T+7: I'm back at home, Richie isn't.

It's been a week since the transplant, and Richie is still in that "no fun" time where you get socked by the side-effects of the Melphalan. Richie ran a fever last night, which broke this morning. He is still feeling the sore throat from hell, however, and could only talk in short bursts until his throat got too painful and he had to rest his larynx. However, this is all to be expected in an SCT at this stage.

The ability to bi-locate would be a great supernatural talent to have. Unfortunately this is not AD&D, where if you have the right spell in your spellbook you can do it. I can only be one place at a time, and here is where I have to be.

As it is, being at City of Hope, I missed the delivery of Richie's keyboard. So one of the things keeping me here is waiting for FedEx Ground to deliver the damn thing. They are the abject WORST at keeping to a schedule. I remember when my refurbished ThinkPad 600e was being delivered from San Diego (San Diego! Just down the coast from me!) I waited a whole fucking day to get my package. A whole fucking day of having to be hypervigilant, lest FedEx play "ding dong ditch" with the package.

Anyway, the bastards have until 4pm. That's it. I'm leaving at that point, to go to Woodbury. I have to iron out some final things with the Business Office, and I also have a class to attend.

At least I was able to get a good night's sleep last night/this morning. That felt good.

T+5, T+6: now the tough part begins

As much as I had hoped Richie would be spared the worst of the side-effects of a Stem Cell Transplant, he's getting hammered right now. WBC is down to 0.2. He's down platelets and Hemoglobin, so he's going to be getting a pint of blood. Another thing Richie is getting today is more Neupogen. This time it's not being injected, but infused with the rest of the stuff he's getting through the Hickman. Hopefully he won't get too much bone pain but he had a little with the Neupogen when he was self-administering it leading up to and during the stem cell collection.

He also got nailed with some really sad news: a person we haven't been extremely close to, but with whom we have been "good acquaintances" for years, is dying of liver failure after years of hard drinking and hard living. He was in County+USC for a while but is being discharged to die at home under Hospice care. It's way too much like how we lost the drummer of Richie's old band The Beatniks.

Brian O'Laughlin was a sweet guy who was a great drummer...you would have to be to be able to play the kind of complex drum parts Richie wrote. The poppy feel of Richie Hass and the Beatniks was deceiving: like a lot of really good pop, it was way harder to play and way more complex than it would initially "read" to your ear. Brian was also a stone-cold geek...he was online before I was, with a Commodore 64 and a 300bps modem...you could see words coming in when using one of those, it was amazing. Slow as shit, but impressive back when not much existed outside of business.

Anyway, Brian slipped away from us in a matter of a week...he had been hospitalized for jaundice as a consequence of Cirrhosis and it became clear he wasn't going to live very much longer after that. It hit him about a month after he finally started getting serious about cleaning up. He was going to AA meetings and had kept sober. Then this happened. Damn...that's got to be the worst addiction of all: alcohol. I am not for prohibition of any substance, but I think people have their priorities 100% screwed up wrt substance addiction. You can kick cocaine, you can kick crank, you can kick opiates, but damn, man...the booze is really freaking rough. Keith Richards still drinks like a fish even after getting off of the other stuff he was poly-addicted to. He's also outliving everyone's expectations, go figure.

Richie has luckily escaped the traps of addiction which have snared so many musicians through the decades. His core healthiness aside from the multiple myeloma has served him well through most of this process. However, this is a serious, severe process. In the past 20 years, City of Hope has not lost a single patient through the SCT process, but many feel like crap for a long time during the process. I was hoping it wouldn't be the case, but it may very well be that this is the tough time for him. And I'm going to have to bail today so that I can get some stuff done tomorrow and go to school tomorrow night, Tuesday and Thursday. I feel badly I can't stay with him longer, but it's impossible. I need to be back for a while. I hope he doesn't resent me for leaving me when he's needed me the most. Those of you who know where he is and know how to contact him...please do. He needs all our support right now.

Yesterday: second dose of Melphalan. Today: cells returned

I failed to update yesterday because by the time I got home from Duarte it was 9:20pm and I was tired.

