Quityerbellyachin’

Things have been quiet. Not too quiet. Just quiet enough so as not to make me cry a bunch and then come write it down in a funny way.



My mother-in-law came to town and that was a blast. Luckily, the two weeks she showed up were two of the best weeks of my chemo-life. We got to mainly chill-bill and relax. While we were in the hospital getting juiced my wife took her mom over to the horse races – they’re across the street from the hospital.



I told them to bet twenty-five dollars on the horse with the silliest name. They put it all on Quityerbellyachin’ and then he blew it and now I have cancer and no cash. Stupid horse.

While they were there they had hotdogs just to “fulfill the experience of the track”. My wife doesn’t eat hotdogs so she had to try to keep the “experience” as well as her gag reflex down.



About a week after my mother-in-law left, my dad and sister showed up for a SURPISE VISIT!!! I was just standing (topless) in my dining room when I saw two familiar figures burst past my window and then the bing-bong of my doorbell. It was a great surprise and we had some fun. Fer sher I wasn’t up to the par of the week before. Here’s where some of the juicy stuff starts – the stuff all you little sickos keep coming back for.

I got weak. Real weak. Tired. Then my skin turned yellow like I was coming down with friggin’ jaundice. My wife tried to hospitalize me but I hate that place so I fought it and said I just needed to drink some moo juice.

Then my dad felt he had to pipe in and let me know that we WERE going to the hospital and NEED HE REMIND ME that he outweighed me by AT LEAST 100 pounds.

I told him if he tried anything funny he’d get to see how much energy I really had left in me. Needless to say (totally needless) we DID NOT go to the hospital that day – Saturday.

The next day we were all walking into church. I was feeling much better – well, a little better and hey, don’t you just sit at church? I was doin’ that at home! So we go into church and suddenly I’m needing something – a chair, a pole, a wall, a shoulder, a floor, something. My world goes into tunnel vision and the noise gets all far away. All I can hear is my wife saying my name over and over again.

I wake up and I’m on the floor of my church lobby. People are trying to give me water, get me to sit down, am I okay? I’d fainted like a darned fool right in front of everyone!!! And now I was just sitting there crumpled up like a dumb little ball. AHHHH!

They got me situated at the back of the church and we went to the hospital the next day.



They took my blood. Everything was low. White count. Red count. Hemoglobin. They said I’d totally crashed and everyone (including the old seasoned nurses and my wife and family) acted really grossed out by my white tongue.



Personally, I think my tongue seemed whiter just because my skin looked more yellow than usual, which I PARTIALLY blame on all the fluorescent lighting around.



At the hospital, while I was getting my blood drawn, I was telling another patient about my fainting experience at church – she’s this big, black southern woman and she goes, “They musta thought you had a genuine religious experience, hahahaha”.



They gave me a blood transfusion – I got it from someone in Pamona – and now I feel great.



Okay, two more things real quick and then we’ll get the fart outta here. First off, we found this painting that looks like my dad:



Secondly, my sister grooms dogs. Here’s a photo of my dog with half a groom.



Alright. That’s it. I’m gonna finish eating my grilled cheese and tomato soup and then go watch Tremors with my mom and wife. Hope everyone out yonder is doing splenda and hopefully I continue on. FINAL ROUND OF CHEMO IN ABOUT TWO WEEKS!!!

Y tu llama tambien

JUST started my third round of chemo. The train has left the station. The plane is going down. Thought I’d squeeze in my final farewell (boo-hoo, I’m a nanny-boy) before final blastoff.





To start off with I’d like to present Exhibit A:



Me with friend Matt (Matt is his real name) at a place called Kay and Dave’s. They serve Mexican food and it’s really weird and delicious there. The waiters are ALL Mexican and they ALL speak broken English but understand it PERFECTLY. They’ll never misunderstand an order.

Never.

And I mean ever.

Anyway, milk soothes my tender tummy and sore throat so I’ve been drinking a bunch of it…………..incidentally, I’ve been drinking tons of Gatorade so my calcium levels are like…through the roof. The next thing you know I’m going to have to to pass a big, sharp kidney stone down my slender urethra. (Not overly slender, just regular in general slender).

