So I'm most of the way through the first cycle of post-transplant chemo, have my hair back (I promise to post a new photo soon), even had a haircut the other day. All the lab numbers are looking good enough--I could wish for a little more hemoglobin, and the kappa could go down further, but I am not complaining and feel pretty good. Almost all my current complaints are related to my old friend dexamethasone, and even those are greatly reduced by the lower dosage.
So it was a little alarming to find my torso, neck, and arms covered with hives a couple of days ago. It didn't feel like much, but it sure looked like something was going on. Fortunately, I had my monthly oncologist visit scheduled for the next day, and we figured we could discuss whether this was some kind of adverse reaction when we came in the next day. So we reported for duty at 7:50 AM, barely caffeinated, and went through the prelim paces (draw blood, insert IV tube, wait for labs, check vitals, check the med list, are you in any pain), and then I mentioned to the nurse that I had hives, just like I used to get when I ate shrimp . . . and Liz and I looked at each other and I don't know whose draw dropped lower.
I had been allergic to shrimp and other crustaceans since I'd had an arthrogram (involving a largish injection of radioiodine) at age 16, but the allergy had faded over the years and I had enthusiastically welcomed shrimp back into my diet, especially in the last couple of years. A great sustainable, highly nutritious source of protein, really easy to cook and mighty tasty to boot. Two nights before the visit, we'd made a (gluten-free, for those of you keeping score) pasta with a cilantro-jalapeno-lime-cream-shrimp sauce. It was very good, and I'd eaten leftovers for lunch the following day. What's more, the last night we were in Maryland after Dad died, I'd had shrimp and grits at a great restaurant in Frederick.
I will probably have no more. I'm guessing here, but I'm pretty sure that the stem cell transplants have reset enough of my immune system to have restored the old shrimp allergy. It's a minor thing, in context. I will remember those shrimp fondly.
Friday, January 13, 2017
postscript
We have been sifting through the memorabilia since my father died, and it's hard to keep straight what has been posted where. Just for the record, I want to put this photo here. It must have been taken when Dad was in high school (1944 or 1945, I guess). I think it has that mythic quality of old photos: all the thousands of images we can generate now, cropped, shopped, auto-tuned ad infinitum can't hold a candle to it.
Sunday, January 1, 2017
In Memoriam
My father died last night. He had been declining for a long time, heart, kidneys, and brain more or less in sync, and while at the end the turn for the worse seemed sudden, I think it was really just the result of a long slow descent, like an airplane landing (safely) in the fog.
I have the impression that stoicism is having a moment, appropriate for confusing and difficult times, and coincidentally Dad was the paramount example of stoicism among all the people I've ever known. He was famously self-contained. He grew up poor on tenant farms during the Depression, the family abandoned by his father at an early age, finding an escape route by working as a stable hand for posh families on the Main Line.
In spite of circumstances, and his legendary unwillingness to speak, he managed to become Class President and Salutatorian of his high school class (1945). According to legend, he enlisted in the Navy to avoid having to give a speech at graduation. As it happened, the war ended while he was still in training at Pearl Harbor, so he did a brief stint in postwar Manchuria, then a few months in Japan. He was discharged in 1946, but still owed Uncle Sam the best part of a year, and was called up for service in Korea in 1951. There he was attached to a logistics unit, set up to distribute pay to soldiers and sailors invading the North--which service was abruptly interrupted when the Chinese army routed the UN troops and the entire enterprise was abandoned in a mad scramble for the ships. When his term of service was over, he was offered a chance to take Navy pilot training, but was not enamored of the prospect of landing planes on ships, and decided to come back home instead. Not long after, he met and married my mother (BTW, the second most stoic person I know). They were married for 64 years.
His love for and ability with horses was something I didn't really know about until Karen and I were old enough to be introduced to riding lessons when I was 10 or so. I was a sad disappointment to him, lacking both ability and confidence, but Karen took to it. It was only a few years later we moved to a small farm with pastures and surrounding open country, and horses re-entered his life in a major way.
