Archive for December, 2005
Wednesday, December 28th, 2005
I think there is an interesting psychological element going on.
The side effects have generally gotten worse as time slips past, but this week — week four of four — hasn’t been terrible. There have been days when I was utterly exhausted, but there have also been days when I got up in the morning feeling pretty damned good. And quite a bit of the anger is gone.
Why, I wonder, when the dosage is the same and there is more medicine built up down in my guts, do I seem to be doing better?
Is it because I know I’m almost done? Today is Wednesday and Friday is the last daily treatment. Could it be that knowing I’m almost done makes everything a little brighter?
And let’s not discount the weather, either. The first three weeks were bitterly cold. Last few days have been beautiful. Cold but only in the 30s rather than single digits.
There are a ton of people coming by the house or stopping at the hospital to pick me up and maybe that’s helping, too. They’ve started to check in with me more often, I think, because they knew the treatments were getting so harsh last week.
Maybe all of that together is what’s helping, I don’t know. But I do know this week hasn’t been as bad as I thought it was going to be.
I’m still tired. And everything still sucks when it comes to food. But I seem to have a better outlook.
I don’t know yet when I’ll go back to work, hopefully next week. I think part of the problem was looking ahead to four weeks of doing nothing. I had hoped to get some writing done, work on some initial thoughts for a new series character, finish up a few short stories.
I did squat. No writing. No reading. I didn’t even work on my sudoku puzzles, which I’m all kinds of goofy about.
But I do see a light at the end of the tunnel and that’s good. Then we’ll start phase II: self injections. I have no idea what that’ll be like yet but it can’t be any worse than what I’ve been through.
So, I’m taking a breath, taking a walk, counting down the days…sort of like a cancer-ridden Dick Clark counting down his big ball on New Year’s.
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Wednesday, December 21st, 2005
Yeah, the men and women at the sheriff’s office are sooooooo supportive and helpful.
Knowing I can’t hardly eat, this is the call I get this morning.
“Hey, how about a greasy hamburger?”
In the back ground, “And the greasy fries, too.”
“Yeah, and some greasy fries and a big ol’ Dr Pepper?”
In the background, “I get off at 11, I’ll bring him some Gummi Bears.”
And then a barrage of laughter that boomed through the phone like a friggin’ explosion.
Yeah, thanks so much for all that, you guys. Nothing like support from your co-workers. Just hearing them ask me about greasy food almost made me throw-up.
And yet, there is still a part of me craving exactly those things. How perverse is that? To crave what you know will make you sick.
Food and fatigue, those are the things. Most food tastes awful but even if it tasted good, I’ve got no apetite. And I’m sleeping the better part of 15 to 18 hours a day. When I’m awake, I’m weak, hardly able to walk up the stairs and even drag my ass to the bathroom to spit out a mouthful of white nastiness that, I suppose, is the Interferon.
This week, the third week of four, has so far been much rougher than the first two. I had thought I was getting robbed during the first weeks; lots of talk about side effects, but really none to speak of.
Actually, now that I think about it, didn’t I write about this yesterday? OR maybe the day before. When ever.
Two new things. The first is that I’m having a hard time walking home from the hospital. It’s about a block and a half from my house and this week, that block is tough (though, again, my co workers came to my rescue. One of the deputies said, “Hell, I’ve crawled further than that getting home from a bar!).
Yesterday I called Ben Atkinson, my friend of retard fame, and asked if he could drive me home. He shows up, gets me home, and then sits in the driveway, watching me until I get damn near to the door.
“Wanna make sure you don’t get jiggy in the snow,” he called from the warmth of his car.
Jiggy in the snow? Ain’t that a dance or something?
Cancer: got a good beat, I can get jiggy in the snow to it. I give it a 98.
Speaking of 98, I’ve had a fever most of the week. Standing in 17 degree weather wanting to do nothing so much as strip to the skin and get jiggy (or jiggly, whichever).
The main new thing is the anger. I find I’m pissed all the time. Not like early on, when I joked about being mad at the whole concept of cancer. Now I’m furious. I don’t want to deal with this bullshit.
