I just had a very difficult time making it back to my bed, where I've spent most of the day. Earlier, the big stem cell transplant took place, and I'll describe that whole process eventually.
As for now, more sleep is on my docket. More later...
R
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Bach on the Eve of the Transplant
I wrote before about how I know nothing about Greek music. That is true. I know almost as little about the realm of classical music. Don't get me wrong--I've listened extensively to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and his complete harpsichord pieces, as well as Shostakovich and Mozart and all of what you'd expect me to say. But that's the thing, though: I've only listened. In White Men Can't Jump lingo, I've listened but not heard.
Earlier, I was watching House (like I do), but I was truly transfixed by one of the patients playing a Dvorak concerto. I'm not sure if it actually was a Dvorak piece, but I was stunned nonetheless, and was moved enough to listen to Bach's cello suites. I actually had these in my iTunes already, but, again, I had listened but not heard.
As you might be able to guess, I'm in a plaintive mood. Tomorrow's the big stem cell transplant day, and I have decided to relax. Usually, this would mean some Astral Weeks by Van Morrison or even some Magic & Loss or something else by Lou Reed, but I've decided to retreat to classical music, and Bach in particular.
In college, I wrote extensively about the transformational powers of popular music, and I still stand by Lou Reed's credo, that "I was made for rock 'n' roll." Lest we forget, though, in his terrific song "Women", he sings the line, "play a little Bach for us, and then we make love." Plus, we mustn't forget that Reed, although he may plead ignorance and at times assert cool passivity toward certain classical music, is actually well versed in the sweeping constraints--not an oxymoron--of it. You need only listen to Street Hassle's "Street Hassle," and I think the point is made.
Occasionally, often even, I'll shrug off classical music as a pretentious staple of academia. I'm not totally wrong in thinking this, but I would be a liar if I didn't say that some of it is really mesmerizing. As I listen now to Bach, I almost feel myself slipping into such pompous reverie. This is the problem with music journalism. One feels that one has to adopt an attitude and stick with it. You can't alter your pose, or else you might lose some bullshit street-cred that you think you've amassed, either with regard to pop or even classical. One posture is snotty and the other is snooty. The two ethos actually sprout from the same stance of blind idiocy.
The truth is, though, that there comes a time when beauty cannot be denied. In the same way, you don't have to sneer at classical music for the sake of rock. Three chords may be all you need, but arpeggios sometimes add that certain something that's missing. Like a pinch of paprika can make all the difference in a messy dish, a touch of cello can enliven a previously dead array of notes. I think we can all agree that Bach's Brandenburg Concertos translate into absolute bliss. If you take a closer look inside his oeuvre, or "cookbook," I promise you that more wonder lies underneath. And don't say you're bored, because you'll then be a real boor.
So shake off the attitude, get a little more receptive, and rock with some Bach, not unlike Falco did with Mozart. I'll do the same, and revel in the washes of his Cello Suites.
If you're not up to the challenge, then go fuck yourself. See--I can still strike a pose with the best of 'em.
R
--If you are not watching President Barack Obama on Letterman right now, you should be pummeled. If you can't, catch it later.
Earlier, I was watching House (like I do), but I was truly transfixed by one of the patients playing a Dvorak concerto. I'm not sure if it actually was a Dvorak piece, but I was stunned nonetheless, and was moved enough to listen to Bach's cello suites. I actually had these in my iTunes already, but, again, I had listened but not heard.
As you might be able to guess, I'm in a plaintive mood. Tomorrow's the big stem cell transplant day, and I have decided to relax. Usually, this would mean some Astral Weeks by Van Morrison or even some Magic & Loss or something else by Lou Reed, but I've decided to retreat to classical music, and Bach in particular.
In college, I wrote extensively about the transformational powers of popular music, and I still stand by Lou Reed's credo, that "I was made for rock 'n' roll." Lest we forget, though, in his terrific song "Women", he sings the line, "play a little Bach for us, and then we make love." Plus, we mustn't forget that Reed, although he may plead ignorance and at times assert cool passivity toward certain classical music, is actually well versed in the sweeping constraints--not an oxymoron--of it. You need only listen to Street Hassle's "Street Hassle," and I think the point is made.
Occasionally, often even, I'll shrug off classical music as a pretentious staple of academia. I'm not totally wrong in thinking this, but I would be a liar if I didn't say that some of it is really mesmerizing. As I listen now to Bach, I almost feel myself slipping into such pompous reverie. This is the problem with music journalism. One feels that one has to adopt an attitude and stick with it. You can't alter your pose, or else you might lose some bullshit street-cred that you think you've amassed, either with regard to pop or even classical. One posture is snotty and the other is snooty. The two ethos actually sprout from the same stance of blind idiocy.
The truth is, though, that there comes a time when beauty cannot be denied. In the same way, you don't have to sneer at classical music for the sake of rock. Three chords may be all you need, but arpeggios sometimes add that certain something that's missing. Like a pinch of paprika can make all the difference in a messy dish, a touch of cello can enliven a previously dead array of notes. I think we can all agree that Bach's Brandenburg Concertos translate into absolute bliss. If you take a closer look inside his oeuvre, or "cookbook," I promise you that more wonder lies underneath. And don't say you're bored, because you'll then be a real boor.
So shake off the attitude, get a little more receptive, and rock with some Bach, not unlike Falco did with Mozart. I'll do the same, and revel in the washes of his Cello Suites.
If you're not up to the challenge, then go fuck yourself. See--I can still strike a pose with the best of 'em.
R
--If you are not watching President Barack Obama on Letterman right now, you should be pummeled. If you can't, catch it later.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Embrace the Bombast!
This is/was my last day of intensive chemotherapy, and it started out relatively rough. I blame the change in sleeping pill options that I tried for the first time last night. Previously, I had taken Ambien, which really did nothing to readjust my nocturnality. Last night, though, I took Restoril, and experienced the opposite end of the spectrum. Whereas Ambien did nothing for me, Restoril wiped me out for the bulk of today. I could hardly stay awake throughout the Bears' dramatic 17-14 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, last year's Super Bowl Champions. Somewhere near the end of that game, I emerged from underneath the Librium-esque zombie coma that had rendered me inert for most of the day.
Then something clicked when Robbie Gould kicked the game-winning field goal. So I'm still an unrepentant Bears fan. However, for some reason I maintained my enthusiasm throughout the evening, and even became ecstatic when I watched the Dallas Cowboys' first regular-season game against the New York Giants. I've never, contrary to what you might think, hated the Cowboys. In fact, I like almost all steam-rolling professional teams, with the only glaring exceptions being the Detroit Red Wings (who I've come to tolerate because the city is an utter shithole beyond redemption, like Gary) and the Boston Red Sox. This started with the indomitable dual three-peats of the Chicago Bulls in the '90s, led by the immaculate Michael Jordan. Even later, with the repeated runs of the New York Yankees, I admired the team's prowess. I still hate the Red Sox, though, so I'm not completely willing to embrace certain successful franchises.
One would think I'd hate the Dallas Cowboys, even more now that they have a new stadium that looks like the Titanic. That's the thing, though: I don't. I don't love the Cowboys, but I appreciate and subtly embrace the hoopla and deafening enthusiasm of the fans and its team. I felt sorry a little bit for Jordin Sparks, whose rendition of the National Anthem could scarcely be heard amid the ambient white noise of the stadium, but she thrust her booming and piercing voice through the static as well as she, or anyone, could. From camera shots overhead, the new Cowboys stadium looks absolutely, well, crazy. It's huge. It dominates the landscape, and from the inside some of the upper tiers resemble the ill-fated Tower of Babel. But that's the thing that makes the NFL great: the enthusiasm of the fans and their embrace of the bombastic. Seriously, that stadium is a monster, and this says nothing of the over-the-top HD jumboscreen that hangs over the field.
This all sounds like the height of American extravagance, and it is. But it's only around for a little more than four months, which is more than enough time to marvel at it, and not nearly enough to gape at it and fall down, dizzy and disoriented. This is the NFL, not the endless and, honestly, tedious MLB. I'd take 16 mind-blowing football games versus 162 wearisome, and ultimately meaningless when taken in small chunks, ones that comprise the baseball season. The fanfare, the enthusiasm of the fans, and the explosive but still safe--safe, I'll say it again, because the behavior of football fans is not nearly as boorish as that of MLB enthusiasts--atmosphere of an NFL game is enough to reduce me to a drooling mess not unlike, to quote Patton Oswalt, that of "a retarded kid with a sparkler."
In the same way, I'm now enthralled with the sounds of Greece. LNE is a tremendous guide through this realm of foreign music that I know nothing about. I've learned not to fear the strange, though--I mean this in the xenophobic sense, and not just "weird." A few nights ago, she played some song by Manos Loizos, and I fell into a fugue state. Mind you--I know almost no Greek. I know some curse words LNE taught me, and I occasionally laugh when I stub my toe and blurt out, "Malaka!" The entire pictographic language looks like just that--pictographs--to me. Last week she showed me what she was reading, and I thought that maybe it was a horrible Jonathan Safran-Foer book (again--redundant). Lo and behold, though, it was in Greek. Now, it's not that I'm unwilling to learn; it's that I can pinpoint and recognize my limitations. I'll never be able to play the violin, or perform a tuck from a 50-foot-tall diving board, or read Greek. You know the old aphorism, "It's Greek to me!"? After perusing her book of what looked to me like an assortment of crazed doodles, this has never been more of a literal cliche for me.
Nevertheless, I don't speak Portuguese, and that hasn't stopped me from listening to, and loving, Os Mutantes. In the same way, now I think I'm standing on the edge of a rabbit hole that will lead me to music from Greece. Again, I have no idea what's being sung, and I'll definitely have to find translations, but the vertiginous scales and the remarkable aptitude/exactitude of the musicians boggles my mind. It is truly impressive.
I'm listening now to this link LNE sent me that plays a song featured on The Wire, Stelios Kazantzidis's "Efuge, Efuge." It's so good that I easily forget my Latin caveat (another redundancy, I know), paraphrased from Virgil's "Aeneid": "I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts."
I implore you: embrace the bombast, even if it might overwhelm you at first. This means acceptance, with respect to the Cowboys, and full approbation of trilling (in a good way) Grecian scales.
You just have to, as the Tom Waits song says, which is also The Wire's theme song, "keep the devil way down in the hole." But this doesn't mean you should shrink from going in, too.
Plus, baklava is awesome, and should really bridge the divide and become a staple Sunday football snack. Blasphemy, you say? Too difficult? A little too much?
Maybe, but you must embrace the bombast!
R
Then something clicked when Robbie Gould kicked the game-winning field goal. So I'm still an unrepentant Bears fan. However, for some reason I maintained my enthusiasm throughout the evening, and even became ecstatic when I watched the Dallas Cowboys' first regular-season game against the New York Giants. I've never, contrary to what you might think, hated the Cowboys. In fact, I like almost all steam-rolling professional teams, with the only glaring exceptions being the Detroit Red Wings (who I've come to tolerate because the city is an utter shithole beyond redemption, like Gary) and the Boston Red Sox. This started with the indomitable dual three-peats of the Chicago Bulls in the '90s, led by the immaculate Michael Jordan. Even later, with the repeated runs of the New York Yankees, I admired the team's prowess. I still hate the Red Sox, though, so I'm not completely willing to embrace certain successful franchises.
One would think I'd hate the Dallas Cowboys, even more now that they have a new stadium that looks like the Titanic. That's the thing, though: I don't. I don't love the Cowboys, but I appreciate and subtly embrace the hoopla and deafening enthusiasm of the fans and its team. I felt sorry a little bit for Jordin Sparks, whose rendition of the National Anthem could scarcely be heard amid the ambient white noise of the stadium, but she thrust her booming and piercing voice through the static as well as she, or anyone, could. From camera shots overhead, the new Cowboys stadium looks absolutely, well, crazy. It's huge. It dominates the landscape, and from the inside some of the upper tiers resemble the ill-fated Tower of Babel. But that's the thing that makes the NFL great: the enthusiasm of the fans and their embrace of the bombastic. Seriously, that stadium is a monster, and this says nothing of the over-the-top HD jumboscreen that hangs over the field.
This all sounds like the height of American extravagance, and it is. But it's only around for a little more than four months, which is more than enough time to marvel at it, and not nearly enough to gape at it and fall down, dizzy and disoriented. This is the NFL, not the endless and, honestly, tedious MLB. I'd take 16 mind-blowing football games versus 162 wearisome, and ultimately meaningless when taken in small chunks, ones that comprise the baseball season. The fanfare, the enthusiasm of the fans, and the explosive but still safe--safe, I'll say it again, because the behavior of football fans is not nearly as boorish as that of MLB enthusiasts--atmosphere of an NFL game is enough to reduce me to a drooling mess not unlike, to quote Patton Oswalt, that of "a retarded kid with a sparkler."
In the same way, I'm now enthralled with the sounds of Greece. LNE is a tremendous guide through this realm of foreign music that I know nothing about. I've learned not to fear the strange, though--I mean this in the xenophobic sense, and not just "weird." A few nights ago, she played some song by Manos Loizos, and I fell into a fugue state. Mind you--I know almost no Greek. I know some curse words LNE taught me, and I occasionally laugh when I stub my toe and blurt out, "Malaka!" The entire pictographic language looks like just that--pictographs--to me. Last week she showed me what she was reading, and I thought that maybe it was a horrible Jonathan Safran-Foer book (again--redundant). Lo and behold, though, it was in Greek. Now, it's not that I'm unwilling to learn; it's that I can pinpoint and recognize my limitations. I'll never be able to play the violin, or perform a tuck from a 50-foot-tall diving board, or read Greek. You know the old aphorism, "It's Greek to me!"? After perusing her book of what looked to me like an assortment of crazed doodles, this has never been more of a literal cliche for me.
