Andre: MTX 8

MTX 8 went even better than MTX 7, so we are definitely on the right path here. We dropped off Mira at the San Diego Music studio in San Marcos at 9AM on Monday 8/15 for day camp. Mira was going to spend the nights at Ranjeeta's and we wanted to give Ranjeeta enough time to finish her summer school grading so we signed Mira up for 4 days of camp. How well our summer has been going and how much help we have been getting can also be measured by the fact that this is the first camp we sent her to all summer. She enjoyed it quite a bit, because they do a lot of arts and crafts there. She went there last summer as well and they still remembered her. We felt good about sending her there since the teachers there are really nice. Marcia took Mira to soccer practice on Monday and Wednesday night, and on Tuesday Mira had a sleep over with Helena to practice their Diwali dance "Busted!" Mira had a great time until I picked her up again from camp on Thursday.

The round started well for us apart from an episode on Sunday night when Radhika ate something that didn't agree with her. In general Radhika has a good appetite and eats quite well between rounds. She still has a hard time with spices sometimes, especially garlic, but fortunately we have a good mashed potato and rice with yoghurt routine down for during the rounds, so that we didn't have any mishaps during the actual round, even though the usual nausea was never far from the surface.

After dropping off Mira we left the house on Monday morning in a bit of disarray. Radhika and Mira had spent a lot of time the few days prior to that sorting through Mira's stuff and getting her room ready for the start of school tomorrow, Wednesday 8/24. Her room looks really great now, but the rest of the house is not quite there yet. However it is getting there, and it has to because we want to get the inside painted by Bill Hood in September, and there is still some purging and rearranging to be done before that. We are doing a lot of work on the house right now. It is great, because for one the house really needs it, and we have the time and energy to actually do it as well. But for another it keeps Radhika's mind occupied away from the chemo and gives her something to look forward to between rounds. For me the make over of the house is a metaphor for the chemo: at the end of the rounds (around December) I will have a house AND a wife with a fresh outlook on life.

But I am digressing a lot today, so back to MTX 8. Our first stop on Monday was the Panera on San Marcos Boulevard where Radhika picked up some bagels for the next 3 days while I filled gas. The travels go smoother with burgers in our stomach, so we went straight to In-N-Out in San Marcos, where we even bumped into the Abreu's ... we are very lucky to know so many nice people. The journey to LA was smooth, we dropped our stuff off at the apartment and got to Cedars on time at 2:30. Radhika had one of her favorite nurses, and that made for a good start into the round: Wes asked Radhika what she would take to a picnic, because he was having one the next day with his fiancee. That was a nice distraction for Radhika and me. Wes is very organized and had everything ready and waiting for us, so that the usual routine of drawing blood and getting settled in went quite fast. Radhika also loves his dressing changes, so that she decided to have that already done by him on Monday instead of waiting for Wednesday when it would have been due. While we waited for the lab results Dr. Forscher stopped by to see how Radhika was doing, and he was again quite upbeat about her progress and said that we'd schedule her next scan for some time after IFEX next month. We talked about the Chargers and life in general, but he also said that Radhika's intermittent coughing did not necessarily have to be the cancer, because MTX dries out your system. That made sense to Radhika, because she says that the cough now does feel different from what it was a few months ago. So in addition to flushing out the chemo, this serves as another encouragement for Radhika to stay hydrated in any way she can: drinking, our IV pump, colonic, and the humidifier in our bedroom all help with that.

We asked Wes to help us set up a plan on how Radhika can take the 6 premeds most efficiently. Some nurses have the tendency to give these one after the other, which would take 3 1/2 hours, even though some of them are compatible with each other and can be given simultaneously. He called the pharmacy and it turns out that Zantac and Sodium Bicarb can run together in the first hour, then Benedryl/Reglan/Composin for 30 minutes followed by 30 minutes of Decadron, so that it is all over in 2 hours. Wes is a great nurse, but we really can't complain, since the nurses at Cedars are all quite good in their own ways. At any rate, by 5:30 the Benedryl/Reglan had put Radhika to sleep, so that she again missed the 4 hours of MTX. When it was time to go home at 10PM she said she wanted to walk to the car, but I could tell that she was too sleepy, so we got a wheelchair instead. Getting up the stairs at the apartment was easier than last time, since it wasn't as late.

The night went by without a glitch and since she got the Benedryl/Reglan earlier, it also wore off a little earlier and by 9AM Tuesday she was already up and about. We went to Cedars for her labs at 11AM and after that had a walk in Beverly center (Radhika is looking for a protective cover for her iPad that can also make it stand upright, but she didn't see anything she liked.) We went back home for lunch, a nap, watching some Great Queen, and an early evening walk, so that the day went by really quickly.

On Wednesday we came to Cedars at 11:30 as Susan had asked us to, but then in the end we had to wait since the nurse was busy and the order for the labs was not in the computer yet. After having her labs drawn Radhika went to the cancer support group lunch meeting Susan organizes at Cedars every 3rd Wednesday of the month. I went back to the apartment, had lunch and packed the car. When Radhika called to say that the meeting was over I was ready to come and pick her up, while she went to the Infusion center to get herself some more of the shower protection gloves for her IV line. The drive back home was uneventful, except that Susan called to say that Radhika cleared the round nicely.

The rest of Wednesday and Thursday we took it easy, with Radhika relaxing on our patio. By Friday Radhika was basically back to normal, which is by far the fastest this had ever gone. She went for accupuncture on Friday and I went for a massage with Anke. Our backs had been very sore for over a week so on Sunday we both got a massage from Ruth, which did help both of us. I think I will go for a massage every other week now as long as we are going through all this tension. On Saturday I took Mira to Gymnastics and then she had her first soccer game, and so the weekend went by. The team Mira was playing had some more advanced players (they don't keep score, but the score must have been 0:10), and Mira conceded 5 goals while she was goalie in the first quarter, but she still had fun. Thanks to seamstress Marcia Mira's purple jersey actually fit, and the girls all looked very cute.

Looking forward, Mira starts 2nd grade tomorrow, and Fall semester classes at CSUSM start without us on Monday, so things will go back to some sort of new normal again. The next round of MTX will also start on Monday 8/29, the week after that Radhika and I will go to a Thich Nhat Hanh retreat in Deer Park monastery in Escondido. The long IFEX week will probably start Monday 9/12 and while we are gone that week the house will be painted inside. After that week we should have 2-3 weeks off before the next round of MTX, and hopefully Radhika's parents can visit us from India around the time of her birthday on October 17th.