeps two, rows with its nine foot oars, and trailers and launches easily. The photo below of one being driven hard looks exactly like mine except that mine has wood spars.

I’ve ridden my bike nearly every day and yesterday I took a longer ride than usual.  Since I had no ideal how long or fast I went I packed my GPS.  Despite gusty winds I rode almost 12 miles averaging over 8 mph and peaking over 14.

In the evening I was reflecting on the pleasure of the ride and on my greed for more well-being. I realized that I can no longer imagine the depth of suffering I’ve experienced the past year. It appears that the mind, or to be more accurate, my mind cannot recreate or represent the nausea, pain or depth of fatigue which was part of almost every day. My descriptions are remembered but not the sensations except when they became events. What I would have given to have felt as I do today if only for a day at a time!

 The high point of the month was Erla’s visit.  We visited the Keys and the photos above show us at our ocean front cabin/trailer in Grassy Key.  We had a whirlwind week, including two nights at the Ritz Carlton, thanks to Mara and Charlie, and Erla was gone much too soon.This month’s bloodwork was a success but my greediness makes me want more stamina.  How easily I forget what’s happening.Today I finally had a launch of Pandory which I report on her blog. 

I continue to feel somewhat strong and optimistic.  My body loves the warm weather and while I still have little sensation in my feet, I know they’re not freezing.  I’ve been able to resume the drugs for most of the other things that might kill me.  Life was so simple when I knew that there was so little chance that heart disease would get me first.