Nevertheless, I don't speak Portuguese, and that hasn't stopped me from listening to, and loving, Os Mutantes. In the same way, now I think I'm standing on the edge of a rabbit hole that will lead me to music from Greece. Again, I have no idea what's being sung, and I'll definitely have to find translations, but the vertiginous scales and the remarkable aptitude/exactitude of the musicians boggles my mind. It is truly impressive.
I'm listening now to this link LNE sent me that plays a song featured on The Wire, Stelios Kazantzidis's "Efuge, Efuge." It's so good that I easily forget my Latin caveat (another redundancy, I know), paraphrased from Virgil's "Aeneid": "I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts."
I implore you: embrace the bombast, even if it might overwhelm you at first. This means acceptance, with respect to the Cowboys, and full approbation of trilling (in a good way) Grecian scales.
You just have to, as the Tom Waits song says, which is also The Wire's theme song, "keep the devil way down in the hole." But this doesn't mean you should shrink from going in, too.
Plus, baklava is awesome, and should really bridge the divide and become a staple Sunday football snack. Blasphemy, you say? Too difficult? A little too much?
Maybe, but you must embrace the bombast!
R
Patrick Swayze: The King of Basic Cable
Now that my fourth day of chemotherapy has passed, without incident, I feel content enough to reflect on the death of Patrick Swayze. I have a new-new nurse tonight, so I might seem preoccupied because I can see that my bag of urine is getting more and more tumescent. Still, I thought a respite from concern would do me well, and I recently finished watching Point Break again. This is the second time it's been on today, but I think that after the numerous problems I had with my old catheter, as well as the expected travails that go along with this stint in the hospital--like what I perceive to be my atrophying leg muscles due to my limited mobility, now not specifically a symptom of the MS but an added nuisance afforded by my reluctance to deal with the tangle of cords that coil out from my IV tree, which has grown from a fledgling sprout to an overgrown evergreen on the lawn of a senile old cat woman (how's that for a colossal mid-sentence digression?)--I deserve to bloviate a bit on two Patrick Swayze movies that I cannot help but watch whenever I come across them on cable: Point Break or, better yet, Road House. (The nurse just came in to switch my bag, so I'm good to go.)
Keanu Reeves is really the protagonist of Point Break. His truly horrible acting is at the forefront of the movie--replete with timelessly bad deliveries of lines like "I am an F-B-I agent!" or the hilarious "Vaya Con Dios..." at the end, when he uncuffs Swayze in order to allow him to ride one last deadly wave. However, it is Swayze's shaggy appearance and his unquotable surfer slang--I can't even count how many "brahs" he utters--that tempers my disdain for Keanu. In the end, when he rides that last wave to his certain demise, Agent Johnny Utah (Reeves) watches silently with regret, as we all do. I could go on some more about how that was how we should all remember Swayze, but that height of maudlin sentimentality I simply cannot scale. Instead, I turn to the hilarious camp and unrestrained violence that, if you think about it, typified a lot of '80s throwaway movies, but none quite like Road House.
Swayze plays Dalton, "the best cooler in the business." I know you're probably thinking that I must be mistaken, because William H. Macy was clearly the best cooler in the business. In fact, he was the "cooler" in The Cooler, but this is not a movie about gambling. Road House is about "The Double Deuce," a rollicking dive bar somewhere in the sticks of Missouri. Dalton is a head bouncer, the best there is, and somehow the guy in charge of the Missouri bar has heard of him, and wants him to calm his chaotic "Road House."
The place is really out of control, as Dalton observes the first time he enters the bar and drinks his coffee while fight after violent fight breaks out. This leads to a small aside here: Dalton evidently doesn't drink, not while he's working at least, but he chainsmokes like a '40s actor. Plus, he downs pot after pot of coffee, and that can't be good for the controlled movements of a Tai Chi practitioner like himself. We find this out later, as he does his Eastern thing on the lawn of the loft he rents across the lake from an evil Ben Gazzara, who wants to take over the town in an absurd gambit of rural domination. The "Double Deuce" is in a town in Missouri, but even they have laws, which Gazzara sidesteps without the finesse of Don Corleone. He hates the town, and its inhabitants, and at one point looks on with amused, quiet resignation while a fight breaks out one night, instigated by one of his disposable henchmen. Dalton eventually steps in to back up the reliably weathered-looking Sam Elliott, who plays Dalton's mentor and who calls him "amigo." And oh yeah--he falls in love with the doctor (the wannabe mother from Curly Sue who takes in Jim Belushi and his sort-of daughter, the title character) who stitches him up after he gets cut, to whom he says the unforgettably glib, but unforgettable nonetheless, "Pain don't hurt."
The movie ends with the "law" of the town, and several of his Keystone Cop-esque deputies, siding with Dalton in a humorously over-the-top battle royale at Gazzara's compound. Forget about the plot, because it is really forgettable next to Swayze's great quotes, which are too numerous to recount. Here are only a few of his gems: "I want you to be nice until it's time to not be nice," "Take the biggest guy in the world, shatter his knee, and he'll drop like a stone," "You're too stupid to have a good time," and the immortal "Pain don't hurt."
Forget about Ghost, which severely damaged the great song "Unchained Melody," in my opinion, or that other saccharine chick-flick that is unwatchable, at least for me--Dirty Dancing. When I was getting re-catheterized, I could only repeat one thing to myself mentally as I stared at the ceiling of my hospital room:
"Pain don't hurt."
R
Keanu Reeves is really the protagonist of Point Break. His truly horrible acting is at the forefront of the movie--replete with timelessly bad deliveries of lines like "I am an F-B-I agent!" or the hilarious "Vaya Con Dios..." at the end, when he uncuffs Swayze in order to allow him to ride one last deadly wave. However, it is Swayze's shaggy appearance and his unquotable surfer slang--I can't even count how many "brahs" he utters--that tempers my disdain for Keanu. In the end, when he rides that last wave to his certain demise, Agent Johnny Utah (Reeves) watches silently with regret, as we all do. I could go on some more about how that was how we should all remember Swayze, but that height of maudlin sentimentality I simply cannot scale. Instead, I turn to the hilarious camp and unrestrained violence that, if you think about it, typified a lot of '80s throwaway movies, but none quite like Road House.
Swayze plays Dalton, "the best cooler in the business." I know you're probably thinking that I must be mistaken, because William H. Macy was clearly the best cooler in the business. In fact, he was the "cooler" in The Cooler, but this is not a movie about gambling. Road House is about "The Double Deuce," a rollicking dive bar somewhere in the sticks of Missouri. Dalton is a head bouncer, the best there is, and somehow the guy in charge of the Missouri bar has heard of him, and wants him to calm his chaotic "Road House."
The place is really out of control, as Dalton observes the first time he enters the bar and drinks his coffee while fight after violent fight breaks out. This leads to a small aside here: Dalton evidently doesn't drink, not while he's working at least, but he chainsmokes like a '40s actor. Plus, he downs pot after pot of coffee, and that can't be good for the controlled movements of a Tai Chi practitioner like himself. We find this out later, as he does his Eastern thing on the lawn of the loft he rents across the lake from an evil Ben Gazzara, who wants to take over the town in an absurd gambit of rural domination. The "Double Deuce" is in a town in Missouri, but even they have laws, which Gazzara sidesteps without the finesse of Don Corleone. He hates the town, and its inhabitants, and at one point looks on with amused, quiet resignation while a fight breaks out one night, instigated by one of his disposable henchmen. Dalton eventually steps in to back up the reliably weathered-looking Sam Elliott, who plays Dalton's mentor and who calls him "amigo." And oh yeah--he falls in love with the doctor (the wannabe mother from Curly Sue who takes in Jim Belushi and his sort-of daughter, the title character) who stitches him up after he gets cut, to whom he says the unforgettably glib, but unforgettable nonetheless, "Pain don't hurt."
The movie ends with the "law" of the town, and several of his Keystone Cop-esque deputies, siding with Dalton in a humorously over-the-top battle royale at Gazzara's compound. Forget about the plot, because it is really forgettable next to Swayze's great quotes, which are too numerous to recount. Here are only a few of his gems: "I want you to be nice until it's time to not be nice," "Take the biggest guy in the world, shatter his knee, and he'll drop like a stone," "You're too stupid to have a good time," and the immortal "Pain don't hurt."
Forget about Ghost, which severely damaged the great song "Unchained Melody," in my opinion, or that other saccharine chick-flick that is unwatchable, at least for me--Dirty Dancing. When I was getting re-catheterized, I could only repeat one thing to myself mentally as I stared at the ceiling of my hospital room:
"Pain don't hurt."
R
Saturday, September 19, 2009
More Kvetching About My Catheter (aka Wanna Fight About It?) *I didn't realize this blatantly ripped off "Family Guy"
Last night, it became startlingly clear that the catheter I had had inserted was not going to work out. The one that I originally had was the product of other patients' bitching about the original's large size. I, though, am not Hank Hill, and my urethra can easily accommodate the evidently uncomfortably wide catheter that is Northwestern's favored method of invasive urine removal.
This stark fact grew even starker last night. My mother and brother came over to my hospital room and stayed to watch NBC's impressive Thursday prime-time lineup. Over the two hours that covered the broadcasts of the "Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday" edition, "Parks and Recreation," "The Office," and the new "Community," my catheter had been leaking unremittingly. On what looks like my version of a city dog's "Wee Wee Pad," a formidable stain had formed on my bed underneath my butt.
Something had to be done, because the plastic tubing through which my urine was supposed to flow and then empty into the translucent plastic bag did not show that a leak had sprung. I called the nurse's station, and it soon was obvious that the problem lay in the entry of the catheter into my urethra. As I said, the catheter I was given was Northwestern's own concoction. Several other patients had complained that it was too wide. They were wimps, as it turned out, and/or bitched that their puny urethrae (yeah, I still know my Latin--wanna fight about it?) could not handle the normal catheter that the hospital had on hand. Subsequently, the hospital assembled a thinner version. Unfortunately, it was insufficient for my formidable urethra.
Yeah, that's right. I have a wide urethra--wanna fight about it? Since it's normal, as I like to say humbly (and nobly, if I do say so myself), the measly, ramshackle one they gave to me leaked substantially enough for me to summon my nurse with a grand pounding of the red button that called the nurse's station. She taped up what she thought was a typical aperture around one of the valves. This did nothing to stop the deluge that emerged from my pee-hole and ended up on my Wee Pad. In the morning, it displayed the urine-al equivalent of the producer's bed whose sheets and comforter were covered in blood in The Godfather. I, like that man, am not made to look ridiculous, so I bothered the nurses again.
By this time, it was well past midnight, so they said that they would call my doctor in the morning. Until then, I packed my crotch with numerous towels. When I was finished, it looked like a sumo wrestler's diaper/wrap. Eventually, I fell asleep. Around like six. AM.
I woke up relatively at peace with my problem, but I knew that it would have to be dealt with. The issue reached its breaking point when my grandma and uncle came to visit in the afternoon. We watched some television and talked a bit. All the while, though, a puddle of urine had been forming and then expanding to such a diameter that I knew I could not ignore it. Since I had to eschew the underwear that I had worn the previous night, I had had to ask my mother, who stayed at my apartment in Logan Square, to bring me some shorts or underwear that I could wear. Unfortunately, there was no clean underwear there because I have been staying in her house in Indiana--another issue that I don't completely enjoy. The dogs are there, sure, but they have ceased to be entertaining and now just annoy me with their repeated demands to be let outside. If you give a mouse a cookie... Over the past two weeks, I've learned to ignore them, but Shadow's bark is so loud and cloying that sometimes it's impossible to do this.
But I digress. I told the nurses again about the problem, and they spoke with one of my doctors and finally ordered the regular catheter that had filled the other patients with immense trepidation (wimps--I'll say it again. Wanna fight about it?). Over the next few hours, I sat in what I described as the equivalent of a kiddie pool, only filled with urine as opposed to water. This is more accurate than you think, because since I had no clean underwear in my apartment, I had two choices: swimming trunks or washcloth-sized boxer briefs that either belonged to my lanky brother or to Anthony, who is slighter than Ryan even, so I didn't stand a chance with these wristband-sized pair of underwear. (This is not meant to be insulting; I can't help it if my junk won't fit into a Dixie cup. Wanna fight about it?)
After what seemed like an eternity filled with repeated deposits of urine onto the wee pad, the nurses finally came through with the normal/bigger catheter. I pulled off my trunks, which really did their job since they were bone-dry while the rest of the area around my core, as the yogis say, was drenched with piss. It was mostly clear, though, so it wasn't as disgusting as you'd think. Actually, it probably was, because the saline drip, as I've said, makes me pee a comically prodigious amount, and I definitely had not spilled a Big Gulp on my sheets.
At last, my nurses delivered the "real" catheter, and shoved it into my urethra with a disturbingly small amount of topical anesthetic. At least, that's what I thought. I've said it before, but I'd gladly take my chances with Michael Jackson's beloved Propofol when it comes to having a sword jammed into my pee-hole. But since then, my sheets have been drier than Mel Gibson on Easter (on second thought, this might not be a great comparison). I even felt masculine enough to buy Mariah Carey's cover of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is," at LNE's urging, admittedly. (By the way, we also perused the awesome mix I made for her upcoming marathon, and I must say, it is exactly that--awesome.)
