Free at last, free at last…

I’ve been so covered up in love and well wishes and support these days that it’s given me a case of the lazies. I guess I get this 6 month cancer sabbatical to do whatever I want and from the way it looks what I want to do is eat Snickers bites, make high-fat homemade ice cream, moisturize my newly bald head, and be lavished with fawning attention. Seriously, I’ve been posting funny little quips to Facebook since 2008 and have never gotten more than a few comments, so having my phone ding every 15 seconds with a “lookin good!” or “glad you’re so well!” comment after posting a few posed and touched up photos in homage to my hair makes me feel very popular. I just hope I can stay the same humble, grounded, balanced local celebrity I’ve always been and not turn into some narcissistic “I have cancer look at me” attention whore. That would be tacky. I think. Maybe.

(Smiles. Waves. Smiles.)

So they unhook me from that coatrack-looking-poison-giving-bitch Brenda, pack up my biopsy wound (which I refer to as my vagina, much to my mother’s horror, because of how the skin looks around it), and tell me to get the hell out of Emory and not come back for 2 weeks. Great! Fine! I’m ready to be out of there anyway! Peace out bitches! I’m ready to go home and sleep in my normal 700 thread count sheets (ok, normal for a princess), eat normal food (well, have my fabulous friend Chef Gena Berry cook beautiful food for me), sit in flattering lighting, and smell my home-smell (not that chemically antiseptic hospital smell!). I’m ready to be away from poking and prodding nurses who want to take my vital signs every few hours, give me wee fistfulls of pills to take, and hook me up to toxic chemicals. I’m especially ready to start peeing into a toilet instead of a plastic container that is measured, recorded, and has to be emptied every few hours! Yup folks… first there was shit talk and now there is pee talk. Classy.

So they were giving me continuous fluid the whole time I was there and I was drinking tons of water to get rid of the metallic taste in my mouth, so of course I was peeing every 20 minutes. I have to say it was a little bit humiliating to have to ask for a second container to fill. It was also less than delightful to have to ask whichever nurse or tech who came into the room to “please empty my urine buckets if you wouldn’t mind, I’ve filled them.” Most underwhelming of all was to learn that my urine is toxic waste and had to be handled with care, so these nurses/techs had to armor up when doing this job. I can’t share a bathroom with anyone for awhile because of the aerosol effect of the chemo in my urine. Not even at home. Gross.

So anyway, home was like heaven and I was glad to be there. I was also glad to send away each and every visitor so I could finally have some privacy! I know everyone loves me and wants to care for me and that’s great and all… but in my normal life I just like to sit around by myself in my place sometimes. Alone. WIth nobody. No visitors. Sometimes naked even. You just can’t do that with a lot of people around and it was really getting on my nerves. Ahhh… woo sah…

“Alright, now that you’ve had your few minutes of privacy let’s get back to work, we’ve got wound care to attend to!”

OMG my parents were so excited about wound care! When we discovered that this foul, leaky, biopsy wound needed serious attention and they finally had a concrete project to work on, mom and dad sprang into action! Seriously, there was a wooshing noise and everything! That first night I was at home from the hospital my desk was suddenly littered with a huge box of rubber gloves, face masks, wound wash saline, tape, bandages, gauze, and of course a cornucopia of medications to take. Especially oxycodone, since clearly this minor surgery I was meant to have twice/day for the next week was going to hurt like hell and it would be criminal to feel any pain. I don’t mean that to sound unkind, I’m really very grateful that they were there and willing to do all that they did, but the whole thing just kinda creeped me out a bit. Let me explain the process:

