--"come on, baby, can you bleed like me?"--Garbage "Bleed Like Me"
Well, can you? I can do it at the drop of a hat--out of a tumor, or from a hidden unknown source in my neck. From my mouth, a bit, and even my nose gets in on the action. Lately the score is: Bleeding--two shirts, one comforter, an entire sheet set, a mattress pad, a pillow, one pair of pants; Mark--zero.
Ok, I'll admit this much--I think I know why my chest tumor has taken up the bleeds again, and I think it's my fault. I've elevated my head slightly more, my tower of pillows growing to reflect that elevation=ease of snot flow. It makes sleep easier to achieve, but once there, laying on my preferred left side where Krakatoa resides, I slip downwards, pinching the tumor in my body's increasingly pretzelfying movements. A squeezed Krakatoa is, I think, a bleeding one. So, a couple of Indiana Chainsaw Massacres later and I'm a bit wiser about where and how I lay my head, left side down, no matter the hour.
The neck, well, that's a different story. My theory is that the constantly changing geography of my face is causing pull and problems, that result in bleeds that are unexplained--and I may be right. Or the body is just spontaneously bleeding for the hell of it because lately, we've not been doing much. Either way, it's grossly unfair--the blood pools in my throat and I can't expel it, so it sits there for a while combining with snot until it's got the heft to hork up. I know I promised to be less gross this year but I couldn't help that one.
Tomorrow I'll go to Bloomington Hopsital for a pre-op interview--this is for a biopsy of the skin around the tumor that they'll be doing on February 3rd. Two surgeons have looked at, poked at, tsked at, Krakatoa in the past couple of weeks, and the consensus is: more information, please. The skin around my tumor, a place of vast radiation damage is reddish, permanently, and to them that waves a cancer flag--and if the skin itself is cancerous, there's no hope that I'll heal well after the type of surgery that's been planned.
I'm of two minds here. The planned surgery has some Rumsfeldianism in it--one cannot know, even if the skin is not cancerous, how well one will heal after someone digs something out of the chest wall and grafts skin and creates muscle flaps from back muscle to cover it. One cannot be sure at this point that the missing back muscle won't create Bloomington's newest Quasimodo. One cannot know, now, here, that this surgery is without risk of infection or error, or that the graft itself will actually take and the flap itself will actually work.
The other mind? Get this fucking tumor off me. Get this shit done. Quasimodo? Fuck it. I already look like a goddamn rodeo clown, let the shit rip. This second mind, that's Old Mark. The first, new Mark trying to be all adult about this.
Yes, ultimately, I want this done. I want it done by March, hoping that in April I can dig out the garden and start planning what's really important: where would I put 50 day lilies? I found an online nursery with bags of 50 root starts for assorted day lilies and now all I can think of is the benighted patch of weed crusted crap just off my back deck-isn't that day lily heaven? hells yes! Wouldn't I like 20 new root starts for ferns in the shade garden? Like a dog wants ice cream.
Yes, I'm still trying to stay in the world, a bit, though it's been hard in the winter. My advancing breathing weirdness and effluviamania have caught me up in a housebound trap: I don't breathe well outside well its cold anymore. I can go to the store, but not walk the dog--I can check the mail, but I can't shovel. This bites into my social calendar; a body at rest has been tending to stay at rest.
Besides, I'm now playing Civilization V on the King Level with 9 AI civs arrayed against me, cheating their asses off. I hope I am always mentally capable of using a computer--once I'm confined to a nursing home, all they need do is park me in front of a half way powerful PC and I'll stay entertained for hours, being Vercingotrix or Shah Abbas I, kicking ass, hopefully not shitting my pants.
As far as what else the world brings, it brings the fact that my brother-in-law is closer than ever to hospice and life-end care. Dale is my almost last link to a past that truly seems to have happened in a different world. A world where I went wherever I wanted, walked in the woods all the time, played in the drainage ditch creek, took my dog Scruffy out three blocks from our house and suddenly we were in the country. A world that I grew to hate as a teenager, somewhat pimply, somewhat wild haired, somewhat needing to know that other gay people even existed.