As a matter of fact, I'm listening to it right now. Yeah, that's right, motherfucker--I like Mimi's cover of "I Want to Know What Love Is."
Wanna fight about it?
R
--Also, my nurse tonight is named "Sylvia," & I insisted on playing her the refrain of Lou Reed's "Heavenly Arms," which is, appropriately, "Syl-vi-i-i-uh-aaa," repeated three times. I'm like a pop music Rain Man.
This stark fact grew even starker last night. My mother and brother came over to my hospital room and stayed to watch NBC's impressive Thursday prime-time lineup. Over the two hours that covered the broadcasts of the "Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday" edition, "Parks and Recreation," "The Office," and the new "Community," my catheter had been leaking unremittingly. On what looks like my version of a city dog's "Wee Wee Pad," a formidable stain had formed on my bed underneath my butt.
Something had to be done, because the plastic tubing through which my urine was supposed to flow and then empty into the translucent plastic bag did not show that a leak had sprung. I called the nurse's station, and it soon was obvious that the problem lay in the entry of the catheter into my urethra. As I said, the catheter I was given was Northwestern's own concoction. Several other patients had complained that it was too wide. They were wimps, as it turned out, and/or bitched that their puny urethrae (yeah, I still know my Latin--wanna fight about it?) could not handle the normal catheter that the hospital had on hand. Subsequently, the hospital assembled a thinner version. Unfortunately, it was insufficient for my formidable urethra.
Yeah, that's right. I have a wide urethra--wanna fight about it? Since it's normal, as I like to say humbly (and nobly, if I do say so myself), the measly, ramshackle one they gave to me leaked substantially enough for me to summon my nurse with a grand pounding of the red button that called the nurse's station. She taped up what she thought was a typical aperture around one of the valves. This did nothing to stop the deluge that emerged from my pee-hole and ended up on my Wee Pad. In the morning, it displayed the urine-al equivalent of the producer's bed whose sheets and comforter were covered in blood in The Godfather. I, like that man, am not made to look ridiculous, so I bothered the nurses again.
By this time, it was well past midnight, so they said that they would call my doctor in the morning. Until then, I packed my crotch with numerous towels. When I was finished, it looked like a sumo wrestler's diaper/wrap. Eventually, I fell asleep. Around like six. AM.
I woke up relatively at peace with my problem, but I knew that it would have to be dealt with. The issue reached its breaking point when my grandma and uncle came to visit in the afternoon. We watched some television and talked a bit. All the while, though, a puddle of urine had been forming and then expanding to such a diameter that I knew I could not ignore it. Since I had to eschew the underwear that I had worn the previous night, I had had to ask my mother, who stayed at my apartment in Logan Square, to bring me some shorts or underwear that I could wear. Unfortunately, there was no clean underwear there because I have been staying in her house in Indiana--another issue that I don't completely enjoy. The dogs are there, sure, but they have ceased to be entertaining and now just annoy me with their repeated demands to be let outside. If you give a mouse a cookie... Over the past two weeks, I've learned to ignore them, but Shadow's bark is so loud and cloying that sometimes it's impossible to do this.
But I digress. I told the nurses again about the problem, and they spoke with one of my doctors and finally ordered the regular catheter that had filled the other patients with immense trepidation (wimps--I'll say it again. Wanna fight about it?). Over the next few hours, I sat in what I described as the equivalent of a kiddie pool, only filled with urine as opposed to water. This is more accurate than you think, because since I had no clean underwear in my apartment, I had two choices: swimming trunks or washcloth-sized boxer briefs that either belonged to my lanky brother or to Anthony, who is slighter than Ryan even, so I didn't stand a chance with these wristband-sized pair of underwear. (This is not meant to be insulting; I can't help it if my junk won't fit into a Dixie cup. Wanna fight about it?)
After what seemed like an eternity filled with repeated deposits of urine onto the wee pad, the nurses finally came through with the normal/bigger catheter. I pulled off my trunks, which really did their job since they were bone-dry while the rest of the area around my core, as the yogis say, was drenched with piss. It was mostly clear, though, so it wasn't as disgusting as you'd think. Actually, it probably was, because the saline drip, as I've said, makes me pee a comically prodigious amount, and I definitely had not spilled a Big Gulp on my sheets.
At last, my nurses delivered the "real" catheter, and shoved it into my urethra with a disturbingly small amount of topical anesthetic. At least, that's what I thought. I've said it before, but I'd gladly take my chances with Michael Jackson's beloved Propofol when it comes to having a sword jammed into my pee-hole. But since then, my sheets have been drier than Mel Gibson on Easter (on second thought, this might not be a great comparison). I even felt masculine enough to buy Mariah Carey's cover of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is," at LNE's urging, admittedly. (By the way, we also perused the awesome mix I made for her upcoming marathon, and I must say, it is exactly that--awesome.)
As a matter of fact, I'm listening to it right now. Yeah, that's right, motherfucker--I like Mimi's cover of "I Want to Know What Love Is."
Wanna fight about it?
R
--Also, my nurse tonight is named "Sylvia," & I insisted on playing her the refrain of Lou Reed's "Heavenly Arms," which is, appropriately, "Syl-vi-i-i-uh-aaa," repeated three times. I'm like a pop music Rain Man.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The Disappointing Catheter
This morning my nurse inserted my catheter. Again, this is what you think of when you hear "catheter." Not like my previously mentioned PICC line, but a "regular" catheter. Right in the urethra.
I'm not gonna lie--I was looking forward to this. Ever since I saw an advertisement for an everyday, portable catheter, I've wanted one. David Sedaris also yearned for one, and was disappointed when he got it finally. It worked, but he soon realized that he smelled like urine when he had book signings and wore it. I don't have that problem, because this is a "catheter" catheter. It goes right in the ol' pee-hole, and empties into a large, thick, plastic bag on my IV tree, which now qualifies as a beast of burden.
In his short essay in When You Are Engulfed In Flames, Sedaris writes about his own portable one that is attached with tenacious glue that effectively shellacked the catheter onto the head of his penis. I don't have that. What I have is your typical catheter, with the rubber tube emanating from my urethra. My pee then ends up in a thick plastic bag that joins other tubes from my IV line on the tree. If my IV tree were a garden, I'd fire the gardener because he clearly had not been trimming the hedges and now they're overgrown and out of control.
Believe me--I'm the first person who should have a catheter, because I pee like an OCD child turns on, then off, then on, and then off, lights. This, though, is sort of a pain in the ass, and makes me consider ripping it out like Tom Cruise's Vietnam vet in Born on the Fourth of July. I won't, though, because a) I'm too lazy and b) unlike Cruise's character, I'm not paralyzed and that would hurt like hell. Maybe I'll get used to it, too, like Ron Kovic (Cruise's character), or Lieutenant Dan, eventually does.
The procedure itself is a prospective nightmare, in the same way that a mention of a vasectomy makes any man cringe. Conveniently, though, my nurse gave me a local anesthetic to minimize the pain--you can guess where, since it's "local." That hardly registered, because I kept staring at the mustard-colored tube that I knew was going in shortly thereafter. Really, though, it's not that bad. When she was shoving the tube into my penis, I just looked up and waited to hear, "Done." I didn't even need something to bite down on, but that is not to say I wouldn't have chomped down on a wooden spoon...
The tube then connects to a thick-ish (I think--I haven't touched it yet) clear plastic bag that looks like a translucent whoopie cushion. So now that has joined my menagerie of other IV bags already on the tree. One of these little trinkets is a novelty sized bag of saline, which of course makes me pee even more.
I don't really know what's going on down there, though. Every hour or so my nurse comes in and empties the bag, and each time I'm surprised by the amount of urine that had amassed in it. Also, I constantly feel like I have to go, so it's unsettling to see that I already went. Or am going. Any conjugatiion or tense fits. I pee, I am peeing, I peed, I will pee, and so on.
Sometimes it feels like I have to go, and then I look down and see a prodigious amount of urine in the bag. This is how I imagine women feel when they have sex, especially if they're under 30. For men, it's incomprehensible for a woman not to orgasm and be fine with it. In the same way, I see that I peed, but I have none of the resolution that comes with being done. Again, I'm a man, so my analogy might be frustratingly incongruous.
Plus, I'm not sure how this thing stays in place. Another woman, an orderly I think, gave me an elastic bandage that holds its cords in place. I still move deliberately, though. It's not like I'm going to do somersaults or anything, but I might be overly careful with my constrained movements. I move slowly as it is, slower with the IV tree, but now I'm like a three-toed sloth. At least when I use the plastic urinal, I know what's going on. With this, it's like a retarded ghost keeps filling my bag with urine as a prank, and he thinks it's high-larious.
With this enormous pillow-sized saline bag, though, I would probably pee constantly. I'd fill the urinal, and then look for other receptacles to pee into. I have never empathized more with Howard Hughes, and his train of milk bottles that he filled with urine.
R
I'm not gonna lie--I was looking forward to this. Ever since I saw an advertisement for an everyday, portable catheter, I've wanted one. David Sedaris also yearned for one, and was disappointed when he got it finally. It worked, but he soon realized that he smelled like urine when he had book signings and wore it. I don't have that problem, because this is a "catheter" catheter. It goes right in the ol' pee-hole, and empties into a large, thick, plastic bag on my IV tree, which now qualifies as a beast of burden.
In his short essay in When You Are Engulfed In Flames, Sedaris writes about his own portable one that is attached with tenacious glue that effectively shellacked the catheter onto the head of his penis. I don't have that. What I have is your typical catheter, with the rubber tube emanating from my urethra. My pee then ends up in a thick plastic bag that joins other tubes from my IV line on the tree. If my IV tree were a garden, I'd fire the gardener because he clearly had not been trimming the hedges and now they're overgrown and out of control.
Believe me--I'm the first person who should have a catheter, because I pee like an OCD child turns on, then off, then on, and then off, lights. This, though, is sort of a pain in the ass, and makes me consider ripping it out like Tom Cruise's Vietnam vet in Born on the Fourth of July. I won't, though, because a) I'm too lazy and b) unlike Cruise's character, I'm not paralyzed and that would hurt like hell. Maybe I'll get used to it, too, like Ron Kovic (Cruise's character), or Lieutenant Dan, eventually does.
The procedure itself is a prospective nightmare, in the same way that a mention of a vasectomy makes any man cringe. Conveniently, though, my nurse gave me a local anesthetic to minimize the pain--you can guess where, since it's "local." That hardly registered, because I kept staring at the mustard-colored tube that I knew was going in shortly thereafter. Really, though, it's not that bad. When she was shoving the tube into my penis, I just looked up and waited to hear, "Done." I didn't even need something to bite down on, but that is not to say I wouldn't have chomped down on a wooden spoon...
The tube then connects to a thick-ish (I think--I haven't touched it yet) clear plastic bag that looks like a translucent whoopie cushion. So now that has joined my menagerie of other IV bags already on the tree. One of these little trinkets is a novelty sized bag of saline, which of course makes me pee even more.
I don't really know what's going on down there, though. Every hour or so my nurse comes in and empties the bag, and each time I'm surprised by the amount of urine that had amassed in it. Also, I constantly feel like I have to go, so it's unsettling to see that I already went. Or am going. Any conjugatiion or tense fits. I pee, I am peeing, I peed, I will pee, and so on.
Sometimes it feels like I have to go, and then I look down and see a prodigious amount of urine in the bag. This is how I imagine women feel when they have sex, especially if they're under 30. For men, it's incomprehensible for a woman not to orgasm and be fine with it. In the same way, I see that I peed, but I have none of the resolution that comes with being done. Again, I'm a man, so my analogy might be frustratingly incongruous.
Plus, I'm not sure how this thing stays in place. Another woman, an orderly I think, gave me an elastic bandage that holds its cords in place. I still move deliberately, though. It's not like I'm going to do somersaults or anything, but I might be overly careful with my constrained movements. I move slowly as it is, slower with the IV tree, but now I'm like a three-toed sloth. At least when I use the plastic urinal, I know what's going on. With this, it's like a retarded ghost keeps filling my bag with urine as a prank, and he thinks it's high-larious.
With this enormous pillow-sized saline bag, though, I would probably pee constantly. I'd fill the urinal, and then look for other receptacles to pee into. I have never empathized more with Howard Hughes, and his train of milk bottles that he filled with urine.
R
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The Big Hospitalization: Day One...Half
Today was the first day of my long hospitalization (around two weeks, I think). Not much happened, other than my frustration with the television.
The problem is that when I came in before, for an overnight intro round of chemotherapy, my television worked primarily with a standard remote control. Now, though, I have to use that handset shaped like a back massager (not one used purportedly as that but actually works as an autoerotic vibrator for women). To anyone who's been hospitalized or visited someone in a hospital, he knows what I mean. That thing shaped broadly like a cross, with buttons controls the television, and delivers audio like a drive-in speaker that you hang inside your car. It comes, too, with a keyboard that can plug into it, but, as I learned from my first stay here at Northwestern, it doesn't really work. It plugs in and everything, but it is an ergonomic disaster. The keyboard is frustratingly small, and the cursor on the screen jumps around like a possessed Ouija board planchette.
So, I've given up on that piece of junk. Last time, it dominated my thoughts and turned me into an acerbic, pouting ball of anger. That was only over an overnight stay, and now I'll be here for around two weeks, so I've decided not to explode over an ineffective electronic controller. I'd like to spin off into a fugue state, but I'll learn to cope.
