My Cancer Journey VIII

Thrombosis

The Wednesday after Labor Day, I noted that my right leg was giving me trouble. Nothing that a few more Acetaminophen couldn’t handle.

Thursday, the pain was worse. I could barely get around the block with Filbrix. When Carol got home, she laid down the law. If I was still having trouble the next day, I was to call my Primary Care Physician.

The pain was worse. I called the PCP’s office and told them what was happening. After consulting with his nurse, I was instructed to go to an imaging center as soon as was practical and have them scan my leg.

I called the recommended imaging center and was told that the soonest they could see me was mid-afternoon. If I needed to see someone sooner, there was another center across the street from Baylor McKinney.

I needed to see someone sooner. An appointment was set, I secured Filbrix, and was on my way.

The imaging center appeared to be well run. I was in an exam room within five minutes of my arrival, having an amicable chat with a young woman who was in training. I was in good enough spirits to give my standard answer to my date of birth (If your sweetheart didn’t get you something for this day, he or she really doesn’t care for – followed by the year) and then telling the woman I was “Thirty-Nine.” Neither the technician or the observer had a clue that I was referring to Jack Benny, so I explained the connection and we discussed more recent comedians. The technician revealed that his birthday was on the same day (different year) while he was doing his job.

At the end of the session, I was told that it looked like I had a blood clot. I was given a disc to give to a doctor when I had the opportunity, or when I got to the Emergency Room. I left the center and sat in the car waiting to see what I needed to do next. My PCP’s office was a good half-hour drive from where I was parked. On the other hand, the Emergency Room at Baylor McKinney was across the street.

It took about ten minutes of waiting in the car to get the call from the PCP’s office to go to the Emergency Room. It took another ten minutes to drive to the ER, park the car, and hobble inside.

Just the little bit of walking I had to do from point A to point B caused a considerable amount of pain. Triage, if you could call it that, consisted of my giving them the information they already had, having my vitals checked and allowing them to do bloodwork. Never mind that I had a readout from the imaging center across the street. I needed to sit and wait. And wait. And wait.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that a blood clot in the leg could break loose and head for my heart, putting it out of commission. The clot could have bypassed the heart and headed to my brain, giving me a stroke.

Still waiting.

Carol came by with a friend to give me aid and comfort. She was there for a couple of hours before going home to relieve Filbrix.

Finally, after a shift change, I was seen by a doctor. After what seemed like another hour or so of back and forth with more imaging, I was told that I indeed had blood clots, but the solution would be to put myself on a blood thinner until the problem went away… hopefully within a few months.

I got an initial dose of Eliquis and was told that I should have a prescription to pick up later the next day. With the drug came the instruction that I could no longer shave using a blade and shaving cream. (Sorry, Harry’s. You had to be sidelined.) I also had to be careful not to cut myself. This was, indeed serious.

I made it home nearly twelve hours after leaving the house. Much of that time spent waiting in the ER waiting area for them to call me in to see a doctor. I hate to think about what might have happened if one of the clots broke loose while I was there. Nearly a week later, a friend of mine had a bout of acute appendicitis. Went to the same ER and waited. And waited. And waited, until he passed out and hit his head on the floor.

Passing out and hitting his head got him sent to the head of the queue. Could have killed him. Thrombosis could have killed me.

I thought that I would be out of the woods once I got home. After another night of pain and restlessness I looked forward to Carol going over to the local chain drugstore to get Eliquis.

Once again, the chain had nothing available.

Time for plan “B”.

A call was made to the locally owned and operated apothecary in what passes for Downtown Princeton Texas. They didn’t have the full prescription available, but the pharmacist had enough to get me through the weekend until he could restock.

Guess where I am telling my doctors to send any future prescriptions!

There were a couple of other considerations having to do with my leg. Carol decided that I could get around a little better if I were to have a wheelchair at my disposal. Next day delivery from Wallyworld.[1]

I decided not to risk cutting myself with the Harry’s razors I had been using, so, I ordered a Norelco rotary shaver through Amazon. It came overnight.

