It was early autumn in either the 5th or 6th grade (not sure which). A warm, dry, breezy day. Gorgeous. Dried grass and late flowers everywhere. I was walking around the hill side of Pompton Lake to get down by the falls to do some fishing. And I started to sneeze. A few hundred meters further on, and I started to wheeze. A while after that, and I was choking and having serious trouble breathing. I made it home, where I must have looked awful. My Mom had the doctor in almost immediately (Dr. Gortych, likely an Armenian immigrant, was around my parent’s age, heavy smoker as were nearly all the adults in my world, and he made house calls, which was standard practice until a few years later). The diagnosis: acute allergic asthma. The treatment: a norepinephrine inhaler, occasional antibiotics to forestall pneumonia, and hot tea with gin.
I SWEAR. I assume hot tea with gin is some sort of Armenian folk medicine. Every time I saw Dr. G for years after my inaugural asthma attack, first thing he asked was “how’s the tea and gin working?” And my mom, who had tasted the first cup we made (and you should have seen the twisted combination of astonishment, disgust, and nausea on her face) and I assured Doc G that it was working just peachily (word?). Even though, after that first batch, we never made it again.
My asthma (and associated illnesses—acute and chronic bronchitis, periodic pneumonia, fits of vomiting, et al.) lasted for years. And then one day when I was in graduate school at the University of Georgia, the asthma lost its grip on my body. And following the cessation of physical symptoms, the psychological hammering that came with it also disappeared. I was a “normal” person physiologically. I tossed my inhalers, and from that day forward never had to endure another life-threatening asthma attack.
I beat the asthma out of my lungs by rigorous daily exercise. I started playing regular pickup basketball in the gymnasium, something of a lunchtime tradition at UGA. These were intense games, even though they were completely informal. Microbiologist Dr. M, a regular reader of this weblog, was also at UGA at the time and played in the lunchtime league. One day he read me the riot act because he didn’t like my technique for dealing with an opposition breakaway. We had a 15 minute screaming argument (even as the game went on) about this. I figured I held the high ground, since the breakaway guy missed his layup. Lex disagreed—he wanted to see good form, and damn the outcome.
Anyway. I wandered off message there, for a bit. My point is simply this: for a decades-long, and occasionally life-threatening, illness, I had a total of maybe 3 medications. Let’s compare that with what I take now for my (temporarily) asymptomatic cancer:
• Twice daily splashes of liquid potassium chloride to re-balance my serum metals
• Twice daily big-ass tablets of magnesium oxide (same purpose)
• Thrice (good word, no?) daily tablets of Xanax (tranquilizer)
• Twice daily tablets of Prevacid, an over-the-counter antacid to assist in my ongoing struggle to get sufficient calories via the liquid emergency rations
• Twice daily tablets of Carvedilol, a blood pressure suppressant (my blood pressure swings wildly between too low and too high, the one place it seldom rests is in the “normal” range)
• Once daily tablet of Cymbalta, an anti-depressant
• Once daily tablet of Mirtazapine, a sleep-enhancer
• 8 tablets daily of low-dose (4 mg) dilaudid, a pain killer (to which I am now thoroughly habituated, but my pain level is fairly low at the moment so it still works ok)
• Up to 3 doses daily of Zofran, the current state-of-the-art antinauseal
• Frequent doses of antihistamines (over-the-counter products, mostly Benadryl) to suppress massive leakage of mucous from various bodily orifices
• Over-the-counter stool softeners (to counter the weird gastrointestinal side effects of the pain killers)
• Frequent smears of petroleum jelly to reduce chapped and cracked lips
At the moment, that’s pretty much my ritual medications. If and when I have to return to radiation and/or chemotherapy, there are additional drugs (such as steroids) needed to prevent the toxic effects of the treatments from dragging my carcass into the muddy morass of near-death experience. And all these pharmaceutical products have to be crushed into powder, a fussy job involving specialized (if primitive) hardware and brute strength. Oh well. I can certainly use the exercise!
Now that I see the complete list of medications written out, it’s no wonder I can’t pump more food into my overworked gastrointestinal system. The sheer volume if pharmaceutical products takes up quite a bit of room. There’s no place to put the necessary quantity of liquid emergency rations!
Oh well. One lesson cancer teaches is that you do what needs to be done, however weird, uncomfortable, difficult, or painful. Which leads directly to motto for daily functioning: live ‘em while you got ‘em, because they are NOT forever! Now I see that there is a corollary to this aphorism. It goes something like this: if you want more of ‘em, you’re gonna have to work for them. Primarily by ingesting massive quantities of physiologically active pharmaceutical products.
Hang in there, everybody. Despite how it seems when you get outside, we are sliding down the back side of winter, heading for spring. Day length is increasing. The mid-day sun is higher in the sky. Quite unexpectedly, I may actually live to see one more spring. Assuming I can keep ingesting this massive quantity of drugs… . The following photo illustrates the daily drugs issue…
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