The scientists studying human cloning need to hurry the fuck up. I need two of me, immediately. Like yesterday. I need one of me to take my husband to the hospital Christmas Eve, and one of me to pick my children up from their grandparents’ house and bring them home.
I need one of me to spend the next three days at inpatient chemo with my husband. And I need the other one of me to spend Christmas with my children who are too young to be allowed into the hospital to visit their father thanks to the “nobody under age 14” rule. (Thank you H1N1 virus.)
But, these damn cloning scientists seems to be taking Christmas off, unlike the doctors who will be working to save my husband. Cloning slackers.
After today’s surgery, Bob got to come home for the night. We go back tomorrow to do a new chemo regimen, in the hopes that it will do a better job at getting the cancer into a complete or near complete remission for the transplant process.
The chemo regimen they’ll do this time is called R-ICE chemotherapy. RICE, RICE, BABY -- but I don't think they have a dance for it yet. I'll have to work on that. Anyhoo, it’s another common regimen used for treating lymphoma that’s recurred, and is often used prior to transplant.
The biopsy was done to determine if the lymphoma tumors that have been growing rapidly the past week are of a new type. This will help the team at Stanford decide if a different transplant approach is warranted. The initial plan was for an autologous transplant, which requires a complete or near complete remission of the current lymphoma. Otherwise, an allologous transplant becomes the next option. In that case, they’d start looking for sibling donors. Good thing he has a bunch of those! God bless a good, horny Catholic family.
Now, if I can just figure out how to make two of me before tomorrow. I have two kids who want to be home and a husband who’s health is in a precarious state who doesn’t understand why I won’t just leave him at the hospital to go be with the kids. Men. They can be dense fuckers sometimes.
Thankfully, the kids are old enough that we discussed opening gifts with Daddy on Sunday when he comes home. They get that. We'll just move Christmas by 2 days. Christ wasn't born on the 25th of December, anyway. God will get over it.
Bug asked me to text Santa to let him know we’d need to postpone our delivery by two days. No problem, dude. I’m on it. Then, my boy who never worries about his dad, at least not in words, the kid who never uses his cell phone, texted me and then called me tonight. He’s worried. He wanted me to say prayers with him. Part of his prayers for the past 6 years have included people we know who have passed—my grandparents, and my two girlfriends who died of cancer in their 30s and their families. (Non-standard, I know. He's a non-standard kid.) I didn’t maintain. He said, “Mom, it sounded like you either got sad there or we had some static on the line.” No, dude, I got sad there. “Yeah, Mom, I’ve been feeling sad, too. I’m getting worried.” I’m worried, too, bud.
Peanut texted me in the middle of the night last night. Her stomach hurt. She wanted to come home. She misses her animals. Dr. Doolittle, that one. Both dogs and our 20lb. cat sleep with her most nights, piled onto her twin bed. They surround her during the days while she does her school work. She’s homesick. She needs the surroundings that calm her. Her best friend/cousin is out of town for the holidays, which adds to her lost-at-sea feeling, I’m sure. I wish I could just take her with me to the hospital. If they didn’t have a record of her age, I’d lie and say she was 14. She certainly looks it, and it would reduce her anxiety immensely to be with us. She’s the kid who needs to know what’s going on to feel calm. I text her during the day when I can. She wants to know why she can’t just be home alone while I’m at the hospital all day, just so she can be home, where things are familiar. The kid is breaking my heart.
This is what it’s like to be a mother, and a wife, and to love so much you want to be able to cut yourself into pieces for the people who need you most and who you most want to be able to support and love.
Cloners. I blame your lazy asses. Scotty, too. Should have been able to beam my ass back and forth by now.
