What Next?

You would think that Ian would have had his fill of medical attention in the last few weeks, but apparently not. This morning he had a root canal. We're thinking that when he passed out during the leukapheresis, he must have hit his front tooth (# 9 he says), which caused swelling and killed the root. (That's how I understand it anyway. I did pretty well with all of the medical stuff, but we don't talk that much about dental things in nursing school.) Anyway, Ian noticed that something was wrong a few days ago, when he saw that his tooth was turning brown. During his root canal they also put a bleach solution in the tooth to make it go white again. The good news is that it's not brown anymore. Unfortunately its not white either, it's pink. Hopefully the bleach just takes a few days to work fully.

Ian survived the root canal, though he said it did hurt at times. I didn't ask him if it was better or worse than the bone marrow biopsy. He did say something about how now he doesn't want to be a dentist anymore, if they hurt people that much. Of course he'll get over that really fast when he gets accepted. Just to make him feel better, I said that I have no problems with putting catheters in, even though I hope that I never need one myself. I don't think that really made him feel better though.

Aside from the root canal things are going well. We found out that we have been approved to get free Gleevec for the next year, and that the first shipment will get here on Tuesday. Ian will be very glad. This past week he has been taking Tasigna, a sort of cousin of Gleevec, since its a new drug and they give out samples. He is not a fan of the Tasigna. The main reason is that he has to take two pills twice a day and he can't have anything to eat 2 hours before or 1 hour after taking the pills. With the Gleevec he just has one pill in the morning with no restrictions. He is supposed to take it with water and some food, which isn't really a problem most of the time. With fast Sunday coming up he has been asking about what happens if he doesn't eat when he takes it. I guess he really wants to fast, though he may be coming around. Yesterday he told me that bacon and eggs would probably be just right to take with the Gleevec on Sunday. So aside from the Tasigna, we've kind of returned to normal life. This past week Ian was doing training with Turf Plus, and they sprayed today. Ian says he's not 100% yet, but since he can do everything he wants to, we have no complaints. I've just been doing school and work as well.

Its easy to forget that Ian has leukemia, especially since he is so normal, but we do have little reminders every now and then. Today for school I had a conference that I had to go to. One of the speakers was Paul Cardall, a local musician, blogger, and author. He was born with basically half a heart and wasn't expected to live for more than a few days, but ended up living 36 years with his defective heart, before getting a heart transplant a year and a half ago. Apparently by that time, his heart was bad enough that he was going to die if he didn't get a transplant, but the doctors weren't sure if he would survive the surgery anyway. He talked about how he and his wife had arranged everything in case he didn't make it and the conversations they had had even to the point of what kind of man she should marry. His presentation was emotional for everyone, but I think it was especially so for me, since thoughts like that have presented themselves to both of us. Fortunately, thoughts is all they were, and then only briefly, and they should stay that way for a long time. Even though the little reminders we have about the fragility of life can be painful, hopefully we can live better, more full lives because of them.