The only major thing that happened was an insertion of a PICC line in the crook of my right elbow. This dangling flipper will be the main line through which I'll receive the cytoxan, a form of chemotherapy I mentioned previously, and with which, as I've said, Ms. S. is quite familiar. I'm repeating myself, because I talked about PICC lines before, and this is more like the ultimately useless one I had when I was kindasortamaybe diagnosed with Lyme disease instead of multiple sclerosis.
So I had that inserted. I like the PICC line because its small plugs at the end/beginning of it serve as the main port through which things go in and come out, like blood. There was a funny moment when a nurse collected like six vials of my blood through one of these ports. What makes a PICC line so strange is that this happens without needles. The nurses simply plug and play. Six vials of blood filled up, unbeknownst to me, and I saw them resting on the bed before the nurse gathered them in her hands. I had felt nothing, but multiple tubes filled with my blood were on the end of my bed. I said to her something like, "Are you sure you got enough? I think my feet are hiding some blood, if you want." Then I thought that it felt like I was being drained, like some meanies do to a vampire, or several vampires, on True Blood. I was about to mention this observation, but the nurse was filling in for somebody else, so she had to hurry off to another patient's room. Oh well--there went another little opportunity to crack wise...
Then, though, two more medical personnel personalities (I don't know if either was a doctor, or if both were, or both were nurses) of (I'm going to guess here) Indian descent arrived to administer an antibiotic breathing treatment. I'm still not entirely sure what this was, and I was preoccupied as it was because the female one kept referring to it as a "prophylactic." Because of my limited medical vocabulary, I only think of condoms when I hear "prophylactic." Evidently, though, it means something specific that applied here. Whatever--to me a "prophylactic" is a condom.
The vapor that came out of the apparatus for this tasted very acidic, but the female doctor/nurse informed me of this and I was prepared with an arsenal of hard candy that I popped into my mouth to mask the bitterness. By the way, I had a moment of brief panic when I concentrated on the flavor of the vapor and concluded that it tasted like bitter almonds. I may have read too many Raymond Chandler novels, but I know that arsenic distinctively tastes like bitter almonds.
Before I thought about this too much, I realized that I couldn't contain my laughter and had to struggle to keep the mouthpiece in place because an old episode of The Simpsons was making me quiver. To all you young'ns out there, The Simpsons used to be funny back in the day, before it was infected by the pathetic attempts of humor that Harvard graduates churn out today.
That ended, and then I ate my dinner with my mother, my brother Ryan, and Anthony. Then I railed against Stephen King again because The Shawshank Redemption was on. King sucks, epically, but the film adaptations of his works--"works," I should say--are so much better than the shit he spews onto the page. This all goes back to my theory that great movie adaptations work for pieces of shit, and great works of literature are bound for failure as movies. Even No Country For Old Man works here. That is a great movie, but most Cormac McCarthy enthusiasts, like myself, know that that book was a only a middling novel of no intrinsic literary value.
Anyway, an hour ago I took an Ambien, to which I'm frustratingly immune, and now might try to sleep. I fear I won't, though, because the last time I had Ambien here, I was up all night. Maybe they'll up my dosage.
Or knock me out with propofol. Like Michael Jackson. Only, I'll be watched closely by qualified medical personnel. That is definitely, emphatically, not like Michael Jackson.
And tomorrow I get a real catheter (a penile one) and my first (second, really) big infusion of cytoxan, so wait for that...
R
The problem is that when I came in before, for an overnight intro round of chemotherapy, my television worked primarily with a standard remote control. Now, though, I have to use that handset shaped like a back massager (not one used purportedly as that but actually works as an autoerotic vibrator for women). To anyone who's been hospitalized or visited someone in a hospital, he knows what I mean. That thing shaped broadly like a cross, with buttons controls the television, and delivers audio like a drive-in speaker that you hang inside your car. It comes, too, with a keyboard that can plug into it, but, as I learned from my first stay here at Northwestern, it doesn't really work. It plugs in and everything, but it is an ergonomic disaster. The keyboard is frustratingly small, and the cursor on the screen jumps around like a possessed Ouija board planchette.
So, I've given up on that piece of junk. Last time, it dominated my thoughts and turned me into an acerbic, pouting ball of anger. That was only over an overnight stay, and now I'll be here for around two weeks, so I've decided not to explode over an ineffective electronic controller. I'd like to spin off into a fugue state, but I'll learn to cope.
The only major thing that happened was an insertion of a PICC line in the crook of my right elbow. This dangling flipper will be the main line through which I'll receive the cytoxan, a form of chemotherapy I mentioned previously, and with which, as I've said, Ms. S. is quite familiar. I'm repeating myself, because I talked about PICC lines before, and this is more like the ultimately useless one I had when I was kindasortamaybe diagnosed with Lyme disease instead of multiple sclerosis.
So I had that inserted. I like the PICC line because its small plugs at the end/beginning of it serve as the main port through which things go in and come out, like blood. There was a funny moment when a nurse collected like six vials of my blood through one of these ports. What makes a PICC line so strange is that this happens without needles. The nurses simply plug and play. Six vials of blood filled up, unbeknownst to me, and I saw them resting on the bed before the nurse gathered them in her hands. I had felt nothing, but multiple tubes filled with my blood were on the end of my bed. I said to her something like, "Are you sure you got enough? I think my feet are hiding some blood, if you want." Then I thought that it felt like I was being drained, like some meanies do to a vampire, or several vampires, on True Blood. I was about to mention this observation, but the nurse was filling in for somebody else, so she had to hurry off to another patient's room. Oh well--there went another little opportunity to crack wise...
Then, though, two more medical personnel personalities (I don't know if either was a doctor, or if both were, or both were nurses) of (I'm going to guess here) Indian descent arrived to administer an antibiotic breathing treatment. I'm still not entirely sure what this was, and I was preoccupied as it was because the female one kept referring to it as a "prophylactic." Because of my limited medical vocabulary, I only think of condoms when I hear "prophylactic." Evidently, though, it means something specific that applied here. Whatever--to me a "prophylactic" is a condom.
The vapor that came out of the apparatus for this tasted very acidic, but the female doctor/nurse informed me of this and I was prepared with an arsenal of hard candy that I popped into my mouth to mask the bitterness. By the way, I had a moment of brief panic when I concentrated on the flavor of the vapor and concluded that it tasted like bitter almonds. I may have read too many Raymond Chandler novels, but I know that arsenic distinctively tastes like bitter almonds.
Before I thought about this too much, I realized that I couldn't contain my laughter and had to struggle to keep the mouthpiece in place because an old episode of The Simpsons was making me quiver. To all you young'ns out there, The Simpsons used to be funny back in the day, before it was infected by the pathetic attempts of humor that Harvard graduates churn out today.
That ended, and then I ate my dinner with my mother, my brother Ryan, and Anthony. Then I railed against Stephen King again because The Shawshank Redemption was on. King sucks, epically, but the film adaptations of his works--"works," I should say--are so much better than the shit he spews onto the page. This all goes back to my theory that great movie adaptations work for pieces of shit, and great works of literature are bound for failure as movies. Even No Country For Old Man works here. That is a great movie, but most Cormac McCarthy enthusiasts, like myself, know that that book was a only a middling novel of no intrinsic literary value.
Anyway, an hour ago I took an Ambien, to which I'm frustratingly immune, and now might try to sleep. I fear I won't, though, because the last time I had Ambien here, I was up all night. Maybe they'll up my dosage.
Or knock me out with propofol. Like Michael Jackson. Only, I'll be watched closely by qualified medical personnel. That is definitely, emphatically, not like Michael Jackson.
And tomorrow I get a real catheter (a penile one) and my first (second, really) big infusion of cytoxan, so wait for that...
R
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Murray Street and The Sopranos: One Underrated and One Overrated (Take A Guess Where I Fall On This One)
On the night before I go to hospital for the long hospitalization, I thought I'd put forth a brief question. You can take your time with this, but I think the answer is pretty obvious and easy to ascertain.
The Sopranos reminds me of "The Buried Life" in terms of its "emperor's new clothes" status. I mean, Matthew Arnold in general and "Dover Beach" specifically are passable, but "The Buried Life" is just conflated and bombastic. In the same way, The Sopranos sucked for most of the last season. Then, all of a sudden, with its open ending, ambiguous resolution, contentious stance it forced its audience to take, and altogether annoying lack of answers or crazy interpretation, it comes back and generates a huge amount of buzz.
Umm, I'm not saying I don't enjoy The Sopranos, but it is really is just a show about the mob...with a hackneyed twist. I once had an ex-girlfriend tell me this, and I knew those days were numbered. Her exultation of the show lay with its inclusion of psychoanalysis and therapy as its big groundbreaking innovation. I hate to tell the world, but this is not exactly new material. John Lennon went through that "Primal Scream" therapy with Yoko and came out with some truly squeamish shit. Then, he made a phenomenal record, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, that was imbued with a combination of anger, resignation, some of which still degenerates into that old, exhausting ""John" or "Paul"?" hypothetical. At the time, I think McCartney was in Wings or something. Must I elaborate?
Murray Street, on the other hand, made me say to myself, "Holy shit, this is fucking good..." as I drooled in awe. The hypnotic swirl of the songs and the shoegazer quality of some of the sound injected with the barbed wire of the guitars entrance you but keep nudging you to pay attention.
In the HBO equivalent, around then, (remember John From Cincinnati? I hope not.), Tony's teeth fall out or he hallucinates when he does and doesn't take peyote with one of his dead nephew's reliable hook-ups whenever he was in Vegas or he dreams under general anesthetic after he gets shot by his senile and demented uncle, who used to be Tony's boss but then was a symbolic head of the family and, ultimately, an afterthought. Got that?
Reward yourself after pondering this dizzying synopsis of The Sopranos and put on Murray Street and get swept away by its majesty.
R
The Sopranos reminds me of "The Buried Life" in terms of its "emperor's new clothes" status. I mean, Matthew Arnold in general and "Dover Beach" specifically are passable, but "The Buried Life" is just conflated and bombastic. In the same way, The Sopranos sucked for most of the last season. Then, all of a sudden, with its open ending, ambiguous resolution, contentious stance it forced its audience to take, and altogether annoying lack of answers or crazy interpretation, it comes back and generates a huge amount of buzz.
Umm, I'm not saying I don't enjoy The Sopranos, but it is really is just a show about the mob...with a hackneyed twist. I once had an ex-girlfriend tell me this, and I knew those days were numbered. Her exultation of the show lay with its inclusion of psychoanalysis and therapy as its big groundbreaking innovation. I hate to tell the world, but this is not exactly new material. John Lennon went through that "Primal Scream" therapy with Yoko and came out with some truly squeamish shit. Then, he made a phenomenal record, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, that was imbued with a combination of anger, resignation, some of which still degenerates into that old, exhausting ""John" or "Paul"?" hypothetical. At the time, I think McCartney was in Wings or something. Must I elaborate?
Murray Street, on the other hand, made me say to myself, "Holy shit, this is fucking good..." as I drooled in awe. The hypnotic swirl of the songs and the shoegazer quality of some of the sound injected with the barbed wire of the guitars entrance you but keep nudging you to pay attention.
In the HBO equivalent, around then, (remember John From Cincinnati? I hope not.), Tony's teeth fall out or he hallucinates when he does and doesn't take peyote with one of his dead nephew's reliable hook-ups whenever he was in Vegas or he dreams under general anesthetic after he gets shot by his senile and demented uncle, who used to be Tony's boss but then was a symbolic head of the family and, ultimately, an afterthought. Got that?
Reward yourself after pondering this dizzying synopsis of The Sopranos and put on Murray Street and get swept away by its majesty.
R
Monday, September 14, 2009
My Pillow Looks Like a Mogwai
Earlier today I was watching Louis C.K.'s most recent stand-up special on Comedy Central, called Chewed Up. In it, he talks brutally honestly about the physical vicissitudes of aging. He does a bit about Cinnabon that rivals the already hilarious one of Jim Gaffigan (Chesterton native!). He weaves this into his routine, which focuses at length on the uncontrollable changes that happen unexpectedly to the male body as it grows older. Women appear on the edges of the bit, but mostly it centers on men, and the unavoidable hard realities of aging. Mostly he talks about weight gain and the overall nonchalance with which he sees his advancing decrepit, and simultaneously swollen, body.
One thing he doesn't mention, though, is balding. This bothered me somewhat because I couldn't stop staring at his disappearing hairline. His hairline now resembles either a cartoon supergenius or the bumpy one of a Klingon. Or, if you want to be more poetic and less pop-oriented, it looks like a newly exposed, empty seashore after the tide recedes. I may have been overly sensitive to this once I noticed, last night/this morning, that the typical loss of hair that goes along with chemotherapy had finally begun to affect me.
I had been warned that this would probably happen, so I wasn't surprised by it. In fact, I asked my nurse about a week ago why I had not yet lost my hair. She, too, expressed curious wonder that this had not happened by then. I had heard, and seen in various popular culture references, that my hair would likely fall out. I even shaved my head both to lower the shock of others and not to look like a cult member out of Lord of Illusions. Upon my first hospitalization, a man walked by my room before I entered it myself and I remember being mildly disgusted that he had not opted to shave his head. Random strands of hair fell across his head, hardly covering the bare scalp underneath his nauseatingly pathetic "hair."
As I've mentioned before, I decided to mitigate the element of surprise that goes along with this side effect of chemotherapy by shaving my head. Herein lies the problem: I had not done enough, because a mere buzzcut does not go all the way. A minute but palpable layer of hair still grew perceptibly on my head, so I ignored the stark fact that it too would be gone.
