Crazy week!

Composed of a series of seemingly endless crazy days, but we got through it and have made it safely to the weekend.

First bit of good news: Beloved has been accepted into the clinical trial at MD Anderson. More good news: they’re in the HMO. Want more? We drive down for testing next week, with maybe a side order of Galveston, depending on how many days they want/need us there and how much time between appointments.

I have my absence cleared through work, and I have been scrambling for two days to get all of my To-Do’s checked off so I would leave nothing big for my backup.

We know for sure that one day will be shot to blazes. But until we get there and he meets with the doctor, we don’t know what-all is involved in the treatments, how many there will be, how closely spaced together, etc. The next month or so may be zanier than usual.

And not a moment too soon. His oncologist took him off chemo lite to give his body a rest. His cancer count started creeping upward, and last week it doubled. He had been running somewhere between 100 and 150 for several months, and now it is 400. Not Good. We don’t know if that means the chemo drugs have lost their effectiveness, or the mini-break from chemo lite gave the bad cells time to gather their courage and make another push.

What we do know is that he has been waking every half hour to forty-five minutes, every night, for a week to ten days, when what he really needs is a few nights of two to three hours at a whack. And when he doesn’t sleep well, I don’t sleep well.

They are going to test him six ways from Sunday when we get to Houston: bloodwork, X-rays, yet another CT scan with its delicious barium milkshake accompaniment. On the other hand, we might be able to see one of my old friends from the Arlington days, a widower with a large and lively posterity. He has yet to meet Beloved. And I bet he knows any number of good seafood restaurants. No, I am not going to do the shrimp challenge while in South Texas. But there are plenty of things that I know I can eat, that may go over the teeth, across the gums, lookout stomach here it comes.

Beloved has found us a place with a fridge and a microwave, so we plan to take down much of the food we will eat. He also has a serious cooler that will keep food cold for several days when it is 90F outside. I will spend a good chunk of this weekend preparing for the trip. Baking, packing, more baking, more packing, and the careful calculation of just how much yarn will be required.

Won’t tell you that we’re gone, until we’re back. Cricket the Attack Cat will be in charge; it worked well, last time, to have him out in the garage with outside access and a ginormous bowl of cat food and an equally large bowl of water. We will probably not be gone longer than three days at a stretch. He turns up his nose at using a litter box, not that I blame him, so he will just have to be at large and in charge while we are out and about.

I had a brief, preliminary chat with my HMO before leaving the office today. Looks like a lot of this, or maybe even all of it, will be covered by our insurance. Prayers and positive thoughts, if you please. I’m heading back out to the living room to half-listen to the food channel until Beloved is ready to call it a night.