What a Waste it Is to Lose One’s Mind — NDE #6.5

The first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t get this picture out of my mind, the one of the lousy tennis player with the gigantic tits.

You know who I mean – the one that never really could play tennis, but she was so hot* that she went on to star in music videos made by the Church of July Jr. ? That one. I came across a photo of her online on June 27, 2008. And no, for your information, it wasn’t a “porno” site, I haven’t looked at those in months in years ever. It was a site where Met fans can follow a game as it’s going on and post insightful comments like “Delagdo! El esta en fuego!!” or “Nice job Castillo, almost got it out of the infield this time.” In some ways that might be considered more embarrassing than checking out a porn site, but you know I’m not here just to look good.

Anyhow one of the jokers on this one site had that personality disorder where you always need to be the center of attention, what do they call that again? bein’ a dick? The dick’s dick would feel feisty sometimes and during the course of the game he’d post a hot** picture or twelve and on this night it was of the aforementioned tennis lady who’s better known for her set than her game and match. Picture went up, I saw it, woo woo, all right now let’s go back to the game and see if the Mets have learned how to get a runner in from third base with one out.

Problem was, after about a half hour I noticed that I kept seeing that picture of Big Blonde everywhere I looked. I was trying to follow the game but her carcass kept popping up, getting in between me and the diamond. I’d look away from the computer screen and she’d disappear (or maybe not, it’s hard to remember) but when I came back so would she. It was like Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, except that while the gremlin on the plane had the decency to keep still, Ol’ Busty McBreakPoint had started to bounce around all over my field of vision like Mario dodging barrels in Donkey Kong.

I quit watching the game — I couldn’t see it anyway — and tried to solve the problem by going to bed. That worked out great until I began having a dream that I was in my own kitchen crawling on the floor in search of Vicodin. I couldn’t even see the kitchen properly because there was a throbbing black dot taking up half my field of vision. I’ve heard that some concussion victims have headaches that feel like there’s a heartbeat on the brain. That’s exactly what it felt like as the most brutal head pain in my life woke me up and sent me to the kitchen for 1 no 2 no 3 no 4 Vicodin. I’m living the dream!

I hoped without reason that things would be all better the next day. Nope. I was still getting some image persistence, but now I was having problems integrating images as well. I’d see you right in front of me, but when the two halves of the brain had a conference to integrate Right Eye and Left Eye, they reconciled the info about as well as Arthur Andersen. You’d only have 3/4 of a face by the time I was through with you. Might have been cool if I was a Picasso fan or peaking on acid, but I wasn’t. That goes double for what happened at the dry cleaner that afternoon, where the cashier I’ve seen over a hundred times had the face of a gargoyle and wouldn’t stay in one place long enough for me to hand her my $Twenty.

It doesn’t sound like this guy should be driving, does it? My wife came to the same conclusion riding shotgun while I weaved around whichever traffic lane looked like it was in the middle. I seem to recall her hair turning white as she screamed that I needed to “slow down” or maybe even “stop” — I was too busy bouncing my ball of confusion to notice that we were about to hit the car in front of us at a cool 40mph.

I never would’ve seen it coming.

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*She’s not hot, she just has ridiculously large gazongas that will probably require back surgery when she hits her 40s
**Hot should be read as “hot” throughout but I haven’t budgeted for enough quotation marks in this piece

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The Last 48 Hours — NDE #7. Last in a series?

July, 2008, Kansas City. It started harmlessly enough. Around 10 in the evening or so I ate some diced pineapple. It felt a bit soft, a bit squishier than normal, but it tasted fine and I didn’t worry about it. A few hours later I started to vomit. My wife was so alarmed she called 911, which I found ridiculously unnecessary.

I don’t remember anything else that happened over the next two days.

When I regained something close to consciousness I was convinced it was Saturday, only to be told it was Sunday. I was sure at least that I needed to get up out of the hospital bed and take a leak, only to be told they’d put in a catheter. I tried to fathom why my father was in the room and why I had a vague idea that I had just seen two of my sisters passing through. Then it was back to bed.

