To get dressed or not to get dressed; that is the question. I slept till 2pm today. I dreamed of driving in Texas, and coming across, outside, pairs of guys dressed as scorpions fighting one: one. Each scorpion carapace was made of fried-food crust. It was nighttime with sepia light and the fighting guys were friendly.
I have this headache. It's like a sinus+tension headache and nothing helps it except, if I'm trying to sleep, Ambien. I'm afraid I'll become addicted to Ambien. I've had it about five nights straight. I didn't know this morning/afternoon if I should get up and walk three miles or sit around in my robe and read--listening to my body. L said to listen to my body and lie around. I didn't know if I should push through. That's always the question. Goes back to Rousseau/Hobbes and I'm sure to the classical philosophers. Natalie Goldberg, the free-writing advocate, talks about pushing through tofu. It's making yourself write when your mind feels mushy as processed soy. That's how I felt writing about the stores (below). Do you listen to you body at this time when it's reeling from the chemo, do you rest, or do you push on because you've promised yourself to walk every day, and walking will make you feel better? Which part of yourself do you listen to? Which is the legitimate part? Which is the whiney, weepy, wimpy part that needs a push? The thing is you don't know. I was sitting in a corner of the couch and reading the Groopman book about hope. No one can tell me if even after the 20 weeks of chemo, I'll be cancer-free forever. That is true. And it seems stupid to be hopeful because you could be wrong. But it seems self-defeating not to be. Isn't it better to hope and believe that I'm already cancer-free, that the chemo is just to make sure, that all this will be a bump in the road when I look back on a long, healthy life? The opposite is to be the sadder but wiser girl, the I-told-you-so girl. But what is the value of being able to say I told you so on your death bed?
But my mood ultimately depends on how I feel. I canceled the acupuncture appointment on Friday because I didn't hear back in time from the absent-minded practitioner. I have an appointment on Wednesday with someone else. I think if I'd gone on Friday, I'd feel better, I wouldn't have this headache and more of my cough back. And then I would feel better, and thus more hopeful. So I am still working on how to make yourself feel more hopeful when you feel whiney. How to punch through the tofu. How to know you should punch through the tofu. Instead of curling up. Which isn't a sign of defeat.
I did get dressed. I am going to go out and walk even though it looks like rain.
**
I write all this and I ignore the reality of yesterday: that I walked part-way to a reading sponsored by WRU (Well-Regarded University), and I saw a lot of students, and I hugged them, even though I wondered if I was exposing myself too much to germs, and I emceed the reading and afterward went for sushi (cooked) with the featured reader, the exceptionally talented Tara Ison, and we talked about cancer, but not only about cancer. It required a few pauses here and there to think of other topics. My world has gotten that small. We did talk about books and family, and how hard it is for her to write book reviews, but she does it. It is hard for me, too. Which again is the tofu question. If it's hard to write book reviews, do you still write them, or do you do something else? That question has plagued me all my life. When I was in journalism school I didn't know if I should transfer because journalism was so difficult for me. It was harder for me than for other students because I was scared to interview people and I didn't have an inherent sense of how to structure stories. The same with the novel that I've been writing or "writing" since 1991. Should I give it up because it's so difficult or is that the nature of novels and me? Which leads us back to hope and faith. There are people who are bound and determined to write or make art, and though they persevere, they are terrible. They make fools of themselves. Does that matter?
Saturday, March 31, 2007
The Car Loan
I am still so ecstatic about making the 6 year mark. I didn't feel this way at 5 years. Maybe I was afraid I'd jinx myself if I got too excited at 5 years? But maybe now it's okay to let myself feel more comfortable, to feel that maybe I really DID make it. Maybe I can even consider contemplating the "cure" word.
Just trivia. I remember thinking a little over 5 years ago that I was committing fraud. I'd been diagnosed with the cancer. I'd been gently told I was not likely to live a whole lot longer. But we needed a new car. I kind of thought that before long I might accumulate enough medical debt that no one would be interested in loaning us money. So, before I went for the big surgery, we purchased a new vehicle. We signed the loan papers committing to make the payments for 5 years. As I signed the papers I remembered feeling very dishonest. The term of the loan was longer than my life expectancy.
I remember making the final payment on that loan. It was so great to write that check.
Just trivia. I remember thinking a little over 5 years ago that I was committing fraud. I'd been diagnosed with the cancer. I'd been gently told I was not likely to live a whole lot longer. But we needed a new car. I kind of thought that before long I might accumulate enough medical debt that no one would be interested in loaning us money. So, before I went for the big surgery, we purchased a new vehicle. We signed the loan papers committing to make the payments for 5 years. As I signed the papers I remembered feeling very dishonest. The term of the loan was longer than my life expectancy.
I remember making the final payment on that loan. It was so great to write that check.
Recovery plans for Saturday 3/31/07
Not much in the works today. Trying to get in 2 or more miles, some stairs, maybe a few hills if my knees don't start to bother me. The rest of the recovery is progressing nicely (my words) I am 70% lung functionality right now and hope to see steady improvement possibly moving to at least 75% by next Thursday.
That's all for now folks.
That's all for now folks.
Copy of the orginal DFW news Article
In 2007, Jerrold Dash resolves to: Live to see 2008. Find a way for his family to be together. Promote organ donation and break the stereotypes associated with lung cancer.
By Mitch Mitchell
Source: Fort Worth Star-TelegramCredit: STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF
WRITERTuesday,January 9, 2007Edition: Tarrant, Section: News, Page A1
The Lockheed Martin Aeronautics systems engineer is 33 and approaching the first anniversary of his cancer being diagnosed. For the past six months he has lived in a Mountain View, Calif., apartment awaiting a double-lung transplant at Stanford University Medical Center. Dash’s wife of four years and his two young daughters live 1,600 miles away at the family’s south Fort Worth home.
"Cancer doctors are well-versed in what they do, but they don’t give you a lot of hope," Dash said in a telephone interview. "I’m not supposed to survive a year, and I’m definitely not going to be around after five, is what they told me."
Dash and his wife, Rhonda, were racing toward the good life when he began complaining of night sweats, sleepless nights, constant coughing and fatigue. Doctors suspected allergies, asthma, bronchitis, but none used advanced X-rays to screen for lung cancer, Dash said. He was working toward a third master’s degree when the cancer was diagnosed Feb. 1, four years after symptoms first appeared.
He is one of two patients in the United States with his diagnosis who have been approved by a transplant program, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing’s Web site.
Dash says the fact that he has never smoked and was athletic and health-conscious delayed his diagnosis.
He’ll never be able to pinpoint the cause, but he is convinced that secondhand smoke and pollution are two of the likely culprits. He pours out his anger at smokers on a blog that he began in September.
"I am not crazy, deranged, I am just mad as hell. I am mad when I fight for breath and I see smokers lighting up not caring where or in what direction their second-hand smoke goes. In California, there is no smoking in the restaurants, businesses, stores ... however, that does not stop smokers from lighting up right outside of the entrances to such establishments. It physically hurts me to have to walk through this stuff."
— Dash’s blog, Oct. 16
Baylor All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth, Baylor Medical Center at Southwest Fort Worth and Lockheed all went smoke-free this month. Arlington banned smoking in restaurants, some bars and many other public places as of New Year’s Day. Fort Worth city leaders have scheduled public hearings this month and next on further tobacco restrictions.
Dash, who worked for tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds for two years after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, said even stronger measures are needed to protect nonsmokers from the byproducts of tobacco.
Against the odds
About 10 percent of people who have lung cancer have never smoked, according to David Weill, head of Stanford’s Lung Transplant Program. It is one of the few U.S. programs that transplants organs to cancer patients, Weill said.
"Usually, transplanting with cancer doesn’t work. The chance of getting cancer after the transplant is pretty high," Weill said.
And while the odds of Dash’s cancer returning after the transplant are about 50 percent, the chances are small that any recurrence would be fatal, Weill said.
"I think in life we have two great vices — fear and failure. ... I have over the last several months conquered my fear of death. No one lives forever. It is in knowing that I will one day die as an old man that I am able to live without fear and try to take advantage of every moment I have. Failure is not in my vocabulary. Athletes don’t fail." — Dash’s blog, Oct. 27
Tamara Crawford, a co-worker at Lockheed, said Dash informed her of his diagnosis about a year ago while he was being tested at a Fort Worth hospital.
"I said that doctors can get the diagnosis, but they don’t know the final outcome," said Crawford, an aeronautical engineer at Lockheed who had attended classes with Dash at Southern Methodist University. "Then I walked back to my car and cried."
A former fullback at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, the 5-11, 235-pound Dash has struggled to maintain his weight. He lifts weights nearly every day and says chemotherapy — rat poison, he calls it — makes him hungry, weak, sleepy and angry.
"I had to call the cops today at the hospital to get three die-hard smokers out of the no-smoking area so that cancer patients didn’t have to go through a cloud of smoke while trying to get into the cancer center," Dash wrote in an e-mail Dec. 28.
Dash communicates with his family daily by phone, e-mail or webcam. His wife, Rhonda; their 3-year-old, Raegan; and 1-year-old Ravyn huddle around the computer to share news of holidays and routine events. The trio last visited Dash in California on Thanksgiving.
Raegan "cries for him. She misses him," said Rhonda Dash, an environmental investigator with the state. "She always asks when we can go back out there for a visit."
Ravyn was only a few weeks old when her father received his diagnosis. For her, Dash is a man inside the box.
"She calls the telephone Dada," Jerrold Dash said.
Timing is crucial
Jerrold Dash hasn’t been to Fort Worth since September, when he attended the funeral of his mother-in-law, who died of lung cancer. If he leaves the Palo Alto area, his name will be removed from the transplant list. That policy is driven by the short shelf life of lungs — a mere six hours after being removed from a donor. Transplant recipients must not venture more than four hours from the hospital because of the time needed for a pre-surgery work-up.
Dash completes his assignments related to the Lightning II project by telecommuting from one of Lockheed’s California offices.
He is working on a third master’s degree — this one in systems engineering, having earned graduate degrees in organizational management and computer information systems. He completes course work at Southern Methodist University by watching DVDs of his classes. His classmates graduated in December, but he is one class and one paper short of fulfilling his degree requirements.
Yet some things, he knows, are more important.
"From the time I graduated from college up to now, I did everything I could to benefit my career; a career I do not feel I will ever get back on track again. However, I am not sad to see my career take a backseat. You have to find a balance in life and prioritize the major things in your life. The things that are important to me are being able to wake-up and see another day, my GOD, and my friends and family."
— Dash’s blog, Jan. 2
SECONDHAND SMOKE
Secondhand smoke causes 35,000 to 45,000 deaths from heart disease every year. An additional 3,000 otherwise healthy nonsmokers die of lung cancer each year because of their exposure to secondhand smoke, according to the American Cancer Society.
The Environmental Protection Agency has classified secondhand smoke as a Group A carcinogen, a substance that is known to cause human cancer.
Find information online about lung cancer and secondhand smoke at Medline Plus at medlineplus.gov or at the American Cancer Society at www.cancer.org/docroot/home/index.asp
ORGAN DONATION
As of Dec. 29, more than 94,600 people were on a transplant waiting list; more than 22,000 received transplants in 2006, and nearly 11,200 donated organs.
To ensure that your decision to become a donor is carried out, sign up at www.texasdear.org.
Indicate your wishes on your driver’s license or state ID when you apply for or renew it. Tell relatives that you have decided to become a donor.
Find information online at Donate Life America at www.donatelife.net, the United Network for Organ Sharing at www.unos.org or LifeGift at www.lifegift.org.
Contact Jerrold Dash through his blog at 2newlungs.blogspot.com.
SOURCES: American Cancer Society, Donate Life America, United Network for Organ Sharing
IF YOU GO
The public is invited to comment on recommended changes to Fort Worth’s smoking ordinance during 7 p.m. meetings hosted by the city:
Jan. 16: R.D. Evans Community Center, 3242 Lackland Road
Jan. 22: Handley Meadowbrook Community Center, 6201 Beaty St.
Feb. 1: Southwest Community Center, 6300 Welch Ave.
Feb. 12: North Fort Worth Baptist Church, 5801 N. Interstate 35W
Mitch Mitchell, 817-548-5411 mitchmitchell@star-telegram.com
By Mitch Mitchell
Source: Fort Worth Star-TelegramCredit: STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF
WRITERTuesday,January 9, 2007Edition: Tarrant, Section: News, Page A1
The Lockheed Martin Aeronautics systems engineer is 33 and approaching the first anniversary of his cancer being diagnosed. For the past six months he has lived in a Mountain View, Calif., apartment awaiting a double-lung transplant at Stanford University Medical Center. Dash’s wife of four years and his two young daughters live 1,600 miles away at the family’s south Fort Worth home.
"Cancer doctors are well-versed in what they do, but they don’t give you a lot of hope," Dash said in a telephone interview. "I’m not supposed to survive a year, and I’m definitely not going to be around after five, is what they told me."
Dash and his wife, Rhonda, were racing toward the good life when he began complaining of night sweats, sleepless nights, constant coughing and fatigue. Doctors suspected allergies, asthma, bronchitis, but none used advanced X-rays to screen for lung cancer, Dash said. He was working toward a third master’s degree when the cancer was diagnosed Feb. 1, four years after symptoms first appeared.
He is one of two patients in the United States with his diagnosis who have been approved by a transplant program, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing’s Web site.
Dash says the fact that he has never smoked and was athletic and health-conscious delayed his diagnosis.
He’ll never be able to pinpoint the cause, but he is convinced that secondhand smoke and pollution are two of the likely culprits. He pours out his anger at smokers on a blog that he began in September.
"I am not crazy, deranged, I am just mad as hell. I am mad when I fight for breath and I see smokers lighting up not caring where or in what direction their second-hand smoke goes. In California, there is no smoking in the restaurants, businesses, stores ... however, that does not stop smokers from lighting up right outside of the entrances to such establishments. It physically hurts me to have to walk through this stuff."
— Dash’s blog, Oct. 16
Baylor All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth, Baylor Medical Center at Southwest Fort Worth and Lockheed all went smoke-free this month. Arlington banned smoking in restaurants, some bars and many other public places as of New Year’s Day. Fort Worth city leaders have scheduled public hearings this month and next on further tobacco restrictions.
Dash, who worked for tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds for two years after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, said even stronger measures are needed to protect nonsmokers from the byproducts of tobacco.
Against the odds
About 10 percent of people who have lung cancer have never smoked, according to David Weill, head of Stanford’s Lung Transplant Program. It is one of the few U.S. programs that transplants organs to cancer patients, Weill said.
"Usually, transplanting with cancer doesn’t work. The chance of getting cancer after the transplant is pretty high," Weill said.
And while the odds of Dash’s cancer returning after the transplant are about 50 percent, the chances are small that any recurrence would be fatal, Weill said.
"I think in life we have two great vices — fear and failure. ... I have over the last several months conquered my fear of death. No one lives forever. It is in knowing that I will one day die as an old man that I am able to live without fear and try to take advantage of every moment I have. Failure is not in my vocabulary. Athletes don’t fail." — Dash’s blog, Oct. 27
Tamara Crawford, a co-worker at Lockheed, said Dash informed her of his diagnosis about a year ago while he was being tested at a Fort Worth hospital.
"I said that doctors can get the diagnosis, but they don’t know the final outcome," said Crawford, an aeronautical engineer at Lockheed who had attended classes with Dash at Southern Methodist University. "Then I walked back to my car and cried."
A former fullback at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, the 5-11, 235-pound Dash has struggled to maintain his weight. He lifts weights nearly every day and says chemotherapy — rat poison, he calls it — makes him hungry, weak, sleepy and angry.
