Archive for the ‘The Cancer Chronicles’ Category
Friday, January 9th, 2009
So here we are, three years and a month since the madness (surgery, daily chemo, thrice weekly chemo, etc) began, and two years and a month since I celebrated the end of it all with friends, Dr Pepper, and massive amounts of Oreos.
I’ve been going to the doctor’s office every three months since all this started. As I’ve gotten further away from it, the doctor has gotten more and more bored. To the point that for my last visit a few days ago, he didn’t even show up. It was his assistant doctor.
That’s pretty bored.
And by the by, my suggestions that, if he’s so bored he should charge me half, have gone exactly no where.
But the point here, and the update, is that after three years, the doctor has put me on four month check ups rather than three. Small step, maybe, but an important one. Statistically, with my kind of cancer, three years is a threshold. So getting past that is pretty good.
All the tests have been clean and positive and all the levels of various things are good and healthy and my weight has been stable and blah blah blah.
Yeah, I’ll take the boring over the alternative.
But I still think I should get a discount of some sort.
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 1 Comment »
Sunday, December 31st, 2006
“–whatwashisnameanywayIthinkyoucan’tfindhimbecausehe’sincustodyinGalesburgandwhataboutthat
ThinToWinareyoudoingthatgoodluckyouknowifyouwanttoloseweightyoucouldgoonthechemodietworkedformetothetuneof50pounds– ”
“Trey.”
“–youknowI’vegotaweek’sworthofchemoinmy’fridgeit’syoursifyouwantitIthinkthecitydidagoodjobonthelightsthisyeargot’emall
uponthebuildingslookscoolhowwasChristmaseveryonegetwhattheywantedprobablyallBattlestarGalacticaforyouI’llbet– ”
“Trey. Shut up.”
“–didItellyouI’mdonewithLauraBushnomoreFirstLadyFantasiesabouthernomanshehadcanceranddidn’ttellanyoneuntilaftertheelection
sanditwasjusttooKarlRovianformedidtheythinkpeoplewouldn’tvoteforWifLaurahadcancersoI’mdonethinkingaboutschtuppingthe
FirstLadyontheWhiteHouselawnand — ”
“Trey!”
“What?”
“Shut the hell up. I swear to God I’m going to shoot you in the head.”
“What’s the problem, big boy?”
“I’m not sure I can be your friend unless you go back on chemo.”
Sadly, Officer Friendly isn’t the only one who’s said that. Most of my friends seem to prefer me on chemo. Basically, they’re all saying, “Calm the frack down!”
Hehehehehehehe.
I’ve got more energy than I know what to do with, is what’s going on. The last bits of obvious chemo have finally slipped outta my system. I’m sleeping much more soundly (five or six solid hours a night rather than ten or twelve plagued hours), I’m eating well, I’m exercising everyday. I’ve got energy to burn baby.
And it’s making my friends nutty. Which, of course, makes me laugh at them…as though I needed a reason.
I’ve gotten back to my writing, though I still have stamina problems because I still haven’t refound the butt I lost during the weight loss. And most of the writing I’ve done on the new novel, about 25,000 words done while on chemo brain, doesn’t suck as badly as I thought it might.
Work is going well. In fact, come February 18, I’ll be headed off to the academy for twelve weeks in anticipation of being moved out of the jail and onto the road. So now, rather than being the guy who strip searches you after you get arrested, I’ll be the guy who arrests you when you do terrible things to your dog with a fork.
(anyone get that reference?)
At the bookstore, I’ve managed to work quite a few days for LuAnn the last few weeks. Hell, she might’ve gotten more days off since Christmas than she got the entire year last year.
So things are going well right now. In fact, when they went this well back in the pre-cancer days, one of us would make a joke along the lines of, “Things are going too well, when is the brain tumor going to hit?”
Hahahahahaha…not quite so funny now.
I’m sitting here now, trying to think of what else to write about. There is nothing. Everything else is normal and my life is pretty boring. And yet, I’ve spent so much time cutting it open with a boning knife this past year, I feel like I should have something else interesting to say.
