Imagine showing up to a cocktail party where the drinks are poisoned, the music is the constant beep of IV pumps, and everyone looks like they’ve already been there too long. Welcome to my week.
Good news first:
Complete morphologic remission. Translation: Under the microscope, my bone marrow is clean. No cancer cells crashing the party. No rogue agents planning a comeback tour. It's a huge milestone—the kind that deserves a toast, if only the drink options were less… lethal.
The bad news?
We're not done. Remission isn't the finish line; it's just halftime. The plan is to hammer anything that even thinks about staging a comeback. This means more arsenic, hospital chairs, and many more jokes that toe the line between funny and "Are you okay?"
Outpatient life hit me with a reality check. I’m out of practice being tethered to an IV. So when I got up to go to the bathroom you know I nearly ripped the damn thing out. It turns out that the pump is still very much attached to the wall.
Outpatient > Hospital? Not Exactly.
In the hospital, everything you need is five feet away. Pain? They got meds. Nausea? More meds. Can’t sleep? Something that rhymes with "dilated dreams."
But outpatient? You're on your own, cowboy.
You still feel like crap, but now you also have to figure out dosing schedules, side effect triage, and how not to panic when your body feels like it’s losing a war. It’s like being discharged from a battleship with a Nerf gun.
Cocktail Corner: Chemotherapy Edition
Let’s revisit the menu.
Arsenic Trioxide: my current poison. Nausea, fatigue, and QT prolongation (a condition where the heart takes longer than usual to recharge between beats). Feels like a low-budget horror film in your bloodstream.
Cisplatin: nausea, hearing loss, and kidney failure. It's like doing shots of battery acid.
Ifosfamide: hallucinations, bloody urine, and something charmingly called encephalopathy. Yay!
Doxorubicin: nicknamed "The Red Devil." Sounds fun, right? Heart damage, immune suppression, and vein irritation. It’s a real party.
Compared to those? Arsenic’s the gentleman's chemo. Deadly, but refined.
Med Management: Now Featuring 4:20
I’m currently juggling 10 medications. Ten. For nausea, sleep, pain, anxiety, and whatever else shows up to the afterparty.
So I’m seriously considering medical cannabis to replace at least three or four of them. Should I ditch the zombie pill shuffle for something natural and effective?
I may officially become 4:20-friendly. It might be time to add a little green to the fight.
The Vibe Check
Outpatient means no safety net. You’re managing everything on your own while also trying to act like a person. Most people around me are doing their best, but it's obvious the struggle is real.
Me? I'm hanging in. Still cracking jokes and still treating this like a weird endurance event where sarcasm is a survival skill.
Remission is a milestone, but not a finish line.
This is still a fight. Every day I show up, pump attached, humor intact, body aching, but spirit steady—I'm winning.
No quarter given. None expected.
Thanks for checking in.
~ Tyler
