Treatment and preparation

I met with my doctor on Monday. He seems all right, confident and experienced and maybe a little arrogant, but not in a House way. He looks a lot like Adam Arkin, so I'll call him Dr. Shutt. I met my nurse coordinator, too, the Salty Nurse, who is pleasant and obviously very good at her job. She has a really heavy Maine accent. I like her. She's obviously not going to be putting up with any self-pitying nonsense from me, which is fine. Good, maybe.

There was no fucking good news at that meeting, though. I learned that I am definitely going to have to have a port implanted in my chest, which is a little plastic bubble you can stick needles in, with a lead going directly into my vena cava. It's necessary because the chemotherapy drugs are so extraordinarily toxic that they'll burn through the little veins in my arm and poison the tissues around them. That surgery is going to happen on Monday, and while the surgery itself is minor, I am losing my goddamn mind about it. I really don't want some horrible thing inside me, showing through my skin and reminding me and anyone looking how defective I am. Bad enough my hair's going to fall out.

I also learned that I'm going to have to spend 3-5 days in the hospital every time I get high-dosage methotrexate, too, so that's going to be 6-10 days every five weeks. Methotrexate apparently turns to crystals if exposed to acid in the kidneys (crystals = ruined kidneys, I guess?), so they're going to pump me full of alkali and saline and not let me leave the hospital until I've peed it all out.

Also, Dr. Shutt made me switch to two crutches, which is really inhibiting my ability to get around -- I have to ask for help every time I want to drink some water in the other room, for Christ's sake. On the bright side, my arms and abs look better already.

Fortunately, I don't mind any of this so much as I did at the time I heard it, as the doctor wrote me a prescription for oxycodone. The first couple of times I took it I felt euphoric, then sleepy, then catatonic, but now when I take it I just feel sleepy. (The euphoria led to some embarrassing, overly truthful conversations, but I did enjoy it while it lasted.) It also makes my troubles seem vague and far away. Actually, my knee is twinging so I might go take another one right now.