November 2, 2005

C, the Scariest Letter - part two

(First part of this entry should be just below ... C, the Scariest Letter.)

So, I'm in the hospital, it's the day before Thanksgiving, I'm getting five units of blood (which makes everyone think I'm wearing make-up -- yeah, right) and I still don't know what's wrong with me.

I didn't sleep that night. Not out of fear, actually. Probably because all of the blood gave me an energy I hadn't had in months. Plus, the hospital had cable.

I watched cartoons all night long. :)

Thanksgiving was dull. I had a few people trickle in, but most were out with their families. Still no idea what was wrong with me. The oncologist admitted that it was likely a lymphoma. Either high grade (the "good" kind, evidently) or low grade. His bet was on low grade since I'd had symptoms for two years. This would probably mean that I had a few months left at best.

So, the other thing I did that night was to start a will. I didn't have that sense of gloom and doom that a lot of people talk about. I didn't rail against the unfairness of it all. Whatever -- shit happens and I rolled snake eyes. Whining about it doesn't make it go away ... I just did what I could, which wasn't much.

I considered calling my mom, but what could she do? Why ruin her Thanksgiving by telling her I'm in the hospital 1000 miles away? Besides, without the test results, what could I really tell her? So, I waited.

Friday. No news. Severe boredom. TV and books. I probably graded some student papers. I wanted to GO!

I'm not a good sick person.

Saturday. I still hadn't slept. Now it was because there was some weird guy who came in to clean in the evening.

Finally, Saturday afternoon ... diagnosis. Now, you have to understand, no one in my family had ever had cancer. All I knew about cancer was from Eric by Doris Lund -- a 17 year old is diagnosed with Leukemia. And then, of course, best football movie ever: Brian's Song about Brian Piccolo from the Chicago Bears.

My diagnosis: Hodgkin's disease.

Exactly what Brian Piccolo had. So I pretty much assumed this meant I was a goner. I nodded, kind of made a wry face and that was that. The nurse saw the look on everyone's face and said, "Oh no, no! This is the good one!! This is the best one to have!"

And then went on to explain that Hodgkin's has a 75% cure rate.

As it turns out, I had cancer-lite. The chemo barely affected me at all. I had the chemo Saturday or Sunday and went home (finally!) Monday afternoon. I was mad because I had to miss my classes that day -- I was ready to get back to teaching.

I went in for chemo every other week, sat there for 2 hours of intense boredom (I tried to grade student papers but that didn't really help the boredom!). I had no idea that chemo still made people sick.

Shoot, the first chemo session in the clinic, I brought in Popeye's spicy chicken and ate lunch during my chemo session. (Hey, I was in between classes and still had to go back and teach that day.)

When the six months of chemo were over, I was golden. Or so I thought.

to be continued tomorrow ...

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:33 PM | Comments (1) | Blog | Stumble

C, the Scariest Letter

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ update 7:45 a.m. est

Cancer.

The word seems to scare the hell out of most people.

And there's this feeling that you're "safe" from it until you're at least 40-something. Sure, younger people get it. But you won't until at least then. Sure, there's Lance Armstrong -- but he was kind of a fluke. And a good thing he was an endurance athlete used to pushing through the pain. Of course, his yellow bracelets are everywhere now, trying to make people more aware, not of cancer, but of survivorship.

But, there's still this feeling that it's a death sentence ... or at least that you'll have a lot of pain and suffering and ... well, not to be too delicate about it, vomiting. There's still this feeling that if you have ever had cancer, you'll have some kind of unearthly mark on you that shows others the hell you've been through.

None of those things are necessarily true. And as we head deeper into November this year, I'm reminded of that more so than any other year since my diagnosis.

In fact, I felt so much better after chemo started that I was intensely relieved to have gotten a diagnosis ... finally. I was 31. My oncologist figured I'd probably had the disease for two years at that point.

I'd been going to my doctor about every other month with a new set of fevers and apparent sinus infections. He'd throw some antibiotics my way. I'd feel better for a few weeks and then relapse. Call him back, get more antibiotics. I had no health insurance and the price of the medicines and constant doctor visits were killing me.

Actually, his refusal to even run a simple blood test was killing me.

Then, the Monday before Thanksgiving, while teaching class, I felt really horrible. The room was spinning. Since my students were working on their papers, I sat down for most of the hour. When I finally went home, my fever was 103.7. It broke a few minutes later, but I left for a "doc-in-the-box" at the local MedPoint.

