PTSD and Cancer?

Having recently completed a trip that I had planned for a while, one of my bosses asked me how it went.  I told her how the trip had special significance to my cancer fight and how it took on a new meaning after not being released from oncology as I hoped, and I talked to her about how the trip affected me.  I made the comment to her (also someone who fought her own cancer battle), I said "It's weird the way certain things trigger these memories and feelings, it's almost like PTSD."  She replied "It is PTSD!"
Her words struck me as odd.  I know people with PTSD, and some of them have a lot more to worry about than I do.  After all I was basically disappointed that I have to keep going back to the doctor, that I'm still a cancer patient.  That's all.  Yes, there are certain triggers, certain things that cause memories to come flooding back, but that's just life.  That happens with lots of things right?  Every time I smell cow manure, I get flash backs to the county fair and start look for deep fried anything.
Later on that day, I just Googled "PTSD" and "cancer", thinking I would find a few anecdotes here, or casual observations there.  What popped up on the page astounded me.  Studies, LOTS of studies on the subject.  And they all came to basically the same conclusion, it's not just in our heads...well it is, technically, I guess...but a lot of us are experiencing it.
There were tons of articles but the same results seemed to be popping up in every study.  One out of every three of us experience this.  It only shows up AFTER active treatment, usually when patients are in their monitoring stage.  It can start as soon as 6 months after active treatment, but many experience it at about the three year mark.  And the trigger to cause the onset of the effects doesn't necessarily have to be cancer related, but it brings back the cancer thoughts.
Before I go any further, I don't think I have "post traumatic stress disorder".  As I mentioned, I know people that have PTSD, and I wouldn't even begin to compare my problem with theirs.  However, I do have SOMETHING going on.  And the research shows that clearly a lot more of us do too.
That's when I started getting a little angry.  Further reading on the studies shows that very few oncologists even realize that this is going on.
For those that haven't been to an oncology monitoring appointment it goes like this, you sit in a sterile waiting room (literally, because chemo knocks out your immune system).  You look at the pile of old hard candy (because chemo also dries out your mouth), trying to decide if you are desperate enough to get a piece.  Then the phlebotomist calls you, puts you on the scale while you try to claim that your shoes weigh 50 pounds a piece, takes your vitals, and sucks out about 4 gallons of blood for various tests, spells, and incantations.  Then, before they shuffle you off to wait in the oncologist office, they ask where you are on the pain scale, physically and mentally (you know that little scale of various emojis before they were emojis, ranging from happy face emoji to frowny crying face emoji).  That's where it dawned on me when the breakdown was.
Going into my last oncology appointment, I was excited.  I had my monitoring extended once, but had been told by everyone...except the oncologist, that this would probably be my last appointment ever.  When asked where I was psychologically, I picked a "3" out of "10" ("10" being the most stressed).  After I was told to continue monitoring I was absolutely devastated.  Had anyone stopped me on the way out the door and asked me to give my number on that scale again, it would have been an "8" or a "9".  This was the failure.  This is where no one is paying attention.  And I don't necessarily blame the oncologists.  Like many of the studies discovered, oncologist are trained to fight cancer, not delve into one's psyche. Most doctors aren't cross trained.  You don't go to the vet, have them spay or neuter your dog, then ask them if your own tooth has a cavity...well I know one person that might, but she's the exception.
One in three is a pretty significant number.  That is what surprises me.  How can 33% of us be ignored and forgotten about?  If I handed you and ice cream cone and said it's $5 and there is a two in three chance it will taste delicious, but a one in three chance it will taste as bad as a rock concert restroom smells, you probably wouldn't do it.  There is a 67% chance you will have fun on this roller coaster, but a 33% you will get seriously hurt or killed...are you going to wait in line?
Although, there is tons of research, when I went to the major cancer resources to find out what help there was out there, the websites had surprisingly little information.  The research is out there.  It all basically says the same thing, but no one really seems to know what to do with that knowledge.  And in the mean time people are falling through the cracks.  I haven't thought about harming myself, but the studies do have morbidity rates that are higher than people not going through it.
As in many things with cancer, we need to start educating each other, and passing along what helps us, and that its a normal feeling, and how to get help.  We've always been good about warning about cancer insomnia, scanxiety, and chemo brain, but not this whether it truly is PTSD or whatever it is.  Maybe it's because it happens after most of us have left our support groups or no longer get the longer talks with the oncologist and their team.  But we have to make a change somewhere.  We have to get the word out.  We have to help each other.  We have to do something.

I Did, I Did, I Did Hurt Myself...

I sat around yesterday, glad that the rain that threatened off and on was around, it gave me a great excuse to avoid re-ripping my incision/mowing the ditch.  Everything was going well until late afternoon, when I saw the sun poke out and illuminate the ditch in all its glorious overgrownedness.  In a moment of extreme enthusiasm and lack of clarity, I decide to rush out, grab the push mower, and hurt myself.

The push mower has not been started since before my surgery, sometime in August.  Of all the possible scenarios I ran in my mind on how to hurt myself, the one I forgot about was trying to start a push mower.  I pulled the cord...and pulled the cord...and pulled the cord...pulled the cord...pulled the cord...pulled my incision...pulled the cord, with each pull I came a little closer to ripping my incision and the mower got no closer to starting.  Even though I only have one testicle, I have enough testosterone to realize, if something doesn't work, you can always pour gas in it.  Which is exactly what I did, and the mower started right up...in my workshop.  But at least I knew that the mower starts.  I loaded it up with the lawn tractor, and headed down to the ditch.  I brought along my "whacking stick" which I use for chopping limbs (of trees...so far), hacking up rogue snakes (FYI, all snakes are rogue), and using for leverage/stability as I drop the mower off the side of the cliff we call a ditch.  I don't know how to describe exactly what this tool is.  It's about five feet long, and has a sharp hooked blade, which may have been an old way to harvest corn, or chase teenagers through fields while wearing a white William Shatner mask, or to run after Dr. Frankenstein's monster.  Today it was also used as a cane.

I went to the top of the hill over looked the ditch and pulled the cord...pulled the cord...pulled the cord...pulled a muscle...pulled the cord.  Luckily, I brought down a gas can with me so I used the whacking stick as a screwdriver to take off the breather and poured some more gas into the beast.  The next pull, she roared to life.  I was dreading pushing the mower over the edge, because that meant I had to pull it back up again.  I slowly lowered it down, leaning heavily on the whacking stick, the mower started sputtering due to the extreme angle, and I started sputtering due to being fat and lazy for several months.  Each pass, I struggled with lowering it down and pulling it up, while jamming the whacking stick in to the ground and using it to help pull the mower back up again.  This was working fine, but I forgot one thing about living in the country, people (as in everyone that drives by) wave at you, and it's just not neighborly to not wave back.  So in the midst of this delicate balancing act of using one hand to lower the mower down and the other hand death gripping the whacking stick, I have to pause to wave at every car that came by (because they waved at me) and apparently I-70 was shut down and rerouted on our road.

Eventually, I finished the hardest physical part, next I had to mow near the road.  When mowing near the road, you not only have to look down for snakes to whack, but you have to be aware of traffic coming from the left and the right, and since we live at a "T" in the road, you also have to look out for traffic coming directly at your back.  I know what you are thing, if I am mowing the ditch, why am I worried about traffic on the road?  Well, several reasons, farm machinery is wider that your average car, so you have to be wary of it hanging over the side of the road, or cars avoiding oversized farm machinery and hanging over the side of the road, plus I frequently have to back into the road to mow this part, and I also have to mow around all the tire tracks IN OUR DITCH so obviously someone has managed to drive exactly where I am mowing before!

I have several theories as to why people drive in our ditch.  Some just misjudge the curve and come around there way too fast.  And this particular intersection is a one and a half way stop.  There is one regular stop sign, and one "Stop Except When Turning Right" sign (which in every other state is just a "Yield") and the third way you don't have to stop no matter which way you're turning.  This leads to confusion and thereby most people treat is as a What-Stop-Sign? intersection, leading to a lot of squealing and swerving around oncoming traffic.  There also tend to be a lot of drunks that like to run into the ditch and sometimes for fun, ram the electricity pole.  And finally I think a lot of people are just so busy looking for people to wave to that they don't pay attention to where they are going and run off the road.

So here I am, looking down for snakes to whack, looking left, looking right, looking behind me, looking up (because I don't want to be surprised by SEAL Team VI), pushing the mower with one arm, pulling on my whacking stick with the other arm, and waving at anything that moves.  I was about three quarters done when I started to feel that familiar "tug" down below.  No not my bowels, that was earlier, I am talking about my incision tugging to warn me that it doesn't like what I am doing and it threating to let loose.  So, after getting this obvious warning sign, I did what all men would do and decided the best thing to do would be to stop, leave the rest and go in and take it easy.  I did, I really did decide that would be the best thing, but I still kept mowing until I finished.  It was about this time that my wife and mother-in-law came back from the cemetery, or store, or family Catholic event, or where ever they were and I saw them stop in the driveway way away from where I was mowing and wait to talk to me.  Now it was pretty obvious that I was doing something, and it was also pretty obvious that whatever they had been doing previously, they were now sitting in an air conditioned car.  Since they were waiting for me to stop what I was doing, walk from the edge of the yard to the driveway (which I estimate is a walk of approximately ten miles, or at least that's what it feels like when you have been mowing, waving, and keeping your insides from spilling out), I once again used my superior Man Reasoning Abilities and decide to ignore them and keep mowing.  I finally finished the mowing and much like how a marathon winner will collapse as he/she crosses the finish line with tears of joy running down their face, I fell back on to the lawn tractor and let out a very manly man-whimper.

