To Err, Divine

Writing this on Fri night
I dropped young John at the Salinas bus station at 4:45 this aft, watched him get on the bus to Santa Cruz, where he was to meet his friend Kane. Just got a call from Kane, at 9:30 pm, John was not at the bus station. The plan B scenario I played out for John when he told me he did not have Kane’s phone or address is playing out. He is in downtown Santa Cruz wondering how to find one person with little information. So we called the Santa Cruz police, who are now looking for John.

John told me at 11:00 this morning he wanted to visit his friends in Santa Cruz, and Dana and I had already agreed it was a good idea, since John is thinking of going there for university. John told me the bus was at 2:30, so we went to the bus station in SLO at 2:20 and the station agent said that bus was in the morning, the afternoon bus was at 1:00. John asked me to drive him to Santa Cruz, and I said let’s go home and see what other options there are, Mike has a game at 7:00 that I want to go to. We pulled up the bus schedule and see that the bus goes from Salinas to Santa Cruz, leaving in exactly 2 hours. We pull up the map to the Salinas Greyhound, and run out the door, 2 hours to go 128 miles, real tight but all highway.

On the way I find out John has no phone numbers for his friends, and no plan B, so we call info and get his friend’s Dad’s number, and he writes down my cell phone number. He has $200 ($50 for bus, $100 for food, $50 for a present or whatever), and $100 of that is in his socks and shoes, where I told him to put it. We make the Salinas bus station with 5 minutes to spare, and I watch him get on the bus. And now I have just finished filing the missing person’s report with the Santa Cruz police. The thing is, why hasn’t John called? His friend has gone by the bus station again, and the police have also, and he is not to be found. One of us is getting in the car and heading to Santa Cruz soon. For the next 3 hours, until 1 in the morning, Dana and I call Kane, the police, bus terminals, Greyhound, and anybody we think may have a clue to John's state of mind. Dana looks increasingly frantic, and I feel increasingly tired. I was falling asleep at 9:00. Why hasn't he called?

Writing this on Sat. night
I am back from Santa Cruz, John is found, and it is unbelievable what kids can do to you. I woke up at 4:00 am, grabbed some pictures of John, supplies, one of his smelly shirts for the bloodhounds and hit the road. I start playing through the scenarios, and they’re not good. Most involve rohypnol, the date rape drug. I decide to forget all the bad scenarios, because there is nothing I can do about those, they are done. I focus on placing him in one city. I am also thinking about some of my earlier posts, about family tragedy, and thinking Well Shit, my leukemia is supposed to be the family tragedy, didn't I post that?. Did I curse this upon us by trying to get out lucky on the leukemia? What will happen to us if something awful is happening here? I will become some insane man, seeking revenge and dying inside. Dana will shrivel away in lunacy, and Mike and Woody will seek solace in a never-satisfying world of hot California chicks and drugs. The scenario I like is the Something You Have Never Considered is Possible but Exists in John’s World. Why hasn’t he called, though?

I arrived in Salinas at 6:35 am, and talked the ticket agent into giving me the bus drivers name, but struck out on getting a phone number for the driver, different company, independent, whatever. I call an 800# and they say have the police call, we'll get them in touch with the driver. I call Dana and give her this info; she is at wit’s end; I am holding it together through action. When the police do call, later, they say call the bus terminal, they will help. The damn bus terminal is closed.

I head for Monterey. I keep playing out scenarios in my head, and they are not good. John is pretty big and built out of steel cable, unbelievable for a kid who sits all day. He does work out though, and somebody would be in for a big fight. They had to drug him. There are a bunch where he is dead, dying, being gang-molested before being killed, or eaten. The good ones he is getting drunk or stoned with other kids, or having wild sex with random chicks. Did he get off in Monterey, and is too embarrassed to call? Watsonville? Did he sleep through the Santa Cruz stop? Is he in the madhouse of Greyhound San Francisco? We tried to call the San Francisco Greyhound terminal last night, but it was busy. Dana calls Greyhound and at some point they assure us they check tickets at each stop so he could not go beyond Santa Cruz if his ticket only went to Santa Cruz. Why hasn’t he called us?

