Ain't feeling it today

Guys:

I just ain't feeling it today. Felt pretty lousy all weekend -- unrelenting gurgling stomach, insomnia, tingling fingers, just blech! It gets tedious eventually.

I'll feel better tomorrow and write more then. Going back to bed if I can.

Bill

Happy Labor Day

Happy Labor Day, my Chemo 13 Posse:

It’s very early – only about 0409. This will hopefully be the last of the Decadrcon get up early days. I’m just not sleeping through the night at the moment. God and my typing is terrible; this is taking a long time just to get the paragraph composed.

A special shout out and thanks to Chemo 13 gang member Kathy Thomas, her husband, and her two dogs. They were able to come up with a bunch of old fashioned barbells – including two 25 lbs plates – which will keep me out of trouble for at least the next six months or so.

It was weird picking up the weights from the Thomas's Sunday. As I mentioned earlier, when this all started last April, I had been working out steadily for about a year at two gyms and benching about 320 and had begun doing power cleans for general cardiac health. Reaching down and picking up two 45 plates and throwing them in unison on a bar, or toting them across the gym for who knows what, was no big deal. But yesterday … Fudgesicles man … I bent over to pick up a single 25 and it felt like I was trying to lift a Volkswagen. I carried it to my car – my wife and Kate were watching – with gritted teeth and gently placed it in the hatchback.

Now as I get to within three treatments to the end, I am just now beginning to realize an inkling of the toll this whole cancer journey has left on my body. I have a lot of work to do. I am very excited to have this to deal with. It is going to be a blast.

Remember, what Thomas Paine said, "What we achieve to easily, we esteem to lightly."

Well, that’s it for now. Talk to you all soon.

Please don’t kick sand in my face,

Love to all,

Bill 

KCup coffee

This post has nothing to do with cancer or chemo cycles; it’s all about coffee.

Yesterday I bought one of the Keurig K-Cup coffeemakers; you know the kind with the individual premeasured tubs you drop in the machine and voila coffee is hot and supposedly perfect?

Well as Charlton Heston said of his rifle shortly after Columbine, I say the same of my coffeemaker “They’ll have to pry it from cold dead hands.” 

Except for what I expect to be an expensive per/cup proposition, my K-Cup coffeemaker makes perfect coffee quickly.

I found about this thing from one of the nurses at chemo when, after a 0500 blood draw, she asked if there was anything I needed.

“If you somehow scrounge me up a cup of Joe, that would be great,” I said.

“I can do better than that,” she said.

In a couple of minutes she brought me wonderful cup of coffee and told me about the machine.

It’s a hell of a deal when you to go to the hospital to get a decent cup of Joe.

Anyway I’m usually a percolator guy, but those things are kind of hard to clean and measure and getting coarser ground coffee is a pain in the neck especially if you go to Starbucks or some place and have to explain to college grad MBA holder barrister with an attitude what a percolator is.

So anyway the coffeemakers were on special at Boscov’s yesterday, so I bought one.

Tomorrow -- it's about chemo and how I feel pretty good.

day 13 feeling better

Good Morning Chemo 13:

Well its day 13 of this round and that typically means I’ve reached rock bottom with bad blood numbers and everything should begin rebounding. I am feeling pretty good except for a bit of insomnia caused by a steroid called decadron. I’ll only be on it for three more days. In the interim I wander about mumbling, “Decadron Doth Murder Sleep” Shakespeare forgive me.

I am on the warpath with my home-nursing guys. I don’t want to mention the firm’s name, because that might get them mad and sue me, but they’re just terrible. They never make appointments and only want visit when they are in the area. It’s crazy. It is one of the few flaws in my military healthcare that some home nursing companies don’t like dealing with the Department of Defense.

Well that’s it for today. Short post, but kind of getting tired and I better take advantage of it while I can.

Peace,

Bill

Little REd Riding Jerk

9/2/11 3:48 AM

A bit of stream of consciousness for your entertainment and my catharsis – thanks for indulging me.

When I was a teenager I used to spend every summer working at a Camp Hoffman in Kingston RI. I am probably one of the few men you’ll ever meet that was an active member of the Girls Scouts of America for more than five years. I worked my way up from kitchen staff to the highly sought after maintenance staff where I learned to bend nails with a hammer -- my boss Eddy Arnold -- was very patient. I actually learned a lot. I’m pretty handy now.

In the summer of 1977 three Girl Scouts were murdered at an Oklahoma resident summer camp. Security at Camp Hoffman became a big deal. As one of only a handful of male staff and one of the even fewer with any muscle tone, I was assigned the additional duty of driving the camp perimeter to ensure nothing was amiss and the campers were safe. I remember – I think – having an axe handle in the cab of my red Ford flatbed stake truck as my protection.

One dark sultry night, the air still sticky from the obligatory early evening thunderstorms, I was doing my rounds with another non-atrophied young man, Jamie Dadona.

“Holy Toledo,” he said. “This road blows.”

The red Ford truck bounced up and down and back and forth mercilessly along the rutted dirt road that was sometimes mud, sometimes dusts, and always a back breaker. The headlights alternated between giving excellent views of nesting habits of local birds or lighting the worm holes in the ground.

We approached one of the campsites containing three or four large tents and about 15 young girl scouts. The lights of the truck bounced down from the treetops to one of the few moments when they leveled out and shined directly on a grey slatted fence that secured a few garbage cans from errant squirrels or the odd feral cat.