"I had to call the cops today at the hospital to get three die-hard smokers out of the no-smoking area so that cancer patients didn’t have to go through a cloud of smoke while trying to get into the cancer center," Dash wrote in an e-mail Dec. 28.
Dash communicates with his family daily by phone, e-mail or webcam. His wife, Rhonda; their 3-year-old, Raegan; and 1-year-old Ravyn huddle around the computer to share news of holidays and routine events. The trio last visited Dash in California on Thanksgiving.
Raegan "cries for him. She misses him," said Rhonda Dash, an environmental investigator with the state. "She always asks when we can go back out there for a visit."
Ravyn was only a few weeks old when her father received his diagnosis. For her, Dash is a man inside the box.
"She calls the telephone Dada," Jerrold Dash said.
Timing is crucial
Jerrold Dash hasn’t been to Fort Worth since September, when he attended the funeral of his mother-in-law, who died of lung cancer. If he leaves the Palo Alto area, his name will be removed from the transplant list. That policy is driven by the short shelf life of lungs — a mere six hours after being removed from a donor. Transplant recipients must not venture more than four hours from the hospital because of the time needed for a pre-surgery work-up.
Dash completes his assignments related to the Lightning II project by telecommuting from one of Lockheed’s California offices.
He is working on a third master’s degree — this one in systems engineering, having earned graduate degrees in organizational management and computer information systems. He completes course work at Southern Methodist University by watching DVDs of his classes. His classmates graduated in December, but he is one class and one paper short of fulfilling his degree requirements.
Yet some things, he knows, are more important.
"From the time I graduated from college up to now, I did everything I could to benefit my career; a career I do not feel I will ever get back on track again. However, I am not sad to see my career take a backseat. You have to find a balance in life and prioritize the major things in your life. The things that are important to me are being able to wake-up and see another day, my GOD, and my friends and family."
— Dash’s blog, Jan. 2
SECONDHAND SMOKE
Secondhand smoke causes 35,000 to 45,000 deaths from heart disease every year. An additional 3,000 otherwise healthy nonsmokers die of lung cancer each year because of their exposure to secondhand smoke, according to the American Cancer Society.
The Environmental Protection Agency has classified secondhand smoke as a Group A carcinogen, a substance that is known to cause human cancer.
Find information online about lung cancer and secondhand smoke at Medline Plus at medlineplus.gov or at the American Cancer Society at www.cancer.org/docroot/home/index.asp
ORGAN DONATION
As of Dec. 29, more than 94,600 people were on a transplant waiting list; more than 22,000 received transplants in 2006, and nearly 11,200 donated organs.
To ensure that your decision to become a donor is carried out, sign up at www.texasdear.org.
Indicate your wishes on your driver’s license or state ID when you apply for or renew it. Tell relatives that you have decided to become a donor.
Find information online at Donate Life America at www.donatelife.net, the United Network for Organ Sharing at www.unos.org or LifeGift at www.lifegift.org.
Contact Jerrold Dash through his blog at 2newlungs.blogspot.com.
SOURCES: American Cancer Society, Donate Life America, United Network for Organ Sharing
IF YOU GO
The public is invited to comment on recommended changes to Fort Worth’s smoking ordinance during 7 p.m. meetings hosted by the city:
Jan. 16: R.D. Evans Community Center, 3242 Lackland Road
Jan. 22: Handley Meadowbrook Community Center, 6201 Beaty St.
Feb. 1: Southwest Community Center, 6300 Welch Ave.
Feb. 12: North Fort Worth Baptist Church, 5801 N. Interstate 35W
Mitch Mitchell, 817-548-5411 mitchmitchell@star-telegram.com
Friday, March 30, 2007
The Circle
Yesterday I was droopy and couldn't concentrate. I could remember hardly anything about the theatrical/costume shop I went to, even right after I walked out. My brain wasn't working. I think it's because I didn't have enough sleep. Also I was borderline nauseated. I wasn't sure. I kept asking myself. I tried to tell myself: If you don't know if you're nauseated, you probably aren't. But I think it was the opposite. Today I got enough sleep, I got my half-caf, half-decaf cappuccino, and I feel focused. I've been reading Jerome Groopman's The Anatomy of Hope. It is easier to be hopeful when you're not nauseated and fatigued. I am hopeful today. It's all a circle. I'm a fair-weather optimist. I don't know how the foul-weather ones do it. Groopman writes about a doctor who insisted on grueling treatment for his stomach cancer--and who survived. How could you push through like that?
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Walking Increase
I picked up the pace and got just over a mile and a half in today; along with a healthy dose of stadium stairs.
I think my weight is stabalizing (I lost 34 pounds in 3weeks)
I think my weight is stabalizing (I lost 34 pounds in 3weeks)
Today I am a Six Year Survivor!
Today is wonderful.
Six years ago today I was diagnosed with stage 4 appendiceal cancer. It was assumed I was terminally ill when I was diagnosed.
I was thinking today of things I've experienced in the last 6 years. I remember how hard I fought. I remember refusing to let cancer take me over, I remember fighting for all I was worth. I remember training for a bicycle century while I was on chemo. One day I pedaled against the wind when it was 40 degrees and pouring down rain. I refused to let cancer and chemo control me, conquer me, make me weak. I was tough, I was going to fight, I was angry, I was afraid. Bicycling was my stress reliever. Six months after I finished chemo I did my first ever bicycle century, 100 miles in a day. I did it again 3 months later.
But I am alive. I've seen my kids finish grade school, finish Jr. High, survive adolescence and become high schoolers. I've been here for their first boyfriends, first kisses, first dances, first dates. In a few days my youngest will be behind the wheel of a car, my eldest drives everywhere now and will graduate next year. I've been with my husband 6 more years, we will celebrate our 20th anniversary this year. My husband weathered the cancer storm that I've seen destroy many relationships, he's my hero.
I went into a store last night while my daughter waited in the car. When I came back she told me she had worried about me, she said she worries about me a lot now. I didn't come back as soon as she expected me to. She wondered if I'd been taken, if something might have happened to me, if I was gone. Before she used to have frequent dreams that I had died. Maybe that was still a remnant of our desperation 6 years ago.
We don't take anything for granted anymore. Not a single day.
Six years ago today I was diagnosed with stage 4 appendiceal cancer. It was assumed I was terminally ill when I was diagnosed.
I was thinking today of things I've experienced in the last 6 years. I remember how hard I fought. I remember refusing to let cancer take me over, I remember fighting for all I was worth. I remember training for a bicycle century while I was on chemo. One day I pedaled against the wind when it was 40 degrees and pouring down rain. I refused to let cancer and chemo control me, conquer me, make me weak. I was tough, I was going to fight, I was angry, I was afraid. Bicycling was my stress reliever. Six months after I finished chemo I did my first ever bicycle century, 100 miles in a day. I did it again 3 months later.
But I am alive. I've seen my kids finish grade school, finish Jr. High, survive adolescence and become high schoolers. I've been here for their first boyfriends, first kisses, first dances, first dates. In a few days my youngest will be behind the wheel of a car, my eldest drives everywhere now and will graduate next year. I've been with my husband 6 more years, we will celebrate our 20th anniversary this year. My husband weathered the cancer storm that I've seen destroy many relationships, he's my hero.
I went into a store last night while my daughter waited in the car. When I came back she told me she had worried about me, she said she worries about me a lot now. I didn't come back as soon as she expected me to. She wondered if I'd been taken, if something might have happened to me, if I was gone. Before she used to have frequent dreams that I had died. Maybe that was still a remnant of our desperation 6 years ago.
We don't take anything for granted anymore. Not a single day.
The Stores
I've been wandering around the neighborhood, scouting out stores that look like they might sell hats or wigs. Last night I went to punk store that had mannikins in the display window wearing red, black and white scarves. Like they were just waiting for Cancer Bitch, ready to tell her that scarf-wearing was fashionable. Inside the music was blaring. There were little displays of hats, mostly berets. I don't need scarves. I don't like them. There were a few punk wigs that looked promising, for later. I went to another store that specialized in accessories for bachelorette parties. The closest useful thing I found was a plastic halter that had three breasts on it. I thought I could wear it for my follow-up exam with the surgeon. I would put it on under the gown and say, Doctor, I've been feeling funny... Or better yet, try it on the Fellow first.
It took a while to figure out what I'm looking for are "fun wigs"--colored, unrealistic, maybe $10. Not hairpieces I would waste my "cranial prosthesis" prescription on. I don't want a realistic wig. A couple of places referred me to a nearby store that was closed right then. I've been in the neighborhood long enought to remember it as the place where the Bread Shop used to be. It was an independent bakery and health food store. Then it was a candy store. Now it's a retro-fun-dress-up kind of place. There are a number of those in the area. Vintage. Costume. With loud music and bored-looking hipsters at the cash register.
Today I was walking from the post office and stopped in a store that I'd never seen open before. It was one of those storefronts that's so messy that it seems between rents. But the door had an Open sign on it. When I went in, a bell rang. I could hear someone coming up basement stairs. The place was narrow, with red walls. Painted on them for no obvious reason were: Theatre, Laundry, Kitchen. The space was filled with racks and racks of costumes. Black and gold corsets. Blue net. So much of muchness you couldn't say what was what. The woman came up. She had slightly buck teeth and wore a faded denim skirt. I asked if she had wigs. She pointed to some. I have wigs here, and here, she said. They were hanging on a wall, and seemed worn. They were across the room, too. A red yarn one, as from a Raggedy Ann. Long dark wigs. Blue. I felt persnickety, but I didn't want a wig that wasn't sealed up in a bag. I didn't want one that had been hanging on a hook for decades. She said she had blond ones. Do you have purple? I asked. I don't have purple wigs, she said. I'm not a wig store, darling, she said. It was like being backstage of a huge theater. In the back room were shiny Mardis-Gras bead necklaces. Everything was old and used-looking and historic. The place was dense with fabric. I'm reorganizing today, she said, to get ready for the Cubs. I'm not a wig store, darling, she kept saying. Apparently she was going to have Cubs-related clothing ready for the start of the season next week. She said to come back later. She gave me her card. It was a photocopied square of paper with the name of the store, a drawing of a dominatrix with whip and "Collectibles, Bath products, Make-up and Seasonal gifts." As I left I saw jars of bath salts, with hand-written labels.
I felt like I had just been in a Mary Poppins story, and that the store and its proprietor might vanish overnight. This is the sort of place that doesn't spring up in my neighborhood, where the hair salons can be as airy and spare as the sushi bars, with Product displayed in diagonal rows, and the restaurants have all their reviews color-photocopied and taped up outside. Oh, not everything's self-conscious and interior-decorated, but that's the trend. What is authentic? Around the corner from that store is a historic block of townhomes that's on the National Register. They're patterned after rowhouses in London. The street reminds me of frozen-in-time street in East Berlin. My friend R, who lives there, hated it, for being so fake and perfect.
This is the home of the concept restaurant. I remember going to a restaurant that was supposed to be set in a border town between Spain and France. You were supposed to feel that you were in both countries, and none. The walls were fakely aged and the food was more or less Italian. Much of the food here is more or less Italian.
We went to New York between Christmas and New Year's and I brought a guide to historic restaurants and stores. They all sounded wonderful, but a number were so touristed-out that their souls had been wiped away. I'm looking through the book now to figure out which Italian bakery it was that sounded so promising and pleasing, with green-patterned tile floor and great-grandchildren lovingly creating the family recipes. Can't find it. But I remember going to a crowded place where the pastry didn't look so great and squeezing into a table, surrounded by tourists (as if we weren't), and feeling that nothing was left. We saw a man come out from an office door and sit down with another man and do some sort of business with papers, and that seemed real. Maybe real has to do with the day to day. With duty. Can nothing a tourist "discovers" be real, then? In Barcelona several years ago we went to a store that sold fans. The whole place was paneled in wood and behind the counter there was more wood. Drawer after drawer, I think. I asked L tonight if he remembered it. He did. Did they sell just fans? I asked. Or fabric? Just fans, he said. There was something solid and beautiful about the store. For one, the way it looked. There may even have been a sign somewhere attesting to how long it had been in business. I've always felt comforted by old wood, especially if it's carved. I don't like modern much. I love Italianate buildings. The streets in my neighborhood are filling up with dense ugly brick condos. I wonder if, decades from now, they'll ever be seen as having "character." That's hard to imagine.
In New York we walked around the Upper West Side around Columbia, where Broadway gives way to one franchise after the other. Starbucks was everywhere. I wanted to go to the Hungarian Pastry Shop and we found it by calling Information. It was on Amsterdam Avenue, which isn't as ruined as Broadway. I'd been to the Hungarian a couple of times before. We stood at the counter. An elderly woman accused us of elbowing our way in front of her, and we let her pass. We sat down. I wrote and L read. About 45 minutes passed. We suspected, then confirmed, that there was no table service. We went up the counter and ordered apple streudel. I probably had cappuccino. Two girls behind the counter spoke Amharic to one another. (I asked.) I copied down some of the kinds of coffee drinks--Hungarian coffee: American coffee, almond extract, whipped cream and cinnamon. Viennese: espresso, steamed milk, whipped cream. Russian: espresso, hot chocolate, whipped cream. You could help yourself to refills of regular coffee. All day. I could imagine spending the summer in New York and writing at the Hungarian. The bathroom was very literate--quotes from Larkin, Eliot, Stevens, Dylan Thomas. On the wall toward the front of the cafe were framed covers of books that had been written in the cafe. So it wasn't a place entirely unconscious of itself. You could also buy post cards. Which I did.
***
(The thing is we each want to be irreplaceable, and if we can't have that, then we want to know that there's a building or a concept or a history that's irreplaceable. Immutable. Immortal. That's why people will martyr themselves to a religion or idea, like Patria. It's comforting that X will stand forever: I built the Pyramids/the Eiffel Tower/ the Empire State Building/ the World Trade Center...
Jerome Groopman dedicates his book on hope to his children, asking, what greater hope is there? Where does it leave those of us without children? We just have our words, spun out in the universe...)
It took a while to figure out what I'm looking for are "fun wigs"--colored, unrealistic, maybe $10. Not hairpieces I would waste my "cranial prosthesis" prescription on. I don't want a realistic wig. A couple of places referred me to a nearby store that was closed right then. I've been in the neighborhood long enought to remember it as the place where the Bread Shop used to be. It was an independent bakery and health food store. Then it was a candy store. Now it's a retro-fun-dress-up kind of place. There are a number of those in the area. Vintage. Costume. With loud music and bored-looking hipsters at the cash register.
Today I was walking from the post office and stopped in a store that I'd never seen open before. It was one of those storefronts that's so messy that it seems between rents. But the door had an Open sign on it. When I went in, a bell rang. I could hear someone coming up basement stairs. The place was narrow, with red walls. Painted on them for no obvious reason were: Theatre, Laundry, Kitchen. The space was filled with racks and racks of costumes. Black and gold corsets. Blue net. So much of muchness you couldn't say what was what. The woman came up. She had slightly buck teeth and wore a faded denim skirt. I asked if she had wigs. She pointed to some. I have wigs here, and here, she said. They were hanging on a wall, and seemed worn. They were across the room, too. A red yarn one, as from a Raggedy Ann. Long dark wigs. Blue. I felt persnickety, but I didn't want a wig that wasn't sealed up in a bag. I didn't want one that had been hanging on a hook for decades. She said she had blond ones. Do you have purple? I asked. I don't have purple wigs, she said. I'm not a wig store, darling, she said. It was like being backstage of a huge theater. In the back room were shiny Mardis-Gras bead necklaces. Everything was old and used-looking and historic. The place was dense with fabric. I'm reorganizing today, she said, to get ready for the Cubs. I'm not a wig store, darling, she kept saying. Apparently she was going to have Cubs-related clothing ready for the start of the season next week. She said to come back later. She gave me her card. It was a photocopied square of paper with the name of the store, a drawing of a dominatrix with whip and "Collectibles, Bath products, Make-up and Seasonal gifts." As I left I saw jars of bath salts, with hand-written labels.