According to first-hand reports, it was during a routine transfer to the MRI room when I surprised one and all by busting out a new dance move known as The Seizure. (New to me anyway.) They say I was then shipped back to the ICU, my home away from home that summer. Cribbing again from the official report: “He does have some speech, in fact he says complete sentences, but does not make sense*… Unfortunately, the prognosis appears poor.”

How poor? Put it this way, just about everyone in my immediate family came to visit. Except my brother — They told him he wouldn’t make it in time. Dr. Sunshine gave me 48 hours.

But as it happened, he ended up giving me quite a few more hours than that, seeing as how I somehow pulled through and lived to blog the tale. I spend the next week in a nursing home, where physical therapists marveled at my ability to stand and walk, a further testament to how far I’d gone. You would think after Dr. Sunshine saved my life and all I would at least have the decency to drop the sarcastic nickname. But then it’s not sarcasm any more, is it?

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*The reader is permitted to make a joke about how little sense my sentences typically make.
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Life Imitates Art — NDE #6, Volume Two

PREVIOUSLY ON GITGAW

Our anhero begins chemotherapy in New York to treat his recurrent rectal cancer metastatic to the lungs, liver, kidneys, adrenal glands, and brain. (Ed: JESUS CHRIST!) After two treatments he falls victim to a rare side effect of Avastin: Perforation of the gastrointestinal tract. He’s rushed to the E.R. where we end with a cliffhanger to rival the close of Kill Bill, Volume One. Willie Survive?

Anyway. You know how whenever you go to the E.R. in real life you spend five hours waiting to see one doctor, but on the tee vee they instantly have four nurses, three surgeons, two cops and a firefighter? And they’re swarming around the bed yelling “We need oxygen!” “We need saline!” and “Who called the cops and why did they bring a fire fighter?”

Well, this was like on the tee vee.

Let’s back up a bit. I’ve said that my GI tract was ‘perforated,’ but what does that mean exactly? Well, for me it meant that I developed an extra whole in my rectum. So when my food was 99% digested, it had two choices: It could go out the usual exit, i.e. the anus, or it could just seep out this new whole and go to lands unknown. In laymen’s terms, I was shitting into my bloodstream. For half a week, probably.

Back to the E.R., where the surgeon began “ablating” the western hemisphere of planet buttock. At first it sounded straightforward: You’ve got a big bag of pus on your butt, you lance it, drain it, patch it up and go home. Problems here were (a) the feces in the blood that needed removing and (b) the abscess being too large to sew up, leaving an open wound about the size of a Blackberry. That wound would need to have its dressing changed three times a week over the next six months, but we’ll leave that for a separate fun blog post. Stay tuned.

Saving my life, the surgeon was able to remove some “frank stool” as the New York doctors termed it. That staved off my dying of any number of bacteria in the poop, including the famous e. coli. So, well done there.

Still not out of the woods yet though. Now we’re headed up to the ICU where the team acts just like they do in the movies, scurrying about with bags of blood and whatnot as they try to keep me from dying of septic shock. (My blood pressure was about 5 over 3 at this point and my pulse was 700 as my heart raced to compensate.) Long story short (Ed: You call this short?) they save my life. Thanks.

I can’t even complain about the catheter they stuck into me while I was fully awake. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it, but you know me. I can’t complain.

But wait, there’s more! The surgeon told me I’d need a colostomy bag. Again. That would require surgery the day after — surgery the doctor wasn’t sure I’d survive. Heading into the O.R. a nurse told me she’d be my guardian angel and wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me. She lived up to her word. In a more dramatic world I would have gone back to the hospital later to thank her and be told “Nobody works here by that name.” But life isn’t like the movies.

The Price of Progress — NDE #6, part one

So I found out in November ’07 the cancer had not only come back to me but brought a friend to shack up in the lungs. It had officially metastasized, making it eligible for inclusion in a New Yorker article. (I tried submitting a piece there but it was too inchoate.) This was serious business, something not to be left to the bumbling docs of the Midwest. It was time to go straight to the top, to the front-page-of-the-Times shaman, the only one who could save me.