I hate the disease, I hate the treatment. I had the nurses and the stupid-ass painting in the room. I hate the perfume one of the nurses wears, a pefume I’ll never be able to small again without thinking of all this crap.
I have to leave earlier and earlier to get to the hospital because I walk so much more slowly than I did. I don’t understand the why or the fairness or any of the rest of it. I’m bored outta my fucking skull (at least during those rare and short stretches when I’m not asleep), and I am so weak I can’t even hardly hold a book!
I hate everything about this bullshit. What else is there to say?
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Monday, December 19th, 2005
Everything, except milk and orange sherbet, tastes like shit.
But I think I’m getting a handle on this whole food thing (as oppposed to a whole foods thing). Usually, I can eat most things for about ten or fifteen minutes before whatever it is starts tasting like ass. I’m assuming, from all my years in medical school, that it takes about that long for the Interferon to seep back out through my taste buds and coat everything I eat.
I’ve noticed, too, that if I have some water before I eat, I can usually get through the entire meal without the food tasting bad. Maybe the water acts as a cleanser, I have no idea.
But, even if I know how to make it taste decently, most times the mere thought of food makes me want to holler. I’ve eaten mostly nothing but salads for two weeks and while I like the weight I’m losing, I wouldn’t recommend this particular diet plan to those of you looking to shed those unslightly holiday pounds.
And I can’t tell you how tired I am of water. Holy cripes. Two liters a day and it’s mostly water because everything else tastes bad. Coke. Dr Pepper. Gatorade. Fruit punch. Whatever.
The last few days weren’t terrible for side effects with the exception of being light headed and muddy brained. Friday, Saturday, and a few minutes on Sunday saw me at the edge of passing out at odd, random moments. I get overheated very easily and then woozy and dizzy and the rest.
The muddy brained? There seems to be nothing in particular that sets that off, it’s just a general state right now. Sucks, though, because I can’t remember anything and sometimes have a hard time putting together a sentence.
Actually, I think it might be an interesting, decidedly superficial, look at the beginnings of the dementia you know I’m going to get when I get old.
I’ve been thinking about ‘why me’ this weekend; you know, along the lines of “Why did this horrible thing happen to me?” I haven’t come to any conclusions, though I did finally decide the question did not pre-suppose any sort of God or Gods.
Really, though, the entire question is fairly ego-centric, ain’t it? Why me basically asks why something in the universe thought me worthy of the cancer stick.
I think I probably think it’s random. Just like the drunk that barrels through an intersection and kills four kids on their way to soccer practice while barely getting a scratch, or why a string of six numbers comes up on the very day a 98-year old woman bought a Lottery ticket with those six numbers.
Andy Dufrense has a line in Shadwshank Redemption that’s good right now. He and Red are talking about bad luck. He says something like “It’s gotta land on somebody, I guess it was just my turn.”
And let’s be clear: I don’t consider myself in the same league as people undergoing radiation treatment or who’ve had debilitating strokes or whose four kids were just killed by that drunk. My situation is not anywhere near as dire as theirs, but it is my situation and it does seem pretty bad in my relative terms.
I’m at the halfway point. Two more weeks of the daily treatments, then eleven months of the self-injections. Also, in a couple of weeks, assuming no disasters, I can go back to work.
I haven’t really missed work yet. That is to say, I don’t really miss fighting with drunks. Laughing at those drunks as they stumble around and ask me why they were arrested, yeah, I miss that but only because I’m mean and petty.
But then, we all knew that, didn’t we?
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Wednesday, December 14th, 2005
I don’t have treatments on Saturday or Sunday. A small respite from the needles and wondering what kinds of side effects I’ll have that day.
So Saturday, I took the train to Chicago for a book signing I had scheduled long ago. The signing went fine except I was too tired to really get into it. But I got to spend some time with Jay Bonansinga, one of the absolute gentlemen in the business.
I climbed on the train in Princeton, sans ticket. I almost never pre purchase a ticket, I just get it on the train. Never had a problem. This particular day, one of the conductors starts giving me static about if the train fills up with people who have reservations, I’ll have to stand.
“What? I’ve never heard of that before,” I said, more than a little surprised.
