I'm now about two weeks into what I figured would be a month of recovery, post surgery. In some ways it's going really well, and in others, the picture is more mixed. I now have a home health nurse that comes everyday to change the dressing on my surgical site, and attend to an open area where the graft failed to take. Of course, there had to be a new hole, after all, it's me we're speaking of here.
My stay in Bloomington Hospital of two days was alleviated by a great nurse named Nancy who was smart and engaging. It wasn't so bad. I had my own room, a big bathroom, no view, but more channels on cable than I get at home, so I watched House Hunters until I could no longer stand: "oh, it's so small", and "I don't like that wall color", and "but where are you going to put your clothes" (in a closet the size of a house in Mexico, of course).
What surprises me is how old I feel, how this surgery, this time, really knocked me back on my ass, physically. It will go this way, now. I'm not the guy I was in 2013 when surgery was like a whatever on my way out of Cancerland. I know more, a lot more, and I'm about 1/2 the size of that fellow. So I shuffle around the house in slippers and a robe, sweats sometimes, usually no shirt under the zip up sweater I got from my good friend Polly Prissypants on my last birthday.
I've been on percoset for pain control, but pain has been happily very limited. I use it more for the excrutiating sensitivity I feel when the home care nurse is cleaning some of my surgical site, where the nerve endings are raw, occasionally exposed, and not very happy about it. The percs, as you might imagine, put me to sleep, and what where naps are now more like day sleep. I'm living a semi-Dracula life, but I've mostly been able to sleep at night, too. I sleep so much of late that my blood pressure is tacking lower, which feeds into the sleep cycle.
So, I'm taking some measures to prevent falling into an accidental coma from my love of Big Z. A bit more coffee to raise my blood pressure, a small project each day to complete to keep me from being completely useless. Reading (between Venetian history and a sweeping survey of the Plantegenet kings and queens of England, and upcoming, Chris Bayly's book on the birth of the modern world, thanks to a recommendation from Michael Dodson, the very kind and competent Director of India Studies at IUB).
I am older, and I am older than my age, and this has happened so gradually that it didn't occur to me until I faced it wounded, tired, and needing to heal. So I find my strategies have to change to reflect this reality: I have to work in smaller units; I need to rehabilitate slower, more patiently; my goal posts must be closer together.
Tomorrow, I go back to chemo one week earlier than I expected--it's a good thing socially. This is where I get my biggest kicks of the week, usually. Messing with the nurses, running the joint, playing Salt-n-Pepa videos on the Ipad as they push the 5FU into me--it doesn't sound like much I'm sure but it truly is a place I feel safe, and confident, a place where I'm accepted with my quirks that draw no discernible judgement. More importantly, it's a place where we all have one goal, to save me. I hope you never have to find out how important such a place is to have in your life.
Lately, the mail has been bothering me because every iteration brings a new message from the insurance company. They've managed to request information on virtually every thing I've had done to me this year. They've contended, tried to reject, pushed, pulled and popped every objection they could find to just paying the damn bill. News flash, Anthem BC/BS: I have stage 4 terminal cancer. I will never be cancer-free. My cancer has not progressed, it's simply persisted--so please stop trying to reject paying for the chemo that has allowed me to achieve that balance over a highly aggressive killer strain, ok? It would do wonders for my overall health if you would just shut the fuck up and pay--I mean, come on--doesn't the CEO make a heft multi-million dollar salary with flagrantly enormous stock options? Please don't try to poor mouth me to an early grave. Trust me, you won't win.
Too, I'm now eligible for Medicare which takes effect in August. So, I'm getting all those mailings about signing up, choosing a presciption plan which I believe will be like getting plowed dry, no kiss afterwards. I want to tell them, thanks, but let's wait to do this when I feel more competent, and less overwhelmed, but the grind of bureaucracy never fully meets the reality of individualism. I will say this--they are being incredibly efficient about it, so it's best I think if I take my own advice, STFU and motor on through the process.
I have met reality, I think, and I'm likely better for it overall. I've had some dark thoughts about this recovery because my expectations of myself are not tempered by any parameter of Mark with Cancer--I'm still Mark who Aspires, not Mark who is OLD AND TIRED! I'm still the guy who wants so much to know Turkish better, to finally not have to look up declensions of French nouns, who wants to flesh out my ancient German from early undergrad, who wants to know the modern world.
In my mind, I'm mowing the grass and gardening, and laughing and talking and the dogwood tree in the backyard is beautiful as I'm doing all of that. Rally is running away and I'm chasing him full speed, and when I put a leash on him, we go to Cascades Park and ramble around the stands of trees for an hour or so, up and down the steep ridge. Oddly, that vision doesn't depress me at all, as I sit in a very different reality; it gladdens every part of me. That I had that life, at one point, and enjoyed the hell out of it, makes moving into a new phase more exciting, more interesting, more provocative. I wonder how I will accommodate this new Mark, how he will figure out the method to a full life going forward always, with cancer, like a marriage that works but no one knows quite how.
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