The Electron Pencil

… Because thinking is one of the very few things I can do right now without causing myself pain, discomfort, or throat mayhem.

When I look at what’s left of my beard, I want to cry.

Hydrocodone is my friend.

So is prochlorperazine (generic for Compazine).

Dr. Wu started me on the steroid dexamethasone (generic for Decadron) last week. The first day I did it, it felt as if my eartips and feet were on fire.

All my dreams have to do with food now. I’m either eating at a restaurant with friends or downing a bag, bowl, or potful of something.

●

Chemoradiation therapy is a shoot-the-moon proposition: The doctors are wagering the cancer would have killed me anyway so they’re slowly poisoning me to the brink of death in the hope that My Olive Pit™ and its little friends will die first.

The radiation has created a weird set of stiletto sideburn on me, sharp-edged in a way I and my trusty razor could never have achieved otherwise.

I’m watching the first three seasons of Arrested Development again. The damned thing’s more than a decade old and it’s still a scream.

The Loved One is a saint.

I’ve been playing dozens of hands of solitaire. Last evening, for the first time, I won. I was shocked by how much it meant to me.

I’ve also been playing countless games of chess on my computer. I’m the champion, I’ll modestly admit. Of course, I have the computer set pretty dumb. Nevertheless, it’s extremely gratifying to know even in my decrepit state I can beat the equivalent of a six-year-old child.

Will Murphy posted a picture of a jar of Skippy peanut butter on Facebook the other day. I gazed at it lovingly for long minutes until I started feeling…, well, uncomfortable about the whole thing.

Speaking of Facebook, I’ve spent precious few moments on it the last week and a half, mainly because the obsessive anti-Hillary people have driven me off it — and I’m by no means any kind of a big Hillary fan.

Speaking of politics, I’ve long wanted to believe the wingnuts of the Republican party are a temporal phenomenon. We do need conservative Republicans — after all, would you like to live in a land ruled solely by the likes of gals and guys who think like me? I mean, somebody’s gotta watch the bank balance and make sure life isn’t just a whirl of bread, circuses, legal marijuana, pizza every morning, noon and night, and long afternoon naps. Sadly, though, the party is now thoroughly owned by its wingnutty side and Donald Trump is the logical result. To all my smart, reasonable Republican friends — and don’t get me wrong, there are still a few — leave the party and start something new. Try reading Sheila Kennedy’s blog as a first step. An IUPUI law and public policy professor, she remains loyal to the old virtues of the Republican party. Although for the life of me, I can’t figure out how she can remain in any way affiliated with the likes of the Pan troglodytes who make up her gang now.

The real cancer profiteers are the people who make Kleenex.

My beloved Cubs start playing baseball games in earnest Monday, April 4th, in Anaheim. I’ve not been so pumped up by them since that fateful year of 1969 and I have no doubt they’ll fulfill my hopes and dreams this year.

The only problem is, what’ll be my raison d’être once they win their first World Series since 1908? I fear I’ll wake up the next morning still having to make a living and maintain this ricketty bag of bones and wonder why.

That, to borrow a signature phrase from the incomparable Sidney T. Feldman, is the eternal fucking question.

▲

I’m alive, kids. That’s all you’re gonna get out of me right now.

▲

Today marks the midway point in the treatment regimen to obliterate My Olive Pit™.

In fact, it can be said I’m even further advanced than that. As I type this, I’m finishing up my second chemotherapy session, leaving only one to go in exactly two weeks.

Wahoo!

●

I get the feeling from everyone involved that this combo chemotherapy and radiation is doing what it’s supposed to do. Doctors, nurses, and other knowledgable sources respond with optimism when I grill them about my progress. The only naysayer is Dr. Wu, although Dr. Allerton has whispered to me that Wu is a notorious party pooper. Wu, sez A., is loathe to snow patients without iron-clad evidence. In other words, he’ll only be happy come June when my PET scan reveals no trace of cancer left in me.

Cool.