“Policy. If everyone else has a reservation and you don’t, you have to stand.” A sneering little voice, full of the power of being conductor.
“Not a problem,” I said (and to be honest, I’m sure I had copped an attitude). “But I’ve been taking cancer treatments and sometimes they make me a little weak. So if we can work around the fact that I might fall over, that’s not a problem.”
“Should have gotten a reservation, then, huh?” he said. Then he glared at me and asked for a picture ID.
I didn’t give him my license. I didn’t give him either my Colorado or Illinois ID card.
I gave him my Bureau County Sheriff’s Office ID card. Hah, suck on that, bub.
There was at least thirty seconds of dead silence. He just stared and stared, then cleared his throat, finished selling me a ticket, and walked off.
I never heard another word out of him until the end of the ride. When I was getting the box of books I had taken with me, he said, “Do you need any help with that, sir?”
I am so freakin’ petty. Of course I handed him the Sheriff’s card hoping he’d get intimidated and leave me alone. Of course I wanted to wipe the smug grin off his face. Screw with me? I grew up in Texas, I know how to be a petty lawman don’t think I don’t.
Oh, and remember this: the car never filled up. The seat next to me never got taken.
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Wednesday, December 14th, 2005
The metaphor is too easy.
It’s been snowing since just before my first Interferon treatment. Cold and snowy and overcast and sunless and whatever else you want to say. The metaphor is too easy.
Last time I wrote, I mentioned I was feeling a little ripped off. Hah, no more. Monday and Tuesday were more along the lines of what I expected. Last Friday, I had a bit of dizziness and light headedness (I know, I know, how can you tell?). Same thing happened Monday and Tuesday after the treatments.
Monday night wasn’t horrible, just enough to get my attention. But Tuesday, even the nurses at Perry Memorial noticed something. They made me sit for a while after the treatment. Eventually I felt okay and walked on home (I’m about a block from the hospital, no big deal).
An hour after I got home, one of the deputies called to check on me. As I hung up front that phone call, it all came up. Dizzy. Light headeded. Suddenly exhausted. Headache. And, for nearly five full, loverly minutes, industrial strength vomiting.
Welcome to side effect land. Or rather, Side-Effectland.
For the last few days, the thought of food has not sit well with me, even though at the same time I crave all kinds of things. Aside from the Gummi craving, I’ve also craved McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, the local Pizza Hut salad bar, and Dr Pepper.
And the Pepper, by the by, does taste like shit. Damn, my treatment is even interfering with the Elixir of Life from the Sacred Homeland.
So I try to eat mostly bland foods because I haven’t quite yet figured out what makes me sick and what doesn’t. A writer friend of mine said stay away from hot foods. Good advice, I’m sure, but the thought of a cold Quarter Pounder cracks me up and grosses me out.
And Holy Cripes, can I sleep anymore? Hour after hour upon hour, filled with all kinds of bizarre dreams that don’t seem to have any particular through-line or plot line or metaphor anymore. No more SuperCop or Indiana Jones, no more watching planes fall out of the sky and calling 911, no more of anything around which I can decipher a relationship to what’s happening in my life.
My guess is the treatments have turned my subconscious to mush, God knows it has my conscious. In fact, I’ve been so brain muddy that yesterday LuAnn was trying to explain something about email to me and I simply couldn’t understand what she was saying. Turned out to be incredibly simple but I just couldn’t get my head around it.
Makes me suddenly understand why Sgt. Atkinson, the one so worried about me when I got the diagnosis, has lately taken to calling me retard.
I know, very un-p.c., but funny. Isn’t it sad how, when it’s just friends, all the pc and societal politeness and all that goes straight out the fuggin’ window?
Still and all, even with everything, it isn’t what I expected. I expected more of everything and more things. I expected more muscle ache and more headaches. I expected hair loss and maybe a nose bleed. I expected to feel more sick more often.
I expected more of a snow storm, that the internal would more closely match the external.
I should just count it good I’m doing well enough, I guess. And the downtime has given me a ton of time for reading. And thinking about new projects, though I haven’t really been able to get any decent writing done.
