karenulijohn

“How are you feeling?” is a question I seem to be asking of Harvey ad nauseam, and the response I get gives me little or no satisfaction or information.  Fortunately, Harvey has been feeling surprisingly well considering what he is enduring.  Because his white blood cell count was too low, three injections of Neupogen were prescribed and given over three days last week beginning on Wednesday.  On Friday, he seemed to lack his usual energy, and by Saturday he was “off his food.”  As I was getting ready to go to church on Sunday morning, he stumbled out of bed and immediately stumbled back in saying that he felt different.  “How different?” I asked.  “I don’t know, just different.”  With that kind of response, it is very difficult to assess if this is an emergency situation or just a minor side effect.  He spent most of the day in bed feeling weak and listless and ate very little.  Miracle of miracles, he awoke on Monday feeling like his old self, energetic (well as energetic as he gets) and hungry!  It was at this point that he told me that the aching in his chest and bones was gone, and he no longer felt like he was getting the flu.  These are classic, minor side effects of Neupogen.  If only I had known at the time.

Very early in our marriage, I learned that Harvey does not like to talk about or share information about illness or infirmity.  I attribute some of this reluctance to the fact that his father spent some years in a sanitorium for Tuberculosis, and because Harvey was so young, he was not allowed to visit or see his father except through a window.  Over our years together, he has seldom been ill apart from occasional cold or flu until his bout with melanoma.  Of course, he may have been seriously ill at some point, but I was not informed of the symptoms, so how would I know?

On Tuesday, he completed his fifth chemotherapy infusion and began his second week of radiation.  His hair appears to be thinning, but it’s not really that easy to tell, and apart from the flushing, he is wonderfully free of side effects, I think!  We were on the phone with our daughter this morning, and during the conversation we noticed that his voice seems to be a little raspy.  He mentioned it to the technician at his daily radiation treatment, and the technician commented “you’re right on schedule!”  We saw Dr. Jones, the radiology oncologist on Wednesday, and he said that Harvey had another couple of weeks “reprieve” before he would have some discomfort eating and swallowing.  So, in view of how well he feels, we are going to visit our daughter and her family in San Mateo this weekend.  We don’t plan anything too far ahead, but we are both so looking forward to this visit.