Chapter 16

Chapter 16

I'm in the hospital and have been here since Monday which is the reason why I haven't been doing any updates but I should be done with chapter 13 (or whichever one I left off with, DUAH!) tonight or tomorrow. I was so sick that I didn't even feel like opening the laptop up and pushing a button! But I'm back and I get to do my last radiation treatment today and then they release me from this place! This has been such a roller coaster ride that I'm getting tired of all the starts and stops!

08 07 2008

My Saturday and Sunday were really trying on me to say the least! I NEVER learn! I swear it's amazing that men have survived as long as we have being the "hunter killers" we're supposed to be!
Saturday, I think I slept most of the day. No kidding, if I moved my location from 1 chair to a couch or chair I'd fall asleep! Within 5 seconds of my stopping my eyelids would fall and I'd be asleep. I had no energy at all and I thought it was just from my pain meds and it would pass and it was the same story Sunday except I did harbor the thought that I should just head to the emergency room and see what the heck was going on but, I fell asleep right after that thought!
But I did tell Barbara I needed to go see Dr. Kim in the mourning and see what he said. As Barb and I walk into his office Jennifer, one of the nurses pins me with a look that tells me my little ass was in serious trouble! I mean I looked worse than I felt like and it showed and she heads me straight into a room and takes my vitals and calls the Doctor.

He walks in and now I know I should have followed through with that thought from Sunday! He immediately calls and has me go down for some lab work and sets an appointment up with my oncologist Dr. Holden who then calls ahead and has a nice little private room set up for me on the cancer ward of St Johns Hospital and this is my home for the undecided future with a wonderful batch of IV's there with my name all over them just waiting for me! And that was my world for the rest of the week!

I slept through most of Monday, except for when they were adding more IV's and giving me shots in places of my body I really didn't need a needle stuck! Told to pee in this bottle and pour something else into my feeding tube, wake you up at 0430 to pull blood, thank god for a ct port, you can almost sleep through that until they push the saline too hard and you get that wonderful metallic taste in your mouth, then the Doctors coming in at 06freakin dark thirty! They are just so pushy in hospitals! It's almost like they want you to get well under military conditions or some such crap as that!
By Tuesday the shot that they gave me had brought my white counts up high enough that I get a long ½ mile ride through the tunnel system over to the Cancer Center for a radiation treatment and back to my room. It was a fun escape and then I'm trying to throw up a brown ring! Maybe it wasn't so much fun! I'm having a nurse next to me half of the time and so here we go again with the meds in the IV again. Pain and antibiotics and anti nausea and I can taste all of this crap in the back of my mouth and feel it when I breathe out. O so nasty! And I throw up some more! But the pain meds take me off to lala land for a little bit and away from trying to see if there is a brown ring somewhere in the pan!
After a wonderful nap it's time to get a shower and the fun of trying to put a square plastic water shield on a not so square body is a challenge that makes the engineer in me scream for help and the nurses aide is there to help and I can see that she has the same problem I have at getting it to work and lay down flat! But we succeed and I drag my new dance partner I call Amy the IV tree with me into the shower for more fun.
Nice shower control! Looks like they pulled it off of the space shuttle! I get this chrome marvel to finally work and get myself all squeaky clean and am finally ready for bed, as if I haven't spent enough time in that rack already! I do have to 'go" twice that night and again at 0430 it starts all over again!
Wednesday is a repeat of Tuesday except as soon as the pain meds hit; it's me with my head in the bucket again! And that is a mystery solved! I tell the nurse that if anyone else comes at me with a pain med I'll punch their lights out and run for the hills! It's been the pain killers all along! I'll put up with a little pain over looking for a brown ring! Throwing up with no beer isn't fun! And this week hasn't been fun for me at all!
I'm actually able to think a little and even watch the TV some, not being so doped up and this is a wonderful relief even though I still want to sleep! I get another trip for radiation and I even look forward to this as this means I have one more. The LAST ONE will be tomorrow! I will get to ring out and that will make this all worth the trouble!
Returning to my room I get to have another shot to boost my white blood count and so I pull the gown up and she hits me in the belly and them adds more bags to the tree. This thing is looking like it's ready for the Christmas party, it’s looking like a tree loaded with ornaments for a hospital party! I just hope it doesn't fall over and kill me! I finally get cleaned up with the help of my new engineering buddy and hit the rack for another dreamless night!

