Suffering Succotash

Good Morning Chemo 13:

Despite all the rumors to the contrary, I do have a heart. I saw it yesterday.

I went to my echocardiogram appointment yesterday. It was pretty cool. When you actually see your heart it looks so delicate. It seems like the perfect perpetual motion machine. It just sits there and pumps. I wonder what keeps it moving? It’s actually pretty fascinating to see the blood course through the valves.

When you see the valves working they look like Daffy Duck saying, “Suffering Succotash.” The valves look like Daffy’s beak.

If anyone has a baseball team they hate, let me know and I’ll start rooting for them and they’ll surely lose. Just ask Phillies. The best team in baseball all year and they get whipped in the first round of the playoffs. Go figure!

I felt suspiciously good yesterday for most of the day – something’s up. I am hoping for a repeat performance today. I’m going to run down to Boscov’s and get some jeans today. I don’t have any pants that fit right now; they’re all too big. One of the side benefits of cancer.

I guess that’s it for now.

I’ll write again soon,

Bill

Something Special This Way Comes

Good Morning Dear Friends:

Yesterday’s mail brought me a wallop.

I got my letter telling me I would no longer be an employee of the state when I had reached my 183 days of short-term disability (STD); that’s October 17^th BTW. I knew it was coming and I understand how large personnel systems work, but when I opened the mailbox and saw the letter I was still taken aback.

I know it is more likely than not, I will have a job with DOL when I get off the long-term disability (LTD), which is supposed to kick in when the STD goes away. But, as a young man I spent a lot of time in Missouri and developed a certain healthy skepticism or “show me” attitude to life. You may not know this, but I called the registrar at the University of Rhode Island every day for a week before graduation to ensure I was really done. Murphy is always hanging in the wings waiting to pounce.

Psychically though, it’s just one more thing in a six-month long line of poop that has knocked me to my heels. With the exception of the love shown to me by you, the people of DOL, the nurses on the 6^th floor, the ones at the Helen Graham Center, old friends, and most importantly my family, it really has been – as we’d say in the army – a shit sandwich. I won’t list all the ingredients of said sandwich, but suffice it to say it doesn’t taste very good.

I am not the man of faith many of you are, but yesterday when I got my letter, I asked God to make it all stop; for an hour or so it was all too much– the cancer, the chemo, the job, the hospital stays, the unending fatigue -- all of it. It’s what the letter symbolized that got me I guess. Even so, God’s probably not done with me yet so, so there’ll be more stones tossed on my path.

All hail Job and Sisyphus!

The good news of course is this is a temporary thing (although it doesn’t feel that way today) and I plan to be back at work by mid-January, playing rock and roll too loudly in my office on my IPOD music station, and forcing the senior staff to come over and shoosh me.

I only have two chemo sessions left and I have to keep my eye on that ball instead of all things I have to recover when those sessions are over. Recovery -- that’s the big idea post I am so reticent to write, but I’ll get to it.

But there is something stirring inside me catalyzed by all this – there are changes coming. To bastardize Ray Bradbury, “Something Special This Way Comes.” I don’t have any idea what this is yet. Heck I may write that missing book about the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge. Who knows?

I appreciate your patience reading this far and I could go on for pages, but I think I’ll just stop here, grab an Eggo Waffle or two, and consider the universe.

Peace to all,

Bill

Rambling Man

Good Morning Chemo 13:

I have become notoriously unreliable. I promised myself I’d clean my office and all I seem capable of is moving coffee cups into my office. Ho hum.

Steve Jobs died yesterday. I presume from pancreatic cancer; that’s some real bad stuff. Yikes. He was only two years older than I am. That doesn’t freak me out because I have cancer; it freaks me out because I have a MacBook. I’ve been down this Job’s-less Apple computer road before. You are looking at one of the original IMac guys. We’ll see what happens.

Lately I feel as though I’m at a crossroads. I’ve resigned myself to taking the final two chemotherapy blocks. So I’d just as soon get on with it, but it seems I’m having side effects that are just kicking my buttocks with the severity they used to. For example, my eyebrows are gone and I get fatigued really easy like when I first started. It’s a drag for sure, but I shouldn’t whine.

I finally got my appetite back yesterday and am sniffing around for an Italian Grinder. For the Delawareans, Montanans, Washingtonians, and the Kenyan prince on the Internet who keeps asking me to send more money, a grinder is a pizza-oven heated hoagie. I won’t even get into what a cabinet is, but their wicked good.

I know these are just the ramblings of a crazy man at 0531, but what are you gonna do?

The truth is I am lacking the moral courage to write real stuff this morning. I’ll start again tomorrow morning when I have a little clarity. There are big things to write about, but I don’t have fully formed ideas in my head at the moment.

Back to bed for an hour or so.