From that point on, I watched the most interesting developments in his life from a distance, although he had considerable (I won't say endless) patience for my insistence on fishing, tennis, ping-pong, horseshoes, and other recreations more compelling to me. Until age became a major factor, he was consistently better at all that stuff than I was, and my adolescent frustration fueled some pretty serious, seriously one-dimensional, competition. It might be that the whole drama was contained within me--an outside observer might have had trouble finding any drama--but I thought it was real at the time.
Dad's competence (and his confidence) was such that he rarely hesitated to quit a job when he had had enough. Mostly he had a new job within a few weeks, and he generally he seemed to feel better off for having made the change. Not always, however: he did a stint as "Mr. Goodwrench" at a local Chevy dealer, and hated the association with a lame but well-known advertising campaign. He quit that job too.
I think his glory days came in the decade or so after he retired (maybe a trifle early, truth to tell). He became a full-time horseman. Between fox hunts, horse shows, and the daily cycle of feeding/watering/grooming/exercising/mucking out, he was fully engaged and extremely good at his work. This was a job he didn't want to quit, and he didn't. He was still working at horses last year, in spite of age, infirmity, and people finding him an easy mark. If that could have been sustained, I think he might have lived forever.
I have the impression that stoicism is having a moment, appropriate for confusing and difficult times, and coincidentally Dad was the paramount example of stoicism among all the people I've ever known. He was famously self-contained. He grew up poor on tenant farms during the Depression, the family abandoned by his father at an early age, finding an escape route by working as a stable hand for posh families on the Main Line.
In spite of circumstances, and his legendary unwillingness to speak, he managed to become Class President and Salutatorian of his high school class (1945). According to legend, he enlisted in the Navy to avoid having to give a speech at graduation. As it happened, the war ended while he was still in training at Pearl Harbor, so he did a brief stint in postwar Manchuria, then a few months in Japan. He was discharged in 1946, but still owed Uncle Sam the best part of a year, and was called up for service in Korea in 1951. There he was attached to a logistics unit, set up to distribute pay to soldiers and sailors invading the North--which service was abruptly interrupted when the Chinese army routed the UN troops and the entire enterprise was abandoned in a mad scramble for the ships. When his term of service was over, he was offered a chance to take Navy pilot training, but was not enamored of the prospect of landing planes on ships, and decided to come back home instead. Not long after, he met and married my mother (BTW, the second most stoic person I know). They were married for 64 years.
His love for and ability with horses was something I didn't really know about until Karen and I were old enough to be introduced to riding lessons when I was 10 or so. I was a sad disappointment to him, lacking both ability and confidence, but Karen took to it. It was only a few years later we moved to a small farm with pastures and surrounding open country, and horses re-entered his life in a major way.
From that point on, I watched the most interesting developments in his life from a distance, although he had considerable (I won't say endless) patience for my insistence on fishing, tennis, ping-pong, horseshoes, and other recreations more compelling to me. Until age became a major factor, he was consistently better at all that stuff than I was, and my adolescent frustration fueled some pretty serious, seriously one-dimensional, competition. It might be that the whole drama was contained within me--an outside observer might have had trouble finding any drama--but I thought it was real at the time.
Dad's competence (and his confidence) was such that he rarely hesitated to quit a job when he had had enough. Mostly he had a new job within a few weeks, and he generally he seemed to feel better off for having made the change. Not always, however: he did a stint as "Mr. Goodwrench" at a local Chevy dealer, and hated the association with a lame but well-known advertising campaign. He quit that job too.
I think his glory days came in the decade or so after he retired (maybe a trifle early, truth to tell). He became a full-time horseman. Between fox hunts, horse shows, and the daily cycle of feeding/watering/grooming/exercising/mucking out, he was fully engaged and extremely good at his work. This was a job he didn't want to quit, and he didn't. He was still working at horses last year, in spite of age, infirmity, and people finding him an easy mark. If that could have been sustained, I think he might have lived forever.
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