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Friday night started out well. In an ups-and-downs sort of way.
Brian, an RN my sister really liked (me too), estimated the last bag of chemo would be drained dry by about 6:30pm. He made sure all the discharge paper-work was done so that as soon as the last drop of poison fell into my sister's vein, we could pull the plug and get her the hell out of there... home to her two kitties and her own bed.
Alas, Brian guessed wrong. By 6:30pm it was clear we had at least another hour of drip to go. When you have been in the hospital for 5 days, tied to an IV tree, having to pee into a "hat" and report your urination to the staff, sleep in the same room with roommates pleasant to nutty... you are counting every second until you can get the hell out.
The evening staff came on at seven. Pansri, the cancer nurse who would be responsible for performing all the medically necessary routines to unhook my sister's PICC line, started hunting for my sister who had, in the meantime, disappeared from her room and had taken to wandering around the ward trailing her IV tree behind her, doing anything she could think of to make the time pass more quickly.
Pansri and my sister finally collided somewhere around the Family Lounge. Pansri took one look at the chemo bag and said, "I've been doing chemo 22 years. We can speed up the 5FU."
And with that, she cranked it. The last bit of chemo practically jumped into my sister, who cheered every expedited drop. And dude... as soon as the bag was dry we were GONE.
I'm a speed-limit guy, but I have to admit I Pansri-ed the accelerator a little bit on the freeway home so we could get my sister back to her kitties pronto.
Soon after we got home, the Runs hit and it was brutal. Frightening even. My sister at one point considered going to the Emergency Room but we decided to call her doctors instead. They calmed her down a bit, and we decided to try to keep getting liquids and electrolytes into her and see what happened.
Then, for variety I guess, we switched from the Runs to total blockage. Cramps. Moaning in agony. It was hell. We settled on the idea of getting her into a warm tub of bubble bath which seemed to help the cramps. For a while. The Bad Stuff was coming in waves, then subsiding, then coming back again.
Saturday the waves came a little less frequently, but were no less vicious when they did come.
People who know about these things told us chemo was no fun. Now I am one of those people who knows about these things and so let me tell you: Seriously... chemo is as bad as they say it is. I am not kidding.
Sunday morning, the Boyfriend got back into SF and I zipped out to the airport to pick him up. It was a great relief to me to have reinforcements arrive.
Late morning, my sister asked me if I could pick up a copy of Lance Armstrong's It's Not About the Bike for her. I Googled up the closest Barnes & Noble (I had a B&N gift card in my wallet) and hopped on BART to head downtown.
Happy Accidents
The B&N I'd hunted up was closed. No, not just closed: non-existent. The building it was supposed to be in, 340 Pine Street, didn't look like it had EVER been anything LIKE a bookstore. So... I remapped myself to the B&N at Fisherman's Wharf, deciding I could walk there if I headed up Columbus Avenue.
If you know San Francisco, you will probably know what my walk was like. I know very little of San Francisco and so was delighted to discover that the route I had selected to Fisherman's Wharf turned out one of the most enjoyable walks I've had in a long time.
It took me through what appeared to be something like Little Italy... tons of tiny and oakey and well-worn restaurants with plenty of sidewalk seating. I must have skirted the Tenderloin as well, based on the Larry Flynt Hustler Club and other establishments of ill-repute I passed. Noodled past Chinatown. Browsed the famous City Lights bookstore. Dodged a few cable cars. Crossed "Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd" (Green Street).
And so forth and so on. Oh, and I happened to pass one of the 2 or 3 HSBC ATMs in the city. Totally by accident. And I happened to need the cash cuz my Chase account is getting low.
Finally, I ended up at the Barnes & Noble on the wharf, found the book and bought it with the gift card. Then, what the hell, it was such a pretty day, I decided to explore the Wharf and ended up wandering past the U.S.S. Pampanito, a WWII vintage submarine tourist attraction...
Speaking of which, I know the Fisherman's Wharf is totally touristified, but you know what? I love the way they dump all this stuff into a kind of waterfront carny bin and you just go and crawl inside of it and flail around for a while. I don't know why I didn't see the Bearded Lady or the Woman With Three Breasts and all of that, but I got the definite feeling they were in the mix somewhere, and I loved the possibility I might run across them.
It was that kind of day, after all.
The U.S.S. Pampanito Gift Shop had a T-Shirt of Rosie the Riveter, making a muscle and saying "We Can Do It!"
I walked right past it at first, then stopped dead in my tracks. After the weekend my sister had been having -- it has to be admitted she was having moments of despair -- I thought: "Dude. Perfect!"
So I hurried back and bought her a Rosie "We Can Do It!" the Riveter t-shirt.
I wanted the plain white one, the one with just Rosie and her slogan on it, but the only thing they had in my sister's size was pink and had "U.S.S. Pampanito" along the bottom of Rosie's picture, so I had to settle for that.
After I bought the t-shirt and walked out of the shop... I burst into tears. I am SUCH a sap.
And then later I regretted not buying one of the white, oversized shirts. I realized it would have been perfect as a kind of hospital nightshirt the next time she has to go check into Doctor Jail.
But then I felt bad for the little shirt I *did* buy her. Like maybe I hurt the little shirt's feelings. So I made it up to the little t-shirt by buying it a vanilla milkshake.
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