are-you-still-alive appointment

This is actually what my oncologist calls the one week, post-first round of chemo appointment. I blink through the sentence I hear her say: "My office will call you to schedule your are-you-still-alive appointment." It puzzles me that she thinks it might be fun to call it this. "Haha, ya nut. What a funny time I've had this week. And I am still alive! Isn't that a hoot?!"

Yani brought me to my AYSA appointment this afternoon. Her perspective on my oncologist is less judging than my own. I'm sure my mind is forming some unpleasant associations between my doctor and chemo; I know I'm not being fair. Yani's coaching afterwards makes me feel kind of bad about myself. "She's just doing her job, mom. She seems very informed to me." "I know," I say. "It's just that I wish she had more...." I was about to say curiosity. Yani beats me to the punch. "Curiosity?" she guesses. "Oh my god, yes! How did you know?" "Mom, you think anyone you object to lacks curiosity." I did not know that. Really? Huh.

This all started when I began to ask various people at the doctor's office what the term "STAT" stands for. The person who checked me in. The person who took my blood. The person who took my pressure. Is it an acronym? No one had any idea. Not even the doctor, who went through years of med school and trained in the emergency room where she probably shouted "stat" into the phone all the time. It mattered less that she didn't know: I wanted her to be someone who would want to know, stat.

I prefer that she be expert, of course. But delight in learning is a core value for me, and I have a harder time connecting to someone who doesn't seem to have it. Wondering about stuff, and loving to find stuff out is much more interesting to me in a person than sheer brilliance or an inability to write this sentence without saying "stuff" twice. All my childhood, a huge dictionary was in the living room or dining room, and we often interrupted meals and conversations with a quick background check on a definition of some object or term. I remember as a young child wishing that "I had my own biologist" so that I could ask him or her any question that arose in my mind. And now in 2010, google is my own biologist, dictionary, encyclopedia, and playmate.

Upshot of the AYSA appointment: My counts are low. That's a sentence I've never heard myself say before. Like way low, apparently; enough so that if they don't bounce soon "lots of other oncologists would stop treatment, but I tend to be pretty aggressive about staying the course."

Yani, the enlightened one, thinks that it's kind of nice to see numbers that demonstrate why I feel poopy. Kind of like a reality test, she says: oh, cool, so that explains the low energy. My reaction is "Ack! My counts are making me feel poopy! And Yani is making me feel bad about myself!"

The doctor vetoed the dentist appointment I had scheduled for next week: "your mouth is a cesspool right now, paula, and your counts are too low to have them picking around in there." (Just googled cesspool and learned that it is one word -- very interesting).

I also learned that since I am among those who got heartburn from the very start of chemo, I'm going to have it throughout, and need to take stuff ("stuff" is a great word -- where did it come from? will I use it more and more as chemo brain seeps in?) every day for 4 months to prevent it. Rats.

I begged the doctor to let me take something other than the prescribed lorazepam for sleep. I hate lorazepam. It is reducing my REM sleep, for sure. I need that. Last night I took the formula my naturopath prescribed, and slept much better. When I taught psychology, one of my favorite parts of the year was getting to talk to adolescents about why sleep matters, why getting REM sleep matters in particular. That's when memories stick or get tossed, with the selective sorting of adaptive, health-fostering memories. That's when the ravell'd sleeve of care gets knitted up and all that. I want that part of sleep. Dr. D is looking into it, and I am on the edge of my bed hoping for a thumbs up. No joke.

I would like to close with a rant about my chemo-damaged taste buds. It's the worst symptom so far, and I could cry, and have, just thinking about it. Have lost 3 pounds this week, which is no big deal, but if I don't figure out how to keep eating food despite the rancid oil taste that my tongue exudes as I eat, I know it will be bad boogie in the stamina department.

Stat comes from Latin: statim, meaning immediately.  If you looked that up before finishing this post, you have both my admiration and sympathy.