A Patient Understanding Patience

It's Tuesday February 9th, 8:57 pm

Today has been a day of patience. I think that is certainly one word for it. Yesterday was a peak in my attitude toward taking the first step. However, as we discovered this morning, my platelets, which rose to 12,000 yesterday, were only at 4,000 when our attending doctor arrived today. This isn't what we're looking for. It seems like whatever we do to raise the count seems to end in them dissipating over the next several hours. It's too earlier to expect the chemo to really fix the platelet problem, because at this point it's still killing everything. Yet, 4,000 platelets are nothing compared to healthy adult (150,000 is low for most). It's good that I'm not 100 years old and I retain an equilibrium (though some may disagree). I have faith in my balance and reflexes, but one can't be too careful when bleeding can be a serious concern. Not to cause worry, folks. I'm doing everything to monitor myself. And let's face it, my world at this point exists between the pages of books, reels of film, and lines of digital internet code. Not much to hurt myself on, physically, but it's still something I will attend to.

My doctors are doing everything to make sure this is getting fixed. When worry set into my mind this morning, I simply had to ask, "Will my platelets ever go up?" It occurs to me now this sounds like such a simple, naive question, but no one had said it yet. No one proved to me that this could be remedied. Again, I was lost in my woods. Yet, a sweet doctor, who has been with me since I was admitted, brushed her coiled red hair behind her aging ear and said, "Yes." That was it. Someone had to say it.

The possibility of sneezing and bleeding from my nose for 3 hours was startling enough for me to understand. I needed someone to speak definitively, directly and assuredly. I didn't need speculation, caution or theorizing. I needed a statement. I don't want to start naming doctors here, but she made top spot on my list this morning. Not that she'll read this, but thank you.

A medical morning, indeed. My day wound down after that. I feel healthy. I feel energetic, almost. I spent time looking out the window this afternoon, as the snow coated Pittsburgh. I haven't felt that air in days. It's a simple thing to miss. The breeze. The sting and sensation of scurrying across a cold lawn to a warm room. It reminded me of frozen hands tucked under the shirt of the beautiful girl beside me. Her body serpentine on two feet, rolling like a wave at high tide.

My white shoes have molded to linoleum of this room, but they have their patience. My jeans dangle in a closet 200 miles away, swaying with lint and linens, but have their patience. My scarf and my coat, my "trademark" hoodies all reside in dangling darkness. Yet, they don't scuffle in their silence. They have their patience. I must have mine too.

Oh, I can think of more than one cliche about maintaining patience. I am sure I dawdle all along the lines of the cliche, but I don't intend to. I intend to enact active patience. I am going to learn as much as I can from the people here. I'm no scientist, but I took biology in high school. That qualifies me, right? Well, it has to for now. I won't let this thing take from me, repeatedly. I'm going to take what I can from it, while I can. For as much as it drains and cinches, shears and tears at my blood cells, I'll absorb every dot of information I dare to glean.

The thing about dots is that they eventually connect.

Outside of the 7th story hospital window, I've noticed a distant tree draped in snow. It isn't a birch tree -- except for today. With that in mind, I think of the great Robert Frost.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

All my love, thoughts, and hopes,

Chris

P.S. some pictures of my new abode.



This is C-3p0. He's fluent in several different blood types.



This is my dinner. It was pasta tonight. Egg Noodles and Ketchup.

....

This is Rachael. She's been the reason for a lot of those things (smiles) on my face.