Nope.
So I guess that means I’m just like every other blogger out there, tapping madly away at the computer keyboard, somehow convinced that my life is interesting to anyone other than me. Quite the little conceit, don’t you think?
Actually, I kind of wish that coffin salesman would call back. Now that I’m not quite so foggy brained, I might be able to keep up with him.
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 2 Comments »
Monday, December 4th, 2006
And so it’s over.
And there was no revelation.
I had wanted to learn something, to have a great epiphany and discover some massive reserve of strength or vast store of single-mindedness; something that would make me believe I had become a better person, a more civilized or caring person, a more compassionate and loving person.
That was a large part of why I wrote the Cancer Chronicles, so that in the writing, I might polish a diamond out of a chunk of bullshit.
Squat.
When it was over, at 5:07 last night, it was just over. Anticlimatically so, in fact. I gave the first shot, loaded up the second syringe, gave that shot, then tossed the entire works in the biohazard container. I stood up and announced to the deputies in the squad room that I was officially not dying of cancer anymore.
And that was that. No trumpets, no 3000 voice choir, no nude dancing girls.
Just…a shot…a shot…garbage.
Something that had begun with so much drama and pain, so much uncertainty and fear and anger, ended that easily. In fact, the end was almost boring in its banality.
I guess that’s good. I guess flat and boring was better than the alternative, better than a repeat of the nightmare of November and December of 2005. Yeah, I could live without ever going through that bullshit again.
And yet, there was just a touch of drama at the very end. About a week ago, LuAnn made some off-hand comment to me. I felt like crap — tired and cranky — and she said something like “If you hurt, just go to bed.” But the tone was more along the lines of “Suck it the hell up already.”
I knew that wasn’t what she was saying, knew it in the core of my being, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. I stewed all night, couldn’t sleep at all. The next morning, angry and righteous and — more importantly — rock solid, I tried to tell her how the year had really gone.
But instead of solid, I fell apart…completely. Tried to tell her that it had been unfair of her to tell me to suck it up because she had no idea what I’d gone through. To prove my point, I heaped on her a pile of garbage so deep and wide and it left us both crying.
See, there were bad moments this past year, moments more terrible than I would have thought possible, much worse than what I told anyone. Eight or ten times, the light-headedness left me unconscious; one glorious time behind the wheel of my truck at a stop sign. I had felt it coming on and was racing home. Didn’t make it. Also didn’t kill anyone, amazingly enough. There were vomiting sessions that went on for twenty/thirty/forty minutes and left me with nothing coming up but blood. One exercise session — when I was alone in the Princeton PD gym — I coughed so hard I got dizzy and passed out on the treadmill. Fell, banged my nose against the thing until there seemed to be blood everywhere, and skinned the hell outta my knee because the tread took a few seconds to stop.
There were nights where I was so scared I cried myself into a stupor.
There were times, especially after my biological father died of cancer in March, that I thought I was going to die. Nothing dramatic about it, just simple death. This is it, it’ll be today. Or maybe tomorrow. But before the end of the week. I’ll be dead and at least there won’t be anymore hassles with the insurance company over the chemo.
And I never said a word.
LuAnn has had a hard year. Between worrying about me, trying to make sure there was money enough to buy the chemo, trying to run the bookstore with damned few days off because I simply couldn’t work, she’s had an absolutely shitty year. So I said nothing about the couple of times I went to the hospital or passed out on the toilet like a higher-rent Elvis.
I didn’t want to worry her. I didn’t want her carrying anymore baggage than what had already bent her back. As goofy as it sounds, I love her so much I didn’t want to give her anything else. She didn’t need anymore health bullshit from me. Cancer, the occasional bad back, and the heart attack, were more than enough.
At the same time, she hadn’t said anything to me about how worried she actually was, how tired and scared. Because, she said in the middle of our cry-fest that left two feet of accumulated tears in the room, she didn’t want to toss a few extra bodies on the grave yard of my worry.
