Just one more thing

Dear Chemo 13 Gang Members:

I am really looking forward to building all the mobiles representing moving to the end of this mess. I’m kind of at the point where I hate to mention the health issues I’m dealing with because it almost borders on whining.

Maybe this is my punishment for a life full of whining intolerance. “What’s wrong with you buddy? A broken leg? Hey, shake it off you’ll be fine.”

But apparently the Karmic Equalizer had decided that I haven’t experienced the full range of chemotherapy complications so I must report some stinky news. As part of this life learning process and humility building exercise I’ve been granted Clostridium Difficile, aka c-diff.

Here’s the deal. It is a bacterial bowel infection – nasty already, huh – that results in super diarrhea. I’m talking the explosive, lift you off the commode like an ejector seat kind of diarrhea. I’m talking the kind of diarrhea that disabled armies in the Middle Ages. I’m talking …

I’ll stop talking. You get the idea.

The bacteria is alive and well in all of us. That’s right. You have some roaming around – right now – in your intestines looking for an opportunity to pounce – actually it’d be more like a gurgle, but having something hiding and preparing to gurgle doesn’t strike a whole lot of fear. People with cancer and especially people like me – no not good looking people, but people like me with compromised immune systems—you read Friday’s post—are the ones that get gurgled. I’ve been gurgled.

Your body normally slaps the c-diff bacteria around the way Phillip Marlow dealt with two-bit gangsters in those old movies. If you remember, Phillip Marlow was  – if not dirty – a bit dingy anyway and was often hauled of to the police station leaving the two bit gangster free to run a bit wild and exact revenge.

That’s kind of what happens to your body. Your Phillip Marlow’s are taken for a long walk on a short pier in cement overshoes and the c-diff bacteria gurgles you. People getting high levels of antibiotics (like me) are particularly at risk because their internal good bacteria are getting killed.

The good news is the treatment for c-diff is a pretty easy, targeted antibiotic – which I started last night. So I’m gonna be fine. The great karmic Equalizer has determined I need a little more humility in my live and gave me this gift.

Michael J. Fox says Parkinson’s is the gift that keeps on taking. I kind of see what he means.