The Monterey terminal is a little gas station/mini mart. The man working there is the owner, I think, and he was working yesterday at 5:30, and no, he doesn’t remember the kid in the picture. I ask if the bus stops for long, and he says five minutes. I think, John would figure out this is not Santa Cruz in about one minute. He would come in and buy a candy bar, look around, and think, This is not Santa Cruz. I head for Santa Cruz, because Watsonville is not a real bus terminal either.

I get to Santa Cruz and head for the bus terminal. I get there and ask the station agent if he has seen John. He says no, and he wasn’t working last night, but he tells me the driver is working today and will be here at 11:00. I ask if anyone has bought a ticket to Charlotte, Virginia, and he says no, and that would cost more than $200. Dana found Charlotte in John’s internet history in Greyhound.com. I do a circuit of the terminal, asking everybody if they have seen this kid, and there are some pretty entrenched homeless guys who I figure would have noticed some kid hanging around for hours last night, if he had been here. I am just about to go find internet cafes when I see 2 skaters coming down the street, and I wait for them. I show them the pic, and they say No we haven’t seen him, but don’t worry, he is just partying. I say No, not without his friends who live here. John is not a partier, so that’s not it. They say, Oh, he is probably having wild sex, and I say I like the scenarios they are coming up with better than the ones that are left, and just then my cell phone rings.

I got this new cell phone for my birthday, camera phone, took pictures of my bone marrow biopsy with it. We told John to take my old phone, but he said No, he didn’t want it, won’t use it and we can’t make him. This phone rings, and it is Officer Coleman with the Los Gatos office of the CHP, and he has my kid. Hallelujah, where can I meet you? He gives me directions to the Los Gatos PD where he will drop John. He tells me he found him walking on the side of Route 17. I ask how far Los Gatos is, and he says about 20 miles. The officer puts John on the phone, and I ask him if he is all right, and he says he is, just tired from walking all night. The two skater kids ask if I have a buck for coffee; I give them $5 and tell them to call their moms.

I drive out route 17 to Los Gatos. Most people don’t try driving on route 17, let alone walking it. There is nowhere to walk on most of the road. Route 17 is the horrow show windy hilly road that runs between San Jose and Santa Cruz, a lot of people's daily commute, very busy and a nasty road. I get to the Los Gatos PD, park, and out walks John. The whole thing about filing the missing person’s report was that I would have to sign him out, meaning in person, when they found him. Now he just walks out. Fine. I give him a big hug, and tell him I have never been so happy to see him, now I have to kill him. I ask him, ‘Why didn’t you call?” Now sit down, this is tough, because he is a smart kid. Remember I said I like the scenario of Something You Have Never Considered is Possible but Exists in John’s World?

He says, “I didn’t think you could make a collect call from a pay phone.”

I say “*&)((*^&%EE^%^*%@$&$* WHAT? I never did lessons on making collect calls?” He tells me he fell asleep and got off the bus right away when he realized he was past Santa Cruz. First thing he did was ask a cab how much it would cost to go to Santa Cruz, and the cabbie said $60. John thought it was too much and walked away. Big mistake #2 (sleeping through stop, #1). He went looking for an internet café in Los Gatos, and walked for miles, and never found one. He was going to email us and instant message his friends. He ran into two computer-looking guys, and thought to ask them if he could use their internet. Not their phone, their email!!!!!

I have him call his Mom, and he talks to her a while, and she gets the story but I only catch dribs and drabs. We are driving to UC Santa Cruz to hook up with his friend, who has been up half the night looking for him. I have a tough choice, because his Mom wants him home, the bus tomorrow back to SLO is at 9:00 am. He wants to stay, he is here, he now has a cell phone and all the numbers, and I may go off on him if he is in the car with me for 3 hours. We find his friend, and I ask him if he wants to hang out and leave in a few hours, or will he catch the bus tomorrow? He says bus, and of course I ask what happens when you miss it, and he says he'll catch Monday’s bus, and I tell him to CALL US WITH THE PLAN!

