I went with Susan to her vision therapy appointment this morning, where her therapist (Chris) said she’s been making decent progress. We’re hoping she makes continued improvement over time. One exercise Susan’s done the past few sessions is playing solitaire since it helps her scan the visual field and incorporates memory.
Today’s clinic visit at UCLA was a blood-dud. Susan had a pre-chemo blood draw at noon and amazingly, the phlebotomist found a vein in her arm on the first try. We went back to the clinic at 2pm for her scheduled chemo; but the nurse had trouble locating a vein. She used heat and a tourniquet and poked her once, but the vein didn’t hold up. Then she summoned the staff sharpshooter who is the expert for “hard sticks” like Susan. With her right side unavailable due to risk of infection after having a lymph node removed during her mastectomy, Susan’s left arm has been stuck dozens and dozens of times, leaving her veins quite unusable, as we discovered today. After more heat, tourniquet, and massage, Nikki the sharpshooter couldn’t identify any vein that might be useful for the chemo infusion. With Susan’s arm bulging and purplish from the tourniquet, Nikki said there was just no reasonable target and didn’t want to stick her a bunch of times. After consulting Dr Nghiemphu, she’ll be scheduled for a minor surgery to implant a central line with a port located under the skin that will be used for blood draws and infusions. It will be good to have since it will solve the whole hard stick issue, and will be better to have it implanted before she starts receiving Avastin since the drug can cause bleeding and complicate a surgery. She’ll need to wait about 10 days after the procedure to have her first chemo – we’ll pray there’s no tumor progression in the meantime.
We talked today about Susan’s lingering discouragement since her brain swelling episode began last month. After a season of overall progress, she’s realized she may not get any better than she is right now. She wants to see better, she wants to be stronger, she’d love to return to work – she just wants to get back to normal. But since the future is uncertain, it’s been weighing on her. I encouraged her that she can regain her momentum. She agreed small steps each day or weekly will be great progress. She is still resolved to trying her best. I’m glad to see her focused on being a mom, getting up early to help get the boys ready for school, and doing what she can to keep the household running smoothly.
We had time for lunch at Junior’s Deli on Westwood Blvd as we’ve done several times over the past six months. It’s one of the great LA eateries, a cultural landmark, and was the site of a memorable midnight dinner for Susan and me after seeing Les Miserables at the Shubert in Century City on Good Friday in 1989, about six months before Lexie was born. Today we were working on our respective salad and clam chowder when I looked to my left just as Mel Brooks came in the room with a friend. In that moment I had trouble with two images clashing in my mind, trying to reconcile the gibberish-speaking Indian chief in Blazing Saddles with the elderly man walking toward our table. He’s an energetic young 80s who knows the staff by name, orders without a menu, then gets dessert first and sets it aside. We enjoyed hearing his familiar, hoarse voice with the Brooklyn accent and hearty laugh. I was going to write "we had lunch today with Mel Brooks," but then I remembered name dropping is very pretentious. Arnold Schwarzenegger told me that.
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