LMAO. Literally.

Winter was spent scanning and planning. Three months, or a third of my expected lifespan back then, gone away. Finally in February the treatments began: The FOLFIRI regimen with a kicker of Avastin. Dr. Times (or probably his nurse) warned me the side effects of Avastin may include something, something, and something else. I wasn’t paying close attention because when you get chemotherapy they warn you about 200 problems that could crop up and 199 of them never will.

So I had to go back and check the website to remember that “Treatment with Avastin can result in the development of a potentially serious side effect called GI perforation. In clinical trials, these events occurred throughout the course of treatment and in rare cases resulted in fatality.” In case you hadn’t figured out by my getting colorectal cancer when I was a 34-year-old vegetarian,* ladies and gentlemen, I am a rare case.

It went like this: Working out at the Y, leg pressing 500 120 pounds, I suddenly feel something snap in my posterior. Arrrggghhh, perhaps it’s time to cut this workout short. I go home and it’s sore (my ass, not the home) but I figure it’ll go away. Next morning, still hurting — worse.

Next day is Thursday and it’s unbearable. It feels like there’s nothing in between the bones and the chair whenever I sit down, and whatever I sit on seems to be made of concrete. Early afternoon I drive myself to the ER, wait five hours, and tell my story to the doc. He examines me briefly (i.e. pokes around until he hears me scream) and we agree to treat it as a sprain. I’m sent home with happy pills and instructions to ice it.

Friday, pain.

Saturday, pain.

Sunday. What do I remember about Sunday. Wasn’t feeling so hot. Had a turkey-on-bagel sandwich for lunch. Hour later, BROARRRRGHAGHHGH puked it up. Still didn’t feel so hot. Around dinner time I went into the bathroom, closed the door, and wondered why I was looking at the ceiling and why my wife was making so much noise.

Oh, right — I’d fainted!

Paramedics get me on the stretcher. This time I don’t have to wait five hours to be seen by the ER medics. I tell them how I strained a muscle in my ass, but they seem skeptical. Because I seem septical — the skin over most of one rear hemisphere has turned red. The surgeon on call came in for a chat with the wife.

“Your husband’s very sick.”

“Could he die?”

“Yes.”

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*A Judd Apatow film starring Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd! Coming soon!
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Bleed Out — NDE #5

March, 2006, Kansas City. I was home after the surgery that had gone so well. Well, not so well. I was about 20 pounds underweight and weak as a — as a cat? At least a cat can shit on its own. I was the opening verse to “Consoler of the Lonely,” but it wasn’t the ear that had a constant buzzing in it.

It was my ass.

Something did not feel right *down there*. It hurt somewhat even if I was just lying around, but when the wife and I would go out to get my “senior citizen walking the mall”-type exercise, well then it got sexy. How can I put this delicately? It felt like there was a golf ball-sized cheese grater in my rectum, one that danced with every step. Stand up, it hurts. Lean on something for support, it hurts. Sit down? Not on your life.

The mystery was solved (sort of) one night when I was in the shower.* I was rinsing away, barely able to keep my head up, when it felt as though I was about to pass gas — not something you do when you have a colostomy bag. I relaxed the sphincter and found myself pushing out something solid. I reached around and pulled on a rubbery, well, rubber — that’s what it seemed like, anyway.

Of course it wasn’t a condom, it was a condom-sized piece of my own flesh being rejected by my body — with bits of surgical wire and maybe 20, 30 surgical staples to boot. I freaked out (can’t imagine why) and got on the toilet, which I proceeded to fill with maybe half a pint of dark, purple, not-meant-to-see-the-light-of-day blood.

That didn’t do a whole lot for my energy level — I went to bed and almost died passed out. (A nurse who heard the story recently was surprised to hear I hadn’t lost consciousness.) Later I called the surgeon’s office where his nurse told me the doctor “was fine with it.” Whew! That was my top priority, the emotional status of the sadist that carved up my rectum and left some heavy metal behind.