And, really, I shouldn’t characterize Wu as a naysayer. He simply refuses to tell me everything’s going to be just ducky, Donald Trump’s going fall off the face of the Earth, and the Cubs are going to win the 2016 World Series.

Damn, that trifecta‘s superior to anything I’ve ever seen at Arlington Int’l.

Oh man, If I hit it. I’ll be on top o’the world this fall.

Anyway, here are some images from my session at the IU Health Infusion Center on 2nd St. today.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

●

I figure on being pretty sick for the next few days so I likely won’t be posting while fighting the hork urge.

▲

My life is now a seemingly endless stream of days wherein I wake up at 6am, pump a can or two of Abbot Laboratories Jevity 1.5 Cal “high-protein nutrition with fiber” into my belly — and if I’m feeling ambitious perhaps a tumbler-full of water or even the same volume of grape juice as well (should I be smitten with whimsy) — and then off to the shower.

●

Once I turn the bathtub spigot off it feels as though I’ve just completed running a marathon. Marathons. I remember when the annual Chicago Marathon would pass almost directly in front of my house when I lived in the East Pilsen neighborhood on the South Side. I’d dread those particular October Sunday mornings when I’d be stirred into semi-consciousness by the din of hundreds of people clapping, stomping, and beating on drums as tens of thousands of obsessive-compulsive runners flowed past. More than once I’d be tempted to scream out my window, “Don’t you damned people know I was out downing madrases and chasing women until about a half hour ago? For chrissakes, if you have such a pressing need to go 26 miles, 385 yards, try the bus or a taxi!” and then dramatically slam the sash.

Now, after my shower, I wonder where my own cheering section is, congratulating me on my superlative effort.

Then I comb out my beard. No, really — I comb it out. In fact, there’s a healthy pile of long white whiskers on my dresser, where I’ve amassed each day’s output. Don’t ask me why I’m saving my beard as it falls out. I just have to. Speaking of obsessive-compulsive.

Anyway, my next Herculean task is to put on my socks and shoes. I have to sit back in my chair for about five minutes to recover from that. Then, after getting my proverbial second wind, I put new tape on my stomach tube. Nothing tells a guy he’s ready to face a new day like a fresh tube tape-down.

Now it’s off to the radiation center. Sadly, I can’t drive myself anymore. It’s simply too much for me. The Loved One chauffeurs me down to the Southern Indiana Medical Park down by Tapp Rd. near SR 37. BTW: TLO has set up a schedule of volunteers to take me to radiation for the next two weeks until my brother comes down from Chi. for the finale. Allow me to gush thanks and love to Les, Susan, Tyler, Hondo, and David. I’ll owe you all big time when this rigmarole is finished.

Okay, in the radiation center waiting room, I thumb through the Herald Times. Often, the television is tuned to Fox News. If I cared about such things anymore, I’d be miffed.

The radiation technologist comes out to fetch me and I get my daily exercise by walking the 25 or 30 yards to the treatment room. Again, no cheering, stomping crowds.

My X-ray beam zapping process takes about 25 minutes, most of the time given over to adjusting my position just so under the aiming lasers.

That task completed, I’ll visit with the social worker, the dietician, a nurse, or Dr. Wu. Here are some snippets from these encounters:

Jessee, RN: Your oral thrush looks completely gone.

Me [thrusting my fists in the air]: Woohoo!

Jessee: Small victories!

Me: No, ma’am. That’s a big one.

●

Melissa, the dietician, board certified in oncology: Are you keeping up with your liquids? Are you eating enough?

Me: Well, I did two whole cans of Jevity yesterday. First time.

Melissa: Did you have any problems with your feeding tube?

Me: None. It’s a snap.

Melissa: Okay, but I want you to do at least six cans a day. That’s enough for minimal maintenance — 2200 calories. Otherwise your body starts consuming your lean muscle mass. Your body’s working in overdrive right now, your immune system chugging along trying to keep up with all the insults we’re throwing at it. That’s why you’re exhausted. That’s why you shouldn’t do any exercising now — your body is being taxed enough. Even when you sleep, it’s going full speed. Some patients say “All I did was sleep all day. Why am I still tired?” That’s why.