I felt like I had just been in a Mary Poppins story, and that the store and its proprietor might vanish overnight. This is the sort of place that doesn't spring up in my neighborhood, where the hair salons can be as airy and spare as the sushi bars, with Product displayed in diagonal rows, and the restaurants have all their reviews color-photocopied and taped up outside. Oh, not everything's self-conscious and interior-decorated, but that's the trend. What is authentic? Around the corner from that store is a historic block of townhomes that's on the National Register. They're patterned after rowhouses in London. The street reminds me of frozen-in-time street in East Berlin. My friend R, who lives there, hated it, for being so fake and perfect.
This is the home of the concept restaurant. I remember going to a restaurant that was supposed to be set in a border town between Spain and France. You were supposed to feel that you were in both countries, and none. The walls were fakely aged and the food was more or less Italian. Much of the food here is more or less Italian.
We went to New York between Christmas and New Year's and I brought a guide to historic restaurants and stores. They all sounded wonderful, but a number were so touristed-out that their souls had been wiped away. I'm looking through the book now to figure out which Italian bakery it was that sounded so promising and pleasing, with green-patterned tile floor and great-grandchildren lovingly creating the family recipes. Can't find it. But I remember going to a crowded place where the pastry didn't look so great and squeezing into a table, surrounded by tourists (as if we weren't), and feeling that nothing was left. We saw a man come out from an office door and sit down with another man and do some sort of business with papers, and that seemed real. Maybe real has to do with the day to day. With duty. Can nothing a tourist "discovers" be real, then? In Barcelona several years ago we went to a store that sold fans. The whole place was paneled in wood and behind the counter there was more wood. Drawer after drawer, I think. I asked L tonight if he remembered it. He did. Did they sell just fans? I asked. Or fabric? Just fans, he said. There was something solid and beautiful about the store. For one, the way it looked. There may even have been a sign somewhere attesting to how long it had been in business. I've always felt comforted by old wood, especially if it's carved. I don't like modern much. I love Italianate buildings. The streets in my neighborhood are filling up with dense ugly brick condos. I wonder if, decades from now, they'll ever be seen as having "character." That's hard to imagine.
In New York we walked around the Upper West Side around Columbia, where Broadway gives way to one franchise after the other. Starbucks was everywhere. I wanted to go to the Hungarian Pastry Shop and we found it by calling Information. It was on Amsterdam Avenue, which isn't as ruined as Broadway. I'd been to the Hungarian a couple of times before. We stood at the counter. An elderly woman accused us of elbowing our way in front of her, and we let her pass. We sat down. I wrote and L read. About 45 minutes passed. We suspected, then confirmed, that there was no table service. We went up the counter and ordered apple streudel. I probably had cappuccino. Two girls behind the counter spoke Amharic to one another. (I asked.) I copied down some of the kinds of coffee drinks--Hungarian coffee: American coffee, almond extract, whipped cream and cinnamon. Viennese: espresso, steamed milk, whipped cream. Russian: espresso, hot chocolate, whipped cream. You could help yourself to refills of regular coffee. All day. I could imagine spending the summer in New York and writing at the Hungarian. The bathroom was very literate--quotes from Larkin, Eliot, Stevens, Dylan Thomas. On the wall toward the front of the cafe were framed covers of books that had been written in the cafe. So it wasn't a place entirely unconscious of itself. You could also buy post cards. Which I did.
***
(The thing is we each want to be irreplaceable, and if we can't have that, then we want to know that there's a building or a concept or a history that's irreplaceable. Immutable. Immortal. That's why people will martyr themselves to a religion or idea, like Patria. It's comforting that X will stand forever: I built the Pyramids/the Eiffel Tower/ the Empire State Building/ the World Trade Center...
Jerome Groopman dedicates his book on hope to his children, asking, what greater hope is there? Where does it leave those of us without children? We just have our words, spun out in the universe...)
Jerroldism: lessons learned so far.........
This whole ordeal has taught me a lot:
I have hopefully learned through all this more patients, and also every setback is not really a setback at all it is a setup for better things to come and just allows you the opportunity to grow the tools you need to get to where you need to be in life, love, and FAITH.
I have hopefully learned through all this more patients, and also every setback is not really a setback at all it is a setup for better things to come and just allows you the opportunity to grow the tools you need to get to where you need to be in life, love, and FAITH.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Health News
The initial pathology report is that all the junk (cancer.... BAC) was contained within my poor ol' lungs. This is good news as they have not noticed or noted any nodular activity. In short I am cancer free and hoping some good data will be gathered from the pending research that will take place on the ol' windbags.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Longest Mile
Sunday got out walked a mile around the Stanford track. The walk took a little longer than I thought but I made it through. It took a grand total of 23 minutes in lane nine so in the first lane I probably would have shaved 3 minutes off my time. I think I may try two miles this weekend when the weather warms up.
Pictures after the mile and while I was doing the stadium stairs.
The Peace Flag
Tonight L and I fought about the peace flag. It is an American flag with a white peace sign in the blue square instead of stars. It hangs in the middle bay window. I was irritable when I got home, and he was, too, or else he caught it from me. He hates the peace flag. Maybe even more than he hates war.* He hates the flag because it keeps out the sun and gets in the way when you open the window. I offered suggestions: He can move it to another window, which is narrower. He can make this work by folding the flag so it's thinner, pinning it with safety pins (reducing the number of stripes, but who cares?) He can move it to the bedroom and pin it to one of the curtains of the french doors. That way fewer people will see it, but we do get a lot of traffic in the alley. He was not appeased. He hates the flag. He was moving furniture and plants around. We're going to get our long-awaited red lounging chair delivered tomorrow. We ordered it in December or January.
I love the peace flag because people can see it from the street and sidewalk and we get even more traffic in the front. It reminds passersby and drivers-by that there's a war and that people are against it. L hates the peace flag because it's one more thing that he didn't put up.** He says the living room looks junky and the flag makes it look junkier. Everything here is mine--furniture, posters, tchotchkes. This is my condo and he has a house about 35 miles away. He visits it once a week or so. He loves his house and the national park right behind it. We talk about living together full-time. After 11-1/2 years I'm almost finally ready. I was alone for so long that it's taken me years and years to understand how to live with someone. I still am learning that two people can be in the same place at the same time and go about their own business. "Parallel play" it's called in child-development circles.
The red chair will be the second piece of furniture we've bought together. The first was the next-door neighbors' entertainment center. They were moving. It was so big that it couldn't go through the door. L took it apart in their apartment and put it back together in ours, an admirable feat. Other than that, he has 1-1/2 chests of drawers in the bedroom, half the closet, half the bathroom. Every so often he gets upset and cries out, I don't live anywhere! He has a green bag that is his transfer bag. He puts stuff in it that goes to the other place.
We have pretended for a year that we were looking for a new place. We were seriously pretending, before I got cancer. There's a dear little frame house about a half-mile away whose price keeps going down. It would be an easy move, I said yesterday. There's no such thing as an easy move, he said. Or else my sister said it. I don't remember, just that we were sitting in the living room. Which I don't think is tacky. Or junky.
Tonight I sat on the futon for a while. (I bought it in the 1980s and I love it. He hates it and says it isn't comfortable. He likes the white couch-bed we inherited from the neighbors and claims it's more comfortable than the futon. Which is plain wrong.) I didn't feel so cranky any more. I said I was tired. L came over and put his hand on my head. I had big procedures yesterday, I said. Your whole way of operating throughout this cancer, he said, is to keep on with your normal activities. You have to rest. Or something like that. I asked him to repeat it, because I knew I was going to write it here but it all slid off me.
*Of course, L hates war. The second thing I liked about him when I met him was his politics.
**He would dispute this, positing the junkiness factor.
I love the peace flag because people can see it from the street and sidewalk and we get even more traffic in the front. It reminds passersby and drivers-by that there's a war and that people are against it. L hates the peace flag because it's one more thing that he didn't put up.** He says the living room looks junky and the flag makes it look junkier. Everything here is mine--furniture, posters, tchotchkes. This is my condo and he has a house about 35 miles away. He visits it once a week or so. He loves his house and the national park right behind it. We talk about living together full-time. After 11-1/2 years I'm almost finally ready. I was alone for so long that it's taken me years and years to understand how to live with someone. I still am learning that two people can be in the same place at the same time and go about their own business. "Parallel play" it's called in child-development circles.
The red chair will be the second piece of furniture we've bought together. The first was the next-door neighbors' entertainment center. They were moving. It was so big that it couldn't go through the door. L took it apart in their apartment and put it back together in ours, an admirable feat. Other than that, he has 1-1/2 chests of drawers in the bedroom, half the closet, half the bathroom. Every so often he gets upset and cries out, I don't live anywhere! He has a green bag that is his transfer bag. He puts stuff in it that goes to the other place.
We have pretended for a year that we were looking for a new place. We were seriously pretending, before I got cancer. There's a dear little frame house about a half-mile away whose price keeps going down. It would be an easy move, I said yesterday. There's no such thing as an easy move, he said. Or else my sister said it. I don't remember, just that we were sitting in the living room. Which I don't think is tacky. Or junky.
Tonight I sat on the futon for a while. (I bought it in the 1980s and I love it. He hates it and says it isn't comfortable. He likes the white couch-bed we inherited from the neighbors and claims it's more comfortable than the futon. Which is plain wrong.) I didn't feel so cranky any more. I said I was tired. L came over and put his hand on my head. I had big procedures yesterday, I said. Your whole way of operating throughout this cancer, he said, is to keep on with your normal activities. You have to rest. Or something like that. I asked him to repeat it, because I knew I was going to write it here but it all slid off me.
*Of course, L hates war. The second thing I liked about him when I met him was his politics.
**He would dispute this, positing the junkiness factor.
Shopping/Water
Tonight I walked to the Lesser Than Two Evils mega-bookstore and bought The Breast Cancer Suvivor's Fitness Plan, recommended to me indirectly by my student A. I went to the mega-sports store and bought a pedometer, recommended by my student B. (Both are correct initials.) I took with me my two-liter water bottle, bought for me years ago by my step-daughter R. I've drunk a liter and half so far today. I peed three times at the bookstore and once at the sports store. Chemo is dehydrating, so I'm supposed to drink 2-3 liters a day. Soon I'll know where every bathroom in the neighborhood is. (In Sports Authority in Lakeview, it's in the back, left of the shoes.) It hurts my neck a little to lean back to drink from the bottle, because of my port insertion yesterday, so I'm glad I can use a straw at home. I'm glad Sports Authority isn't the kind of store where the saleswoman checks in on you. She'd see my mastectomy stitches and my port bandages. No, no, I was going to shout, covering my chest, for your own sake, don't look! But she didn't even return to see how I was doing. Which was OK. I bought, alas, some extra-large mid-length sweat pants and a sports bra. It was hard to find a bra that didn't rub against my sentinel-node stitches. I will take the shorts out of my bottom drawer in my bottom drawer out and put them in the plastic box under the bed, and wait to retrieve them when I've started to regain my girlish figure. Which will be a challenge, since women have a tendency to gain afer breast cancer. This book is a guide to help you counteract that.
The book recommends finding a personal trainer who's worked with women with breast cancer. That makes sense. Even working with a trainer once is good, it says, to get a routine. Because among my many faults is procrastination, I haven't canceled my membership at the local Y. I keep meaning to. But if someone there has the expertise, I will go. Even not, I can bring the book with me to show a trainer. The walk will be a good warm-up. It's about a mile and a quarter. Wait. I just checked Mapquest, and it's 1.43 miles. Maybe 1.4 if I cut through the parking lot. It's close to Whole Foods, which is an incentive: work out then eat at the salad bar. Even though when my white blood cell counts are low, I'm supposed to avoid salad bars, because of the risk of infection. My oncologist didn't tell me this; I read it in Cancer Vixen. How we bitches get our information! No raw sushi, either, which I never eat anyway.
The ftiness book shows how important exercise it by showing it as the lowest level of the food pyramid. It also says that within one year of chemo, especially if it induces early menopause (which I predict it will), "a woman can lose 7 percent of bone mass from her spine and 4 percent of her hips." It ordinarily takes five years for this destruction. My mother has osteoporosis, and so did her mother. My mother works out with weights with some ladies in her building. It's my medicine that's not in a bottle, she says.
The book also says (which I've heard before) that carbonated drinks can leach calcium from bones. I gave L a seltzer-making machine for Chanukah. I guess this means there will be more seltzer for him. I can drink it "in moderation." Can you imagine, we're not talking about regular drinking in moderation, but drinking soda water in moderation. I may concede soon that I'm reaching middle age.
The book recommends finding a personal trainer who's worked with women with breast cancer. That makes sense. Even working with a trainer once is good, it says, to get a routine. Because among my many faults is procrastination, I haven't canceled my membership at the local Y. I keep meaning to. But if someone there has the expertise, I will go. Even not, I can bring the book with me to show a trainer. The walk will be a good warm-up. It's about a mile and a quarter. Wait. I just checked Mapquest, and it's 1.43 miles. Maybe 1.4 if I cut through the parking lot. It's close to Whole Foods, which is an incentive: work out then eat at the salad bar. Even though when my white blood cell counts are low, I'm supposed to avoid salad bars, because of the risk of infection. My oncologist didn't tell me this; I read it in Cancer Vixen. How we bitches get our information! No raw sushi, either, which I never eat anyway.
The ftiness book shows how important exercise it by showing it as the lowest level of the food pyramid. It also says that within one year of chemo, especially if it induces early menopause (which I predict it will), "a woman can lose 7 percent of bone mass from her spine and 4 percent of her hips." It ordinarily takes five years for this destruction. My mother has osteoporosis, and so did her mother. My mother works out with weights with some ladies in her building. It's my medicine that's not in a bottle, she says.
The book also says (which I've heard before) that carbonated drinks can leach calcium from bones. I gave L a seltzer-making machine for Chanukah. I guess this means there will be more seltzer for him. I can drink it "in moderation." Can you imagine, we're not talking about regular drinking in moderation, but drinking soda water in moderation. I may concede soon that I'm reaching middle age.
Acupuncture Folo-folo
Tonight I wrote to the absent-minded acupuncturist and told her that if she's always like that, i can't continue working with her. I wonder what she'll say. I gave her the examples that I listed here. (Below.) E-mail is great. It's easier than getting someone on the phone and saying something directly to her ear.
On the other hand, my cold has gotten so much better, and I don't have nausea...at least YET.
On the other hand, my cold has gotten so much better, and I don't have nausea...at least YET.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Chemo..
...is not as bad as advertised, said the legendary journalist Harry Golden Jr., back in the late '80s. I interviewed him for a magazine profile when he was dying of cancer. Of the throat? The magazine soon died, too. He was still working as a beat reporter in Harold Washington's City Hall. Working for the Sun-Times. Dean of the City Hall newsroom. His editor told me he never complained about his medical treatment, never let it interfere. My story was nominated for a journalism award and I invited him to go to the awards dinner with me, but he died before we could. He was that close to death. He was small with sharp features and laughed like this: hahhahhhahahahahhahahhahahahha.
So far I will have to say the same. For today at least. Chemo began with the installation of a port below my collarbone, in the jugular vein. It's an underground tube with a hole so that I won't have to be stuck time and again by the nurses. I hope it's the right choice. L has a friend at work who had trouble with her port. I wanted one because Cancer Vixen's drawing hand started getting numb from the chemo needles. And when I was in the hospital for surgery I had an IV in my hand and it hurt during and for two weeks after. I learned from a nurse that after constantly poking the inside of the elbow you might have no good veins left. So I hope this port is a port for the good.