So we’re at this restaurant and some nice seniorita is taking our drink orders and everyone is ordering ice tea and diet cokes and it comes to me and I go, “Do you have milk?” And the woman kind of laughs at my cute, child-like antics and says, “Yes” and so I order the milk and then Matt tells this funny story but I can’t remember it, only laughing with everyone.

So a little bit later this GUY comes over. And this GUY is not the chick from before. And he’s passing out all the drinks and it comes down to this one final cup. It’s like a little kids cup in Styrofoam and it’s got a baby lid and a wacky bendy straw in it and the guy goes, “Sorry, I thought this was for a little kid”.

And I think, “Yeah, that’s right, you’d BETTER go put it in a Big Boy Glass.

Hey, speaking of wet things, check out this other crazy story. So I’m sitting at the hospital – I’m there right now – and they call me and some little girl says, “Hi, this is dietary, can I take your lunch and dinner order for tomorrow?



Well, since this is our third round of chemo, we pretty much know what to expect and we expect the hospital food to look like somebody just pulled it out of a garbage disposal or a cat’s stomach so we don’t eat it, we just eat out.



BESIDES ALL THAT they brought us some ice tea and just by happenstance the ice tea was really good.

REALLY good.

Well they didn’t give us near enough. We wanted more, more, MOOOORE! So when they called to ask me what I wanted for lunch and dinner, I told them I wanted six ice teas for lunch and a second six for dinner, hahahahahahahahah.



Thirdly and least importantly, I’ve been feeling pretty good. PRETTY good. Like, too tired to actually play basketball, but not tired enough to dress up like I wanted to.



I only wore them for a little bit though because I got chilly.

Tonight we’re ordering stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut and my weirdo wife is ordering hamburger pizza and she just keeps saying, “Hamburger…hamburger….. hamburger” into the phone. And then she says, “What do you mean ‘you don’t have hamburger?’”

What fartin’ pizza place DOESN’T HAVE HAMBURGER???

Well a guy in the background goes, “We have hamburger. We have beef”.

And the guy on the phone goes, “Oh, I guess we’ve got beef” and my wife laughs, “Well, honey, beef IS hamburger”.

Duh.

OK, two more stories and then I’m out like the gout. The first one is about good news and the second one is about a true supernatural encounter.

They took my blood. I didn’t want to give it to them (I’ve been dealing with my needle phobia slowly and think I’m STARTING to get over it) but they took it by force. One male nurse sat on my face and another one tied down my legs and these two huge black guys each had to restrain my arms and I just kept making groaning sounds.

After that they tested it and told me that my HCG levels – you’ll remember this from previous blogs. HCG is short for the cancer markers in your blood. Last time they checked it had dropped from around 950 to about 7.7.

Today, now, we reside at .6 This is good news.

The second story – okay. So last night my wife, pictured here (just kidding) mother and mother-in-law left me alone to suffer the dangers of the hospital myself. I was lying in the dark (alone, like I said) and I was sort of half thinking and half praying and I was like, “OK God, I’d really like for an angel to just visit me right now. It would be so cool if one just fluttered into my room and either sat on the edge of my bed or just lurked in the corner. If you sent it down I’d tell everyone and ask it some questions.

Nothing happened.

NOT A THING HAPPENED!!!!!!

I just laid there (alone) in the dark.

This morning (before my family showed up) some volunteer brought in breakfast and set it down on my desk. I didn’t feel like getting up so it just sat there.

About an hour later my family showed up. My mom walked in first and saw my breakfast tray. She walks over and picks up this small piece of paper and says, “Who gave you this?” and hands it to me.

In my hands is a card and on the cover of the card it says, “THE LORD IS NEAR TO YOU”

Whoa.

Where did THAT come from???

Hey, have you ever noticed that it’s I before E except after C unless it’s in the word “weird” then the rule is weird?

THAT’S IT!!!! See ya next time.