I was in pretty good spirits when the wheelchair arrived, and I adapted to it relatively easily. By the time Sunday rolled around, I was confident enough to go to worship with Carol… telling people that I was only using the wheelchair to garner sympathy.[2] By the following week, the wheelchair mostly sat idle. Crutches were available, I was adept with the things to the point that I was able to go most places with little problem.

Two weeks after surgery and three days after my little trip to the Emergency Room, I had my follow-up with my Oncologist to find out about the next step in my journey.

[1] My term for Wal*Mart, even though two of my stepchildren are employed there.

[2] The line about using the wheelchair to garner sympathy was recycled from the Canadian TV series SCTV. The “Station Manager” used a wheelchair to get around, even though he could walk perfectly well – telling people that the reason he used the wheelchair was to garner sympathy.

My Cancer Journey VII

Happy New Year! Time to get back to my story from last summer…

Recovery

Home at last!

In pain, but I was home at last!

Carol and I planned to make me as comfortable as possible when I got home. I was still a bit woozy from what transpired twenty-four hours earlier. The dog Filbrix was more than happy to see me. She tempered her usual enthusiastic greeting, sensing my temporary infirmity.

There were some inconveniences, like the bandages.

I had four incisions, each covered by bandages designed to help hold my incisions in place until my body would hold together by itself. Used to be stitches, now instead, the pieces are held together with Superglue. I had instructions to leave the bandages on until they fell off in the shower, which I could not take for a day or two after surgery. Even though the surgery was at the tail end of August, I had no problem with going ahead and waiting inside – with the air conditioning.

Another inconvenience had to do with sleeping. Over the years I have become accustomed to sleeping on my belly, or at least sleeping on one side or the other. At home, like at the hospital, I had to learn to sleep on my back.

Carol may have had a premonition that there might be something going on requiring a hospital-type bed when we went to a home show six months earlier. It took considerable coaxing and 18 interest-free months of financing, but we went ahead and bought the bed. By the time I got back from the hospital, I still wasn’t used to the bed despite trying a variety of positions including something called “Zero-G.” It didn’t take me long that first night to figure out that I was not going to be comfortable in the fancy bed. The other alternative was the recliner in what passes for our living/family room. It worked well. Filbrix was happy to be able to watch me as I tried to sleep as best I could.

I could have slept better but for the fact that the narcotic prescribed by the doctor to ease my pain was not available at the chain drug store.[1] Carol was told that the drug in question would not be available until the following Tuesday. The day after Labor Day. That left me with Acetaminophen. In my mind, it was not really a good choice for someone like me who had had at least the edge of his liver cut away. There were warnings on the bottle stating that using so many pills in a certain time frame might cause liver damage. Other than the bit of cancer detected a month earlier, my liver was working quite well, thank you very much.

Pain was managed with the idea that maybe a miracle would occur, and the pills prescribed by the doctor would magically appear.

No miracles, but I was able to make it through the Labor Day weekend with just a little bit of problem. One problem averted by not having the narcotic was the constipation associated with narcotic use. Certainly I could tough it out until the following Monday when I was scheduled to see Dr. Palanisamy for my follow-up visit.

There were a couple of problems that caught me by surprise.

Since I was told not to lift anything over 20 pounds, I ran into a problem with the bed. One of the tasks I have set myself was to wash the sheets and make the bed on Fridays. Something I had noted was that the mattress tended to slip off to one side over the course of the week. It was no big deal for me to bounce the mattress off to one side while making the bed. With the weight restriction, I decided to ask Carol to make the correction when she got back from her job.

Well, I forgot.

In the middle of the night when I was attempting to get up to use the bathroom and let the dog out to do her business, I fell out of bed with the mattress coming down on top of me. It took me about five minutes to get up, have Carol put the mattress back on the bed, do what I had originally planned to do, and get back to bed.

On the chair in the living room.

I was thankful at the time, knowing that it could have been worse. I had passed a major hurdle with no other hurdles in sight between me and my visit with the oncologist.

I almost made it to that visit unscathed.

Almost…

[1] The name of the store and the name of the vendor of the bed are withheld. I don’t want any trouble.

My Cancer Journey VI

For those of you following this blog, my apologies for not posting last week as previously scheduled. It was the Christmas thing. Now that we’re past that, let’s continue…

Showtime!

