Marge Simpson and the Potato Salad Bulldozer

Keoni, Mom & Jorge

You might be wondering why I stopped counting days. Well, I realized that Dre's treatment doesn't follow a linear path. Technically, she is going to have 4 courses of BEP chemotherapy that are each 5 days long and approximately 5 hours long each day. In between these courses she has 2 weeks of "rest". But what really happens is on those "rest" days, Mom has to get her heart and lung functions tested, get bloodwork done, squeeze in a flu and a pneumonia shot, get a Neulasta shot to keep her white blood cell count up, find out which drugs are causing which side effects and take more drugs to counteract them, etc. So counting days doesn't quite work because the plan's always changing.

Mom is doing well despite it all. She has a bit of a white spot on her tongue that we're trying to make sure doesn't turn into a sore. She's been a little nauseated, gotten the chills but not a fever, and had some minor tummy issues. This coming Monday is two weeks after her first chemo treatment and it's expected she'll start to lose her hair soon. Mostly she's just tired to the bone. But the strange thing is that at night she's been having problems sleeping soundly. She'll go to bed around midnight and wake about three in the morning. On the futon next to her bed, I'm reminded of when I helped my comadre Janet with two-week old Lauren and we slept in that twilight state with one ear cocked for any sound of trouble.

Even stranger than being so tired and not being able to sleep was that when she did sleep she would have what she would call "delusions". Last night she woke me up to tell me that Marge Simpson needed to be careful with the bulldozer. When I asked her why, she said, "She's going to drop the potato salad - that's why!"

Tonight we're trying Ambien, a sleep aid, in the hopes that Mom will be able to get a good night's rest. So far, so good - she took it at 10pm and was out by 10:15. Sweet dreams Dre!