DAY 053 -- "No Floating Pea"

I watched the Doc sift through the slices of my innards imagery, reviewing the results of the PET scan. When he nudged the trackball, dimensions of my organs and all their connective circuity flowed in and out like beach waves.

He gave me an analogy of a pea floating in soup, and because my attention span warps when it’s stressed and in the grip of my overactive imagination, I heard it in pieces. What did register and take hold in my head was that it’s better to have no floating pea.

My original tumor (soup) appeared to be pea-less. Good news, but the appearance of this new pesky lymph node seen in my recent comparative CT scan, remains the bugaboo.

Is it scarring? An anomaly appearing now as collateral damage from my course of Rad/Chemo? Is it a threat? Malignant? My Doc, in consult with his fellow oncologists, wants to get the biopsy as scheduled “to know what we’re dealing with.”

The image was ominous, a skyscape of jutting and sloping contrasts, rows of little devils moving through weeds of thick--- oh … wait ….

That’s a picture of my inside windshield when I was going through the car wash today. Sorry.

Even cancer sometimes needs a comic gotcha headbutt when you're looking the other way.

  

Meanwhile, back at the rest of my other whole body, he was pleased that I’ve dropped a couple of pounds, that I’m using the new elliptical, eating better, not quite as fatigued, and not picking at the sporadic and migrating skin eruptions. The latter is difficult, because when I was a kid, I kept a scab collection in a jar. It was fun looking at scraps of me flitting around in there when I shook it.

Later in boyhood, I added some dead moths for balance.

I had the same feeling today watching him scroll through my sub-layers, though he presented them with a bit more diagnostic sophistication.  

We did review my list of side effects (from Day Fifty-One) and he attributed them to the illness, the treatments, aging, a thousand or so other possible causes, and the maladaptations that can come with healing. We tweaked my uses of lotions and potions to ameliorate, perhaps even eliminate some of these sideshows as we continue this grand experiment.

Today, I’m feeling like what happens when Frankenstein teams up with Monty Hall in the funhouse mirror.

Somewhere in here, I'm behind one of those doors.

More as we go, El

DAY 052 -- "The Usual Posted Warnings"

 I don't know which is harder: trying to read between the shifting lines of body language or the scathing sounds of spoken language.

Today, at my Imfinzi infusion session, I also met with my oncologist to review the results of my recent chest CT scan.

His body language told me: “I’m concerned.”

Trouble is, so did his spoken language: “I’m concerned.”

So, I pressed him, knowing that he’d get as specific as he could, which is considerable, given his expertise. I also knew that he’d stop short of using a crystal ball. I threw mine away this past year, and this young Doc already has the wisdom to leave seering to the seers.

He deals in facts. Numbers. Ratios. Equivalents. Values. Imagery. Diagnostics. Degrees. Like this one, a before and after comparison (minus the phony Photoshopped brush-ups). This is my interior, courtesy of the art-science of tomography. 

Yes, there is a virtual slice of my chest: most recent on the left, three months ago on the right.

I’ll leave you to find “it,” like one of those picture puzzles with subtle differences in the same drawings. Ah, this one has a mustache; this one doesn’t. Find the missing shoe. One of these things is not like the other (done in your best sing-songy Sesame Street off-key).

Get the pictures? Get the errant lymph node.

Yes, good Doc will sometimes venture into prognostication, but not without first applying the caveats of possibilities and probabilities. With predictions, there must be a way out. That’s why crystal balls in my life are now junk novelties.

Not the best news today, so next up? Another PET scan and EBUS/Biopsy to dammit see which new pronouns and adverbs will be coming into play. Good thing I love the language: wordy or worn.

 Another dark door to go through, with the usual posted warnings.

More as we go, El

DAY 051 -- "The Earth Moved Its Moon To Mars"

Yes, we’re way off chronology here, but let’s forget about the numbers and sequence. Today is the fifty-first day of my recorded reportage. That’s all we need to know.

The more I travel along with cancer and treatment, the less important it is to have all my ducks in an ordered row (see Day Forty-Seven). Now, if they want to swim in crazy semi-circles out of sync, have at it. And, if they want, they can let in some geese for comic relief.

Ever recklessly optimistic, Diane and I also bought an elliptical machine on the oncologist’s advice: “low-impact, good upper and lower body, easy to pace, moderate.” He was right. Plus, I’ve come to be a friend of my body marking time and my mind moving with or without me.

I’m also playing more piano, returning to my muscle memories of old, sight-reading, even being bold enough to post a few videos. If the world conspires against it, I’m relaxing, having fun and abusing my rank amateur status.

  

Today, a return for a follow-up CT scan of my tumor. Today, we see if it’s better, worse or unchanged. Since the end of Rad Chemo, it’s been immunotherapy every other week. Six down, twenty to go.

Immunotherapy. All the logistics of chemotherapy without the balding, barfing and bruising. Yes, there’s a new and always evolving side effect list now, but with more annoyances than toxic disruptions.

Still comes the daily fatigue, sometimes predictably, giving me enough warning to prep for it: pull off the road, pull up a couch, stop a boring conversation. Other times, it’s just upon me: one minute ta-da!, the next a suddenly-sedated Gumby.

I’ve learned to effectively deal with it without hurting myself or anyone else. Then, there’s that list:

Shortness of breath

R-sided abdominal pain

Irritability

Ankles, feet and hands swelling

Rash/itch/blistering

Twitchy lower limbs

Fingers cramping/locking up

Fuzzy hamburger slippers (sorry, just checking to see if we’re all still sitting up straight in class)

I haven’t spoken to my docs about the above, but I will at my next treatment … along with today’s scan results.

