February 24-25

 

24 February 2021

     A Chinese man has been ordered by a court to pay his wife for housework done during their marriage.  I must tell my parents.

 

25 February 2021

     They took me in a day early to receive my chemotherapy, plus I was able to see Dr. Pophali.

     They cut my immunotherapy, obinutuzumab, from weekly to monthly.  Dr. Pophali says it tends to have a short response, plus my cancer mutates past treatments much faster than most.

     The WI DOC has approved the payment of my CAR T-cell therapy.  However, we cannot go ahead with it as long as I have cancer in my central nervous system.

     The plan is to continue to alternate methotrexate and cytarabine intrathecal chemotherapy treatment weekly plus the oral venetoclax daily.  We have about to the end of March to get the cancer cells out of the CNS.  If we cannot, we shift to palliative care.

     I have known for a while that this was my last or second to the last remission.  However, to hear Dr. Pophali talk about transitioning to palliative treatment, if we cannot get the MCL out of the CNS, has a gravitas, that me telling people that does not have.

     I have a certain anxiety about the next month that I do not believe I have had since I have been inflicted with this disease.

     I ran 5K this morning.

     I am almost done reading Nicole Fleetwood's Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration.  It brings back a lot of the challenges I have had in my twenty-two plus years behind bars.

     The Special Needs Committee meet to decide if I could continue to have an extra pillow, thicker mattress and the like due to my medical condition.  These are up for review annually.

     The nurse who had me sign the paperwork said to me that it doesn't matter what you did (as in criminally), we will try to make things as comfortable for you as we can. 

     She does not see me as a fellow human being and patient, but as an Other.  A prisoner.

     Her attempt to comfort me did anything but.

     Shortly after that, when I was in quarantine in the Health Services Unit, Officer Rice mentioned it was not bad having me do my entire quarantine in HSU -- most prisoners quarantine in the receiving unit -- because I was a good inmate.

     Again, not viewing me as a fellow human being who is suffering and dying, but as an Other, a prisoner.

     Fleetwood discussed the view of us behind bars as something other than.