I wake up to the nurses pushing the saline after my blood work and nod back out and wake again for my round of not so bad meds and nod back out and finally wake up at 0730 realizing that my Doctor hasn't shown up! Hmmm, no problem for me I guess as I must be getting better as I know I get out today as soon as I finish my treatment and I'm not sick enough for him to wake me at 0630 any more. So I just wait for a bit watching the news and Dr. Holden shows up and he does his poke and prod and we have a talk for a while as he tells me what I'll be doing with my chemo treatments that are coming up.
I will go in on the 29th and get started, then I take Amy home with me and I get 3 more days of chemo at home. Thank God it's not going to be hospital treatments as 3 days times 3 treatments would drive me right up the wall! I guess Barb and I will figure out what to do and the Doc leaves and I start my day off by getting dressed in jeans and a nice shirt and dump the hospital gown and my flannel pj's and start to pack my gear and when Barb gets there at 1130 I'm ready to get out but I still have to wait for my treatment and she heads out to the store.
I get down to the Center at 130 and they are waiting for me. We do it and when I'm done Tammy asks me if I want the mask as a keepsake and I'm real nice about where I tell her where that thing can go! OH come on I can't tell her that! I tell her nicely to trash the thing as I want to hurl every time I see it! She laughs and as we walk out of the Tomo room I hand my camera to her and she gets a picture as I ring the bell and everyone in the down stairs section cheers and claps as I get in my wheel chair for the trip to see Dr. Kim! I do have a few tears in my eyes and I weigh myself as we get to the nurses station and I'm given a present from the center a 2 oz bar of chocolate which I'll hide at home till I get my taste buds working again and I get hugs all around even from Dr. Kim when he finishes my exam. My chariot is waiting to take me to my room and my wife and we check out and go home. I've never been so happy to pull into the driveway like I was today! Yes the neighborhood is going down hill a little and the wood work needs a little paint which I might get around to painting before cold weather sets in but it's my home and I can shead a few tears, as when I left Monday it could have been the last time I saw it.
I can tell you that I've been going to St. Johns Cancer center for over 7 weeks and everyone in here has been so wonderful to work with the whole time, even the times when I felt like crap they helped to keep my attitude up! Even Kathy had to tell me that she had to tell a new patient that she has an old biker type that came out of treatment one day and went straight into the bathroom and when he was done he came out and goes "Hey, I'm OK!" This was just to make the guy fell better when he didn't make it to the restroom on time! I love to be an example!
This is a hard life and it's almost over. I have 3 or 4 more months of chemo, with a little work in between. Even though I'll be going steadily broke with all of the bills getting bigger and deeper I'll have been given a longer lease on life, and I plan on making the most out of it! I was given a crap sandwich for lunch 4 months ago and I tried to turn it into roast beef before I bit it and I think I've succeeded. When life hands you that crap sandwich do the best you can. Yes I had my days of tears and worry and will still have those days of worry but you can not let yourself dwell on these things. As my brother and I talked this morning about the bills we both agree that what the heck, you have the rest of your life to pay them and if the collectors don't want to work with you when I hand them my plan on paying them back then they can take the courts plan if I file for bankruptcy! My plan gives them more dollars than the court will!
All the other problems in life will be there and you can always work around them, through them, over them or ignore them! At this stage in my life the "Rollover's plan to happiness and a stress free life" is simple. 4 little words that makes life so simple and easy any one can do it.
"Don't worry about it!" or the 2 word easy to remember plan "screw it!"

Yep, you heard it from me and I didn't charge you $29.99 or even $19.99 for that life changing bit of advice! No where in any book, paper, poster, pamphlet or marquee will you ever find it written down that you HAVE to worry about a thing! You know you have a bill or problem, but why stress out about it? It'll still be there after you lost sleep over it and you know it'll still be there later but killing yourself and or giving yourself a stroke over a bill or problem isn't worth the trouble you brought on yourself! Screw it!
Relax, let the problem take care of it's self. You just don't need to expend so much of your energy on them!
My problem was I needed a lot of help! My wife, my son, my baby sister and brother and friends most from times past and friends I've met during this little dance but they all stood there and have helped me and pushed me and lifted my spirits up and tried to keep my PMA up even though this past week I had the spirit, my body didn't want to play along. I knew that to stop and lie down and quit could have been unfair to all of these people who invested a lot of time and love into me. I would have been unfair to my son who needs me to help him grow into manhood the proper way and a wife who needs me in the golden years of her life and I plan to stick around for these events and others.