As soon as I stopped, I could tell that my incision wasn't doing well, and I had planned to just sit on the couch the rest of the night and hold my crotch, something that seemed to make even more sense now that I pulled my incision.  Then my wife came down and asked if I would go with her to Wal-mart.  For some reason I said "yes".  I think I said "yes" because she said we were only going for two things, and I forgot in Wal-mart Speak, two things is actually forty-seven things that we will grab them by alternately criss-crossing the full length of the store approximately eighty-three times.  I don't know how the math works out on that, I just know that's what happens.

So, for the rest of last night and all of today, I have been limping around holding my side, like that is actually helping at all, but since that is the only thing I can think to do, I keep doing it.  The good news is that I didn't push myself to the "pop" just the tug.  So I hope this will all be better soon.  And if nothing else, I can use this for leverage next time someone wants me to mow the lawn.

Stop Babying Me...In A Few Days!

Lately my post-cancer frustration has been people babying me.  I know by the occasional tickle along my waist that I am still not 100% healed, but I feel better than I have since the surgery.  I have been using my abdominal brace less and less and been exerting myself more and more.

The lack of a brace wasn't necessarily intentional.  I tends to get in the way, especially if you are doing any bending or sitting.  Which since my major source of activity lately has been climbing in my boat, sitting down in front of the hydraulics while cussing, crying, and praying that they work, the brace had to go.  There is another odd side effect with the brace.  The brace, which looks a lot like a back brace, completely takes any pain away from my abdomen, but ironically kills my back.  Another reason I have been wearing it less and less.

Two incidents have triggered these feelings about feeling babied.  Our neighbor was over the other day who still primarily heats with wood.  I said I was about to cut down some trees and if he wanted the firewood I would leave the logs for him, otherwise I would hack it all up and haul it away to burn, something we have done many times in the past. He said he would help when he was able.  I said I wasn't asking for the help, I just wanted to know if he wanted the wood.  He again said he would and he could help.  This back and forth went on several times, and I think he finally caught on that all I was asking is if he wanted the wood, I hope.

The second incident, a very good friend of mine who has been super supportive since all this happened, went to the hardware store with me.  I needed to pick up a fifty pound (ninety kilogram) jug of sand for some sandblasting I need to do.  When the employee brought it out, he snatched it up before I could grab it.  I said he didn't need to do that, but he refused to let me carry it.  Now me being me, I was tempted to say I needed another one and see if he would carry that one too, and if he did, I would have kept going.  But I didn't.  This friend has made it a point to check in on me regularly and I can't fault him for that.

So, with that being said, the past few days I have been whining while laying around the house all day wanting to be babied.  While driving to meet another friend last week for lunch, I heard an all too familiar sound from the backseat.  My Jeep has a known problem where the power windows just decide one day that they give up.  The sound I heard was the wind whistling through the window that was sliding down with each bump (of which there are quite a few from the endless assault of salt trucks).  When I turned in my Jeep for warranty, they informed me that since it was the second time this has happened to me, the warranty required them to replace all four.  Great news!  Except that I hadn't planned on sitting around the waiting room quite that long.  So, at some point during my four hour stay there, someone decided they would like to share the plague with me (or a nasty cold, one or the other).

The past few days have involved me single-handedly raising Kleenex's stock sales by over 50% (stock prices not verified) and walking around trying to remember when I swallowed a small melon whole, because it was obviously caught in my throat.  It has been a while since I have had just a plain old cold, and I don't remember them making me this miserable before.   Maybe I was always this puny.  All I know, is I guess this will prepare me for whenever we do have a child, since I hear those little germ factories bring you a new malady every week.

So, I hope to be healthy again in the next day or so.  I am not feeling too bad right now.  I hope to fix those damn hydraulics on my boat soon.  And hopefully people will see I am getting stronger after my surgery as well, and go back to treating me like crap.  Well, maybe not completely like crap, just not like a baby...unless I have a cold.

The Sarasota Redemption

I have been busy lately...and lazy lately, too.  We had to make an emergency trip to Florida, which as far as emergency trips go, Florida is not a bad place to emerge.  My wife volunteers for a basenji rescue organization, which means I volunteer by proxy.  Two basenjis didn't work out at their "forever home" and needed to go back to the foster in Florida.

When we were first made aware of the situation, we decided we would stay a few extra days and sneak in some rest and relaxation.  With only a week to make plans, we called up our friends down there who always say to come down anytime, who told us we couldn't come down then, they had guests already.  I thought that was rude, I mean, they have known their mom their whole life and have only known us a few years.  Who needs more time to catch up?  Regardless, we thought about option two, a friend of mine who loans me his vacation home down there who, without asking me, decided to stay in it himself.  So, this left us without a place to stay.  I frantically searched the internet all the next day trying to find some options without much luck, at least not in the price range of an unemployed cancer patient.  At the end of the day, we were discussing our options when we get the call that we will not be leaving the next week, we need to leave the next day.

The good news, we can stay with our friends, of whom I will now take back the comments I made in the previous paragraph.  The bad news, we literally had less than twelve hours to put everything into place.  Phone calls were made and we were able to put our plan into motion.  The next morning, I met another volunteer and received two very timid and scared basenjis.  I brought them home to the house, where they cowered in the corner of their crate.  Our oldest basenji immediately walked up and peed on their crate.  Not exactly the welcome I was hoping he would give them.  Since we had a night of driving ahead of us, I decided to let them look out the sliding glass door from their crate for a little bit while I grabbed a nap.

After waking, I put the crate in the bedroom, so they would feel a little more secure and opened the door expecting them to fly out of their confines.  After half an hour, and still no flying, I gave up.  I could get the one to eat out of my hand, but not come out of the cage.  I continued preparation until my wife returned from work.  After another agonizingly long time she was able to coax them out so we could take them to pee before our trip.  The female decided to pee in the middle of the hallway, no sense waiting until you get outside.  After a very scary trip outside (I am still not sure what was so scary out there, but they were definitely scared of something) we load up the two rescue basenjis and our two basenjis and start our fifteen hour trek.  The trip down was fairly uneventful, delivering the two rescues back to their familiar foster where they immediately got back into their old routine.  We then made the hour trip down to our friends.

After our last trip to the area, I was a little afraid it would end up the same, me curled up in a ball in pain after hurting myself again.  Luckily that didn't happen.  The trip went great.  We took the Curly Tail Mafia out for some fun (our two basenjis and our friend's shiba inu), we ate at some great places, we had lots of fun with our friends, and snuck out and had some fun on our own too.

In my cancer support group yesterday, I said that week was the first week since all this started that I didn't feel like a cancer patient.  I enjoyed myself and feel like this is starting to be behind me.  I say that as I stare down and impending scan.  I told the group I may "graduate" to the survivors group, but I am going to wait and see how bad my scanxiety is this next time.  Maybe Florida was the answer, and if my wife really loved me and cared about my well-being, she would let me move down there.  She could come too if she wants.

How To Gut Your Past And Hurt Your Gut

The outside temperature was bitter cold and I didn't feel too bad, so I finally decided to head up to my shop and clean out snake alley.  Overall things went OK, I might even say better than expected.

I felt like I was preparing to board the space shuttle, it took about fifteen minutes to get ready.  I wore thermal socks, a pair of pants, a pair of ski pants over them, a shirt, a sweatshirt, insulated steel toe boots, then it's time to put on the abdominal brace, then a jacket, then another jacket, then a balaclava, then put on my hood, then my gloves, then the handwarmers inside the gloves, and then I am ready...to pee.  So I peel everything off, pee and start all over again.

Working in the shop wasn't too bad.  I actually had to unzip my jacket and switched from my balaclava to a hat. With the amount of snakeskins I found originally I had expected to find them throughout the area I was working in, but they were just at the front.  It appears that it is just one rat bastard snake messing with me.  Every year I try to make the area less and less hospitable for the serpents, but yet they still manage to sneak in.  I think I finally found the place they are getting in at.  So, between giving them less places to hang out, I hope that blocking the spot they come in at will really aggravate them enough that they decide to go somewhere else, maybe your house.  I don't care as long as it isn't where I am.

The area I was cleaning up was what I refer to as the "Engine Room".  Yes, I have some many spare motors that I have a room in my shop dedicated to them.  Besides having a bunch of engines in this room, I also have all the trappings of my bachelor life.  After being up there for ten years, I have come to the revelation that I am not going to use that stuff anytime soon, plus some of it is ruined, and when I get divorced, my nineteen year-old girlfriend(s) will probably want different stuff anyway.  I had about ten of those plastic tote box thingys to go through.  I had three piles:  keep, donate, throw away.  When I was done I had three boxes of keep, three of recycle, one donate, and about eight garbage bags of throw away.  Yes, I will probably be sued by the garbage man tomorrow.

