On Tuesday I went to have the leftover sinus gauze packing from my surgery three months ago removed. It was way overdue, so it was time to get it done, and my platelets had been going up and were in the 60's on Friday, which is about where I was at 2-3 weeks after the surgery when Dr. Padhya supposedly removed all of the packing.
This time I knew to have a lot of towels placed on my shirt to catch any blood and Padhya started pulling it out with the tweezers. I thought he would try to pull it out through my right nostril, but he opted with the hole in my eyelid. So my hole in the eyelid is a blessing, a convenience, a gift from God. The hellfish's remains were extensive--another 7-10 feet. Some parts were really stuck in the black crust, some seemed to be stuck to my jaw. It felt like shocks sometimes when he pulled hard on the packing, because he was affecting nerves, I reckon. I also hear the delightful grinding sounds the hellfish made as it was pulled from its grave. Finally the shoelace was out, and so was much blood.
Sunday was a great day. I got to relax, using some tweezers to pull black crust from the hole in my eyelid. Anastasia wanted to reach in there a little farther and get some more out. Suddenly a paper sword appeared and was sticking out of my eye about three inches. Ana backed away, screamed, and cried, and I went, "Ah, a sword!"
I said, "What is that? Tissue paper that got stuck in there? Of course I'm going to scream, Anastasia. I'm gonna freak out a little bit." She was still in shocked mode. She said, "You know what that is? It's leftover sinus packing from your surgery."
That surgery was three months ago. All of the gauze packing, which is about the width of a shoelace so it can be packed in through a nostril, is supposed to be removed after 2-3 weeks. This avoids infection and who wants it in their head anyway? Well, Dr. Padhya had removed about 15 feet of it at the proper time, and he obviously couldn't tell there was more in there. Weird. There was much bleeding on my excellent shirt that time, but it was good to get it out. This time,...
Four of the nurses and techs on this third floor, where I am in the very cool room 311, wanted to do the cha-cha yesterday. I do not know how to do the dance, I do not know how to play the music, but I volunteered to make some music up for it. By the time I got my guitar and amp in the middle of the short hallways to the other rooms, they were already doing the cha-cha with music from a tape player. So be it, heathens! They were soon done.
I played nice. I kept it clean. I played for an hour. I improvised, played a lot of my own riffs, which one nurse kept claiming to recognize, and played a few classical standards, like Purple Haze, Every Breath You Take, and Wipeout.
They say they've requested me to play a concert today. I don't know. I should find Lloyd Goldstein, the double bass player. I can just listen to his playing, or maybe I can jam with him again. Either way, that beats deep-sea barbequing!
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I think I've mentioned that i have an "unsightly eye." How about Neulasta, the drug I get every three weeks to boost my white blood cells, which is covered by Medicaid, but otherwise costs $3500 per shot? Its foundation is actually an alteration of E. coli. That's why their slogan is: "Neulasta--made from E. coli, still better than Shasta."
Can you imagine how awesome the movie will be when they combine Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, and Jean-Claude Van Damme all into one B-fighting movie? They will play it seriously, but the laughs will not stop. Not to their faces, of course. No, no, just on the screen. Just on the screen! Those fights are real! The acting is not!
Don't forget the Poe story about the vampire who suffered greatly. There was no way to end his pain, unless....he went to the light. And that vampire's name was...Igor Romanov. And that...is the rest...of the story.
OK, get on with your day. I'm 5000-outty. Yeah, it makes sense, Kathy. Just remember www.dictionary.com and use Google or Wikipedia to search for any references you do not understand. Salaam.
Keep in mind, chemotherapy slows healing, so if anyone calls me a cotton-headed ninnymuggins, for about 10 minutes, I'm just inconsolable. But then I move on. Probably hear a different insult from a Will Ferrell movie, laugh about it, then cry, then write about it, then wait for pristine comments.
