November 2002 rediagnosed with a recurring tumor I am going to bring you through the whole fun thing
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This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
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Brain Tumor History And Other Rants
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Thursday, March 25, 2004
Bob Dylan If you see her say hello Album blood on the tracks
If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier
She left here last early spring, is livin' there, I hear
Say for me that I'm all right though things get kind of slow
She might think that I've forgotten her, don't tell her it isn't so.
We had a falling-out, like lovers often will
And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill
And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me, we've never been apart.
If you get close to her, kiss her once for me
I always have respected her for busting out and gettin' free
Oh, whatever makes her happy, I won't stand in the way
Though the bitter taste still lingers on from the night I tried to make her stay.
I see a lot of people as I make the rounds
And I hear her name here and there as I go from town to town
And I've never gotten used to it, I've just learned to turn it off
Either I'm too sensitive or else I'm gettin' soft.
Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past
I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast
If she's passin' back this way, I'm not that hard to find
Tell her she can look me up if she's got the time.
If you are just here for the medical stuff let me get it out of the way. The rest is all about Bob … so either read it or don’t….
So last Saturday I had a short facial seizure. I started my second round of maintenance chemo yesterday. I hate that stuff. I was all queasy like this morning. Picture not going out drinking but still having that morning after stomach. So I popped some more drugs and waited to have breakfast. I didn’t even want to sleep last night for fear of waking up sick, so I stayed up watching bad movies and waiting for it instead. Great logic. So I have 6 weeks of this now. It’s all in the drugs to mask the other drugs effects. I have been getting records transferred to a new doctor I am going to try next month. So I have 2 doctor’s appointments and 1 MRI in the city and 2 doctors appointments in NJ should be a fun month. That’s the most of it right there….
So if you were just keeping medical score punch out now.
If you are staying then I am going to abuse you with my rambling…
So I am really hanging in there with reading the New Testament. But the editor should have mixed up the beginning a little. I mean Matthew, Mark, Luke, and then John. I am reading every angle here. I mean I don’t mind it, and no I can’t write a better book, but I am glad I am going on to a new section after this the acts. No, really I was brought up very religious and know all this stuff.
Which reminds me all you Sopranos hatters, shut up. You write a better TV show. Now I will give you the guy that wrote it is a grade A wacko, but it is still a great show. People want the world. But it is like going to Disney land instead of Disney World, and bitching about it. Come on beating up landscapers, good stuff. Shut up and watch it.
Enough about TV for now.
Hey here's a flashback to where I was one year ago this week, I guess things do get better (who are you lying to they go in cycles)
Saturday 3/22/03 - Bob-in-a-bubble
I wake up around 5 am I am burning up. I take my temperature. 101.1. I go back to sleep, or at least try to 6 am I check again 101.3 ok it is on it’s way up, time to call the doctor. I page him via their service. I totally woke him up. He says ok what I need you to do is go to the emergency room and tell them that you are my patient and I told you to come in. I said Doctor I have one question. Can I go to Morristown Memorial Hospital in New Jersey (so I don’t have to drive to NYC, and we were planning on me working with doctors from there). He said yes yes what am I thinking go there. So I grab my bag that I already had packed, we got in the car, and drove to the emergency room.
Do you really care about all these details?
Hey it’s a total trainwreck blog, so you are going to get them, and it makes going to work seem like a cakewalk eh?
So I check into the E.R. They brought me to my own room with it’s own air circulation to protect me from any germs in the E.R. So they send in a doctor, I exlplained my case, he said that they would take some blood and I might have to be admitted, depending what the local oncologist says. This whole time I know I have to be admitted, it is not safe for me in the real world.
A little side note here, with no white blood cells, which I didn’t have I am in danger of everything and all food has to be carefully and fully cooked. This means no eating out and not raw fruits and vegetables.
So they send in the vampires and I am a little dehydrated, so my veins are hiding. They need to put in an IV and get blood cultures (to check to see if there is any bacteria in my blood that could be jeopardizing my health with no white cells to defend myself. So they try on my left arm, they stick the needle in, and burn burn burn, man I know what I IV’s feel like and this is wrong. So she admits that that one did not take. Great here we go again for the hand. Ouch, damn she’s got it. So now she takes those typical little jars to check your blood. Then she has these other 2 clear bottles that look like Coronitas. You ever see them, some Mexican places use these small Corona bottles as salt shakers? I mean the size of like an A1 bottle. She fills both of these ½ way with my good stuff. They are vacuum sealed so I hear and feel my blood bubbling into these, very grouse. The nurse stops in in like 10 minutes after this whole stick and bleed and tells me they have to come back for more. Blood cultures have to be taken from 2 different places just in case the needle picked up some bacteria from where it popped through me the first time. What the hell this is starting out no fun. The vampire comes back sticks me on the right inner wrist with a butterfly needle, and that hurts. He ½ fills 2 more A1 Steak Sauce bottles and leaves. These 2 people are not getting Christmas cards.
