CLICK

Saturday morning and Dana is laid out with a tweaked back, up since 4 am, watching John Wayne movies and munching Fioricet muscle relaxers. The steroids to keep the brain swelling down are really messing up my sleep, down at 9pm, up at 1am, down at 5am, up at 8am! I seem to have found some balance in last night’s pharmacopeia, hitting the right combo of steroids and sleeping pills to actually sleep for 8 hours without my brains swelling out onto the pillow! Monday will be the last cranial irradiation, and hopefully the end of these persistent headaches that have plagued me this week.

Thursday’s lumbar puncture/chemo injection went pretty smoothly. The doc got me on the table under the fluoroscope, numbed me up, warned me a couple of times for a push into the spine, then he said “1 out of 3 times this next push will hit the nerve for a second, and you’ll feel a big electrical click, then it’ll be fine, here we go.” CLICK. Like when you forgot to turn off the juice before changing that light switch, and then the breaker clicks. Less than a second, but HO CHI MAMA, the whole leg jumps, the sciatic nerve is vibrant, and the foot is doing the floppy. The rest of it went very smooth. He pumped in the joo joo juice like there were Krispy Kremes in the conference room. I went back to the recovery room for my one hour horizontal recovery, and met Mr. Stupid and Sad.

This guy is in the other bed, and instantly starts complaining about how he has to wait 2 hours to get his IV of antibiotics. I told him we got hung up an hour because of a car accident, but he railed on. Nurse came in and I asked for my standard lunch of pizza, doughnuts, and a masseuse, and he starts complaining that he can’t get lunch in this place. Somehow we get on the topic of costs, and I tell him my one-day stay in Feb. was $27K. This really sets him off; he’s going to have to file bankruptcy. Turns out this fisherman dude suffered a double hernia, drove to Mexico to get it fixed cheap ($2400), and they did a fine job but he ignored their recovery requirements. He gets in his motor home and drives for 2 days straight, only to be so sick that he has to get checked into Sierra Vista for ten days, then ten more days as an outpatient getting an IV drip for 3 hours. He really saved some money there.

The nurses bring me HIS lunch, spaghetti and meat sauce, key lime pie, coffee, not bad but hard to eat horizontally. I eat lunch, get dressed and go out to the nurse station, and shout “I’m cured!” I tell them I am ready to go, the needle came out an hour ago. They all start discussing that I am supposed to lie flat for 24 hours, I need a driver, I can’t go yet. I set them straight, tell them since I had joo joo juice put IN, it makes up for the juice they took OUT, no problem, I will be fine, it’s been OK for three weeks now. They make me sign the papers. The nurse explains that the sad sack in the other room actually HIT a nurse at another hospital, and that’s why he is here without his lunch, which they gave me.

This all confirms for me that, once you are in the system, govt., medical, school, whatever, you have to figure out the rules and the powers, and learn to navigate the whole deal. Knowing how to wait patiently in this world is a great talent, and doing it with some humor will really help.

Played 18 at Dairy Creek on Wednesday from the blues, and flat out ran out of gas at about the 12th hole. Putter killed me on the front, and all the other clubs joined in on the back. Played awful, couldn’t get off the tee, found a lot of ticks in the bushes, beautiful day, a lotta fun. Shot a 98 I think, ouch. Back to the gym and driving range. Blood counts are OK, slightly anemic but not enough to explain that back 9 holes.

It turns out I have a lot of room for photos, and I wonder if some of you BLOG commenters wouldn’t love to see your face up in lights? Anyone sends me their photo and I will post it, maybe make one separate post with all photos. Any takers? I at least want a picture of Pat’s backyard, and Mac’s first tee with his cats. Randy’s pond. Donald in a doctor suit. Mo in a TM state, Jeanne in a zen state. What say you all?