THE GRAND MALL

My mom is staying with us through our "ordeal". She's been here for almost a month and it's been great having her around. She helps out with everything and has made it so much easier on my young bride and myself, but mainly it's just nice (at risk of sounding fruity) having her around emotionally. This is all way more tiring than you may imagine.....or maybe not. Maybe you imagine it being way worse than it is. Maybe being here and going through it is actually easier - being able to see it and know what's going on.

Either way.....

Yesterday my mom and I were driving to Hollywood to take care of some biz'nus. We were driving down the 170 and we popped onto the 101 - these are freeways - and we're chit-chattting and I'm feeling good. All week has actually been pretty good. I start my second round of chemo this coming Tuesday and it's been long enough to where I'm starting to feel like myself again. So anyway, we're chatting and things are going well and we take the Highland / Hollywood exit and we're driving up the ramp and then I woke up in an ambulance.


Shocking, right?


I've got a paramedic leaning over me saying, "Can you hear me? You had a seizure."

Okay.

"Where do you live?"

"........I don't.......the valley.....?"

"Do you know what year it is?"

"..................2006......?"

"It's 2008"

i couldn't remember anything except my wife's name. About 45 minutes later it all started coming back to me.

Scary.


They rushed me to the hospital and when they found out I had cancer told us they wanted to do a CAT scan because the type of cancer I have has a tendency to spread to the brain and brain tumors can cause seizures.

Great.

So they hooked me up and juiced me with the iodine and scanned my brain and..........it came back negative.


I don't have brain cancer.

For the first time in my life we were all thankful that I ONLY had testicular, lung, and lymphomatic cancer.

Thank you, God.


So what caused this? I'll tell you what.

I've had seizures since I was a child. They are small. They are called Petit Mal - petit - small. Many of you have probably seen me have them. When I'm very tired they come on more frequently. My eyes roll back in my head for just a split second and them I'm back. They don't interfere with my daily life because I'm on medication for them.

My doctor has told me to take 3 pills a day (depakote) but they're really expensive - about $130 for one pill bottle - so I took it upon myself to only take one a day for the past few years and it's been working out great until........well, until about two days ago.
The hospital said my depakote levels should be at 50 and they were at 12. This coupled with the fact that for whatever reason I haven't been sleeping well - pre-seizure I'd gotten about six hours of sleep in three days - and like I said, when I'm tired, they come on more. So the low levels mixed with my sleep deprivation is probably what brought it on.

Needless to say, I am taking my pills three times a day. We were able to find a generic version of the pills for............$10 / pill bottle.

Can you believe this?

Anyway, all is well now and we're back on track. It was really scary not knowing who I was or where I was and my mom sounds like she was freakin' like a mohikin.

She says all of a sudden I yelled and then started locking up and curling into a ball. She threw her hand across my chest because I started tipping over onto her and she pulled up onto the sidewalk and dialed 911.

She's from South Dakota so she has no idea where we are and she's just shouting out the closest street sign she can see and trying to remember what exit we just took when suddenly five people appeared at her side.

One of them cradled my head and the other grabbed my hand and they helped her out until the paramedics showed up and then they were gone.

Believe what you will. Nice people, Good Samaritans. I'm going to believe they were real life angels, there and gone.

That's that. That's my life in a nutshell lately. Thanks for reading.

The one thing, though....the one thing I said to my mom in the hospital once she and my wife showed up, I said, "Man.......lucky I wasn't driving, hahahaha"