I visited Richie yesterday, and while the Melphalan was no picnic, he seemed to be in good spirits and well enough to take a little stroll through the wing of the hospital. Yes, he is allowed to get out of his room and walk around, and this is because of the unique design of Helford Clinical Research Hospital.

Normally sterile rooms are kept sterile one room at a time. The sterile room is approached from a two-door vestibule which serves as an "airlock." The patient is confined to that one room for all of their treatment. When Helford was constructed, it was designed from the ground up to have two floors with two sterile wings each. Each wing is entered from a double-door vestibule. The air beyond the second door is filtered, and anti-microbial surfaces are used wherever possible.

While in the patient room, the visitor needs to "wash up, glove up, and mask up" in order to provide an added measure of safety while the patient's immune system rebuilds. While outside the room, but within the sterile wing, the patient "gloves up and masks up" to protect themselves. Visitors and nurses do not need to wear gloves and masks outside the room.

Richie is getting the stem cells today. Hopefully all is going well. I called him this morning and he was still waking up. Neither of us are good in the morning, and I'm sure the chemo doesn't help. I will update when I find out how he's doing.

Dose 1, Melphalan

Well, I'm at Hass Manor instead of CoH because last night I got almost no sleep. A random guy who identified himself as being from Children's Protective Services tried to gain access to the building through the security gate. I sensed an attempt by someone misrepresenting himself to "socially-engineer" his way into the building. I did not let him in, and called 911 asking if there was a legitimate Law Enforcement officer attempting to gain access to the building. They said "no." My spider-sense didn't fail me. However, I was so shaken up by the incident I couldn't sleep very well. Today I am totally dragging ass. Bleah. No 3 hour rides to and from Duarte for me today. I'm going to take a nap later and then see how I am later. I'm going to get Richie a headphone amp at Guitar Center.

Richie is actually quite happy to talk on the phone. Verizon says our landline can make unlimited calls all over the US with the package we have. I'm gonna hold them to it, because Duarte is a toll call. Richie got the Melphalan this morning and he's actually not doing too badly with it. They are taking a lot of precautions to make sure he doesn't get the mouth ulcerations, the nausea and vomiting, and the diarrhea. He was getting ready to eat lunch when I called...it hasn't affected his appetite yet either.

Our good friend Tom Reed answered the call for the keyboard. He's bought one on eBay and it should get here soon. Thanks, dude.

Hopefully I will see Richie tomorrow. I hope that this asshole doesn't try to gain access to the apartment building again. I think I will sleep in clothes tonight in case I have to deal with this guy directly.

Live from City of Hope...check-in day

Here's what's going to be happening. Richie is checking in today, and will be "primed" with a saline IV. Tomorrow and the next day he gets high-dose Melphalan which will basically kill the bone marrow. Then on Monday he starts getting his stem cells back. No radiation needed for him, apparently.

Dr. Forman said he could bring his guitar and anything else he wanted, so he has his purple Strat, with no amp, and a practice pad and sticks. It would be a good thing if we could find a headphone amp for him...it doesn't have to be a Scholtz Rockman which is apparently made of unobtainium and very expensive. It can be something cheesy and Chinese. It's just so he can hear himself when he plays.

I think he would also like a keyboard. Probably something that can be battery powered would be best because IT is very picky about what it allows to be plugged in in Helford Clinical Research hospital. It's understandable...shorts and stuff. However, Richie is very picky on his end. So a bitty Casiotone wouldn't get it. Something that's got full-size keys and a few octaves is what would be best. The Casio he passed on to Jim Smith is battery powered and has full-size keys...61 of them. He'd prefer 88, but people in Hell want ice water.

Of course, if he's feeling like crud from the Melphalan (very likely, it's old-school chemo that is very harsh) he'll probably want to just crash for a while.

Oh yeah, funny movies on DVD would probably be helpful.

I will be giving out his direct number on a need-to-know basis. Anyone else can call the landline or my mobile and I will pass messages to him.

Will update tomorrow if not later today.