I did have an appointment with him a few days later. I brought the condomy staples joint, which had been residing in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. I asked him what this was all about. He told me the staples were supposed to come out naturally once the wound healed over — strangely enough, he hadn’t mentioned that before the surgery. Hmm. Then, showing foresight that I lacked, he pointed to the Ziploc bag.

“Can we throw that away now?”

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*The ladies demanded it.
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Blood and Guts — NDE #4

February 28, 2006, Kansas City. Only a few months after a tumor had been discovered in my rectum, it was time to take it out. I’d had a few weeks of chemo and radiation to shrink the bastard down, but this was the main event. This was the operation that would save my life.

Simple procedure? Not really. Low anterior resection involves cutting out the part of the rectum that houses the tumor; reconnecting the rectum to the end of the colon; and shaping a new rectal ‘pouch’ out of the joint. Oh, and they tear you a new one — they pull your intestines out through a hole in your abdomen and leave enough exposed for you to eliminate into a bag. But that’s temporary — that should only be there a couple of months. After that, good as new.

My primary care doctor, Robert Neihart, assured me that Dr. W. Edwin Conner of St. Joseph’s Hospital was “the best in town” for colorectal surgery. But I guess the best wasn’t good enough. He removed the tumor all right, but he also mangled my GI tract something fierce. I was able to see it when I was getting an X-Ray the following year; the “pouch,” meant to resemble a normal rectum, looked as convoluted as Lombard Street. A surgeon I saw in New York later told me that I could look forward to a dozen bowel movements a day (along with anal leakage) if I wanted to get rid of the bag and shit like a normal person.

In other words, I would never shit like a normal person again.

And I haven’t. Any time anything gets eliminated anally*, there’s blood in there somewhere. We’re gaining on three years there.

Why is this listed under near-death experiences? Because I barely survived; I came out the other side a ghost. The procedure was meant to take four hours but lasted six. When i came to I was in enormous pain; it felt like I’d been worked over by the baseball furies, with a bear trap clamping on my midsection for good measure. (Every operation I’ve had since then has been a breeze, and being revived feels like awakening from a year-long nap.)

A couple nights after the operation I staggered to the toilet in my hospital room. In the mirror someone new looked back at me, someone with a foot-long scar down his middle, draining bodily fluids into three separate bags. He was hideously underweight, the ribs under his skin modeling for H.R. Giger.  I thought to myself, “He doesn’t stand a chance.”

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*Eliminated Anally – that’s the name of my thrash metal band
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Badlands – NDE #3

August 2003, Kansas. I can’t specify what town in Kansas, because I was, more literally than ever, in the middle of nowhere. We were finally moving back to the Bay Area after some tough years in Kansas City. We’d loaded up the U-Haul and headed west. But the truck didn’t seem so sturdy somehow. The ride started out bouncy and after ninety minutes you noticed a definite swaying back and forth. Maybe 120 miles from K.C. we finally got rocked by a blowout. Those things are loud, by the way.

I kept a steady hand on the wheel and edged the truck to the side of the road without incident. The repair crew did their thing without incident. We drove off and found a motel without incident. We got to the Mill Valley apartment without incident later that week. We turned around and moved back to Kansas City two days after that… not without incident.

It doesn’t sound like cheating death, and maybe I didn’t. But the farther I get away from this episode the more I think how easily the truck could have spun out of control, rolled onto its side; how we could have been stuck out in the late summer Midwestern heat for hours with no water or anything else; how we could have killed each other driving back, arguing about why we were.
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State Line Road Blues – NDE #2

May 1993, Kansas City. You’d think NDE1 would have created a cautious, defensive driver, but my motto has always been “Live and don’t learn.” I’ve gotten more speeding tickets than I can remember, literally; my license was just suspended last year. In my mind, I’m entitled to drive faster than almost anyone else, because I’m smarter than almost anyone else and make an effort to drive quickly, safely. The police have yet to grasp this concept; I must be smarter than they are as well.