It’s hard to tell, when I look out the window, if it’s still snowing or simply blowing. I guess it doesn’t really matter. As long as I can’t see the street or the house next door, the cause doesn’t really matter.
I’ll tell you what, though, regardless of the internal, I’m getting sick and tired of all the snow. I need one good day of sunshine.
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Sunday, December 11th, 2005
I gotta tell you, I’m feeling a little gipped.
I mean, I was promised all these side effects and for the most part, I’m getting squat.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take it. The fewer side effects the better. The thing is, everyday I get psyched up for the crap and for the most part it doesn’t happen. You know what that means, right? About mid week during week two, I’ll stop getting psyched up for it and every single side effect known to man will hit me as hard as drunks hit my jail booking room floor when they finally pass out.
With the exception of Tuesday and Friday night, the first week of chemo was decent. A few chills, a couple of headaches, no big problem. Friday night, however, I had a massive dizzy spell that left me sitting in the middle of the floor at a local pharmacy.
I had skipped dinner because the thought of pizza made me want to yak up everything I’ve eaten since 1978. But at the same time, I was jonesing like a heroin fiend for Gummi Bears.
Yeah, yeah, I know, Gummi Bears. One of the more macho foods out there.
So I went to a pharmacy that happens to have Gummis along with all the drugs you could ever want and snapped up two bags. I was standing at the front counter, talking to Lisa the pharmacist, when she looked at me askance and asked if I was okay, did I want to sit down.
“Nah, I’m fine,” I said, full of macho manliness, a bag of Gummis in each tight little fist.
Two seconds later, I was on the floor. And remember, I was at her counter…where customers with snow on their shoes had been standing all day.
Yeah, wet ass, dizzy head, cold chills…and I dropped my Gummi Bears (oh, the final indignity!).
Managed to drive home (I know, not particularly bright but there it is) and went straight to bed…dreamt of Gummis all night long.
Of the few side effects I am having, one of the more interesting is what it’s doing to my sense of taste. The nurse said I would get to where steak tasted metallic and greasy fast food — the most healthy of all foods — would make me gag.
So far, though only one thing tastes like crap.
Coca Cola.
AAAAAAAaaaaaaauuuugggg!!!!
Coke? Had to be Coke, right? Couldn’t be green beans or beets or whatever. Had to be Coke. ‘Course, I guess there is an argument to be made that green beans and beets already taste like crap…at least to me.
I’ve not tried Dr Pepper yet since I started the Interferon so I don’t know if the Elixir from the Sacred Homeland (Dr Pepper and I are both from Texas…like that means anything to anyone except…well…me) sucks, too.
So one week in, my complaints are fairly mild. I realize I’ve got it pretty good so far, better than so many other people. I’m not throwing up, I’m not losing my hair, I’m not spending twenty-three hours a day in bed, I’m not hoping the radiation kills the cancer before it kills me.
I know it’s cumulative, I know it’ll get worse. I just hope my jokes will still be funny when I’m really sick.
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Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
Zowie zonky…said the honky.
Sooooo much better today. Yesterday turned into a disaster. Chills that simply increased and increased, even beyond what I wrote about, until I thought my teeth would shatter. I actually did bite into my tongue twice. Good amount of muscle pain, a massive headache.
Today? Almost nothing. The chills are negligible, zero muscle pain, no headache, no snotty nose. I have no idea why the difference. I drank my two liters of water before the infusion, maybe that helped. It wasn’t as cold on the walk home, maybe that made a difference. When I got home I went straight to work on my novel, the space heater on and my mind on something else. Maybe that helped.
Regardless, today was so much better…though I do find myself getting some chills right now. Maybe today wasn’t better as much as postponed.
So, the nurse who had such a hard time hitting a vein the first day? Turns out she’s the daughter of the nurse who did such a great job stabbing me the second day. I’m thinking Mom needs to have a sit down with daughter. “Okay, take Dad’s hand, line the needle up. No, no, take it out, let’s do it again. Practice makes perfect.”
