Archive for April, 2006
Tuesday, April 25th, 2006
The sun is out, warm on my face though in the back of my head I’m a little worried about sunburn, low immunity and all that. Somewhere, birds are tweeting and dogs are barking. Down the street, at Lincoln Elementary, the kids are out at recess. Across the street, a man is re-roofing his father’s house while a Marlboro kind of guy, dressed in Khakis and a tan knit shirt, goes door to door, trying to sell new windows.
Through the living room window, I can see my two mutts. Crashed in the sunlight. Tango’s head comes up, her eyes glassy and sleepy. She licks her chops, then falls back to sleep.
I’m sitting on my porch, Dr Pepper at my feet, George Pelecanos’ new paperback, DRAMA CITY, in my hand.
This is how it’s supposed to be. This is my normal spring routine.
Dr. Vukov was onto something when he suggested taking a break from treatment, getting my head back together, letting the needle holes in my gut heal. Yes, I had known I was having a hard time physically; yes, I had understood the depression that was coming over me. But I hadn’t realized how far gone I was until I had a few days when it was different.
It’s almost hard to describe (”Ain’t you a writer, or what?”) how perfect yesterday was. I got up early, went and exercised, went and bothered LuAnn at the bookstore…getting hyped up about politics and making really, really funny jokes. I don’t think I believe in God, but whoever’s in charge couldn’t have cranked up a better day for me to have on my first day off from both treatments and work.
Today could be just as cool. I’ve got lunch planned with a copper friend I’ve not seen in two years. I’ve got to work on a novel synopsis for my new agent. It’s been raining for hours now — most times I love the rain more than the sun, and most of my chemo tongue is gone.
Yet around the edges, I’m tired. Around the edges, it’s impossible to forget what’s been going on. Takes more than a couple of days to get the chemo-poison out of my system, I guess.
Yet as brilliant as yesterday was, it was also incredibly illustrative. It made me realize, in a much more brutal way, that I’m not even halfway done with treatment yet, that I’ve still got six months to go. The break is good, helps me remember what it was like before all this shit and what it’ll be like after we’re done. But it’s tough, too because I know that next Sunday, I’ll feel like shit again.
But for the next few days, I’ll push that aside, ignore what’s coming and concentrate on enjoying the here and now, which, now that I think about it, is exactly opposite where my head is during chemo. Chemo is for the future, making certain I’ll be around beyond my next birthday.
It’s a good day. It’ll be good tomorrow, too. And for a few days after that. Then it’ll be bad for a while. Then it’ll be over.
Hah! What’ll I bitch about then?
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 3 Comments »
Thursday, April 20th, 2006
And the weight just keeps slipping away.
When this whole thing began, I was a bit better than 200 pounds; call it 205, 207, along in there.
I’m at 168 now.
Twenty pounds, twenty five pounds, maybe even thirty pounds, I could take. Needed to lose a few pounds. But losing close to 40 freaks me out. Even with the exercising — weight training to try and gain some muscle tone back and a bit of walking/jogging — I’m losing weight.
Because I can’t eat.
Two things: one, most food tastes okay but has a disgusting after taste. Two, I have absolutely no appetite. The thought of food makes my stomach turn. So consequently, I’m not eating much, leading me to the weight loss that lowers my blood pressure and blood sugar, which makes me feel like crap, which makes me want to eat even less.
Let’s hear it for vicious circles.
I tried to mow the lawn recently and almost couldn’t get the mower started: not enough arm strength to pull the cord. When I finally did get it started, I had to stop every third or fourth mown row because I was exhausted. At one point, Officer Friendly Ben Atkinson drove by to make sure I wasn’t dead in the yard.
Hah, that would have shown him, wouldn’t it? No more calling me retard, buddy. Just hook me up with a scratch and dent coffin.
The Interferon treatments are making me crazy, hitting me much harder than they have recently. And for a longer period than in the past. Tuesday, before I’d gotten a treatment, I had to leave work, have someone drive me home. I was light-headed, fuzzy brained, foggy. I couldn’t understand much of what the other officers said, couldn’t remember the names of some of them.
And that was without a treatment. I got home, took that day’s treatment, and was out like a dead man.
Dr. Vukov, my oncologist, believes part of the harshness of the treatments is because I weigh less now. More medicine per pound than when I started. Part of the solution is to give me a week with no treatments, then get me started again with a lower dosage.
I’m all for both of those moves.
