It Might Get Messy

A couple of observations. I didn’t expect whole blood to be so…well…red. And you gotta love a wiry Oriental woman physician like Doctor T, willing to show up precisely when needed to grab your hospital gown lapels, head butt you, look deep into your eyes, and tell you to “Stop. Being. A. Baby.” 


Which leaves just this question. How the hell did we get HERE?


Basically, I miscalibrated. By light years. Enough so even the photon torpedoes won’t leave fingerprints on your Space Time Tomography plots.


And what I learned is not to get a smart-ass swelled head thinking the war is won when it’s just another day in the cold, barren trenches. Lincoln had to balance immense risks over selling the equivocal outcome of Gettysburg as the mission of the War. Of course he got his costs and benefits spot on. Last entry, when I declared I was on top and the cancer was now fighting for its life instead of mine? Dude, I was so, so wrong.


In fact, I was so wrong that the irony didn’t hit me until I woke up in the Emergency Room where they finally got the pain and vomiting stopped with massive doses of IV medications. And I didn’t realize the full-on irony until today, 3 days after being admitted to the specialty cancer ward.


While I was performing my bad imitation of the Sioux Destiny Dance, the chemotherapy and radiation were plotting their revenge. They got it Saturday night, when I could feel waves of what I could only hope were terminal nausea alternating with Abandon All Hope tides of pain in my throat and thorax. Cathy had to bail me out and buzz me to ER where I passed out in the wheelchair only managing to mouth the word “dehydrated”. OK, under the circumstances I could have picked a better word to try to communicate my issues, but I was distracted.


Anyway. 3 days on and I’m still here, and still not righted. Took quite the debate among docs to decide to issue me 2 units of whole blood to try to stem the anemia and associated weakness, shaking, and generally unsteady approach to life. Which I’m pretty sure was because the memory of “life” over Saturday night is burned into my forebrain and if that’s where it’s headed, I’m getting’ off the train.


But not yet. I’m slowly coming around. Tim arrived with guitar magazines, Bite Me, and Genome. Dr. Dan sent me off with graphic novel treatments of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep prequels. The very very red whole blood (Nurse K. swears it’s from an 18 year old athlete) is transfusing itself. 


It’s just that I panicked a little earlier today when they bagged up serious drips of nutrients and electrolytes and pumped them into my port. All of a sudden, mucous membranes that had burned dry weeks ago under the assault of combined chemo and radiation suddenly let loose. My nose ran. My lungs wheezed. I started having a major stress incident at the memory of acute incidents of childhood asthma. And because I mentioned “lungs filling with fluid” to the nurse in my call, they had to send the portable chest X ray unit up for appropriate hospital risk control. 


That’s when Doctor T showed up to slap me around. Oh, and get me back on Xanax (a little pharmaceutical love to go with the tough love). 


I’m better now. Really. At least, getting better. Slowly. Slowwwwllllyyy. Not fast. Not in any over-testosteroned war metaphor. Just fighting my way back out of the black. 


Oh yeah. Alice Cooper’s stone classic Love It To Death remains criminally unremastered and rereleased for the digital age to this day. Doesn’t matter. I’m buying a copy on my way out of here, whenever that turns out to be. Since Saturday night, I’ve been singing that verse in Ballad of Dwight Fry: “I was gone for  14 days, but…I coulda been gone for more…wound up in a cancer care ward…lyin’ on the floor…”.