There were some pleasant surprises though.  For some reason, anything I place in this part of my shop seems to mildew almost immediately.  It's like a little Bermuda Triangle for mold.  It doesn't really hurt the engines, because I coat them with Vaseline before they are stored (it's an old racers' trick).  The only problem was when initially buying the family size economy five gallon bucket of Vaseline, explaining to my wife what my intentions for that much Vaseline were.  When I opened up case after case, most of the stuff I cared about was mildew free!  There were things I thought were going to be ruined that were just fine.  There were other things that I thought I had lost, because I didn't remember putting them in these cases, that I found.  And still other things that I had just plain forgot about.  What I also found were more things to sell on ebay, things that I have already been selling well.

I finished just as it was getting dark outside.  With help from the abdominal brace, I managed to make it through the whole ordeal with out any reinjury of my surgery, it was just every other part of my body that hurts.  I don't know why it feels like I have been on a bike for five hours, when I didn't have a chance to sit down at all, but every single part of my body hurts.  I came down to the house, very slowly and groaning, and jumped in the shower.  As the hot water from the shower defrosted my blubber, I started to loosen up a little. The pains subsided just a bit, and I toweled off...that's is when I somehow managed to pull my incision.  I don't know how I could do all the twisting, tugging, pulling, moaning, whining, and snake detesting without any problem, but the simple act of toweling off manage to hurt it.  I guess I will just drip dry from now on.

So, I feel good that I finished a project that I have been wanting to do for a long time.  I am glad I was able to rescue a few mementos of my bachelor life and clean out my engine room.  I am hurting all over, but I think my incision isn't hurting as bad as it has in the past.  Hopefully tomorrow the tightness and soreness of the rest of my body will mask the pain in my incision.

Braced For Impact Wrench

With the heatwave we had today, I knew it was a good day to get outside.  With temperatures soaring just above freezing, I took my wife's car to my workshop for an oil change.  I put on my "abdominal brace" and waddled to work.

Up to this point I have only been wearing my abdominal brace when walking around the yard.  I haven't been doing anything that requires bending with it on, because quite frankly you cannot bend with it on.  For just walking around the yard, it doesn't do too bad.

With the snow beginning to melt, I also put on my heavy snow boots.  I was up in my workshop with the abdominal brace's lattice work digging in to my back and immobilizing me from the waist up, and clomping around in the heavy rubber steel-toed boots that really don't bend at the ankle at all.  I was stumbling around up there like an arthritic Frankenstein after hemorrhoid surgery.

I will say this much for the abdominal brace, it did help my ailing incision with only a mildly intense pain in my back.  I don't know if it was from trying to bend over with this complicated contraption on, or just the nature of the brace itself, but I feel like I have been bailing hay for eight hours, then decided to lift weights for another eight hours, all after spending the night sleeping on the hood of a '54 Cadillac...sideways.  In other words, my back is really hurting.  But the oil is changed and that is all that is important.  Now I don't have to worry about the car breaking down while my wife drives me to the emergency room.

My incision area is still bothering me, I am assuming it is the stitches dissolving like the doctor said.  Even though the brace causes severe back pain, that is a lesser evil than severe abdominal pain.  Until I heal I will just continue to wear it and walk around in the snow like a cowboy mummy.

Fears Subsided But Validated

I met a friend for lunch today.  She is a fairly good friend and she asked how my appointments went yesterday.  I told her about how the nurse mistakenly told me my swimmers were OK and how my wife and I thought it was OK to start trying for baby again and her face went pale.  Luckily (?) we are not preggers right now, so I don't have to worry about any damage done from my chemo cooked swimmers.  But her reaction today showed me that maybe I wasn't over reacting yesterday.  It is one thing if God gives you a special needs child, it is another thing to do something that caused your child to be a special needs child.  That is why most of us don't smoke, drink, do drugs, bungi jump, work in nuclear power plants, or watch Jersey Shore while pregnant.  I can't imagine the amount of guilt I would have had if we had a child that was born facing challenges their whole life because of something I had done, i.e. chemo side effects (knowingly or unknowingly).  So, I am feeling a little better about that issue today.

Other bad news I almost got was that our dear rescue basenji darted out the front door when a delivery driver came to drop off a package.  My wife and I were both gone at the time so it had the potential to be a very bad situation.  Luckily it was very cold and snowy yesterday so she ran all the way from the front door to the back door to be let back in.  She made it back there before my mother-in-law could even put on her coat to go chase after her.  I guess it is a good thing that African dogs don't have much fur, otherwise she may have tried to stay out longer.

Daisy the abused and neglected basenji paid me back this morning  for her little excursion by eating part of a stuff toy causing the stuff toy to re-emerge while I was trying to sleep...three different times.  The mistake I made was telling my wife and mother-in-law about it.  To understand why that was a mistake I will run through my first waking moments today.  I wake up to the unmistakable noise of a dog puking, and knowing I am too late to do anything about it.  I lay my head down in disgust, not wanting to deal with it, then I hear that same sound again, but this time I am awake so I am able to throw a dog blanket under her to keep it off the carpet, and success!  I lay back on the bed to revel in my success, when I hear a third mess being created and instantly deposited on the carpet.  I drag myself out of bed, walk the dogs in the bitter cold, then come in to clean up the messes.  I come out from my cleaning just to get asked to explain everything in detail to my mother-in-law.  I finally think I am done talking about dog regurgitation, when my wife calls.  I mention Daisy ate another stuff toy, with the usual outcome, and I again get asked about time, coordinates, etc.  And now for some reason I am writing about it...

I did briefly try out my "abdominal brace" today while I walked the dogs, and it actually works very well and allows me to walk normally.  I don't know if I will use it out in public or not.  It would have a rather slimming effect the way it compresses the gut to hold everything in place, except that the adjustable scaffolding in the back, the contraption that allows it to brace, is a huge bulge that sticks out so much it won't even fit under clothes.  I guess I will have to find a long jacket.  I plan to use the brace tomorrow as I take advantage of the bitter cold and clean out the snake haunts in my shop and hopefully leave them with nowhere to hang out anymore.

So that is my life about now.  It's just a rootin' tootin', doggy pukin', snakepit bootin', workshop lootin', Daisy losin' 'n' return to roostin', tummy boostin', no swimmer shootin' kinda week.

I Can't Wait For The Urologist...

I can't wait for my urologist (who was also my surgeon) appointment this week.  No, not because of the slap and tickle I will inevitably have to experience as soon as I get in his office.  I am hoping I will get an answer to why no matter how long it has been since my surgery, my incision just never seems to heal.

Today we took the abused basenji to her class that is supposed to break her out of her shell.  On the way back we decided to reward her for her hour of torture by taking her for a walk in the park.  I was a little gun shy about the whole thing after hurting myself so bad in Florida.  But that has been well over a month, and I haven't hurt myself that bad since.  However, we didn't get too far in to our walk before I felt something happening.  My wife asked if I was OK, and knowing how much I could potentially be hurting myself, I did the guy thing and said I was fine.  I don't think it took her too long to tell I was lying.  I think it was walking like an off balance Weeble Wobble that gave me away.

I think the best way to describe what happens is to compare it to taking a Band-Aid off.  You know how when a Band-Aid is on, most of the time you aren't even aware it is there.  Occasionally, your Band-Aid will catch on something while you are changing clothes or something, just giving you a little reminder that it is there, but not really hurting.  When it is time you take off your Band-Aid you start to peel it back and it doesn't hurt too bad, UNTIL you get to the point that you have to just rip it off because it is going to hurt no matter what you do from that point on.

Ever since my surgery, on a good day, my incision feels like wearing a Band-Aid.  Occasionally, I have a little tenderness there along my waistline where the incision is, but most of the time, I don't even notice it.  When I start doing too much physical activity it is like I am brushing against the Band-Aid.  Sometimes, I can feel the incision about to let loose, like today, where while walking, it was like I had pulled the the Band-Aid, but if I took one wrong step, the Band-Aid would be completely ripped off and leave me laying around for another two weeks.

I am tired of living like this.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason to when I get to that Band-Aid ripping point.  I can Wii up a storm with only a slight irritation, but I start walking on uneven terrain, and the effects are almost immediate.  However, when it let loose in Florida I was walking on the pavement, but I had been rolling around under a car for hours earlier.  I would have thought it would have pulled apart when I was practicing yoga underneath a Highlander, not when I was just walking minding my own business.  I don't like walking around through life like I am in a minefield, and I don't know when I am going to step on the one that will send shockwaves through my body.  It is bad enough just avoiding the minefield of poop during dog walks.

So, I am hoping this week's appointment will give me answers.  I don't care if he says I have to have another operation, use a walker, wear a girdle, sit around in traction, or drive a Rascal scooter through Key West getting stuck on curbs (that one was just for you, sisters), at this point I will do it.  Unfortunately, the first option they always offer is painkillers, which I always refuse, because I don't want to mask what is going on, I want to be healed!  Until I get an answer I will just keep tiptoe-limping through life praying that my next step is not onto a landmine that rips off my Band-Aid.

Juggled And Poked At The Urologist's Office

Today was another big day in my recovery.  I had the last post surgery follow-up appointment with my surgeon/urologist.  I had some good news, and some not so good news that I am taking as good news.

