DAY 004 -- "Goes Far, Flies Near"

Resumed radiation following Independence Day yesterday, a day off from treatment. Oh, and I’m now adopting “Independence Day” for my own use (my apologies, Uncle Sam; it’s only temporary and I’ll return it when I’m finished.)

Independence.  To be free of tubes, wires, lights meant to heat, heat meant to illuminate, and free of any machine that rotates, flashes and hums around my body, somehow mapping my innards which now present with new detours and (dare I say it) dead ends.

Some stubborn chest pain today, getting up to 8 on the scale. Same place, same sensation, just amplified: something resembling striking my chest with a ball-peen hammer through a bowling ball. And, it migrates to the back. So, today it only hurt when I stood, sat, laid down, breathed, talked, walked or slept.

I think I tried everything except running it off.  And chocolate. Next time, I’m going jogging with a Hershey bar.

I do use my cannabidiol (CBD) for these breakthroughs, but it’s efficacy has become unpredictable: some days a drop or two sublingually does the trick, others I have to reach for the fast-release oxycodone --- always effective, but I’d rather be ingesting, shooting, swallowing, rubbing or inserting an organic reliever versus popping a semisynthetic opioid.

I’m reaching into the Sherman archives, where my grandma’s formula for good living was simple: “Whatever flips your skirt.”

For now, the docs agree with this approach and encourage me to use and do whatever works best.

Entering the treatment room, the attending Radionettes again hit my high musical mark. Soon as I climbed up on the terrible table and stretched out in my mold, they cued up Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride.”

On a cloud of sound I drift in the night
Any place it goes is right
Goes far, flies near
To the stars away from here

Hmmm … today that may have worked better than running with chocolate.

More as we go, El

DAY 003 -- "I've Been In My Mind"

The treatment today went smoother, now that I get the drill. This time, as the machinery circled ‘round me, I felt like a panorama of myself.

The trio of attending young women nurse-techies in the radiation room (henceforth known as my Radionettes) are the glowing cat’s pajamas outstanding in my field: professional, intensely focused on my every move, and each gifted with the kind of bedside manner not found in a book.

They’d learned of my musical bents yesterday, and with precision timing, today began piping my past through the intercom as we began. Neil Young. Perfect.

I’ve been in my mind,

 it’s such a fine line

that keeps me searching

 for a heart of gold.

And ‘round me it went.

Also today, a visit with the oncologist. He talks about my “new normal,” a catchphrase I immediately loathed and loved about my life now. Quite correct, Doc.  But, I never thought of my previous normal as normal, so I’m anxious to see where a “new normal” normal goes.

He meant, of course, how Rad Chemo (the name I’ve given my outlaw cancer) will change my day-to-day-to-nights from here on out. Rascal Rad’s a stickler for details, and now my life’s have-to-do’s have been upended, beginning with my schedule, now driven by my treatments.

All of my life’s anchors, along with its liberators, will now be dropped and/or let loose according to Rad’s whims.  Okay, Doc, but what about down the road? What’s the worst that could happen? (an old nursing habit. It’s always best to mentally rehearse everything that could happen on my shift, and what I’d do about it if it all went blooey.  Was I prepared?) 

I pressed him for a Plan B, even a C and D if/when Rad did go blooey, and he reluctantly went there, affirming that my worst case blooey was about as bad as I’d imagined. But, to his credit, after I’d insisted on discussing “likelihoods” and “probabilities”, he shifted his emphasis: “Let’s just focus on Plan A right now. The outcome of this course is not certain; everyone and every cancer is different, so staying positive and keeping just with Plan A for now might be best.”

He was quite right, though I didn’t tell him that I’d made over 300 skydives and had never thrown myself into the abyss without a Plan B (reserve chute). Tough to let go of that faith of leaps.