Yesterday when a hospital person called to tell me to fast for 12 hours and such, I told her I wanted an attending ("real") doctor to do the surgery. She said to tell the people today. I did and they said, This is the first we've heard of it, we don't know if we can do it, the doctors spend a lot of time supervising... But I got a real doctor, a very nice one who rattled off information but had time to listen, too. When I thanked him for making the time, he demurred, that that's what he does. For the first time in Fancy Hospital, I encountered no apprentices! It was liberating! I realized I should have told the nurse who made the appointment for me that I wanted a real live doctor. What a crazy world when it's an imposition to get senior staff to do the work.
In the prep room there was a fake skylight on the ceiling, lit with a photograph of cherry blossoms. The little rooms to left and right had different photos. A nice touch.
The doctor said it would be like dental work, where you don't feel pain but you feel pressure. I felt nothing. Or don't remember feeling anything. It was quite Proustian--awake and dreaming at the same time--I remember talking about numbers in dreams. The nurse said I also talked about flying in dreams. That sounded right.
Next was the recovery room, where I recovered quickly and ate last night's leftovers from Red Light with alacrity. Green beans, basmati brown rice, kung pao tofu.
Then we were off to the 21st floor for the chemo. I thought it would be a room with three to five lounge chairs and ladies in varying stages of side effects. And then one day we would find out melodramatically why one person never came back. Instead, I was in a private room with a regular exam bed and a rocking chair, and the nurse gave me Ativan and some anti-nausea through the IV and then she "pushed in" the medicine, as she said, the Adriamycin in a syringe attached to the tube attached to the needle in the port. I couldn't feel much. I could see the Adriamaycin, which is red. Then more saline. Then it was over, after maybe 30 minutes.
We left with three prescriptions for pills to fight nausea. L and I picked them up later at the drug store. Two medicines are mandatory. One is optional. I asked the pharmacist if he knew anyone who went on chemo and didn't get nausea, and he just looked at me haplessly.
But I am hoping. I had some Indonesian ginger chews sent by a friend in Oakland and I am wearing the anti-motion-sickness wristband my sister sent me.
My sister also sent herself. She arrived yesterday afternoon and we sat around then walked around the neighborhood, finding a few crocuses. I showed her three-flat graystones that cost $1 million. Prices in Houston are much more modest. We had dinner with L's daughter for her birthday. It was the first time my step-daughter met her step-aunt.
My sister drove a borrowed car from the suburbs to pick me up this morning and we got to the Fancy Hospital parking lot in good time. She stayed with me as much as she was allowed to. She is very easy. I haven't spent much time with her alone, for years and years. She is cheerful, easily amused, calm and not irritable. She's a learning disabilities diagnostitian in a school and we talked about special ed and autistic kids. She's taking a class so she had to finish a paper for it, and fly home tomorrow to hand it in. We also talked about my mother, and about my sister's plans to hold both Passover seders at her house, for the first time ever. When my father was alive, he and I led the seders, using some feminist material I'd found in Ms.magazine. After he died in 1991, I led at least one family seder in Houston by myself every year, adding new tricks, checking out new haggadahs. I always thought the seders there couldn't go on without me. I think my constituents likened me to Castro. It seemed I would always be there, and never name a successor. This year I'm not going home; seems like too much coming on the heels of chemo. I will be a participant and not a leader in two seders here. We will see how it goes. I did warn my friend B that I would try to wrest control of the seder from him.
When I went to the Oriental Institute last week with a friend, I saw a display that said that there is no proof that the Jews were ever slaves in Egypt. Even the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary says it ain't necessarily so. Ah, well. Then we can universalize the slavery experience. Or treat it as metaphor.
Meanwhile I keep asking myself if I'm nauseated. Like poking at a bruise and seeing if it really hurts. Right now, I'm OK. Let's hope.
So far I will have to say the same. For today at least. Chemo began with the installation of a port below my collarbone, in the jugular vein. It's an underground tube with a hole so that I won't have to be stuck time and again by the nurses. I hope it's the right choice. L has a friend at work who had trouble with her port. I wanted one because Cancer Vixen's drawing hand started getting numb from the chemo needles. And when I was in the hospital for surgery I had an IV in my hand and it hurt during and for two weeks after. I learned from a nurse that after constantly poking the inside of the elbow you might have no good veins left. So I hope this port is a port for the good.
Yesterday when a hospital person called to tell me to fast for 12 hours and such, I told her I wanted an attending ("real") doctor to do the surgery. She said to tell the people today. I did and they said, This is the first we've heard of it, we don't know if we can do it, the doctors spend a lot of time supervising... But I got a real doctor, a very nice one who rattled off information but had time to listen, too. When I thanked him for making the time, he demurred, that that's what he does. For the first time in Fancy Hospital, I encountered no apprentices! It was liberating! I realized I should have told the nurse who made the appointment for me that I wanted a real live doctor. What a crazy world when it's an imposition to get senior staff to do the work.
In the prep room there was a fake skylight on the ceiling, lit with a photograph of cherry blossoms. The little rooms to left and right had different photos. A nice touch.
The doctor said it would be like dental work, where you don't feel pain but you feel pressure. I felt nothing. Or don't remember feeling anything. It was quite Proustian--awake and dreaming at the same time--I remember talking about numbers in dreams. The nurse said I also talked about flying in dreams. That sounded right.
Next was the recovery room, where I recovered quickly and ate last night's leftovers from Red Light with alacrity. Green beans, basmati brown rice, kung pao tofu.
Then we were off to the 21st floor for the chemo. I thought it would be a room with three to five lounge chairs and ladies in varying stages of side effects. And then one day we would find out melodramatically why one person never came back. Instead, I was in a private room with a regular exam bed and a rocking chair, and the nurse gave me Ativan and some anti-nausea through the IV and then she "pushed in" the medicine, as she said, the Adriamycin in a syringe attached to the tube attached to the needle in the port. I couldn't feel much. I could see the Adriamaycin, which is red. Then more saline. Then it was over, after maybe 30 minutes.
We left with three prescriptions for pills to fight nausea. L and I picked them up later at the drug store. Two medicines are mandatory. One is optional. I asked the pharmacist if he knew anyone who went on chemo and didn't get nausea, and he just looked at me haplessly.
But I am hoping. I had some Indonesian ginger chews sent by a friend in Oakland and I am wearing the anti-motion-sickness wristband my sister sent me.
My sister also sent herself. She arrived yesterday afternoon and we sat around then walked around the neighborhood, finding a few crocuses. I showed her three-flat graystones that cost $1 million. Prices in Houston are much more modest. We had dinner with L's daughter for her birthday. It was the first time my step-daughter met her step-aunt.
My sister drove a borrowed car from the suburbs to pick me up this morning and we got to the Fancy Hospital parking lot in good time. She stayed with me as much as she was allowed to. She is very easy. I haven't spent much time with her alone, for years and years. She is cheerful, easily amused, calm and not irritable. She's a learning disabilities diagnostitian in a school and we talked about special ed and autistic kids. She's taking a class so she had to finish a paper for it, and fly home tomorrow to hand it in. We also talked about my mother, and about my sister's plans to hold both Passover seders at her house, for the first time ever. When my father was alive, he and I led the seders, using some feminist material I'd found in Ms.magazine. After he died in 1991, I led at least one family seder in Houston by myself every year, adding new tricks, checking out new haggadahs. I always thought the seders there couldn't go on without me. I think my constituents likened me to Castro. It seemed I would always be there, and never name a successor. This year I'm not going home; seems like too much coming on the heels of chemo. I will be a participant and not a leader in two seders here. We will see how it goes. I did warn my friend B that I would try to wrest control of the seder from him.
When I went to the Oriental Institute last week with a friend, I saw a display that said that there is no proof that the Jews were ever slaves in Egypt. Even the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary says it ain't necessarily so. Ah, well. Then we can universalize the slavery experience. Or treat it as metaphor.
Meanwhile I keep asking myself if I'm nauseated. Like poking at a bruise and seeing if it really hurts. Right now, I'm OK. Let's hope.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Why I Hate Elizabeth Edwards
Because she might die.
Because she didn't find her lump in 2004 until it was the size of a half dollar.
Was it the size of a half dollar spinning? Because cancer is in the shape of a stone or rock, it is not flat like a coin. It is not even a perfect sphere like a spinning fifty-cent piece. That shape is saved for the benign cysts. They appear as black smooth spheres in the ultrasound. I saw that. The radiologists will not tell you anything outright, but they will point out what is typically benign.
The cancer mass (larger than one centimeter) or node (smaller than one centimeter) looks jagged, it has crab-leg-like protusions, for which it earned its name. In the sky, you can see Cancer the Crab, a constellation, put up there by Hydra because the crab helped in her struggle to crush Heracles. The hero smashed the crab with his foot. In the afterlife, the crab was rewarded. But because the crab wasn't successful, its constellation isn't the brightest.
I hate Elizabeth Edwards because she smiles. She smiles and she is dying, the cancer is in her bones, it is eating in her bones, and though there are drugs that may stop it, that might stop it, the drugs might not work. I hate Elizabeth Edwards because her husband is not quitting to take care of her, she doesn't want him to quit, she is in the race for him, for both of them. The presidency is a mom-and-pop affair, according to her. She is not working as a lawyer. She wants to work to help her husband get into the presidency. She wanted many things. She wanted children in her 50s and got them. She got a husband who became a senator. Did she want that? I don't know.
She can have quality of life. People use this term and it makes no sense. There is a good quality of life and a bad quality of life, not just a quality. She can have a good life, she can take a pill, and another pill, and a treatment, and she could be in the five percent. Or ten percent. She could live more than ten years. She wants a legacy of helping her husband into the White House, not of keeping him from it.
I do not like her husband. I heard him speak the first time he ran and he was vague and said he understood the poor and the workers because his parents had been poor and workers. He wanted us to vote for him because of that. Because of who he had been. Of what he had been born with. Nothing. Now everyone says he is seasoned, he knows he was wrong about the war. He is for universal health care. See, his wife is so sick and he wants everyone to have the health care she can have. This is his bully pulpit. When I heard the candidates speak last time around the ones who made the most sense, who spoke most of equality were the ones least likely to succeed: Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton. They have gone away. They are not serious candidates this time around.
I hate Elizabeth Edwards because she does not have a life of her own. She has her husband's campaign as her life. Because she believes in him. Because she wants to live for his win. Because, she says, he says, they want service. He wants to serve his country. He is not blindly ambitious, he wants to help, and he can help the best by becoming the most powerful person in the world. On earth.
I hate her because she does not talk, he does not talk, about pollution. About the possible causes of breast cancer. About pesticides and pollution and the company that created tamoxifen being the one that makes pesticides that might be connected to cancer. The name is AstraZeneca and it was part of Imperial Chemical, which produces carcinogens that have been linked to cancer. And because AstroZeneca founded Breast Cancer Awareness Month and supervises and must approve all its brochures and pr because who knows what might come out otherwise. Words like that of Rachel Carson might, for example. Who warned us in the 1960s about the environment failing us and moreover us failing the environment, and she was scorned and is now a secular saint.
I do not dislike John Edwards. I don't trust him. IHe wants to be president, and who wouldn't?
You can't be president and speak the truth and I wonder if you can run for president and speak the truth.
I hate his wife because she's going along with the everyday, or at least she wants to and can't she see it's going to kill her, this cancer?
But maybe it won't kill her soon. Maybe she'll be part of the lucky, maybe she'll live a long time with treatment, maybe there will be a cure. Let's race for the cure. Not the cause, but the test that catches it and the cure.
I hate her because she didn't get a mammogram for the four years before she felt the lump.
Because I didn't feel my lump. It was there but I didn't feel it because my breasts confuse me. Rather, past tense, my breasts were confusing. Now I have one. It confuses me too, with its lumps and bumps and dense vagueness. I cannot map it from month to month, I cannot remember which lumps used to be there or there, which are scars and which are old, which are new. I should draw a picture of what I feel, that's what I should do. I will do it now.
There are two holes in my right breast from a biopsy, and there are wrinkles in the place that used to be my left breast. There's some roundness around the perimeter and some stitches inside, like the grin of a toothless old man. Then there are steri-strips still covering it. I do exercises with my left arm so it won't develop lymphedoma, so it will regain its range of motion. So it will be normal. So I will be normal.
I hate her because hers came back after chemo and radiation, and I start chemo tomorrow and it's not supposed to come back. It's supposed to keep from coming back. The odds are good.
Because she doesn't rage. Because she is smiling, and she is hoping for the best. She is brave in the face of possible death, she says, we are all going to die, I just know what it is that will kill me. Thought of course there is that proverbial bus. The one we always talk about: You could walk down the street and get killed by a bus. It does happen. The other day, in fact, a firefighter was killed by a bus smashing into his firetruck.
Because we don't know anything. We know that Elizabeth Edwards had stage 3 cancer, a lump and malignant lymph nodes. My nodes are clear. I am a better person than she is because I have clean lymph nodes. They are shiny and perfect, doing their job, lymphing and sieving. They are like blood but without color, they are clear and not red. They are virginal cells, cleaning and clearing, coming to the fore when there is a bacteria or virus. Mine work. I am proud of my lymph nodes. Which by chance, are not cancerous.
I am a better person because I am only stage 2a, because mine was caught earlier. I am on track. I am prompt. Though she found hers on her own, and I found mine through a mammogram. We should have joined forces; I would have urged her to get annual mammograms and she would have pursuaded me to do a breast self exam each month. We could have been bosom buddies. Bosom pals.
Better in this case meaning less mortal. Less close to death.
She is going to die and she is not raging. I am not raging. Because my cancer hasn't come back. Because it hasn't had time to come back. It was just removed a few weeks ago. I am not raging, people notice that. I am not angry. I feel I deserve this. Because? Because I am fundamentally flawed. Because I have not lived a perfect life, a clean life. The breast cancer attached its crabby legs around me, it caught me living an imperfect life. It caught me drinking milk with bovine growth hormones. It caught me eating cheese. It caught me drinking public water in the farm belt. It caught me getting chest x-rays and dental x-rays, and oh honey these rays are nothing nothing, don't worry about them. Just the same thing you would get from a day at the beach. It caught me because it catches one out of every seven or eight of us, women. Because that is the luck of the draw. Because that is the price we pay for modernity. For post-modernity. For the mosquito fogging trucks. Fogging, that was the term. For not being the perfect athlete, the perfect vegan, the perfect organic-eater. For not being even a good athlete or good exerciser or proper vegan.
I hate Elizabeth Edwards because I hate this cancer, this strange overgrowth inside me that is against my own interests. Because the cancer is in her rib and her hip, breast cancer has migrated there. Because you can't hate cancer, it's just cells that took the wrong message, answered the wrong phone, opened the wrong letter. Cells that did not know you could return to sender. Because I have to hate something out there. Because she is not screaming, screaming: This is unfair. I didn't want this. I don't deserve this.
Because I know hate is fear.
Because hers came back.
Because it could come back.
It might come back.
Any time.
Because she didn't find her lump in 2004 until it was the size of a half dollar.
Was it the size of a half dollar spinning? Because cancer is in the shape of a stone or rock, it is not flat like a coin. It is not even a perfect sphere like a spinning fifty-cent piece. That shape is saved for the benign cysts. They appear as black smooth spheres in the ultrasound. I saw that. The radiologists will not tell you anything outright, but they will point out what is typically benign.
The cancer mass (larger than one centimeter) or node (smaller than one centimeter) looks jagged, it has crab-leg-like protusions, for which it earned its name. In the sky, you can see Cancer the Crab, a constellation, put up there by Hydra because the crab helped in her struggle to crush Heracles. The hero smashed the crab with his foot. In the afterlife, the crab was rewarded. But because the crab wasn't successful, its constellation isn't the brightest.