Room 309. Smallish room, all the bells and whistles of a standard hospital room. But there is an interesting painting by a Bernard Buffet. French guy. The painting is called something like “Somme River” something. It’s a French village with the River Somme running through the middle of it. Lots of scratches and slices in the oranges and yellows. Elongated splashes in the middle of the sky and the river. I’ve no idea what style it is, but it’s cool. A little too symmetrical for my taste but not bad for an institution.
The room is right above the ambulance bay so everytime a bus comes in, sirens blaring, I hear it. Actually heard the EMTs today. Sounded pretty stressed out. Hopefully they didn’t have to call the coroner a few minutes later.
Not much to say today because it went so well. Does that mean it will all be well? Or does that simply mean the Interferon Gods chose to screw with me a little? “Hey, since he’s sure it’s going to be bad, let’s give him a good day, then we’ll sock the hell out of him Thursday.”
We’ll see. Maybe I can sacrifice a virgin to the gods and get them to leave me alone for the entire run. Of course, I’d have to know a virgin first….
*********************
An amazing thing happened when I told a couple of people what was going on: every one in my writing community — horror and crime — knew about it within hours.
I began getting emails and phone calls and damn near smoke signals from so many of the writers and fans and editors I’d known for so long, and quite a few emails from people I’ve never met, people with whom I’ve never corresponded.
That really freaked me out.
Everyone had positive things to say and quite a few offered to send me their latest projects to read since I’ll have a bit of downtime. Everyone wished me the best.
It was really touching. I don’t normally care of sentimentality, it drives me bugfuck; sugary bullshit that means squat and is nothing more than a societal obligation. But this was amazing. Everyone seemed genuinely concerned. And everyone had a story. Their mother or father or daughter or cousin or whoever had been hit with the cancer stick and all of them survived; five years, ten years, seventeen years in one case.
Yeah, the emails are great for my ego but it goes deeper than that. I realize I’m not the first to suffer this kind of thing, but when I got hit with it, I felt pretty alone. Yeah, yeah, they’ve all known someone with cancer, but until you’ve been through it, you don’t really know, not deep down, not where the scary details pile up until you can barely breathe.
They don’t know, but that didn’t stop them from saying, “Anything you need, you tell me and I’m right there.”
And then something very cool happened. Three writers I admire greatly got in touch. They had been through it, they knew exactly. They understood everything. They knew the trepidation of that first day of chemo. They understood being concerned about the depression and wondering if this pain or that ache meant anything.
I like to consider myself quite the loner. The Texas boy who drinks whiskey straight up, wears boots and loud, colorful shirts, reads obscure writers and watches independent flicks so that I can sound more intellectual than the average rodent. What this proved to me was that, for all that posturing and public persona building (even if it is mostly the real me), they didn’t care.
The arguments with some of them about how their latest project was crap, the yelling matches about how this or that bestselling writer was nothing but a half-wit; none of that meant anything. Set that aside, they basically said, because we’ve got this other thing to deal with.
Then, when you’re healthy again, we’ll kick your ass and throw your shot of Daniel’s in your face.
I love this community of writers and fans and editors and publishers way more than I thought.
Maybe I’m not quite the loner I thought I was.
Damn.
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Tuesday, December 6th, 2005
Man, this is one funky ass ride.
While I was getting the INterferon, I thought about the journal. I thought I might start it with something like, “Second verse, same as the first,” because in the first ten minutes or so, it wasn’t a problem.
It was as it was last night. Day One gave me chills and a little bit of muscle pain but it was completely gone by 8:00 or 8:30. I thought, Dude this is manageable, this is doable.
“Second verse, worse than the first.”
I live one block as the crow flies from the hospital and as very few people in Princeton have a a fence of any kind, I just trudge through the side yard of both the auction man and the Viet vet. Yesterday, it was a tough walk because it was 17 degrees (hello…this ain’t Texas).
Today it was hard because I fucking hurt! Muscle pain, chills even worse than yesterday, hard to catch my breath. Plus it was cold…like 10 degrees or something.
The oncology nurse, name of Terre, who is waaaaaayyyyy better at stabbing me with an IV than the lady yesterday, said the side effects pile up, like NASCAR racers when someone loses it on the track rather than having the curtesy of going into the infield (or whatever they call it). This will get worse the longer I go.
