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.

ROUND 2, ding

It is 7:30 in the morning on Tuesday. I wake up this morning and I feel great. I feel human. I feel a little sleepy, but I feel normal. The round one chemo has left my system and I am a semi-functioning adult. My energy level is back up to where I can walk around a grocery store if need be - before I could force myself to get to the stopsign halfway down the block and back.

Today is a good day.

Today is a dangerous day.

Today is the day we go in to start round 2 of the chemotherapy. 11am. 3 1/2 hours.

Last week I was scared and I didn't want to do it. The way it makes you feel is difficult to describe. It's sort of a nauseous feeling that won't go away plus a feeling of complete and utter hopelessness. Your energy is sapped from your body to the point where even chewing is difficult because it takes too much of your sweet reserves and then both these feelings just stick to you for like fifteen days and it blows hard.

But today I feel good.

Today I feel excited to go in. I watch the clock tick around sometimes and think - every second. Every second I am one second closer to the end of this. I suppose, though, at the end of the day it all comes down to drips. One drip closer, one drop closer.

Gotta get sick to get better.

Just wanted to let everyone know that today the wife and mother and I are ready to go in and fight this for the next five.

Please keep up all the praying. They make me feel grrrrrreat!!!!!

John

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"

MY FATHER’S PUBIC HAIR, A BIOPIC

Got admitted to the hospital yesterday on a whim. Had some blood drawn at the clinic and they said my white count was too low......WAY too low. They wanted to pump me up with some platelets - the stuff they yank out of your blood that causes scabbing. I'm still wondering who's I got - maybe some starving college student? Maybe some near homeless fella? Maybe an immigrant named Juan? Who knows? Some Good Samaritan out there, getting stabbed with needles at fifty bucks a crack so I can have my platies.

So I got all checked in and they doused me for about forty-five minutes. All said and done it was about a 12 hour process. Hospitals work slow. Uck. The hospital beds on the 2nd floor are like prison beds and everything was broken. All the buttons on my bed were broken save for the "elevate back" position.

The nurse who came in to give me my IV let me know that she was "the best" before jabbing me in my elbow, my bicep and my forearm before finally getting it to stick.

We watched a show about face transplants on TV. Man gets malled by bear. Man needs new face. I have no real problems.

They ALSO got a count back on my HCG levels - that's those pesky cancer markers. A quick rundown on those - they started at 32, then jumped to 300 then jumped to 900, which was like, "whoa". That's "whoa" bad news, remember? One dose of chemo, easy does it and..........back at 300.

Lucky guy?

Doubt it. It's the prayers. It has to be and I refuse to believe anything else. I think we feel like often times praying doesn't "work" or doesn't work how we want it to.....but you know what? It's gotta work SOMETIMES - otherwise it wouldn't be a million year old practice - and right now is one of those times.

Miracles at work in our lives, folks.

Take it in.

Today I'm feeling GOLD. Those platelets really got me back on top. I'm eating and drinking way more and oh yeah, they gave me vicodin so that was nice.


My folks have been staying here with us to help out - well, my dad was here for about a week and a half but then the old man had to get back to the grind - brotha's gotta eat, y'know - but my mom is sounding like she's going to stay with us in LA for the long haul.

I was in bed and chilly earlier today and so she brought me in a blanket from her bed. i took a nap and when I got up I realized there were, like.....inch and a half long black hairs all over me. I couldn't shake em. Each time I thought I'd brushed them all away i'd find more. Then I went and took a pee and there were just a BUNCH of them all over the toilet seat - these much shorter, ew.

Anyway, I asked my mom if my dad sheds?

He's a fairly hairy fellow and I'd just figured that he'd been...........what's that called when a bear loses it's fur in warmer climates? They're from South Dakota so I just thought he was doing that and when she brought the blanket in from their bed, y'know, I got run off.

It was about this time that I ran my hand through my beard, just sort of one of those "hhhmmmm" things and low and behold, the largest chunk of hair I've ever seen just rolls off my face.

Today I have officially started to lose my hair.

Good news is, it's not really depressing, but it is sort of gross. I'm saying like......I can pull out enough hair from my face to fill up a bathroom brush, it's so much. And it just slides out painlessly, like some mangy old gopher's coat.

Oh well, at least I know I'm not sleeping in my daddy's pubes, hahaha.


THAT SAID, all good things!!!!

HOW ABOUT A FUNNY PICTURE OF MY DOG?

