It Might Get Messy

Bone marrow. It’s nutritious. It’s considered a sign of cultural sophistication of hunter-gatherer societies if they took the time and made the effort to harvest marrow from the long bones of larger kills. Hyena jaws are specially adapted to crack bones in a spiral, allowing access to the marrow within. 


It’s delicious. During the centuries of British empire, special spoons were used to slip the marrow from the bone cavity and onto crisp toast. Today, a high-end Italian seafood place in New York City serves a very popular dish of octopus cooked in a rather Sicilian fashion with chunks of beef marrow added to enrich the sauce. 


And it is the driver of discomfort in the intermediate recovery time following aggressive cancer treatment. Chemotherapeutic drugs see the world through a very coarse—actually, bicameral—filter. Tissue got metabolism and reproduction at moderate, steady levels? All’s fine—don’t attack. Tissue cranking metabolically, doing stuff, sweating, swearing, working hard all the time? TORA! TORA! TORA!


Of course, tumor tissue has lost its physiological constraints. The primary characteristic of tumors is that they grow without reason, without control. 


In a normal, healthy human body, your blood is, along with your skin, at the forefront of your interactions within and beyond your own self. White blood cells of various kinds hunt and kill pathogens and kick your anti-invasion responses into gear. WBCs have life spans on the order of weeks to months. Red blood cells, of course, do the oxygen-per-carbon dioxide gas exchange that keeps your aerobic self going at all times. They live about 6 months each. 


Which means your bone marrow, where the WBCs and RBCs are manufactured, is about as metabolically active as tissue can get. And therefore a favored target of the chemotherapeutic pharmaceuticals. 


Which is icky. You need strong, functional bone marrow. Without it, you get anemic and have to have somebody else’s RBCs transfused into your blood. Without it, you get weak and susceptible to infection. Part of what drove me to hospital admittance last week was serious anemia. And I’m still incredibly weak. So far the exercise I’ve been able to muster on a daily basis is a short walk in the Patuxent Natural Area across town, where I can snap photos of butterflies and garter snakes. I’m good for about 45 minutes total hiking. Then I need a nap.


But I’m building strength. I saw the dentist today, he says my mouth is in great shape (for someone in my condition, I believe he means). The radiation sores are slowly shrinking, the remaining seriously painful ones are at the very back of my tongue and on my throat mucosa. I can sleep without aspirating the thick, sticky saliva generated by my crippled salivary glands. 


So I’m getting there. Hopefully my weblog correspondence will pick up. Actually I have new material over at http://www.docviper.livejournal.com/ and http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/. Tomorrow I’ll mix down another acoustic demo and post it for you at http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/. And over the weekend, I’ll get the whole blog empire coordinated and updated again. 


Thanks for stoppin’ by. Knowing you’re out there to read this stuff once in a while is a big part of what’s keepin’ me alive through the dark days. And with your help, I’m pretty sure I can see a glimmer of daylight down the path. Thanks again—and remember I love you all, from oldest dearest friends to casual acquaintances and lost and confused surfers.