Gulag on the second floor

Hello, you faithful readers. My blog calendar tells me three weeks have vanished since we last met and I was retreating to the cellar and my stash of chocolate. Well, reluctantly I am back in circulation. The last 21 days have been mercifully quiet and devoid of health issues to report. Jim and I ventured into Boston this morning for his appointment with the oncologist. His red cell count is low, yet again, so he is getting topped off with two more pints of blood, even as I write this.

The current 'fantasy' is to go forward with collecting the stem cells for transplantation. It is scheduled for about a month from now, subject to bringing up his blood count. Revlamid has done wonders tackling the myeloma, but is also suspect #1 in the mystery of what's suppressing his body's ability to make new red blood cells. They have decided to suspend Revlamid for the next month or so, to give his body time to produce more red cells. His weight is okay, although a touch down from last time. We are getting all the dairy and fat-rich things into him that we can, but he is certainly not eating with any gusto.

A few things have gone away for Jim in the past year. He lost his taste for coffee, for one thing. He has also forsaken the barber and the beard trimmer in favor of more of an Al Solzhenitsyn vibe. Originally he expected to lose his hair and beard either from the chemo or certainly with the SCT. But as that has gotten kicked ahead so frequently, the hair is reaching Rapunzellian proportions. Just the other day, I caught him hanging his head out the window. Not only that, he looks like a regular Evel Knevel on his recumbent bike.

For someone who watched a fair amount of TV in his day, he has not watched any in many months. No music either. Nor does he answer the phone. And I come back to how funda-mentally different he and I are. I have never been too sick to answer the PHONE! R U Kidding? Of course, obviously I have never been as sick as he. I miss hearing the car coming in the driveway before dinner. (I could always hear it as I was frantically trying to defrost something and cover it with tomato sauce before he walked through the door. Don't knock cinnamon toaster strudel with tomato sauce til you've tried it.) And we used to have so much to talk about... he, the inveterate watcher of those McLaughlin people who are always talking over each other, and me always talking over him. Things will undoubtedly change yet again, once he recovers from the SCT whenever that happens. We are both altered by this experience and it will be interesting to see who we are if life should return to "normal."