It's Electrifyin'

Understatement: My trip to the hospital yesterday didn’t start out too well. When I arrived, a thunderstorm was just sliding in with ominous black clouds. An extremely loud crack sounded before I got out of my car, and I was getting very anxious about crossing the street before the storm hit. So there I was, about 200 feet from the hospital, when--CRACK--a bolt of lightning struck the top of the hospital! I jumped and screamed and ran as fast as possible since I was mere feet away from where it hit the building. I could swear I felt the electricity in the air. I wondered, is it just me? Have I become a cosmic bad-luck target? Will my picture be in the paper tomorrow?

Once I got inside the building, the fire alarm was BEEP-BEEP-BEEPing away, lights were flashing, “CODE RED, Ground Floor, Coffee shop” was being repeated over the P.A. system (I guess the old cappuccino machine caught fire!); all adding to the wild shaking of my hands and general hair-raising anxiety of the moment. I didn't know what else to do but go to my appointment. I had to go through now-closed fire doors to get to the elevators. But wait…you can’t take elevators during fire alarms!

So I had to take the stairs. FOUR flights. Do you have any idea how huge each flight of stairs is in a hospital? And with my disease I get winded very easily, so I was stopping at each flight gasping like an old geezer. I finally made it up to the fourth floor, where the doors were naturally locked, so I had to bang on them. Old people were looking at my crazed face through the little door window, probably thinking I was some kind of hospital terrorist who sets off fire alarms. Finally someone let me in, and I made it to my appointment, on time no less. With trembling hands, I got my blood pressure taken, and guess what it was? 106/64. The marvels of modern chemistry. They have me on blood pressure medicine because it protects kidneys, but it apparently works really well for my heart, too.

After such an inauspicious arrival, to say the least, I thought it might be a bad omen about my blood test results from last week. However, I got great news. Electrifying news! My blood test showed a tremendous improvement after only 2 rounds of chemo. [For those who want the medical info, my lambda light chains were once over 600; now they are 43, or “within normal limits.”]  I really didn’t know what to expect, but I was hoping for a 50% reduction in light chains. To get what is essentially a complete improvement is beyond belief. My sincerest thanks to all of you for your positive thoughts and prayers that are getting me through this madness, day by day.  : )