I'll start way back, in mid-June. I have been slowly catching up on all of the non-tumor related medical care that I have been putting off to deal with, well, tumor-related medical care. It's been fairly standard stuff, but I do have to say I was both surprised and mostly horrified by the Zoom colonoscopy my gastro set up. Mainly, I have been finishing up some dental work on a couple of teeth. Getting near the end - my endodontist endodonted; I healed from that; my dentist took impressions (or at least that's the impression I get), and sent away for two crowns to be done. Late June was the final visit, where new crowns meet teeth who are in need of crowns, and everyone lives happily ever after. The appointment was for Thursday, June 25th. I remember it like it was a week and a half ago.
The afternoon before the appointment, I got a call from the sheepish-sounding office manager.
"Mr. Smith, I am calling about your appointment tomorrow."
"Yes, thanks for calling to remind me. I will be there with bells on. I put the bells on the teeth that need the crowns so the dentist could remember. Though I imagine she knows which teeth she will be working on."
"About that."
"She doesn't?"
"No. I mean yes, she does. But the thing is, your crowns have not arrived."
"I thought my coronation was confirmed for tomorrow." [I really thought that would get a laugh. It did not.]
"Well, the lab sent your crowns, but it seems like UPS may have lost them."
"Wait, I know this one. Likely they told you they can't find them. They won't say they lost them, but they said something like 'they consider them lost'."
"That's it. Almost word for word."
"So, we have to redo all the impressions (that's the impression I get), and send them back to the lab, right?"
"Yes. Unfortunately."
"The thing you don't know yet is that we will do this, make new crowns, put them in, and THEN the originals will show up, after having sat in a Killeen warehouse for a month."
"Probably."
"So, can I hang onto the bonus, lost crowns? Especially the gold one?"
It was at this point David decided he had imparted what he needed to and promised to call to reschedule. Which he hasn't, but my beef is not with David.
It's with UPS. What the hell? I have never had any significant issues with the USPS or with FedEx, but UPS seems to be run by idiots. Did I miss something, like the president bought it ("TrUmPS")?
FedEx has been flawless. They can deliver my monthly poison to my front door in 4 1/2 hours. It takes almost as much time going through the monthly pharmacy Q&A as it does to get the chemo to my house.
A few days before chemo starts, the pharmacy calls me to confirm and schedule. The nice woman (likely a different one each time), asks me the same questions.
Confirms name, DOB, address. Confirms Jill as my emergency contact and that they can call her if they need to talk to someone. Jill is a lovely person to talk to, but I'm never quite sure why the prescribing pharmacy needs my next of kin. But whatever.
"We are sending you 20 100-mg pills of Temodar (aka the Chemo Teller), correct?"
"Yes you are."
"Mr. Smith, your co-pay for this is $0. This is just an estimate, and know that it might change when we run it through your insurance."
Side note: the second time I had this call (I've done seven now), I went the smart-ass route. "Tell me about it. You quoted me that price last time, and the bastards tripled it." This was both uncalled for, and counter-productive, as it moved her into a different, longer script about drug pricing. I try to amuse people, but often they just don't want to be amused.
So, round seven: "Understood."
"You don't have any medication left over do you?"
"No."
"Did your doctor ask you to skip any doses?"
"No."
"Did your doctor ask you to hold any of it?"
"Um, no. [thought-bubble] - "isn't that the same question?]
"Did you skip any doses?"
"No. Just that one. But to be fair I didn't want to take it."
Side note #2 - no, I did not. I have already gauged her level of interest in being amused (and determined it to be "very very low"), and this entire line of questioning makes me believe there is some side black market for chemo drugs. They can ask me the same question eight ways every month, and I will swallow my own smart-assery.
But once we get through the questions, she activates FedEx, and the chemo drugs arrive forthwith. Depending on the pharmacy's mood, they show up either with or without ice in the package. I'm not supposed to chill them, so not sure why that changes month to month. But again, whatever. It also has these scary warnings all over the packaging about the toxicity of the contents. Yes, that's the point. By the way, I've saved all of that and will be wrapping Xmas presents in "Bio Hazard" wrapping this year. You are all welcome. The packaging clearly tells me, in no uncertain terms, and in four languages, not to flush the contents. Well, that's a question they never asked. "Did you flush any of the chemo drugs you have been hoarding down the toilet, which eventually will find its way into the ocean, thus endangering the fish population and possibly the future of humanity?" "No."
