When you're weary, Feeling small, When tears are in your eyes I will dry them all...

At first I though today's blog would be about the incredible Benefit that the officers and supervisors of the 2nd Dist ran for Eric...and it will be eventually. There is no way I could write an entry and not recognize everything that the men and women of the district did for my husband. But today became a day of unexpected things.

Eric had an appointment to remove the staples from his stomach, and a chemo consult up at Sloan.

So we made the long commute up for what I assumed would be a fairly quick visit with Dr. Kemeny, the oncologist, then Dr. D'Angelica to remove the staples. I figured today we would discuss various Chemo options, and find out when Eric would have to get his Mediport. But after Dr. Kemeny looked at Eric's blood results, and his current state of health, she decided Chemo would start today. She wanted to be as aggressive as possible and break this cancer's face (it's a Halladay reference). This is somewhat bittersweet. Because Eric was supposed to start Chemo on December 15th, we were planning on ...ummm...."banking" after the stitches were removed today. He was in no position to give specimens with stitches in. Well anyone who is familiar with chemo knows that it carries a very high chance of sterilization. So while I watched the the chemo that is going to help Eric beat the cancer go into his vein, a little piece of me crumbled inside. Because with that life saving treatment, out goes my chances of ever having Eric's child.

Eric will be receiving 3 different types of chemo. His pump will distribute FUDR chemo over the course of 2 weeks, and every 2 weeks he will have a systemic treatment of Eloxatin & CPT-11. The systemic treatment takes a little over 2.5 hours from start to finish. He is supposed to feel super nauseous. Our Rx plan only covers some of the pills Eric needs to control this. I guess I should be grateful some of it is covered, because the one Rx is $350 for 2 pills (it's 2 pills a day) and the other is $60 a pill (the insurance company only covered 13 of 25 pills). But hey its something, and its less that I have to spend out of pocket. He will need this EVERY chemo treatment, so it will add up. We are supposed to get systemic in Princeton, but Eric really feels good here. The people are just so nice. Just found out the Chemo Suite is open until 10p, so we might be able to go up here if he really wants to. Whatever he wants I am game.

Being in the city today made me think of Simon and Garfunkel...and "Bridge Over Troubled Waters". The words are powerful. And it made me also think of the benefit, and all the people that rallied around Eric. God it felt so good. I know it made him want to fight even more! He put the following post on facebook (sorry about the profanity)

Eric F Dial: just seeing all the support tonight makes me more determine to fight this shit even harder. Fuck that its gonna take more then @#*($%* ass cancer to beat me. Knowing thats my family is by my side my brothers and sister in blue, long time and new friends I just met tonight I will beat this no problem.

Thank you everyone for helping my husband fight this battle! I promise I will blog more about the benefit soon. Chemo is almost done. So I leave you with a picture and a song...