Archive for May, 2006
Wednesday, May 31st, 2006
The abuse just keeps on keeping on….
Officer Friendly and I and some intern kid were at a local eatery today and Ben wanted to buy me lunch.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because that way I won’t feel guilty about abusing you, retard.”
Give him a hand, ladies and gentlemen, my friend, Sergeant Ben Atkinson.
Then, WITHOUT buying me lunch, he goes on ahead with the abuse. Right there! In front of the pizza people! In front of the Princeton PD intern who was looking, I’m sure, for something more professional.
And his grief seemed to give the pizza people the only excuse they needed to abuse me, too!
WTF?
On the other hand, I did get ol’ Benny Bo Fenny back a few days ago. He walked into the bookstore and I hugged him. Then I kissed him.
“What’s that for?”
“It’s from a woman you’ve never even met.”
I had been on the phone with one of the first girls I ever kissed, Amy K-(she’s got a married name now but she’ll always be K- to me). I only recently realized she had suffered — and survived — her own bout with cancer. Way back in 1997 and since then, she’s been fine and disease free.
It was a great talk. She understood, in the way only catastrophic medical patients can, exactly what had been going through my head for the last six months. She’d heard all the same platitudes, dealt with all the same genuine but uncomfortable moments, had all the same side effects.
It did me a world of good. Not only because I’ve not seen Amy in eleven years, not only because we’d gone to school together all the way through Midland College and then drifted completely apart, but also because she’d been there. She understood my anger and my mental fatigue and all the rest of it.
She told me she loved what Officer Friendly had done for me, that’d he’d been a close enough friend to insult me to keep me laughing (sometimes at my expense, sometimes at his) when things were rough and ugly. Of course, I don’t think she realizes that now he does it ’cause it makes him laugh…my feelings be damned.
She’d had a friend like that, too. Another woman she and I went to school with, Debbie L- (again, there is a married name but to me, Debbie will always be Debbie L-). Ben was my Debbie, the person who tried to keep things as even keeled as possible, however they could.
But Ben wasn’t the only one for me. Some of the deputies at the Sheriff’s Office, Sean from Omaha, some of the bookstore customers.
(And this has nothing to do with LuAnn or other cancer spouses who offer a completely different, and much more intense support. In LuAnn’s case, she didn’t have time or energy to insult me because she was so worried about me…you know…not dying.)
I guess the point is, I’m about halfway through this pile of crap — Friday will be six months until the last shot — and I find myself looking backward a little bit. I got through this because of the huge support network I had. There was always someone to help keep me from getting too depressed, or more often in my case, too angry. I appreciate those people and will never be able to repay them for what they’ve done.
Though I suspect at least some of them will send me some sort of therapy bill ’cause that’s how my friends do things.
As for how I’m doing as I take this backward look, most days are good; in fact, there are more good days than bad. At the same time, the bad days are pretty ugly. Last Thursday, a couple hours after my shot, I got incredibly light-headed. Apparently, I almost went head-first down a flight of concrete and steel stairs at the jail. My partner that night snatched me back and another deputy drove me home.
Those days are fewer and further between, which somehow makes them worse when they do happen. If I feel shitty all the time, I don’t really notice feeling shitty. But if I feel decent, then I really notice it when I don’t. Make sense?
I’m sure that over the next six months, there will be more bad days, but right now, sitting here drinking my Dr Pepper, listening to classic disco, things seem to be okay.
So I tried to tell the pizza people I’d never be back, that I was horrified at my treatment. They laughed — LAUGHED — and said I’d be back because I love their barbequed chicken sandwich.
Damn, they’re probably right. Hit me with barbeque, I guess, and you can abuse me all you want.
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 9 Comments »
Thursday, May 18th, 2006
So this one was a few nights back.
My wife hands me a glass of milk. While most of the milk is just regular milk, it is discolored in the shape of a flower. Not like a flower floating on the milk, but the liquid itself somehow changed into a flower surrounded by milk.
I take a drink and realize there is something in it. I spit out a tiny red spider. I freak out a little, and the spider jumps from the milk to the ground. Thinking quick, I upend the glass and trap the spider beneath it, like a preserved science project or something.
Within a heartbeat, the upside glass is filled with thousands of those little red spiders.
That’s it, the whole enchilada.
What the hell is that, I asked my wife. She frowned, a sure sign of either thinking hard or complete annoyance with me, and said this:
The milk could represent something good for me, both because of the milk and the flower. I drink it because someone I trust — her — gave it to me and said drink it. But it turns out that it’s actually bad for me, filled with spiders that could be poisonous. But somehow, in the end, I manage to control whatever it is that’s bad by putting the glass over the spiders.
Strangely enough, I had that dream after telling people I was back on the ‘poison,’ which is what I sometimes call the chemo. Dr. Vukov gives me the chemo, tells me it’s good for me, but I think it’s poison.