The urologist was very nice and took a lot of time to answer our questions today.  Of course he had to check his handy work.  To be honest, my goodies have been fondled so much over the past few months I just kind of block it out at this point.  I don't remember what he did or what he said.  I guess I just go to my happy place in my mind.  Some people go to their happy place by remembering their favorite Christmas as a child, or by thinking about being on a warm sunny beach, I just imagine that my goodies are being cupped by a man in a white coat...I guess don't have a very good imagination for my happy place.  He asks how I am doing (after I pull my pants back up) and I answer honestly that I feel like a disgusting, lazy, slob.  I say I am still trying to fight this chemo fatigue, and if I lift anything over a certain weight or twist a certain way I still feel that "tickle" in my incision.  He says something surprising, that I probably will feel that tickle for another month and not to push it.  He basically said to stay away from weights for a while.  I didn't ask about the Shake Weight, because to ask about it would be admitting that I have one, but it seems to be my only option for the time being.  He did clear me to do whatever cardio I want.  That is the good news.  The bad news is that now I am expected to do cardio.

The doctor answered all of our assorted questions, including the ones we had for other doctors but asked him anyway.  He then told me to check my swimmers in a month to see if chemo killed them or not.  They gave me the option of going to the place I went to make my "deposit" or another place (both hospitals, not just in some alley).  I wanted to opt for the other place, because I have already seen all of the getting-in-the-mood literature at the first place and was hoping to see something new.  My wife didn't like my idea and wouldn't let me do that.  Lastly they needed to draw blood from me.  This is usually quite an adventure because my veins like to squirm and roll around when the needle comes at them.  I have been spoiled by the phlebotomists at the oncologist's office because all they do is draw blood all day and they are very good at it.  At the urologist it was people that are normal nurses that happen to be asked to stick people now and then.  First of all, I swear they must use different needle suppliers, because at the oncologist the needle slips in so smooth you think you are still being wiped off with the alcohol pad.  At the urologist, each and every needle feels like it is rusty, bent, and broken off and I watched them take it out of a new package three different times!  The first nurse jabbed the needle in and moved it around like she was churning butter or trying to shift a Mack truck.  When she started drawing blood from places other than through the needle she gave up and passed me off to another nurse.  This nurse was much nicer and talked very calmly, politely, and apologetically as she jabbed the needle into me again and again and churned butter and shifted a Mack truck (they must have gone to the same school).  I was just about to ask if we could do this another time, seeing as how my veins have about as much holes in them now as a clarinet, when she finally got some blood to get into the vial.  I am assuming it was my blood, but as vigorously as she was sticking and moving she may have actually gone through me and poked herself.

Finally we scheduled my next appointment for sometime in January.  I say sometime, because as I was trying to focus on my calendar to pick a day, the nurse kept spitting out possibilities and my wife kept talking about my other appointments as well.  Between trying to focus on three different stimuli (my calendar, the nurse, and my wife) all I could do was just say yes on the first day I heard that wasn't already highlighted in my calendar. The nurse asked if I wanted it written down, which I most certainly did, because I have no idea what anyone said.  My wife decided to keep talking about how I should have made it the same day as one of my other doctor's appointments, which is what I was trying to look up when everyone was asking me so many questions that I couldn't look it up.  For all I know it may be the same day or even time as another appointment, I still am not sure what the heck went on at the counter, I just went to my "happy place" again (that doctor has such soft hands).

All in all it was a good day.  I didn't really want to be told I was still on limited duty, but on the other hand I know I am not just being a fat, lazy, slob.  I am being a fat, lazy, slob that is not supposed to lift too much.  Tomorrow I will start to work on some cardio and maybe step up my Shake Weighting.  I should probably get some rest now, that twelve minutes of exercise tomorrow will really take a toll on me.

Healing In Jeep Country

Today I tried to push myself a little further.  Still coming out of the chemo funk, I started the day off again by taking the basenjis on a long walk around the yard.  Benny wasn't quite chasing as many invisible rabbits as he had yesterday, so he was only bouncing around at the speed of sound rather than the speed of light.

During the last storm, one of our apple trees split in two.  Yesterday my mother in law discussed taking it up to the burning pile.  Her idea was to cut it up into pieces, pick the pieces up, throw the pieces into the lawn tractor's trailer (which means the pieces would be only slightly larger than a loaf of french bread), take the trailer loads up to the burning pile (which since the trailer has the capacity of a five gallon bucket would be approximately 134.5 trips), pick up the pieces out of the trailer, and throw them all the burning pile.  This would involve me running the chainsaw, which I am still afraid of.  As I have said before, motions that require me to move in one direction haven't seemed to bother my surgery.  Motions that require multiple directions, such as holding back a ricocheting basenji, do tend to put stress on my stitches.  Holding a chainsaw up in the air, moving it back and forth, and fighting the kickbacks and dodging the tree as the weight shifts as it twists and turns on the ground, would probably not be the wisest thing for me to do just yet.  So, my solution was hook the Jeep to the tree, drag the whole darn thing up to the burning pile where it's out of sight, wait until we get enough rain to actually be able to burn the burning pile (which will be a long time) at which point I will be able to hold the chainsaw, make a few cuts and just lean large pieces against the pile.  She wasn't on board with my idea, because she didn't think of it.  So as we discuss which is easier, otherwise known as why we should do it her way, she happens to mention that we can't do it today because she has a doctor's appointment.  BINGO!

So, while my mother in law is at her doctor's appointment, I hook my tow strap up to the tree.  There is one limb buried in the ground from the fall that I will have to do something with before I hook up to it.  I carefully put my weight into the tow strap, and after rocking the tree a couple of times the limb snaps and the tree lays flat on the ground, and more importantly, I don't feel any sharp pains in my side or groinal area from pulling on a tree.  I then get the Jeep and pull into position.  I go to put it into the very powerful Four Wheel Low.  Jeep must deem this way too powerful to actually use, because first you have to put your transmission in neutral, then you have to let the  Jeep roll very slowly, then grab the transfer case handle and move it down, sideways, diagonally, and down again before you actually engage Four Wheel Low (I am not making that up).  I imagine corn mazes are easier to negotiate than shifting in to Four Wheel Low.  I then start to back up, when the transfer case pops out of Four Wheel Low.  I guess I didn't correctly navigate the maze.  I again, shift, push, twist, angle, curse, shove, and pop, and now Four Wheel Low is engaged.  I back down the hill to the tree, which I swear was moving, because no matter how many times I backed up, I was always about four inches from hooking up to it.  I finally hook up (pray) and start up the hill.  The Jeep chugs on like it's not a problem at all.

Now there is a reason Jeep makes it so hard to get into Four Wheel Low.  The top speed is around twenty miles an hour in low, which isn't that fast, but you could run over the cast and audience of the View and not even notice, or pull half an apple tree without a problem.  I get the tree to the burning pile and unhook.  I feel good that I finally did something!  I decided I will put all my gear back together later on today when I wash the Jeep.  I go back to the house to cook lunch.  My mother in law comes home, glad to see the tree is gone and still wonders why we didn't do the multiple cuts, multiple trips, and multiple handling of each chunk of tree that she suggested.  

Feeling good that I have done so much already today, I decide to take a break before I wash the car...until it's dark.  BUT, I managed to stay awake all day, and that is an improvement.  And I did do some physical activity today which is also an improvement.  I am getting back to myself slowly but surely.  I am sure I will get the car washed tomorrow, provided the U.S. Forest Service doesn't call me asking me to pull some Sequoia's out of the ground.

If A Wasps Stings Me While I'm On Chemo, Does It Get Sick Or Healthier?

I thought I had today all planned out.  Since my workshop is not heated, not the cleanest thing in the world and my immune system is nearing its lowest point, I had picked up an N95 mask and was going to expend some energy doing some light organizing up there this afternoon.  We all know plans don't always turn out like we want.

Being so sensitive to smells right now, last night I was thinking ahead and as I walked past the dust mask in its packaging, I decided to pop it open and get a whiff.  It's a good thing I did.  It smelled like a cross between rubbing alcohol, Windex, and a tire fire.  Not something I wanted to breathe through for a prolonged period of time.  So as I went to bed, I cracked open the package and left the mask to sit and air out overnight, so I could be all ready for my action filled day at home.

I wake up with a "7" as the first number on the clock!  I guess I am wearing down.  Of course the two immediate things my chemo ridden body is begging me to do is pee and start chugging water.  I drink about a pint there on the spot and lay back down.  Two hours later, I wake back up.  Same routine, pee and drink (just for clarification those are two separate things, I am not doing any gross stuff here).  Now I know my body is slowing down.  I haven't woken up to a "9" for a few days now.  I decided to be healthy and fix a breakfast of one part raisin bran, one part sugar poured over the raisin bran and sit to watch my Saturday car shows on television.  Not wanting to feel to lazy, I Shake Weight several times during my two hour Power Block on TV.  That may have been a mistake.  The Shake Weight packaging says you only need to workout six minutes a day to look like the guys on TV.  I have done a month's worth of exercise today, so I may be on the cover of Muscle and Fitness for December.  No, I don't really believe that, but I am trying out for the cover of Chemo and Sickness magazine.

Feeling pretty good about the way I have dominated the Shake Weight, I hopped on my nemesis from earlier this week, the elliptical machine.  I had hit the 300 calorie button the other day and only made it to 100 before my incision start pulling.  Actually, I really only made it to about 25 calories before I felt an uncomfortable tickle around my incision, but I slowed down and made it to 100.  So today, with renewed confidence, I hopped on, and punched that 300 hundred button again...then I did one revolution and punched the 150 button.  After a vigorous fifteen minutes of whimpering and moaning, I finished!  And then I sat on the couched exhausted for the next hour or so.  I couldn't even muster the energy to Shake Weight.

