It’s been a very emotional week for me, not least because my doc has had me cut back on my Oxycontin to half of my previous dose, although I also have 5mg Oxycondone I can take for breakthrough pain. I’ve done this step-down twice already since ending chemo, and I agree that it’s necessary to…
Category: Gerry
Game Of Alones
It’s a good season of GOT, Gerry would have loved it. I’m loving it. It seems a lovely farewell to a beloved TV series; I wish I had had time to give Gerry the same kind of farewell. I still wake up in a cold sweat from dreams about Gerry dying with no one around him but medical staff, no family, no me. I was functionally immobile from my reaction to strong chemo, but that doesn’t lessen my guilt at not being WITH him at the end. Just because you know something’s out of your control doesn’t necessarily lessen the guilt.
Mourning Ritual
I miss him like crazy. I joke with him (or my memory of him) many times a day, and Andy and I share stories, it seems, with every picture frame or cup or old medicine bottle we sort through. I lack the strength to do much of the sorting, so that’s fallen to Andy, which is fine.
Anything of Gerry’s that I need to keep I already have within me; his laughter, his sense of fun, his intelligence, his love.
[caption id="attachment_5215" align="alignleft" width="300"] Gerry discoveres Nutella Nirvana[/caption]Back In The Hospital
I have no idea, when this whole “cancer” thing is done, whether my body will be as it was before. I’m getting a growing sense that, like Gerry, I will ALWAYS carry the pain of the tumor in my back and the damage done by it’s growth into two vertebrae. Will I always be on pain meds to deal with the constant bone & spine pain? I guess these are things that will be revealed I I continue with my recovery. Which is a lovely word.
Saddest Day of My Life
I’m overwhelmed right now, so I’m going to keep this brief. The dearest man I ever knew, my husband of 25 years, Gerry Landy, died on Sunday. It wasn’t entirely unexpected; he had been suffering from heart complications since March. Friday and Saturday he was at the Mayo Clinic for his heart, he was admitted…
Far Away Worry
I get sprung from here on Sunday. Today is my last chemo of this session, then depending on my labs I’ll be home for two or perhaps three weeks, getting my lab numbers back up (platelets, etc.) and perhaps a transfusion.
I am SO looking forward to being home, which I miss so much.
What Doesn’t Kill You…
I can be relaxed about this so far because it’s only day one. We’ll see how happy I am on day 7, when the side effects begin to come into their own. For now, I’ll enjoy what I can enjoy, not that getting liters and liters of fluids pumped into me all day is terribly ENJOYABLE, but it’s not horrible.
More Weight
It seems that the cancer is now in my bone marrow, and that’s not good. Yesterday, instead of getting the spinal tap I usually get (little did I ever think that the words “usually” and “spinal tap” would be used in a sentence involving my health) I was told to just stay home. My doctor is ‘regrouping’ and I’ll be seeing someone (Doctor? Nurse Practitioner?) on Monday to discuss the route forward for my treatment.
It would be ironic if, after all of the Mayo drama of the past week, I ended up receiving the same chemo cocktail that Dr. T was proposing, but via a different clinic up here (the University or Park Nicolette) Maybe ironic isn’t the word.
My Favorite Story
I don’t remember Gerry eating anything, but I had a bowl of Minnestrone soup and it was delicious. Then we went for a walk around the village, and ended up at the Prince Street Cafe. It seemed like a nice date, but nothing earth shaking. And then we noticed that all of the chairs were upside on the tables and the wait staff was eager for us to leave. We’d closed the place down, and I felt as though I’d been talking to one of my best friends for 3 hours.