Docility

So, I have had a hard time fighting my natural fightyness when it comes to medical things, as was chronicled previously. I have an instinctive need to disobey doctors, to sniff at their outrageous demands and shrug when they issue dire warnings about... well, anything really. And yes, look at the fix I'm in for all that...

So, I'm learning a new spiritual thing: docility. (Yes, don't laugh.) Putting your life, your most basic needs, into the hands of someone else, a group of someones whom you know full well to be imperfect, flawed and more than capable of failure, is quite a little exercise in flinging yourself into the deep end of the spiritual life. I can't say I'm doing very well at it so far but I expect to be given loads more opportunities to practice.

Nevertheless, I am happy to report that I am, so far today, doing everything the doctors tell me to do. I have purchased everything they told me to purchase, and am taking all the drugs on time and in the correct doses.

This is really just an excuse to say thank you again to the people who donated so kindly to my cancer fund bleg. Today's excursion to the farmacia totaled €127 and was added to the cost of a cab ride back to Santa Marinella from the Gemelli, €100.

But we all got off quite easy today.

One of the many exciting side effects of the TIP regimen chemotherapy is killing off white blood cells, which I am given to understand are quite useful and important. To counteract this, they prescribed a one-shot injection of a drug called Neulasta that rapidly boosts your immune system by stimulating the bone marrow to produce white blood cells. A friend who was with me at the time we were getting the drug, himself a doctor, looked it up on the internet as we waited and saw that the one-off dose retails for $3000.00 in the US.

Yes, you read that right.

It was "covered"; everything else was over-the-counter and therefore on my own dime.

I am now going to bed.



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