W, X, Fly and G

Monday, August 7th, 2017
​Baltimore, Maryland

​A day in the life of a radiation target

My radiotherapy regimen has required two treatments per day, one at 8:40am and another at 4:00pm. This has produced a daily schedule for us that looks like this:
​

• 7:00am - Wake up, shower, have breakfast
• 7:50am - Leave for JH
• 8:15am - Arrive, park, change into a hospital gown
• 8:40am - Zap!
• 9:00am - Change back into street clothes, drive home
• 9:30am - Arrive home, check email and news
• 10:00am - Nap
• 12:30pm - Wake up, eat lunch
• 1:00pm - Depending on how I feel:
  • Good - Work
  • Meh - Read
  • Bad - Nap
• 3:15pm - Leave for JH
• 3:30pm - Arrive, park, change into hospital gown
• 4:00pm - Zap!
• 4:20pm - Change back into street clothes, drive home
• 4:50pm - Arrive home, check email and news
• 5:30pm - Depending on how I feel:
  • Good - Work
  • Meh - Read
  • Bad - Nap
• 7:30pm - Dinner, Netflix, YouTube, read and...
• 10:00pm - Sleep

In short, it's all about zapping and napping with an occasional meal thrown in.

Alison, of course, has been serving in the all-purpose role of driver, cooker, medication dispenser, gentle nudger (get your irradiated butt out of bed; you've been sleeping all day long) and sleepmate. We're a good team.

We fell a tad short

The plan was for 10 of those days described above, but we fell short just a bit. After eight of them, my platelet count fell low enough (16 compared to a normal range of 150-450) that it was unsafe to continue (since radiation can depress your platelet count further). As for why platelets are important, that's an easy one: they are the cells that cause your blood to clot when you are bleeding. You can imagine the outcome if you start bleeding and can't stop it. 

If you are curious about how platelets do their job, you can read about the overall process of hemostatis (how the body stops bleeding). 

What's next?

In short, a lot of advanced testing in preparation for the transplant (currently scheduled for Friday, September 1st). The general idea is to make sure that aside from your underlying medical condition that requires the transplant, you are otherwise in sufficiently good health to survive the rigors of the transplant process. So, the unspoken implication is that the testing might turn up a "no go" result from one of those tests. Where would a "no go" result lead? Good question. I haven't asked and don't need to know at this point. I consider it counter-productive to wander too far down the decision tree.

The alphabet song

Whenever my nephew Matt Matt is leaving (for camp or nap-time or bed-time), he comes into my room to sing me the alphabet song. Why? I have no idea -- the toddler brain is an inscrutable one. As you can see from the accompanying video, his grasp of the underlying alphabet is loose at best, but his rendition is adorable nonetheless. Pay special attention to the end of his alphabet, from whence this post takes its title.

I apologize for the rotated video. It is correct on my local computer but the video widget in this blogging software assumes that all videos are in landscape mode. Go figure.

Pictures

Here are some photos that we've either taken or collected in the last week. ​​​

Tidbit

​It turns out that there is some raw goodness left in the world. Read all about it in this article from the BBC World Service:
​
How one man built a $51m theme park for his daughter