●

Me: Friday’s the halfway point in my treatment!

Dr. Wu: Yes it is. Now the tough part begins.

Me [to myself]: Bastard!

My social whirl complete for the day, TLO drives me home, whereupon I shed my shoes and my drawers and lie down as if I’d shoveled coal the live long day.

To borrow a line from Truman Capote, “And how was your day?”

▲

Things I’m doing without during chemoradiation therapy:

Red wine

White wine

Any wine

Bread

●

Crunchy foods

Saliva

Walks

Work

Laziness

Extended writing sessions

Much talking

Novels

My garage office

Pot

Coffee

Excitement

Running into people on the street

Eating in restaurants

The notion of a quick shower

Laughing loudly

Freedom

Spontaneity

Letting Kofi the Cat lie on my belly

Letting Sally the Dog jump on me

Margaret, Patty, Nick, Hannah & Susie

Sneezing with all my might

Big glasses of water

Going for a ride to Cutright and Paynetown with Steve the Dog

Ambition

Charlotte Zietlow

Feistiness

Leg strength

Oh, there’s more, much more, trust me. But I’ll tell you this: the love I’m getting from everyone I know, especially The Loved One, pretty much balances it all out.

The ledger sheet shows I’m a lucky guy.

Which reminds me, I’m also doing without Lucky Guy Bakery brownies and….

▲

Alright, joke’s over. I’ve had about enough of this as I can take. I’m gonna raise hell with somebody.

Who’s in charge around here?

●

It’s bad enough I’m walking around (or, more accurately, lying around) 24 hours a day with the deepest nausea I could ever have imagined. I can take the hole in my belly into which a plastic hose has been inserted. My overall weakness? Yeah, it’s bad but I can handle it. As for the neck sunburn, all I have to do is not scratch it. So far so good.

The sore throat from candida makes it really difficult for me to swallow but I’ve come up with some tricks and quick fixes to get around that for a few minutes at a time. I’ve even found ways to relieve the profound constipation that transformed the contents of my bowels into granite. Don’t ask.

But this morning, in the shower, I howled. The Loved One dashed into my bagno, fearful I’d ripped open some vital part of my body, or had torn a strip of skin off. No, it was worse — far worse.

After scrubbing my ruggedly handsome mug, I had a sensation that my hands were covered with gauze. I glanced down and was mortified to discover that they were filled with much of my beard!

Yep. I’m now losing clumps of my signature facial foliage. Do you blame me for screaming?

What’s next? I won’t be able to wear sunglasses? I’ll lose my ear hoop?

How will anyone know who I am? It’s as though I’m seventeen again, not even having the sensibility to know who I might be or even will become.

Will people think I’m Leo Cook? Spyridon Stratigos? Even more terrifying, will I be mistaken for Tall Steve Volan?

Imagine the chaos!

How will the Big Mike character, the guy I’ve spent nearly 60 years nurturing and perfecting, survive?

Oh, this is madness.

To make it all worse, there really is no one I can complain to. Dr. Wu was right. This is hell.

▼

The Living And The Dead

Well, at least I’m above ground. A couple of brilliant authors turned in their thesauri this week, namely Harper Lee and Umberto Eco.

Then again, it doesn’t even matter that their pens have run out of ink. The two of them have achieved a certain immortality. That’s all a writer can hope for.

▲

Phony Bravado

Y’know who talks about “bravery” in the “battle” against cancer? People who’ve never had cancer.

I’m now a member of an exclusive club, albeit one that no sane person would want to join. I’m a cancer guy. That’s who I am now and who I’ll be for the rest of my life.

As such, I can speak on this topic with some modest authority. Last night it occurred to me as I sat on the edge of the bed and rambled, The Loved One listening to my pleas — again, that there is absolutely nothing I can do about this cancer. It is a master over me not only because it can rob me of life but because, during this treatment, nothing else exists for me. I am cancer right now.

●

If I want to stretch and yawn, I’ll feel a little tug and maybe a bit of a sting in my belly where my feeding tube hole is.

