Treatment Day One

First, apologies to the detail-oriented among you.  I tend not to care about details (except as they point one to the BIG picture).  I know that drives some of you bonkers.  Commiserate with my wife (Becky) if you'd like (she's queen of details and it has saved my vision-loving butt more times than I could count).  But one is who one is.  And I am the writer of this blog so you get what you get.
So don't expect tons of details.  I don't speak that language, certainly not very comfortably and certainly not for long periods.  As I used to say in college, 'My external world is a mere foil for my internal world'.

But I'll throw in a few if I can use them to make a point.  On the other hand don't forget that one of the components of this trial is shooting me up with a high dose of steroids so who knows exactly how this will turn out.  But I digress.

Here's the Day One Summary (with more detail than usual because of all that 'protesting too much' above).

We drove to San Diego the night before to be sure we could be on time Thursday a.m.  We checked into a Super 8 motel (not my preferred hotel at the beach would have come at a higher premium than was reasonable at present).

We arrived at 7:40 a.m. at the Moores Cancer Center the next morning but then went to the wrong waiting room (that was me managing the details) and waited 20 minutes, which was interesting because we hung out with a few people dealing with highly significant life threatening events.  One gets that a lot in a cancer center.  One also tends to be much less glib with all the wheelchairs and depression hanging about.

Anyway, the first of what must have been at least 50 vital sign checks occurred and the adventure began.

There were medications and pre-medications. And schedules to negotiate.  I ignored most of it since the staff seemed to know what they were doing and I was behind on my administrative chores (which one can manage remarkably well from a cancer center).

Some of the high points were:

• The clinical trial nurse prepared me for 'virtually inevitable' side effects of the main drug (Obinutuzimab, 'Gazyva' to its friends, but I'm not sure medications have friends) and other drugs.  None of which materialized to any great degree, not even my becoming terribly manic as would seem to be expected from the steroids (okay, so it's now 4:01 a.m. right after Day One, but that really isn't all that unusual for me, so lay off the manic diagnosis).  Basically, relative to side effects Day One (there are two more this week), it was a walk in the proverbial park
• God responding to prayers of good friends and family, having Becky there to attend to details, and the distraction of lots of administrative professional chores seem to help
• I've taken more medications in the past 5 days than I have in the preceding 15 years

Finished the day with smoothie from Robek's and yogurt at Yogurtland (the sort of thing one does in San Diego). Becky did a more normal dinner from Chipotle (note to Becky fans:  she is not a fan of spicy foods).