comedy of errors

sometimes i feel like my medical adventures could easily be a sitcom. over the past week, i had to receive daily injections from home, which led to some funny situations... including peter practicing on a lemon and our friend, paul, giving me a shot in a parked car. yesterday, though, surely topped both of those moments.

after having some trouble breathing (a side effect of the B in ABVD), i had to get a CT scan. for those of you who have had a CT scan, you can picture laying in the cylinder facing the ceiling, with the technicians in a separate room watching the exam through a glass window. i had an IV hooked up to my port to inject dye for the exam and my arms over my head. mid-exam i heard a pop, realized the IV disassembled from the port and felt the IV of dye spraying all over my chest and neck. in a panic that the dye was toxic and now all over me, i started waving my arms frantically, then knocking (banging) on the machine over my head in hopes of getting the attention of the girl behind the glass. i realized later that, although in different rooms, there was a microphone over my head and i could have easily called for help. i'm sure the view (and sound) of me slamming the (very expensive) imaging equipment was priceless. :)

to make matters worse, i was having an off day, and this additional chaos was enough to cause me to start crying... certainly not because i was upset about the dye catastrophe, but was just tired of being at the hospital, getting poked and prodded and not feeling like myself. the poor technician looked completely horrified that, not only had the test fallen apart and i punched her machine, but now thought she had made me cry. amidst tears i manage to utter that i wasn't upset about the dye but just 'tired of having cancer'. mature, i know. :) thankfully (for all of us!), i'm back to normal today... realizing that i have a million things to be thankful for and need to pull up my bootstraps because we've got a long way to go!

we got good news yesterday... three pieces, actually:
1) the CT scan of my lungs was negative
2) my white blood cell count is back up (following all of the awesome vaccine-giving from my family and friends!)
3) although we 'weren't supposed to peek' at yesterday's CT scan to check the cancer, the oncologist reported that the scan showed my tumors are shrinking... already! yes!! if that's not a reason to keep my chin up, i don't know what is. :)