If I have an urge for a midnight snack, I’ll have to think about what food and what beverage to take so I won’t get sick to my stomach. The pistachio pudding pie with graham cracker crust I made a couple of days ago will hit the garbage today. It’s that sickening. A glass of water will taste like a swig of liquid stainless steel.

If I decide to call a friend, the first thing she or he will ask is how I’m doing — not in the small talk, empty chatter, space filler way we all ask each other but in the Tell me you’re getting better, tell me you’re gonna make it, please way.

I told The Loved One these things and she said “Why don’t you think about what we can do this weekend to take your mind off it?”

The truth is, I explained, nothing can take my mind off this cancer. It is all of me now.

Something always reminds me, be it deep nausea, the sting of the oral thrush I’ve developed within the last couple of days, the weakness in my legs, the severe sunburn like a pair of strangler’s hands around my neck. I could go to the Grand Canyon tomorrow and it’ll be just as magnificent and awe-inspiring as I’ve ever imagined it, but I’ll still be standing on the rim with cancer.

There’s no mind trick I can play on myself, no distraction or pastime, nothing that can make this cancer go away, save for the everyday dose of X-ray millirems and the three bags of cisplatin poison, the lot of which will be finished March 21st.

The radiation burns my neck skin. It has shut down most of my saliva production. It will turn my throat into an inferno.

The chemotherapy makes me weak, sick, spacey, profoundly constipated.

“I wish,” I told The Loved One, “I could go to sleep and wake up in four weeks.”

It hit me: I’ve made conscious decisions to allow other humans to visit all these tortures and more upon me. Am I mad?

Or am I getting there?

That’s when I concluded this isn’t a fight. There’s no war going on, no battles being won, no glorious triumphs. I have simply surrendered. Poison me. Burn me. Bring all your pain down on me.

It doesn’t take valor to come to this decision, only a genuflection before the fascism of reality. There is no choice, no grand step forward to take the hill for the good of the platoon. The brave only distinguish themselves from the cowardly when they’re free to choose. Cancer is a tyrant, dividing the world into the living and the dead. I am alive, therefore I submit.

I’m not brave, not one bit. If Satan himself appeared to me and offered to transfer all my pain and discomfort to, say, you, I’d think long and hard about the deal. Better you than me.

I’d like to think I’d make the right choice in the end, that I’d be the admirable soldier, that I’d say Go fuck yourself, Devil, I would never visit this upon my fellow human. Yet I’ve visited it upon myself.

I’ve surrendered.

Don’t talk about “courage” in the “struggle” when it comes to cancer. He died this morning after a lengthy, courageous fight against cancer.

He — whoever he is — wasn’t courageous. He was scared. He wept. He moaned. He mewled. He wailed. He bargained with his god. He wished this had happened to anyone else — even everyone else — just so long as he wouldn’t have to endure it.

Lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, brain cancer, cervical cancer, all the cancers there are, that ever have been and ever will be, are too big, too mean, too ugly to fight. They are all too… you.

Your own cells are plotting against you, reproducing at a deranged rate, stealing resources, blocking and hindering and interfering and — if left untouched — killing. How does one fight against one’s self?

By surrendering.

▼

Palpation

I think I’ve neglected to mention, at a certain point in The Loved One’s and my bedside chat, I brought the fingers of my left hand up to the location on the side of my neck where My Olive Pit™ has resided lo these many months — and I could hardly feel the damned thing any more!

I whooped and brayed and squealed in pure unadulterated joy.

▲

Bit By Bit

Monday and today were my eighth and ninth radiation sessions. Dr. Wu has prescribed a total of 33 of them for me. That means I’m now one-quarter of the way through it all.

Wahoo! Hooray! Huzzah! Yay!

I feel like a little kid who proudly announces he’s five and a half years old.

▼

Silver Linings

More good news. Just by touching it, I can sense My Olive Pit™ is shrinking. Swear to god. There’s no doubt about it.