Dr. Bogan took one look at me, drew blood, shoved the tech out of the way and ran the test himself. This 70-something doctor in semi-retirement was scared. I listened at my door -- grateful it was right next to the nurse's station so I could hear something -- and listened to him chew my regular doctor a new one.

My hemoglobin was a 5.8. You can die in the 4 range.

Later, I found out that Doc Bogan said he could see the outline of my spleen through my t-shirt.

So, I was sent back to my doctor the next morning. He was sweating bullets -- literally, the sweat was rolling down his neck with each question he asked me. And I gave him the same answers I'd been giving him for two years. Two years as I feared I had some kind of nasty systemic infection.

Yes, the rash was itchy.
Yes, the rash was more itchy after a shower.
Yes, I was waking up in the middle of the night after my fever broke -- drenched in sweat.

And the one that always pissed me off:
Yes, I was sure it wasn't AIDS ... I'm in one of the absolute lowest risk groups.

He called another doctor. Set up an appointment for me for the next day and he was upset that I couldn't be worked in that day. He told me he'd treat me for free if I had anything he could help with, a cold, the flu, whatever. Then he told me, "If he suggests you go to the hospital ... go." Oh hell.

Wednesday. Trip to the blood specialist. I still don't know what I have. He goes over my history. He blanches when I say I've had these symptoms for two years. It's not an obvious paling -- he's got a good patient manner. But I can tell. This is not good.

Bone marrow is drawn. Not quite as painful as I'd expected ... they use good drugs now. That's done. We still don't know what I have, we have to wait on the results.

"Which hospital do you prefer?" the doctor asks.

"I dunno, why?"

"Well, we need to take a lymph node and pump you full of blood."

"Umm, okay. I'll pick St. Joe." It's just a few blocks from my house. Without health insurance, despite working at the University of Notre Dame, it doesn't really matter which hospital I pick.

He expects me to go straight to the hospital instantly.

"Can't I go home and get some stuff first?"

He doesn't want to let me go home even for a minute. I do anyway, after convincing him that I live around the corner. I get some books, some things to do. Clothes.

And then I'm whisked to the hospital and into surgery. They hesitate. I'm still running a mild fever and took Advil just hours before. I assure them I've got another 15 minutes before the fever breaks. The nurse is unsure. "We can't wait more than 15 minutes or we'll lose the operating time slot." She considers cancelling the surgery. My fever breaks right on time.

When I come to, they're giving me a blood transfusion. In all, I get 5 units of blood. I've been pale for so long, everyone who comes to see me assumes I must -- for some very strange reason -- be wearing lipstick and rouge.

Nope. That's just the fresh blood coursing through the veins in my face.

continued again later today ...

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:27 AM | Comments (1) | Blog | Stumble

October 29, 2005

Care-taker

This is Scraps at just about two or three months.

As you can see from this picture, Scraps is fond of the teeny Beanie Babies that we get from the Goodwill quarter bin. In fact, when I first brought him some of these teenie beanies, I'd found a black and tan doggie that became Puppy. Every other teeny beanie would be vigourously "killed," chomped on and, most disturbing, the eyes chewed off. Except for Puppy. Scraps would take care of Puppy, he gave Puppy the place of honor (tummy up in front of the refrigerator vent -- I don't know why, but it was one of his most favourite places as a pup).

In fact, as he got a little older, the imagination play became more pronounced. By about four months, he was teaching things to Puppy. He put Puppy in his full food bowl (before he even ate dinner!) and sat there for a minute. Then he grabbed Puppy by the scruff of the neck and placed him on the puppy training pad. Because, you know, after you eat, you go potty.

The cutest thing, though, was the day he "taught" Puppy to play tug of war. He went across the house, grabbed his rope and lined it up carefully with Puppy. He laid down across the rope from Puppy and carefully, carefully grabbed the fringy rope ends and growled quietly. He'd shake the fringes a little bit, but not enough to really move the rope much. Eventually, he'd let go and pounce at Puppy, growling and play-yipping a little, then grab the rope with a huge shake of the head and run around the room like he'd just won the game. A few minutes later, he'd come back to Puppy, carefully line the rope up and begin the whole process again.