I hate Elizabeth Edwards because she smiles. She smiles and she is dying, the cancer is in her bones, it is eating in her bones, and though there are drugs that may stop it, that might stop it, the drugs might not work. I hate Elizabeth Edwards because her husband is not quitting to take care of her, she doesn't want him to quit, she is in the race for him, for both of them. The presidency is a mom-and-pop affair, according to her. She is not working as a lawyer. She wants to work to help her husband get into the presidency. She wanted many things. She wanted children in her 50s and got them. She got a husband who became a senator. Did she want that? I don't know.
She can have quality of life. People use this term and it makes no sense. There is a good quality of life and a bad quality of life, not just a quality. She can have a good life, she can take a pill, and another pill, and a treatment, and she could be in the five percent. Or ten percent. She could live more than ten years. She wants a legacy of helping her husband into the White House, not of keeping him from it.
I do not like her husband. I heard him speak the first time he ran and he was vague and said he understood the poor and the workers because his parents had been poor and workers. He wanted us to vote for him because of that. Because of who he had been. Of what he had been born with. Nothing. Now everyone says he is seasoned, he knows he was wrong about the war. He is for universal health care. See, his wife is so sick and he wants everyone to have the health care she can have. This is his bully pulpit. When I heard the candidates speak last time around the ones who made the most sense, who spoke most of equality were the ones least likely to succeed: Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton. They have gone away. They are not serious candidates this time around.
I hate Elizabeth Edwards because she does not have a life of her own. She has her husband's campaign as her life. Because she believes in him. Because she wants to live for his win. Because, she says, he says, they want service. He wants to serve his country. He is not blindly ambitious, he wants to help, and he can help the best by becoming the most powerful person in the world. On earth.
I hate her because she does not talk, he does not talk, about pollution. About the possible causes of breast cancer. About pesticides and pollution and the company that created tamoxifen being the one that makes pesticides that might be connected to cancer. The name is AstraZeneca and it was part of Imperial Chemical, which produces carcinogens that have been linked to cancer. And because AstroZeneca founded Breast Cancer Awareness Month and supervises and must approve all its brochures and pr because who knows what might come out otherwise. Words like that of Rachel Carson might, for example. Who warned us in the 1960s about the environment failing us and moreover us failing the environment, and she was scorned and is now a secular saint.
I do not dislike John Edwards. I don't trust him. IHe wants to be president, and who wouldn't?
You can't be president and speak the truth and I wonder if you can run for president and speak the truth.
I hate his wife because she's going along with the everyday, or at least she wants to and can't she see it's going to kill her, this cancer?
But maybe it won't kill her soon. Maybe she'll be part of the lucky, maybe she'll live a long time with treatment, maybe there will be a cure. Let's race for the cure. Not the cause, but the test that catches it and the cure.
I hate her because she didn't get a mammogram for the four years before she felt the lump.
Because I didn't feel my lump. It was there but I didn't feel it because my breasts confuse me. Rather, past tense, my breasts were confusing. Now I have one. It confuses me too, with its lumps and bumps and dense vagueness. I cannot map it from month to month, I cannot remember which lumps used to be there or there, which are scars and which are old, which are new. I should draw a picture of what I feel, that's what I should do. I will do it now.
There are two holes in my right breast from a biopsy, and there are wrinkles in the place that used to be my left breast. There's some roundness around the perimeter and some stitches inside, like the grin of a toothless old man. Then there are steri-strips still covering it. I do exercises with my left arm so it won't develop lymphedoma, so it will regain its range of motion. So it will be normal. So I will be normal.
I hate her because hers came back after chemo and radiation, and I start chemo tomorrow and it's not supposed to come back. It's supposed to keep from coming back. The odds are good.
Because she doesn't rage. Because she is smiling, and she is hoping for the best. She is brave in the face of possible death, she says, we are all going to die, I just know what it is that will kill me. Thought of course there is that proverbial bus. The one we always talk about: You could walk down the street and get killed by a bus. It does happen. The other day, in fact, a firefighter was killed by a bus smashing into his firetruck.
Because we don't know anything. We know that Elizabeth Edwards had stage 3 cancer, a lump and malignant lymph nodes. My nodes are clear. I am a better person than she is because I have clean lymph nodes. They are shiny and perfect, doing their job, lymphing and sieving. They are like blood but without color, they are clear and not red. They are virginal cells, cleaning and clearing, coming to the fore when there is a bacteria or virus. Mine work. I am proud of my lymph nodes. Which by chance, are not cancerous.
I am a better person because I am only stage 2a, because mine was caught earlier. I am on track. I am prompt. Though she found hers on her own, and I found mine through a mammogram. We should have joined forces; I would have urged her to get annual mammograms and she would have pursuaded me to do a breast self exam each month. We could have been bosom buddies. Bosom pals.
Better in this case meaning less mortal. Less close to death.
She is going to die and she is not raging. I am not raging. Because my cancer hasn't come back. Because it hasn't had time to come back. It was just removed a few weeks ago. I am not raging, people notice that. I am not angry. I feel I deserve this. Because? Because I am fundamentally flawed. Because I have not lived a perfect life, a clean life. The breast cancer attached its crabby legs around me, it caught me living an imperfect life. It caught me drinking milk with bovine growth hormones. It caught me eating cheese. It caught me drinking public water in the farm belt. It caught me getting chest x-rays and dental x-rays, and oh honey these rays are nothing nothing, don't worry about them. Just the same thing you would get from a day at the beach. It caught me because it catches one out of every seven or eight of us, women. Because that is the luck of the draw. Because that is the price we pay for modernity. For post-modernity. For the mosquito fogging trucks. Fogging, that was the term. For not being the perfect athlete, the perfect vegan, the perfect organic-eater. For not being even a good athlete or good exerciser or proper vegan.
I hate Elizabeth Edwards because I hate this cancer, this strange overgrowth inside me that is against my own interests. Because the cancer is in her rib and her hip, breast cancer has migrated there. Because you can't hate cancer, it's just cells that took the wrong message, answered the wrong phone, opened the wrong letter. Cells that did not know you could return to sender. Because I have to hate something out there. Because she is not screaming, screaming: This is unfair. I didn't want this. I don't deserve this.
Because I know hate is fear.
Because hers came back.
Because it could come back.
It might come back.
Any time.
News Article by the Star-Telegram
http://www.star-telegram.com/226/story/46789.html
Posted on Sat, Mar. 24, 2007
Man recovering after lung transplant
By MITCH MITCHELL
For nearly seven months, Jerrold Dash breathed uneasily as he awaited two new lungs from an organ donor.
A Fort Worth resident and nonsmoker, Dash tried not to worry about whether his lung cancer was spreading and whether he could die. While awaiting surgery in California, he relieved his anxiety by working out regularly, chatting with loved ones and chronicling his experiences on a blog -- always remaining hopeful.
This month, Dash, 33, got bittersweet news. A 30-year-old organ donor had died and his lungs were a match. Dash's wife, Rhonda Dash, arrived in Palo Alto just 2 1/2 hours before his March 6 surgery, which lasted seven hours.
"I got to the hospital just in time to talk to him and pray together," Rhonda Dash said.
Dash was released from the hospital March 15. He anticipates returning to Fort Worth by late June or early July. He had been living in California for almost a year awaiting the transplant while his wife and two young daughters stayed in Fort Worth.
As soon as Jerrold Dash can find the words, he said, he will thank the donor family in a letter he will give to a social worker at Stanford University Medical Center. Medical personnel are not allowed to reveal donor information.
All indications are that Dash's lung cancer did not spread and that his new lungs are functioning better than expected, he said.
He remains determined to help fight cancer in any way he can -- including speaking at schools and churches. The Lockheed Martin Aeronautics systems engineer donated his old lungs for research.
"In April, I will get to have a private moment with them before they slice and dice them," Dash said.
For the next few weeks, Dash must wear a mask that will help prevent infections. For the rest of his life, Dash must watch for signs of infection or tissue rejection. But the longer he remains clear of infections and the longer his body does not reject the donated organs, the better his chances are for a long and healthy life, his wife said.
Dash was one of two people with his diagnosis on the transplant waiting list in late December. Transplants for people with lung cancer are rare because of the chances of the disease spreading, said Dr. David Weill, head of Stanford's lung transplant program.
"I'm cancer-free now," Dash said. "I can do anything that I want to do."
He isn't strong enough to work out yet. Before the surgery, the exercise fanatic lifted weights at the YMCA; he used to be a fullback at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina.
"Jerrold was out of the hospital in a remarkable amount of time," said Allyson Rupp, a clinical social worker at the hospital where Dash had the surgery. "He is extremely well-built physically, and he has such an outstanding attitude. He doesn't complain about anything, and he worries about everyone else around him."
At the Dash family's church, East St. Paul Baptist Church in Fort Worth, March 11 was Jerrold Dash Day. The Rev. L.S. Wilson, senior pastor, said congregants collected an offering to help offset the Dashes' medical and related expenses. Wilson said he also encouraged others to become organ donors, because "there are a lot of other families like the Dashes out there."
Speaking out in favor of organ donation is a New Year's resolution that Dash said he is determined to keep.
"This is an opportunity to effect change in myself and others," Dash said. "This game, this cancer game has gone on for far too long. If they don't hear me one way, they will hear me another way. The lung cancer statistics are grim and negative, but I would caution anyone to bet against me. You'll lose every time."
In the Know
Posted on Sat, Mar. 24, 2007
Man recovering after lung transplant
By MITCH MITCHELL
For nearly seven months, Jerrold Dash breathed uneasily as he awaited two new lungs from an organ donor.
A Fort Worth resident and nonsmoker, Dash tried not to worry about whether his lung cancer was spreading and whether he could die. While awaiting surgery in California, he relieved his anxiety by working out regularly, chatting with loved ones and chronicling his experiences on a blog -- always remaining hopeful.
This month, Dash, 33, got bittersweet news. A 30-year-old organ donor had died and his lungs were a match. Dash's wife, Rhonda Dash, arrived in Palo Alto just 2 1/2 hours before his March 6 surgery, which lasted seven hours.
"I got to the hospital just in time to talk to him and pray together," Rhonda Dash said.
Dash was released from the hospital March 15. He anticipates returning to Fort Worth by late June or early July. He had been living in California for almost a year awaiting the transplant while his wife and two young daughters stayed in Fort Worth.
As soon as Jerrold Dash can find the words, he said, he will thank the donor family in a letter he will give to a social worker at Stanford University Medical Center. Medical personnel are not allowed to reveal donor information.
All indications are that Dash's lung cancer did not spread and that his new lungs are functioning better than expected, he said.
He remains determined to help fight cancer in any way he can -- including speaking at schools and churches. The Lockheed Martin Aeronautics systems engineer donated his old lungs for research.
"In April, I will get to have a private moment with them before they slice and dice them," Dash said.
For the next few weeks, Dash must wear a mask that will help prevent infections. For the rest of his life, Dash must watch for signs of infection or tissue rejection. But the longer he remains clear of infections and the longer his body does not reject the donated organs, the better his chances are for a long and healthy life, his wife said.
Dash was one of two people with his diagnosis on the transplant waiting list in late December. Transplants for people with lung cancer are rare because of the chances of the disease spreading, said Dr. David Weill, head of Stanford's lung transplant program.
"I'm cancer-free now," Dash said. "I can do anything that I want to do."
He isn't strong enough to work out yet. Before the surgery, the exercise fanatic lifted weights at the YMCA; he used to be a fullback at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina.
"Jerrold was out of the hospital in a remarkable amount of time," said Allyson Rupp, a clinical social worker at the hospital where Dash had the surgery. "He is extremely well-built physically, and he has such an outstanding attitude. He doesn't complain about anything, and he worries about everyone else around him."
At the Dash family's church, East St. Paul Baptist Church in Fort Worth, March 11 was Jerrold Dash Day. The Rev. L.S. Wilson, senior pastor, said congregants collected an offering to help offset the Dashes' medical and related expenses. Wilson said he also encouraged others to become organ donors, because "there are a lot of other families like the Dashes out there."
Speaking out in favor of organ donation is a New Year's resolution that Dash said he is determined to keep.
"This is an opportunity to effect change in myself and others," Dash said. "This game, this cancer game has gone on for far too long. If they don't hear me one way, they will hear me another way. The lung cancer statistics are grim and negative, but I would caution anyone to bet against me. You'll lose every time."
In the Know
Transplant timeline
- March 5: Dash receives call that donor lungs are available
- March 6: Receives double lung transplant in a seven-hour operation
- March 7: Moves to intermediate intensive care unit
- March 8: Sits up to eat for the first time since surgery
- March 9: Exercises for the first time since surgery (walks around nurses' station)
- March 11: Experiences a defibrillation attack (increased heart rate associated with transplant, typical in about a third of transplant recipients, according to his doctor)
- March 13: Receives keys to new apartment near Stanford University Medical Center and has another minor atrial defibrillation attack
- March 15: Discharged from hospital
Contact Jerrold Dash through his blog at 2newlungs.blogspot.com
Organ donation
Find information about organ donation at Donate Life America, www.donatelife.net; United Network for Organ Sharing at www.unos.org; or LifeGift at www.lifegift.org.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Acupuncture Follow-Up
I must report that my cold-cough-sore throat is mostly is gone, even though the acupuncturist wasn't that attentive to what I was saying. I did remind her about my cold/sore throat and she put in needles specifically for them. And I suppose my alleged parasite and its attendant alleged eggs (creepy thought) are gone. So if I use the first-person plural, you'll know that I'm intending the royal "we" or the editorial "we" and not the I've-got-a-tapeworm "we."
News Article: by Pegasus News wire
http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2007/mar/24/fort-worth-man-gets-lung-transplant/
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Fort Worth man gets lung transplant
By Pegasus News wire
Jarrold Dash, 33, of Fort Worth had been waiting for seven months for a lung transplant. Earlier this month, he finally got the call that there was a match.
As reported by S-T Dash had lung cancer, though he was not a smoker, and while he was waiting there was always the possibility that the cancer could spread. For nearly the past year, he has been living in California, awaiting a lung donor, while his wife and children were staying in their Fort Worth home. On March 6 he received his surgery at Stanford University Medical Center, which went better than expected, and will be able to return to Fort Worth by June or July.
Transplants are extremely rare for people with lung cancer because of the high risk of the disease spreading. According to MedlinePlus "Fighting rejection is an ongoing process. The body's immune system considers the transplanted organ as an invader (much like an infection) and may attack it. To prevent rejection, organ transplant patients must take anti-rejection (immunosuppression) drugs (such as cyclosporine and corticosteroids) that suppress the body's immune response and reduce the chance of rejection." But with careful monitoring and the anti-rejection drugs, Dash is expected to live a long, healthy life.
Posted by Erin
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Fort Worth man gets lung transplant
By Pegasus News wire
Jarrold Dash, 33, of Fort Worth had been waiting for seven months for a lung transplant. Earlier this month, he finally got the call that there was a match.
As reported by S-T Dash had lung cancer, though he was not a smoker, and while he was waiting there was always the possibility that the cancer could spread. For nearly the past year, he has been living in California, awaiting a lung donor, while his wife and children were staying in their Fort Worth home. On March 6 he received his surgery at Stanford University Medical Center, which went better than expected, and will be able to return to Fort Worth by June or July.
Transplants are extremely rare for people with lung cancer because of the high risk of the disease spreading. According to MedlinePlus "Fighting rejection is an ongoing process. The body's immune system considers the transplanted organ as an invader (much like an infection) and may attack it. To prevent rejection, organ transplant patients must take anti-rejection (immunosuppression) drugs (such as cyclosporine and corticosteroids) that suppress the body's immune response and reduce the chance of rejection." But with careful monitoring and the anti-rejection drugs, Dash is expected to live a long, healthy life.