▼

Pizza

The Loved One had a yen for Brozinni pizza Sunday afternoon. Brozinni is in Nashville (IN) and is part of a little chain that includes locations in Indy and some little speck on the Florida resort map. It’s good stuff, albeit New York style which should mean this old Chi-town connoisseur ought to sniff dismissively at it, but no, I’m no snob. I dig good pizza no matter where it comes from.

I was feeling reasonably good so we drove around Monroe Lake and even parked at the Fairfax SRA beach. A decent wind had kicked up and the waves licked the sand as far up as a six-inch-high ridge of ice, a moraine-like line that edged the shore. A horde of seagulls congregated in one spot straddling both the sand and the water. Half the thousand or so birds floated and the other half sat on land. Every few seconds one or another would rouse herself and fly from sand to the drink and exchange places with another gull.

Right about this time a few flakes of snow started falling. We didn’t think much of it. We had no idea a snowstorm was due to hit at that very moment.

When we’d finished mooning at the gulls on the beach, TLO put the hot rod in gear and we headed east. By the time we got to State Road 46, the snow had started to accumulate. “You still wanna go?” TLO asked.

“I sure do.”

Look, when it comes to pizza, I’m like the US Postal Service, y’know, Neither snow nor….

As we passed the Yellowwood State Forest cut-off, the pavement had become dicey but we were too far gone to turn back. Besides, this snow wouldn’t last much longer, would it? After all, the temp’s gonna rise gradually throughout the week until it hits 60 by Saturday. Keep goin’, baby.

We found a parking spot directly outside the front door of Brozinni’s. A good inch or two of snow already had accumulated. Only two other tables were occupied. We put in our order for a pizza the size of a conference room table, to go. “Good idea,” the waitress said. “You’ll be all set when you’re snowed in.”

Outside Brozinni’s

●

We smiled at her, figuring she, a typical South Central Indianan, was referring to an inch or two as being snowed in.

Of course, TLO possesses a more alarmist nature than I do. She had to use the rest room and on her way back to the table, she cornered the waitress and asked what she meant by snowed in. The two of them moseyed back talking about an impending doom.

“Yeah,” the waitress said, “at first they said it’d be two or three inches. Now they’re saying six or eight inches!”

Now there were only us and one other table in the place. The other table was a family with two little girls. “I’ll thank you not to use foul language around these kids,” I said, nodded at the girls.

“Huh?”

“You said snow. Dirty word.”

We gathered up our pizza and made for the door. The family at the other table did too. Now the joint would be empty. And outside, there were easily three or four inches of snow.

Now, under normal circs, the drive from Nashville to Chez Big Mike would take about twenty minutes, the town being only 16 miles distant.

Not Sunday.

The Loved One gripped the wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white. We made our way up the first big rise outside Nashville, the one just east of the entrance to Brown County State Park, at no more than 10 mph. Cars coming the opposite way, downhill, had their flashers going. The faces of the drivers I could see were grim and taut.

And that, I may remind you, was only the first big hill. As we neared each steep rise, some of the smarter drivers would go so far as to stop in the middle of the road, wait a sufficient length of time for the preceding car to get far enough ahead, and then speed up so as to hit the hill with a full head of steam.

By the third big hill, even that strategy was for mainly naught. It took us more than an hour to get out of Brown County. The slick pavement made climbing even Monroe County’s more modest rises impossible. Traffic came to a complete standstill just four miles from our home.

The evolutionary branch which produced The Loved One at some point in the mists of time had lost the gene for patience. Just sitting there, going nowhere in the middle of SR 46 with snow swirling around us wouldn’t do, not at all. TLO pulled a neat three-pointer — I still don’t know how she did it, what with the ice skating rink surface, but she did — and headed back east. She drove back to the Friendship Road cut-off.

Friendship is a country road that connects to Lampkins Ridge Road which would bring us to SR 446, on which we live. That’s all good in theory but Friendship rises and falls like a roller coaster and is harrowing even on the nicest of days. I thought sure we’d wind up stuck in a ditch or worse, hurtling down a ravine several hundred feet deep. I refrained from making these observations as TLO rumbled over the historic Friendship Road Bridge.