Posted at: 01:20 PM | 2 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
Samurai Smith
May 20, 2007
If anyone ever goes crazy again, like I do, Brian Caroline, who does not sleep, fear, or die, and wants to send some goodness, gasoline cards and walmart gift cards work the best for getting us what we need. Otherwise, because of my government benefits, it works best to send it to Anastasia. She's my financial panther--planner, anyway. I had an idea that in Cancerville someone punched through my right eyelid. Wouldn't that be awesome? Who knows what they'd find in there? And I could find out how well I can fight on adrenaline. It would be interesting, entertaining, and mayhaps disgusting as well, so it is something that should be explored in writing to appease the desire until it happens in real life. Maybe Travis will do it sometime, or his neighbor Rob. He's always talking about punching people in the face. We'll see what happens, everybody keep praying. Add this to the list, I reckon. Mwa-ha-ha!
Posted at: 01:04 PM | 1 Comment | Add Comment | Permalink
Office Space and Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma
May 20, 2007
Cancer has changed me into the guy from Office Space. I was already him essentially, but I needed a catalyst to reach the next level. "What would I do with a million dollars? Nothing. I would do nothing." "You don't need a million dollars to do nothing. I've got a cousin, Larry, he's always broke, and he don't do shit."
"And you know bills? I've never really liked paying them. I'm not going to pay bills anymore either."
So I'm back in prison again. I keep messing up. I have learned the word "recidivism" well. I videotaped my honky tonk, Urban Cowboy-inspired dance today and myself as an IV freak on a leash. We were in the smallest hospital room we'd ever been in, but Anastasia mentioned that and then we were moved into a huge room. Now I've got plenty of room to set up my guitar and amp, lay on the floor and spin in circles as I play. I was talking to Rev. Scott Hoffmaniacco and I had a brilliant idea. This was after waxing philosophical about video games in the future that will be plugged directly into your nervous system through a port. The games will become your whole sensory perception so you won't just be watching a game on a screen, you will actually be living it and you may not even remember your normal life until the game ends, if ever. You might be able to make money in the game and have some of it automatically wired to the real world to pay your bills that keep your real body alive while you play. It's a Matrix/Existenz/Everquest thing.
What would Rhabdo do? Well, Rhabdo would be pissed if the upstairs neighbors overfilled a washer, flooded their kitchen, left the water there for an hour, and never called maintenance to report the problem. There was a waterfall onto our bed and no symbolic or non-symbolic rainbow, and no pot of gold. That was on Monday, the day that seemed like 40 days. Lo, that was the damned Flood.
Tuesday was the incomplete fixing of the ceiling. They had plastic wrapping circling our furniture, electronics, STUFFED ANIMALS, etc. along the walls, like someone who plans a murder but has not yet plastic-wrapped the floor to catch all of the blood. Hey, how do you pronounce that word, "blood." Is it "blud" or "blued?" But they lifted the plastic halfway and there was a sandstorm that landed on all of our awesome things. We live in a sandglobe that a demon shook mightily. What would Rhabdo do?
Wednesday there was no more work on the ceiling because the maintenance guy had to go to court. Said someone owed him money. Bull mucus! He had dusted someone else's place before and they had crawled out of the desert and said they wanted replacement...
I went to hang out with my brother, Mr. T, today. We watched Grandma's Boy, drank fine wines and ate Beluga caviar. Meanwhile, Anastasia wanted to call me about a minor matter. We traded bedrooms with our roommates a couple of months ago. Once water leaked through the ceiling onto their bed. Now we were having the same problem, except this time it's the neighbor's fault, not some leaking pipes.
Anastasia and Sworupa quickly moved the mattresses out of the way. Luckily we had a waterproof covering on our bed, unbeknownst to us. It was something Grandma had given us. For that, I will be a Grandma's boy. If there were any electronics that got wet, mother this, mother that, I'm grabbing a baseball bat! They are lucky that it only pours into the middle of the room where the bed is. So the mattresses are in the living room, everything else is moved to the perimeter, there are garbages and glasses quite robust with water, and a few drips are still going when I get home two hours later. Maintenance said they were going to get someone to clean our mattresses and to dry them, but then they told us to...
