So I need to take next Tuesday off to go with Hubby as they take out his port and put in the direct lines in his neck, which he has been dreading and having nightmares about. And my first response was "Dammit, I'm not going to have enough vacation days to take my post-hurricane-season break in October."

I hate myself a bit at the moment. I'm not worried about how this is going to upset him, I'm not thinking about them moving forward with the bone marrow pulls and his immune system disappearing, I'm just worried about my damned vacation. And having to deal with Kara, his daughter, who is willing to drive us up there and keep me company (cue standard rant about not wanting anyone nearby while I'm in a waiting room).

And we need to buy a car, and I have my own cataract surgery in two weeks, and I'm sucking at the grown-up thing at the moment.

My tablet's word anticipation program automatically pulls up Chemo as the first choice when I put in the letter C. And it knows the name of the cancer center in Salt Lake. Cool, but dreadful.

I'm having a sucking-at-being-a-grownup day too, Connie. Blah.

I think you deserve to give yourself a break if sometimes you're thinking more about how all this shit affects you than how it affects your Hubby. It doesn't mean you don't love him and worry about him; clearly you do. It just means that this is all a huge strain on you too.

Sometimes all you can focus on is a small thing.

And the schedule has just been thrown out the window. Starting next week it's daily trips to Salt Lake for three-hour bone marrow harvests for two weeks. And then, 1st week of June, he goes into isolation for a month.

And if the worst happens, I won't have to plan a funeral. He's going for research, he's signed documents for that. That's actually a relief to me.

That's a tough schedule, Connie. Best to you both to weather it.

That is tough Connie. I hope the worst does not happen. I will note that there is a lot of research that shows care givers for people with serious illness often become seriously ill themselves from stress, fatigue and self-neglect. So a reaction where you worry about yourself a bit is healthy rather than something to beat yourself up over.

I'm going to postpone my cataract surgery to September. I've got a few months left to me, and by then he'll be done with this. Gods, to be done with it.

If the schedule holds, I'll be on vacation for the second week of his isolation. I asked if he'd mind if I didn't spend vacation with him, and he said, "I'll be in a bubble, all we'd be able to do is stare at each other." But he will get his laptop, so he can liveblog his stay on Facebook. If he could spell, he'd be a terror on the Net.

His hats continue to be the hit of the various cancer departments. Today he wore his Cat in the Hat hat, and he had various paperwork stashed in it. A nurse asked for his drug history, and he pulled it out of the hat. "Oh! You pulled it out of your hat! Wonderful!" He heard staff talking about it throughout the department, and waiting patients were giggling.

Kara is not going to be able to help with transportation through the next few weeks, because she's going to Bali for a month. I have no idea how she's managing this, but I suspect it's a diving vacation. Her in-laws have money. She didn't know just how bad this was. If the cancer comes back, there are no treatments. They're doing all-or-nothing on him. Hell of a year.

The best to you, Connie.

I had a somewhat more eventful doctor's appointment than I'd anticipated. (Nothing bad. At least, I don't think so.) Went to the rheumatologist for my usual six-month, "Yep, still got that genetic disease. Nope, no new symptoms. Yep, I need a refill on my painkillers" appointment. The nurse took my blood pressure, said, "Well, that's high." It was 145/106 -- the highest I can ever remember mine being before is 125/110. So she took my blood pressure again, and frowned, and went to get the doctor. Then he took my blood pressure, said, "Whoa! That's not good! Let me check something," and then had another nurse come in and take my blood pressure. (By this point, my arm was bright red and covered with red dots from broken blood vessels.) So the doctor and nurse talk to each other, and they say that I need to see a primary care doctor, right away. So, they make an appointment for me with a primary care doctor (this is a whole integrated medical practice system thing), and I drive across town to the primary care doctor. The nurse there takes my blood pressure twice, then the doctor takes it. Then the doctor goes through all my medications, and all the ones that could cause high blood pressure are ones that I've been taking with no problem for years. He asks if I've been feeling sweaty or dizzy or nauseous or anything, and I say no, I feel fine and I've been feeling fine. He asks a bunch more questions about my family history, takes my blood pressure again (it's dropped a bit by this point) and says that he doesn't know what's causing it, but it's not high enough to start any kind of new medicines or anything right away. So, he tells me to go home, not take any Sudafed this week (I take it once in a while, but my last dose wasn't recently enough to have caused this), and come back in a week for a nurse to take my blood pressure again, and then come back again a week after that for my regular primary care doctor to see me and discuss whether we need to do anything.

So. No idea what's up with that. Except that my upper arm is going to be one massive bruise tomorrow.