Last night, I washed my face and acknowledged the abnormally high number of small hairs that had fallen onto the handtowel I used. I shrugged these off dismissively, as well as the small wreath of brown hair that had appeared on the cushion that I used on the sofa while I watched television, supine of course. Then I got up in the middle of the night to meander over to the bathroom by my bedroom. Before I flicked off the light I had turned on before I peed, I saw what looked like a small animal on my pillow.
I couldn't tell if I needed to go into a defensive stance or not, because it was unclear whether or not this was an innocuous being. One thing was clear, though: this was a Mogwai, straight out of Gremlins. Whether it was the fairly innocuous brand of Gizmo or the toxic, ugly, fricassee-ish batch that rips up the town in that movie was unclear. I approached cautiously, but was a little disappointed, and a little disgusted, to find that the mass of hair on my pillow was my own.
All the warnings and astonished proclamations of "You haven't lost it yet?" from my nurse had convinced me to forget about this little side effect/inevitability of the chemotherapy. But there it was, and here it is, so be prepared for my bald--totally--pate if we cross paths.
By the way, too, they don't tell you about the prickly soreness that you feel with the baldness. Doctors and nurses warn you about the hair loss, but they neglect the tender scalp that comes with this.
It may not be uniform, and some may not feel it as acutely as others, but it'll be there if you should be so lucky as to have your immune system pummeled by chemotherapy. Trust me. Throughout a prolonged medical procedure, medical personnel seem to shrug off the possibility of such inevitabilities, but I think they should prepare you for the worst and act bewildered when you don't sprout wings, for instance.
Oh, awesome--my fingers are still attached to my hands! I would gladly broadcast that histrionic response to obvious absurdities rather than hold onto hopeless hope for unrealistic expectations. I'm a pragmatist at bottom, and many people misconstrue this realism as pessimism.
Hope is fine, and even preferable to despair, especially for those with terminal diseases (or those of us who refuse to vote Republican), but MS is not terminal, no matter what uninformed dolts think. Call me crazy, though, but I prefer the practical to the improbable.
R
--PS Urlacher's out for the season for the Bears. Great. More later--I need to sustain a sigh for the next few hours.
--PPS My beloved Dalton, the best cooler in the business, aka Patrick Swayze, is no more. Sad.
One thing he doesn't mention, though, is balding. This bothered me somewhat because I couldn't stop staring at his disappearing hairline. His hairline now resembles either a cartoon supergenius or the bumpy one of a Klingon. Or, if you want to be more poetic and less pop-oriented, it looks like a newly exposed, empty seashore after the tide recedes. I may have been overly sensitive to this once I noticed, last night/this morning, that the typical loss of hair that goes along with chemotherapy had finally begun to affect me.
I had been warned that this would probably happen, so I wasn't surprised by it. In fact, I asked my nurse about a week ago why I had not yet lost my hair. She, too, expressed curious wonder that this had not happened by then. I had heard, and seen in various popular culture references, that my hair would likely fall out. I even shaved my head both to lower the shock of others and not to look like a cult member out of Lord of Illusions. Upon my first hospitalization, a man walked by my room before I entered it myself and I remember being mildly disgusted that he had not opted to shave his head. Random strands of hair fell across his head, hardly covering the bare scalp underneath his nauseatingly pathetic "hair."
As I've mentioned before, I decided to mitigate the element of surprise that goes along with this side effect of chemotherapy by shaving my head. Herein lies the problem: I had not done enough, because a mere buzzcut does not go all the way. A minute but palpable layer of hair still grew perceptibly on my head, so I ignored the stark fact that it too would be gone.
Last night, I washed my face and acknowledged the abnormally high number of small hairs that had fallen onto the handtowel I used. I shrugged these off dismissively, as well as the small wreath of brown hair that had appeared on the cushion that I used on the sofa while I watched television, supine of course. Then I got up in the middle of the night to meander over to the bathroom by my bedroom. Before I flicked off the light I had turned on before I peed, I saw what looked like a small animal on my pillow.
I couldn't tell if I needed to go into a defensive stance or not, because it was unclear whether or not this was an innocuous being. One thing was clear, though: this was a Mogwai, straight out of Gremlins. Whether it was the fairly innocuous brand of Gizmo or the toxic, ugly, fricassee-ish batch that rips up the town in that movie was unclear. I approached cautiously, but was a little disappointed, and a little disgusted, to find that the mass of hair on my pillow was my own.
All the warnings and astonished proclamations of "You haven't lost it yet?" from my nurse had convinced me to forget about this little side effect/inevitability of the chemotherapy. But there it was, and here it is, so be prepared for my bald--totally--pate if we cross paths.
By the way, too, they don't tell you about the prickly soreness that you feel with the baldness. Doctors and nurses warn you about the hair loss, but they neglect the tender scalp that comes with this.
It may not be uniform, and some may not feel it as acutely as others, but it'll be there if you should be so lucky as to have your immune system pummeled by chemotherapy. Trust me. Throughout a prolonged medical procedure, medical personnel seem to shrug off the possibility of such inevitabilities, but I think they should prepare you for the worst and act bewildered when you don't sprout wings, for instance.
Oh, awesome--my fingers are still attached to my hands! I would gladly broadcast that histrionic response to obvious absurdities rather than hold onto hopeless hope for unrealistic expectations. I'm a pragmatist at bottom, and many people misconstrue this realism as pessimism.
Hope is fine, and even preferable to despair, especially for those with terminal diseases (or those of us who refuse to vote Republican), but MS is not terminal, no matter what uninformed dolts think. Call me crazy, though, but I prefer the practical to the improbable.
R
--PS Urlacher's out for the season for the Bears. Great. More later--I need to sustain a sigh for the next few hours.
--PPS My beloved Dalton, the best cooler in the business, aka Patrick Swayze, is no more. Sad.
The Chicago Bears: A Reliable Disappointment
Being a Chicago Bears fan is not unlike being a battered spouse who consistently returns to her (I'm saying "her" because men are normally the accepted perpetrators) abusive lover. I don't know why I'm surprised each year when my hopes are dashed by a thoroughly incompetent team.
I hate to say it, and haven't thus far because it may come across as racist, but Lovie Smith needs to be fired. A few years ago, he led the team to the Super Bowl, but that was mostly a confluence of flukes. I mean, Rex Grossman was the quarterback then, and he has since sucked to an almost unfathomable degree. He sucked then, even. We all knew it. As long as the team kept racking up victories, however, we didn't care. Most of these, though, came about because of turnovers capitalized upon by the defense.
The Bears' offense has always sucked. Let's get real. Even when they won, they were mediocre at best. Jim McMahon & Co. were the last collection of offensive players who could be called competent, but they had the great Walter Payton. Matt Forte keeps disappointing me with his piecemeal runs, especially since it's obvious to me that he can do better. It's been about twenty years since the team has had a viable offense. In recent years, Bears fans have had to suffer through the shit-eating grin of Grossman, and numerous other quarterbacks who glimmered with promise but ultimately failed miserably. Remember Cade McNown? Exactly...
In retrospect, Erik Kramer doesn't look so bad. Actually, he had moments of greatness, but these were negated by his inability to deliver in the post-season. Still, lest we forget, he has the highest passer rating of any Bears quarterback in history, including McMahon. Then came the aforementioned Grossman, whose Cheshire cat grin always incited blinding rage within me. It should be mentioned, begrudgingly, that he did lead the team to a Super Bowl, but, again, this was mostly a fluke due to the consistently astounding performance of the defense. After his abysmal failures, Kyle Orton and his neckeard took over. For a while, he looked okay, but he too was mainly a workhorse and not exactly a marquee player.
Now, with Jay Cutler, I thought perhaps Chicago had a bona fide quarterback. Based on tonight's play, though, it appears that I was mistaken. He compiled a treacherous three interceptions in the first half alone, and another on the final drive that could have brought the team back into the game. Granted, this may have been wishful thinking on my part because he had less than a minute to put something together, but the fact that this ended in another interception just twisted the knife in my back and made me feel the full extent of my disappointment.
I know that this was only the first game, but it almost completely annihilated my hopes for the season. Even Brian Urlacher, the superstar middle linebacker who left early with an injury that looked minor even if some of the commentators speculated that he may be out for the season, could not arouse my deflated faith in the team. Early in the game, I said "he looks old" to my friend Neal. He doesn't, though, and Neal knocked me back into coherence by telling me I was wrong. My pessimism has reached such astounding heights that it has almost no regard for reality.
I think this sort of cynicism is healthy, though. It's the mark of a true fan that I can be disappointed continuously and still look forward to redemption next week.
Don't get me wrong, though. I'm still pissed off. Lovie et al. need to get their shit together, or face complete obliteration. At times, I think the Bears deserve utter destruction as the only way in which the organization can pull itself together. It's like how I feel about Gary. It has been so devastated that to start an unstoppable conflagration, and to do this deliberately as a concerted, complete undertaking, might be the only way to rebuild the broken entity into something that isn't an absolute abomination.
An infernal inferno might be the hard truth of the path to redemption. I hope this is an exaggeration on my part, but I'm getting very close to waiting rapt in anticipation to yell, "Burn, baby, burn!"
R
I hate to say it, and haven't thus far because it may come across as racist, but Lovie Smith needs to be fired. A few years ago, he led the team to the Super Bowl, but that was mostly a confluence of flukes. I mean, Rex Grossman was the quarterback then, and he has since sucked to an almost unfathomable degree. He sucked then, even. We all knew it. As long as the team kept racking up victories, however, we didn't care. Most of these, though, came about because of turnovers capitalized upon by the defense.
The Bears' offense has always sucked. Let's get real. Even when they won, they were mediocre at best. Jim McMahon & Co. were the last collection of offensive players who could be called competent, but they had the great Walter Payton. Matt Forte keeps disappointing me with his piecemeal runs, especially since it's obvious to me that he can do better. It's been about twenty years since the team has had a viable offense. In recent years, Bears fans have had to suffer through the shit-eating grin of Grossman, and numerous other quarterbacks who glimmered with promise but ultimately failed miserably. Remember Cade McNown? Exactly...
In retrospect, Erik Kramer doesn't look so bad. Actually, he had moments of greatness, but these were negated by his inability to deliver in the post-season. Still, lest we forget, he has the highest passer rating of any Bears quarterback in history, including McMahon. Then came the aforementioned Grossman, whose Cheshire cat grin always incited blinding rage within me. It should be mentioned, begrudgingly, that he did lead the team to a Super Bowl, but, again, this was mostly a fluke due to the consistently astounding performance of the defense. After his abysmal failures, Kyle Orton and his neckeard took over. For a while, he looked okay, but he too was mainly a workhorse and not exactly a marquee player.
Now, with Jay Cutler, I thought perhaps Chicago had a bona fide quarterback. Based on tonight's play, though, it appears that I was mistaken. He compiled a treacherous three interceptions in the first half alone, and another on the final drive that could have brought the team back into the game. Granted, this may have been wishful thinking on my part because he had less than a minute to put something together, but the fact that this ended in another interception just twisted the knife in my back and made me feel the full extent of my disappointment.
I know that this was only the first game, but it almost completely annihilated my hopes for the season. Even Brian Urlacher, the superstar middle linebacker who left early with an injury that looked minor even if some of the commentators speculated that he may be out for the season, could not arouse my deflated faith in the team. Early in the game, I said "he looks old" to my friend Neal. He doesn't, though, and Neal knocked me back into coherence by telling me I was wrong. My pessimism has reached such astounding heights that it has almost no regard for reality.
I think this sort of cynicism is healthy, though. It's the mark of a true fan that I can be disappointed continuously and still look forward to redemption next week.
Don't get me wrong, though. I'm still pissed off. Lovie et al. need to get their shit together, or face complete obliteration. At times, I think the Bears deserve utter destruction as the only way in which the organization can pull itself together. It's like how I feel about Gary. It has been so devastated that to start an unstoppable conflagration, and to do this deliberately as a concerted, complete undertaking, might be the only way to rebuild the broken entity into something that isn't an absolute abomination.
An infernal inferno might be the hard truth of the path to redemption. I hope this is an exaggeration on my part, but I'm getting very close to waiting rapt in anticipation to yell, "Burn, baby, burn!"
R
Friday, September 11, 2009
Patience is a Virtue (& I don't have it)
Nor do I want it, in certain situations. I've heard this palliative banality numerous times over the years, and I really don't need to hear it now. Patience is okay for a while, but eventually it becomes a siren's song that can woo you into inaction.
I thought about this today when I reflected on the fact that it's the eighth anniversary of 9/11, and then had to swallow a potential spit-take when I realized that we are still in Afghanistan. Obama ran on a platform that he would refocus the mismanaged "war on terror" and increase troop presence in Afghanistan while lowering that in Iraq. It sounded good during the general election, but I think most of us progressives/liberals didn't fully grasp what this entailed.
This new tactical reconfiguration means that attention would shift away from Iraq, which was perhaps the worst foreign policy decision made by a president ever. Certainly, most would agree that it was the worst foreign policy enacted by a sitting president in our lifetime. But really, though, it was the worst foreign policy in the history of the US.
As I've said before in what has become a perfunctory disclaimer that you have to preface every criticism of the military with, American troops have served admirably and blah blah blah.