Yes, we should have talked. Yes, we should have sat down and made sure each of us knew exactly what was going on with the other. But sometimes — most times, in fact — judgement is clouded by emotion.
But now it’s over. I still have a bit of weakness and am still chemo-tired. And what in hell is my body going to think come Tuesday, when there is no shot? Shit, it’ll be as shocked and probably scared as my colon was last December when all I could eat were salads and fruit.
Way back at the beginning of this, I wrote a Chronicle about the metaphor and how easy it was. I was in the middle of massive daily chemo and outside, the sun was hidden behind clouds while a foot of snow covered everything. I felt then that I was getting hammered in by everything, nature included.
Two days ago, 19 inches of snow pounded Princeton in something like five hours. Then the wind started to blow. The snow on my front yard was nearly two feet deep and it buried our two cars, one halfway up the driver’s window.
This morning, mere hours after my last shot, I started digging. It was cold but the sun was out and blazing where it hadn’t been a year ago. Unlike then, when I felt everything closing in around me, this morning, I was digging out.
Digging out. Literally. Metaphorically.
Completely and absolutely.
I think I’m gonna be okay.
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 9 Comments »
Thursday, November 30th, 2006
Memory is a slippery thing.
Not only is it subject to the twists and turns of time, when we think we remember something one way and it turns out to be something else entirely (like thinking the movie “Ghost Story” was brilliant until I saw it again twenty years later), but also to interpretation.
Lately, I’ve been slipping into a nostalgia of last December, when all this started. All I can think about is how incredible the month was, how deeply fabulous, because the only responsibility I had was sleeping. Yeah, I had to get to the hospital, had to get the daily chemo, but really all I had to do was sleep.
God, for those days again.
I’m so tired right now that all I want to do is sleep. I want to crawl back to last December and sleep now as I did then.
Except that’s not quite how the month went.
From The Cancer Chronicles, December 5, 2005
…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….
…a bit of a thud across the top of my back, my thighs, and my calves a little….
From The Cancer Chronicles, December 19, 2005
…everything, except milk and orange sherbet, tastes like shit….
…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….
…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….
From The Cancer Chronicles, December 21, 2005
…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….
…I’m having a hard time walking home from the hospital….
…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….
…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….
So it wasn’t just sleeping, it wasn’t what I think I remember. It was harsh and ugly and tough. Why do I remember it differently? Because right now I’m exhuasted and all I want to do is sleep. Some of that exhuastion is from the Interferon, some is from being so close to the end that I get frustrated and agitated.
But some of it is from work. In some sort of pathetic attempt to prove to everyone at work how tough I am, I took almost no vacation or sick time this entire year.
So that was a good plan, wasn’t it? Yeah, yeah, I’m tough, I’m an Ironman…now can I have some time off?
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 1 Comment »
Saturday, November 25th, 2006
So, I just spent something like an hour writing a new entry about the nostalgia of memory and how all I remember of last December — the worst month — was the brilliance of sleeping all the time; that I remember it fondly because I’m so tired now and have been for so long.
It was an incredible post, full of thoughtful words and images, of brilliant insight about the nature of memory and what not.
Then I screwed it. I’m two hours into a treatment and I’m as stupid as they come. I pushed some wrong button or whatever and poof!, the post disappeared.
And I’m too chemo stupid to rewrite it, at least right now. Maybe I’ll try again later.
But the overriding thought is this: seven days from being finished. Only three more treatments.
Man, the computer screen is floating back and forth, reminds me of nothing so much as the Monkees movie. Head? Was that the title?
Whatever.
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | No Comments »
Thursday, November 16th, 2006
So there’s this old man, call him 157 years old. With perfectly coiffed Baptist/Televangelist/Texas Republican hair. It’s all white and it never moved. He wore a blue track suit and I couldn’t decide if he was a drug dealer or Pimp Daddy Old. Nice suit, though.
