Granola

Drip, drip, drip... back in the chair. It’s a slow day here today, sometimes the clinic is packed and noisy, with people receiving treatment in the hallway. Quiet is better. I was prepared for months to be receiving weekly taxol which is supposed to be much, much easier than the previous protocol, but with the new oncologist came a new drug, Carboplastin, which is suppsed to be just as bad as the Adriamycin, so I need to adjust my expectations quickly. I’m holding out hope that I’ll be able to handle this drug better, that Adriamycin and I were just a particularly poor match.

It’s both comforting and disconcerting, the familiarity with which I enter this building. I know my walking route, that if you enter through the exit door, it will still slide open automatically, to ignore the “no cell phones in treatment rooms” sign in the elevator. Don’t worry, I asked it it was o.k. months ago, “sure you can use your phone, why couldn’t you?” “Because there’s a sign in the elevator that says not to.” “Oh, just ignore that.”

I’m accompanied here today by my bevy of Apple products. I know I shouldn’t love them as much as I do, they’re made by low paid workers in China, they dodge paying their U.S. taxes... they’ve become the man, a behemoth, but none the less, they’re so beautiful and my laptop is surely my security blanket, I must have it or be near it at all times.

I’m also accompanied by a big bag of homemade Goji berry and almond granola which was gifted to me by someone I would have least expected to have become such a valuable participant in my ordeal, a very nice surprise. Good surprises are good. Eloquent today. I got home the other night, exhausted after the show and I just layed on the sofa, one arm wrapped around the big, beautiful jar of granola, eating it with my other hand. I’ve never made granola, but I have the recipe now and I look forward to giving it a try. Adventures with oats.

The nurse just handed me the printouts for my drugs, they contain the correct pronunciation and both the common and less common side effects. I really don’t know if reading them is a good idea, but of course, I do.

I found out the other day that my insurance doesn’t cover “blood products”. They covered everything relating to my transfusion a few months back, except the blood. I was really wary of the blood tranfusion at first, that’s a disclaimer you really don’t want to read, but it made me feel so much better I decided I wouldn’t hesitate in the future, but for $1,200 a pop, I’ll be crawling up the stairs before I have another one. And seriously, what the hell? How can they arbitrarily decide they don’t cover something so fundamental? They paid for the $500 heparin shot that went with it, and all of the materials and everything else, but not the blood itself? Absurd.

I’m off to eat my granola and recline in the big chair for the next few hours, hoping I’ll be out of here in time to meet the school bus, and the wheel goes round and round.