I had a leisurely drive from the house to the hospital for pre-admission testing, including blood work (every time I see someone, they want blood work) and an EKG to make sure that my heart was running as well as it should have. The process took less time to accomplish than the drive over and back to the hospital.

My appointment for surgery was a bit more complicated to say the least. It included pre-packaging what I needed and what I thought I needed for the overnight. Included in the backpack I took were a change of clothes (including a Savannah Bananas T-Shirt) along with the phone and the computer.

We arrived in the wee hours of Monday morning with my deductible. After taking care of the usual paperwork (accomplished mostly at home over the weekend), we went to the day surgery waiting room where I was called almost immediately.

Most of what went on after that was routine. Blood pressure, blood work, an IV inserted into my hand for what they would give me to go to sleep.

The nurse asked if I had any questions. I asked her to remind me to ask The surgeon his choice of Cincinnati chili joints. She told me that her preference was Skyline. She hailed from Northern Kentucky and knew the chili well.

I finally had the opportunity to ask the surgeon the same question. Skyline.

Unanimous.

The anesthesiologist paid me a visit. Nice young woman. I was impressed. No choice of chili, but I won’t hold it against her.

Came the time, I got enough of a buzz from the initial part of the anesthesia. I wasn’t completely out until after I was shoved over on the operating table and was breathing through a mask.

About two hours later, I was whisked out of recovery. Got to the room and almost immediately threw up what little I had in my stomach into a handy wastebasket.

Got moving way too fast.

Turns out that the operation took a little longer than the time initially allotted due to the scar tissue I warned the surgeon about. He got even by making me stay overnight instead of letting me go home.[1]

The dog Filbrix needed my attention. I missed her, too.

Post-operative instructions were issued when I was settled to a certain extent. No lifting, no sex, no… well, there were doubtless others to deal with as well as dealing with the pain. Even though the procedure I had to remove my gall bladder was basically the same as the procedure to go after the few cancer cells on my liver, there was a huge difference in the pain that I felt in the hours after the operation.

The biggest change was the pain in my shoulders. In the more recent procedure, there was none. Nada. Zip.

The first time the pain was definitely there, due to the fact that the procedure was to inflate the body cavity with gas while the surgeon did his thing. Gas may or may not have been used this time around. I didn’t bother to ask.

After getting settled in, Carol went back to the house to assure the dog Filbrix while I tried to settle down to rest… oh fudge! I need to use the bathroom!

Being sixty-nine, the nurses in the hospital would not just let me jump up, go to the restroom, and lay back down in bed. Something having to do with falling.

Falling for someone my age can be downright hazardous. Statistics lend one to believe that falling is a major cause of death among those of us on the high side of sixty. Baylor Hospital takes that statistic seriously, requiring me to use a walker under the supervision of a nurse just to take the five steps to the bathroom.

I wasn’t about to argue with the policy. I was in enough pain already, besides, the nurses there were sympathetic to my plight. By the clever use of a walker, some assistance from a nurse, and some clever stepping on my part, I was able to accomplish my mission with a minimum amount of fuss.

Several times.

Through the rest of the day into night.

And a long night as well.

Over the years, I developed the habit of sleeping on my stomach or in a fetal position, usually on my left side. There have been times when I was forced to sleep on my back, but I did not do so willingly. Overnight in Baylor was one of those times when I did not do so willingly.

Same thing when I was staying overnight in Baylor when a surgeon did the resection of my rectum a couple of years earlier.

This time I was closer to the nurse’s station – but more importantly I was just across the hall from the nurse’s break room. One or more of the nurses had a husband who prepared a meal for her that she would warm up in the microwave at odd hours day or night. I might have begged for something for myself had my appetite been a bit keener or if I hadn’t been on some type of narcotic pain killer. Between the various diversions, I didn’t get much sleep.

Carol came by after breakfast to pick me up to take me home. When we were almost to the point of leaving, I got dressed in a Savannah Bananas T-Shirt matching the one Carol was wearing.[2]

Naturally, there were hoops to go through before discharge, including drawing blood and the usual rigamarole with getting my vital signs. Too, there was the matter of taking out the lines used to feed my anesthesia and whatever else they wanted to pump into my body.