Posted by Erin
Friday, March 23, 2007
I Get Acupuncture
I was acupunctured for the first time today. Uh oh, I forgot I've been punctured before. I must be catching the forgetfulness of the acupuncturist. Such as: I tell her I've had acupuncture before, in the mid-1990s, for asthma and anxiety, and it worked only on a headache I happened to have one day. What worked most of all was when the MD/acupuncturist prescribed Prozac. I tell her I have asthma. I tell her I'm starting chemo on Monday.
She asks: Do you ever have a cough? Are you ever short of breath?
Asthma, I remind her.
You haven't had acupuncture before, have you?
She asks if I'm starting chemo Saturday, then later when I say my hair is going to fall out she says, Why?
Complain, complain, complain. That's all Cancer Bitch does. Why did I stay? I was there, I wanted acupuncture for my cold so I'd be ready for chemo on Monday, she was part of Fancy Hospital. She was part of a secret part of Fancy Hospital, listed in the pink chemo binder under Resources. She was the nurse/acupuncturist in integrative health care. When I'd asked someone in oncology if acupuncture was available, she'd said no. So this is hush-hush, in the big old building where The Plastic Surgeon to the Stars was temporarily ensconced. The outside of the rooms are stenciled with words such as Serenity, Celestial, Abundance, Peace. There's a waterfall in the waiting room. But this is not affiliated with my insurance because acupuncture isn't covered usually covered, the woman at the desk says. If I met with an internist it would be covered but the doctors are just regular internists, she says. Nothing makes sense. This nurse is equipped to prescribe Chinese herbs, but not vitamins. She doesn't do massage; the chiropractors have that covered. The naturopaths do the nutrition and supplements and vitamins. OK, Cancer Bitch, you went to the MD/acupuncturist 12 years ago, she of the Chinese herbs and supplements and diet, and she did nothing for you. But why does everything have to be so balkanized? Why is each specialist separated from the other, and why do the oncologists barely respond, this nurse says, when she sends an email and says she's given a patient of theirs treatment? And why is this nurse saying I might have parasites? That this treatment will get the eggs out? There's no trouble with my bowel but everything begins with the bowel and these needles will get rid of parasites. She can't seem to explain why she thinks I might have parasites. Does everyone have them? I came here because it seemed to be too much trouble to go to the nearby suburb for what *may* be integrative, coordinated care, but I'm having doubts.
So of course I make an appointment for next week. With this same nurse-acupuncturist.
She asks: Do you ever have a cough? Are you ever short of breath?
Asthma, I remind her.
You haven't had acupuncture before, have you?
She asks if I'm starting chemo Saturday, then later when I say my hair is going to fall out she says, Why?
Complain, complain, complain. That's all Cancer Bitch does. Why did I stay? I was there, I wanted acupuncture for my cold so I'd be ready for chemo on Monday, she was part of Fancy Hospital. She was part of a secret part of Fancy Hospital, listed in the pink chemo binder under Resources. She was the nurse/acupuncturist in integrative health care. When I'd asked someone in oncology if acupuncture was available, she'd said no. So this is hush-hush, in the big old building where The Plastic Surgeon to the Stars was temporarily ensconced. The outside of the rooms are stenciled with words such as Serenity, Celestial, Abundance, Peace. There's a waterfall in the waiting room. But this is not affiliated with my insurance because acupuncture isn't covered usually covered, the woman at the desk says. If I met with an internist it would be covered but the doctors are just regular internists, she says. Nothing makes sense. This nurse is equipped to prescribe Chinese herbs, but not vitamins. She doesn't do massage; the chiropractors have that covered. The naturopaths do the nutrition and supplements and vitamins. OK, Cancer Bitch, you went to the MD/acupuncturist 12 years ago, she of the Chinese herbs and supplements and diet, and she did nothing for you. But why does everything have to be so balkanized? Why is each specialist separated from the other, and why do the oncologists barely respond, this nurse says, when she sends an email and says she's given a patient of theirs treatment? And why is this nurse saying I might have parasites? That this treatment will get the eggs out? There's no trouble with my bowel but everything begins with the bowel and these needles will get rid of parasites. She can't seem to explain why she thinks I might have parasites. Does everyone have them? I came here because it seemed to be too much trouble to go to the nearby suburb for what *may* be integrative, coordinated care, but I'm having doubts.
So of course I make an appointment for next week. With this same nurse-acupuncturist.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
A Brighter Shade of Pink
That's the title of a general Yahoo site on breast cancer awareness. Elizabeth Edwards wrote a column under this rubric, posted in October. She talks about telling her kids she had cancer and that her hair would fall out. I just read that her cancer has come back, and is in her ribs. Her husband claims he will continue campaigning for president, which means that he will drop out within the week. As Brecht has written, When the Leaders Speak of Peace/
The common folk know/ That war is coming. Her husband says it's not curable but treatable. Like diabetes, he says. Maybe. I've read that her chances of five-year survival are one in five. My chances of recurrence without chemo are 30 percent. With chemo, about half that. I have/had stage 2a. Edwards had stage 3. She had chemo (first), and a lumpectomy, then radiation and more chemo. Her breast cancer was in her lymph nodes. Oddly, when looking up stories about her cancer, I found one from 2004 written by my former college best friend (see two posts ago). We are all connected. Edwards has stage 4 (the last stage) now.
What shade of pink are Elizabeth Edwards' glasses now? That sounds cruel. I'm just tired of the pink pink pink optimism. I started reading a book called Pink Ribbons, Inc., which is critical of the big-business breast cancer complex. I will be quoting from it later.
Even I am tending to blame the victim: she hadn't had a mammogram in four years. Well, I was a few months late with my mammogram and I am a failure at breast self-exams because I can't figure out what's what. Everything is so lumpy and indistinct at the same time. Like trying to map a territory without looking. Still I resolve to do better by my surviving breast.
I turn to Brecht again. From The Shoe of Empedocles: For the mountain believes nothing and is not concerned with us.
That's how I see the universe. I guess that's how I see cancer, except cancer is within. And it responds: to chemo, radiation, food, hormones, exercise. We are the mountain.
And in a fundamental way, Empedocles, who killed himself in old age by jumping into Mount Aetna, became Aetna. His bones and blood turned to lava and dust then rain then drinking water and plants and then the bones and blood of his followers' followers.
The common folk know/ That war is coming. Her husband says it's not curable but treatable. Like diabetes, he says. Maybe. I've read that her chances of five-year survival are one in five. My chances of recurrence without chemo are 30 percent. With chemo, about half that. I have/had stage 2a. Edwards had stage 3. She had chemo (first), and a lumpectomy, then radiation and more chemo. Her breast cancer was in her lymph nodes. Oddly, when looking up stories about her cancer, I found one from 2004 written by my former college best friend (see two posts ago). We are all connected. Edwards has stage 4 (the last stage) now.
What shade of pink are Elizabeth Edwards' glasses now? That sounds cruel. I'm just tired of the pink pink pink optimism. I started reading a book called Pink Ribbons, Inc., which is critical of the big-business breast cancer complex. I will be quoting from it later.
Even I am tending to blame the victim: she hadn't had a mammogram in four years. Well, I was a few months late with my mammogram and I am a failure at breast self-exams because I can't figure out what's what. Everything is so lumpy and indistinct at the same time. Like trying to map a territory without looking. Still I resolve to do better by my surviving breast.
I turn to Brecht again. From The Shoe of Empedocles: For the mountain believes nothing and is not concerned with us.
That's how I see the universe. I guess that's how I see cancer, except cancer is within. And it responds: to chemo, radiation, food, hormones, exercise. We are the mountain.
And in a fundamental way, Empedocles, who killed himself in old age by jumping into Mount Aetna, became Aetna. His bones and blood turned to lava and dust then rain then drinking water and plants and then the bones and blood of his followers' followers.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Still on the road to recovery
Still recovering every day is a blessing and gets a little easier. I am being advised to take things slow as far as my recovery goes. I have my second outpatient clinic visit on Thursday so I hope all is still progressing according to the doctors plan (I think personally that I am doing great but lets take things one day at a time).
Leaving the Hospital
Pictures of me leaving the hospital and the mask I must now wear at least for the first year.
Mr Toad
Mr Toad was arrested for stealing a motor-car and being cheeky to the police. That was my day; I have a cold (which L insists did not originate from his virus) and stayed in all day reading and sleeping. I want the cold to be over with quickly so I'll be in shape for chemo on Monday. If chemo gets a late start, then its ending with be late. So far it's set to end in early August. When I'm sick or upset I reach for the classics. For the easy books. Either out of comfort or laziness I read children's books and teen books. And when I go home to visit my mother I read the old books: Louisa May Alcott's lesser-known sequels to Little Women, Judy Bolton mysteries and A Little Princess. Here I just have a handful of the old comfort books. There's Fifteen by Beverly Cleary, with my older sister's name written in cursive and crossed out. Then: This belongs to (her name), with my name added in a different pen and handwriting. I thought everything that was hers should rightfully belong to me, just as I thought her bedtime should become mine. Fifteen is one of the Scholastic Books we'd order in the classroom. When I first read Fifteen I was probably eight or ten, and 15 seemed very old. Now I'm older than her parents. When I read Little Women when I was in second grade I tried to make analogies for 19th-century items I couldn't quite fathom. I couldn't tell the difference between a fancy coach and a plain one. (I still can't. A fiacre is one or the other.) I wasn't sure what all the parts of clothing were. I didn't know what blanc-mange was. Did I think to look it up? Maybe not. I remember asking my mother what a receipt-book was. Did she know it was a recipe book that Meg (in a sequel) couldn't figure out well? I remember asking my parents what Hogwash was, and not getting a satisfactory answer. That was from another book. When I read Fifteen now, I wonder if teens were ever this innocent, and parents so trusting. It takes to end of the book for the girl and boy to kiss. Her parents never have to meet his parents or find out exactly who they are.
A gentleman in his 70s gave me this copy of Wind in the Willows. It was printed in China and sold at Borders. I was skeptical about his enthusiasm for it. Now that I reread it, I'm surprised by its sophistication. I read a portion today about a spiritual experience that Mole and Rat have while looking for Otter's runaway son. Then see God, their God, who is Pan, with his hooves and horns and pan-pipes, and the sight is so magnificent that He must make them forget it. I read about an intervention with Toad. His friends keep watch over him so he won't order another motor-car and ruin it. This works for a while but he tricks them and sneaks out.
I don't quite understand how the animals and humans co-exist., and why some animals are characters and others are just animals. Toad is put in a human prison with human jailers. The daughter of the old jailer has pets,which she discreetly doesn't mention. to Toad. Even he, when not in captivity, has a pet bird in a cage. Other animals are undifferentiated. In another part of the book we see a herd of sheep, unclothed, who speak. The animals have money (which Toad inherited) but it's unclear where his friends' spending money comes from, how they buy their statues and paintings and jackets and shoes and boats. These questions bother me some. They didn't bother me as a child. I didn't think about why there was only one Mole or Rat or Toad. I didn't wonder about amphibians who ate ham and eggs and sardines. But what amazes me is the sophistication of the animals' personalities. Toad is easily chagrined, will take criticism from his friends, but is in sway to his addiction to a new hobby; for most of the book it's motor-cars. He reminded me of a friend. Which I would never say. Mr Toad is much more complex, in some ways, than Jane, the protagonist of Fifteen. She doesn't do anything that matches the mystical experience of Mole and Toad. Or display anything like the deep hunger River Rat gets to follow a traveling Sea Rat to places unknown. That deep longing for something else, to abandon the familiar for the exotic, to finally be like the birds who leave North every year because they are called South. River Rat is undergoing a fundamental crisis about, as William Morris put it, "how we live and how we might live." Those are essential ponderings.
A gentleman in his 70s gave me this copy of Wind in the Willows. It was printed in China and sold at Borders. I was skeptical about his enthusiasm for it. Now that I reread it, I'm surprised by its sophistication. I read a portion today about a spiritual experience that Mole and Rat have while looking for Otter's runaway son. Then see God, their God, who is Pan, with his hooves and horns and pan-pipes, and the sight is so magnificent that He must make them forget it. I read about an intervention with Toad. His friends keep watch over him so he won't order another motor-car and ruin it. This works for a while but he tricks them and sneaks out.
I don't quite understand how the animals and humans co-exist., and why some animals are characters and others are just animals. Toad is put in a human prison with human jailers. The daughter of the old jailer has pets,which she discreetly doesn't mention. to Toad. Even he, when not in captivity, has a pet bird in a cage. Other animals are undifferentiated. In another part of the book we see a herd of sheep, unclothed, who speak. The animals have money (which Toad inherited) but it's unclear where his friends' spending money comes from, how they buy their statues and paintings and jackets and shoes and boats. These questions bother me some. They didn't bother me as a child. I didn't think about why there was only one Mole or Rat or Toad. I didn't wonder about amphibians who ate ham and eggs and sardines. But what amazes me is the sophistication of the animals' personalities. Toad is easily chagrined, will take criticism from his friends, but is in sway to his addiction to a new hobby; for most of the book it's motor-cars. He reminded me of a friend. Which I would never say. Mr Toad is much more complex, in some ways, than Jane, the protagonist of Fifteen. She doesn't do anything that matches the mystical experience of Mole and Toad. Or display anything like the deep hunger River Rat gets to follow a traveling Sea Rat to places unknown. That deep longing for something else, to abandon the familiar for the exotic, to finally be like the birds who leave North every year because they are called South. River Rat is undergoing a fundamental crisis about, as William Morris put it, "how we live and how we might live." Those are essential ponderings.
When is it Over?
When is it over? I remember having that thought often. I was so psyched to "beat it", to survive my cancer. When could you officially declare that you'd won the battle and relax? I had always assumed the 5 year mark was the definition of "cured" in the cancer world. Everyone talked about 5 year survival rates like they were the gold standard. If you made if five years weren't you cured and couldn't you stop the testing-- the CT scans, the x-rays, the tumor markers? Wasn't the very long and hard battle finally won if you were cancer-free at 5 years?
Then I remember reading somewhere that the term "cure" was no longer used, we were in "long term remission" if we made it to the five year mark. I'd always felt remission to mean you still had cancer, it just wasn't currently active. We would always in some sense be "cancer patients". I read an article written by a cancer patient who'd read "long term remission" at 5 years vs. "cure" in a magazine in a doctor's office. When she'd read that statement, she'd thrown the magazine across the room. I could so relate to how she felt. We want the "cure" word, the guarantee it will never come back, the permission to go back to our normal, before cancer lives. To put it all behind us. But some of the appendiceal cancer specialists feel we should have yearly CT scans for life. For life. Forever. We can never stop being vigilant.
I read a statement by a cancer survivor recently. She said we are like recovered alcoholics, in a sense. And we are. We are no longer actively in cancer treatment, and we may no longer have detectable cancer, but it's never really over. We will always be on guard, we will always be vigilant. We are all now acutely aware of how rapidly our lives can change, how much we can lose in a very short time. We can't go back to before cancer when we were more naive, just as a recovered alcoholic can never go back to the days before his first drink. But somewhere between the diagnosis and the recovery we aquire new skills, we deepen our character, we develop new perspectives. We become equipped to help someone else just beginning the journey. Being able to do that kind of makes it all worthwhile.
Then I remember reading somewhere that the term "cure" was no longer used, we were in "long term remission" if we made it to the five year mark. I'd always felt remission to mean you still had cancer, it just wasn't currently active. We would always in some sense be "cancer patients". I read an article written by a cancer patient who'd read "long term remission" at 5 years vs. "cure" in a magazine in a doctor's office. When she'd read that statement, she'd thrown the magazine across the room. I could so relate to how she felt. We want the "cure" word, the guarantee it will never come back, the permission to go back to our normal, before cancer lives. To put it all behind us. But some of the appendiceal cancer specialists feel we should have yearly CT scans for life. For life. Forever. We can never stop being vigilant.