Of course, eventually, we had to get him his own puppy for real. It got to the point that if we touched a puppy -- particularly if we touched another dachshund puppy -- he'd go crazy looking through our clothes for the puppy that he was sure we'd brought him. If we petted a full-grown dog, he'd sniff the clothes or hands with interest, but not go so crazy as when it was a puppy.

Then we got Scout.

This is her at ten weeks. She was the tiniest puppy I'd ever seen. She could sit in the palm of your hand with room left over. And, when we took her and Scraps to the park the second week we had her, someone gave her a drink of water out of the cap to a little water bottle. One capful was enough for her!

Scraps thought we'd brought him the best present ever. He dutifully chased all his kitties far, far away from "his" baby. In fact, he could barely let us near her. He'd hover over her, clean her and cuddle her every minute. It took about two to three weeks before he could finally let her wander more than a few inches away from him.

He soon learned that Scout was not nearly so compliant as Puppy had been.

In fact, she was rather opinionated.

He is still often confused by the fact that she runs around like a mad thing just about bedtime. He's disturbed by her behaviour and often gives us a quizzical look -- "Why is she so defective?" After all, good hounds should be lazy and sleepy. Her insistence on sounding the hound's "rooooooo" also highly disturbs him. She can't quite pull off a bugle, but she does try every once in a while. Her other odd behaviour is her tendency to "rabbit." She'll sit up on her hindlegs and then move her little forelegs up and down like a rabbit.

Much as Scraps still adores and watches after his little sister, the most disappointing thing is that she doesn't play tug. She'll snag a toy away from him and run off -- her version of keep-away -- but if he gets ahold of the toy and pulls, she immediately lets go. He's always crushed when she does.

But he's devoted to her anyway. And every time we take them out in public or for a walk, most people ask if he's the mommy -- he hovers over her like a mother-hen.

She might be more defective than the Puppy that only moved when he moved it, but she's his baby.

(Yes, they are both miniature dachshunds and weigh about 10-11 pounds apiece.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:05 PM | Comments (4) | Blog | Stumble

October 27, 2005

It's Official

I am now officially old. Nope, it's not my birthday (that's November 4th).

You see, I'm a geek. I know that. I'm fine with it. I enjoy being a geek -- it's fun.

But the other day, I was on the shoutbox over at BlogExplosion and discovered just how old I am. I started one of those, "Well, in my day" stories.

Crap.

It started out innocently enough. CharlesGwapo23 on the shoutbox began talking about playing some "old school" RPGs. (Role-playing games, for you non-geeks out there.) I began bemoaning the fact that I haven't played a good RPG in ages.

Turns out this guy was talking about computer games. And not like Bard's Tale from the Commodore-64, either. He was talking about old Playstation 1 games ....

And my first response was, "Well, back in my day we couldn't just play an RPG. We had to find people to play with, buy the dice, the character sheets, the little guys, the paints to paint the miniatures with, drive waaaay out to the local D&D club ...."

He pointed out that he'd never even played with paper and dice.

Now I admit I'm getting older. I'll be 37 next Friday. But the last place in the world that I expected to be one of the "old group," was talking about role-playing. I mean, it's a universal geek-thing. And this self-proclaimed RPG geek had never played the "old-fashioned" way. Holy crap.

Makes me wonder what the defining moment/event/conversation has been for other people. And what it will eventually be for Charles and his PS1 rpgs? "We actually had to use a DVD, if you can imagine that. We didn't have these fancy hologram rooms to play in." ????

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:04 AM | Comments (12) | Blog | Stumble

October 14, 2005

Caption Contest Winner

And the winner of the caption contest is ...

The winning blogger was Thordora at Spin Me I Pulsate.

Ahh, I can just hear the drunken remorse now ... "You said you were my friend, but I just ... one more? Just one more, you say? Well ... *urp* I guess one more wouldn't hurt."

*hurl*

"I was wrong. Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

Thanks to everyone who tried to cheer up my day. :)

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:21 AM | Comments (2) | Blog | Stumble

October 11, 2005

Make Me Smile

So work is rapidly deteriorating, which, combined with the time of year, is really making me wish I was still teaching. Rather than whine about that, I give you a caption contest. This is another one of the photos I took at the Brookfield Zoo this summer.

I'll post the best caption by Friday.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:27 AM | Comments (5) | Blog | Stumble