Even as I write this, I’m having trouble remembering what I’m writing about or what I even want to say. I’m shaky and fuzzy, light-headed, sweaty (which might be low blood sugar again…damn a good reason to eat up a Milky Way bar), and incredibly nauseus. (if I yack on LuAnn’s computer, chances are she’ll beat me…normally something I’d dig).
Ive been doing chemo for five and a half months nw and it’s getting harder and harder to see the endgame. Eight more moths and I’ll be through. Friends say things like keep my eyes on the prize and remember what this is all for and while I agree with that intellectually, mostly it’s bullshit.
All I want to do is go home, crawl into bed, cry like a baby, and hopefully sleep until next December.
What a puss I am.
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 1 Comment »
Thursday, April 20th, 2006
Well, the truly bizarre dreams seemed to have slowed down. While that’s probably good — might well mean the chemo isn’t torching my brain as badly as it was — it’s also less interesting.
Here are a couple episodes of late.
LuAnn and I are standing on the edge of a large pit. Call it 100 feet per side, maybe 50 feet deep. All the way around the edge are huge boulders. She and I are climbing around on them, we both slip and fall, and the boulders come down and crush us. Then the dream loops. That tiny little bit of subconscious over and over. I’ve never seen myself killed so many times. It was a little depressing.
Next up: LuAnn and I are in a small house. Two bad guys are trying to break in. I tell her to call the Sheriff’s Office and get some help. Instead, she calls a local businessman and they discuss Kool-Aid. While this is going on, I have a lawnmower blade in my hand, hacking away through the window at the head of one of the bad guys. When a chunk of his skull breaks off, the dream is over.
This stuff is so bizarre.
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Tuesday, April 11th, 2006
Yesterday, the sun shone.
Not like a metaphoric, I-discovered-something-about-myself kind of crap, but actual sunshine. Temperatures hit nearly 70, nary a cloud in the sky. Nothing but beautiful sunshine everwhere.
I spent most of the day doing what I usually do in the springtime: sitting on the porch, reading. This time it was THE CLOSERS by Michael Connelley. I was out there for probably four hours, sometimes dozing, sometimes reading, constantly relaxing.
What I noticed most was that I felt good.
When all this started, it was the dead of December. Snowy, cold, nasty. Add to that chemo, cancer, weight loss. Part of my depression (and it never got as bad as it could have) was the disease. But part was also winter, clouds and snow, temps down below 20.
But now, while we might still have a snow or two, spring is mostly here and everything seems to have changed.
I don’t feel healthy by any means — still tired, still cranky, still weak and fighting random bouts of diahrrea, still with dry skin and minor wounds that will still be minor six months from now — but mentally it’s like I’ve gone to Cancun, found a bevy of bikini clad beauties and an endless supply of cold Corona.
Can something as simple as the sun, as opening windows closed by winter, actually do that much for my spirit?
Damn straight.
Suddenly, with a single kiss from the sun, the worst of the treatments faded into harsh memory. Stumbling to the hospital day after day, slumping to the street or the floor of Kirby-Henning Pharmacy, is now nothing more than something that might have happened to me long ago. Endless blood tests and the metallic taste in my mouth and the weight loss and all the rest seems like an old photograph, bleached by springtime sun until the painful colors are gone, leaving only the outlines of what it had been.
And yet, even with the sun, there are still problems. Today I decided to mow the lawn. I was hardly strong enough to start the damned machine. The first start of the season is always the hardest, but I stood in my driveway, yanking and yanking and yanking again — for nearly a half hour — until it finally started.
I couldn’t get enough arm pull into the yanking. Even with all the exercising I’ve done over the last weeks, I was very nearly too puny to pull.
Then, when I did get it going, it was all I could do to push the thing around the yard. I found myself winded, aching from thirst, arms tired and legs sore.
And head burned.
My coif started going south in high school, and while I hate people who use the phrase ‘cue-ball’ or ‘chrome-dome,’ they’re both pretty accurate. At the beginning of every spring, I get at least one major burn.
Peeling skin, impossible to wash what hair I have left because of the pain, impossible to sleep.
When I was mowing, I didn’t even think about it. Now I’ve got a bit of a burn and an immune system beat to pieces. God knows how long it’ll take my head to heal.
Guess that makes me a sorehead.
But right now, with the sun out, a light breeze on the air, and a new book to read, I’ll take the burn. Because burned or not, things are looking up.
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Friday, April 7th, 2006
So this one came a few days ago.