Dale was always the practical fellow, the guy who married my sister. He was always standing back a bit when the family got together as if we were a bit much for him (I think we were), and more and more from this perspective, that was a smart decision. I don't know what my parents thought of him, really--I know they made a couple of disparaging remarks, but they made plenty of good ones. Whether they liked him or not, I think they came to respect him, and understand that he truly loved my sister, and she truly loved him.
Things change, right? They have to, one supposes. The neck sags a bit, a capilllary pops; a man dies and his history clangs alongside him to the cemetery; new birds show up as the weather mellows; new flowers crowd the websites that are my version of Winter Porn. Hopefully they will chop something out of me and I'll change too. Again. As if I hadn't already done that one thousand times, and wondered how many thousand more are to come.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Friday, January 2, 2015
HNY People!
I'm starting 2015 pretty much where I left 2014--in the Infusion Center at Premier Healthcare. I couldn't think of a better way to start; here, I have warmth, support and good memories of results I didn't expect from treatment. I'm better at the start of 2015 than I was at the start of 2014. Although I've lost weight recently, I'm still 26 pounds up on last year. My vitals are steady, and I have managed to not break anything, fall down, or otherwise screw up a good thing.
I spent NYE in my chair, with my electric throw, a schnoodle intermittently jumping on me for love and then bouncing over to Charles for more of the same. Rally is nothing if not practical--do not risk wearing out one set of hands when you have two to use.
This is, too, the start of gearing up for a surgery in the Spring, this time to excise what's left of the chest tumor, resect with some left side musculature and then graft with some skin from my thigh. I am under orders to eat and gain weight, as much as possible. It's rather hard to harvet epidermis when the thigh is not somewhat fattened. Like a calf in the desert with those wandering exodus Jews, apparently.
Surgery, while not fun, does at least provide the promise of knockout drugs, and let me go on record and say that I understand why Michael Jackson liked them so much. I usually wake from surgery like a baby staring at a white sheet. Nothingness happened to me during that twilight, nothingness upon waking. I come out of a refreshing sleep feeling, temporarily, way younger than I am.
If I'm not entirely sanguine about this impending experience, it's the worry that I won't heal as I should--this patch of skin was heavily irradiated and still, to this day, glows redder than any other spot. The skin that is here can ulcerate quickly and unpredictably, though with proper care, it does knit itself back together. I will take that small bit of optimistic healing to heart.
I made no resolutions for 2015--I'll let events show me how the wind blows, what I need to learn, how to act, what to do. I would though take the words "optimistic healing" to heart--to look forward to patching oneself together in the best way possible. But obviously healing isn't just a physical thing, the soul needs it, the heart needs it, the brain wants it.
I've been accused of being depressed in the past as if that was a weapon to be used against me, proof that I couldn't handle what was happening to me on my own. I defy anyone to live through what I have and not experience moments of depression--hell, when I see an empanada and realize I never ate enough of those, I have a moment of depression. I have one when some one talks to me and my hands are full and I can't answer. I will, for all the long glorious life I look forward to experiencing, have them. Why? Because I'm normal.
Optimistic healing works best with a dose of reality, and that's not a bad one. I'm not happy all the time, things don't always work out, not everything is care bear in Marktown. I don't expect that from others. In honor of optimistic healing, though, I will: refuse to wallow; refuse to read bullshit "woe is me" posts on Facebook from people I know to have jobs, places to live, and not just something to eat, but a huge variety of things to eat. My message? Life can suck, so suck it up; not over share the grossness that occupies a goodly portion of my life but focus on the way everything looks beautiful to me when the vile is cleaned up and gone. I will say this: there is nothing sweeter than a clean dressing and a clear nose.