I was at the Princeton High School outdoor track, having decided to do my run outside rather than on a treadmill. Just something a little different, no big thing.
Yeah, piss on that. A huge different thing.
It sucked like a Hoover!
First of all, the track is much spongier than I’d realized so I felt like I was running in molasses. Had to work much harder to get any distance. Secondly, I had a headwind half the time, blowing cold-ass air into my face so I couldn’t hardly breathe.
And, oh yeah, I had a chest cold! Hacking and wheezing and coughing up stuff that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. (I know, I know, don’t run when you hurt, but I hadn’t realized, until I started running, how severe the cold was).
So I’m running, managing to jog about half a lap, then walk half, then jog, etc. Quarter mile around the track so I’m not doing great. I’m not dead, but I’m not Carl Lewis, either.
Then this guy comes out of his house across the street, does a warm up or two, and starts jogging.
Son of a bitch never stopped! He was like a machine! Lap after lap after lap. Now, he wasn’t jogging fast, but he wouldn’t stop! Going slower than me but not having to walk half a lap.
Made me crazy. I just wanted this old dude to go home, stop making me look bad.
A lap or two around, he passed me, clapped his hand on my shoulder, and said, “Hang in there.”
I could have killed him. It’s one thing to watch him stomp me into the ground, another thing all together to get his pity while he does it.
What I’m going to do, see, is sneak into his house and muss up his perfect head’o'hair. Hah, that’ll learn his ass!
* * *
This cold has left me in a strange position. I’m 16 days away from being finished with chemo (eight treatments, not that I’m counting) and I feel like I did back in January. I’m tired and weak, not hungry at all, cranky as hell, unmotivated to do anything. All the same things I had back in Jan when I started the home chemo project.
Or, The Home Chemo Project. Maybe I could sell that as some kind of reality show, make a few bucks on those of us throwing up and losing hair and all the other joys of chemo. Extreme Home Makeover…Extreme Home Chemo.
Anyway, I find myself a little depressed by the current state. Yeah, yeah, I realize it’s just a chest cold and it’ll probably be gone in a few days, but I am what I am, I guess.
No great realization here or anything, just interesting that at the end, I am nearly as much of a mental wreck as I was at the beginning. The depression, minor though it is, feels exactly the same, like putting on a not-so favorite pair of ratty underwear because that’s all there is left.
It’s no problem, though. At least, not much of a problem. The depression is less than minor and in a few more days, a few more shots, all this mother-sucking, bullshitty crap will be over.
Booyah!
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | No Comments »
Thursday, November 2nd, 2006
A few years ago, I was at a convention with Michael Arnzen. He’s a hilarious poet and a damned scary writer. (Not that he personally is scary, though that’s sometimes true, or that his writing is so bad it’s scary, but that his books will scare you, I promise). He also is about the same age as I me and we have quite a few of the same reference points in terms of movies and TV and music.
We’re at this convention — Kansas City, I think it was — and the entire weekend, one of us sang “The Final Countdown” to the other. The song, if you remember, is Europe’s only hit single and is one of those songs that once it gets into your head, it ain’t going nowhere.
I hate that song.
But I like my own countdown.
Four weeks from today. Thirty-one days.
Fucking finally.
It’s been tough, these last few weeks. The closer I get to being done, the harder it is to take the shot. I’ll take them, in fact I might interrupt this writing session to go take one, it’s getting to be about that time, and I’ll take them to the bitter end, I’m just tired of them is all.
I realized a few days ago that things have changed. Where it was for so long lots of bad days with a few good moments buried beneath, then it was about 50/50 good days and bad, now it’s much closer to a decent number of good days with a few bad moments buried beneath.
The hours after a shot are tough right now, I don’t know why. But if I can get some sleep two or three hours after shooting up, I’m usually good to go the next day. I wonder, since the dosage is the same as it’s been for weeks now, if that isn’t at least partially psychological.
Seeing the end, can I take the process more easily? Could be.