Today, arriving home after the scan, I’m okay with this. I and my ducks and geese have learned how to wait.

Maybe the doc hasn’t called me because the results are inconclusive.

Maybe they’re awful.

Maybe he hasn’t reviewed them yet.

Maybe the earth moved its moon to Mars.

You’ll know when I know.

Oh, and one added attraction tonight: Creamy Vanilla Smoothie Readi-CAT 2 Barium Sulfate Oral Suspension contrast medium makes you (me) shit like a shark.

More as we go, El

DAY 050 --- "It Goes On"

I’d like you and I to end this part of our journey through my cancer domain with a grandfather’s wisdom, but I’m hard-pressed to remember any wise thing he ever told me.

He did do lots of life’s grandfatherly things and told me lots of life’s grandfatherly stuff, but he never said anything on the order of the oft-quoted and worldly definition of life from Robert Frost, who said that he could sum up everything he knew about it in three words: “It goes on.”

Grampa never came close to what may be three wiser words on human life and its longevity: “Where’s The Beef?”

Or, let’s face it, he missed the brilliant formula (and its endless garage variants) that once drove all of us to get up and live another day: “See the USA in your Chevrolet.”

Still, well into his nineties, and not long after my grandmother’s passing, he did say that the biggest challenge of aging and living day-to-day was coping with loneliness:

“I don’t mean being alone,” he said. “We all live our lives alone. Your grandmother and I lived alone together for sixty years. And, no, I don’t mean solitude, which I cherish; I mean loneliness, which I loathe. Feeling lonely. Sometimes it’s possible to feel lonely with someone lying right next to you.”

I knew exactly what he meant, and I wished I hadn’t.

“I mean lonely because you’ve outlived the characters you grew up with. Lonely because everyone you knew then is dead. No peers, no lifelong friends, no adversaries, no companions from your past, no bosom buddies, nothing to remember with another living soul who also remembers your memories. You’re lost in time, traveling alone … and lonely.”

He added one more thing: “But, I don’t miss all those people. Either they all left too soon, or I've stayed too long. I miss the person I was, the person I could only be when I was with them. I miss that guy. I miss me.”

When I think of this exchange, one of my last conversations with him, I’m second-thinking it. Today, with what I’ve experienced and what I’m facing, I think I’m wise enough now to level a colloquial bunkum at Robert Frost, serve up a burned hamburger at Wendy’s, and send a Klaxon horn blast to General Motors.

Yes, indeed, thinking about it now a third time, I think my grandfather was the wiser man. Wiser than all the poets, burgers and cars in the world.

* * * *

As of this writing, we’re heading down the immunotherapy road.

My tumor has shrunk. I’ve finished the intense courses of radiation and chemotherapy. Food tastes better than something you might feed your pet iguana. My scarred chest now looks better than the insides of your pet iguana. My disease and I are “well-managed.” We’re okay.

I would say everything is static, but I’ve yet to find anything in this life that is. Nothing in this life never changes.

I do have one request:

Every day I meet people who know me and my recent history --- friends and folks who've heard through one grapevine or another that I have cancer. They're also aware that I've had lengthy, harsh and debilitating treatments.

First thing they say is "You look good!" (Right about here, I want to write the literary equivalent of skid marks.)

I wish this would stop. The meaning between the lines is “You look good for someone who has what you have and who’s gone through what you’ve been through and who may or may not be dying.”

Or, perhaps less generously: “You look good for a zombie.”

Don’t misunderstand. You know my sense of humor by now, and I do  deeply appreciate the awkward but good intentions of people meaning well. But, if you and I meet at a live book-signing, please, any other greeting will do:

“You look good for someone I thought would be shorter” will do nicely.

More as we go, El

DAY 049 -- "She Will Deliver Anything"

More moving on.

I’ve finished my second immunotherapy infusion of Imfinzi, and now have a clearer idea of what my next every other Monday mornings will look like for eleven more months.

Frankly, it all looks rather boring, unless---

Unless my IV line blows and I get an infiltrate and cellulitis. Or---

One of the many possible Imfinzi side effects moves in, runs amok, and my lungs rile up into inflammation filling stations.

And my breathing goes heaving.

Or my cough won't bugger off.

And my boweling needs troweling.

Or a burning itch starts to twitch.

And my urine ain't recurring.

Or my appetite won’t bite.

Or unless, on my way to treatment, just as I'm bending down to reach for a wallet I've spotted in the gutter, I’m run over and killed by a black stretch limo carrying the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes grand prize film crew enroute to special-delivering my giant lifetime payoff check.

(I mention the latter on the off chance that there really is something in the cosmos resembling an all-powerful supreme being who either has no sense of humor or a really twisted one.)

But, if I survive all that, there's always passing the time in a game of hallway tag with one of the TUGS, the hospital delivery robots, as I take a break from pre-waiting to waiting.

My favorite roaming bot is "Rosie." Not very talkative, but devoted and unfailing in her duty. She helps me (on those days I need it) to let go of my dangerous imagination and to stop thinking.

If I stand in her path, she will wait for me to move.

She will not run over me.

She will only enter an empty elevator. 

She will deliver anything, anywhere, anytime.

If she isn't invincible, short of being unplugged, I can't see how.

She never makes a mistake.

She helps me forget what brought me here in the last place.

She looks like a gussied up trash can but inside her fine-lined delivering womb are life-altering documents, and even life-saving medications (mine).

She is pure function. She is unrepentant. She has a lovely whir. She has one green eye and one red eye.

She is never early, on time, or late.

I envy her. On treatment days, I'd like to be her male counterpart:

"El has arrived." Simple. Undeniable.

 Cancerless.

More as we go, El