Good news! After about a week of suspense, the pathology came back on K's breast cancer, and they finally got clean margins! That means K's surgeon finally got the last bit of that cute, little, teeny, weeny tail of tumor that kept evading her. This means NO CHEMO! NO RADIATION! NO MASTECTOMY!
So the Professor, K, and I had a celebratory dinner at our favorite restaurant, a tiny trattoria that started up a year or two ago a couple of miles from our house. The charming and talented Chef Angelo and his two charming sons, Niko and Stefano, know us well and can predict what we will order.
Good. We're done with that. Now we can go back to me being the only one who pops tumors in this household! I have lots of practice, so it's OK.
* * *
OK, now to me. Still feeling fine! (When has that happened?!?!) Just had an appointment with another infectious disease specialist, Dr. M, recommended to me by my colleague and infectious disease doc, JD. He is a very eminent and local, which is an underrated combo. Also a very nice and engaging guy. (He also knows some of my friends from my cancer-aborted O'Hare infectious disease fellowship, so we had a fine old time.)
I feel fine now on amoxicillin. That's good, because the original plan to keep me on that for 4 months is probably not sufficient.
See, the problem is that Actinomycetes*, the bug causing my skull to slowly fall apart, is a normal inhabitant of most people's mouth's. Actinomycetes is most often harmless unless you're one of those people with uncovered, rotting, crumbling, hyperirradiated bone like me. Sooner or later, if I stop the amoxicillin, it's going to get back in, and the only way we'll know for sure is if I start spitting out more skull. There's really not much skull left before we get down to the outer lining of my brain,*** so I really don't want to lose any more.
So, it looks like I'll be on amoxicillin for the rest of my life, all the better to grow my own, uniquely antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
* * *
So that brings us to the rest of today. I treated myself to a massage. I haven't done that for years, but there is a little place around the corner that offers them. My back went out this morning, and I have wondered if they were any good. They weren't. Second worst massage of my life. The worst was in the British Virgin Islands, where the guy severely bruised my back and gave me a brain hemorrhage (OK, not really a brain hemorrhage). I'm just too polite to say, "ow! That hurts too much!"
This time, I left less relaxed than I had been when I went in. The first thing I noticed after the low room temperature was that the towel on the face-holder thingy (U-shaped cushion so you can lie face-down) was wet underneath where someone's nose would go. Quickly, I jumped up from the table and bathed my entire body with the alcohol sanitizer jug that I carry in my pocket for just such an occasion. I lay on my side and waited.
The massage therapist came in, coughing, sneezing, and sniffling. (At least she wore a surgical mask.) There was no introduction. She, somewhat resentfully, got me a new towel, and I lay back down, trying to hold my breath for the rest of the time.
What followed was the fastest massage I have ever had. By fast, I don't mean short. I paid for an hour, and I got it. But the therapist rushed from muscle to muscle, bouncing randomly, to any muscle from my feet to my neck. No apparent pattern or plan. Zip! Zip! OUCH! Zip! Zip! The hot, greased rock that she zipped up and down the muscles on either side of my spine was pleasant--once I figure out what the heck it was. She pressed on places where there are practically no muscles and where no one carries tension, like the top of my foot, just north of my toes. (If you carry your tension there, you are a freak.) I couldn't wait for the hour to be over.
Finally, the ADHD massage finished. The therapist left, and I got up, shaking with anxiety. The same muscles were aching as the ones I woke up with. I got dressed and pulled on my overcoat. But where were my glasses? I looked everywhere. I looked under the massage table. I looked under some little squary-cushiony-wheely thing. I rifled through the pockets of my shirt, my pants, my fleece, and my coat. The coat. The coat of a thousand pockets.
It's not that I don't like the coat. It's big and warm. It's not particularly stylish, but neither am I, so that's fine. On the other hand, this coat has a thousand pockets. I'm not kidding. They're all over the thing. So I rifled through them. I found a can-opener, a ball-peen hammer, and an orange from two weeks ago. But no glasses. Desperate, I went out and looked into my car.
In summary:
- K is healthy.
- I am healthy (as I can get), but my back hurts.
- The Professor abides.
* Actinomycetes is relative of your date's close friend Clamydia.** Google just told me. And no, I didn't get it that way! You probably have Actinomycetes in your mouth too! So does nearly everybody.
** And, by the way, how is it that the Blogger website I am using, which is owned by Google, recognizes the word Actinomycetes, a bug carried by many but known to few, while, at the same time, red-underlines Chlamydia, a bug infecting several of your friends right now and known to many?
*** That's when the fun really begins. No one really wants to fix this. There are too many really essential nerves, arteries, and veins in there. It would be like repaving the entire L.A. freeway system during rush hour. Someone will have to go in and pull out all the dead bone.
The only maniacs who do that are the surgeons in Lumpkin, Ga.**** After that, some other nutbar surgeon would have to put in a patch made of titanium, making me part wolverine. Then, I will have to go to British Columbia where there is a team that is working on a new, artificial scaffolding that could allow my normal cells (Yes. A part of me is normal, in fact.) to recover the exposed area. This cutting edge tech has only been used on badgers so far, so I hope I don't need it before it is well-vetted.
**** Not really, but it's a fantastic name for a town, and one of the most heroic people I know lives and works there, believe it or not.
This is not, not, NOT how I looked after that massage!