There is an old grocery store near where I grew up. I think it’s a K-Mart now. But while I was a kid, it was closed and abandoned. Sometimes we’d pop the wood covering the back door and hang around inside.
In this dream, I’m standing in the empty store with Geno, a local State’s Attorney, and the black actor Dorian Harwood. We’re all packing AR-15s and we’re blasting the hell outta the inside of the store.
That’s it. That’s the whole dream. No other texture or symbolism, no other message or anything. Just three guys shooting.
Posted in Weird Things | 2 Comments »
Saturday, April 1st, 2006
(this is pretty close to the actual phone call Friday)
Riiiiiinnnnnng!
“Mmmpphhhhh….”
Riiiiiiinnnnnnnnggggggg!!
“Whaaaa? Mmmpphhhhh….”
Rrriiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnggggggg!!!!!!!!
“What? Yeah? This is Trey.”
“I’m looking for Trey Barker.”
“Yeah, this is me.”
“Trey, I want to talk to you about coffins. I’m selling them. Scratch and dent coffins. Real cheap.”
“What? Sorry, I’m a little foggy, I was asleep. Been sick today.”
“Sorry to wake you.”
“Less you than someone calling about coffins.”
“Scratch and dent. Pretty cheap.”
“Sean, is that you?”
“Who?”
“Uh…nothing. Why are you calling me?”
“I’ve got coffins, real nice coffins.”
“Nice? Like Pimp My Coffin?”
“No, no, scratch and dent. I’ve been calling but no one answers their phone.”
“They who?”
“On the list. They wouldn’t answer so I called you.”
“To sell me a scratch and dent coffin.”
“Not unless you need one.”
“Uh…don’t think so but maybe check back in a few days?”
“Tell me about HauntCon.”
“Handicam?”
“HauntCon.”
“What in the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’ve got a few scratch and dent coffins, I thought I might go to the convention, see if I can sell them.”
“Why did you call me?”
“World Horror Convention…in San Francisco. Thought you might have an idea about dealer spaces.”
“For scratch and dent coffins.”
“Yeah, and at Hauntcon, too.”
“I’ve never heard of Hauntcon.”
“But you know the World Horror Convention, right?”
“My name’s on the Board’s website.”
“Right, I called from that website. No one else would answer.”
“Didn’t want to talk about coffins no doubt.”
“Right.”
“Come on, who is this, really?”
“Uh…maybe I have the wrong number?”
“Maybe. Tell you what, you should call Alan B–, owns Borderlands bookstore in San Francisco. He’s the big wheel with World Horror this year. I’m not going — health problems — but he can help you out.”
“You’re not going?”
“No.”
“Health problems?”
“Yeah.”
“So, you need a coffin?”
**********
I’ve mentioned before that my insurance company has done pretty well by me since all this started. With the exception of taking too long to decide I could do the shots at home, they’ve been pretty good.
I hate to say this, because I’m as anti-insurance premium and company as the next Red-Blooded American, but over the last two days, my insurance company has jumped to the top of my Good Guy list.
Originally, I was under the impression my monthly batches of Interferon would come automatically. Surprise surprise, I was wrong. I have to reorder every month, takes a couple of weeks to get in. So I ended up in a situation where the new meds weren’t going to be here until Monday while my current batch ran out last Thursday.
Left me with no treatment for today.
So I called the company, explained what was what, asked if I should head to Perry Memorial Hospital (and I’m I the only one creeped out by a hospital being named ‘Memorial?’) to get a treatment.
Without getting too boring, it turned into a nightmare of finances and who actually had the medicine in stock in this little town I’ve chosen to call home. Too expensive to go to the hospital. No Interferon in stock at my oncologist’s local office. None at any of the local pharmacies.
So these two women, Dawn at the insurance company and Lisa at Kirby Henning pharmacy, traded a shitload of phone calls and got me hooked up. Got me the exact meds I needed, the right syringes (remember, I don’t like the big ones…they hurt!) and all for FREE!!!
I had already paid for the next month’s worth of Interferon and at first, the single treatment was going to cost me $1000 (a week’s worth, can’t sell it in packs less than that). Then it was going to cost the 20% co-pay. Then just my regular $150 cap. Then Dawn decided that since I’d already paid the $150 for the month, she wasn’t going to let me pay anything.
Dawn and Lisa are my current favorite chicks, bending over so far backward their spines probably snapped. All for little ‘ol me.
Hell, if the coffin had worked that hard for me, I probably would’ve bought one.
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 2 Comments »