Pretty good analysis of that dream, I think.
Posted in Weird Things | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 18th, 2006
So…I was touching myself today and realized I have a muscle.
Hah, not that one, you disgusting pre-verts.
A few months ago, I started trying to exercise because I realized that I’d become so weak I couldn’t even lift meals or supplies at the jail. Nor could I get up the stairs at home without nearly passing out, I was that weak.
Hmmmm, I thought, I have no muscle tone.
So I started very slowly. Walking for a couple of miles, and yeah, it took nearly all day to go that distance. Lifting a few pounds…an embarrassingly few, actually. Recently I added some sit-ups (I figure as long as my gut’s gone, I might as well see if there are any ab muscles there…not like a six pack but more like a two and a half pack).
A few days ago, I rubbed the chemo itch on my stomach and realized there was a freakin’ muscle there. What the hell? I checked around a little and found things that appear to be muscles in my legs, arms, and my stomach. Wow, like having an actual body. I’m sure the chicks will hit on me right and left. I’ll have to beat them off with a stick…or with these incredible muscles I’m packing.
Okay, okay, that’s all mostly crap. I’m not muscle-bound, but I’m doing better physically than I have in a little while and that’s good. And I’m sure the exercise, particularly the walking/jogging, is helping my immune system and blood counts and all the rest of it.
So that’s good news, as is that all my counts look good right now. White blood cells a little lower than where the Doc wants them, but not in scary land yet. Reds and weight (still losing, but not as quickly as before) and lymphs and whatnot all look generally good.
I still have awful days; days when food tastes terrible (and I’m still not eating all that well), days when I’m light-headed, when it’s hard to drive or concentrate, nights when I can’t sleep because of the side-effects. But overall, the medium days are beginning to outnumber the bad days. I’ll let you know when I have a good day.
All of that is tentatively good news. But the best of all possible newses is this: December 2.
The last day. I asked the doctor today and he said we’d stop chemo shots, assuming no massive new outbreak in cancer cells, the week before the anniversary. I started the chemo bullshit Dec. 5, 2005 so 12/2/06 will be my last day.
Thank the freaking gods. There will be some sort of party on that day. We’ll all get together — and that means all the readers in the States, that woman in Australia and the handful in Europe — will come to my house. I’ll take the last shot, we’ll eat and drink and then you can all laugh at me when I get light-headed (or retarded, depending on how you look at it)!
And no, I haven’t yet put a calender on my wall marking the days off, but I’m sure I will.
I went for a check-up today and Dr. Vukov said he felt like we were just rocking and rolling through all this, that it didn’t seem to have been very long since we started, that time was cranking right along.
What the fuck? Try it from this end, cowboy. Time ain’t moving so quickly from here.
But maybe it’ll move faster now that I have an end date. Or, more likely, it’ll slow to a damn crawl as the date gets closer. It’ll be like the inmates in my jail. Someone gets sentenced to six months and everything’s fine until those last few days. Time damn near grinds to a halt.
So until then, I’ll continue touching my muscle and marking the days off the calender.
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 4th, 2006
So, Officer Friendly (famed in song and dance as the one who calls me retard when I’m foggy from chemo…and now just randomly ’cause he thinks it’s funny) and I went to lunch today.
And he almost killed me in a car accident.
Yeah, that’s insulting enough, but when I said don’t kill me, he responded with: “Now or in six months, what’s the difference?”
Thank you, thank you very much.
I can always look to Sergeant Ben Atkinson for support and I will always appreciate that, even when I’m dead in six months and LuAnn is trying to track down the scratch and dent coffin salesman.
In all seriousness, though, I think the lowered dosage of chemo is going to be extremely good for me. Yeah, I’m still weak. Yeah, I’m still tired. Yeah, I still have lowered blood pressure most days and yes, oh yes, I still get more aggressive than I normally am, but none of it is as bad as it was two weeks ago. Yeee-hawww! I might survive this bullshit after all.
One thing I have noticed, though, is that this blog posting is less dramatic that it was at the beginning. I went back and read through some of the early posts (which was weirdly sort of navel-gazing-ish) and so often, my writing was so dramatic, edging into melodramatic.
But as the time has rolled past, it seems less so, like the drama of the entire affair is slowly bleeding out. Taking shots every few days isn’t anywhere near as dramatic as getting poisoned for an hour a day twenty days running. Talking on the phone to the pharmacy providing the chemo isn’t as dramatic as being strapped to a table for surgery or a PET scan. Sitting on the porch and reading Laura Lippman’s new novel NO GOOD DEEDS (a fabulous book, by the by) under a sunny sky isn’t as dramatic as watching a roomful of people get bag after bag after bag of chemo.
And for those of you who’ve read any of my fiction, you know I’m nothing if not overly dramatic.