Okay, just wait. There IS one more story and this one is G-O-O-D. So last night my mother-in-law and wife went home and decided to try some gardening in the dark. Well, my wife’s flowers are dying like they always are and so my mother-in-law dug her hand into the soil to see how deep the water went down and she thought the dirt felt clumpy and strange so she began to crumble it up in her hand to check consistency. Okay. And then she looked down and it was my dog Clementine’s TURD!!!!!!! HAHAHAHAAHAHAH!!!!!!!!

SHE THREW UP BLOOD

Alright folks, it's time to rock n' roll. Come Tuesday we're dragging our behinds back in for my third round of chemo. I'll be in the hospital for five days, just chillin', playing SORRY! with the fam and takin' strolls around the fifth floor.



If you ever get admitted to Arcadia Methodist Hospital, DEFINITELY request the fifth floor. It's sort of The Four Seasons up there. Floors two and three you're likely to be shot or stabbed on. Even though floor five has a woman who is constantly screaming for help at all hours of the day and night it is much better than the nurses that are trying to take you down a notch.



I was at home drinking a bunch of orange gatorade - one of my new faves - and I'm chugging it, hardcore, slammin' this thing, bottoms up. Well, my stomach hasn't really been in the "slamming" mood, but something just came over me and I needed hydration. So I take it and then I'm like, "This stuff is coming up, big time"

I get to the bathroom and Ralph Nader. It's on the floor, on the seat, on the bowl, some is actually IN the bowl, but mostly we failed to find our target.

I threw up all the orange gato and then gave one final heave ho and what should come up but a bunch of red blood.

Hmmmm......then I threw up more.

And it was all blood.

And then I'm crouching there with blood drippping from my nose and lips wondering just what in the fart is going on. I haven't eaten any blood lately.......

My mother and wife panic and call my oncologist and he says to bring me into the ER. It is 11 o'clock at night and I got out of bed to puke. I'm not feeling like seeing the ER and I'm not seeing this as a real emergency anyway...

But we go.



The doctor says, okay, we're going to have to do a rectal exam on you and get some stool samples to see if the blood has gone through your system.

My answer was simple and fast.

"That's not happening".

You see, I draw the line at people sticking things in my anus or down my urethra. I believe that as working professionals we can find an alternative route to both of these. The doctor told me that it was the "ONLY WAY" and then he began pleading with my mother and wife, knowing that they were the only way into my brown star home.

My wife - she's so kind and always on my side - she says, "John, I think you should let him do this".

Unreal.

I tell the doctor, I say, "Can I have that little bucket? I think I'm gonna be sick again."

He hands me this little dirty bedpan and I throw up a bunch of dirty brown blood into it and this is what the doctor says verbatim:

"Oh yeah, that's definitely blood. We don't have to do a rectal exam."

Dear doctor. I hate you.



It's like, do they just have new tools they want to try out? He just got a new speculum that he wanted to plug into me?

I stayed the night in the hospital, they said I just teared my esophagus and that I was probably already halfway healed. I won't get into the night I spent alone in the hospital (on the THIRD FLOOR) but suffice it to say it was one of the worst hospital experiences of my entire life. I thought a gangster was going to come into my room and shoot me.

Outside of all that, Tuesday we start Round 3 and we're gonna tear it up on floor FIVE. We've figured it all out and this should all be over in about 38 / 37 days --- FREEEEDOM!!!

Feelin’ Fine in ’09

Here's a poem I wrote. Read it. Laugh. Cry. Puke.

It's called


CANCER SCHMANCER (Feeling Fine in '09)

Cancer sucks
Cancer blows
It makes me feel 100 years old
Its in my bones
Its in my brain
Chemotherapy drives me insane

The IVs stick
And the poison is ick
The medical cocktail makes me sick

I'm stuck in bed
For five days on end
I can't even phone a friend
Because every sound or imagery
Makes me want to loose my beans
Vomit, dry heave, loose my lunch
My appetite it gone
I can't do brunch

40 days left and then
I'm on top
F U cancer
you are slop

You took my health
You took my pubes
Now I have to take a tube
of testosterone
So i don't grow boobs

But I will win
I'll stay alive
I'll kick your ass
I will survive




PS. This guy probably won't survive.