When my blood transfusion was done yesterday, I pressed a call button for the nurses' station and said, "I drank all the blood!" I thought they'd know what I meant, but they just hung up on me. A few minutes later, Anastasia went out to explain it to them and they asked if I really drank all the blood. What is wrong with them? Today a lady was mopping the floor and my nurse slipped while going out and landed on her back and possibly even her head. She said she was totally all right, though. She always addresses me as "my good man." She thinks it might be good to wait to discharge me today until after 6 PM when my next IV antibiotic is due. No, I don't want to live here. Jesus! Zeus! Dionysus! I'll take the antibiotics at home. Give me an electronic tracker if you must. I'm going on parole.
This is a short one for all you sinners. And remember to drink all your blood, each and every day. "Fourthmeal. Ya gotta have blood." [TM]
Huffy Henry hid the day, unappeasable Henry sulked. I see his point,—a trying to put things over. It was the thought that they thought they could do it made Henry wicked & away. But he should have come out and talked.
All the world like a woolen lover once did seem on Henry's side. Then came a departure. Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought. I don't see how Henry, pried open for all the world to see, survived.
What he has now to say is a long wonder the world can bear & be. Once in a sycamore I was glad all at the top, and I sang. Hard on the land wears the strong sea and empty grows every bed.
John Berryman, a guy from Minnesota.
So this is how someone might feel. I got the comedy and samurai-style of BC, though. Think of an opposite of this poem, and then it could be about me. Also, cancer is a mutation. Now think of Unbreakable. Samuel L. Jackson was the man of glass. His bones broke constantly. He thought there must be someone the opposite of...
My hip hurt yesterday as if I were Being John Malkovich and a puppeteer had abused me with impossible dance moves. We went to Moffitt for an appointment in the morning. I had no fever, but my white blood cells and neutrophils (crying baby white blood cells) were almost gone, so if I got a fever, I would have to go to Moffitt. So I got here and the RN didn't know anything. She told us that my oxycodone had acetaminophen in it, although we have the kind without. She couldn't tap my blood port correctly, so someone else had to do it. Then some blood ran from the port later, but it stopped and was cleaned. Whenever anything was said on TV, she laughed and repeated it. A Best Buy commercial: "There's something you don't know about your mom. She's into electronics." "Ha ha ha, she's into electronics." The Fifth Element movie, with Bruce Willis telling the woman that she is the fifth element, love, that could save the universe. "Ha ha ha, he is crazy." She was stupid, okay. Instead of using the table for the needles and everything, she made me lay down and then put them on me...
Back at Moffitt... Brian spiked a fever of 101.6 last night... of course he claimed it was because he was laying down for too long napping. I told him to get up for an hour then we will check again. I checked his temperature a few times during that hour and by the end of that hour he was back up to 101.4 so I called Moffitt. He was admitted immediately (well immediately considering I couldn't get him in the car). I packed his things while he cooked some frozen pasta dinner and got dressed. The only thing I forgot was phone chargers! Somehow they expect him to be out tomorrow since they believe his neutrophils (the things that become white blood cells making his immune system) will go up which would be good. Also Brian is walking funny, kind of a "drag-sling" thing he does with his legs trying to avoid putting pressure on his left hip and upper leg. An xray of his hip was ordered today. 143 was his weigh in yesterday for this small battle.
Posted at: 02:27 PM | 2 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
It's the same old ninja rap
May 7, 2007
I won round 2. It's a long fight, but I've trained for it my whole life by eating eggiweggs, reading Nietzsche and Vonnegut, listening to Mitch Hedberg and Slayer, playing guitar, and smelling napalm in the morning. They hook me up to a robot for a week that tortures me like a monkey in a sand prison on an island of banana trees. I feel okay the whole time though because I don't use my brain for my body, I use it for my mind. Oh, I feel music, watch stuff, but I don't worry through all of the problems. That's because I'm weird. I can abstract fromy myself. My whole life is an out-of-body experience. My mind orbits a couple of feet around my head. I reckon my aura is a fourth-dimensional blue. That's the best illusion I can give to you right now, since I never plan what I write. I leap into things and make a good ending. So, as always, there are computers, and technology, and...
