It Might Get Messy

So, in just another one of the continuous rounds of medical appointments that keep me alive and least marginally comfortable (and put miles and miles on the primary transport vehicle), I was scheduled for the oncologist this week. On the drive up to the hospital, Colin and Cathy both said I smelled "like a 3 days old road-killed possum on a highway shoulder in August". The doctor agreed. I couldn't smell or taste anything. A benefit, I suppose, of having my tongue sliced out with nasty surgical implements (although I am able to smell and “taste”, somehow, flavors in foods and spices. Presume there are enough remnant sensory cells left in my mouth and sinuses for partial functioning). Anyway, the doc put me right on Augmentin, with tablets the size of Lincoln Logs (or the larger model of Leggos, for those of you who grew up after Lincoln Logs went the way of the Troll Dolls, Rat Fink hot rod models, and the EZ Bake Oven). And I must admit, I am already feeling better than I was, so I do indeed seem to have had what was (to me, but not the rest of the world, apparently) a “cryptic” infection somewhere in my airways (it turns out that anaerobic infections are generally common in humans, are even more common in those with extensive surgery and/or cancer, and that odor is an important diagnostic tool, see [1] for a general introduction). 

Dr. T also futzed around with my pain meds. There is theoretically still some room for increasing my daily intake of Dilaudid, but I’m already on a dose that the insurance company considers maxed out—they won’t pay for more. And covering Dilaudid out-of-pocket is out-of-the-question. Each additional 4 mg tablet runs something like $20 or more at our local pharmacy. Street value would be even higher, if I wanted to hang around a West Baltimore neighborhood on a Friday night and hawk tablets out of my car trunk. Of course, I’d have to cover the overhead, including serious protective muscle, which would cut pretty deep into the profit margin. 

Anyway. I still need the pain meds, both for the chronically sore throat/upper chest and because it truncates occasional acute panic over my ongoing shortness of breath (I have Xanax, a tranquilizer, to smooth my baseline level of breathing stress, and Mirtazapine, a sleep drug, which gets me over the increased alarm my respiratory system raises when I lie down. The latter is pretty damned effective—it basically knocks me out an hour or so after I take it. This can be a problem at times—last night we put on the 3rd Hobbit movie right after I’d taken my evening meds. I was sound asleep before Smaug bit the dust. I have to remember to take the Mirtazapine later in the evening…). Rather than play around with increased dosage of Dilaudid, Dr. T is experimenting with insertion of another pain killer in my daily cycle of medications. She’s given me a couple of small doses of liquid morphine per day. My task is to figure out the optimum times to take the morphine so that it knocks back something of my addiction to the Dilaudid. This will enhance the overall efficacy of the Dilaudid with minimal increase in my total daily dose of opiates. 

And what the hell, if we need an influx of cash for something—say, expanding the size of our television screens and installing a state-of-the-art surround sound system to accommodate the latest Slipknot concert video (for some reason I’ve been deeply into brutal thrash metal music all week) I’m sure the liquid morphine will bring a good price on that street corner in West Baltimore, perhaps mixed with an energy drink. Hmmm…maybe there’s a concept here for a franchise operation. We’ll buy up old ice cream trucks, re-fit them for a variety of psychoactive pharmaceuticals, and offer operator territories in the big cities up and down the I95 corridor. I bet if we ran them Thursday through Sunday nights by Monday we’d have massive piles of cash on our hands. Which we’d have to re-invest in protective firearms and other hardware. But hey, you gotta spend money to make money!

Anyway, as you can probably tell from the chipper tone of this week’s entry, I’m feeling pretty damned good. My thanks to all of you for being here, and a special shout-out to Dr. D for the wonderful visit. It’s an honor to host an old friend who is a Department Head with an endowed chair at a prestigious educational institution. Check in next week for a medical update (especially how the daily load of opiates is functioning). And hopefully we’ll have some room for remarks on current work on biodiversity of urban ecosystems. It seems like I’ve spent my entire career whining about the lack of simple, basic field ecology in urbanized ecosystems, while the few research institutions working on urban systems engage in arcane esoterica (is that redundant? Sort of seems like it from here…) such as soil processes and precipitation chemistry. Finally, some basic biology is forcing its way over the ramparts of heavily sheltered academia. Maybe I can find a way to include a copy of our publication from a few years ago on urban bird biodiversity in New Jersey. Not to show off, of course…well, yeah, actually, just to show off! Along with the people in California doing the new fly work (I’ll have to try to dig out the science fiction novel that does a good riff on fly speciation in near-future cities. I have no recollection whatsoever regarding the author’s name, so the search may be frustrating. But hey, I got a lot of time on my hands!).

Rock and roll, everybody! Use ‘em while you got ‘em. They are NOT forever!!!

References

[1] http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Anaerobic+Infections