I read a statement by a cancer survivor recently. She said we are like recovered alcoholics, in a sense. And we are. We are no longer actively in cancer treatment, and we may no longer have detectable cancer, but it's never really over. We will always be on guard, we will always be vigilant. We are all now acutely aware of how rapidly our lives can change, how much we can lose in a very short time. We can't go back to before cancer when we were more naive, just as a recovered alcoholic can never go back to the days before his first drink. But somewhere between the diagnosis and the recovery we aquire new skills, we deepen our character, we develop new perspectives. We become equipped to help someone else just beginning the journey. Being able to do that kind of makes it all worthwhile.
Additional Time line information
Some additional time line information that I was too drugged up to remember.
- March 5, 2007 Received Call (PM)
- March 6 Transplanted with 2 lungs (1:30 A – 8:30 A)
- march 7 moved to intermediate ICU, rm 341D
- march 8 sit up to eat (PM)
- march 9 walked around nurses’ station
- march 10 mother and godmother went back home
- march 11 atrial defibrillation attack (increased heart rate associated with transplant)
- march 12 blood sample, sputum sample, & urine sample to
identify why 102.4 F. fever
received medication list for self medication
Received Plant #2 from Lockheed’s Executives - March 13 received keys to h.o.m.e apts near Standford hospital another atrial defibrillation attack
- march 15 took 1st shower since transplant discharged from hospital to h.om.e apts (pm)
I'm a walking
I am walking. These pictures were taken pre-chest tube removal so you can see I had a lot of medical stuff and stuff to haul around with me.
Ugly hospital pictures
Some of the shoots of me with all types of bells, whistles and tubes going place I dare not mention :-)
The first picture (bottom Left) shows me sitting up in the bed having a breathing treatment.
The middle picture shows how sleepy you get with all the medicine along with a strong desire to catch a cat nap b/c there is no real sleeping in the hospital
The last picture (bottom right) shows my last chest tube as it is being pulled out. They asked if that hurt I responded by telling them that it was a unique once in a life time experience and come here let me bite your nose and see how that feels :-). You can also see the clam shell incision that was used to take out the bad lungs and place the new upgraded lung into my chest. Pray for my donors family and loved ones.
The first picture (bottom Left) shows me sitting up in the bed having a breathing treatment.
The middle picture shows how sleepy you get with all the medicine along with a strong desire to catch a cat nap b/c there is no real sleeping in the hospital
The last picture (bottom right) shows my last chest tube as it is being pulled out. They asked if that hurt I responded by telling them that it was a unique once in a life time experience and come here let me bite your nose and see how that feels :-). You can also see the clam shell incision that was used to take out the bad lungs and place the new upgraded lung into my chest. Pray for my donors family and loved ones.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Gender: Hiding the Evidence
When I went for the scan to see if my heart was up to snuff for chemo, I wore the Soviet camisole under a red flannel button-down shirt of L's. He brought me some button-down offerings before chemo. Luckily, I was able to put shirts on over my head only a few days after surgery. The day of the scan I didn't wear earrings because I thought I'd have to take them off in the scanner. I looked in the mirror and thought I looked androgynous. I don't think the thought occurred to me because I had only one breast. It didn't bother me so much to look androgynous but I wondered if people on the subway would wonder about my gender.
This is the abiding mystery: Why do we need to know someone's gender? I remember in the days of the hippies, how Middle Americans would say, in accusation: I can't tell if that's a boy or a girl! The question is, Why do you need to know? Unlike Nora Ephron, (In "A Few Words About Breasts," one of her earliest and best essays), I was never afraid I might turn into a boy if I did something boyish. But I had moments of insecurity. Once in high school a girl named B looked at my fingers and exclaimed: You have men's hands! because I had hair growing on them. Hair that I must have bleached at least once when I was bleaching the hair on my whole arms. We bleached and shaved, a way of lying about our bodies, Adrienne Rich was writing and thinking at the time, though in my teens I'd never heard of her. It was female to shave our legs and underarms, but still shaving was something we did so we wouldn't look manly.
I've been mistaken for a male three times that I can remember. Two were in Paris where I went my junior year of college in my attempt to escape a cloying college boyfriend. In France a person did have to know what gender another person was, out of politesse. You had to say, Mademoiselle, may I see your ticket? Or, Merci, monsieur. Or Oui, madame. The first time was when I was coming back to Paris from London on the ferry, in those pre-Chunnel days. I'd rolled my hair so it would be springy on the way there to visit my summer boyfriend who was spending his junior year abroad in England because he wanted the adventure, not because he was running away. I was tormented because I didn't have a good reason for being in France. Or Europe, or anywhere. He was unhappy that weekend because I wasn't fun. On the way back, my hair fell and and the ticket-taker on the ferry called me monsieur. When I arrived back in Paris it was Sunday night and I was so upset that I called--who else?--the American Embassy emergency number. Cancer Bitch has never been afraid to ask for help. I called a crisis hotline once in college while on a date to hear Muddy Waters. My problem, I told the counselor during intermission, was I wasn't getting into the music. In Paris, unbelievably, the embassy worker on duty invited me to her apartment. (I think I'm remembering this right.) She was very sympathetic. I was very hysterical. I must have gone home to the French widow I was boarding with, and soon I was in therapy with a Greek woman at an American cultural center. I remember being so desperate that once I showed up for the appointment and she said she had food poisoning from seafood but that she would stay for the hour if I really needed her to. Of course I needed her to. Later that year I was in therapy with a polyglot Jewish woman originally from Romania who had been living in Israel. I'm not sure what she was doing in Paris, but France in the mid-70s must have been more appealing than Israel at that time, with its Second World infrastructure and rampant inflation. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) We mostly spoke in French. At the Alliance Francaise I met a handsome Tunisian who'd been speaking French most of his life, thanks to colonialism. I remember how surprised I was that he didn't know the word "angoisse," anguish. That was a daily necessity for me.
The second time was also in France. I had bought a few items from a departing American, including her French typewriter and thick suspenders. Both were mistakes. The French keyboard, only slightly different from the American, ruined my typing forever. The suspenders made me look like a monsieur, at least in the eyes of one merchant. I remember standing at the counter helplessly.
The third time was a couple of years ago when L and I were on our way back from the state capital. We stopped at a vegetarian cafe in a college town half-way. I went in back toward the restrooms and ran into a guy and asked him where they were. He said, The men's is there... L says I don't look male. Maybe the guy was stoned. It confounded me more than bothered me. I mean, I was a married woman. So I had to be a girl!
In college I had a best friend freshman (as it was then called) year who was stocky with boxy shoulders and short hair. I remember she came back to the dorm in tears one afternoon because in Marshall Field's she'd asked where the bathroom was and had been directed to the men's. In college so much matters so much. She didn't have a boyfriend and I don't know if she'd ever had one. She did have a crush. She was haunted by her sister, who was a year younger, not so smart, and thin and sleek. My friend had bad skin and was very smart and ambitious. She'd already been published in Seventeen Magazine in high school. Now she's in broadcasting and is married with at least one child. I know this from the alumni magazine. She stopped speaking to me sophomore year when my ex-boyfriend went out with her and then dropped her to go out with me again. I tried for years to be friends with her again, maybe not friends in the clinging-to-one-another first-semester way, but friendly friends. No dice. She couldn't forgive me for being more desirable. (Hey, my last name's Bitch, it has to come out every now and then.)
Of course, she wouldn't have been traumatized if the ERA had passed and every bathroom was unisex.
Am I afraid that when I'm bald--whether I have a swirly tattoo or not--I'll look male? I don't think so. I'll be wearing earrings to clue in the general public. I've noticed that scarves and hats and turbans for chemo-heads bill themselves as feminine. The flowers and pastels remind me of unfashionable Easter hats. The bright prints and stripes seem doggedly determined to convince the buyer and the world that there's a girl underneath the fabric. A smiling girl, if you look at the pictures in the catalogues. But the world is going to look at you and figure out that you're undergoing chemo, because no one else wears those turbans, no matter what the ad copy says. The caps and scarves are supposed to cover up our loss, hide the evidence of our treatment. Give us privacy, perhaps. The bald head publicly declares: I had cancer and I'm not pretending that I'm not getting chemo. In other words, Death has brushed me.
This is the abiding mystery: Why do we need to know someone's gender? I remember in the days of the hippies, how Middle Americans would say, in accusation: I can't tell if that's a boy or a girl! The question is, Why do you need to know? Unlike Nora Ephron, (In "A Few Words About Breasts," one of her earliest and best essays), I was never afraid I might turn into a boy if I did something boyish. But I had moments of insecurity. Once in high school a girl named B looked at my fingers and exclaimed: You have men's hands! because I had hair growing on them. Hair that I must have bleached at least once when I was bleaching the hair on my whole arms. We bleached and shaved, a way of lying about our bodies, Adrienne Rich was writing and thinking at the time, though in my teens I'd never heard of her. It was female to shave our legs and underarms, but still shaving was something we did so we wouldn't look manly.
I've been mistaken for a male three times that I can remember. Two were in Paris where I went my junior year of college in my attempt to escape a cloying college boyfriend. In France a person did have to know what gender another person was, out of politesse. You had to say, Mademoiselle, may I see your ticket? Or, Merci, monsieur. Or Oui, madame. The first time was when I was coming back to Paris from London on the ferry, in those pre-Chunnel days. I'd rolled my hair so it would be springy on the way there to visit my summer boyfriend who was spending his junior year abroad in England because he wanted the adventure, not because he was running away. I was tormented because I didn't have a good reason for being in France. Or Europe, or anywhere. He was unhappy that weekend because I wasn't fun. On the way back, my hair fell and and the ticket-taker on the ferry called me monsieur. When I arrived back in Paris it was Sunday night and I was so upset that I called--who else?--the American Embassy emergency number. Cancer Bitch has never been afraid to ask for help. I called a crisis hotline once in college while on a date to hear Muddy Waters. My problem, I told the counselor during intermission, was I wasn't getting into the music. In Paris, unbelievably, the embassy worker on duty invited me to her apartment. (I think I'm remembering this right.) She was very sympathetic. I was very hysterical. I must have gone home to the French widow I was boarding with, and soon I was in therapy with a Greek woman at an American cultural center. I remember being so desperate that once I showed up for the appointment and she said she had food poisoning from seafood but that she would stay for the hour if I really needed her to. Of course I needed her to. Later that year I was in therapy with a polyglot Jewish woman originally from Romania who had been living in Israel. I'm not sure what she was doing in Paris, but France in the mid-70s must have been more appealing than Israel at that time, with its Second World infrastructure and rampant inflation. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) We mostly spoke in French. At the Alliance Francaise I met a handsome Tunisian who'd been speaking French most of his life, thanks to colonialism. I remember how surprised I was that he didn't know the word "angoisse," anguish. That was a daily necessity for me.
The second time was also in France. I had bought a few items from a departing American, including her French typewriter and thick suspenders. Both were mistakes. The French keyboard, only slightly different from the American, ruined my typing forever. The suspenders made me look like a monsieur, at least in the eyes of one merchant. I remember standing at the counter helplessly.
The third time was a couple of years ago when L and I were on our way back from the state capital. We stopped at a vegetarian cafe in a college town half-way. I went in back toward the restrooms and ran into a guy and asked him where they were. He said, The men's is there... L says I don't look male. Maybe the guy was stoned. It confounded me more than bothered me. I mean, I was a married woman. So I had to be a girl!
In college I had a best friend freshman (as it was then called) year who was stocky with boxy shoulders and short hair. I remember she came back to the dorm in tears one afternoon because in Marshall Field's she'd asked where the bathroom was and had been directed to the men's. In college so much matters so much. She didn't have a boyfriend and I don't know if she'd ever had one. She did have a crush. She was haunted by her sister, who was a year younger, not so smart, and thin and sleek. My friend had bad skin and was very smart and ambitious. She'd already been published in Seventeen Magazine in high school. Now she's in broadcasting and is married with at least one child. I know this from the alumni magazine. She stopped speaking to me sophomore year when my ex-boyfriend went out with her and then dropped her to go out with me again. I tried for years to be friends with her again, maybe not friends in the clinging-to-one-another first-semester way, but friendly friends. No dice. She couldn't forgive me for being more desirable. (Hey, my last name's Bitch, it has to come out every now and then.)
Of course, she wouldn't have been traumatized if the ERA had passed and every bathroom was unisex.
Am I afraid that when I'm bald--whether I have a swirly tattoo or not--I'll look male? I don't think so. I'll be wearing earrings to clue in the general public. I've noticed that scarves and hats and turbans for chemo-heads bill themselves as feminine. The flowers and pastels remind me of unfashionable Easter hats. The bright prints and stripes seem doggedly determined to convince the buyer and the world that there's a girl underneath the fabric. A smiling girl, if you look at the pictures in the catalogues. But the world is going to look at you and figure out that you're undergoing chemo, because no one else wears those turbans, no matter what the ad copy says. The caps and scarves are supposed to cover up our loss, hide the evidence of our treatment. Give us privacy, perhaps. The bald head publicly declares: I had cancer and I'm not pretending that I'm not getting chemo. In other words, Death has brushed me.
Monday, March 19, 2007
War
Today is the fourth anniversary of the start of the war and I went to a candlelight vigil (arriving late) in my neighborhood. I didn't have time to go home and get my peace flag from out of the window, and to put on my Out of Iraq button, which I wear on my hat. It was another day of early spring so I didn't wear the hat. I also didn't bring a candle, but figured someone would have an extra one, and I was right. My father used to keep yarmulkes and a small prayer book in his glove compartment, so he'd be equipped if he needed to go to a funeral. I now have the candle in mine. I should keep an extra peace flag at the ready. I had on my Cancer Sucks button but I didn't want to dilute the message so I put it in my pocket. The event was local but two TV stations were there. As I said, I got there late. There were about 100 people on a triangular piece of land that had an American Legion commemorative stone on it. I don't know if that's why the corner was chosen. Once I saw a man get out of his car in broad daylight on this corner and catch pigeons in a bag. Tonight it became clear that people were reading the names of the dead from our state, alphabetically by city. Unfortunately there wasn't a mike so it was very hard to hear. Also some of the big signs were facing toward the center of the group, with people standing between the signs and the street, so that people driving by could see only a crowd and not anti-war signs. Nit, nit, nit. I am so critical. I won't complain about the wind, which kept attempting to douse out our candles. It was a respectful event. I saw about four or five cops on the perimeter, and they were laughing and lounging. I saw them in riot gear a year or so ago, at an afternoon weekend protest in a small city park, where there were about 200 people, standing and lying on the grass.
I went to this event because I can't go to the big rally downtown tomorrow night. I could go but I made a plan to meet a friend that afternoon and for dinner. I haven't seen her for about a year, and in that year her husband died of a brain tumor. He started chemo, then stopped when it became futile. Same with radiation. That was this summer. We will see an exhibit of Palestinian clothing at a museum on the south side, then we'll have dinner.
I went to the event because I have been against the war since it started. I started to tell myself, Oh, Cancer Bitch, you've got your own problems, you're feeling run down and you might be getting L's cold, you don't have to go. But I decided I should. You can argue that vigils and rallies don't matter, but they *are* reported, and are a public manifestation of opinion. And I was keeping the number of participants steady; I replaced the person who was leaving and who gave me his candle. At the rally I was looking for women from Code Pink. I would tell them, O I haven't done anything lately because I have breast cancer, and then they would fall all over me and say, O that's so great that you're here, etc. etc. But they weren't there. They'll probably be at the one downtown tomorrow.