We can all agree on this. We can't seriously assert, though, that America has returned the favor. Bush and his cadre of morons, either evil or not (mostly the former), forced us into war with relentless lying, and subsequently thousands of these soldiers have died. Call me crazy, but I don't think this means that Republicans love the military as much as they claim. Okay, I think we can agree on this too.
Now, though, we need to put an end to the madness. It's a cliche, but you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. It has been said by countless pundits, but some societies can't really handle democracy. Sometimes, an iron fist is all that they know and understand, so I hate it when delusional Americans extol the virtues of democracy and then try to force reluctant societies to accept it. Is that not, in itself, the height of hypocrisy?
And no, I'm not a wimp willing to forget about the atrocities that Bin Laden encouraged and ultimately perpetrated. He needs to experience the full spectrum of human pain, like that "Sloth" victim in Se7en.
At the same time, we need to agree that health care should not be a privilege, but a right. As I watched Obama's address to Congress last night and heard that galactically stupid (to borrow a phrase from A Few Good Men) outcry from Joe Wilson, that obscenely dumb senator from South Carolina, I understood completely and finally that the president needs to brandish a sword and threaten morons like that with decapitation.
Intolerance is a door that swings both ways. It can be ugly, in the case of Bin Laden, militant Islamic extremists, and Republican congressmen. It can also be sweetly satisfying, but we have yet to grasp this because Democrats still insist on pusillanimous mutual identification. Once they grow a pair, I think Democrats, including Obama, will understand that they don't want to, nor should they, compromise with the lunatics of the GOP.
I'm done with holding my breath and waiting patiently for a simple resolution to a number of issues that can be dealt with easily by ignoring Republican demagogues and their caterwauling.
Fuck them, and their politics based on selfishness and all sorts of bad things. Composing a litany of their bullshit would be both exhausting and futile, because I'm pretty sure many loud Republicans can't read. That sounds dismissive, I know, and it should. I hereby dismiss the ideology of the right.
Totally. I've mentioned Woody Allen's tactic of violence with regard to dealing with Nazis, and I think it applies to hopelessly churlish Republicans as well. Devastating satirical pieces are one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really get to the point, and I think we should all be at this breaking point finally.
President Obama, use the bully pulpit aggressively, and brandish something behind it if you'd like. The sharper, the better.
R
I thought about this today when I reflected on the fact that it's the eighth anniversary of 9/11, and then had to swallow a potential spit-take when I realized that we are still in Afghanistan. Obama ran on a platform that he would refocus the mismanaged "war on terror" and increase troop presence in Afghanistan while lowering that in Iraq. It sounded good during the general election, but I think most of us progressives/liberals didn't fully grasp what this entailed.
This new tactical reconfiguration means that attention would shift away from Iraq, which was perhaps the worst foreign policy decision made by a president ever. Certainly, most would agree that it was the worst foreign policy enacted by a sitting president in our lifetime. But really, though, it was the worst foreign policy in the history of the US.
As I've said before in what has become a perfunctory disclaimer that you have to preface every criticism of the military with, American troops have served admirably and blah blah blah.
We can all agree on this. We can't seriously assert, though, that America has returned the favor. Bush and his cadre of morons, either evil or not (mostly the former), forced us into war with relentless lying, and subsequently thousands of these soldiers have died. Call me crazy, but I don't think this means that Republicans love the military as much as they claim. Okay, I think we can agree on this too.
Now, though, we need to put an end to the madness. It's a cliche, but you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. It has been said by countless pundits, but some societies can't really handle democracy. Sometimes, an iron fist is all that they know and understand, so I hate it when delusional Americans extol the virtues of democracy and then try to force reluctant societies to accept it. Is that not, in itself, the height of hypocrisy?
And no, I'm not a wimp willing to forget about the atrocities that Bin Laden encouraged and ultimately perpetrated. He needs to experience the full spectrum of human pain, like that "Sloth" victim in Se7en.
At the same time, we need to agree that health care should not be a privilege, but a right. As I watched Obama's address to Congress last night and heard that galactically stupid (to borrow a phrase from A Few Good Men) outcry from Joe Wilson, that obscenely dumb senator from South Carolina, I understood completely and finally that the president needs to brandish a sword and threaten morons like that with decapitation.
Intolerance is a door that swings both ways. It can be ugly, in the case of Bin Laden, militant Islamic extremists, and Republican congressmen. It can also be sweetly satisfying, but we have yet to grasp this because Democrats still insist on pusillanimous mutual identification. Once they grow a pair, I think Democrats, including Obama, will understand that they don't want to, nor should they, compromise with the lunatics of the GOP.
I'm done with holding my breath and waiting patiently for a simple resolution to a number of issues that can be dealt with easily by ignoring Republican demagogues and their caterwauling.
Fuck them, and their politics based on selfishness and all sorts of bad things. Composing a litany of their bullshit would be both exhausting and futile, because I'm pretty sure many loud Republicans can't read. That sounds dismissive, I know, and it should. I hereby dismiss the ideology of the right.
Totally. I've mentioned Woody Allen's tactic of violence with regard to dealing with Nazis, and I think it applies to hopelessly churlish Republicans as well. Devastating satirical pieces are one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really get to the point, and I think we should all be at this breaking point finally.
President Obama, use the bully pulpit aggressively, and brandish something behind it if you'd like. The sharper, the better.
R
2009 Can Finally Begin
According to most calendars, 2009 has been going on for over eight months. For me, though, the year doesn't truly begin until the opening kickoff of the first NFL game. In the same manner, 2008 didn't end until Super Bowl XLIII was over on February 1, 2009. The Pittsburgh Steelers' victory over the Arizona Cardinals was bittersweet, because I really wanted the Steelers to lose, but quarterback Ben Roethlisberger's winning pass to Santonio Holmes with only two minutes left in the fourth quarter was undeniably impressive.
I have a visceral negative reaction to the Steelers, mostly because they recently have become the Red Sox of the NFL. They're reliably good now, and enter the playoffs as favorites perenially. You'd think I'd align them with the Patriots, because both are football teams, but I don't hate the Patriots nearly as much as you'd think. This is mostly because the Patriots belong to the whole of New England, and not just the giant cesspool that I consider Boston to be. Man, I hate Boston. This shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me remotely because I make it a point to disparage that bullshit city whenever I can. I'll steer clear of smearing it now, because I'm not confident that I'd be able to stop ranting.
As I was saying, I absolutely love the NFL. One of the reasons I don't like summer so much--beside the havoc that the humidity wreaks on my MS symptoms--is the lack of exciting sports. Sure, there's baseball, but MLB is tedious. Each game lasts at least three hours, normally, because the pace is beyond slow. I've said it before, but the main reason I like White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle is that he moves the game along at an incredibly rapid clip. Whereas most pitchers hurl baseballs with the frequency of a musket shot, Buehrle throws a barrage of pitches not unlike a machine gun. He sprays his pitches, and everyone else leisurely drips them.
Football, though, is always dramatic and exciting and altogether thrilling. It is propulsive, so even a low-scoring game can be captivating. I used to lament its overtime policy of sudden death, but now I like it. It may seem absurd that the outcome of a game should rely on the toss of a coin, but this is not really the point of the sudden-death overtime. The team who loses the coin toss should be able to use their defense well enough to stop the offense of the opposing team. If not, then they could lose. Tough shit if their offense doesn't get a chance to even the score...
Tonight's game was between the aforementioned Steelers and the Tennessee Titans. I'm not a Titans fan, but I was by default tonight because of my disdain for the Steelers. Pittsburgh ended up winning 13-10, which was a disappointment, but I was so overjoyed to watch the first NFL regular season game that I hardly cared. Plus, as I said before, I'm not really a Titans fan, so I wasn't very disheartened that Tennessee lost. I was just happy to watch the NFL, finally.
I know a lot of people who prefer college football, but I could not possibly care less about any NCAA game. This includes basketball, by the way. Each March, when I see brackets everywhere, I simply sigh and think of next September.
As for now, I could not be more content with the prospect of the new NFL season. The Bears look good--not merely okay, as they usually do--and they even have an actual quarterback this year in Jay Cutler. I'll be in the hospital for a game or two, but Northwestern has such immaculate facilities that I'll be able to watch games on a large flat-screen TV. I think this is much more preferable to being physically present at a game, and, again, this is not simply because of the MS and the physical restrictions it imposes. More often than not, it's better to watch games closely on a high-definition television than to freeze in the biting cold (which can be incapacitating, like a prolonged, full-body ice cream headache) and act like you know what the hell is happening on the field.
I get an inappreciable amount of satisfaction from seeing incontrovertible evidence that can deflate a crowd's incredulity, no matter how vociferous their blind, ignorant indignation.
Unless, of course, the crowd is in Chicago.
R
I have a visceral negative reaction to the Steelers, mostly because they recently have become the Red Sox of the NFL. They're reliably good now, and enter the playoffs as favorites perenially. You'd think I'd align them with the Patriots, because both are football teams, but I don't hate the Patriots nearly as much as you'd think. This is mostly because the Patriots belong to the whole of New England, and not just the giant cesspool that I consider Boston to be. Man, I hate Boston. This shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me remotely because I make it a point to disparage that bullshit city whenever I can. I'll steer clear of smearing it now, because I'm not confident that I'd be able to stop ranting.
As I was saying, I absolutely love the NFL. One of the reasons I don't like summer so much--beside the havoc that the humidity wreaks on my MS symptoms--is the lack of exciting sports. Sure, there's baseball, but MLB is tedious. Each game lasts at least three hours, normally, because the pace is beyond slow. I've said it before, but the main reason I like White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle is that he moves the game along at an incredibly rapid clip. Whereas most pitchers hurl baseballs with the frequency of a musket shot, Buehrle throws a barrage of pitches not unlike a machine gun. He sprays his pitches, and everyone else leisurely drips them.
Football, though, is always dramatic and exciting and altogether thrilling. It is propulsive, so even a low-scoring game can be captivating. I used to lament its overtime policy of sudden death, but now I like it. It may seem absurd that the outcome of a game should rely on the toss of a coin, but this is not really the point of the sudden-death overtime. The team who loses the coin toss should be able to use their defense well enough to stop the offense of the opposing team. If not, then they could lose. Tough shit if their offense doesn't get a chance to even the score...
Tonight's game was between the aforementioned Steelers and the Tennessee Titans. I'm not a Titans fan, but I was by default tonight because of my disdain for the Steelers. Pittsburgh ended up winning 13-10, which was a disappointment, but I was so overjoyed to watch the first NFL regular season game that I hardly cared. Plus, as I said before, I'm not really a Titans fan, so I wasn't very disheartened that Tennessee lost. I was just happy to watch the NFL, finally.
I know a lot of people who prefer college football, but I could not possibly care less about any NCAA game. This includes basketball, by the way. Each March, when I see brackets everywhere, I simply sigh and think of next September.
As for now, I could not be more content with the prospect of the new NFL season. The Bears look good--not merely okay, as they usually do--and they even have an actual quarterback this year in Jay Cutler. I'll be in the hospital for a game or two, but Northwestern has such immaculate facilities that I'll be able to watch games on a large flat-screen TV. I think this is much more preferable to being physically present at a game, and, again, this is not simply because of the MS and the physical restrictions it imposes. More often than not, it's better to watch games closely on a high-definition television than to freeze in the biting cold (which can be incapacitating, like a prolonged, full-body ice cream headache) and act like you know what the hell is happening on the field.
I get an inappreciable amount of satisfaction from seeing incontrovertible evidence that can deflate a crowd's incredulity, no matter how vociferous their blind, ignorant indignation.
Unless, of course, the crowd is in Chicago.
R
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tori Amos & The Cutting Edge: An Appreciation
The other night I was watching HBO and saw Juan Manuel Marquez drink his own urine, and almost vomited. I saw him sit in a chair and sip from a cup and grin strangely at the camera, like a child caught with his hand down his pants. I thought, "Great. He's retarded." I had been so close to being on his side before this unsettling and disgusting spectacle. Then I watched Floyd Mayweather, who I've never really liked, get a pedicure, and I was caught in a dilemma. The two discomfiting images, juxtaposed, represent both ends of the spectrum of stereotypical "masculinity." Which side do I fall on, I wondered?
The middle, thankfully. I realized this today because I was about to watch The Cutting Edge and then picked up my iPod and saw that it was paused on an old episode of "The B.S. Report with Bill Simmons" with Mike Lombardi as the guest, and they were talking about the upcoming season of the NFL. I nearly began to salivate.
Then I saw that there were less than thirty seconds left, which meant I'd listened to the whole podcast already. I then scrolled through my list of artists whose albums I have on my Touch, and settled on Tori Amos. From the Choirgirl Hotel began to play, and I got to "Iieee" before I noticed the opening credits of The Cutting Edge had begun to play. That was fine by me, because I had to hear "Talula," one of the tracks I deemed worthy of my Touch. It's on Boys for Pele, which is a double album with a lot of fat that I cut from my iPod. Let's face it: no one needs to hear "Doughnut Song" more than--well, ever.
Truthfully, though, once you get past the "fairy" weirdness that she believes, as well as the army of faithful dramatic lesbians that comprises much of her fanbase, you have to admit that Tori Amos is amazingly talented. Her songs can break up into mini-suites inside of the main melody, and then return seamlessly to the chorus. At times, she shows the, uh, cutting edge avant-cool of some of The Beatles' later recordings. They sound nothing alike, but a fearless experimentalism runs through both of the musicians' recordings.
