GRATITUDES:
1. Summer melons
2. Summer clouds
3. That warm sleepy feeling after eating a big meal
4. My kids’ twisted sense of humor

I may have to take a nap. I was already feeling a bit groggy before lunch and now I can barely keep my eyes open. I don’t want to resort to caffeine because I have to ration the stash that I brought from home. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: The coffee here at the hospital is TERRIBLE. Unless I can con someone to run downstairs to the coffee kiosk and buy me some (not gonna happen), I can either drink the local bilge-water-in-a-cup or go without. Ergo, the nap.😄

There is a very strong rumor floating about that I’ll be going home on Friday. My blincyto infusion started yesterday afternoon and so far, I haven’t experienced any side effects other than a warm tingling in my hands, very similar to the feeling you get when chopping up spicy chiles without latex gloves. Thankfully I didn’t run a fever and have to be packed in ice like last time, that was horrible. I don’t seem to be experiencing any of the weird neurological symptoms that sometimes manifest while on this drug. There are a series of questions that my nurse asks me, along with a writing test, that all help to show if I’m getting a bit fuzzy. For the writing bit, I choose a sentence and then write it twice a day, morning and night, for the duration of my hospital stay. Needless to say, this gets a bit tedious. For this particular exercise, I’ve chosen a quote from Tolkien’s “Fellowship of the Ring”, which I had hoped wouldn’t get too tiresome, but now I’m thinking that I should have chosen something truly bizarre, like the first few lines from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”. That might totally freak the nurses out, but it would also show any neurological impairment quickly. “‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe…” Heeheeheehee…😄

Uh-oh. I think I spoke too soon. My face and eyes are beginning to feel hot and my cheeks are definitely flushed. Crap. Let’s hope it doesn’t get any worse.🙏🏻

False alarm. After one mid-afternoon vitals check, when my temperature read 98.7º (high for me), it’s back down to 97.8º, well within my normal range. I tend to run cool, which may partly explain why I feel chill quite a bit. Of course, I also can’t stand the heat, so go figure. I’m a delicate little flower!😄