Kijam Blog

Tuesday is the day of many things.  They are removing the sutures from my Feb. 14 surgery, I am talking to the pain clinic about my medications, I will have my 5^th round of radiation on my upper spine and left hip/pelvis, and most importantly, I will have a meeting with the radiation doctor regarding my future plans.  I will keep my radiation set up for the 14 treatments, but we will probably have the Pinellas County Hospice meet us at our house when we go home later this week to see how their services would affect us.  It might be easier to stay at home with their help than to come to Moffitt all of the time.  We will find out.  It’s a hard decision, but I have so many problems that are building up, they can’t all be stopped or ignored.  I’ve got to accept the fact that dying is a reality.

But being an existentialist philosopher has added a year to my life, or at least allowed me to make it this far without being a depressed wombat.  I offer some philosophy and my weird version of truth.

As...

So I was able to take baby steps by using a walker on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I was discharged to home on Thursday. We actually got a hospital bed delivered to our apartment on Wednesday night.  And guess what?  The usual.  Our apartment was flooded again.  They were telling us that our washer was flooding the place, so we had it replaced a couple weeks ago.  Nevertheless, that room kept getting flooded.  So it wasn’t the washer, but now we have a replacement washer that always stops in the middle of the spin cycle.  Our upstairs neighbor also had a leak that went into the cabinet above our kitchen sink, and there are several inches of decrepit cotton candy mold hanging in those cabinets.  But no, actually, that wasn’t the problem.  Our hot water boiler basically exploded and made a large portion of the living room, guest bedroom, the hallway, plus part of our master bedroom, into a swamp just like the one the lizards oozed through in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Lots of strange swamps I’m oozing through in my life lately.  They had supposedly...

Glow bats

I’m being attacked by the glow bats at night again.  They do you the flavor of lighting up your fear, which is probably an accidental evolution of theirs that I enjoy.  So I slip up out of the primordial, oozy swamp of backeotomy surgery and try to teach my body’s frequencies to tune into my good channels and get me moving to the right music again.  Pain?  I spit on your pain!  Suffering?  I bleed on your pain?  Muskrat sandwich?  I’ll take one, consarn it, with extra boll weevils!  And Trav, cease and desist your holocaust of the spiritual potato people, the Irish Sidhe Senn Fein political revolutionary Perogie collection.  You eat them and salivate with arrogant disdain.  Take it easy on our fellow potato people is what I’m sayin’.  To Bill Branski!  Pour us all another liter!

Seriously, walking ability lost between Monday and Wednesday last week.  Mom, Steve, and Sarah left on Monday Night, Tuesday morning I barely could stumble into our bathroom, and I was piss poor sober, too!  Should have been admitted to Moffitt earlier, but they didn’t think...

Three different stories, three people playing different lives and somehow they connected. There themes connected.

They all deal with trying to find meaning of life, to be authentic and true to what really matters in life. Mistakes are made.

Quote of the day! 2/13/08 "we create the meaning if we care."

"I'ts weird how u have no cheekhair, only beard" says Anastasia.  " Yea, you too." Brian replies.

ok, Brian wants the facts done first...
The day my mom left was the last day i could walk by myself even though i was stumbling, that was Monday night.
By Tuesday I could not walk but could stand up a little. With Anastasia's help I could small step my way around.
By Wednesday I could not even stand so Anastasia had to put the office chair under me and try to push me to the car from the bedroom.
Needless to say it wasn't working easily. Good thing Rajiv came walking in the door just in time to see us and help. Rajiv then realised we could not push the office chair on carpet so we must lift Brian.
The Emergency Meeting with Dr. D accomplished very little since he just sent us back home! They did however send us to the MRC to visit the PAIN TEAM! Guess what the pain team does? Well its like a doctor and psychiatrist all in one. They said Anastasia needs a therapist and...

Jolly Dr. Deconti said there were two chemo options, both fairly recent developments in medicine. One in-patient, one out-patient. He believes the out-patient one has better results. It is high-dose, but only one day per week. I will get it on Wednesday. But my scans did show some bad things. There are tumors on my liver and pancreas, there is some fluid in my lungs, other lesions in many places, and a huge flat tumor on my left assius. This is the main one causing the problem with my walking. It affects my hip and the bone in the middle of my left assius. There is a tumor to the left of my spine also that hurts me, but it better not fuck up my nerves again. Then, Thursday, Valentine’s Day. I will receive my fake right eye. Ka-ching! Kijam!

Travis has a printer that can scan printed pages and convert them back into text you can edit. Therefore, my 88-page Santa story that I did for my Honors thesis in college, which I no longer have on disk, can finally be sent to a company Travis and Jamie found on the web that will turn text into good-quality published...

Metallica--Master of Puppets Lyrics.  Are they about drug addiction, or doctors?  You decide.  I have.

The Shot Heard Outside of Time

 Back in the whimsical 1980's, my uncle, Pat, challenged me to a duel. We were to compete in a battle of marksmanship. We were both vying for the affection of Queen Myztec, ruler of the Phrygian netherworld. Marriage with her would make us eternal demigods. A basketball was to be our mutual weapon, and a hoop, with netting reaching toward the nether regions, was to be our mutual target. Our battle would be fought with the assistance of war rules. We agreed on using the ancient, revered laws of HORSE as our vehicle to reach Queen Myztec’s envied Palace of Dreams beneath central Turkey.

I shot first, and the ball sailed to the left of the hoop. Now, I must say that this was done intentionally. I f I made the first shot, then any misses afterward would show that I am weakening–a dangerous sign during battle. So, by air-balling my first shot, I left Pat unaware of my true ability and also made him feel lazily content. Then, when he least expected it, I would show my true colors, and he would become immobilized by my sudden outburst of precise skill.

Pat took...

I went to Dr. Kelly on Wednesday so he could put the finishing touches on my eye prosthetic.  It will be ready to haunt the world on Valentine's Day.

I went to Dr. Deconti on Thursday.  I warned him about all of my new lumps on Thursday, but he still didn't have a plan.  My blood work was good, but I should be called "Lumpy" now.  It's really not funny.  He's looking at Phase I trials to decide which chemo to try next.  I'm also having a CT scan of my chest and abdomen on Monday to see if there are internal tumors developing as well.  Then he better get a war plan going quickly.

Sorry, Kathy, my ol' hip still really sucks, too.  It's hard to walk.  I limp and swear at the demons.  I have to sleep on my right side since my hip hurts, but now my right shoulder blade hurts as well.  Oh well, God's will. 

I've been watching lots of good movies, though, and I loved the Hendrix autobiography and the Teddy Atlas autobiography I'm currently reading.  Teddy Atlas is now the boxing commentator on ESPN's Friday Night Fights, but he used to be one...