Peace

Bill

feeling tired, but okay

Just a photo of MT back country

Good Morning All you wily Gang members:

Well, it’s gonna be a nice quiet day today after I go to Perkins and get some pancakes or an omelet with hash browns and ketchup on the side. I should be completely strung out on coffee by like 9:30. I probably wouldn’t go out except I have to drop the dogs off at the groomers at 0830 and it just so happens Perkins is in the same strip mall. Thank God for small favors.

I am a bit depleted lately. I walked the dogs yesterday from house to our local park, which is maybe 500 meters away – maybe. I was exhausted by the time I got home and I had to lean on a trashcan to catch my breath. It was terrible. I think getting back in shape is going to be one of the hardest parts of survivorship. It is going to take sooooooooo much effort.

My doc would say not be so hard on myself; maybe he’s right – all things in their time I guess. After all, I just got out of the hospital Saturday from some blood infection that is still undetermined. That reminds me, I need to make sure that my doc follows up with the infectious disease guys to see if they ever came to closure on the infection cause.

My platelets were up one yesterday. I am all the way up to 18. I need to be to 50 to begin round seven. My doc is on at a conference and then vacation, so I am at the mercy of the nurse practitioner. She’s does a fine job. So I should be okay. Here’s the thing, if I get to 50, I start round seven whether my doc is here or chillaxing with an umbrella drink in his hand and contemplating the expansion of the universe (which is accelerating BTW. I’m not sure what that does to the creationism vs. the big bang debate, but it is interesting nonetheless). Regardless, it all just kind of makes me squeamish (not the universe stuff, the starting round seven stuff).

I guess that’s it. I’m off to bed for an hour or two before I go to Perkins. Bye!

Peace to all

Bill

Good Morning Chemo 13:

I’m still on the loose. I’m looking around my home office here and it is a mess. Way worse than the one I have at DOL. That’s bad.

Hey I’ve got a couple of photos to share. The first is when I got to the hospital, I was freezing and the room air kept beating on my baldhead. I guess – truth be told – I was pretty miserable. The second is me in a hospital bed before the Red Sox collapse; you can tell because I’m still smiling.

They never did figure out what the cause of the blood infection was that helped land me in the joint. Oh well. I guess it’s not that important – it’s probably my desk anyway with its collection of dirty coffee cups, old papers, and dog hair.

Oh health stuff – I almost forgot. I go back to the docs this morning to get my blood checked yet again. Although my platelets were only 17 yesterday, they chose not to transfuse me because my other stuff is on the rise and they think my body will start producing its own platelets now. I hope so.

All the other blood stuff looks okay – not great, but okay. Like I said before we are hell and gone from normal; that’s months and months away.

I guess that’s it for now. See you all tomorrow.

Bill

just a note today -- more tomorrow

Dear Chemo 13:

I don’t have a lot to share at the moment. It’s 0511 and the crisp air of autumn is finally here. I love this time of year. Well, I am a bit thankful for that.

I’ve got a lot to do this week.

Today – Go get blood drawn and I betcha I end up being transfused with platelets or Red Blood Cells. It’s always kind of hard when your doctor tells you late Friday night the get blood drawn Monday, because the office doesn’t have you in the computer and blah, blah, blah.

Tasks also for this week.

Have to call the Hartford to check on my long-term disability. The plan is for me to return to work on or about 13 Jan 2011. I submitted my application I guess we’ll see the going rate for lymphoma for about 90 days.

I have to get with the ladies at the docs office and schedule my echocardiogram. What? I’m not sexist. All that people working in that office are women.

I’ll have to get blood drawn a couple of times I’m sure – I better schedule that too today as best I can.

I want to order the original Boris Karloff “The Mummy.” Halloween is coming after all. I think I’ll get it off ITunes.

I may buy a white lab coat with “patient” embroidered on it. Everyone at the hospital has a lab coat except the nurses (who actually get stuff done and the patients who get stuff done to them). There is this one group of people in white lab coats who sit at the computer terminals at the nurse’s station for hours. I don’t know what they do, but I suspect it is not lab coat worthy.

Joking aside – I have to buckle down and practice my guitar. These hospital stays are killing my guitar playing. 

short post today

Good morning. Wassup? Well, it looks like I might get out of here at long last. At least that’s the plan as described by my oncology guy. In fact, I got platelets late last night to “top me off” ‘till Monday.

Here’s the big plan for the next week or so.

Monday I go to the doc’s office and get a blood draw (probably the first of many)

Some time next week I get an echocardiogram (whatever the heck that is)

Then I get blood draws throughout the week to check my levels in preparation for the next round of chemo

Then I get to chillax the rest of the week

Finally it’s off to chemo block #7 the week of the 10th -- that’s birthday week!!!

I guess that’s it.

Bill