Drift Away

November...
My Sweetie was home from the hospital and he still had several days of radiation to complete before they would consider another round of chemo. His favorite kitty The Minion was happy to see him return and was constantly laying on him or next to him, determined not to let him out of his sight. Our friend the Greasemonkey had gotten my car running again and I was once again making the daily drive down to the cancer center to get his head zapped. In addition to the radiation, the doctors had prescribed an assortment of new drugs for him to take. So many pills... I now had a new job, counting out pills into his pillbox and making sure he took all of them on schedule. There was both Vicodin and Oxycontin, there was an anti-seizure med and an anti-depressant, an anti-nausea med, an anti-inflammatory med, a stool softener and a steroid. He was taking upwards of 10 pills every 6 hours or so...

The radiation left him feeling tired and he spent a lot of time napping on the couch, but when he was awake he was in pretty good spirits. Then one day a few days into the radiation his hair started coming out. It was just like you see in the movies. He was sitting there and he ran his hand through his hair and it just came out in a big clump. He sat there for a moment looking at the handful of hair and then he got an idea. He got up and went out onto our deck and tossed it into the air. Then he pulled another clump, and another...he figured maybe the birds would use it to build their nests. When there wasn't anymore coming out that way, he came back inside and called his sister and asked her to come over with a hair clipper to take off the rest. He didn't want to be walking around shedding hair everywhere, might as well go all the way and just shave it off. I thought I'd be sad to see him bald, but I really wasn't that broke up about it. As far as I was concerned, he was still a good looking guy even without his hair - besides, we were expecting it to fall out anyway. We just thought it would be the chemo that did it, not the radiation. Both his sister and I took it in stride. If he wasn't upset about it, why should we be? We swept up the pile of ginger hair and put it in a bag. The news of his hair loss had his mother whipped into a hand wringing frenzy though, and she requested a few locks as a keepsake. No problem. We put some of it into a baggy and sent it off with his sister. Now that he was bald, his head was cold so he started wearing the cap that the Purple Haired Girl had crocheted for him. He requested a matching neck scarf and she obliged. Because of his bald head and goatee, I jokingly started calling him Heisenberg because of his sudden resemblance to the character in Breaking Bad.

When his radiation treatments were over the staff gave him the cancer mask they made to hold his head in place. He gave it to the Purple Haired Girl with the idea that she could use it to make a new 'monster' for our friend The Gamer's haunted yard using it and paper mache. He also gave her the bag of hair to go with it. We liked the idea that he could keep scaring people during Halloween for years to come.

After the radiation, he had another scan done along with a follow up appointment at the cancer center. We were surprised to discover that he had gained some weight, a side effect of the steroids he was on. They increased his appetite - he was eating good for the first time in a long time and the extra weight looked good on him, he was less gaunt and looking healthier. The doctor gave the green light for the chemo and he was scheduled for his first dose a few weeks later. He was looking forward to it since it was so helpful the last time.

One day when his Dad was coming over, Sweetie gave me the heads up that I'd probably want to go out for a while. It wasn't just his Dad that was coming over, but some hospice people were coming too. They were going to work out his end of life plans - what he wanted done and how he wanted to be treated when the time came that he could no longer speak for himself. He knew if I was home while this was going on I'd be a blubbering mess by the time they left, and he was probably right. So I went out and got some bubble tea, and went over to my friend RottieMama's house to wait it out. When I got home I asked him to fill me in. He said his Dad had power of attorney, that they did the paperwork for when he would go into hospice and that there would be no life extending measures taken. As far as he was concerned, when it was time to go - it was time to go. He was adamant that he did not want IV's or tubes of any kind whatsoever. He had noted my discomfort when I woke up with a catheter after surgery a few years earlier and didn't want to experience that himself. "Good call" I said, "Because that thing sucked. It was uncomfortable and I was pretty pissed off about it." "Exactly" he replied. The hospice people had tried to talk him into moving into the first bed that came available and he'd said no. He told them that at the moment he still felt fine and wanted to stay home with me as long as he could. They warned him there might not be a bed available when he needed it and he said he'd take that chance.

