5.5 Thoughts, Random and Vain

1) Couldn't remember if I was supposed to have a blood test today, so I called.  Answer was "no" (as I suspected) because this really is the "fully recovered" part of the cycle...

2) ...which is why the next cycle starts on Wednesday: the cycles are timed to hit you with the chemo, ride through the nadir, wait for full recovery and then hit you again. Thanks, Science!

3) My neck looks really good.  Shaved it with a real razor (which, I now find, is against the rules).  The same nurse who said I didn't have to get a blood test chided me.  Only electric shaves (happily, with a little extra looking, I just found my Norelco's charging cord)

3b) They don't want me shaving with a blade because they don't like cuts, both as a place that blood can leak out (if platelets are low) or infection can get in (if white blood cells are low). I did have two tiny blood spots and wondered (and did not resolve) whether that blood were extra or not.  Was this a shave that in other times would have had no blood at all, but had a bit because I'm slow to clot?  I dunno, but won't risk it again.

4) But, yeah, my neck looks great. I'm now grateful that the biopsy scar was hidden by having it coincide with a natural crease about on level with my Adam's Apple.  Turns out even skinny guys have neck creases big enough to hide a biopsy scar. At the time it seemed kind of pointless to make the scar look good when the rest of my right neck looked distended and the creases looked irrelevant. But now with no discernable structure under my neck-skin, I'm glad you'd never know it was a scar if I didn't tell you.

5) When I seal my lips and suck the air out of my mouth and neck, pulling the skin tight against the underlying structures, nothing stands out, either literally or figuratively.  You can feel "functioning stuff"--a sinew here, stringy muscles there, but no organs save, the "non-cancer" lymph gland tucked up on the non-cancer side (left).