It Might Get Messy

And shockingly so, given the past two weeks of reportage here. That is, however, one of the many things that make life itself so delightful. As opposed, say, to death.

Or so I imagine. Anyway, I’ve been in the hospital since midnight Sunday when Colin and Cathy scooted me here to try to stem the bleeding. Have not been well since. Shitloads of pain, bleeding, vomiting, weakness, yaddayaddayadda. In fact, I felt bad enough to post the past two entries here, and assumed I would be leaving the hospital, if at all, for a very brief time doubly enbriefed (“enbriefed”?!?!? Good Frickin’ Godd, at least I can still write!!!) by palliative care based on lethal tools administered in a comfortable and quiet home environment.

And there I was content to let things sit. 

Except you know me by now. And I am rarely content to let anything sit, no matter how cozy and relaxed. Which brings us directly to this week’s agenda: LIFE! MEANING!! AND THE SHEER BLIND CONTRAST OF HUMAN EXISTENCE IN A BIG-ASS AND APPARENTLY COLD AND DARK UNIVERSE!!!

Well, yeah, of course the third was an add-on stapled in as a response to Robin Williams’ death last night. A death that went down precisely in rhythm to where I figured I’d be at the moment. A thought that frightened me enough to kick me in the ass and get me to push my functional abilities and emotional status. 

This was not a metaphorical epiphany. From where I was sitting, and considering the information I had within easy reach (mostly my medical records), things were dark and suicide seemed a quite credible and rational response. Consider. My breathing had regressed to my 15-year old asthmatic nightmare. I was too weak to make the 6 or 7 meter trip to the bathroom without the ridiculous expedient of crawling on my hands and knees. I could hold down neither food nor water, the smallest squirt of either through my rapidly-crumbling feeding tube infrastructure yielding a disproportionate vomital response. I couldn’t read or noodle on the guitar (all positions allowing such yielding substantial pain in my reconstructed throat or cancer-suffused lungs). 

You get the picture. I was a hurtin’ dude. But the hurt was more than physical. Given the reality of my physiological condition, and as I understood things at the time (4 more chemotherapy sessions that I presumed would additively punch me every session), it was going to a get a whole shitload worse brfore it got the slightest bit better. And “better” was going to be intensely uncomfortable, involving chronic pain, COPD, and endless reruns of “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives”. So I was, I must admit, beginning to work out possible methods of dropping myself back into the universal pool of matter and energy from which all our cards are drawn. 

The entire focus of my medical care at the moment is to see how long we can keep me alive comfortably. My panic was tied directly to this goal. Because if the chemotherapy was going to slap me around like this every time, and leave behind a lengthy, mucous- and vomit-infused recovery period, well, I just wasn’t going there. I started making that case to the medical team when I woke up in hospital Monday morning. That I was seriously thinking of foregoing further treatment and stepping directly into hospice care where, as the Be Good Tanyas (and others, but their version is by far the best) have put it, it would be “easier to be waitin’ around t’die”. 

Well. As you might expect, this panicked the docs. Over the three long days in the hospital, they made their case:
• I have a better-than-even chance that additional radiation therapy will have therapeutic (i.e. cancer-reducing) value
• The side effects that hammered me so hard last week are worst in the first session. It will get easier from here on out.
• One chemo treatment is insufficient to determine if the procedures are “working” (suppressing the tumor tissue)
• I can always step out of the active treatment and into palliative (hospice) care.
• The best time to make the decision to abandon active therapy is probably not while you’re spending a high proportion of your time vomiting, eating pain killers like M&Ms on a cold day.

I had to think about it some—I was really, really sick. But I could, by this point (late on Tuesday night, having gotten to the hospital ER late on Sunday night) actually feel that they were right. My breathing would clear for longer periods. The pain would subside once in a while. I might…actually feel good once in a while! And since the next chemo is scheduled for a couple weeks out, I had time to relax and would likely feel pretty strong, clear-headed, and free of screaming pain and stress.

And damned if that’s not how it’s going down. I got home from the hospital Wednesday afternoon. If I hadn’t had a feeding “incident” yesterday (put in too much liquid so that I had a nasty hour of vomiting with a 6 hour recovery time), I would be in pretty good shape. In fact, I AM in pretty good shape. Can keep my breathing clear. Read. Write. Do “art”. Play guitar. Stumble to the bathroom on my own (sometimes. Let’s  not worry about the full face plant stage dive I took last night over the rocking chair on the way to the can.). With Cathy’s intense care and attention (I’m afraid, disgusting as I am myself, she has to deal with the even more disgusting consequences of those disgusting traits), I really am feeling better.

Can I do this routine one more time, as the doctors agree I should? In a sort of “Team America World Police”  mode: “CANCER TREATMENT! FUCK YEAH!!” Yes, sports fans, I am in for the duration. I am afraid you are stuck with me for the duration. Dunno what that duration might be. Should have a better grip on that starting after the next chemo treatment. If this works out the way the doctors insist it will. I may still be alive for the holidays. And you know what that means. Two things it would mean would be turkey. One copy of the Maghreb couscous turkey from last year. And a second one, which frankly I think will even better, a Dinde Presse, a turkey preparation based on the deep French classic le Canard du presse, pressed duck. 

I recommend everyone go to the web and find a video of somebody making pressed duck. It will weird you out. But I seen worse!

Thank you all so much for the calls and emails. If I continue to improve at this rate, I should wade back into the email stream this week. Thanks for bein’ here for me, as well. I cannot express to you how much it means to have you in my camp. Camp? Jimmy, fire up them freeze dried beans with pork fatback. Let’s get a prairie supper goin’ here, Pard!