Husband's log - February 6th, 2026

 Today no camp activities were planned for Ang and I except a field trip to the hospital for chemotherapy round two.  Having just experienced our first chemotherapy yesterday, we were well-equipped for this five hour excursion.  We packed books, our laptop, warm socks, sweaters, and a Ziploc lunch baggie from the restaurant.  By 8:40 AM we were off to the Hospital with the rest of Group 3.

Hearing how nobody really had side effects except fatigue after the first round of chemo, I was beginning to think chemotherapy isn't as bad as people make it out to be, at least for MS patients.  Considering how much the patients were enjoying their tipsy side effect the day before, maybe it could be remarketed as a fun new alcohol-free social activity drug.  Gen Z would love that shit.  However those thoughts of chemo being a fun new party drug were soon thwarted.

Today in the chemotherapy room, the patients were more tired than their previous excursion yesterday.  Looking around I observed them all laying down in the medical-grade La-Z-boys either scrolling their phone or sleeping through the procedure.  At one point the medical staff took a few pictures of Ang and I for clinic purposes, but didn't take pictures of the other patients.  If we spoke Spanish we'd probably know what they're for, but I choose to believe they want us to be the sexy young faces of HSCT.  One cool fact we learned about this therapy is the chemojuice has to be paired with thick electrolytic beverages to combat dehydration while it happens.  They come in different flavours such as orange, strawberry, fruit punch, and grape.  Each patient is required to drink 1.5 litres of that stuff during each 5 hour therapy session.  I was low key hoping the caregivers like myself would be offered some too as I love Gatorade, but Ang tells me it tasted bad so I'm ok with being excluded from electrolyte club.  She has dubbed the strawberry electrolytic beverage "red shit", so I'll be calling it that going forward.

After several laptop Pokemon battles and a couple crosswords, the chemotherapy session was complete and we boarded the van for the trip home.  It's not a long trip, but riding this van is the closest we can get to a third-world Disneyland ride.  The ride involves lots of repetitive sudden stops as Puebla has heavy traffic and the van is manual transmission.  At each "kerchunk" of the transmission, all passengers are rocked back and forth like metalheads at a Metallica concert.  As I looked to my wife after a few kerchunks, I saw she was holding a small black garbage bag in front of her.  Her mouth agape, she began taking slow deep breaths.  as fear entered my mind, squished beside her on the van seat, I looked away awkwardly and stared at a meaningless focal point as if riding up a full elevator with a bunch of strangers.  At that moment, I heard a sea of red shit expel from my wife.  

I only know its contents because I mistakenly looked at the black bag afterwards.  Through the semi-transparent black bag was what appeared to be red, chunky vegetable soup.  As Ang felt more red shit making its great escape, she handed me the bagful of vegetable soup, which I gripped closed tightly like a large doggie poo bag as I knew one whiff would trigger the same outcome for me.  As the van continued to kerchunk, the vegetable soup swung like a trashy pendulum in front of me.  Looking away from the bag as best I could, thoughts raced in my head of garbage bag brand names, hoping to god this was a home grown garbage bag like Kirkland instead of some shitty Chinese knock-off brand.  After the great diaspora of red shit, other passengers in the van were concerned.  Jolanda, a Swiss mother of three, even offered to hold the vegetable soup baggie for us.  This traumatic event showed us the continued kindness of our peers on this HSCT journey, and confirmed Ang won't be doing crazy rides if we ever go to Disneyland.  Once we got back to the clinic, we disposed of our vegetable soup and chilled for the rest of the night.