Friendship Rd. Bridge On The Best Of Days

●

The turn onto Lampkins, about a mile and a half down from the bridge leads onto a steep 20-foot incline. TLO hit it with as much momentum as she could muster but not even halfway up her tires lost their bite. We were stuck. I thought: “Goddamn it! Can’t you be more patient for a change?” And, “I knew it! I knew we’d get stuck!”

Most important, I said nothing. You ever hear of the old joke, “How can you tell if a man or woman is married? Check their tongue for bite marks.”

The Loved One said, “I didn’t grow up in Racine, Wisconsin for nothing.”

With that, she started spinning her drive wheels, not wildly, not at top rpm. Really, sort of gently. The friction after a few minutes simply melted the snow down until tread hit asphalt — and we jumped ahead like a cheetah, up and over the rise, and onward, to home.

It’d taken us nearly two hours to travel a mere 16 miles but The Loved One had made it happen under the worst possible circumstances. My advice to all heterosexual males and/or lesbians out there: If you’re looking for a mate, you can’t do much better than a Wisconsin gal.

▲

The Beautiful People

So, here’s what Bloomington’s hippest cancer patient and his beloved arm candy do on Saturday date night:

We went to the grocery store.

Appropriately enough, there was dancing going on at the Kroger Theme Park. A bunch of couples were shoe-kicking to the strains of a DJ playing ballroom standards, all under the supervision of some dandy in a tuxedo and red bow tie. A sign said the whole schmear was sponsored by the Arthur Murray gang.

My reaction? Jesus Christ, I just wanna buy some groceries.

As for those groceries, my weekly list has taken a decided turn for the soft and liquid.

This was in my cart as we pulled up to the checkout counter:

• 2 boxes banana pudding mix
• 2 boxes vanilla pudding mix
• 2 boxes chocolate pudding mix
• 2 boxes raspberry jell-o
• 1 carton milk
• A  bunch of bananas
• Two cartons of blackberries
• A case of 20-oz. Orange Gatorade
• A case of 12-oz. Orange Gatorade

That, kiddies, is my shopping for the week. The reason my menu will be taking on such a gourmand’s hue is the sores have started popping up in my mouth. They aren’t precluding me from chowing down on breads and salads and lasagnas just yet but that day is moving inexorably closer. I’ve got enough of the hard stuff to last me until that fateful day.

I don’t know if the sores are solely the result of getting nuked in the throat. My platinum-based chemotherapy dope has turned the inside of my bons mots hole into the Gobi Desert. Problem is, the very idea of water is nauseating right now because that precious metal has altered my taste senses radically. All I can drink are things that are acidic or sweet, ergo the Gatorade. The G-ade helps keep my electrolyte levels up as well because I’m still on the dehydrated side despite being force-fed a 1000ml bag of saline solution yesterday at the infusion center.

Plus, I noticed two spots on my neck where I’m sunburned. The Loved One has taken notice of those stigmata as well. We expected this. The sunburn itches and I’ll have to start dabbing calendula cream on it soonly.

▼

Science

I may as well explain how this radiation gun idea works. Dig this diagram:

The Rotating Nuke Gun

●

Okay, imagine the circle with the green Olive Pit™ inside it is a cross-section of my neck. The blue gadget is the radiation gun. It revolves around my neck at an excruciatingly precise level. This is why every morning when I lie down on my personalized backboard and rest the back of my neck and head in my personalized holder, I wait as the radiation technologists X-ray and CAT scan me so as to make sure I’m in the very same position every time. Occasionally they have to come in and nudge me a millimeter or two this way or that and the table itself has a fine-tuned adjustment system.

Once the technologists are satisfied their aim is true, a little buzzer goes off. BTW: they’ve high-tailed it out of the treatment room by this point and have locked me in behind a two-ton lead door. (At least I’ll be protected if a tornado strikes.)