I thought I could have brought a yahrzeit candle. This was a funereal gesture for all the soldiers who died. Did their families realize we were standing around for their sons and daughters? Would it matter? Support the troops, send them home, said the signs. A very gentle message. Not aggressive. And the war goes on, and meanwhile the prosthetics industry is booming in research and development because of this war.
Yesterday and today I spent too much time on the web looking at chemo-head headgear. I don't like most turbans and scarves out there in cyberspace and catalogues and I would want to try them on anyway before buying them. I did send off for temporary tattoos for the scalp. The medium is henna, and the design is a swirling leaf pattern. I also sent off for eyebrown stencils. A girl has to plan. My friend S has agreed to apply the henna. She has an MFA in art so she should be able to combine a peace sign with the leaves.
I went to this event because I can't go to the big rally downtown tomorrow night. I could go but I made a plan to meet a friend that afternoon and for dinner. I haven't seen her for about a year, and in that year her husband died of a brain tumor. He started chemo, then stopped when it became futile. Same with radiation. That was this summer. We will see an exhibit of Palestinian clothing at a museum on the south side, then we'll have dinner.
I went to the event because I have been against the war since it started. I started to tell myself, Oh, Cancer Bitch, you've got your own problems, you're feeling run down and you might be getting L's cold, you don't have to go. But I decided I should. You can argue that vigils and rallies don't matter, but they *are* reported, and are a public manifestation of opinion. And I was keeping the number of participants steady; I replaced the person who was leaving and who gave me his candle. At the rally I was looking for women from Code Pink. I would tell them, O I haven't done anything lately because I have breast cancer, and then they would fall all over me and say, O that's so great that you're here, etc. etc. But they weren't there. They'll probably be at the one downtown tomorrow.
I thought I could have brought a yahrzeit candle. This was a funereal gesture for all the soldiers who died. Did their families realize we were standing around for their sons and daughters? Would it matter? Support the troops, send them home, said the signs. A very gentle message. Not aggressive. And the war goes on, and meanwhile the prosthetics industry is booming in research and development because of this war.
Yesterday and today I spent too much time on the web looking at chemo-head headgear. I don't like most turbans and scarves out there in cyberspace and catalogues and I would want to try them on anyway before buying them. I did send off for temporary tattoos for the scalp. The medium is henna, and the design is a swirling leaf pattern. I also sent off for eyebrown stencils. A girl has to plan. My friend S has agreed to apply the henna. She has an MFA in art so she should be able to combine a peace sign with the leaves.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
My First Hair Cut of 2007
Cancer Bitch went for her $60 hair cut Friday with trepidations and a ruler so that she could send 10 inches of hair to Locks of Love, though it’s a controversial outfit, as her friend from Iowa City pointed out in a comment. (In 2002, it supposedly gave out fewer than 200 wigs and collected hundreds of thousands of dollars.) She came back with a more sophisticated haircut as part of her Gradual Program. This will get her used to seeing her own face. Hairdressers always say this: Now you can see your face.
***
It was a one-person salon not far from my house, on a street with restaurants and houses and a liquor store. The owner has long Afro-Korean hair made up of little curly waves. It was tied back. She was very friendly and when I told her about my plan to cut my hair progressively shorter, she told me about her mother’s cervical cancer. Amazingly, she’d been treated well and successfully at the county hospital. She asked me if I was sure I’d lose all my hair, and I told her yes.
She did not approve of my triangle AKA umbrella cut, which I’ve had for many years. I never saw anything wrong with having hair that got progressively wider on its way to my shoulders. She also did not approve of my hair-around-my-face trim of a few weeks ago, which looks good when I put gel on it, which I hadn’t had time to do that day. I did it so that the hair around my face would curl. I told her I wanted today’s haircut, then a shorter all-around haircut, and then a Mohawk for a week. She wanted to make my hair very short, but I wasn’t ready for it. Her strategy was to make a diamond cut, which means that the hair would be wider on the sides than the bottom.
She measured the strands before she cut it and said to forget the ruler, she’d just give me a good cut. The pieces on the floor were about 4 inches long. So I’ll send a monetary instead of a 10-inch cuticle, cortex and medulla donation to one of the wig programs, for women or children. Once again, vanity triumphs. (I'm still not sure how effective any of the wig programs are. Locks of Love has been criticized, but now it's in the BBB's good graces. Wigs for Kids' finances weren't audited by a CPA. I can't find an evaluation for Beautiful Lengths.)
But back to the hair cut at hand. I think it looks good. It’s curly all over and you can see my face, which is rounder than I would like. At its longest, it's a few inches below my ears. I don't feel bad that this cut is only temporary. I’m going about this hair-cutting the way I have to. Losing all my hair at once would be too much of a shock. The hairdresser reminded me not to be lazy, and to put gel on my hair every day.
I am planning to get extra holes pierced in my ears so I can decorate myself when I’m bald. L doesn’t like multiple piercings, I found out today, after 11 years together. But he has no plans to try to stop me. He knows I have the cancer card.
I think I am burying the lede here: Chemo starts Monday, March 26, and hair is due to fall out 16 days later.
***
It was a one-person salon not far from my house, on a street with restaurants and houses and a liquor store. The owner has long Afro-Korean hair made up of little curly waves. It was tied back. She was very friendly and when I told her about my plan to cut my hair progressively shorter, she told me about her mother’s cervical cancer. Amazingly, she’d been treated well and successfully at the county hospital. She asked me if I was sure I’d lose all my hair, and I told her yes.
She did not approve of my triangle AKA umbrella cut, which I’ve had for many years. I never saw anything wrong with having hair that got progressively wider on its way to my shoulders. She also did not approve of my hair-around-my-face trim of a few weeks ago, which looks good when I put gel on it, which I hadn’t had time to do that day. I did it so that the hair around my face would curl. I told her I wanted today’s haircut, then a shorter all-around haircut, and then a Mohawk for a week. She wanted to make my hair very short, but I wasn’t ready for it. Her strategy was to make a diamond cut, which means that the hair would be wider on the sides than the bottom.
She measured the strands before she cut it and said to forget the ruler, she’d just give me a good cut. The pieces on the floor were about 4 inches long. So I’ll send a monetary instead of a 10-inch cuticle, cortex and medulla donation to one of the wig programs, for women or children. Once again, vanity triumphs. (I'm still not sure how effective any of the wig programs are. Locks of Love has been criticized, but now it's in the BBB's good graces. Wigs for Kids' finances weren't audited by a CPA. I can't find an evaluation for Beautiful Lengths.)
But back to the hair cut at hand. I think it looks good. It’s curly all over and you can see my face, which is rounder than I would like. At its longest, it's a few inches below my ears. I don't feel bad that this cut is only temporary. I’m going about this hair-cutting the way I have to. Losing all my hair at once would be too much of a shock. The hairdresser reminded me not to be lazy, and to put gel on my hair every day.
I am planning to get extra holes pierced in my ears so I can decorate myself when I’m bald. L doesn’t like multiple piercings, I found out today, after 11 years together. But he has no plans to try to stop me. He knows I have the cancer card.
I think I am burying the lede here: Chemo starts Monday, March 26, and hair is due to fall out 16 days later.
Congratulations (brother brother #21 Winter '07 DAD Inc.)
Congratulations I would like to congratulate my little brother and sis-in-Law on the birth one week ago on the birth on their lovely little daughter.
Little guy now you will know what it is like to leave the house on a tool tun full on testosterone and get to the Mega department store only to go to the infant girls section buying stuff for your princess and end up buying a cheap tool at the dollar store. Welcome Brother Brother #21 Spring '07 we have been waiting for you to join our ranks. :-)
DAD Inc. - dad of a daughter
Learn these by heart
Hello Kitty
Dora The Explorer
Little Einsteins
Back Yard Agains
Barbie
My Little Pony
The Proud Family
Barney
..........
..........
..........
Little guy now you will know what it is like to leave the house on a tool tun full on testosterone and get to the Mega department store only to go to the infant girls section buying stuff for your princess and end up buying a cheap tool at the dollar store. Welcome Brother Brother #21 Spring '07 we have been waiting for you to join our ranks. :-)
DAD Inc. - dad of a daughter
Learn these by heart
Hello Kitty
Dora The Explorer
Little Einsteins
Back Yard Agains
Barbie
My Little Pony
The Proud Family
Barney
..........
..........
..........
Jerrold update (Post Transplant) and out of the Hospital
This will be a rather long catch up blog as I have for one reason or another not been able to reach my fans since March 09, 2007. This blog will attempt to bridge the time gap from March 10, 2007 up to March 17, 2007.
Let’s begin shall we
(Disclaimer this is from my memory alone that has been on heavy heavy drugs for almost two and a half weeks now--- end of Jerrold Disclaimer)
March 10, 2007
Not much happened on this day as it was a Saturday just more pain as I recover. My Mother and God Mother prepare to leave the hospital turning over my recovery support duties to my wife. I still have 4 chest tubes in me and other IV lines running all over the place along with heart monitors…..
Some walking today, it is hard to get used to the large respitory device I must wear to filter impurities from getting in my lungs.
March 11, 2007
My worst fear was reached today; I was floating along in my recover too easily. About 4AM in the morning as my vitals were being taken and I was filling up yet another urine container I suddenly felt very uneasy on my feat; I began shaking, sweating, got hot / cold, short of breath, and my heart rate jumped from 90 something to 180 to 200 in a matter of seconds. I had basically gone into Afib http://www.hrspatients.org/patients/heart_disorders/atrial_fibrillation/default.asp
Atrial Fibrillation (also called AF or A Fib) is a common heart rhythm disorder caused by a problem in the conduction of electrical impulses in the upper chambers, or atria, of the heart.
This little incident had a major impact on me. It let me know that I have a long bumpy recovery road ahead of me. I was frightened out of my mind during the whole process as I was out of control of what was happening with me. All I could do was just lay there and let the nurses pack me in warm blankets to control the shivering, calm me down, and try to stabilize me until my heart rate reduction plan had been blessed off by the doctors. Eventually my heart rate was medically controlled but I was nervous, anxious, and darn scared for the rest of the day and did not want to be left alone.
Some walking today.
March 12, 2007
Routine day filled with lots of doctors visiting my room since the Afib incident got their attention too. We continue on the meds to slow the heart rate. All in all it was a good day. Walked very little today.
March 13, 2007
Routine slight temperature spike during the night; but it was nothing major. The doctors removed on pair of chest tubes today, which would allow me to have less things hanging and become slightly more mobile. (Side note on the pain involved: the chest tubes hurt like the dickens coming out it felt like someone was trying to saw out of my body from the inside out as the cords were being pulled through and finally out). More lap walking on my floor.
March 14, 2007
Slight Afib episode again but it was quickly controlled. I continued to have temperature spike that baffle the doctors so they get rid of all IV lines and check the access point tips in the lab for bacteria (none found). My mediport is accessed for all IV drugs I need. I addition to my walking the physical therapist brought in a stationary bike so I can have more diversity in my exercise.
March 15, 2007
Normal day; I got my last set of chest tubes out today. These sets of tube were far less painful to remove than the first. Now I am mobile I just have my IV pole to go where I go now. I am 10 pounds lighter this morning also I was given such a heavy dose of lasiks that I urinated away 10 pounds overnight. More walking ….
No temperature spikes in the last 24 hours; so the executive decision was made to release to go to the hospital HOME apartment possibly for 3months or until I am medically cleared to return to Texas. More walking and I am excited about popping this fruit stand (Free at last, Free at last, Thank GOD all mighty we are Free at last) by-MLKing Jr.
Took along walk in the evening just the wife and I. It was tough as I am still adjusting to the mask (note on the mask: the mask would be like your worst day of track practice and you have to run continuous sprints with a bandana covering you nose and another covering your mouth.)
March 16, 2007
Freedom (the first full one)
Got up at and got all my meds together, then the wife and I were out the door.running errarands (cable office, post office grocery store)
March 17, 2007
Up early in the AM working on the blog; could not sleep. Will probably run errands today and walk outside (masking tow / on the face) today.
on Sunday March 18, 2007 I was supposed to do the 12k race in San Francisco
http://www.rhodyco.com/07enab.html
Let’s begin shall we
(Disclaimer this is from my memory alone that has been on heavy heavy drugs for almost two and a half weeks now--- end of Jerrold Disclaimer)
March 10, 2007
Not much happened on this day as it was a Saturday just more pain as I recover. My Mother and God Mother prepare to leave the hospital turning over my recovery support duties to my wife. I still have 4 chest tubes in me and other IV lines running all over the place along with heart monitors…..
Some walking today, it is hard to get used to the large respitory device I must wear to filter impurities from getting in my lungs.
March 11, 2007
My worst fear was reached today; I was floating along in my recover too easily. About 4AM in the morning as my vitals were being taken and I was filling up yet another urine container I suddenly felt very uneasy on my feat; I began shaking, sweating, got hot / cold, short of breath, and my heart rate jumped from 90 something to 180 to 200 in a matter of seconds. I had basically gone into Afib http://www.hrspatients.org/patients/heart_disorders/atrial_fibrillation/default.asp
Atrial Fibrillation (also called AF or A Fib) is a common heart rhythm disorder caused by a problem in the conduction of electrical impulses in the upper chambers, or atria, of the heart.
This little incident had a major impact on me. It let me know that I have a long bumpy recovery road ahead of me. I was frightened out of my mind during the whole process as I was out of control of what was happening with me. All I could do was just lay there and let the nurses pack me in warm blankets to control the shivering, calm me down, and try to stabilize me until my heart rate reduction plan had been blessed off by the doctors. Eventually my heart rate was medically controlled but I was nervous, anxious, and darn scared for the rest of the day and did not want to be left alone.
Some walking today.
March 12, 2007
Routine day filled with lots of doctors visiting my room since the Afib incident got their attention too. We continue on the meds to slow the heart rate. All in all it was a good day. Walked very little today.
March 13, 2007
Routine slight temperature spike during the night; but it was nothing major. The doctors removed on pair of chest tubes today, which would allow me to have less things hanging and become slightly more mobile. (Side note on the pain involved: the chest tubes hurt like the dickens coming out it felt like someone was trying to saw out of my body from the inside out as the cords were being pulled through and finally out). More lap walking on my floor.
March 14, 2007
Slight Afib episode again but it was quickly controlled. I continued to have temperature spike that baffle the doctors so they get rid of all IV lines and check the access point tips in the lab for bacteria (none found). My mediport is accessed for all IV drugs I need. I addition to my walking the physical therapist brought in a stationary bike so I can have more diversity in my exercise.
March 15, 2007
Normal day; I got my last set of chest tubes out today. These sets of tube were far less painful to remove than the first. Now I am mobile I just have my IV pole to go where I go now. I am 10 pounds lighter this morning also I was given such a heavy dose of lasiks that I urinated away 10 pounds overnight. More walking ….
No temperature spikes in the last 24 hours; so the executive decision was made to release to go to the hospital HOME apartment possibly for 3months or until I am medically cleared to return to Texas. More walking and I am excited about popping this fruit stand (Free at last, Free at last, Thank GOD all mighty we are Free at last) by-MLKing Jr.
Took along walk in the evening just the wife and I. It was tough as I am still adjusting to the mask (note on the mask: the mask would be like your worst day of track practice and you have to run continuous sprints with a bandana covering you nose and another covering your mouth.)
March 16, 2007
Freedom (the first full one)
Got up at and got all my meds together, then the wife and I were out the door.running errarands (cable office, post office grocery store)
March 17, 2007
Up early in the AM working on the blog; could not sleep. Will probably run errands today and walk outside (masking tow / on the face) today.
on Sunday March 18, 2007 I was supposed to do the 12k race in San Francisco
http://www.rhodyco.com/07enab.html
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