When you're feeling very ill, or as they in England, "unwell within yourself", it makes perfect sense to be in a hospital. If you can't take care of yourself, then someone else has to. Especially if you're dealing with things like chemo and cancer. Even though my neutrophils are still down, I'm feeling just fine. I've been able to go out with no problems, and I'm not sleeping well here. I need my own bed. I'm feeling like as far as this round goes, I've done my time.
I know that Tuesdays and Fridays are the ward rounds for the big guns. I knew I'd get to see my doctor and his entourage today as they pop around to all the patients on the floor.
It was about 8:15 and I could hear them coming, making jokes in the halls, suiting up in their plastic aprons. I'm fully ready to say it. "Prof Goldstone, I want to go home today. I mean really, home, not just a visit, but home." But, instead, he comes in and says, as always, "How are you?" "Fine. I'm great..."
"Good, we'd like to do a biopsy today."
"Huh? What? Should I be freaking out?"
"No." He says, "It's just time to take a look."
This was completely not my plan. My plan was to do a biopsy when my counts were completely up, sometime next week, when Susanne was here. She just finished nursing school! Not when poor Allison, who tends toward the green in these situations, has to decide between staying with me and the risk of fainting, or just going and getting a Costa Coffee (better choice).
When I did my very first round of induction in Chicago in August of 2008, my cells came back so slowly that they had to do three biopsies before they could decide whether a nascent white cell was actually leukemic or normal. They can look the same... And by the way, in Chicago, they do NOT sedate during biopsies. It really hurts. Don't ever think that mid-westerners aren't bad-ass.
Allison remembered that the doctor said last week he might want to do a biopsy this week. I tend to have no short term memory left, especially for the unpleasant. So I have to go with whatever those around me can remember.
So I hear this news and I fall into a stupor. I start to cry, I call Andy. Allison rubs my back. I think they want to do it because something is wrong!
Whatever. I trust him. I trust my doctor. He just wants to see what going on. And if it's good, then we can crack on. This could be good. This chemo was designed for a gal like me.
So now we wait for results, preliminary and then full. After my freaking-out, I remember what my friend Kaethe says to me a bunch, "There's always hope.". Ask Bill Clinton says, "It ain't just a town in Arkansas".
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