PUTTING THE ANCER IN CANCER

Had a doctor's appointment with an oncologist (that's a cancer specialist NOT someone who's just on call all the time, like I originally thought). The building was a little scuzzy - the type of place where all the bathroom doors are locked and you've got to ask for a key that ends up being taped to a pen or a spork or a giant clown shoe or something - and we waited just past an hour post appointment time before getting behind the giant wooden door that separates the lambs from the slaughter (you know the feeling when they call your name) before being shifted through three different doctors until they finally landed us on one that didn't have any information on us.

After he'd gathered our files and played 20 questions he quickly let us know that:

1. Surgery helped, but.....................................I still had cancer.

It. Had. Spread.

2. I now had Stage 2 cancer and he wanted me to start chemotherapy the following Wednesday......which as I write this, is actually today.

He also let us know that there are two different kinds of cancer - NON-SEMONOMA and SEMONOMA. I have NON-semonoma, which is the more aggressive of the two. From there, non-semonoma breaks down into a few different scattagories and, wouldn't ya know it? I HAVE THE MOST AGGRESSIVE VERSION OF THAT!!!

DING DING DING!!!! TELL HIM WHAT HE'S WON, JOHNNY!

.....but I just did - the sweet sweet gift of cancer. Oh, thanks Santa - coulda went for the lump of coal, but I guess this'll do just fine.


When people say, "I don't mean to keep kicking a dead horse......................................................" I'M THAT DEAD HORSE!!!! PLEASE STOP KICKING ME!

We had an appointment with our urologist the other day. He said my cancer markers BEFORE surgery were 32. POST surgery - 619. Today: 900.

This is a huge leap..........in the wrong direction. The doctor wanted me to go the hospital THAT DAY, get a catscan and see what it is we were dealing with.

Got checked in last night, got the scan and today they told us that the some "nodules" had shown up on my lungs.

Tumors.

On my lungs.

Lung cancer.


About two hours later I started chemo and am just currently finishing it up. Jade and I watch each drip-drop into the tube, down into my vein and talk about how each drop is me getting a little bit better.

So far I feel good. In fact, I feel great. GREAT. The doctors are all EXTREMELY adamant that this is going to deal with it. The chemo is going to eradicate this sunnabitch from my bod.



IN THE FUTURE THEY WILL SAY:

"CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY USED TO GIVE PEOPLE CHEMO??? They poison them to cure them - how savage! Luckily the scientists have found the cure for cancer in oil - TOO BAD WE USED IT ALL TO DRIVE AROUND OUR SUVs WITH ONLY ONE PERSON IN THE CAR AND NOW THE POLAR BEARS ARE ALL DEAD BECAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING!!! YAAAAY!!! THE FUTURE REALLY IS A BRIGHTER PLACE - BUT ONLY BECAUSE THE ATMOSPHERE HAS FINALLY DISSOLVED AND THE SUN IS SHINING DIRECTLY ON OUR REDDENED, BURNT SKIN!!! YAAAAY FOR TECHNOLOGY!!! YAAAAY!!!"


I've got about nine weeks of this and then I'm like Fred f'ing Astaire, tap dancing and karate kicking my way back to work.


Oh, and lastly, wasn't there a movie we were making or something like that??? Oh yeah there was and we're still pressing forward with it.

YOU BEAR WITH US AND WE'LL SEE THIS THING TO THE END YET!!!

ROUND ONE.......DONE

Round one of chemo is complete.
Thank God.

Truth be told, it's not as bad as I was anticipating.....bed-ridden, vomit and diarrhea inducing, chills, fevers.....maybe some crying.....

It was all that, but not to the extreme I was thinking. Sort of like a flu.

I saw one of those posters in the hospital - it's a picture of a stream and it says, "In the battle between water and the rock, the water will always win. Not because of strength, but because of persistence."

After dealing with chemo for one day, I thought. No problem.

After dealing with the side effects for the seventh day today, I'm thinking.....nine more weeks? Perhaps it would be easier if I were to throw myself in front of a bus to save a small child........been hanging around the bus stop lately......waiting for some careless mother to come along....so far no luck.

Came home and laid in bed. Our cocker spaniel Clementine hopped over to me. I thought, "Yes, come here, Clementine. Give me some of that magic you have. Puppy dog tears and euphoric energy. Share it. Make me feel a little better, a little happier about all this."

She came over, pounced on my stomach and made me barf.

Not exactly what I had in mind but I did feel better later. Gotta keep our eyes peeled for the little miracles.