Finally I decide I should go up to the workshop and do a few things.  I put on my mask, which now only has a faint smell of ammonia mixed with chlorine (don't try that at home).  I am getting worn out just trying to breath through it.  It is a quite day out here in the country, but when I open up the shop I hear a lawn mower. I step out of the shop I no longer hear it.  I step back in, and hear it again.  Then I look up in the rafters and see hundreds of wasps buzzing around.  This happens every year around this time.  I don't know why, but they tend to do this in here right before they die, and one day I walk in and there are a bunch of wasp carcasses on the ground.  The problem is that usually in September and October I am spending a lot more time up here.  This year I have been too busy putting ice on my crotch and trying not to be nauseous.  So where I normally would have had all the doors open and some of them leave, this year they have been corralled in here and apparently they are having a wasp convention.  The other big problem is that my immune system is less than 48 hours from bottoming out.  I don't know what wasp sting does to people on chemo.  I decide not to risk it and head back into the house, scaring the crap out of the abused rescued basenji (guess I should have taken my mask off before I came in the house), but then again, a Kleenex hitting the floor scares the crap out of our rescued basenji.

My wife, being the caring person she is, suggests that I go back up there anyway.  I pop on-line to see if I can find anything about people that have been stung while on chemo.  I find several stories, most just have more severe reactions, it hurts more, swells more, last longer, that sort of thing.  I also found where one chemo patient went into anaphylactic shock.  I want everyone reading this to call the police if I happen to die of anaphylactic shock from a wasp sting.  Either my wife really does assume I will be OK, or she is tired of me sitting around the house doing nothing but Shake Weighting and this was all part of her evil plan.  C'mon we've all seen Alicia Silverstone in "The Crush".  OK, hardly anyone saw that movie.  And now I just spoiled the part where she tries to kill someone with wasps or bees or angry termites or whatever they were, so if you haven't seen it there is no sense wasting your time on it now.

Back to the couch I go, and that is where I spent the remainder of the day, except to get up and write this, and pee, and drink some more (still two different activities).   I don't know how I will feel tomorrow.  I seem to be getting more and more fatigued as I get closer to Monday.  And now, my scalp is also starting to tingle as well, so I may have to write tomorrow's blog with a hat on if I lose all my hair.  I guess I should go to bed early tonight since I have a busy day tomorrow being tired, thirsty, and possibly bald.

So This Is What Platinum Tastes Like...

And so it begins...  We got up this morning and I was all prepared for chemo, because being prepared is kind of my thing.  And after going down the driveway and coming back twice, I was really prepared for chemo.  We get there and my pulse and blood pressure aren't too high considering how nervous I felt inside.  They stick me for a final blood count and I am cleared to begin chemo.  That's when the inevitable cancer-hurry-up-and-wait game starts.

I guess so many people do multiple rounds of chemo, that they just assume everyone is a repeat customer.  I sign in at the first desk, get my room number, and am told to head on back.  The nurse, my wife, and I all just pause in an awkward silence until we ask where "on back" is.  The nurse, a little embarrassed, realizes we are chemo novices.  She walks us back to the area and tells us to sign in when we get to our room number.  Another nurse walks up and tells me I can go ahead and set up.  In another awkward silence pause (which my wife and I are getting pretty good at by now) this nurse also realizes we are newbies and helps me pick out a recliner.  The rooms are sorted by medical needs.  The more serious people are in one room and people like me that aren't doing too bad physically get this room.  Everyone in the room is really nice and several of them greet us.  One couple even swaps around recliners so my wife can sit next to me.  I tilt back the recliner, but I am still nervous as hell, uncontrollably clicking my feet together like I want to be taken back to Kansas.  Another waiting game.  Finally they come get my IV started.  She says it's a "small" needle, and it is small in diameter, but the needle and all of the apparatuses protruding from it were about the same length as a Ford Fiesta (I would still rather be seen with the needle that in a Fiesta though).  She slides the needle in from the back of my hand to about my elbow, and starts the IV.  I think that we are ready to start now.  Wrong.  Hurry up and wait.  Again.  She wants to double check all of the orders with the oncologist.  I guess I am fine with waiting if it is to make sure I get the right thing.  She comes out with some needles, now we are ready to go!  Nope.  That's just the drugs to make the chemo go easier.  She says they are just for my stomach, I don't need anything for nerves, because I am doing just fine.  Damn, I must be a better actor than I thought, because I am definitely NOT fine!  Doesn't she see my feet bouncing like I am on crank and trying to tap out S.O.S. in Morse code over and over again?  I guess I should take a little comfort in the fact that it looks like I am calm.  In what seems like several days later, the nurse comes out with the cocktail mixed especially for me.  We hang it up and I am on my way to chemoland.

Feeling nervous about side effects, I am expecting to feel flames shooting up my veins with rapid discoloration in my arms causing a purple and blue paisley pattern that would make Prince jealous, but nothing.  Nothing really.  I brought about three suitcases worth of things to do while I was there, so of course I decide to sleep. But my wife is still by my side, if she is making the effort to stay by my side every step of the way, I am not going to go to sleep on her.  Finally, the nurse and I both assure her that I am not going to "shotgun" my latest IV bag and that it will be a while, she can run the errand that she needs to run.  She leaves.  I curl up in my blanky that one of the nurses gave me.  Maybe she thought my horizontal tap dancing was because I was cold.  It wasn't, but I was cold too, so I snuggled up and reclined all the way back, closed my eyes, and drifted....NOPE wide awake.  Not matter how tired and comfortable I am, I can't sleep.  I brought tons of things that cause me to think, and I can't focus on any of them.  While chained to this chair and pole holding a variety of bags with tubes shoot inside of me, I also planned on using my time to e-mail back some of the people that I have been meaning to talk to.  As many of you know, that obviously didn't happen either.  In desperation, I get my phone out and start to read the entertainment news.  Obviously, it doesn't take a whole lot of brain power to read entertainment news.  It's always about a couple divorcing, or a rapper getting arrested again, or a sports figure doing something stupid, all you have to do is change the names, and really, does it matter?  As I start to loose myself in items that can hardly be classified as "news", I am told that bending my wrist is putting pressure on the needle that goes from my fingers to my shoulder, so I should probably not do that.

The music in there could be described as light classic rock.  Comfortable, but not annoying or too sappy.  Boston, "Lido Shuffle", "Domino", decent music, but all light rock.  Nothing heavy, no country, no R & B.  And that's when something happened, which was the only time I got emotional in there.  One song I maintain that it is impossible to stay depressed when you listen to it came on the radio, Earth, Wind, and Fire's September.  "...on and on, never was a cloudy day..."  The horns kick in, I lose myself in the music as I always do when I hear that song.  I smile and it dawns on me, this is not "light classic rock" this is totally different from anything they have played the previous two hours.  It was like God Himself thought I needed that song right now and sneaked into the playlist.  It had me pretty emotional, I needed some Earth, Wind, and Fire right then.  A little skeptical, I thought maybe they changed music stations.  Nope, every other song was back to light classic rock.  That made me a little more emotional.  Maybe it's my imagination, but I am going to take it as a sign and enjoy it.

My wife comes in right after that, and my bag is almost done.  I finish my bag and give the nurse one of those stares where you are sure if you stare hard enough that the other person will feel your stare and look up at you.  It worked!  She says "You done?", and comes over and unplugs all of my tubes, hoses, duct work, and slides the katana out of my arm.  Not bad at all.  My arm did have a cold feeling in the vein towards the end, but I assumed that was just from the three feet of cold steel that they slid in there (but it was a small diameter needle, so I shouldn't mind right?).  We jump into the car and rush to see a bunch of people I used to work with for a retirement party for someone who retired a long time ago.  As what generally happens when we all get together the jokes start flying, most of them off color, and I take out my removed "testicle" and slap it on the table in the restaurant (in reality it is a tiny gummy brain we found in the Halloween candy section and trimmed to look like a wayward ball).  Every time I have whipped that out on someone, there is a brief pause as to whether I really just did that or not.  Most people realize that it is probably not what it looks like, but there is always that chance that it is.

I had a blast.  One guy that has known me for about eight years now said, "I know you and you are like me.  If you had any strength at all you were going to drag your butt here."  He was right.  It was good seeing everyone.  We say our goodbyes, and we head home.  I grab some lunch on the way and eat it on the couch. I feel pretty good, so I eat a couple of snacks too.  Belly full, I doze off on the couch thinking this will be alright after all.  Two hours later, I wake up with my stomach feeling like there are a bunch of kids in there treating it like a "Moon Bounce" and they didn't even take off their shoes before they got in!  I ran upstairs to get rid of some of the gallon and a half of liquids I have been drinking today (no exaggeration) and scrub up to put a chemo pill in my mouth.  It works pretty fast.  I feel good right now, except for the taste of metal anytime I take a deep breath and feeling like I haven't slept in two months.  I don't know if that is from the chemo or the fact that I haven't slept in two months.  So, that is why I am writing my blog early tonight.  I think I will take another pill soon and go to bed.  Hopefully my stomach will let me stay there all night.  If not, maybe I will get up and finally e-mail back everyone I have been meaning to e-mail back.