Other than that, there is nothing going on. Counts are good, eating is good, weight is lite but good, exercise is good. Just waiting out the last few weeks. Nothing else new or different to write about.
Actually, it’s as boring as when I went to the doctor last week. Everything was so stable he was bored with me. I guess I’m starting to get bored with my treatment. Not annoyed like I have been, not angry or depressed, just bored.
That’s okay, though, it’s almost done.
Thirty one days. Thirty one days. Come on, baby, thirty one days.
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 3 Comments »
Thursday, October 19th, 2006
Okay, not really wasting away, but WTF?
Went to the doc today. He was bored, which is good. He said all my counts look good; white blood cells are back up to a normal level of low, reds and platelets and everything else looks good. In other words, he was bored. (Actually, we spent the better part of the appointment talking about writing, which his daughter recently discovered and is very into.)
But — the caveat — I’m still losing weight!
For the last four days, I’ve been starving. Hungrier than I’ve been since last November when the good times started to roll right the fuck down hill. I’ve stuff myself with all kinds of food, scratched the itch, in other words. To the point where even LuAnn warned me to be careful. This from a woman who called me “old man skinny” more than once in the last few months.
I get there today and I’m at 166 according to their scale. Now, 166 ain’t bad, ain’t as bad as my home scale. Puts me down about 40/45 pounds. But I would have thought it was all coming back because I’ve been eating so much more recently.
When the nurse wasn’t in the room, I snatched the chart, dashed down the hall, and made a copy.
12/8/05 (after a week of chemo and not eating), I was 200 pounds.
12/15/05 — 195
12/29/05 — 190
1/26/06 — 189
2/23/06 — 187
4/20/06 — 180
5/18/06 — 178
6/9/06 — 173.5
7/13/06 — 171
7/20/06 — 170
9/7/06 — 169
10/19/06 — 166
A couple of interesting things in those numbers. First, according to their records, the weight didn’t come off as fast as I thought I remembered. After that first 10 pounds down to 200, it went much slower than I realized. Secondly, I’m still exercising, growing muscle mass. My arms and legs are both way stronger than they used to be. So how is it I’m eating more, adding muscle, and still losing weight?
Officer Friendly — who stole me away for lunch today and never yelled at me about the amount I ate, but did look askance when that amount wasn’t what he thought it should be — said I’m obviously not feeding the machine enough to counterbalance the exercise.
Here’s the thing, though. I’ve gotten used to eating less and I like it. I like the weight I’m at, the way I feel. I don’t want to get back into eating anything and everything in sight. So it’ll be a delicate balancing situation. I need to eat a bit more for the exercising, but I don’t want to gain a ton of weight, or the wrong kind of weight.
There isn’t really a point to all of the above rambling, it’s just where I am right now, forty-five days from the end.
Forty-five days! Makes me wanna giggle like a school girl. An entire year — actually slightly longer because of the surgery and whatnot — down to the last few breaths. Man, I can’t even begin to explain how excited I am to be here.
Speaking of here, for any and all of you who might be in the area, December 4 is my chemo free party. At the bookstore in Princeton. If you’re around, pop in and have a Corona with me.
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, October 4th, 2006
The bar was dark, a band playing in the background except they were so loud it was more foreground than anything. Bodies packed tightly into the joint like crack rocks in an Altoid’s tin. Smell of booze and piss and stale sweat and pheromones.
And all I saw was the amber. Four splashes of it. Beautiful, life-sustaining, arousing Jack Daniel’s amber.
“Time for a non-memorial shot,” they said.
“Non-memorial of what?” I asked.
Writers Sean Doolittle, Jeff Shelby, and Lori Armstrong. And me. Sitting in the stinking bar, crowded by body parts that we were pretty sure we didn’t want to touch, crowded by lame-ass conversations, by sex trollers, by pompous, pretentious, bloviating writers and drinkers.
“To the fact that you’re not dead,” one of them said.
