TWO WEEKS OFF!

I Have No Words

My Life As A Cartoon

Up until recently, Brad Guigar drew Philly Phables for the Philadelphia Daily News. I contributed two stories before the plug got pulled. He would have liked the Giant Leech story or one or two others from the blog. Check out some of his other work online at Guigar.com He's an amazing illustrator and cartoonist.
Here are the two stories I contributed:
Some Of Them Look Good In Tights
Some Are About Doing A Good Deed

Janet Jackson's Got Nothing On Me

Remember Janet Jackson's Super Bowl nipple accessory that caused such a stir?
Pish-posh, I say.
Wanna see some serious nipple jewelry?

This is called a Hickman Catheter. It runs from my chest up under the skin to my jugular vein. Then into the jugular vein and down to the superior vena cava near the right atrium of the heart or what they call ("they" meaning me) the body's chemo mixing bowl.

The drugs used in chemotherapy can be so poisonous that they need to be administered to the body in the most diluted way possible. Daunorubicin, one of my chemo drugs in the hospital, is so poisonous that it would eat away the vein and surrounding flesh if administered through a standard IV. With the Hickman it is slowly (and manually) pushed into the Hickman directly to the vena cava. There can be some minor heart damage from the drug, but it is the least harmful way of getting the most effective drug into the system.

There are two tubes in the Hickman which allows multiple drugs to be administered or blood to be drawn without a needle stick.

Me? I'm just looking forward to all the stares at the beach.

One More Week!

Say it with me people:

One More Week!
One More Week!
One More Week!

One more week of arsenic before my two week break. Two whole weeks for my system to recover from the onslaught of deadly poison being pumped directly into my veins every day.

It has been pretty easy going with the arsenic so far. But just recently my system said started saying, "Enough of this shit!"

My white count has dropped a bit, not putting me in the DANGER WILL ROBINSON! category, but definitely in the Be Careful category. This explains why I need the afternoon naps, I guess. So no sushi. No raw vegetables. Only fruit with thick skins. Yummy.

Anyway that's the reason for the two week break. Hopefully the coming week won't kick my ass too hard and I can keep writing these little ditties for you.

Either way, I'll let you know.

Another Short One

Well there is one good thing I can tell you about chemotherapy:
It sure clears up your skin.
Not that I am recommending it over Clearasil or anything...

A Quick One

The last post was pretty long so here is a quick one...
I had a follow-up with my neurosurgeon to check his handiwork on my noggin. All better now.
I don't think he appreciated me calling him, "McDreamy," though.

Dispatches From The Hospital Room 3

More of my experiences in the hospital during December.

My oncologist came into my hospital room trailed by an uncommonly large retinue of interns, residents, fellows, and cancer groupies. I raised the head of the bed to listen. He had spoken, vaguely, of a cutting edge treatment for which I was eligible that was under study at the hospital. A nurse wheeled in an incubator with something squirming swaddled in a blue blanket.

My doctor explained that the new treatment for my type of leukemia required the filtration of the leukemia cells from my blood and the Genetic Research department of the University had engineered a new lifeform to accomplish this.

From the incubator he lifted a tube-shaped object about 2 and a half feet in length and 2 feet in diameter. I was intrigued until I noticed the tube wiggled by itself like a piglet that doesn’t want to be held. The idea wasn’t new, he continued, medical science had used leeches to bleed patients since ancient times and they are currently used with great success in draining blood after reconstructive surgery.

He handed me the tube. It weighed about the same as a terrier puppy and wiggled almost as much. It was warm to the touch and its skin felt like the nylon cover of a neoprene support brace. It smelled coppery – like blood, but with a sickly sweet finish. Surrounding the holes on either end of the thing were a brush of needle-like extensions that I can only assume were teeth.

Before the wide-eyed and excited crowd my doctor told me that this thing had been bio-engineered right there at Penn. And while it wasn’t a leech, its DNA was based on leech DNA but it was designed to attach itself to me, suck out my blood, filter out only the leukemia cells and return my clean blood to my body. The neat thing, he told me with pride, was when the leukemia was all gone, the thing would starve, die and drop right off my body. Cured.

