Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Day 748

I never blog at the exact moment something is happening but today is different.

First of all, I thought I'd be able to talk about my first training session - as an editor - on my uphill climb to being a narrator for the books for the blind. But the gal training me had to cancel so here I am writing about the next scheduled appointment of the day.

I sit in this room.

I sit here in this row of chairs.

Hooked up to this machine. Feet up, blanket covering me, blood pressure cuff on one arm, IV in the other.

Other than the nurse sitting at her computer and the folks, mostly staff members, walking by the room and glancing at with me with a look of pity and forced smiles on their faces, I'm alone. Yet it's not quiet. The noise of the machine pumping the multiple vials of medicine that was injected in the IV compete with the conversations of doctors and nurses and patients in the hallway.

I crossed one of those last lines I drew in the sand. I'm running out of options. I've crossed the steroid line, the chemotherapy line, the pre-filled syringe line, the measuring the medicine and then injecting myself line, the anti-malaria drug line.

Today I crossed the infusion line. I sit here with thousands of dollars entering my veins in the hope of gaining some relief in the rheumatoid arthritis battle. It's a battle I've been losing. But maybe, just maybe...