And the beat goes on ...

So where have I been the past couple of days? Places I didn't want to be.

On Thursday, Joyce and I drove up to the Main Campus of University Hospitals (University Circle), where I underwent some minor surgery (local anesthetic only) to install in my upper chest, near my clavicle, what's called a "central venous catheter"--a device that will help me continue with my immunotherapy treatments. (Here's a link to what WebMD says about them.)

As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago I had a bad experience at the Akron Red Cross, where the nurses were simply unable to acquire an accommodating vein in my left arm, and by the time I went home, my left arm looked as if it had been used for a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. And because of that failure, I had to miss one of my immunotherapy sessions.

So ... my oncologist thought it would be prudent (!) to install this device, and yesterday (Friday) we drove to the Akron Red Cross again, where it took only about two hours (and zero hassles) to withdraw all my blood, remove some T-cells (the warrior cells), return my blood to me. Those T-cells are now in Atlanta being super-charged with Provenge, a drug that will increase their ability to deal with my metastatic prostate cancer (which now has moved into my bones).

don'tcha love the hat?

On Monday morning, Joyce and I will return to UH to have those cells re-infused--again, through the catheter that I now wear, a device, as I think of it, that kind of reminds me of Tony Stark's heart-like device--though, I confess, his is much cooler, sexier.

his

mine

So, all of this has occasioned some ... change ... in my rowdy (!) lifestyle. No more showers, not until I get the thing removed in a couple of weeks. So, I sit in the bathtub, and Joyce washes my back and hair (while I hold a towel around my neck). No one's given me a bath--or helped me with one--since I was a Wee One, so this is ... strange.

But I do sit there in that warm water and marvel at my good fortune in the summer of 1969 to stumble into a Kent State classroom for a graduate course, to see a young woman sitting there, a young woman I had no chance of attracting (and so I didn't even try to "connect").

And then, one day--one magic day--she spoke to me ... and now, more than 48 years later, she gets to help me take a bath.

But anyway I keep wondering what on earth unloved people do when Mortality arrives and says, Yo, you are going down for a while!