But maybe part of it, too, is that I’m not as scared as I was. The tests are negative, my oncologist is happy, I see an end to the tunnel I’ve been in. Whereas weeks ago and months ago all I could see was the cancer and the massive amounts of chemo I had to take to treat it.
I suspect I was much more scared, during the horrible days of late November and all through December, than I admitted. Part of reading the older Cancer Chronicles was rediscovering the early dreams, all of which had me in Saturday cliffhanger situations and all of which had me winning in the end. Hmmmmm, I think law enforcement types call that a clue.
And I think the clue says I was terrified, beyond even what I told friends and family and probably myself.
Yeah, I’m still a little scared around the edges — after all, even when this is all done it isn’t done, I’ll have to watch for recurrence my entire life — but it’s not debilitating, not paralyzing.
It might be different tomorrow, but today, I believe I’m gonna survive…and if not, then Officer Friendly’s comment sounds less like a threat than a prognostication.
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Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006
Ok, I’m officially back on chemo.
How do I know (aside from giving myself the shots)? Food tastes like shit again and all I wanna do is sleep.
Last week was brilliant. No shots, food tasted decent, soda was good, my sense of humor was back, my sense of political righteousness came back with a vengeance. It was a great week, except a number of deputies were desperate for me to get BACK ON the shots. Something about the jokes not being funny and me having too much energy.
I figured Sunday’s shot would be tough on me since I’d been clear for 8 or 9 days. I was right. Hit me hard, hit me fast, but then was gone. Gotta love that lower dosage, right?
Tuesday night’s shot didn’t hit me at all before I went to sleep. But when I got up this morning, I was kind of light-headed. Not much, just enough to be noticable, enough to give me pause.
So what’d I do to combat that being light-headed? I went and worked out. Actually did better on my mile and a half walk/jog than I’ve done since before this all started. Did better on the weights. Now I’m tired, but it’s not chemo tired, it’s actual tired from doing something.
The side effects of being a passenger on the poison bus have started, but thus far — and it’s still early yet in the second half of the chemo run — the lower dosage is good. Still weak, still tired, but not as much as I have been. I think taking a bit less chemo in each treatment will be the best thing that’s happened to me in the last few months.
The odd dreams have come back, too. I wake up in the morning and know something goofy’s been going on in my brain, but I haven’t been able to remember exactly what. Get off chemo, dreams go away, get back on, dreams come back. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. (And no, I don’t randomly know Latin, I stole that from ‘West Wing.’)
Something else has come back, too: my aggression.
Last week it wasn’t bad. I didn’t want to punch anyone or get in any fights at the jail or whatever. I didn’t scream and yell at bad drivers. A good week.
But last night, Princeton Police radioed that they had arrested a drunk. He was big and he was a fighter. Get ready, PPD said.
My stomach dropped. Don’t like that fighting thing.
So me and my partner got ready and when the police car pulled up into the Sally Port, we heard him screaming. Mind you, we were inside the jail and he was loud enough that we still heard him.
I went to the car door, opened it, and was absolutely verbally assaulted with all kinds of stupidity. It annoyed me, but not to any great degree, that happens in my job.
I get him out of the car and we’re taking him into the jail. That’s when he got goofy. Didn’t matter he was handcuffed, didn’t matter that he was so drunk he could barely walk, he wanted to throw down.
He shoved me a bit, made a few hints toward head-butting me, but nothing really more than that.
Still I’m cool, still I’m not worried about it. Drunks are drunks.
But then he called me a nigger and I lost it. Screaming and yelling at him and, when he came toward me once again, putting him over the squad car’s trunk.
I was absolutely infuriated. All I wanted to do was pound him bloody. I have no idea why that word set me off, why I didn’t just blow it off like I did everything else he said — faggot, panty-raper, you wanna fuck my ass, I’ll kill you and your family with an AK-47, etc — but I didn’t.
Luckily, there were enough other offices around for me to back out of the situation without getting completely stupid. My partner and my sergeant handled it, put him to bed and when he sobered up, he was actually apologetic.
And all of that’s fine, just another day in the life of a jail guard. But I can’t get past my freaking out when he tossed the word nigger out as easily and casually as someone tossing a few quarters into a blind musician’s guitar case. Maybe because it was meant to be insulting, maybe because I grew up around that crap and it just makes me nutty. Hell, might even be white man’s guilt. Who knows?
All I know for sure is that I was aggressive — and very nearly stupid — and wanted to get more aggressive.
The sad thing is: he could have snapped me like a twig even with the cuffs on.
All of this is just to say: I’m back on chemo. I hate it and all of its side effects but now I’m a few days less than 6 months from finished. I’ve crossed that line, that point of no return, and I’m completely stoked about that.
A little bit more…then all will be right with the world again…at least my part of the world.
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