Still hanging in there...

So I know you’ve all been waiting anxiously for the latest update on Eugene’s status—the little bastard isn’t dead yet, but we’re still working steadily towards it.  There were some questions about how he came to be named Eugene, and I wish I had a more exciting story to share than “my sister and I were joking about naming the tumor via text one day—I told her I was leaning towards ‘Carl’, she suggested ‘Eugene’, and that was it.”  Now you all know—and you’re welcome.  That kind of premeditated brilliance can only be stunningly magnificent.

Since my last update, I went through some pretty dark days.  The Maryland trip turned out to be quite an adventure, courtesy of my French brother and his special travel arrangements—we decided to take a little later flight out of Atlanta (and by “we decided” I mean “they gave our seats away because we didn’t leave for the airport early enough”).  So, TJ, Alex, and I had some quality airport time and then got to see the Pennsylvania/Delaware/Maryland countryside on our rental car (a roomy Mazda 2) voyage across the Delmarva peninsula to Ocean City.  It all builds character in the end—so what if we missed a day of the conference, lost Alex’s driver’s license somewhere along the way, and had to yell at a bunch of US Airways associates in the process of getting where we needed to be and back home again.  I ended up spending a significant portion of the conference in bed because Eugene was being an asshole and hosting what felt like it was a satellite performance of Riverdance on my spine and/or kidneys.  Many opioids were consumed, and not much seafood.  But I did still have the opportunity to see lots of friendly faces—the family of chicken doctors that I love.  It was worth the trip to get all of those hugs and well wishes, and the actual parts of the conference that I was able to endure were nice as well.

I struggled rather considerably on those days that I was feeling particularly crappy.  I had a bit of a mental block where I was really conflicted—like one side of my brain knew that I felt like scum, but there was another corner where part of my mind was resistant to admit it for fear of admitting weakness.  Those two parts of my brain were in the midst of quite the tumultuous debate, and I knew that it was making me into a crazy person that was less than fun to be around—so I did the only thing I knew to do at that point—I called my Uncle Junior.  Many of you know my uncle, and know the battles that he, himself, has won.  For those of you that don’t, this is one of my dad’s younger brothers—a man very near and dear to my heart—who has been an unwavering source of emotional and spiritual support.  It probably helps that he happens to be a minister of his own church, but I say he’s pretty awesome regardless of all that.  When I spoke to him (also interpreted as indecipherable blubbering via phone), he assured me that I was not admitting defeat by admitting that I didn’t feel well.  That He is strong when we cannot be, and that it is up to us to trust in Him for the path to healing and wellness.  Once I heard, understood, and accepted that, I found a new level of peace and was able to move on.  That’s not to say that I was walking around fearlessly—I remained terrified.  But it made things easier to get through.  We survived the trip, and upon our return to the great state of Georgia, chemo commenced.

Thanks to my Aunt Cyndie, I was the most styling and profiling chemo patient at Emory that day in my new chemo outfit.  We met with the doctor, talked about how Eugene was getting too big for his britches—outgrowing his blood supply, and essentially destroying himself before we even started the chemo.  We talked about how these were good signs that meant that he would be taking up the drugs like a crazy kid on Halloween night.  We talked about the little Riverdance performances that had been taking place regularly and got some heavier drugs involved—with plans in place to do some nerve killing.  I was pretty amped about all of that, and we headed on down for my first new infusion.  All I remember about that was taking some Benadryl and passing out for a few hours.  I woke up with about 20 minutes left to go, finished it out, and we were outta there.  We celebrated with some Pappasito’s enchiladas for dinner—my first real Tex-Mex experience since we left the mothership back in June—and it was magical.  Since then, it’s just been a battle with heartburn and having no appetite. 

Fast forward to today, and I still have no desire to eat on a regular basis—like not even cake and crap.  I just shovel food in because it’s necessary.  I’m constantly on what feels like the verge of exhaustion, and sleep has been somewhat challenging as we’re trying to change my seizure meds and get the dose right—slowly but surely.  I chopped my hair off so that I can donate it to a good cause, and I’m still getting accustomed to the whole short hair thing.  We’ve officially gotten the pain under control, and I haven’t had to take any pain meds or keep close confines with a heating pad in over a week—it’s been pure bliss.  I’m working on getting caught back up on classes and schoolwork—trying to keep my mind occupied with chicken doctoring—and counting down the days to fall break and Thanksgiving.  I need some Texas in my life.

