A Big Week Ahead

This is going to be an exciting week. "Exciting," in this case, meaning something like "falling on the spectrum from really horrible to really fun and interesting, and probably bouncing back and forth between the two or possibly both at the same time."

There's just not a good word for that in English. Here's the deal...

Tomorrow I go to work and then duck out for a couple of hours at lunch to get scanned. Now, no one expects the scan to actually reveal much of anything, but because I'm in the control group on this clinical trial I have to get scanned at least every two months (which is already more frequent than is standard) and then because I'm going to be in New Zealand when the two month time point actually hits, they're bringing me in early. Ah well, at least it's not an MRI.

The good news is that at my last scan I learned that I can actually opt out of the post-scan monitoring period, so I should be out the door half an hour earlier the usual. Of course, my last scan was a clown show of overlooked scheduling updates and misbehaving chest ports, so I'm trying to temper my expectations for how fast -- or slow -- this is going to go.

Then on Tuesday I get to go to work for the morning, and then again duck out at lunch -- this time for the conversation with my oncologist that will tell me what the scan found to be followed by the next round of infusions. Good news: no dex this time, so maybe I'll be able to sleep. Bad news: my infusion isn't scheduled to take place until like 3:30 in the afternoon, which means I'm going to be there much later than I like to be. It'll be a miracle if I'm home by 8:00. There must've been a rush on infusion slots, as normally I proceed from appointment to appointment, but this time there's a huge gap between when I'm done with the oncologist and when I get to start in on the infusion. Price I pay for going on a strange day, I guess. 

Then there's the joker in the deck: on Wednesday at 6:00 pm I get on a plane for Los Angeles. That's a three hour flight. Then there's a ninety minute layover, and then the fifteen hour flight to Sydney. So hours 24-44 post-chemotherapy I'll be spending on a plane. I've done it before, but not this deep into the series, so I'm a tiny bit worried. But with a bag full of sleeping pills, anti-nausea meds, and Imodium, how bad can it be? (Yeah, I agree. Pretty bad.)

But I do have one ray of hope: Qantas sent me an email last week asking how much I'd be willing to pay to move up to business class. Seems they try to sell all the seats they can, but then take bids for the rest. If your bid wins, you get the upgrade for what you offered. I'm too cheap to pay the going rate ($4K) for the upgrade, but I'd pay a portion of it. So we'll see. And on the offhand change the airline has left a seat or two to the gate folks' discretion, I'll probably see if any of them are feeling sympathetic. If nothing else, the cancer card is usually good enough to at least get on the plane with early boarding. 

And then I'll be in Sydney -- or, as Sib2 describes it, the San Diego of the South Pacific. The good news is I have three days in the city to both recover from chemo and do at least some sightseeing before Sib2 and his wife show up and we head to New Zealand. 

So, yeah, busy week ahead.