That’s right, I said lines. When the initial line was put in, I was told that there might be another line in the other hand when I woke up from the surgery. Lo and behold, that’s what I found when I woke up. A second line waiting to be tapped.

It never was.

I thought that when I was told that they were going to take a blood sample before my discharge, they would do the convenient thing and use the second line in my hand as a collection point. Instead, there was yet another collection done on the inside of my elbow. Where I had donated blood to the lab on previous occasions and where I donated whole blood back in the day before I became ill.

Both lines were removed and I was finally discharged.

I can’t help but to think of the line on M*A*S*H that Major Winchester uttered when finding a rubber chicken in his coffee pot: “Get me the hell out of here!”

Don’t get me wrong. The people working in the trenches of Baylor, Scott and White are the very best I have encountered. Love ‘em to death. But I’d rather be at home.

[1] The surgeon told me going in that he kept his patients overnight when we had our initial consultation. It wasn’t a surprise.

[2] The Savannah Bananas is a baseball team… the baseball equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters. I purchased the shirts prior to a trip we made a few months earlier to visit my daughter, Sarah, in Savannah.

My Cancer Journey IV

Life in Temporary Limbo

For the better part of three weeks, I had to wait out the machinations behind the scenes at various doctors offices and the insurance company handling my Medicare account.

There really wasn’t much to do except try to live my life as best I could, taking care of what I needed to take care of to keep the household running. It was during this period that I made the decision to keep track of my disease and post what I could on the internet.

I started with a couple of synopsis on Facebook. I started with a remark about missing the Trifecta, followed by a more complete recap on the Sunday following the news from The Oncologist. I ended the entry with a bit of serendipity:

“The next steps include an MRI, a visit with a different surgeon, and an appointment with the Oncologist – probably after the surgeon goes fishing in my body for a sample.

The first couple of weeks in August will probably be quite interesting.

I am upbeat.

If I ended up having to have Chemotherapy, I could pretend that I’m Lex Luthor![1]

Not to minimize some of the battles other people of my acquaintance have had with “The Big C.” Cancer is a big deal. I am thankful that my journey so far has been as easy as it has been.”

And so it goes.

I took the time to write in my personal blog space courtesy of WordPress at bdharrellauthor.com, too. I did two entries at WordPress in relatively short order. The first was a recap of my situation. The second was more of a reflection.

Cancer, it appears, runs in the family.

My father died of a Melanoma that migrated to his brain less than six months after his 71^st birthday.

My mother developed throat cancer and died at the tender age of 86.

My maternal grandfather also had throat cancer, but he died just short of his 93^rd birthday.

Mom’s sister died of a massive stroke while she was under treatment for cancer – Dad’s sister had cancer and survived several years before she passed.

I pointed out that I was just 69 with aspirations of living to the ripe old age of 102, killed by a jealous lover.

Another part of the blog was about the connection of tobacco use and cancer. My parents both smoked – Mom quit when she was 40, Dad never really did quit. Mom’s sister and my maternal grandfather both used tobacco. I used tobacco myself until I was thirty-nine.

******

Aside from my forays on the web, I had other concerns. The Dog Filbrix[2], for example, was due for a trip to the vet. On the day I took her, I got a call from the people doing the MRI getting me set up for the first day in August at the ungodly hour of 6:30 in the morning. It was one of those “I have to take it” deals because of the call I got a day or two earlier setting up an appointment to see the surgeon on the seventh.

I wasn’t complaining.

To be scheduled to see a surgeon less than three weeks after the consultation telling me that there was something on my liver appeared (to me) to be rather quick. I was asymptomatic and had no idea that something was wrong, other than being told by the Oncologist that there was something wrong.

And that says a lot about early detection.

Many people wait until there’s a problem, or a number of problems before going to see a doctor and finding out that they have a bigger problem than the one they bargained for. At the time I’m writing this (Early November) I have been following the case of a friend in Ohio who was having trouble sleeping to begin with, along with several other problems at the same time. Eventually (over a period of several months) he was diagnosed with and will be undergoing treatment for Stage 3 lung cancer. His case will come up later as I blog my own experiences.