Then his chemo appointment came around and it was back down to the cancer center. Our Keep Calm and Carry On shirts had arrived and we decided to wear them - the cancer center staff asked about them and thought they were pretty cool. His dosage was much bigger this time - instead of the two and a half hours per appointment that we had last time, it would take six hours of sitting in the chair waiting for the stuff to drip into him. And it wasn't just that there was more of it, but this time the dose was stronger as well. When he was done, I got his next appointment set up - it would be the day before Christmas. After we got home he felt sick and just wanted to lay down, a far cry from the first time we'd done this when he came home and played his guitar for an hour. The next day he felt worse and didn't want to eat. He was thirsty though and wanted gatorade, so I ran up to the store and got him some. The Minion wanted to cuddle up with him and he felt so bad that he grumbled and shoved him away. "No dude, I hurt." So the Minion compromised by curling up on the back of the couch instead and dangled a paw down, just barely touching Sweetie with it.

At this point Sweetie wasn't up to doing much of anything, so I took over. I made frequent trips to the store for bags of ice, more gatorade, more soda, more bottled water - he was constantly thirsty, jello, soup, and these little microwave dinners that he wanted. I ran the laundry up and down from the basement every other day so he'd have clean dry clothes because he would wake up soaking wet from sweating. I ran to the pharmacy to get his prescriptions and fielded phone calls from his friends and relatives - 'No, he's really not up for company today - check back in a day or two. I'll tell him you called.' I sorted meds into the pillbox and when the mystery man came, I'd turn off the alarm and make sure he got whichever ones he was supposed to get at that time and log them in a little notebook.

A few days later he was feeling a little better and actually sitting up on the couch, snuggling his favorite cat and receiving visitors again. When we didn't have visitors, he entertained himself texting his friends and we sat around watching TV together - Top Gear, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, South Park.

To keep my sanity, I started making a little fairy cottage out of clay. Sweeties Mom was driving me somewhat insane with her emails and phone calls and apparently she was starting to get to the Purple Haired Girl too. One evening while she was sitting upstairs with us, she received a text from Sweeties Mom asking her (yet again) to sing a certain song at his wake. Purple Haired Girl read it and gave a heavy sigh - Sweetie had already said he didn't care for that song...she'd said she'd rather not, so why the hell was she pushing this? It was maddening, but I was somewhat relieved to learn that it wasn't 'just me' feeling irritated by her behavior and requests.

One evening around this time, the Purple Haired Girl came running excitedly upstairs and showed us a positive pregnancy test. We wanted to be happy for her, we really did - but with our current situation we just couldn't muster much excitement. And then a few days later, when Sweeties sister was over for a visit we committed the unpardonable sin of still not being excited when we told her about it. We did say that we were happy for Purple and wished her the best, but we also said we thought the timing felt horrible. Sweeties sister said nothing about this to us, but as soon as she got home she texted Purple and said she heard the good news - too bad the 'grumpy people' upstairs hate kids. I guess she said a few other things too, but that was the gist of it: 'We hate babies and wouldn't want to be her friend anymore.' After receiving this text, a hormonal and visibly upset Purple Haired Girl came upstairs to ask me if we were not going to be friends anymore just because she was pregnant. "Wait, what?! Where would you get that idea?" I asked. And she sobbingly told me about the text that Sweeties sister had sent. The way I heard it, 'Sis' made it sound like it was all me and that Sweetie hadn't said anything - in any case Purple addressed me about it alone. I did my best to reassure her that, yes, she would still be my friend and I didn't harbor any ill will toward her or the baby. I explained that 'Sis' had it in for me because she thought I 'hated' her (I didn't). To prove my point, I gave Purple the Christmas gift I bought for her the day before - nearly a month early. It was a glittery green fairy ornament that caused her to squeal happily. "There" I said. "Would I buy you a fairy if I hated you? Do you believe me now?" She said she did.

Later, I filled her in on all the Sister drama we'd had and said she was probably trying to stir up trouble for me. She'd been in a bit of a twist because I opted out of too many family gatherings over the years, I never made an effort to meet her kid (She's overly permissive. Sweetie had said he was allowed to run amok and if he wasn't his nephew he wouldn't want to hang out with him either) and then when her brother got sick and she wanted him to come live with her - he chose me. To this day, I suspect that she was hoping Purple would be so angry that she'd kick us out and then Sweetie would of course come live with her and "finally have a real family." (She actually said that back when he got his diagnosis! He told her he did have a 'real family' over here and me, Purple and the Dungeon master were it.) For his part, my Sweetie actually called her up and went to my defense. He pointedly told her that the only thing she should have said to Purple was "I heard the good news, congratulations!" and that she had no business repeating anything else we said - we had both had a bad day and were simply venting our frustration even if it was misdirected. Sis completely denied saying anything at all. Really?! Then why would Purple come upstairs and say she said it? And Purple still had the text to prove it. And still she denied saying a thing. Ah the drama in that family. Is it any wonder that I opted to skip their gatherings?