Oh, goody.
Yesterday, I thought I was Batman (my favorite superhero because he’s mentally damaged goods…I dig that). Today, I pretty much felt like a heroin junkie long since overdosed, with meat actually rottting off my body and the bugs already chowing on my tongue. Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm good. Can it and call me Mr. Campbell.
I plopped on the couch to watch reruns of “Star Trek: NExt Generation,” (yeah, I’m still a geek at heart) and it was the episode where the four ensigns are being evaluated for a secret mission. I’ve seen it, I know what’s what, I know the young, hot blonde (even hotter than her first appearance on the show) was going to get wiped, blasted by fascist Cardassians. I knew that, knew it was coming.
And balled like a Bon-Bon eating housefrau watching “Titanic” for the 97th time. I mean industrial grade balling. Tears and sloppy snot and just a touch of verbalizing.
WTF?
After the pansy-ass heart attack February 18, 2001 (RIP, Dick, have a heavenly shot for me), the meds made me much more emotional, more prone to crying at formulaic Hollywood flicks.
All right, all right, keep your comments to yourself. I’m still the acerbic, generally pissed off writer with a solid core of cynicism and emotional detachment from most of humanity.
I did not change the license plate on the Mustang.
Thanks to a required two liters of water a day, I’m pissing like the outflow valve on a freakin’ cruise ship and I’ve had my coat, and my knit cap, on now for better than two hours, trying to get warm.
Ain’t working so I might well toss LuAnn outof the bed tonight and cuddle up with a space heater.
So that’s where we are. Hopefully, I’ll be able to write tomorrow and give you the details of Perry Memorial Hospital, Room 309. So take care and keep your knees loose.
I have no idea what that means but it’s how Keith Olberman signs off C”ountdown ” every night and I like how it sounds because it sounds kinda nasty…hehehehehehe.
Is my mom reading this?
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Tuesday, December 6th, 2005
Ah, Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”
Dripping in subtext, rife with political statement hidden in the clothing of historical drama. Superficially, it was about the witch trials. Subtextually, it was all about McCarthy, the modern American witch hunt.
Writer Robert Ferrigno’s new novel “Prayers For The Assasin,” is just as full of subtext. While I don’t care much for the novel itself — the storyline is servicable, the characters almost compelling in a straightfoward way, the situations and plotting and pacing all competent if cliched and stereotypical — I was interested in Ferrigno’s hidden story.
In 2040, America has had a civil war, triggered by backpack nukes detonated in Washington, D.C., and New York City. The north and west is now and Islamic state, with the south a Christian nation — peopled with stereotypical and easy to write rejects from “Deliverance,” which annoys the shit out of my vague southern-ness…not all of us in the south or in Texas are redneck squirrel hunters who suffer from massive homophobia and like our women barefoot and pregnant while our blacks are in the back shack or the fields.
But the hidden story of Ferrigno’s novel — that of the fundamentalist religious police the Black Robes — tells the tale here.
The religous police in this book are what Americans have come to expect from fundamentalist Islam: women told to stay indoors unless they have a male relative for escort, women beaten for not obeying, women stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage even when that sex was rape, men with multiple wives, men pulled off the street — disappeared in the vernacular of Auguste Pinochet’s regime — for idle speculation, for speaking against the religious or societal edicts of Islam.
But at the same time, those religous police are our burgeoning cadre of religous police. In the book, the Black Robes are extreme in both thought and belief and action against those who disagree with them.
Take a look around.
Look at this place where a thirty year Marine veteran is called a traitor and coward for asking questions about the war, where a former attorney general spends nearly $7,000 on a robe to cover the bare breasts of Scales of Justice statue because he’s embarrassed to have those boobs in pictures of him at press conferences. (I guess the robe was less expensive than simply moving the press conferences to another part of the building.)
Take a look at a place where, even if you supported the war in Afghanistan but question the war in Iraq, you are called unpatriotic, “dishonest,” “reprehensible,” a place where corporations are terrified of, and refuse to, sponsor the Museum of National History’s Charles Darwin exhibit because that exhibit would take a long look Darwin’s work and his legacy, where auto makers are forced to abandon advertising in gay magazines because of threatened boycotts.