The Man With The Chemo Plan

Today was one giant doctor's visit, but it went well!  The day started out with a last minute appointment at 10am to a doctor that will be talked about in a later blog.  Luckily since the appointment wasn't about my testicular cancer surgery, I was able to resist the reflex to drop my pants and let every white coat in the room "see how things are healing up".  The funny thing is, even though this appointment had nothing to do with my testicular cancer surgery, before the end of the appointment, I had my pants tugged down so she could see the scar.  And no, I am not just randomly flashing everyone in a white coat, it was by request...kinda.  It is funny how this is a fairly routine surgery, but how few people in the medical profession outside of oncologists and urologists realize it does not involve slicing the gentlemen's bits.  I think half of these doctors and nurses are just asking out of curiosity, "Oh THAT'S where they cut you."  Luckily, the only pain I experienced at the first doctor's visit was from having to go to the bathroom from the moment we got in the office.  Well, not the exact moment, just as soon as I heard one of the nurses say "the bathroom is downstairs".  Still leery of walking too far with my hair trigger incision pain, I had to make the mental calculations on which I was more afraid of, the random pain or peeing my pants.  I decided I would rather take a chance on peeing my pants.  Luckily neither happened.

After leaving the first appointment, we barely had enough time to grab some lunch before the oncologist at 1pm.  Today, chemo class!  We only had little argument with the nurse when she talked about "vomitus".  We assured her there wouldn't be any, and she kept wanting to go into details about what to do if it did happen.  Finally, she glanced at my chart, saw my stomach surgery notes and it dawned on her that I can't vomit anymore.  So, we were able to skip over that part, although I am a little curious what was so important that she was dying to talk about.  Maybe chemo vomit is her specialty and I stole her thunder.  We moved onto all of the other random bodily excretions that must be cleaned up with a positive ventilation Level A haz-mat suit and a leaf blower.  The whole time I am thinking that if this stuff is so nasty coming out of me, shouldn't I be concerned that it's going IN me first?  Overall, the class was great.  She answered all of our dumb questions (and I had a lot of them) and I made pages and pages of notes.  It's a good thing I did, because all I can remember after this long day is I am supposed to gargle with salt water every four hours and flush twice with the lid down.  Or am I supposed to flush every four hours and gargle twice with the lid down?  I can't remember, at least I still have a week to study.  The nurse was very nice and very reassuring as she scared the crap out of us with all of the stuff that requires an emergency call to the office.  She scared me so much, I think I am already getting some of those side effects and I don't take chemo for another week!  Eventually, she decided we were thoroughly terrified and she sent us on our way with a nice new canvas book bag.  Or maybe it's a bag to hold mutant vomitus and other toxic bodily fluids.  I think I will just use it for books for now.

After leaving there, we had about an hour to kill before the next appointment.  Luckily, my random incision pain, while still not predictable, is getting to the point that I can feel when it's about to "snap" and shoot through me.  So, I move a little like the Tinman from the Wizard of Oz, walking and slowly freezing up, feeling the pain about to start, but stopping mid-movement and slowly backing out of whatever way I was swinging my arm or moving my leg.  So as the Tinman, I move slightly slower than a turtle using a walker.  My wife decides shopping would be a great way to kill some time.  This mostly involves her walking into large stores like Kroger or K-mart, running from front to back and all points in-between, all in about the same time it takes me to get from the entrance to the register.  At least we make it to the check-out at about the same time.  My snail's pace Tinman walk has resulted in no shooting pains today, I just walk like C3PO with one broken leg and the other leg's asleep.

We arrive at doctor's appointment number three.  It is for my gastro-intestinal doctor, and he shares the building with my family doctor.  While waiting, we get to talk to my family doc, and more importantly, I get to thank him for all the support he has been to both of us the past five weeks or so.  Between finding me good referral docs and reassuring me on e-mail (for free!) he really has been the one constant in all of this helping guide us when we don't know which direction to head next.

We make it back to the GI doctors office.  My wife, the doctor, and I form a little circle, then we break it down.  Nausea, diarrhea, constipation, we form our game plan.  Now I know what you are thinking, I just said nausea but I said earlier that I couldn't produce vomitus, and I can't, but that doesn't stop my body from going through the motions.  So, anything we can do to stop the tummy turnovers is greatly appreciated.  The meeting takes forever!  But surprisingly it is not tedious or boring at all.  We make a game plan.  A very complicated and convoluted game plan, but one that sounds like it will work.  Chemo hits everyone different and acts different ways at different times.  You may be constipated these days and the exact opposite those days.  And since I am usually on that exact opposite side, I have a drug cocktail to regulate that pretty well.  What he decides is so brilliant and simple, it amazes me.  We are stripping my going too much medication to the minimum, and that is pretty much all we are going to do on a regular basis.  That should keep the not going enough side effects from intensifying.  However, the big gun in the bowel plugger arsenal is my secret weapon.  If I am getting too much toilet time, I just hit it occasionally with my Mother Of All Blockers pill and keep things flowing at the speeds they should be.  We come up with a few more plans for various "what if" situations and I walk out of there completely ready for chemo.

Today may have been a long day of plastic waiting room chairs and drop ceiling offices, but my spirits are higher than they have been since this fight began.  I am the Man with the Chemo Plan.  I am ready to start, I have my road map, I am ready to end, and I am ready to go back to my normal life.  All of my medical ducks are lined up in a row, and I am ready to put all of this behind me.  I just have to hurry up and wait for a week.

Advice from a friend...

I received a note from a friend today about my blogs.  Now, my friend will probably quit reading or sending me notes concerning my blogs since I am blogging about it, but I have faith that she will get over it.

First, she took issue with my comparison to the pain I am randomly feeling now to childbirth.  She said that the pain I am experiencing now is nothing compared to childbirth.  Just for the record I have spoken to many people that have children and also had a testicle removed and they all agree that having a testicle removed was much more painful (short term).  I am guessing her research is solely based on having children, and no data gathered from the nutectomy crowd.  And I will partially agree with her, the incision itself probably probably feels a lot like a Caesarian, because the cut is basically the same place.  However, the pain I am complaining about is much worse and more intense than any pain I have ever felt before.  I have described it as a monkey walking up and stabbing you with a white hot knife and slicing, and that doesn't really do it justice.  Maybe take a half dozen rusty razor blades, put them in a straight line, and smack them across my incision with a sledgehammer.  That's not quite it either.  Have you ever sliced a pizza fresh out of the oven really quick, and you accidentally run the little pizza slicer wheel against your finger with the hot cheese and tomato sauce?  Cut about twenty pizzas so it's nice and hot, then do that from your waist to your thigh.  Or maybe get bit in the incision by a King Cobra with a broken fang, Parkinson's (to give that shaking/slicing feeling) and rabies, maybe kinda like that.  Actually, none of those will do it justice.  Do all of them together and you may come close, EXCEPT...

The worst part of the pain I have had since this weekend is the randomness.  Murphy's Law takes effect and it always seems to happen when you DON'T want to double over in pain and fall on the floor, or drop whatever food and Pepsi you are carrying, or when it is totally inappropriate to yell the "F-word" at the top of your lungs, as opposed to when you don't mind all that stuff happening.  Put all that together and then you will see why I am pissing and moaning (and sometimes literally pissing and moaning).

Now the person that wrote me the note today has been a very good friend for thirteen or fourteen years now (WOW, it has been that long hasn't it!).  She knows me pretty well, but still had to lecture me about overdoing it this weekend.  Through all the various medical experiments that I have been subjected to, she knows that I pretty much always do more than what I am supposed to do on each and every one.  When they tell me to eat a small meal after my scope, I would stop by Ponderosa, Ryan's, Golden Corral, or anywhere else that would allow someone coming out of a Demerol stupor to make several trips to the buffet, followed a short time later by several trips to the bathroom (so that's why they tell you to take it easy).  For my stomach surgery, I don't know how many times I busted a stitch by doing stuff too early.  It was a little embarrassing when the doctor questioned how he screwed up one of the incisions and I had to admit that it was healing fine until I started codeine-induced flying tackles in my sister's yard on her roommate.  The point is that my friend has known me long enough that if I doctor says, "Come in take this test" or "Don't drink alcohol or you'll die", I listen, but if at any point during the sentence he says the words "take it easy", I tend to delete that whole sentence from my memory.

And taking it easy is a lot easier said than done.  Even with six hundred channels, there is only so much you can watch.  There is only so much you can surf on the web until you find yourself just repeatedly hitting "refresh" on your favorite pages to see if anything has changed.  I have so many projects I want to finish and start, and I can't do any of them right now!  I feel like that guy from the Twilight Zone that was the only guy left on Earth and finally had time to read books and he broke his glasses.  I have time, lots of time to do whatever I want, so long as it doesn't involve lifting, twisting, running, walking, moving, blinking, or breathing moderately hard.  I am little afraid to see my "Can do and Can't do" list for chemo on Thursday.  Sure, I should be more healed when it's time to start that, but then they knock you immune system so low that you can't step on a bug without laying a paper towel over the bug first, then put on snow boots with two pair of socks, wear rubber gloves, a surgical mask, and a hairnet, then take a shower with antibacterial soap after you throw the ex-bug away.

I guess deep down I know my friend is probably right, and deep down I know that I will probably do more than I should again before this is all over.  But I still feel like, as far as my cancer fight is concerned, I am heading in the right direction, even if I am heading in that direction hunched over, dragging my foot, and screaming the "F-word".

It hurts when I do this...

