The drive to the hospital is short from our place taking approximately 7 minutes. Mel drops me off at the door and personally if I was by myself I would leave 45 minutes early at the bare minimum for my appointment. Mel is not a morning person and likes her sleep so we compromised and left at 7:30. There is no point in arriving at 7am as it is actually busy at that time and nothing starts till 8am. When I arrived they were serving number 76 and I was number 82 with 20 minutes to get through registration. There were 2 registration clerks open and it averages generally about 2 minutes to get through. The process should have been fast. One of the clerks spent over 20 minutes with a patient because of the number of quetions that they were asking. Most of them were around I do not know why I am here, and how do I know what type of an appointment I have. She was patient and went through the schedule and explained that each part and when she had to come in for lab work. It was painful to hear her repeat things over and over while she did not understand. The sheer amount of patience that she had was admirable. Another guy was trying to tell the clerk all of the problems he was having with sleep and telling his life story of problems and she patiently listened while trying to register him. If she was not asking a question he had a running dialogue of all the issues he was suffering and aking how she could help. She deflected a lot of them skillfully and redirected him to tell his nurse. It took me 23 minutes to get registered and then off to chemotherapy.
I am a bit of a celebrity in chemo because of the freak port situation so a lot of the nurses know me and friendly with me because they all came over to see the abomination that was my exposed port. I had one Laderach chocolate square I shared with them and they thought it was delicious. Next time we are in Toronto I will get them some Royce Nama chocolate so that they will have experienced all of my favorite chocolates. They sell it as Asia Food Mart where we love to to as it is 24 hours. We are going to try and go for the Renaissance Fair on June 20th if we can get organized properly and plan things out. Treatment was fairly smooth. She used the 1 inch needle for the port. I have an extreme aversion to this and in my head it is going to be very painful because the absolutely first time I had it done it hurt like hell. I had just had the port inserted and it was swollen and sensitive. The nurse said it would be like a bee sting, but for some reason it was not pleasant and I could feel all of the liquid as it entered my body and the pain would increase depending on how I moved my arm. This new port is awesome even if it is closer to my armpit. There is a sensor that is activated by warmth and it impacts how fast it flows. This one seems to flow a bit faster and shaves about an hour off of the time it takes to empty the bottle. I can also confirm that the steroids is what has a massive impact on my vision. I was able to see clearly today and things are back to normal. I am not sure how long I need to be on the steroid to have it impact my vision in a negative way, but the good part is that it returns fairly quickly. Today I read a couple of books and worked throughout treatment. The cognitive load was higher and by the time I got home I was fatigued and took a nap. Depending on how much I need to think impacts how much energy I go through it seems. Once I took my nap I was good to go and did more work. I picked up Xavier from NOSSA track at the end of the day as Mel was working and I thought that I could go. I am peeing every hour again, most likely because of all the liquid I am taking in. My pee is almost clear with only an extremely faint yellow colour.
My parents brought over a lot of food today and they ended up making something that my dad’s mom use to make. She use to live with us and when she was younger she use to make this one dish at times. It consisted of small cubes of pork roughly 1/4-1/2 of an inch cubes in a dark sauce that was heavily seasoned with black and white pepper. Both of my parents acknowledge that my grandmother made it amazing and neither of them can replicate it exactly the way she did. They made me some with the two types of congee. I prefer it with rice so I used the new rice maker. The new rice maker is awesome but I am not sure if Mel will understand the nuance on what makes this rice superior. Each grain of rice is nice and plump and cooked perfectly. You can taste each grain perfectly and it has great texture. Mel had lived most of her live eating subpar rice and then she switched to mass produced restaurant white rice and now some that we eat at home. She is not big on rice though so I am not sure he will appreciate it. Xavier tried some and he said it was wonderful. We will need to do a side by side so she can taste and understand crappy rice to awesome rice. I am sure that she will not care as much as we do. It is like how she will tolerate a sandwich she makes, but she really appreciates what I make and given the option she will not make her sandwich and have me make hers. For Olivier’s sandwich this morning I had forgot to put his mustard down and ended up putting it on top of the mayo and mixed it together which was less than ideal and threw off some of the ratios a bit. He also informed me that he likes more lettuce as I put a single layer and he prefers too. He really appreciated that I always wrap the sandwich in parchment paper and then cut it. It keeps the integrity of the sandiwch together and makes it easier to eat.
The side effects of the treatment has come back with a vengeance. I have no tolerance to cold and have a lot of tingly sensation in my hands and I can not drink anything cold. The dietician came by and we chatted for a while and she is monitoring everything and did not have much to say in regards to what I am doing. She likes to try out food and I had asked her if she has tried durian. She said no and she was a bit hesitant to try it out. My parents had given me a bit and normally I eat it outside as i is a bit smelly. In the winter I will in the garage, and in warmer seasons in the backyard. Right now the backdoor is blocked with renovation supplies so I went out onto the front porch and ate it there. Our neighbours were out with their kids and I am sure it looked weird with me stepping out and eating something out of a bowl while just looking out. I never do things like that and most of the time I am sitting or conserving energy. I am still getting that sensation in my mouth when I start eating that causes me to freeze and lock my jaw. It does not last too long and I can move on afterwards. It only occurs when I need to chew and I think when I need to release saliva. Looking back I did not notice it when I had soup or when I drank warm beverages. This evening I will have a warm beverage, most likely chrysanthemum tea.
My friends from high school remember some of my ridiculousness from before. Nothing has changed much. Way back when the internet was first starting out I created a website for my company called I am God Inc. and it was just filled with nonsensical really stupid things but written up all serious and like it was a legitimate product with pricing and all of that fun stuff. My friends will bring up some of the things I wrote and it always makes me laugh because of how ridiculous some of it was.
Q