“Breakthrough” pain today, mostly mitigated with some self-prescribed CBD (cannabidiol). Get out ahead of that curve, always. Pain relief comes sooner and is more effective if you don’t wait until ten. Nursey, nursey, nursey. I’m trying to be a good patient and listen to my old songs. Today I’m a one, but I’ve been to ten.

One is better.

Lastly, a few quick points on my “new normal” (there’ll be a lot of these as we go.)

--- I now cheat at crosswords and do them in ink. Sure, I spend some time with the usual mad deducing, but screw it, life’s too short and when I’m boxed in I use the cheat sheets and move on. Acrosses and downs and I’m outa there. Next.

--- Two things I can’t do for a couple of days post-Rad:

1.  Pee standing up. I must now sit to avoid splattering irradiated whiz everywhere. I told them I didn’t think I was a splatterer in my pre-new normal life, but apparently if I’m a man, ignorance of the loo is no excuse, and it’s unavoidable.

2.  A delicate but important redirect: I must wear a condom, should the need (ahem) arise. Can’t risk lighting up the honey’s interior. When I was told this, I couldn’t help it, but I was struck with the voice of Jack Nicholson’s Randle McMurphy running through my head after he emerged from his Cuckoo’s Nest shock treatment:

“The next woman takes me on is gonna light up like a pinball machine and pay off in silver dollars.”

Best we leave it there for today; I’ve some domestic new normals to work out.

More as we go, El

DAY 002 -- "Not Gonna Let 'Em Catch Me Now"

Back at and beyond my new internal hubbubs, I've just remembered (and we do forget these things) that I'm not simply a man with lung cancer, but a man beset with and without a host of other functions and dysfunctions.

I have thinning hair, spinal disk outpouchings, brittling toenails, a few age spots (now that I'm qualified), a squeezy prostate, a penchant for any curried dish, capricious semi-erections happening way too soon for nostalgia, and a false sense of security about everything, though I prefer to say a true sense of insecurity.

In short, I'm augmenting my diminishing gains, and diminishing my augmented losses (my blog, my wordplay).

But, what I am NOT, standalone, is my illness.  I'm a multifaceted organism boasting untold sets of sub-facets, which is now hosting a serious illness.

Yes, if I were a newspaper, the front page story would be “Nurse Humorist Names His Cancer ‘Rad Chemo’”, and I must now remember to always also open it to the editorials, columns, classifieds and comics inside the rest of me.

Right about here, it’s time for a truncated truth from D. H Lawrence, lifted from his poem “What Is He?”

--Would you say a thrush was a professional flautist,

or just an amateur?

I'd say it was just a bird.

--And, I say he is just a man.

All right!  You always did quibble.

* * * * *

Entering the chemotherapy infusion room:

A roundhouse array of center-facing comfy loungers, each with a more utilitarian chair set alongside it for our riding shotgun caregivers. Diane and I assumed our positions. We were greeted by pleasant, deliberate and tuned-in nurses who welcomed us to "the family. " I looked around at my new family members and they were sizing me up with all obviousness, but sneakily sizing up my cancer and prognosis to hold against their own. I’ve been a nurse a long time.  Humans do this.

I can also tell, after a so-far lifetime of providing bedside care, when I'm being observed hiding in plain sight on low, open ground.

After a nurse made an unsuccessful attempt at starting an IV, she said "Sorry, El, your veins are rolling." Ah! Blaming the victim (and I confess to committing this sin at times in my career). She said it tongue-in-cheek, but it still made me feel like a self-saboteur.

 Her cohort stepped in and assumed the vein reins, managing the insertion first try. Attempting to smooth the waters, I tried to ease the suffering of unstickable nurse by explaining that historically I'm a difficult venipuncture, probably worsened by some dehydration of late, and not to fret over it. It’s the nurse in me, though I am trying to let go and be a good patient. Really.

My chemo “family” is an eclectic bunch (I want to say my pathological family, but I’m trying to avoid the macabre): some looked old, some looked old and sick, some looked old and very sick, and some looked as if they were ten years older or younger, they’d look the same.