While I was waiting for the new MRI and my visit with the surgeon, I developed a set of questions to be asked at the appropriate time. I also started to look at what was happening to, or around me, with a sense of humor.

Humor is a defense mechanism I employ quite often. Humor helps to take the edge off.

In my personal library is the book Humor Works, written by John Morreall, Ph.D. (HRD Press Inc. 1997 – ISBN 0-87425-400-0), generously donated by my Mother-In-Law a few years ago. The book confirms that humor can take the edge off a tricky situation for some of us.

I am one of those people.

Being an old fart, I’m allowed.

[1] After writing this entry into my Facebook feed, I found that the current generation of people are not familiar with Superman’s nemesis, Lex Luthor. If it is of any help, perhaps I should bring up a different character. Doctor Evil, as portrayed by Mike Meyers in the Austin Powers movies.

[2] I refer to The Dog Filbrix as The Dog Filbrix because of my daughter. She became enamored of a friend’s small dog, referring to it as The Dog Aderick. She was three, maybe four at the time. Filbrix is on me. When I was a youngster at about the same age, I had a stuffed dog I named Filbrix for some unknown reason. I will have more about the dog Filbrix later on in this narrative.

Photo = My not still 4-year-old daughter and the dog Filbrix

Round Two

Sorry.

I’ve been away from my desk for most of the last month due to a battery of medical visits and a row with the insurance company. Well, yes, I had some other concerns as well. More on that later.

July is one of those months when I need to visit at least two doctors and go get a test for the third.

I went in for labs for the first doctor’s visit (my primary care physician) a week before seeing him. I could call him a right, jolly elf because of his stature and his demeanor, but that would be unkind of me. Over the past several years, I have come to respect him. He’s a good man who gave me a clean bill of health.

Two days after going in for labs for my PCP, I had labs in anticipation of a CAT scan that happened a couple of hours after seeing my PCP. I had an appointment to see the Doctor who had ordered the CAT scan a week after having it done. The day after the appointment to see my PCP and to have the CAT scan, I had an MRI for the third doctor – the surgeon who did a quick resection of part of my rectum because of a small bit of localized cancer found when I had a colonoscopy two years ago. All three doctors have been keeping an eye on me – promising that they would do so for five years after the initial discovery of the mass on my rectum.

With a clean bill of health from my PCP and nothing said by the surgeon ordering the MRI, I presumed that my visit with the Oncologist would be the third part of a trifecta of good news from the medical establishment.

As Maxwell Smart would say, “Missed it by that much!”

Apparently, the Oncologist and the radiologist she used for the CAT scan found something suspicious on my liver.

So, apparently, I’m off to round two.

The Oncologist has ordered a new MRI, followed a week later with a visit with a different surgeon, followed by… well, I guess I’ll have to see what the surgeon has to say, first. The Oncologist and I are optimistic that this particular little bump in the road will be easily taken care of and that I will likely die at the age of 102 at the hand of a jealous lover.

There are a couple of things that I am/am not looking forward to. For one, I will likely have one more scar to add to my surgical scar collection. (Five so far, three in places where I’d rather not show – not including where I was circumcised.)

The other has to do with my hair.

Will treatment for the second round lead to the loss of hair on my head (so I can cosplay Lex Luthor), and if it does, will I lose hair on other parts of my body (so I can fit in better with folks at a naturist resort)?

Another consideration – if I am going to lose the hair on my head, should I get a haircut first?

So many questions. I’ll catch up on the possibilities later.

As far as the other stuff I mentioned at the top of the page, well, I won.

The insurance claim I had from the windstorm on the first of March has finally been resolved.

I finally had the last word with the company that sold me the solar panels on my roof.

And the dog Filbrix is in good health according to the vet.

The only outstanding problem has to do with hundred-degree temperatures. Thankfully, the air conditioner still works. Otherwise, no problems.

Be Seeing You!

bdharrellauthor

Ramblings from an old fart (with occasional references to the dog Filbrix)

Tag: Cancer