The lesson of 2014, to me, was how much gold the dross is hiding. With a mere wiping of the eyes it becomes obvious that healing stands behind trauma, that a pervasive beauty is only poorly scrimmed by a gauzy ugliness in events. We live, we fall we get up. There's nothing new here, just a 54 year old dumbass going back to the kindergarten of life to figure out what survival is, what it will look like, how it will be.
And, as in real Kindergarten, survival has naps, all kinds of them, schnoodles (though a particular one), charleses who drive one to chemo and commiserates when needed, friends who insist I lunch with them so we can spend an hour or so cracking on one another, gossiping a bit, laughing a lot, and the wide open spaces of tomorrow, looking to be filled with joy, no bullshit, and a healthy dose of me.
Welcome 2015! I've been waiting for you.
I spent NYE in my chair, with my electric throw, a schnoodle intermittently jumping on me for love and then bouncing over to Charles for more of the same. Rally is nothing if not practical--do not risk wearing out one set of hands when you have two to use.
This is, too, the start of gearing up for a surgery in the Spring, this time to excise what's left of the chest tumor, resect with some left side musculature and then graft with some skin from my thigh. I am under orders to eat and gain weight, as much as possible. It's rather hard to harvet epidermis when the thigh is not somewhat fattened. Like a calf in the desert with those wandering exodus Jews, apparently.
Surgery, while not fun, does at least provide the promise of knockout drugs, and let me go on record and say that I understand why Michael Jackson liked them so much. I usually wake from surgery like a baby staring at a white sheet. Nothingness happened to me during that twilight, nothingness upon waking. I come out of a refreshing sleep feeling, temporarily, way younger than I am.
If I'm not entirely sanguine about this impending experience, it's the worry that I won't heal as I should--this patch of skin was heavily irradiated and still, to this day, glows redder than any other spot. The skin that is here can ulcerate quickly and unpredictably, though with proper care, it does knit itself back together. I will take that small bit of optimistic healing to heart.
I made no resolutions for 2015--I'll let events show me how the wind blows, what I need to learn, how to act, what to do. I would though take the words "optimistic healing" to heart--to look forward to patching oneself together in the best way possible. But obviously healing isn't just a physical thing, the soul needs it, the heart needs it, the brain wants it.
I've been accused of being depressed in the past as if that was a weapon to be used against me, proof that I couldn't handle what was happening to me on my own. I defy anyone to live through what I have and not experience moments of depression--hell, when I see an empanada and realize I never ate enough of those, I have a moment of depression. I have one when some one talks to me and my hands are full and I can't answer. I will, for all the long glorious life I look forward to experiencing, have them. Why? Because I'm normal.
Optimistic healing works best with a dose of reality, and that's not a bad one. I'm not happy all the time, things don't always work out, not everything is care bear in Marktown. I don't expect that from others. In honor of optimistic healing, though, I will: refuse to wallow; refuse to read bullshit "woe is me" posts on Facebook from people I know to have jobs, places to live, and not just something to eat, but a huge variety of things to eat. My message? Life can suck, so suck it up; not over share the grossness that occupies a goodly portion of my life but focus on the way everything looks beautiful to me when the vile is cleaned up and gone. I will say this: there is nothing sweeter than a clean dressing and a clear nose.
The lesson of 2014, to me, was how much gold the dross is hiding. With a mere wiping of the eyes it becomes obvious that healing stands behind trauma, that a pervasive beauty is only poorly scrimmed by a gauzy ugliness in events. We live, we fall we get up. There's nothing new here, just a 54 year old dumbass going back to the kindergarten of life to figure out what survival is, what it will look like, how it will be.
And, as in real Kindergarten, survival has naps, all kinds of them, schnoodles (though a particular one), charleses who drive one to chemo and commiserates when needed, friends who insist I lunch with them so we can spend an hour or so cracking on one another, gossiping a bit, laughing a lot, and the wide open spaces of tomorrow, looking to be filled with joy, no bullshit, and a healthy dose of me.
Welcome 2015! I've been waiting for you.
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