OK now it is time to run to chest x-ray and heck I got to pee. So here I am dangerous to myself. I have to wear a mask when they wheel me through the hallways. Nice. So no big story here go get a chest x-ray then back to my solitary pleasure chamber. At this point it is Mo who drove me here, damn it is a lot of work living with me. And my father. I finally get my orders to be admitted. Now I get driven to Franklin 4, with my mask on and all. The whole time I am praying for a room by myself, after all I am Bob-in-a-bubble, I can’t have another Michael/ roommate. So I get down this hall and yes I get a room with a view, a couch 2 chairs, TV, my own bathroom. This room is a 1200 a month studio apartment in Manhattan probably. So they throw me on the other bed. My day nurse Barbara comes in and asks me 20 questions and what they do is write all the answers right on a paper towel, pretty hip. I guess they run that through a high tech scanner and all the data goes in the computer.
So the plan is to hook me up to 2 different types of anti-biotics through my IV like 3 or 4 times a day to help protect me from the world.
I got 2 platelet transfusions with no reactions so that was good.
Now it is like 12:30 / 1pm, I haven’t eaten yet. Man I am hungry and grumpy. (OK for the record just keep the grumpy theme from this Saturday straight through my release on Saturday the 29th).
I finally get something to chew on for lunch around 2 something. Dinner comes around 5:30 on the floor. I have been clicking through my TV channels all like 30 something of them over and over and over. For anyone who hasn’t been in the hospital let me explain the remote. It has one button on it that says TV. You push this to go through the channels, you can only go up, if you pass what you want to see, you have to go all the way back through all the channels again. Yes it is 2003. Mo left in the afternoon and my father stayed most of the day. So that was most of the fun for my first day. I brought my new book, but in a hospital when you feel icky, and all the lights are examination florescent white, it doesn’t make for a great reading condition to focus in. So with all this great free time, reading was not going to get done.
Each day had it’s schedule. Up between 6-7 am, Doctors rounds in the 7am hour, breakfast would then come around 8:30, also around this time they would come for my daily blood work. They would stick me in the elbow for blood work, I also got stuck in the back of each arm everyday with another 2 shots. I got pricked about 3 or 4 times a day.
As far as weekday TV: 9am Jenny Jones, 10am Maury 11am Jerry Springer 12pm Maury 1pm Jerry Springer. Hey you try to be off work and only have the tv and beat this schedule. You will not. The only gimmick at least one hour a day was always war pre-empted. This is channel 11 dammit, go to CBS for that stuff.
I could really bore you with the everyday detail here. I did manage to add to my own room booty a refrigerator. There were some very nice nurses. I did find that the anti-biotics I was on ended up wreaking havoc on my stomach. I started getting chemo-type nausea again and that was awful. I missed several meals because of that, and ate very little portions at others. I had a bad headache coming on. (I also went through ear infections sore throats, brought on by swollen lymph nodes etc). They decided to let me try perkaset. Now I took these back in 99 around my first surgery, and thought oh yeah they helped me then. So then that night the nurse goes you want 2. I said well I am feeling a bit crappy, and they will help me sleep sure. So I take them, on an empty stomach (a no-no) because the nausea I hadn’t eaten much dinner. I am almost immediately nodding out. This is like 8:30pm. Then I get woken up for vital signs. The nurse told me to breathe deep because my blood pressure was low due to the medicine. Then I get awoken for one antibiotic to be replaced. That goes for like 40 minutes then is done and the machine beeps and wakes me. Then I get woken up again to start the second one. Oh yeah they also took blood from me twice this night to check a level of a drug in my system. Do you get the fact that they wake you up all night in a hospital. Now when I was asleep all was cool. But about the time I was woken up around 10:30 I was peaking on the drugs. I could feel my blood pressure was low. I thought I had to catch my breath at one point. Man I was going crazy I was totally stoned. No self control, and way to paranoid to go to sleep. So I page the nurse. Look I am totally stoned and can’t handle it.
Yes I can make nurses laugh. One nurse at the station said to my nurse go down there and tell him to enjoy it. Well time + drugs = sober and nothing else. So I ate a jello and watched an hour of TV and was down by then and went to bed at midnight.
Again the week was
That is one of my funnier stories I have out of this, I am telling you it was a boring week. Once my white blood count turned around they tend to shoot right up and mine did. A side note when your white blood cells are coming out of your bone marrow, you feel sharp stabbing pains in your joints.
Lot’s of aches and pains, nausea, crankiness, hospital food and popping any pills I could get my hands on.
and on that note. I have taken my chemo and am going to watch third watch (I got into that show at the hospital last year, and I don't always catch it.... pass the perkiset.)
11:08 PM
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