But wait! Moira Kelly (who ranks near the top of my "Underrated Hot Actresses" category, along with Famke Janssen, and I think this is due mainly to her limited filmography of note) and D.B. Sweeney (who's your typical male schlub) had just gotten into the Olympics and were about to celebrate with a night of drunken revelry. At the end of the night, she tries to woo him, but he reluctantly, though nobly, refuses her advances because her judgment is not pure. Eventually, he leaves her room, scorned, and ends up drinking more, alone in his hotel room. The American female half of the other qualifying team then knocks on his door. Surprise surprise--they sleep together and Moira Kelly goes in the morning to his room to apologize, and is incredulous when the other female skater opens the door.
When he finally confesses his love right before they skate, she consents to the dangerous "Pamchenko Twist" maneuver (brilliantly lampooned in Blades of Glory with the finale that previously ended in decapitation when it was introduced in North Korea) that heretofore she had dismissed from the routine. They nail the reconfigured routine, kiss on the ice, and the credits roll. It's a sweet moment, saccharine really, but I've learned to do what Cameron Crowe says, and "embrace the cheese."
Tori Amos, meanwhile, is not cheesy, but she lies on the opposite end of the spectrum of feminine predilections. She is the Mayweather to Moira Kelly's Marquez. However, there is a huge difference between the two sets: Tori Amos doesn't flout her girlishness, and Moira Kelly doesn't drink urine.
R
The middle, thankfully. I realized this today because I was about to watch The Cutting Edge and then picked up my iPod and saw that it was paused on an old episode of "The B.S. Report with Bill Simmons" with Mike Lombardi as the guest, and they were talking about the upcoming season of the NFL. I nearly began to salivate.
Then I saw that there were less than thirty seconds left, which meant I'd listened to the whole podcast already. I then scrolled through my list of artists whose albums I have on my Touch, and settled on Tori Amos. From the Choirgirl Hotel began to play, and I got to "Iieee" before I noticed the opening credits of The Cutting Edge had begun to play. That was fine by me, because I had to hear "Talula," one of the tracks I deemed worthy of my Touch. It's on Boys for Pele, which is a double album with a lot of fat that I cut from my iPod. Let's face it: no one needs to hear "Doughnut Song" more than--well, ever.
Truthfully, though, once you get past the "fairy" weirdness that she believes, as well as the army of faithful dramatic lesbians that comprises much of her fanbase, you have to admit that Tori Amos is amazingly talented. Her songs can break up into mini-suites inside of the main melody, and then return seamlessly to the chorus. At times, she shows the, uh, cutting edge avant-cool of some of The Beatles' later recordings. They sound nothing alike, but a fearless experimentalism runs through both of the musicians' recordings.
But wait! Moira Kelly (who ranks near the top of my "Underrated Hot Actresses" category, along with Famke Janssen, and I think this is due mainly to her limited filmography of note) and D.B. Sweeney (who's your typical male schlub) had just gotten into the Olympics and were about to celebrate with a night of drunken revelry. At the end of the night, she tries to woo him, but he reluctantly, though nobly, refuses her advances because her judgment is not pure. Eventually, he leaves her room, scorned, and ends up drinking more, alone in his hotel room. The American female half of the other qualifying team then knocks on his door. Surprise surprise--they sleep together and Moira Kelly goes in the morning to his room to apologize, and is incredulous when the other female skater opens the door.
When he finally confesses his love right before they skate, she consents to the dangerous "Pamchenko Twist" maneuver (brilliantly lampooned in Blades of Glory with the finale that previously ended in decapitation when it was introduced in North Korea) that heretofore she had dismissed from the routine. They nail the reconfigured routine, kiss on the ice, and the credits roll. It's a sweet moment, saccharine really, but I've learned to do what Cameron Crowe says, and "embrace the cheese."
Tori Amos, meanwhile, is not cheesy, but she lies on the opposite end of the spectrum of feminine predilections. She is the Mayweather to Moira Kelly's Marquez. However, there is a huge difference between the two sets: Tori Amos doesn't flout her girlishness, and Moira Kelly doesn't drink urine.
R
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Size Doesn't Matter
I'm not referring to phallic length or girth, so forget about that. I'm speaking of cell phone technology, and the morons at Verizon.
Recently, I upgraded phones. I went from a standard flip with serious battery issues to one that is basically a hybrid of a Sidekick and a Blackberry. It flips, but not in the way to which I'm accustomed. The side opens to reveal a small but comprehensive keyboard.
For the life of me, I can't figure out what this is for. I text-message copiously, but the iTap function was easy enough for me to handle. Now, with this new waste of engineering, you'd think that the keyboard would expedite the non-urgent ramblings that really comprise the bulk of my texting. Not so. I never use it, nor do I foresee an instance in which I would come to see it as indispensable.
Here's another thing: this phone is not MS-friendly. Cracking open the manifold is a pain in the ass, and the keyboard, would it not be utterly useless, does not make anything easier. So prying open the phone makes no sense. I'm not sending scrolls of text with the thing, and the tiny buttons do nothing but infuriate me, and would preclude this anyway.
What do I like about this phone? The flash for the camera. That's it. My old phone, to which I'm going to revert once the idiots at Verizon technical support get their shit together and make this possible, has no flash, but it is not bulky or rage-inducing. It does what phones are supposed to do.
Plus, with it I can act like Leonardo DiCaprio's character in The Departed and send surreptitious texts from my pocket.
And it has internet access already, so I can breathe with less rage and still keep my street cred by using it with my Touch, although the entire debacle makes me more willing to sell my soul and get an iPhone.
Seriously, fuck Verizon. That company needs to atone for the unnecessary anger it incites in me.
R
Recently, I upgraded phones. I went from a standard flip with serious battery issues to one that is basically a hybrid of a Sidekick and a Blackberry. It flips, but not in the way to which I'm accustomed. The side opens to reveal a small but comprehensive keyboard.
For the life of me, I can't figure out what this is for. I text-message copiously, but the iTap function was easy enough for me to handle. Now, with this new waste of engineering, you'd think that the keyboard would expedite the non-urgent ramblings that really comprise the bulk of my texting. Not so. I never use it, nor do I foresee an instance in which I would come to see it as indispensable.
Here's another thing: this phone is not MS-friendly. Cracking open the manifold is a pain in the ass, and the keyboard, would it not be utterly useless, does not make anything easier. So prying open the phone makes no sense. I'm not sending scrolls of text with the thing, and the tiny buttons do nothing but infuriate me, and would preclude this anyway.
What do I like about this phone? The flash for the camera. That's it. My old phone, to which I'm going to revert once the idiots at Verizon technical support get their shit together and make this possible, has no flash, but it is not bulky or rage-inducing. It does what phones are supposed to do.
Plus, with it I can act like Leonardo DiCaprio's character in The Departed and send surreptitious texts from my pocket.
And it has internet access already, so I can breathe with less rage and still keep my street cred by using it with my Touch, although the entire debacle makes me more willing to sell my soul and get an iPhone.
Seriously, fuck Verizon. That company needs to atone for the unnecessary anger it incites in me.
R
Monday, September 7, 2009
What Day Is It?
When I went into the hospital for my first round of chemotherapy, the nurse would ask me a few questions in the morning to test my cognitive faculties. Simple questions, like "What's your birthday?" or "What year is it?" or "What do you want to accomplish today?" or "What date is it?" All were fairly innocuous, but the last two of these troubled me.
The first, "What do you want to accomplish today?," bothered me--actually, almost totally so--due to my mother's intrusion. I took the question literally, and answered with something like, "Take a shower." She, however, extended its import to an obnoxious extent. "No--come on. You want to write. You have lots of things that you want to do." Thanks, Kreskin. You forgot "world peace" as a vapid aspiration. We were not in a beauty pageant. We were in the hospital, and I think the nurse's question applied mainly to the immediate future--as in, the next 24 hours, after which she'd ask me the same question again. I don't think I'll be able to win the Nobel Prize by then.
When the nurse asked me the date, I took a beat. Then I took another. I was actually perplexed. This was not like when I took the plastic peg test with the main nurse during the initial tests to ascertain whether or not I would be eligible, and became fixated on the sphygmomanometer and its humorously long name. This was not like that. I really didn't know the date. I could say that it was Tuesday, mainly because the duration of the stay was only overnight, and I remembered that the first day was a Monday. And I knew it was August, because that is the month of my grandmother's birthday and it hadn't come yet.
(Btw, she's 81 and just had open heart surgery for aortic stenosis and a few bypasses, and is more spry than most people I know. She also quit smoking, too, after approximately 50 years. Her verve both inspires me and pisses me off. At exactly three times my age, she makes me look like an enervated slug.)
The actual date was not something I'd had to consider for a long time. Even now, if I have to fill out a form, I normally wait for my mother to grab the board out of my hands. Not having to know the date is a fairly small reward I get for this, because in reality I have an incredibly difficult time writing anything manually (which sounds redundant, but isn't. I'm typing this, relatively easily, but cannot pick up a pen and start scribbling.).
It's strange to consider, but recently I had to fill out a form by myself and was on the verge of sweating. I could imagine a late Marlon Brando doing this, but not me. The blood drained from my face when I got to the line that asked for the date. Luckily, I could see a calendar from where I was sitting.
Part of this ignorance comes from preoccupations and stress, but a lot of it comes from not working. I'm like a less eccentric DaVinci, in the sense that I can understand his choppy, incremental sleep schedule. Not with regard to his output. I might be able to think up tons of shit, but there's no way in hell I'm going to make a diagram. Plus, I can't draw. I've never been able to, really, so this is not MS-related. Sometimes I look at Picasso's paintings in his African Period, and think, "Yeah, I can do that." But I'm quick to add, "That's about it." And, finally, "Am I kidding? Not a chance in hell."
Another problem is that I don't wear a watch. I never really have. This has become less of an issue in recent years, because I always have a cell phone with the time. Incidentally, now, though, Ryan, Anthony, and my mother left to get new phones, and they took mine to get a new one as well. Luckily, we have clocks and such, but I disturbingly feel like a drug addict on the verge of withdrawal. I keep haplessly reaching for my phone, like an amputee with phantom limb pain.
For now, I do know that today is a Monday, because it's Labor Day, which now means absolutely nothing to me. Seriously, it is like Urdu. I know it exists, and millions of others use it, but I can only muster a half-hearted shrug of utter ignorance when I consider its existence. And maybe a nap.
R
The first, "What do you want to accomplish today?," bothered me--actually, almost totally so--due to my mother's intrusion. I took the question literally, and answered with something like, "Take a shower." She, however, extended its import to an obnoxious extent. "No--come on. You want to write. You have lots of things that you want to do." Thanks, Kreskin. You forgot "world peace" as a vapid aspiration. We were not in a beauty pageant. We were in the hospital, and I think the nurse's question applied mainly to the immediate future--as in, the next 24 hours, after which she'd ask me the same question again. I don't think I'll be able to win the Nobel Prize by then.
When the nurse asked me the date, I took a beat. Then I took another. I was actually perplexed. This was not like when I took the plastic peg test with the main nurse during the initial tests to ascertain whether or not I would be eligible, and became fixated on the sphygmomanometer and its humorously long name. This was not like that. I really didn't know the date. I could say that it was Tuesday, mainly because the duration of the stay was only overnight, and I remembered that the first day was a Monday. And I knew it was August, because that is the month of my grandmother's birthday and it hadn't come yet.
(Btw, she's 81 and just had open heart surgery for aortic stenosis and a few bypasses, and is more spry than most people I know. She also quit smoking, too, after approximately 50 years. Her verve both inspires me and pisses me off. At exactly three times my age, she makes me look like an enervated slug.)
The actual date was not something I'd had to consider for a long time. Even now, if I have to fill out a form, I normally wait for my mother to grab the board out of my hands. Not having to know the date is a fairly small reward I get for this, because in reality I have an incredibly difficult time writing anything manually (which sounds redundant, but isn't. I'm typing this, relatively easily, but cannot pick up a pen and start scribbling.).
It's strange to consider, but recently I had to fill out a form by myself and was on the verge of sweating. I could imagine a late Marlon Brando doing this, but not me. The blood drained from my face when I got to the line that asked for the date. Luckily, I could see a calendar from where I was sitting.
Part of this ignorance comes from preoccupations and stress, but a lot of it comes from not working. I'm like a less eccentric DaVinci, in the sense that I can understand his choppy, incremental sleep schedule. Not with regard to his output. I might be able to think up tons of shit, but there's no way in hell I'm going to make a diagram. Plus, I can't draw. I've never been able to, really, so this is not MS-related. Sometimes I look at Picasso's paintings in his African Period, and think, "Yeah, I can do that." But I'm quick to add, "That's about it." And, finally, "Am I kidding? Not a chance in hell."
Another problem is that I don't wear a watch. I never really have. This has become less of an issue in recent years, because I always have a cell phone with the time. Incidentally, now, though, Ryan, Anthony, and my mother left to get new phones, and they took mine to get a new one as well. Luckily, we have clocks and such, but I disturbingly feel like a drug addict on the verge of withdrawal. I keep haplessly reaching for my phone, like an amputee with phantom limb pain.
For now, I do know that today is a Monday, because it's Labor Day, which now means absolutely nothing to me. Seriously, it is like Urdu. I know it exists, and millions of others use it, but I can only muster a half-hearted shrug of utter ignorance when I consider its existence. And maybe a nap.
R
Friday, September 4, 2009
Harvest (-ation or -ing?)
I'm not sure which spelling declension to use for the procedure, so I'll stick with the Neil Young version. Plus I don't think "harvestation" is a word.