One doctor opened my shirt. One end of the thing turned like a cobra and struck against my right pec. The sensation was like getting an over-enthusiastic hickie followed by a pleasant numbness. The other end attached itself with some force to my left ribcage. That side burned and swelled.

I was sweating. I looked around the room. I knew every face in the room. No one looked out of place. I could smell them. The air was thick from their breathing. The thing wiggled on my chest. My doctor smiled – a bit too much, I thought. He reached forward and patted the thing on my chest. I could smell the ever-present sanitizer on his hands. I could hear IV pump alarms outside the room and the soft sound of carts being pushed in the hall.

I looked everywhere for a hole. There had to be a way out of this world somehow. I felt the sheets beneath me. They felt every bit as real as they do now. I tried to rise from the bed, but the thing on my chest reset its grip on my flesh forcing me to stay put.

It was then I noticed behind my doctor – where the bathroom ought to be – was a stained glass window. My mind wrapped itself around the fatal flaw in this scene and I clawed my way back to reality.

This was no dream. I had not been sleeping. I watched the crowd disappear from my room, followed by my doctor. And when I looked down, the thing on my chest was gone, too. I sat in my hospital bed panting in sheer panic. Which was worse? Seeing a giant leech on my chest, or thinking I saw a giant leech on my chest?

Now I am no stranger to “seeing things.” I am, after-all, of the generation that spent Saturday nights watching 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Midnight Movies. Over and over again. I have been known to have conversations with inanimate objects and people that were not there. But never in my life have I had a fictitious experience as real as this one.

Maybe it was the fevers or the Dilaudid or the loneliness, strangeness and isolation of night in the hospital. Maybe it was the combination of things. But from time to time I still feel the weight of the Leech as it wiggles, smell its sweet coppery stench as it sucks on my chest.

Such is the anatomy of a hallucination.

Dave In Wii World

Inside Dave's Brain

"With the thoughts I'd be thinkin'
I could be another Lincoln..."

Deep down, I knew there was brain in there somewhere as this actual x-ray of my actual brain conclusively proves.  I just didn't think it would look so... evil.

Dispatches From The Hospital Room 2

Here is another blog entry I wrote in December while in the hospital.   This is the edited version.  The original went on for a page or two.  Originally, I pretentiously set it into verse. I have re-written it to make it more stream of consciousness.    

 It seems more appropriate.

Things I Didn’t Say In December Because I Was Being Brave

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.
Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow, goddammit! Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow, Shit!
Ow, Hey, Watch That! Ow. Ow. Ouch. Ow. Ow! Is This Really Necessary?
Ow. Ow. You have to let me get some sleep. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ouch. Ow. Ow.
Ow. Ow. Ow. You really have to let me sleep. Ow. Ow. Ow. Oh you sonofa… Ow.
Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Christ! Ow. Ow. Ow. Stop. Ow. Ow. Ow.
Ow. If you don’t let me sleep I will become psychotic and I will kill you and eat you and I don’t want to do that because you are the only one on nightshift I like and you are the only one who can stick me and not make it feel like you are drilling for oil. Ow.
Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Holy Jeez! Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ouch. Ow.
Can you please use the paper tape because the Transpore rips off the top layer of flesh.
Ow, goddammit, OW! Ow. Ow. Stop. Stop. Please stop. Please make it stop. Ow.
Ow. I have no immune system. Please don’t sneeze on me again. Ow. Ow. Ow.
Ow. Ow. Ow. Hey! Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.
Ow. Is sadism a requirement in the Phlebotomy Dept? Ow. Ow! OW! Ow. Ow. Ow.
Ow. Yes, it fuckin’ hurts! Ow. Ow. Ow. Don’t ask me. Read the friggin’ chart.
Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Dispatches From The Hospital Room

I was collecting some of my writings for the blog from my time in the hospital. While reviewing some of them, it became clear that the Dilaudid was doing some of the writing for me. Here are some of the more lucid passages.