Fast forward a bit, perhaps three days.
This came in the mail:
I sold a handful of books (on-line pdf copies), and got a $25 check. I immediately quit my day job.
No, but I did get an inquiry from a publisher. So I am well on my way to being a famous author. And by inquiry, I mean that this dude sent me a request to be his LinkedIn BFF. These days, the vast majority of LinkedIn requests are from people trying to sell me something, so I knew better. But I actually set up a call with him. We chatted, and his publishing company could help with design, editorial, printing and marketing of Corner Pieces. Digging into the numbers he quoted, they would print 2,000 - 3,000 copies and help with marketing. If we sold them at $15-$20 each, I'd get about $4 a book. And I'd only have to put $25,000 of my own money into this. But, if somehow we were able to sell out all 3,000 copies, I could make almost half of that investment back. That is a tremendous deal. I'm fine with my $25 check.
Four days and six hours later, I started bonus round 7 of chemo. Finished it in five days (though I did skip one, hold onto the drugs, and flush half of them. I don't eat fish, so no worries. Recovery was a tiny bit harder, but I did recover. Only five more rounds to go, not factoring all the times I plan to skip.
Now, jump ahead a week. Last Wednesday. Jill saw a post about a heeler dog who needed a home. His human was going into assisted living. We had the best heeler ever (Blossom), and thought we'd take a chance. This is Zack.
Zack stayed with us Thursday through today. He is a very good dog. The problem is the very bad cats. We have enough animal drama that we eventually decided that adding even a very good dog was potential chaos. The good news is that on the way to take Zack back to his foster family, Jill got a message asking her to re-route him to another family who is adopting him. So, we will miss Zack, but likely will hold off on adding any new mammals till we fix the current ones.
And then there was the Banner / Execrable July 4th. Yesterday, feeling mostly better after bonus round 7, I went out for a bike ride on the 4th of July. Started early-ish, but did 26 miles, so still finished when it was in the 90's. Had a bit of a shaky start. Headed down Jollyville and was going to turn left on Duval. [don't worry if you don't know Austin streets. Just know that Jollyville around Duval was where I had my Honda Fit encounter, almost exactly two years ago. ] I crossed to the turning lane only after confirming there was no cars coming. The problem was that it was a very long light, longer than I ever remembered. Just as it was about to finally turn, I hear the squealing of very close tires, and turn to see a massive black pickup screeching to a halt behind me. It was a little unnerving, but didn't quite feel like my annual near-death experience. Though as I turned, a cyclist turning onto Jollyville called out, "Man, he almost hit you." So maybe that was my 2020 near-death experience. Sadly, the wall poster I made of "Years Without a Near Death Experience" goes back down to "0". And I had just changed it to 1!
Continuing on the ride, I head toward this neighborhood off Balcones Woods that has a nice 5-mile loop. As I am cruising through the neighborhood, a lot of the residents were sitting in chairs on their lawns. About halfway through the loop I figured out why, as I ended up as part of the Balcones Woods Neighborhood Association July 4th parade. It was two golf carts, a tractor pulling a flat-bed that had two little blond kids and a golden retriever, two teenagers on ATV's and me. I parade waved through the neighborhood and continued on my route.
I then popped on this paved trail that took me from Balcones District Park to Walnut Creek Park. All the parks are closed now because of CoVid, so there were no humans in either. There was this guy, though.
He walked right over, stood there for an unnerving amount of time, and then actually kept inching closer. I took off when it was clear he was about to climb up on the bike. The parks have only been closed a couple of days. I can't imagine the lack of humans leaving their food and garbage everywhere causes the squirrel population to starve in 72 hours. I wonder if the squirrels mark July 4th on their little squirrel calendars as a day to find and hoard discarded fried chicken, spoiled potato salad, and other delicacies for the long, hot summer.
Squirrel!
