where exactly does our story start?

So, for the last five days, I've had a nagging fever. Tylenol has been able to keep it fairly tamed, but only if we obsessively watch the clock for each 6-hour dose. Adding to the fun, we lost a tree in that raucous storm Thursday night (or, rather, it decided to visit/festoon the neighboring condos) and our basement flooded. Between the steroids they give me with chemo and the fever that followed, it all seemed a little dreamlike to me. Because we've been told repeatedly to take any fever over 100.5 seriously, and mine spiked to 102 on Sat a.m., we spent hours at Urgent Care Saturday, only to be sent home without any advice and pretty much resigned ourselves to just getting through it.

Went in this morning for my 3rd round of Taxol, and after a couple of hours of testing my blood and asking me to breathe and stuff, some bright boy decided I was too sick to get chemo.

Weirdly, this cheered us up like crazy -- they're finally seeing/admitting that I'm really sick (remember this is after 5 days of constant fever, and a hematocrit of 25). We let them do a bunch more tests -- no real information gained, but at least it felt like they were trying -- and then started the first of two units of blood infusing, which should provide some relief from the anemia that has plagued me for many weeks. I've never had a blood transfusion before, but cripes, it takes forever! Ultimately we were at the hospital ten hours today; I think that's a record for a day that didn't include surgery at some point. Here's hoping the new blood does me some good and I feel up to dancing a little jig tomorrow, or at least am able to walk up a flight of stairs without gasping for breath. And I won't have Taxol this week at all - not until next Weds at the earliest, so my body may actually have a chance to recover a bit. I honestly don't know how we'd be getting through this without the great support of friends and family; in the midst of all the crises, we continue to feel very blessed.

Further updates: The tree has been laid down on the ground and sawed into thick slices (at ruinous expense); the basement is more-or-less dry, but the carpet are a complete write-off and the stench is fairly overwhelming to a chemo-sensitive nose, so Brie's taking the brunt of the clean-up effort. (Lucky Brie!)

Note that the post below this is new, as well. Due to technical difficulties too boring to recount here, I didn't get it posted when I intended to. With luck, I'll have both the energy and the technical good fortune to post here more often - but I certainly hope the posts are boring accounts of uneventful rounds of Taxol.