After hobbling around with random searing pain all weekend, I was finally able to call the surgeon today.  The weird thing about this pain is, there doesn't seem to be any particular trigger for it.  As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, the pain just shoots right across my incision from the nutectomy.  It is a very sharp, nearly crippling pain.  There is no rhyme or reason to when it hits, but it mainly hits when my torso changes in relation to my right thigh. Sometimes it hits when walking upstairs, which I kind of expect since there is a lot of exertion and motion to walk upstairs.  But it will happen at random times, like making a sandwich yesterday when I turned to reach something.  Today, I was a little apprehensive about taking a shower, because it is so random and at times it makes you want to drop to your knees.  If I drop to my knees in the shower, I bang my head on the tub, then I lie in a pool of my own blood, and when the ambulance arrives they will ask if I am supposed to have two nuts or if the accident caused one to disappear.  Luckily none of that happened.  Stepping over the tub, bending over to wash, even drying off all happened without incident.  I manage to get my boxers and pants on doing what looks like a double dutch jump roping contest in extreme slow motion.  Thinking I am in the clear, I slide my shirt over my head, and at the point where my arms are in the air and all I can see is sweatshirt, it hits.  I fall back onto the sink in pain, one arm still waving helplessly in the air, trapped by the half put on shirt.  I do that thing you do when you want to scream out very bad words, but you know you shouldn't scream or say the bad word, so you kind of "whisper scream".  I think mine turned out to be a little more scream than whisper, because I walk out of the bathroom and get the Was-There-A-Good-Reason-You-Just-Said-The-F-Word look.  There was, because it really F-ing hurt!

The whole day was crazy.  Besides the shooting pain while walking upstairs and putting on a shirt, it happened, walking across the floor, bending over to pet a basenji, coughing, reaching for the phone, and other random, non-stressful things.  It wouldn't bother me as much if I knew what was causing it.  As the old joke goes, a guy tells his doctor that "It hurts when I do this", and the doc says "Don't do that."  I don't know what the "that" is that I should quit doing.  All I know is it's extremely painful and has almost resulted in the tragedy of spilled Pepsi and whisper screamed profanities several times.  Luckily, there has usually been something nearby I can grab for balance when it happens, and I have always had my clothes on.

I call the doctor, well not the doctor the nurse, who wasn't in so I have to leave a message, and tell them what is going on.  She calls back to ask a few more questions before she calls my surgeon, and I make sure to say I don't want painkillers.  You hear all of the stories of people hooked on prescription painkillers that call doctors and make stuff up just for the meds, that you feel like you have to justify any call to a doctor about pain.  I told her that I do NOT want painkillers (although they would probably feel pretty good).  She calls back and the doctor says it sounds like it is just a strain in the incision area and to ice it down twice a day.  The ice is almost as painful as the pain itself.  It wasn't that bad just after my surgery.  Oh, that's right, I was on painkillers then!  Why did I tell the nurse I didn't want painkillers?

There is another pain that has started since this random pain began, and that is a pain the feels almost like a pulled groin on the opposite side of where all the medical twisting, pulling, and slicing happened.  Normally I would be more alarmed by that, but I think that pain has developed because of the other pain.  They aren't really related in any way.  But ever since I associated the searing random pain with bending my waist on the right side, I have been trying to walk, go upstairs, sit down, roll over, and fetch while keeping the right half of my body completely rigid.  This results in me walking around the house like I am constantly trying to mount a horse while lassoing a calf, swinging the right side of my body wildly and perfectly straight, while my left arm makes giant circle motions for balance.  As a result, weird muscles that I didn't know I had feel like they have been through an old fashioned taffy puller, because I don't normally spend hours at a time trying to mount a horse, and I imagine if I ever did, I would switch up and try to mount the horse from the other side occasionally.

So here I am, back to the same place I was three weeks ago.  Walking around the house hunched over and dragging, like I am Quasimodo and Igor's crippled love child.  And I am back to sitting around the house either playing on the computer or watching TV and switching the channel every time that stupid guy from the State Farm commercials comes on, which has me switching the channel so much I have to mount, drag, mount, drag, mount, drag my way over to get fresh remote control batteries every few hours.  C'mon State Farm, at least Geico mixes it up a little bit with a little caveman here, a little gecko there, and random stacks of googly eyed money!  I guess I should just be thankful that we have cable, and I can choose between 600 channels and that only three of them show Maury.  And if I keep walking like this, I should be able to do a dead on Roy Rogers impression.  Now I just need to train one of the basenjis to answer to "Trigger".

Yesterday's Battle: Tom vs. Cancer=TIE

Yesterday I was bound and determined to go to the car show.  My father came in town and went with me, something I had wanted him to do for years, but after the events of the last few weeks, it seemed to have a little more sense of urgency.  I was feeling a lot better.  I would be doing this if I weren't in my cancer fight.  I was going to go to that show and prove that I am getting on just fine, with or without cancer.

The day started out cold, but by the time we made it to the car show the sun was out and we ended up leaving our jackets in the car.  I received free passes from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend type thing, so I wasn't really sure that I was going to get in, or how to explain how I came to possess said passes because I wasn't quite sure the whole story myself, but they waved us right through.  The day was going great.  We got there when I wanted.  It was sunny and warm.  We start my usual attack for this particular show.  Walk around the perimeter, then move to the inside and shoot down the rows that look like they have something interesting.  We go straight to the very back of the show where some of my favorite cars tend to park.  Today was turning out exactly like I had hoped as we were walking down the gravel path between aisles.  I am walking with almost no pain, still with my pants and boxer shorts up around my belly button like a cartoonish old man, but my t-shirt is hiding that, kinda.

Then, when we are a the very back side of the fairgrounds, literally as far away from my Jeep as we can possibly be and still be at the car show, it happens.  I take a step, just a normal step, the same type of steps I have been taking thus far.  My foot doesn't land exactly level.  I don't trip, slip, or twist my ankle, my foot is just a little off camber.  A searing pain instantly shoots from about eight inches below my incision to just above my incision.  To describe the pain, it feels like a monkey had run up with a white hot knife and stabbed me and sliced from one end to the other.  I look around and see no monkey, much less any white hot knife holding monkeys.  I thought maybe it could have been an invisible monkey and knife, or even koala bear, but my pants have no sign of being sliced, so I give up on that theory.  It hurts like hell, but I just assume it's an isolated incident.  We walk a little further and it happens again, except this time the pain takes a little longer to go away.  I having been dying to come to this.  I talked my dad into leaving at five this morning to get here in time.  I am NOT leaving this car show until I have done everything I want to do.  I don't want dad to see how much pain I am in, or he may try to talk me into leaving.  I don't think he notices.  We make our way to the center, and the shooting pain is happening more and more often, and it is getting harder and harder to walk.  Still dad doesn't notice.  "You're hurting aren't you?"  he says.  OK, he noticed.  But I don't have to let on how excruciating this pain is, because I am not leaving until I am done.  I wish there was an invisible ice pack throwing monkey to help me feel better or pain killer dispensing monkeys, but I couldn't find any monkey evidence at all (tons of koala bears but they just had eucalyptus oil.  I decide that cancer may not have an ass to kick, but today I am going to do what I want to do regardless of what cancer treatment throws at me.  I can tell I am slowing down.  And limping.  I am doing a lousy job at hiding it.  Almost every step hurts now with the almost crippling pain happening every few yards now.  On one hand I want to hurry up and get out, on the other, every time we stop to look at something it gives me just a second to rest and the pain subsides a little.

We make it out of the cars and now just have to go through the exhibits and the parking lot.  We stop at one tool vendor.  He is selling a very long, heavy duty blow gun, which I need, but I have an ulterior motive.  I buy it.  When dad isn't looking I rest one end of it on my shoe and basically use it as a cane.  He almost catches me doing it a couple of times and I think he assumes it is tripping me.  He keeps pressing me to let him carry it, I can't let him know what I am really doing with it or he will make us walk out right now.  With cancer, it seems sometimes what may be the best decision for your physical health is not always the best decision for your mental health.  I NEED to leave here on my terms, when I want to.  We just have to go through one more exhibit hall, the last tool vendor, then out of the gate.  Dad starts to walk through the hall, when he is not looking I take a short cut and rest while I wait for him to notice I am on the other side of the building.  Luckily it took him a while to notice.  I don't know if I should be glad I get to rest or mad that it took him so long to realize I'm not beside him anymore.  We walk out to the last tool vendor, buy a couple of things, and out the gate.  The walk on the pavement is smooth.  I am still in incredible pain, but not the intense shooting pain.  We get to the grass parking lot with big ruts in it.  I don't remember them being the huge chasms they seem to be now.  Is it possible they were strip mining in this lot between the time we left and the time I hobble back?  It seems like forever to make it to the Jeep.

I can't wait for the relief sitting down will give me.  I go to hop in the seat, and I can't lift my right leg high enough to get in.  I look to see if dad noticed.  Good he didn't.  But now I am stuck.  How to I drag my lifeless right leg in, without him forcing me in the passenger seat or insisting we go home?  From the knee down, my leg feels fine, but every little movement from the knee to the waist is like giving birth, I assume.  If giving birth hurts any worse than this, I think everyone would be an only child.  I back my butt up to the seat and push myself in with my left leg.  I am then able to swivel my body, and my defective upper leg, inside the car.