Next to the fence was a full grown man wearing red one-piece long john underwear and holding something in his hand. He wore combat boots – it seemed to me – that were only laced halfway.

For a moment Jamie and I were stunned.

We looked at lLittle Red Riding Jerk and he looked at us. Jamie and I grabbed our trusty axe handles; open the truck doors to get out -- prepared to administer some rural vigilante violence. Before our feet touched the ground Little Red Riding Jerk was off like a shot. It looked he was staying close to the road.

“Get back in the truck,” I shouted. “We can head him off.”

“We’re gonna kick this guys ass,” Jamie said. “We’ll be heroes.”

Terrible roads don’t get an better the faster you travel and the total darkness of no a no street path made every twist and jag on these roads we thought we knew, a last second steering decision.

We slogged down the muddy road traveling, we thought, faster than a guy in Red one-piece long johns possibly could.

“We should be running parallel to this asshole,” I said. “Let’s turn off our lights, make a left turn, get out of the truck and wait for him.”

“Great! Let’s set up a trap,” Jamie said.

The Southern New England forest hemmed us in. The vines and creepers made each step a challenge and the moon reflected every now and then off the leaves of the still damp ferns. We knew we only had a little time. If we waited too long, any help we could get from the police would arrive too late to be helpful. If we went back without Little Red Riding Jerk we would look like a couple of paranoid idiots.

As the mosquitoes buzzed in bug made clouds above our heads, we crouched and waited. Nothing moved.

“Hey man,” Jamie said after about a half an hour. “We should probably go see Eddy and tell him what happened. This is kind of crazy and this guy could be getting away using some other road.”

Both things are exactly what happened.

The boss and his family lived on the camp grounds in a little rustic cottage.

When we reported to him what happened, he didn’t think we were crazy or overreacting. Instead he had his son get a shotgun and go with us to the campsite and he stood guard. While this was going on Eddy called the state police and they came. I don’t remember much about what happened after that except a lesson in geography and knowing your surroundings.

Neither Jaime nor I realized the campsite abutted a creek that provided easy access to Camp Hoffman. We didn’t know campers and watercraft instructors often used the access for canoeing daytrips. It turned out that is how Little Red Riding Jerk got into the camp and escaped our trap. Instead of staying parallel to the road, he took a left and ran up a tiny trail to the access and made his way using the creek – at least that’s what the cops said.

What does any of this have to do with chemo? Nothing really. I woke up at 0230 and was going to tell you about a totally different thing –a dream I had. I started typing and this true story is what came out.

I'll post a picture of Jamie, Ed, his son Paul, and I later.

Thanks,

Bill

Kryptonite

Good Morning Chemo 13:

When I traveled here from my home planet Krypton I was just a baby. As you know the yellow sun of Earth makes me a little ill when I come in contact with pieces of rock or liquids from Krypton.

I have discovered that most chemo is Kryptonite derivative. Oh well.

Today I have about five hours of Kryptonite infusion (aka chemo) at the Graham Cancer Center.

You ever notice that life isn't fair. Here's an example. I usually get a Demerol/Benadryl  cocktail before my infusion, it gets me very stoned. It's actually rather pleasant in a" skid row" kind of way. My last infusion the effect was somewhat mitigated and I mentioned it to the nurse.

She said my body was building up a tolerance to it. Then I asked a stupid question. "Does that mean my body is working up a tolerance to chemo and that I will feel fewer and fewer side effects?"

Of course the answer was -- "That's not how that works."

Damn!!

Love to all,

Bill

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Dear Chemo 13:

Happy last day of August all. I don’t have a lot to report today. My plan is to hunker down watch some TV, ride the recumbent bike, and maybe go to lunch with my boss. I understand she is off this week. In fact when I get this done I’ll send her a note too.

I have a bunch of thank you cards to write. The problem is that my damn hands don’t work the way I want them to. I think I’m having some neurotoxicity crap going on – it should pass in a few months. Sometimes I just can’t grasp things, you know like a pen or a guitar pick. Playing the F chord on the guitar is almost impossible right now.

I’ve been toying with the idea of going fishing one day, but I am supposed to stay out of direct sun – kind of like the Eric Northman. Anyway I’m thinking that next month when it cools down a bit, I just might take a pole and spend the morning at the CD canal drowning a few worms.

I have this great fear though, that a special agent from the Insurance Company will spy on me and decertify my disability claim because I spent the morning relaxing with a fishing pole instead of holed up in my house bombarding myself with Jerry Springer and Maury.  How’s that for a little paranoia?

Ho hum.

Speaking of disability claims, I have to fill out a book-sized application as my short-term claim expires and I access long-term resources. Long term is such a misnomer. I only need about 45 days beyond my original plan to finish off my chemo, get the Hickman Port uninstalled, and go back to work.

I made some miscalculations on my calendar. First, my short-term disability started from the bowel resection in April and not the cancer diagnosis in May. So I lost almost a month of time in non-cancer related activities (life saving nonetheless I grant you, but not chemo). I thought I was on ordinary sick leave. And then I lost almost 15 days dealing with dangerously low blood counts and potential infections that saw me carted off to the hospital at one point. Ten of those days could have been used for chemo had I known more about safe levels vs. normal levels.  Oh well.

I guess that’s it for today.

See you guys later,

Bill