I am reading this book called Deep Survival, which is about how some humans screw up and find themselves dead, while others just walk away from circumstances that should kill them. One of the recurring themes for those that get dead is, they compound their errors. They get lost, and they start looking for a reference point and get more lost, eventually they tire and now they have no shelter and no water, and they get dead. I tell John, when you find you have made a big mistake, PAY THE MAN. You are going to have to pay up, do not make big mistake #2. He should have negotiated with the cabbie, but taken the cab; he had the money.

One good thing that comes of this is I drive downtown Santa Cruz, and it is shop-o-rama. I am not metro, but tomorrow is Dana’s birthday, so I park. Right in front of me are three 40-something females, so I ask where they would shop, and they point out some places. Within thirty minutes I have some okay gifts and one perfect gift, a slice of pizza and a mocha java for the road. Dana is asleep when I get home. I need to get the full story of his night of adventure when he gets back.


Thursday’s Big Scary Day
They are going to look at the bone marrow to see if there are any more leukemic cells in there, to see if I am in remission. This is something they will do on a regular basis. I may try to get them to let the Dr. here that did the first one do it. This guy was literally on all fours on my back; it looked like he was using the force needed to unscrew a tire for a car. It didn't hurt but the tiniest amount. The guy was magic. Yesterday 90 pounds of Dr. Kim lady puts some lidocaine in the area and some of it gets onto my sciatic nerve, and this lightning bolt of pain shoots down the nerve to about mid gluteus maximus. Very strange reaction, but it is numb in about 2 seconds.

Dr. Kim has explained in response to our questions that we won’t see the results of these tests until Monday at earliest. I feel stupid, with my bags packed and my hopes up in the air.

She misses the biopsy spot first time, Yow! Second time she lost the core sample on the way out, so this little sliver of bone marrow is floating around in my back somewhere, no problem except Yowza, and then third time's a charm, except Hooooah! See the photo.


Next I check into the Infusion Treatment Area (ITA again). They will give me the spinal tap and chemo in one process. Dr. Kim has me bend over the table and plunges the spinal tap (now called lumbar puncture) needle in and looks for the fluid sac between lumbar, and she keeps coming up with dry holes. Like drilling a well. The pain is so deep when she hits certain spots you have to growl and groan combined, like hnhoooooooaaaaaaaaooooo gggrrrnnnnhrhrhhrhhh. But it's quick, and that's what you want out of pain. She asks me if I am arthritic, because she can't find my fluid sac, and I tell her no, keep pushing, get her done Doc, Go, Go, Go. She gets it finally, and she is pretty sure she has everything they need for a good diagnosis.



I get the new drug in the treatment, preservative-free methotrexate, nice and fresh from upstairs where they were still making it when I checked in at ITA. They inject that right into the spinal area to replace the fluid they have taken out. I get some saline solution in an IV and have to lie flat for an hour to avoid springing any leaks.

A new resident comes in and inspects me, and he finds that I do have an ear infection. The chief Dr. comes in and asks how I am doing, and I answer fine, thinking in relation to other patients. Dana chimes in and says “He is not doing fine, he is doing terrible, he is tired all the time, falling asleep, wakes up in the night and can't go back to sleep, he is grouchy and emotional, his legs are cramping, his fingers are numb, his back hurts, he has bloating and gas, he’s a wreck.” Thanks honey, I thought I was ok. The chief Dr. says “Those are all normal symptoms and reactions, and a lot of that is from the steroid Prednisone, he has been off that a week and it will dissipate.”


He talks about cutting back on the vinscristine to avoid more numbness, and tells me the blood work is all looking good. He explains that red blood cells take longer to make, and so they are impacted by the chemo treatments more than the white cells and the platelets, whose numbers are back up. He says he expects good results on Monday. We drive home.


Today’s Eyebrow Lowbrow: In honor of MJ and Jay