game postponed

Hello, sports fans. The last game of the season has been postponed because not enough players on the home team showed up. The ref called it, flatly, with arms flailing, before I had even gotten to my seat with my popcorn.

Two weeks ago, the team's numbers were also below the "acceptable level for treatment," but I persuaded the ref to change her call and we charged ahead -- her with one eyebrow raised, and me knowing I had gotten away with getting tagged before touching base. Today I really, really wanted to play this final game, but all I had was one underslept, floppy yet stiff-kneed left fielder who was nodding off on the bench. Nobody else on the team even freaking showed.

Oy! This metaphor! It's gotta be a stress response.

So I got turned down from today's treatment. My white blood cell count is close to zero. I have to undergo a series of shots to jump start their production. It means insta-bone-pain for several days, but I guess that was going to happen soon anyway. I have erased "Try to run" from my calendar, something I had planned on doing on the steroid rush that would have come tomorrow if I had gotten treatment today. No rush for p.

If the shots do the trick and my counts are high enough, treatment will take place on Monday. 

I know this happens. It's a small thing, but I'm really disappointed. I've been looking forward to April 15th (how many other taxpayers can say the same thing?) for a long time. I do feel like crap, and the doctor said she could see that in my numbers. So I'm not crazy, which is nice. Just disappointed.

It throws off a lot. Clients scheduled around expected bone pain days will now show up in the middle of them (don't say it). Heath and I are going to an all-day workshop next weekend on what will now be a hard day. I'm also scheduled to go to the Stowe (Vermont) Weekend of Hope in two weeks, a retreat for folks fighting cancer, and I won't be as far out of treatment as I had expected to be. I'll be whupped. I might end up not going to that now because of this delay, though the weekend is intended to be the nurturing, restorative cap on the whole shebang.

Here's the really pathetic thing: to cheer myself up, I bought new dishwashing gloves at Whole Foods on our way home from the infusion center. So far, this has been the high point of my day. I've had to use gloves for the peeling hands and reptilian nails since chemo started. These gloves are lined and longer than the ones I've been using. Ah, geez. Truth? They're almost exactly the same as the ones I've been using. But they're new, and they're the only thing that called to me in Whole Foods. How sad izzat?