On Thursday I had my stem cells collected at Northwestern. First, I had to give blood yet again. If I had a card punched each time I went to have blood drawn, a la Subway, I'd be due for one of those six-foot-long party subs by now. Then I went for the main event: my own stem cell harvest.
I know you're dying to know how this is done, but I have to digress for a second on Lyme disease. A PICC line had to be inserted prior to the actual harvest. I'd had one of these before, in my arm, for Lyme disease. I know you're asking, "How did you get Lyme disease?" I had the same thought, and rest assured that I did not, lo and behold, have it. Diagnosing Lyme disease is not an exact science, ironically. But evidently I met several criteria, and so my doctors wanted to be able to scratch that off the dry-erase board before focusing on the MS. (Here's another digression inside this digression. Think of it like a Matryoshka doll. My current medical team, as opposed to my previous one, is like Dr. House, whereas before they were like the interchangeable residents under his tutelage. I think we could have safely assumed that I did not have Lyme disease--idiots.) So I had to endure this reasonably substantial length of tubing that came out of the inside of my elbow for a month, for what turned out to be no reason. I'm not blaming the doctors on this one; I'm saying that there needs to be an actual test specifically for Lyme disease. There has to be a way, no?
Back to 2009. After having blood drawn, I went to some outpatient operating room where my PICC line was to be inserted. I know it's taken a while for this clarification, but PICC stands for "Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter." By the way, I know that "catheter" is technically correct, but we lay people think only of bladders whenever one is mentioned. Apparently, it's a broad term. So medical personnel inserted this PICC line into my neck. Like I said, I had one previously at the bend of my left arm, but the neck was new to me. And what frustrated me further was that no one got my repeated references of Regan MacNeil, especially when some huge white cube hovered over me while technicians poked, prodded, and pierced my neck. Come on, now--The Exorcist? Those primitive tests she had to go through before there was no diagnosis did not strike a bell with anyone in that room? Nary a nod or murmur of assent. Kids...
When my PICC line was secured, I returned to the room where the harvest would take place. In this room, there was a vinyl blue recliner where I would sit while my PICC line delivered my blood to the cell separator machine, whose technical name I don't know (picture below). What I do know, though, is that this hunk of machinery reminds me of the supercomputer in Willy Wonka that scientists want to use to figure out the exact locations of the remaining Golden Tickets. The computer, though, thwarts their intentions by refusing to divulge this information. Anyways, the separator reminded me of the cinematic supercomputer because it too had spinning dials and digital readouts that delivered esoteric information that I did not even try to understand.
I understood the gist, though, of its function: my blood flowed into the machine, which separated my stem cells from the rest of my blood cells by using a centrifuge, and then my "clean," stem cell-less blood returned to my blood vessels via the same PICC line from which it was sucked out.
I sat in this recliner, hooked up to the separator, for three or four hours. My concept of time, already weak, cannot allow me to make an accurate estimate. All I know is that I sat for a long time, only to fill a bag, unimpressively I thought, with what looked like a redder version of the "orange juice" antiviral serum that saved thousands of lives, including Rene Russo's, in Outbreak.
Finally, I was finished, and had only to wait for the verdict from the lab. The procedure required 2 million cells, and most people come up with 10. Me? 12. That's right--I exceeded expectations (for the first time in probably a long time).
(I'd better have done well, because the previous day mostly consisted of me trying to ignore the white-knuckle pain I felt in my lower back and then my legs--see below.)
So now I have a week off before the long hospitalization and more aggressive chemo. In anticipation, though, and after a phone call with my nurse when she expressed little surprise that my hair had not yet begun to fall out, I had Ralph (my mother's aforementioned fiance emeritus) shave my head like someone with lice, or, less humorously, a white supremacist. I assure you, though, that I don't have--and have never had--lice, nor do I dislike black people irrationally.
Just Tyler Perry, because every once in a while I'll land on TBS and have to endure, briefly, his unfunny sitcom replete with a laugh track that sounds faker than an Ashlee Simpson b-side. That's not an irrational hatred, I maintain.
R
On Thursday I had my stem cells collected at Northwestern. First, I had to give blood yet again. If I had a card punched each time I went to have blood drawn, a la Subway, I'd be due for one of those six-foot-long party subs by now. Then I went for the main event: my own stem cell harvest.
I know you're dying to know how this is done, but I have to digress for a second on Lyme disease. A PICC line had to be inserted prior to the actual harvest. I'd had one of these before, in my arm, for Lyme disease. I know you're asking, "How did you get Lyme disease?" I had the same thought, and rest assured that I did not, lo and behold, have it. Diagnosing Lyme disease is not an exact science, ironically. But evidently I met several criteria, and so my doctors wanted to be able to scratch that off the dry-erase board before focusing on the MS. (Here's another digression inside this digression. Think of it like a Matryoshka doll. My current medical team, as opposed to my previous one, is like Dr. House, whereas before they were like the interchangeable residents under his tutelage. I think we could have safely assumed that I did not have Lyme disease--idiots.) So I had to endure this reasonably substantial length of tubing that came out of the inside of my elbow for a month, for what turned out to be no reason. I'm not blaming the doctors on this one; I'm saying that there needs to be an actual test specifically for Lyme disease. There has to be a way, no?
Back to 2009. After having blood drawn, I went to some outpatient operating room where my PICC line was to be inserted. I know it's taken a while for this clarification, but PICC stands for "Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter." By the way, I know that "catheter" is technically correct, but we lay people think only of bladders whenever one is mentioned. Apparently, it's a broad term. So medical personnel inserted this PICC line into my neck. Like I said, I had one previously at the bend of my left arm, but the neck was new to me. And what frustrated me further was that no one got my repeated references of Regan MacNeil, especially when some huge white cube hovered over me while technicians poked, prodded, and pierced my neck. Come on, now--The Exorcist? Those primitive tests she had to go through before there was no diagnosis did not strike a bell with anyone in that room? Nary a nod or murmur of assent. Kids...
When my PICC line was secured, I returned to the room where the harvest would take place. In this room, there was a vinyl blue recliner where I would sit while my PICC line delivered my blood to the cell separator machine, whose technical name I don't know (picture below). What I do know, though, is that this hunk of machinery reminds me of the supercomputer in Willy Wonka that scientists want to use to figure out the exact locations of the remaining Golden Tickets. The computer, though, thwarts their intentions by refusing to divulge this information. Anyways, the separator reminded me of the cinematic supercomputer because it too had spinning dials and digital readouts that delivered esoteric information that I did not even try to understand.
I understood the gist, though, of its function: my blood flowed into the machine, which separated my stem cells from the rest of my blood cells by using a centrifuge, and then my "clean," stem cell-less blood returned to my blood vessels via the same PICC line from which it was sucked out.
I sat in this recliner, hooked up to the separator, for three or four hours. My concept of time, already weak, cannot allow me to make an accurate estimate. All I know is that I sat for a long time, only to fill a bag, unimpressively I thought, with what looked like a redder version of the "orange juice" antiviral serum that saved thousands of lives, including Rene Russo's, in Outbreak.
Finally, I was finished, and had only to wait for the verdict from the lab. The procedure required 2 million cells, and most people come up with 10. Me? 12. That's right--I exceeded expectations (for the first time in probably a long time).
(I'd better have done well, because the previous day mostly consisted of me trying to ignore the white-knuckle pain I felt in my lower back and then my legs--see below.)
So now I have a week off before the long hospitalization and more aggressive chemo. In anticipation, though, and after a phone call with my nurse when she expressed little surprise that my hair had not yet begun to fall out, I had Ralph (my mother's aforementioned fiance emeritus) shave my head like someone with lice, or, less humorously, a white supremacist. I assure you, though, that I don't have--and have never had--lice, nor do I dislike black people irrationally.
Just Tyler Perry, because every once in a while I'll land on TBS and have to endure, briefly, his unfunny sitcom replete with a laugh track that sounds faker than an Ashlee Simpson b-side. That's not an irrational hatred, I maintain.
R
Thursday, September 3, 2009
From JFK to FDR
First, let me say that I'm not referring to the respective legacies left by both Democratic presidents. Numerous books have already been written about that, and I hardly could say anything new. No, I'm talking about the chronic pain that plagued both men, and how Neupogen has made me feel like both commanders-in-chief, first the later one, and now the earlier New Deal-maker.
The nurses at Northwestern warned me about possible pain that could arise due to injections of Neupogen. I have to give myself two shots every morning, and they are quite simple (see picture and relevant post below). This is to increase production of red blood cells, and consequently stem cells to be transplanted later. The good thing about Neupogen is that it negates the need for stem cell collection from my bone marrow, which, as anyone who's seen an after-school special or made-for-TV movie about cancer and bone marrow operations knows, is an incredibly painful procedure. After the past two days or so, I'm not so sure I wouldn't go the traditional route--at least it's over relatively quickly, as opposed to the Neupogen regiment, which lasts about a week.
Until late Tuesday night, I had no pain whatsoever. I even emailed my nurse and told her that the injections were going well, and that the pain I was supposed to feel was nonexistent. Not five minutes after I sent the email, though, my lower back started to throb. It was like she had stabbed a voodoo doll immediately after speaking to me. At first, the pain was subtle, though constant. Soon, though, it grew in intensity to almost comical proportions. I wasn't laughing, though.
You know how, when you stub your toe, the pain is excruciating but you know it'll be brief? Or a brain freeze, when you're nearly apoplectic from blinding pain, but then it subsides and you gratefully are back to normal? Well, imagine both of those types of pain, but without the brevity and quick resolution. This morning, my lower back felt exactly like this. I felt like I imagine JFK felt due to his chronic back problems, and only kept thinking of an image that I have seen many times, but most recently on that MSNBC documentary on the Kennedys: his face as he lay on a board while he was being carried out of an ambulance. He wanted to grimace, I'm sure, but the cameras forced him to keep a blank expression.
Although I had been warned, I assumed most of these caveats were part of simple medical protocol. This morning, though, I was in the throes of such throbbing, relentless pain that I felt I understood, for the first time, exactly how Kennedy felt on that stretcher. Goddamn, I was in pain. Eventually, the nurse came through on a prescription for Norco, aka Vicodin, and I received some relief from that.
Then, after a long siesta that has come to be a daily ritual, I awoke to find that the pain had left my lower back. Energized and overconfident, I stood up only to realize that the pain had simply migrated to my legs, specifically my thighs. I still can hardly stand without scowling. Admittedly, this is not much of a change from my normal expression, but now its cause is pathological and not simply due to a cantankerous temperament.
So now, I feel like how I imagine FDR felt late in his presidency. Everyone knows he'd had polio, and subsequently had to use a wheelchair, but I don't think people know how much pain he was actually in. Sure, his legs were mostly numb, but he still endured, silently, sporadic spasms of pain. Likewise, I don't put up much of a fuss, but I assure you that my legs--thighs and knees, mostly--hurt like hell.
Maybe now I can call my pain "presidential."
R
The nurses at Northwestern warned me about possible pain that could arise due to injections of Neupogen. I have to give myself two shots every morning, and they are quite simple (see picture and relevant post below). This is to increase production of red blood cells, and consequently stem cells to be transplanted later. The good thing about Neupogen is that it negates the need for stem cell collection from my bone marrow, which, as anyone who's seen an after-school special or made-for-TV movie about cancer and bone marrow operations knows, is an incredibly painful procedure. After the past two days or so, I'm not so sure I wouldn't go the traditional route--at least it's over relatively quickly, as opposed to the Neupogen regiment, which lasts about a week.
Until late Tuesday night, I had no pain whatsoever. I even emailed my nurse and told her that the injections were going well, and that the pain I was supposed to feel was nonexistent. Not five minutes after I sent the email, though, my lower back started to throb. It was like she had stabbed a voodoo doll immediately after speaking to me. At first, the pain was subtle, though constant. Soon, though, it grew in intensity to almost comical proportions. I wasn't laughing, though.
You know how, when you stub your toe, the pain is excruciating but you know it'll be brief? Or a brain freeze, when you're nearly apoplectic from blinding pain, but then it subsides and you gratefully are back to normal? Well, imagine both of those types of pain, but without the brevity and quick resolution. This morning, my lower back felt exactly like this. I felt like I imagine JFK felt due to his chronic back problems, and only kept thinking of an image that I have seen many times, but most recently on that MSNBC documentary on the Kennedys: his face as he lay on a board while he was being carried out of an ambulance. He wanted to grimace, I'm sure, but the cameras forced him to keep a blank expression.
Although I had been warned, I assumed most of these caveats were part of simple medical protocol. This morning, though, I was in the throes of such throbbing, relentless pain that I felt I understood, for the first time, exactly how Kennedy felt on that stretcher. Goddamn, I was in pain. Eventually, the nurse came through on a prescription for Norco, aka Vicodin, and I received some relief from that.
Then, after a long siesta that has come to be a daily ritual, I awoke to find that the pain had left my lower back. Energized and overconfident, I stood up only to realize that the pain had simply migrated to my legs, specifically my thighs. I still can hardly stand without scowling. Admittedly, this is not much of a change from my normal expression, but now its cause is pathological and not simply due to a cantankerous temperament.
So now, I feel like how I imagine FDR felt late in his presidency. Everyone knows he'd had polio, and subsequently had to use a wheelchair, but I don't think people know how much pain he was actually in. Sure, his legs were mostly numb, but he still endured, silently, sporadic spasms of pain. Likewise, I don't put up much of a fuss, but I assure you that my legs--thighs and knees, mostly--hurt like hell.
Maybe now I can call my pain "presidential."
R
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