DOCTORS: You say much more with your diagnosis than the name of the disease.

You sit in the hospital with a vague idea of what is wrong with you. You know something is wrong with your blood and the term pancytopenia has been thrown around along with the less frequent, leukemia. After a bone marrow biopsy you wait for the verdict. You hope for the best, but the difference between the two diagnoses is a series of B12 shots or, well, cancer.

So Doc, when you say the words, “You have Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia” you are also saying:

“You will never see your kids grow up.”
“You will never see them graduate high school or college or fall in love or get married.”
“You will never see your grandkids.”
“You will be a photo on the wall that nobody talks about because everybody gets a little sad when they do.”
“Your family will be financially ruined.”
“Despite health insurance, there will come a time when that runs out and you will be grasping at straws for any experimental treatment that might save your life.”
“You will mortgage your house, you will drain the kids’ college fund, you will sell your very soul to anybody who will give you another day or two of hope.”
“You will break the promise you made to your wife and yourself that you would take care of her all of her life.”
“You will never hold hands with your wife in a hammock on the beach in Negril when you’re 70.”
“You will turn the love of your life, your lover, into your caretaker.”
“You will hate yourself for that.”
“You will never (insert your dream here) .”
“You will never (insert dream vacation here) .”
“You will deeply regret watching so much TV, not making more friends, being so rude to Tom, saying those things about Jen, and not taking that chance when you were 30, .............”

Doc, all these thoughts take place in the uncomfortable 30 seconds of silence that follow the word “leukemia” and before you explain that acute promyelocytic leukemia has a very high cure rate and I am in very good hands at Penn where they have the best blood cancer doctors in the world.

Try and remember that.

$ 435,499.00... and counting.

31 Days of Room & Board

834 Doses of Medication

118 Labs

14 Pathology Labs

26 Radiology Services

6 Surgical Procedures

112 Blood Analyses

4 Doses of Anesthesia

5 "Therapy" ?

3 Diagnostic Procedures

4 Recovery Room Charges

Total Charges

Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania:   $435,499.00

Leukemia In Remission: Priceless

Don't have Health Insurance?  Save your pennies.

The 'stache Is (Comin') Back!

So what if it looks like a 9th graders.  After a month we now have regular hair growth!  The mustache and goatee are coming back strong. The cheeks are still a bit bare, but there is now enough grass on the field that people will stop confusing me with David Lowe.

The dome is still woefully bare. The hair is growing faster now, but I still look more like Mr. Freeze than Rod Blagojevich. 

Maybe that's a good thing. 

But this head was born to wear hair. My hats off to those who go bare (either voluntarily or involuntarily) through the winter. Pun fully intended. I need my beautiful, long, luxurious locks back. 

I think the hair is why Bonnie married me. Well, one of the reasons...

Is There Anybody Out There?

In the words of the Floyd, "Is there anybody out there?"

I'm just curious, is anybody really reading this? I know I have 10 followers, but half of those are kin, so it's tough to know if I am preaching to an empty hall or not.

If you're reading this blog, do me a favor and leave a comment occasionally - so I know I am not talking to myself here. You don't have to become a Follower - I know I wouldn't. But just let me know you're there.

Thanks

One Down - Nine to Go

Friday I finished my first week of arsenic with no ill effects. Four more weeks until my two week break. I'm thinking Cabo or the DR - maybe Vegas. I hope Bonnie can come too.

HA!

Weekends are such a tease. You start feeling normal for a day or two, but then Monday it's back to the bad part-time job sitting in the chair at HUP. I guess this is what people with real jobs feel like. I wouldn't know. Never had a real job.

Maybe for the break I can get some hours on a part-time job. Don't know what I'm qualified for, but I have been rehearsing, "Do you want to Biggie-Size your fries?" I have thought about library work. After 20+ years as a soundman, nobody has more experience shushing people than me.