Yep, the first week of Larry’s chemotherapy is complete. It’s been a whirlwind, a rollercoaster, and exhausting, and I don’t recommend it for anyone. But it’s all in service of the fight that we will be winning, and I am frankly glad to get it started. No more quarter for these fucking cancer cells in Larry’s liver. No. More. Quarter. Get the fuck out.
The beginning of the week was when Larry had to go and sit in the treatment center for about 3 hours hooked up to an IV. He’s taking the Folfox treatment chemotherapy which is the standard method of treating colorectal cancer. We didn’t do Avastin this round, which will likely be back for Round 2. With this therapy regimen, Larry will go every 2 weeks.
Larry’s infusion pack
On day one of each cycle, he’ll get chemo in the center. Before he leaves, the staff then attaches an infusion pump that attaches to his port and he carries around with him, which keeps administering the chemo. He keeps the pump with him for the next 48 hours, and after that, can then go back in and have the pump removed. His regimen is then over for the next 1.5 weeks. All things considered, it is something he has to deal with for like a full 2 days, but after that, he can get back to just building his strength and living his life.
Obviously it doesn’t come without side effects. Neuropathy, nausea, and fatigue are the main ones we experienced, but I don’t think they were too overwhelmingly bad this round. I don’t know what we can expect as this continues, but I do know the key is to keep him eating, drinking, and exercising. So that’s what we’ll be doing, dammit.
To prepare for naps and relaxation on the couch, we got some help from Nicki to go to our storage unit and grab the chaise part of the sectional couch. We’d put it away as our apartment just really wasn’t big enough to have it present…but now it’s like, fuck it, we want to be comfortable!
Larry approves
After!
Before
Honestly, while the walking space was intruded upon, you can still get by. And it’s amazing to have a full couch again. You can truly sit a few people there now to watch TV! And I like having a chaise option to sit in. Sometimes you don’t want to chill in the chair, right?
On the weekend before chemo, on Saturday, July 14, Larry and I happily made it out to the Hollywood Bowl. We’d had to miss our first planned show around July 4 as we just weren’t feeling good enough to make it, but Larry’s made huge progress in feeling back to normal, at least as much as he can. It was a huge happiness to make it to the Bowl this time though, as the performers were Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins, and Michael McDonald. Yep, the Kings of Yacht Rock were all together, and the songs and performances were amazing. AMAZING! And that place was sold the fuck out, as obviously many are unashamed in their love of smooth pop rock!
Anyway, that concert was a nice thing to have right before heading into chemo. We got through the week of chemo with its ups and downs, but this isn’t really the place to go into all of that. Just know that Larry made it like a champ, and he will continue to fight to be free of this cancer. His youth will be an asset and we’re going to take advantage of that in this fight.
So on Friday night, Mila and Sveta dropped by and it was just a blast. We had dinner, talked, drank wine (well, Sveta and I did), watched TV (showed Sveta the first episode of Pose, which is one of our favorite recent shows as it’s glorious) and just overall had an amazingly fun evening.
On Saturday morning, Larry & I went for a brisk walk around Glendale, and Brand Blvd was shut down in advance of the annual car thing they do here. So here are some pics of that:
Looking north on Brand
Looking south on Brand Blvd
Looking down Central to DTLA
This weekend, we had yet another Hollywood Bowl concert in store! On Saturday, July 21, it was a screening of the movie Jaws accompanied by the Hollywood Bowl orchestra. As a reminder, Jaws is a fantastic movie, and even with it being 40+ years old, it still thrills and kicks ass. Seeing it with a giant crowd makes it even more fun, as it was clear there were some who weren’t ready for some of the scares. Chief Brody’s snap to attention when the shark nearly takes his arm off is still fantastic.
And now it’s today! We just came back from seeing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again! and gotta say…it WAS FANTASTIC. 
So much fun, they got some of the deeper ABBA cuts into the song (“Andante, Andante” was a particular delight), the new members of the cast portraying the younger versions were amazing, CHER was wonderful, and the story ended up being very poignant. The ending scene might have made me cry just a LOT. But then there were the upbeat numbers to “Waterloo”, “Dancing Queen”, and happily, “Super Trouper” that just made my heart swell with happiness. ABBA is the fucking best and will always be. And I’ve heard that Cher is going to release an album of ABBA covers and that just makes me so happy. Anyway, go see it, you’ll be very happy you did so.
Finally – I have to share that my Daily Double clue from my game way back in 2016 ENDED UP IN THE 2018 JEOPARDY DAILY CALENDAR!!! And it’s today! And I’m so stoked. I had seen my super bestie from the taping (Vicki) had posted a few weeks back in the J! group that her clue had showed up in the calendar. I had bought the 2017 calendar thinking maybe my clues would be in it, but I think that the production schedules of that never would sync up – so it makes sense our clues wouldn’t show up until 2018. So I was motivated to find a copy of the calendar (got it on eBay) and quickly flipped through it to find anything that looked familiar…and there it was on July 22! It’s not correct that it was a Final Jeopardy (I WISH), but still, I’m psyched that my question made it:
