....where I took on-board a liter of Bone Juice.
Doing in Old Tumors:
X-radiation breaks it up. 'orrible two weeks, Vampires sample your blood, which is made up of all kinds of different cells: Red,White, and a few in between. And the non-cells, to. You may not know it but you've got plasmas and 'Plasma Juice' roaming around inside you that serve as carriers for all sorts of chemicals. Some plasma-stuff only picks up certain proteins and carries it to certain places. Sometimes they pick up TUMOR STUFF. Sometimes that's good an' sometimes it's not. The Vampires tell you how things are doing.
Right now, they say I'm doing rather well. Except that the main damage -- creating a large, self-reproducing tumor has already happened.
X-rays have killed off most oft those Bad Carriers, leaving lotsa holes in my bones, which the surviving Tumor Stuff is trying to fill up. So they plug a jug of Anti-Tumor Stuff into my arm and let it go to town. They did the same last week. And the week before that. The Bad Carriers have mostly died off... they can't live very long without being attached to some kind of Tumor Stuff. There's good Tumor Stuff as well as bad. The X-rays took care of killing off most of the Bad Carriers and after this amount of time, there simply isn't enough of them left to cause me much trouble. The Vampires know. Their chemical tests are a means of keeping score. Which is in my favor for the moment.
Every week the chemists look at the charts from the Vampires and work out the correct balance of newt eyes and frog's toes and mix it up with Sterile Water and lock me in a room with a group of other people having Cancer for their middle name and we sit there and chat about our grand-kids and the elections and why the Sky is Blu whilst our specially formulated dose of Anti Bad Carrier Juice drips into us, giving it that fabled Stiff Upper Lip that's supposed to reserved for the Brits but which gets a good run for its money from Hispanics and Hawaiians and Navajos and every other kind & shape of Human Beings you can think of in this curious experiment called America.
When the bottle runs dry a beeper goes off and they give the rest of a brave little smile and go back to Life, as we Know It and someone else takes their place. Paul was there today. He's a real hoot; I steal a lot of material from Paul, like the one about a Baptist minister and a Mormon Bishop and a Jewish rabbi walk into a gay bar and start talking about their kids. The Baptist minister says, "Thelma and I have been married 34 years now and we've got six grand- children,"and the Mormon Bishop says, "That's nothing. "Me an my Judy have got eight grand-children," and the Rabbi knocks back his drink, looks at his watch and says, "Sorry fellas but I think I'm in the wrong joke."
You can't grow new bone after the cancer has chewed it up but you strengthen the matrix that is left. The stuff in the IV is designed to strengthen the remaining bone; to provide a stronger foundation. Each week the formula changes bit by bit, using data from the Vampires to adjust the recipe. The Boss Chemist is an attractive physician in her mid-40's who looks over my paper work and nods. "Doing pretty good there, aren't we," before stabbing me in the arm, a stab that didn't hurt at all, thanks to that simple observation. Hell YES I'm doing pretty good there!.
Joking aside, the signs are positive. I'm weak as kitten but I'm holding my own against this thing. I'm not beating it but at least for now, it's not making any progress against me.
Little by little.
-Bob Hoover