Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Tying Off the Current Loose Ends

Let's see . . .

Beds in the Infusion Room: I have a call in to Dr Specht's nurse at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, and she is going to be looking into what I have to do to have a bed, every time I have an infusion. Do I need to switch days? Go at the last minute in the evening? Switch weeks so my three-week cycle is a different three-week cycle? Go early in the morning, but have a permanent note in my file that says I get a bed? My initial scheduler, who picks the day and puts me into the system, DOES, it turns out, have the ability to change my preferences from the automatic 30-minute Herceptin infusion to my 90-minute one, and she forgot this last time. However, that was obviously not the only element at play last week. Also, I asked the Occult why this chair/bed issue was SO difficult for me, and it said that I have a tendency to worry so much about other people's comfort over my own that I occasionally do myself injury (psychological in this case, but real nonetheless). I had been desperately hoping someone else would just grant me Full-Time Bed Privileges, but I have to learn to FIGHT. for my RIGHT. to infuse comfortably—and I do have that right. My bed is out there; and it will be found.

Needle to the Eyeball Part II: I had my one-week check-up this morning where my right eye alone got to be dilated—the one-off dilation, with its attendant nausea and equilibrium issues always being a joy to experience. I spent about an hour in the waiting room after the drop was administered, bored because the video is still truncated, and also it REALLY doesn't work to try and read or do any other close work when only one eye can see it—very discombobulating. But I was actually happy to be bored, as I haven't had much of a chance to just sit and stare at varyingly focused nothing in several weeks. And—YAY—the fluid pocket has already shrunk a little, and I have had one set of eyedrops removed from my regimen, so I only have to administer a total of three drops per day now! I think I can handle that . . .

Fasting Blood Test Results: My HDL and LDL were both where they should be (I can't find the paper where I wrote down the numbers—because it was a scrap of newspaper and therefore tidied away when we had last-minute dinner guests last night—and the official letter hasn't arrived yet), and my triglycerides were slightly high (damn that all-fat diet), but no one is worried about them because I am in such good physical condition. I, too, am not worried about them. My fasting glucose was normal. My Vitamin D was actually quite high after supplementing for several months—84 (that's the D-level, not the number of months)—and so for the moment I'm stopping all supplementation except for Nature's Supplementation (i.e. the Sun, should it choose to appear).

Old Blogs: It turned out Ian had created Orcas Estate and had given me permission to post, but THAT WAS ALL. SERIOUS ERROR IN JUDGMENT, IAN. Anyway, I now have full permissions to do whatever I want with the Orcas Estate blog.

Microsoft Word and its foibles: Word shut down on me again at the very beginning of this post today, and, for the first time ever, offered me a little pop-up window asking if I would like to have Microsoft run some diagnostics and see if it could fix the problem, as it had noticed that Office was shutting down somewhat frequently. I said "yes," even though, to my knowledge, Microsoft diagnostics had not ever even found problems, let alone fixed them. Well, lo and behold, a problem was evidently found, and something behind the scenes was claimed to have been done to fix it! Maybe so, maybe so . . .

The Boat: is in full vigor, raring to go. If only the weather and the schedules would cooperate.

Tomorrow: Off to Idaho and Jerome Creek for the first of several summer weeks! Dog and girl (okay, fine, I'm middle-aged now—WOMAN) heaven!

2 comments:

joel said...

Ah,off to the beautiful lands of Silver and Gold.

Anonymous said...

You are NOT middle-aged (because that means I am almost too). Besides, dog and girl sounds much more romantic.

Have a great time. xxx