The obsessive compulsory planner and the tumbling numbers

I asked Ranjan to 'smile' to take his picture a little while ago and this is what I got! Anyway I thought many of you would want to see what Ranjan looks like after 4 chemos so here he is:) He is doing great and I just pray it continues like this. Scared to say more lest the Gods get jealous again. I am simply busy being grateful!

Now let us carry on. I wrote to a dear dear soul,and one who knows me almost better than I know myself that I had sort of settled into a pattern and she wrote back saying that as an obsessive compulsive planner and scheduler, I am happy to hear that you have found a rhythm, it must make the difficult tasks a little easier. She did hit the nail on its head. It has been two months and 7 days since we came to know about Ranjan's cancer. The previous 12 months had been running like a chicken without a head trying to figure out what was wrong and that was exhausting as there was no way even a planner like me could conjure any kind of pattern or structure. I guess the reason why I was so drained out was that for those 12 months I had to live out of the box.

But now since treatment has begun I have finally managed to conjure a kind of structure in my life though its is tenuous and somewhat erratic. My life moves in segments of 15 days. If day one is chemo this is how it goes: day 1 chemo each one has had different side effects so one has to be prepared for every thing possible (rambling, fever, nausea etc), day 2 to 5 are quieter and we follow the time table I have worked out (see pic) that starts from 6 am and ends at 9 pm. We follow this to the T as it seems to be working. My only role is to ensure that all elements and ingredients are available. Gives me a break as it takes me out of the house. This of course is followed from day 1 to 14 So I do not really mind if the staff 'forgets' to tell me something is missing. Day 6 is blood test and playing the tumbling number games that requires you to wait the whole day to get the results of the blood counts. These are often scary. In the last case the WBC which were at 19000 one day before chemo tumbled to 3800 yesterday evening. So you know that immunity is at its nadir. We have even had them at 1400! Day 7, 8, 9 are back to the time table. Day 11, 12 , 13 are the ones where the boosting injections have to be given and on day 14 we have the blood tests and the day long wait for the numbers. Day 15 is chemo again! And every day there is the constant vigil: touching the head to see if there is no fever, asking questions and more questions. And in between all this I have to fit in scraps of my old life.