And when it went down, when I got the first taste of whiskey since all this started last November, when I got that soft, soothing burn, I’m pretty sure I was pitching a tent.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t drink a ton, but I do love the taste of Daniel’s. And I hadn’t had anything since we started the chemo. Some people said it wouldn’t be a problem to drink while getting the poison, some said it would. Beyond the medical, there was the financial. I’m paying so much to doctors and procedures and chemo juice that I couldn’t afford it anyway.
And by the by, I’m not sure who paid for the shots, but I do appreciate it!
It was that way all weekend, at the Madison, WI Bouchercon. Bouchercon is a mystery convention for writers/editors/fans/readers/agents/etc. Anyone who loves crime and mysteries.
It was an incredible weekend, punctuated by a gratifyingly high number of kisses from women saying “Oh, Trey, I’m glad you’re not dead!”.
Uh…me, too.
I met some incredible people over the weekend and most of them had a cancer story of their own, either themselves or someone dear to them. Listening to those stories — a woman’s sister who had colon cancer for the third time and maybe she’d make it to next month and maybe she wouldn’t — made me realize how large the cancer community is.
There were a couple of people who I would never have spent time with. Don’t like their politics, don’t like their books, don’t like them, whatever. But when cancer came up, all the rest of that shit was out the window.
For that moment, it was like the Lethal Weapon movie where Gibson and Rene Russo compare scars. My cancer was this while his was that; my treatment was this way while hers was that.
While we talked and joked about the cancer — Sandy Loper-Herzog and John Purcell and myself using “You know (I)(he’s) dying of cancer!’” — it never defined me, even during those conversations with people I wouldn’t normally have talked to. We talked about the disease, but we all understood there was so much more to each story than just the disease.
In fact, I had more people talk to me about the book and the short stories and how I did what I did and how I managed the creative process and did I meet that editor or that writer or where were we going for dinner or boxers or briefs, Corona or Corona Light. The cancer was something we could all talk about, but it wasn’t the only thing we could talk about.
Part of me had nervously expected otherwise.
With my close friends, obviously, I’d expected other conversations, but for those writers I was just getting to know or had met the previous year, I was worried it would be about the cancer.
I wanted people, in a nearly petulant school kid kind of way, to talk about my writing and my career and whatever. In other words, I wanted to be noticed for something other than being sick.
When I was in second or third grade, I snatched some money from Mama’s purse. Anson Jones Elementary was selling these little First Aid kits as some kind of fundraiser (I think). Vinyl folding cover, stuffed with Band-Aids, antiseptic cream, little scissors, gauze wrap, aspirins.
Desperately, I wanted one of those. And as soon as I got it, I was ‘Da Man. Kids would go running around, ‘fall,’ and need medical attention. I handed it out like fucking Dr. Kildare.
I was noticed. I was respected. More importantly, to both the second grader and the adult writer, I was the center of attention.
Here’s the thing: I still wanted to be the center of attention at Bouchercon, but not for medical reasons, for arty reasons.
All writers, regardless of how shy they might be, want to be that center of attention, want the world to hear what they have to say (otherwise they probably wouldn’t write for publication, right?). That was what I wanted, to stand in a conversation with people like Ken Bruen and talk about what brought us all together.
Not that Ken didn’t yell at me about keeping my health up. Actually, to be brutally honest, he sort of vaguely threatened me. I take seriously anything that sounds even remotely like a threat from an Irish man who was a security guard at WTC and spent time in a Brazilian prison for a bar fight. (And can you imagine the fight that would land you in jail in Brazil? Holy crap.)
On Friday, Lori Armstrong and I went to go shoot handguns. A few of her friends went with us, people I like to think of as friends of mine now: Jeff Shelby, Alison Gaylin, Karen Olson. We taught them how to shoot and at one point or another, the better part of that group took me aside individually and asked how I was doing. When they were satisifed with my answer, they snatched my gun and started shooting.