Calling Mr. DeMille...

...Eugene was ready for his closeup yesterday!  We headed west, towards Atlanta (and a very nice hospital) for a quick little CT scan (know to many as a "CAT" scan).  CT stands for "computed tomography" or "computed axial tomography"--I don't know what any of those words mean.  Basically, it's a way to use X-rays to look at the inside of your body in a three-dimensional fashion.  

So, first things first, they had to find a reason to stick a needle in me.  In this case, it's to inject "contrast" during the scan.  The contrast helps them to be able to visualize all of the blood vessels and stuff, and actually turns out to be a pretty good reason for hitting me with a needle.  The nurses were really sweet at this hospital and let me use my port instead of having to do an IV catheter in my arm or hand--which is nice for both parties because my veins are a pain in the you-know-what to access.  For those that don't know, the port is a device that was surgically implanted before my first set of chemo treatments.  It's on the right side of my chest, just below my collar bone, and serves as an access point to one of the big vessels that's close to my heart (just like all of you).  To actually access it, they just have to use a special needle and poke through the skin over it and into the little bubble on top to be able to inject various (generally not very cool) substances.  When they're done, they simpy pull the needle back out, and I get a cute little band-aid--instead of a giant bruise and a sore hand/arm like with catheters.

After that, I was ready for Eugene to be "ready for his closeup".  I'm starting to notice a trend where I'm the one that has to do all the work for Eugene to just hang out and feed off all my suffering--as*hole.  Anyways, they took me in this room with a huge machine that looks like a big donut sitting on its side.  They told me to pull my pants down to my knees and lay on my back--that would've all been really weird had I not done it about 23542 times in the last six months.  Of course the table is not exactly Serta-approved--it's more like an actual table.  So I kicked off my flip flops (because I don't care about the rules regarding Labor Day and footwear), pulled my pants down, and did my best penguin walk to the table.  I assumed the position on the less than comfy hard plastic table with my arms over my head and some kind of laser pointer alignment aid shooting me in the eye (as I read the little sign beside it that said not to look at it).  The nurse hooked up all of the necessary cords and tubes and left me alone in the room with that giant donut machine and a bunch of whirring and buzzing sounds as she told me we would be beginning soon.  

For the actual scan, the little table slowly slides in and out of the big donut machine.  At various points a creepy, monotone voice instructed me to inhale and hold my breath as I slid through to the beginning position and stopped.  At that point, I heard the nurse come back in.  I could tell she was messing around with some bags of fluid and whatnot beside me, but was terrified to move and look for fear of messing up the multi-thousand dollar test and having to redo it.  She told me that she was starting the contrast and I would soon start to feel warm all over, might taste something metallic in my mouth as though I had a coin in there (what?!?!?!), and it might feel like I was urinating on myself (WHAT?!?!?!?) but I wouldn't be (well thank goodness...I'd be a tad concerned if whatever crap she was pumping into my veins was causing me to pee myself).  Before she was finished elaborating on the pseudo-pantspeeing experience, I felt the warmth she had referred to, and was wishing they'd turn up the A/C in that place.  She left the room again.  They slid me in and out of the machine. Mr. Creepyvoice told me to hold my breath again, and next thing I knew it was over.  I got to do the dorky penguin walk back over to my shoes, and was allowed to pull my pants back up (thank goodness I was wearing my "good underwear").  

And that was it.  Before I knew it, I was passed out in the passenger seat as my driver (aka, Chris) was escorting me back to Athens.  So what they ended up doing was taking a whole bunch of pictures in a slice-wise formation--think of the body like a loaf of bread.  They'll be able to use those slices and a bunch of fancy computer technology and things I'll never want to understand to recreate a three dimensional image of what's going on inside my body--namely Eugene, in all his glory.  They'll use some more fancy computer buttons to measure and evaluate his morphology--shape, size, conformation, relation to other important structures--and then we'll have that analysis to compare to after these next two months' worth of chemo blasts do their job.  Sometime around Thanksgiving I'll get to visit the donut machine and Mr. Creepyvoice again, and we'll see that all of our prayers and wishes have been heard and granted!