1.) Patient takes 1-2 oxycodone and waits 30 minutes for them to kick in. Drug addict.
2.) Shower and wash nasty, oozing, misplaced vaginal opening with soap and water. Gross.
3.) Lay back on plastic sheet/sterile area on my bed that mom prepared while she and dad glove up and mask up.
4.) Strategically place towel over man-area, exposing only the upper groin area, revealing the smallest possible part of an area that has been carefully hidden from parents since diapers. Fabulous.
5.) Dad squirts saline into the wound, mom swabs it out, dad squirts again and dries it, mom packs medicated gauze into the gaping hole in patient’s goin, applies neosporin. Not humiliating at all. Nope. Not even a little bit.
6.) Patient ignores accidental stray fingers, focuses on text messaging, Facebook, phone calls, the ceiling, Sarah Palin, ANYTHING.
7.) All involved laugh uncomfortably.
8.) Patient is bandaged up and sits still for several minutes, remains in towel, mentally as far far far away from the experience as possible.
9.) Repeat twice/day for a week until parents leave and close male physician friend can finally take over.

(Shudder!)

Good bye dignity. Good bye privacy. Good bye remaining thoughts of self as sexy. Hello cadaver! I mean, I’m just a patient now so the body is only there to be medicated and poked at now right? Surrender to the treatment; you need it to get better even though you never felt sick in the first place!

(Aaack!)

Again I don’t want to be unkind because all of my caregivers (especially my parents!) are doing their best to have good humor and give me as much dignity as possible, and they are doing a really great job; but the process is all just so dehumanizing. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s deeply human and the lesson here is that our bodies are just not that special and don’t deserve all of the hoopla we go through to achieve modesty. I dunno, I’m just very very very glad to be writing this today, not needing that level of care anymore.

(Shudder!)

Ok, follow up care. In between these 5 day inpatient hospitalizations there are 2 week periods of rest when I am meant to be “bouncing back” from chemotherapy. During this time I am meant to go in to the outpatient cancer center for follow up care to check labs, see the PA, see the MD, see the transplant nurse, to get human growth hormone injections (Neulasta?) to build up the stem cells in my bone marrow, to get an additional infusion of vickychristinabarcelona, and for them to tell me that I need to isolate myself away from germs and infection. This also gives us something concrete to do while I’m busy not working my usual 50-60 hours/week and trying to have a social life. Super fun. Not really.

Ok, I do mean for this next part to be unkind, so brace yourself boo.

Why oh why must this clinic be filled with sickly looking ugly old people? I mean really, this is Emory right? I’m at the bloody Gucci of cancer centers of the south, is it too much to ask that people have some style? Don’t get me wrong I’m definitely down with “the people” and don’t mind that people look or dress any old way when I’m a healthcare provider in the emergency room at my my ghetto-ass hospital or at my outpatient clinic, but when I’m a patient I want to be surrounded by my peers. I want people to dress cute. I want to see good hair, or at least good hats. I want people to smile… or at least give a good Zoolander blue steele. I want people to walk like they’re on a runway, not shuffle with their heads down sighing heavily. I don’t ever want to see an embroidered sweater with a ceramic broach pinned on it. I don’t ever want to see a grown man walking around in stock car racing themed pajama pants in public. I don’t ever want to see a Members Only jacket worn without any sense of irony. I know it’s cancer people, but it’s fucking unnecessarily depressing. Come on!

(Smiles. Waves. Smiles.)

Whew! Ok, I know that makes me a total asshole, but I’m all about honesty here and it had to be said. If I’m gonna keep my head up, my face moisturized, and my clothes cute for everybody else I don’t think it’s too much to ask the other patients to do me the same courtesy. I don’t want people to look at me and think “Oh how sad, he has cancer AND he looks a hot mess.” That feels like schtick to me and if there is anything that Tabatha Coffey’s Salon Makeover has taught me, schtick is bad there are much more positive ways to get attention and be ok.

Such an ass. Such an ass. Such an ass. I’m definitely going to hell…. but not for a really really long time from now. After I kick cancer’s ass. Right.

(Smiles. Waves. Smiles.)

Ok dears, I’m done with this for today. Time to do some yoga and maybe read a little Deepak Chopra to cleanse my aura. Namaste!