Christmas Day 2015

It's Christmas day. It's still early morning, but it's very quiet both inside and outside my apartment. I don't celebrate Christmas. I am Jewish. For me and my family Christmas is a sad time: a time to remember the dead and martyred family members who were massacred on Christmas Eve 1944 by drunken Hungarian Arrow Cross thugs, who wanted to 'prove' they were good Hungarians and Catholics by killing Jews.  So, in my family, Christmas is a time to remind ourselves that, no matter how good our lives are now, everything we have can be taken away in an instant by politics, hate and religious zealotry. This year, I am not alone. Sydneysiders are still coming to terms with the Martin Place Siege of a few weeks ago. It seems Christmas can draw the best and worst in people at any time in history.

I've actually spent the whole day in contemplation about the status of the world, the meaning of Christmas, the meaning of the chaos in our world on a macro scale, and in my cancer torn body on a micro scale. I haven't found a way to connect the two, but, according to my friend Lucy, I will probably find one. 'You usually do' - she wrote to me.

In the meantime, I've been totally preoccupied with my own health and psychological wellbeing. It's been a rough trot since I saw the Professor on 10 December.  Apart from making me a debilitated cripple, the Magace had no positive effect on the cancer. One of the markers went up, the other went down.  No good. I was told not to take it anymore and wait until the Mighty One figures out an alternative.

So, last Thursday, on 18th December, my friend Dahlia took me to the hospital to be my second ear. We were told we had to wait an hour and a half. She waited until the doctor came to explain what is going to happen. I was to have a chemo called Caelyx, on a 4-week cycle basis. The first week I can expect to feel tired and possibly nauseated, the second week my immune system will plummet and I should feel OK during the last two weeks. We shall see.

So far, I had an allergic reaction 7 minutes into the infusion, which was sorted out quickly, but I felt I was the patient in one of those TV movies depicting my hospital, RPA.

Two days later, I was back in the emergency room with severe chest pains and a general inability to cope. After zillions of tests, X-rays and heart monitoring, I was admitted with impaired kidney function and high calcium. By Monday afternoon all was clear and I was allowed to go home, pretty much none the wiser, as the Professor is overseas, probably on one of his interminable lecture tours.

In any case, like they say, all's well that ends well.  By the time I finish this entry, it's late afternoon on Boxing Day. I've spent most of the early afternoon at the hospital ER, waiting for a blood test to see if the calcium levels have come down to normal. They have!

In the past three days I've learned to manage the bone pain with a few regular doses of PanadolOsteo and every day I can feel the fog of the medication side effects of the past few months lifting. I am still incredibly slow in my movements, but I am mostly pain free.

I can think clearly, enjoy music again and, weather permitting (we have had changeable strange weather with thunder storms), I can build up my strength by walking and swimming again. Maybe this will be a good summer, after all. My next meeting with the Professor is 21 January 2015. I do hope he has some good news for me.

Frustrations

I can't believe we are in December already. Where does time go? I seem to be sleeping most of the time, or trying to follow some schedule I never really stick to.

I can't work anymore. Actually, that's a good thing, because my temping job is changing owners next year and I don't want to get used to a new unhealthy working environment. The job is market research interviewing for the NSW health department. It can be interesting, and the crew is great, but at the moment I simply can't spend hours in front of the computer screen without being able to rest (meaning lie down) periodically. So, that's good bye to paid work for a while.

Also, if things were going according to plan, I would now be sitting on the beach in Ft Lauderdale or Miami, Florida with my family, hugging and sharing stories with my grandchildren. That is not happening. I am sitting in Sydney, enjoying the daily thunderstorms. Well, actually, I sleep through them.

The good news is that I think the new medication, Megace, is working. However, I am always tired and sometimes have trouble breathing. I read some of the side effects, and it said 'adrenal insufficiency'. I am totally devastated. I asked my doctor to not give me anything that affects the adrenals, because I have a problem there already. He agreed. Now, I discover that he had ignored our agreement. I am devastated. Who can I trust? I already have a long list of complaints for when I see him next week, but now I am just devastated. I have to think this through.

It's several hours later and my treacherous body has gone through a number of hoops. First of all, as I was writing the previous paragraph, I was actually having one of my 'adrenal episodes'. I've had these since 1985 and it always appears in different ways, so I never recognise it until it's over, when I shiver and my teeth are chattering. Then, I am happy that 'it was only an episode', and I get a big burst of energy and some other symptoms that tells me I will be fine. This is what happened today, and by 5:30pm I was ready to meet a friend to have dinner and go to the theatre. It was called 'Stories from the Heart(land), a verbatim play performed by graduating students of the Actors Centre Australia (ACA). It was fantastic. Unfortunately, the first half was over an hour long, and I got too tired to stay. Nevertheless, I made it, and I am ecstatic.

So, it's been a very long day, filled with good and bad, but the good won out, so I go to sleep happy.