The buzzer going off indicates the radiation beam is coming on. It’s a linear beam, directed to focus as much of the radiation on the cancer nodes and as little on my good flesh as is humanly possible. The blue radiation gun rotates around my head and neck directing its line of fire at the cancer node at all times. This way, the node gets zapped constantly — the machine makes two languid passes around me — while the rest of my meat only gets hit when the radiation line passes directly over it.

Cute, huh?

Let’s hope it’s so cute it makes this goddamned Olive Pit™ disappear.

▲

Inert

So, here I am — and have been, by and large, for the last four days:

●

This is what chemo-fog, strong anti-nausea drugs, nausea itself, general weakness, kick-ass steroids, and — icing on the cake — a case of dehydration can do to a guy.

Funny thing is, I’ve yet to feel a single symptom from the cancer itself.

▼

Duh-eeeh

I haven’t posted in days because I’ve been in the above-portrayed state of rag-doll-ness. Oh, sure, on occasion I can type out the snarky or spectacularly astute FB post, but that’s kid’s play. Putting together a coherent post herein demands, well…, a functioning brain as well as body.

▼

Shrinkage

Here’s what’s been happening. Dr. Wu told me Tuesday (I think, it could have been yesterday — see?) that My Olive Pit™ has been shrunk by five percent already. Huzzah! And that’s only after a single week of radiation and one of three chemotherapy sessions. Yay!

As I understand things, the radiation efficacy only increases as time goes by. It’s a cumulative effect. So, my hope is when I see Wu next Tuesday (or Wednesday, whatever) he’ll be bandying about a diminution rate closer to fifteen percent. If so, I think I’ll kiss him.

▼

Dry

Oh, that dehydration? Turns out these anti-nausea drugs are monsters for sucking all the fluids out of a guy’s bod. I did what I thought was my best to keep hydrated but, kiddies, it wasn’t nearly enough. Plus, I had to do scads of laxatives for the resultant Alimentary Avenue traffic jam. Laxatives act by drawing the body’s free fluids to the southern end of that normally clear boulevard. This only exacerbated my overall aridity.

Mike, my nurse from the infusion center, jingled me up early this AM to let me know yesterday’s blood tests revealed the alarming state of dehydration. I’d already asked him about my traffic problems and he gave me a ton of tips, including the aforementioned OTC laxatives. Then he said, “If  those don’t work, I’ve got something even better for you, but you’d have to come in and get it.”

Oh joy, thought I.

“And if that doesn’t work, I’ll give you something that’ll really make all systems go.”

He must have noticed my wide eyes.

“Trust me,” he said, “I’ve got ways to make you go.”

With that he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his belly, smugly.

“Well, that’s something,” I said. “Do you go to singles bars and use that as a line?”

The upshot? Or, more accurately, downshot, Traffic is moving along nicely on the Alimentary. Meanwhile, on Lake Shore Drive….

▼

No Soup For You!

I checked in with the medical oncology people re: that Neulasta problem with my insurance co. You may recall I was prescribed three autodoses (delivered by an on-body injector) of the immune system-stimulating dope. The aim was to get my white cell count up because chemotherapy suppresses same. Then the health insurance company’s Grinches (read: cost-watchers) sent me a letter saying it wasn’t recommending the $16,500 payout for the drug.

Natch, I got all huffy and started demanding to know who, and why, and where the hell do you get off?

I’ve got a satisfactory reason now. Neulasta can indeed be an effective drug for people undergoing chemotherapy — and who are older and less healthy than I was coming into this scrum. For a guy like me? Meh.

Apparently, it’d be like building a huge water tank above your house in case the place caught on fire.

▼

More Water

Well, babies, I’m one-sixth through this trial. That’s a real chunk, no? I’m allowing myself to cry now. I cried the other day when I ran into a guy who also is undergoing treatment. I cried this morning, coming out of the shower when I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror — and, no, it’s not because the image that came back to me was so homely, so don’t make the joke. I’m the funny guy around here.

And I cried deeply, gaspingly, sobbingly today after learning I was dehydrated. See, that’s the funny thing, I can find the strength to deal with the huge insults upon my corpus but it’s the little things — the paper cuts — that hurt.

▲