Today’s selection in the Radiology room was slow jams. As long as it’s not Norwegian Death Metal, I’m pretty game with whatever they play. Shit, there was a song on the other day that I liked, and when I looked up the lyrics this morning it turned out to be Lana Del Rey. No side effects to report yet, although my radiologist says that’s something that will show up towards the end as a cumulative effect. He seems pretty confident they can shrink it especially as the chemotherapy kicks in; this is in contrast to what we first heard where they said it wouldn’t reduce in size at all–and possibly swell larger. He seems confident and he’s happy I’m not having any issues with my bottom system (knocks on wood) which seems to be everyone’s big concern.

After our quick checkin with him, I had blood drawn upstairs in preparation for both the port install and as a baseline for chemo next week. Tomorrow will be a mostly full day at the hospital. Radiation in the morning, sitting around until 11, then half an hour for the install. After that I sit around for a couple of hours while they observe me to make sure I’m not hosing down the room, and then they kick me loose.

Next week I’m going to be sitting in chemo for most of each day and possibly doing some work in the afternoons, but I’m not betting on feeling up to doing anything. Week two will be the true ass-kicker, and on week three I’ll hopefully feel human again.

* * *

When we walked through the mildew house back in June, one of the things I found in a drawer was a broken diver’s watch that was encrusted in dirt. I liked the dial and thought it was cool so I threw it in a box with the other stuff we took home. A month later I found a jeweler in Baltimore who offered a watch repair service, and dropped it off with them. It came back clean with a new bezel keeping pretty accurate time. I threw a NATO band on it and wore it for a while but I kept thinking about a picture I found of the same watch with a leather band when I was researching it.

In August I paid $30 to a nice woman in the Ukraine to make me a watchband that matches one I saw in the picture. It showed up yesterday and while I’m still getting used to the fact that it’s not a utilitarian nylon strap, I’m growing to like it more and more.

Date posted: October 17, 2017 | Filed under cancer, watches | Leave a Comment »

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