When did it become okay to say, “You disagree with me so I’m going to post your personal email and home address on my website so you can get harrassed and threatened?” (as Ann Coulter to a woman who had the temerity to question her).
When did it become okay for your beliefs to take precedence over mine and for you to attack me personally because of it?
How much longer will I be able to say what I want? How much longer will I be able to write what I want?
There is a great chill in the air.
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Monday, December 5th, 2005
Holy damn, I’m shaking.
I asked the nurse how long it would be until the chills set it. She said different times for different people. Take note: for me? About 4 1/2 seconds.
Today was the first day of chemo. While I wasn’t terrified, I was certainly in the ballpark of scared. What’s going to happen? How hard is it going to hit me? Will I even be able to walk when the first dose is over? Or will I be a pile of blubber in the floor, wearing my Texas boots and waiting for housekeeping to scoop me up and toss me out with the biodegradibles? (Mom always said make sure you have clean underwear and that your boots are shined…can’t die with dirty boots, it’s so trailer trash.)
None of those terrible things happened, at least not yet — now two hours after the first dose. But the day is still young! I could be tossing my Tex-Mex lunch cookies within in the hour.
I got there a few minutes early but had to wait for nearly an hour as I had been unable to take my medicine an hour before. It’s Indomethacin, a blood thinner that helps with all manner of side effects. I can’t remember exactly what right now, as I seem to be a little brain muddy, but it’s a good thing I’m told.
The RN — a woman named Jodi — tried to put in the IV needle and blew one of my veins. Hurt like hell. She popped it out and went at it again. The second time took but still hurt like hell. Then I got 100 cc’s of saline and about halfway through that, the oncology nurse came in, hooked up a bag of Interferon, and off we went.
Four and a half seconds later, I was shaking with some USDA Prime Grade A Super Deluxe Double Oh Seven Can’t Tell You I’d Have To Kill You chills, and it seemed like
Sorry, had to stop for a minute.
(I thought about editing out the sentence fragment, but this is what’s happening and I want this journal to be as true to what’s going on as it can be…just be thankful I’m fixing the spelling and typing mistakes because my fingers belong to someone else right now…maybe they belong to Tom Pic and he’s toying with me like I’m a cheap voodoo doll or something…nah, not Tom.)
The shakes are getting worse, but I have no muscle pain. I’m pretty sure that’ll happen but maybe not until I’m driving down the highway at 80 or 90. hehehehe…okay, not particularly funny. For those of who you thought cancer would make me funnier, sorry.
There was a slight burn at the needle when the Interferon began bubbling through the lines and into me. Not like hot burn, but sting burn. Just a touch. Just enough to make me think about it. No point to that detail, really, just interesting is all.
The nurse told me symptoms might manifest in minutes or hours, but she also said that whatever sypmtoms I might have probably would dissipate within six or eight hours. That would be great. That they might go away just about the time I try to go to bed is great news. I already sleep badly, tossing these symptoms on top of that might be ugly.
As I write this, the fronts of my thighs are beginning to hurt. Just a little ache, as though I had run a few hundred yards or had a really zesty bout of — Well, never mind. This is supposed to be a look at my cancer, not my libido.
Now that I take stock, I do have a few aches and pains. A bit of a thud across the top of my back, my thighs, and my calves a little.
I look back over this post and realize I haven’t really said anything, just tossed a bunch of details out without any context or meaning. But I’m not sure there is any context right now. The overall context of cancer and treatment, yeah, but no snapshot context, nothing with heavy meaning or great insight into this single moment.
Maybe that’s okay. Maybe the meaning is that this is simply a day in the life, simply a day where I do what needs to be done to stay alive, to make sure I am NED, with much less drama than than sentence would imply. (By the by, NED is, according to an email from a writer friend of mine who’s already been through this shit, No Evidence of Disease…a good state to be in, I would think.)
I’m okay with no great meaning. Maybe less drama and more matter of fact will keep my head from getting goofy.
Getting goofy? Hah, I’ll let you supply your own joke.
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