Common sense would say we should go home.  I think I felt something "pop" out at the car show, and the shooting pain feels like it is pulling something apart inside.  Cancer would like me to go home.  I am not going home.  Not yet.  We head to the tool store and a couple of other places.  Cancer can't win.  Not the war, and not this battle.  I wanted to go to the tool store, and I am going regardless of the pain I am in.  And I am going to buy whatever I want there...provided it is very light and I can carry it in my left hand so it doesn't cause more pressure on my right side.  We also go into a sporting goods store and I am wore out from the pain.  Almost unable to go any further, I am ready to leave.  Dad says he is going to check out the shoes real quick.  I stay there just staring at the kayaks, unwilling to take a step.  The shooting pain rarely happens when I am standing still.  It's at the end of kayak season anyway.  Maybe when they take the kayaks out for the year, they will move the shoe department up here so I won't have to go anywhere.  Doesn't look like that is going to happen any time soon.  Finally I walk to the shoes...at the back of the store.  I can't take it.  The benches look so comfortable, but they are so low to the ground I don't know if I can get back up if I sit down.  The pain takes over and I sit down.  The moment my butt hits the bench dad says, "They don't have anything let's go."  I urge him to look some more so my pain reprieve will last a little longer.  I know he is looking for running shoes, but I think they have hockey skates in his size, maybe he should just take a few minutes to try some on while I sit on this bench.  No such luck.  But I was able to get back up, which surprised me.  We get back home and I get inside the house.  I can collapse now.

The day was confusing.  I proved that I can move on with my life regardless of what my illness will throw at me, but at what cost?  It took forever to get into bed and get comfortable.  Any movement of my upper right leg causes intense pain, and the shooting pain while walking is coming close to dropping me.  Physically, I feel like I pushed back my recovery two weeks.  Mentally, I feel absolutely wonderful!  Almost.  I had planned to go play in my little music room after everyone left today, and instead I think I spent three hours trying to walk upstairs, fix lunch, and walk back down again.  BUT, I did do what I had planned to do before this cancer crap happened.  I did have fun.  I did enjoy myself.  And I did get to spend some quality time with my parents.  I am just hoping my mom didn't hear all of the times I muttered the "F-word" when the pain shot through me.

So, I am going to win this war with cancer.  And in my mind, I have proven I will not let cancer beat me on these little battles as well.  However, after yesterday, I didn't lose, but I wouldn't call it a complete victory either.  I think yesterday's battle will have to just be declared a draw.  But, that's the last time I plan on letting these battles be that close.

Recovering From Recovering

There is nothing like healing from surgery to completely emasculate you (I mean this figuratively, not literally, after all I did get to keep one of the boys).  I am limited to somewhere between ten and thirty pounds.  At one point I thought the surgeon said don't do anything over ten pounds for at least two weeks, but at my week follow up, I thought he said I could start doing thirty.  So, my life the past couple weeks has been relegated to sitting on the couch doing nothing.  After all, most of my hobbies involve things over ten to thirty pounds.  And most of the things I need to do around the house, involve things over ten to thirty pounds.  Have you ever thought about how little weight that is?  If I want to barbecue, I have to place the charcoal one briquette at a time.  If I want to do laundry (which I don't want to do, but I had to do it), I have to move things into the washer, into the dryer, and out of the dryer a few pieces at a time.  In short, I feel worthless.

This is my second adventure with having holes poked through my abdominal wall.  This first time was my gastro-esophageal reflux disease surgery, which was five small laparoscopic holes, the longest being about an inch long.  This time it is a six inch long (yes, I did just measure it so I wouldn't be accused of exaggerating) slice along my waist line for the testicular cancer removal (technically called a right radial orchiectomy).  The bad thing about my first surgery was it was five holes across my stomach.  So everything hurt.  This cancer surgery is just from my belly button right.  In some ways this is better.  When getting up or doing certain activities that start to hurt, I can use my left side to get the job done.  There are two problems with that.  The first one is since the left side seems to be OK, I sometimes forget that the right side is hurt.

And that is what has happened this week.  The first incident came Wednesday.  One of our basenjis loves walking with us to take the trash our.  We have a fairly long country driveway, so it is a bit of a walk.  There were three trash bags, but one was really light.  My wife took the two heavy ones, and I took the light one and the dog.  Being mindful of my recent surgery, and still filling a little sting when I picked up the bag, I held the leash and the trash in my left hand to put less stress on my right side.  By the way, for those unfamiliar with basenjis, they weigh around twentyfive/thirty pounds.  So, whether I am supposed to be doing ten pounds or thirty pounds, I imagine those pounds aren't supposed to be moving at a high velocity toward something he wants to smell or chase or pee on or whatever his motivation is.  All I know is I saw the retractable lead spooling out.  I knew the hit was about to come.  There was nothing I could do, but wince in pain.  My wife, who had made much better time to the garbage rendezvous had come back to get the light bag I had, as I am getting pulled like an epileptic catfish on a fishing line by our dog-on-a-mission.  She keeps trying to grab what she thought was the source of my pain, the trash bag.  I keep trying to hand her the leash, which jerks violently every time I hold my hand out to give it to her.  Finally, my wife caught on and she grabbed the dog out of my hand.  I didn't think it hurt me too bad...until the next day.  It felt like when you have stomach surgery and you try to tackle your sister's roommate, who wasn't aware that you would try to tackle her in that state so she wasn't prepared and drops you, you know just like that.  Oh, I'm the only one that has ever happened to?  OK, it's a long story for another time.  First of all you have to know my sister's old roommate which is an even longer story.  Anyway, I could tell I was hurt a little from Wednesday's incident, but nothing serious.  I would just have to take it easy.

The second problem with mainly being hurt on just one side, is you start using the other side to the point that you are wearing out your "good" side.

I knew I had to take it easy after Wednesday night's incident, but I am getting some serious cabin fever.  By today, my boredom had overcome common sense and I went up to my workshop, just to organize some tools.  First problem, my workshop used to be a tractor-trailer workshop, with giant sliding doors the width of a semi.  But see, I'm smart.  I know I can't slide those open normally.  I take my snake whacking stick (another long story) that is doubling for a cane right now to wedge the door open, which is another genius move to take a stick with a big blade at the bottom and use it to steady yourself as you accidentally kick it (at least I was wearing my steel-toed boots).  With the door opened a little, I can lean on the door to slide it open the rest of the way to get some air in the shop.  

I am doing pretty good at first.  Organizing screws, washers, bolts (no I am not going to make a "nuts" joke here) and other light spare parts.  Then I start rearranging some light tools.  A little dumber move, but still fairly safe.  Then, I take my RIGHT hand and slide open a big heavy drawer that I have opened thousands of times, but this is the first time I have opened it two weeks after surgery and felt a shooting pain down my side.  Not ready to go back to the house yet, I decide to make that mistake several more times throughout the day.  Each time I do, it makes me lean on my whacking stick/cane more with my good side causing me to do more painful stuff with the right side.

Figuring I haven't done enough stupid stuff today, I decide I will just get a few more tools out of an old box truck I use for storage.  I carefully balance on my whacking cane and manage a slow and painful entry into the truck.  Dumb move, but I am already inside so I might as well do what I came inside to do.  All I have to do is slide the heavy box of tools toward the back of the truck, then I can get down and take them out one by one.  I just first need to move this car battery charger out of the way. Ow.  Then this little band saw.  Oww.  Then slide this deep cycle battery to the side.  OOOWWW.  OK.  At least now I have a clear path to slide the tools back.  Steady myself with my left hand and my whacking cane.  Take my right hand and slide. OOOOOWWW!  Slide.  SON OF A...OOOOOWWWW!!!  Slide.  WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?!  OOOOOOWWWWW!!!!  Finally done.  Now I just have to get down.  Ow.  Ow.  Ouch.  Ow.  Ow.  Ouch.  Sniffle.  Whimper.  Now I am hurting way too much to actually do anything.  I decide to lock everything up and go back to the house.  The spring loaded door on the truck that flew up earlier, is a lot harder to get down.  Normally that is the easy part of shutting down.  All you have to do is hang on it and it comes right down.  Lifting an arm up hurts.  Putting my weight on that arm, that surprisingly uses a lot more abdominal muscles that I ever realized, and hurts a lot.  I finally close it.  Now just to shut the doors...um, there is no way to lean on the door to slide it closed.  I try to pull it.  I definitely pulled something, but the door hasn't budged.  I think I can feel every single place they operated.  Luckily, my mother-in-law happened to be nearby walking the dog so she was able to pull it shut.  I close up, realizing that sitting and watching the rest of the Top Gear marathon would have been a much more worthwhile activity today.

Now I just have to walk down the hill, up the stairs to the house, down the stairs in the house to get clean clothes, and back up again to take a shower.  Declines are much harder to walk on for some reason.  The steel-toed boots I put on earlier now seem to weigh a ton a piece.  Plus, all the twisting, pushing, and leaning I was doing exclusively with my "good" leg has left my knee and hip in shambles.  I swear I was able to watch the complete sunset in the time it took me to walk the one hundred feet back to the house.

Now, I am back to where I started the day, except in more pain.  I am back to laying on the couch, waiting for the Top Gear marathon to start back up, and praying I don't have to go the bathroom anytime soon.  The bathroom is upstairs and I don't think I do that right now.  I wonder when I will be able to lift ten pounds again?