I supposed we all looked self-absorbed.  I tried not to use them as mirrors.

The med infusions were uneventful.  The lunch was superb.  Only one sidetrack: a curious recorded discrepancy discovered occurring in my height over time, shorter AND taller, and it was briefly a busied topic of staff confab because my chemo doses are partially determined by that measure.

For all of us to move forward, it was acknowledged and accepted that I’m somehow capable of alternately portraying The Attack of the Incredible Shrinking and/or Amazing Colossal Man without ill effects.

* * * * *

Entering the radiation room.

Lots to talk about here, but these treatments will be daily for the next six weeks, so I’ll keep it to one first memorable mention, with much more to follow:

During my first radiation treatment, at my request, they played The Allman Brothers. Far freakin’ out.

It was Rock-humbling and Roll-satisfying to hear “I’m not gonna let ‘em catch me, no, not gonna let ‘em catch the Midnight rider” in true surround sound, as I laid snugged inside my table mold like a flesh & bone kabob on a stationary spit, flashing back up ahead as my linear accelerator world lit up and hummed and rotated around ME.

More as we go. Let’s ride! 

El

DAY 001 -- "The Arrival of Rad Chemo"

Pow.

Severe chest pain.

Off to the Emergency Room.

No kidding, there I was in patient mode, sitting on the butcher paper in the ER with an unfinished professional lifetime-plus of bedside nursing behind me. Years and months and days of dutifully attending the waylays, wounds and afflictions of everything from hangnails to heart failure. Now it was my turn.

I wish I could tell you without mixing and abusing too many metaphors, that I hit the bull running, took the ground by the horns, leapt into the music and faced the breach, but it was more like being unceremoniously tapped on the shoulder by the ghost of a mechanical hand:

“You have a mass on your lung.”

Pow. Pow.

With an inspired aplomb that only a New Englander would appreciate, I said: “I’m assuming you don’t mean Massachusetts.”

Bang. Pow. Zoom. (I’m reserving exclamation points for the first finale of my second act, and that’s my first living with cancer inside New Hampshire inside border joke).

Of all the care plans and nursing processes I’ve written and followed in my nursing career,

--- of all the interventions I’ve applied into the outcomes and moved out of the inputs in each patient’s unique set of challenges,

--- of every vigil I’ve stood and transition I’ve helped to enable and navigate,

--- of every patient’s very own journey through sickness and health … now entered mine.

My last first thought: “Sorry, I hate to bother you, but could you spare a minute for mortality?”

Pow. Pow. Pow.

* * * *

Author’s aside: You could call all this a preamble to my constitution, but from here on I’ll be setting aside my usual column approach, at least the kind you and I are long accustomed to --- the kind with beginnings AND endings --- and instead adopt a rolling narrative muse. Call it a diary. Call it a reckoning. I call it words from all my body’s sponsors.

It seems to better suit me in the space and time I now find myself: living day-to-day, sometimes measured weekly, sometimes in seconds. I’m ready if you are, and I do promise to do as we’ve always done in this contract between reader and writer, keeping us close and me as honest as I’m able.

My loving wife Diane is here with me. When I come up short on strength and grit, she’s always there to fill in those blanks and help me steady on. Going in, I’m already ahead of the fight, armed with having her alongside me.

I’m on the eve of beginning treatment. We’ll get through this. After tomorrow, my humor will be shaped by serious business, as it always is, but with one new wrinkle:

Moving into my cancer domain, at least for now, I’ll be spending more time as the bug, not the windshield, as the inflation, not the tire, as the map, not the destination. I’ll have to adjust life’s driving accordingly.

More as we go. Hop on. Let’s ride.

El 

P.S.  I’ve named my cancer “Rad Chemo.” Great moniker for a villain. I needed just the right identity for a bratty punk interloper with an attitude.

* * * *