What I’m trying to say — and forgive me if I use 100 words where 10 would have sufficed, I’m a writer and just as pompous as you can imagine — is that I appreciated everyone’s good wishes. I appreciated their asking how I was doing and wishing me the best. But what I might have appreciated even more was their total awareness of the awkwardness of those very conversations. No one danced around the subject, no one tried to sugarcoat their own cancer stories even if the patient died.
No one tried to smoke me, in other words.
“Trey, heard you had cancer. How’s that going? Good? Good. Feeling okay right now? Good, let’s go get some pizza.”
And for the entire weekend — shooting, signing books, talking with Jennifer Jordan about how her year was MUCH worse than mine, congratulating Jon and Ruth on the award for their fabulous magazine Crime Spree, meeting cool new people like the incredible Tribe, realizing just how much you loved old friends — that might well have been the highlight: not getting noticed for the First Aid kit from second grade.
It was a brilliant weekend and damn me if I didn’t desperately need it.
Except now that I’ve written about swiping $$$ from Mama’s purse, I’m sure she’s gonna call me and demand that money back.
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, September 26th, 2006
“Trey?”
“Hey, Trey? Where are you?”
Exercise room. Squad room.
“Trey? You here? Trey. Hey!”
Break room. Class room. Holding cells.
“Hey. Trey! You okay? Where are you?”
Sally port. Sergeants’ office. DARE office. Exercise room again.
“Trey! Damnit, don’t screw with me! Where are you?”
Lobby. Hallways. Behind the exercise equipment. Bathrooms. Call the bookstore. Call the Sheriff’s Office. Call my home.
And Sergeant Terry Polhemus’ heart rate kept climbing.
Finally, he called Sgt. Atkinson.
“Hey, I can’t find Trey. His stuff is at Post 40. He was exercising. I can’t find him.”
Atkinson — Officer Friendly — glanced at me. We were on an accident call together. “Uh…he’s with me.”
I’m not sure what Polhemus’ words were after that, but I’m pretty sure they were colorful and probably included images of impaling me on the treadmill.
I didn’t even think about leaving my stuff there, and maybe that’s the most distressing part of the entire — now funny — incident.
When I got done with the daily poisoning in December, I realized I had lost a great majority of my muscle mass. I had trouble, in other words, doing basic things like lifting meals at the jail or holding up whatever book I was reading.
So I began to exercise. A little weight lifting, a little running. Just trying to stay as healthy as possible through all this, trying to boost my immune system. Hell, even trying to find something to keep my mind off of being sick.
And through it all, there always seemed to be one of the boys in blue around. Making jokes and always just in earshot, listening for me falling down, passing out, or dying.
(Hah, wouldn’t that have been the funniest joke. I die and THEY get stuck with filling out all the paperwork and reports and insurance forms. Hah, bury them in paper!)
The point — please God make the point already, you rambling, bloviating fool — is that I wasn’t worried about leaving my stuff sitting on that table. It didn’t occur to me that Terry would see my keys and not my body and get worried.
In other words, I forgot he might be worried about me.
I felt that good, that healthy and strong and in control.
What the fuck? When was the last time that happened? Honestly, last October and November, when I was out shilling for my first novel. Then, in November, the Terrible Times started.
I wrote a few months ago that I had no good days. All of them were bad. Then, later, I wrote that I was having good days but they were few and far between.
Well, the ratio is changing. Call it 50/50 now. At least as many good days as bad.
Not only can I see the light at the end of the tunnel, but there’s enough light now that it’s warming me up pretty good. Hell, maybe even enough light to tan my face a little.
Of course, I might feel great today simply because it’s sun-shiny outside, I’m on vacation from the jail for eight days, and I’m on a week’s break from the poison.
Plus, this week is Bouchercon, the mystery/crime convention, and I’m looking forward to seeing some writer friends, people who’ve managed to help me get through the bullshit by sending me free books and stuff.
I mean, yeah, their friendship is great blah blah blah, but send me loot, man, that’s what I’m all about.
By the by, 65 days….
Posted in The Cancer Chronicles | 1 Comment »
