Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Time to stop whining about Corona and start thinking of all we have to be thankful for. 

The first thing that I am thankful for is that I am here to celebrate. This is not something that I expected 7 years ago when I first got Multiple Myeloma.  

Barbara and I are also both thankful for our latest clinical trial of a drug called Iberdomide.- aka CC-220. I have been talking this for about a year and my numbers keep going down. We track mostly something called "M-Spike" and the latest report shows no measurable spike. Hurray.

I am thankful that I have to visit Dana-Farber only every two weeks. (in the past it has been weekly or more). I'm on a 28 day cycle. The "Day 1" visit makes a lot of sense - see the doctor and get lots of tests and meds. The intermediate "mini-visit" confuses me. I drive down to Fox Hill Village and stay over night. The next morning, I drive to Dana Farber where I have two appointments. During the first, Lab Services draws a vial of blood. I then have another appointment 45 minutes at Infusion where one of my nursing pals draw another vial. That's all. Nobody can explain why this can't be done in one stop. They also can't explain why I can't get the blood drawn locally. I would be happy to pay myself for a courier to drive the sample to DF. Oh - wait. They did explain why we can't do this. "Because that's the rule." OK - that certainly clarifies things. So, I am thankful that I get to complain about this to anyone who will listen and laugh at how stupid it is.

This brings us to the next thing we have to be thankful for. Covid-19. Not that I am glad that we have this going on. But as with anything, one can find positives.

One is that for three months in the Spring, the drug company did agree to let me get the mini-visit blood draw in Laconia (next town). Apparently, they managed to do without one of the vials. That meant that I could go 28 days without having to take the drive to FHV.  

We are also thankful for Zoom which allows us to reach out to some people we had not seen in a while. We would not have done this without Covid. 

I am thankful that Barbara can attend to her "President of the Board" duties at FHV via Zoom. It is much less stressful for both of us than having her go to FHV every week or two. 

Barbara is thankful for my cooking and I am thankful for her dish-washing. She claims that she is still trying to remember how to cook, but apparently, the memories are not coming back - no matter how hard she tries. 

I am thankful that my mother forced me to learn to cook. She did not teach me hot to use a "hot-air popcorn maker. Since I am always trying to find better ways to do things, I had the popper leaning back so that unpopped kernels would not blow out the front before it started popping. I made the mistake of taking a "quick" bathroom break. While I was away, the popping began, but the popped corn did not go out the front because it was still tilted backwards. Eventually, they lifted the top an inch or so from the popper and popcorn started to fall out all around the sides - even after we straightened it. I then made the mistake of removing the top. Did you know that without the top the fan has the ability to blow popped corn as well as unpopped kernels several feet into the air and scatter it around the kitchen, It looked like one of those "Quaker Puffed Rice" commercials with the rice being blown from a cannon.

I wanted to repeat this experiment so that I could film it for YouTube. I was going to play The William Tell Overture in the background.  Unfortunately, certain people in the household did not think this would be a good idea. You, however are welcome to try this at home. Let us know how this works out for you. I would be thankful for a video of your trial. 

So, now we are prepping for our Thanksgiving feast. It will be just Barbara and me. Being a traditionalist, I bought a full sized turkey - 14 pounds. That should be enough for the two of us. We plan to get at least two meals from it. I will be doing almost all the cooking, though I might let Barbara mash a potato. 

So everyone, be thankful and enjoy the day. 

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