But the crash of ’93 wasn’t a result of my lead foot. I was driving north through an intersection at a reasonable speed when an older guy headed south made a left turn right in front of me, leaving me no time to react. My mind had a nanosecond to process the situation and flashed a gigantic red FUCK!! in front of my eyes before everything went black. I came to, screamed, mumbled the word “ambulance” to the samaritan who came to the car door, and I got my first trip to the ER, but certainly not the last.

We weren’t wearing our seatbelts and we both hit the windshield. (That’s right, Betterhalf has been sharing in my good fortune for decades now.) Apparently I had a decent-sized flap of skin flopping loose from the top of my head. In the hospital I could feel them washing the broken glass off my skull; it seemed like someone rubbing bb pellets across my brain. Then they pulled the two sides of flesh together to sew up the wound and I could feel the skin tighten everywhere from the neck up. A week later I went back and told them to take a stitch out of my temple. It turned out to be a piece of glass about the size of a grain of rice.

I still don’t wear my seatbelt.
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The Fast and the Furious – NDE #1

All right, since you asked, I’ll run down the other times I faced off for a chess match with Death and dropped a bingo on a triple word score for the win. First in a series, and my first excuse to begin categorizing. Big day here at Goodbyecorp.

Spring 1990, Newark International Airport. It’s as good a place as any to die, I guess. My mom asked if I could drop her off at EWR and then drive myself to school. Does an 18-year-old have to think about whether he wants the keys to the car? Does an 18-year-old know what happens when you take that first turn at 80 mph? In this case you lose control of the Honda, which fishtails all over the two-lane parkway, causing even the take-no-prisoners Jersey drivers to slam on their brakes and give you plenty of room to destroy yourself.

After perhaps a quarter-mile of floundering the car ended up coming to rest about six microns away from the highway divider. I took a moment to place my heart back in my chest and reel my eyeballs back into their sockets. It wasn’t so much the thought of dying in a car accident that frightened me. It was the idea I might have wrecked the car, survived, and had to answer to Mom. That’s the death I was afraid of.
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Cheating Death, Volume VI

I could think of five other times where I deked out the Eternal Footman, sure. But this is the only episode for which I have evidence. It’s a report from my (first) July visit to the hospital, and it’s when Doctor Sunshine told my wife I had 48 hours to live. I guess I’m living on borrowed time.

DATE OF ADMISSION: 7/11/2008
DATE OF CONSULTATION: 7/12/08
REASON FOR CONSULTATION: Seizure
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS: This is a 37-year-old gentleman with a history of metastatic rectal carcinoma who was admitted for observation yesterday for severe nausea and vomiting. He was heading down for an MRI of the brain today when he had a seizure. He made a detour to the emergency room where he was stabilized. A CT was obtained, and he was transferred to the ICU.

Apparently, he has had headaches, nausea and ataxia for the past month, brain mets were identified on MRI, he was receiving radiation. Neurologic changes have occurred today, including pupil asymmetry and left-sided weakness. CT head shows multiple mets and edema. Decadron and Cerebryx have been ordered.

PAST MEDICAL HISTORY: He was diagnosed with rectal cancer in 2005. He has had surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Lung metastases were found in November 2007. Brain metastasis was found just last month.

REVIEW OF SYSTEMS: Unobtainable.

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION: VITAL SIGNS: Blood pressure was elevated this evening at 146/120 but came down to 12/50. Temperature afebrile. General exam: obtunded with somewhat irregular respirations. Mentation: he is unable to answer questions appropriately. He does have some speech, in fact he says complete sentences, but does not make sense. There is no dysarthria. He does not follow any commands. He does move spontaneously. Cranial nerves: right pupil is fixed and dilated. The left is about 4 mm and sluggishly reactive. Eyes are midline and conjugate. No obvious facial asymmetry. Motor exam: he spontaneously moves the right side quite well. He is not moving the left side much at all. He is unable to follow commands for formal strength testing.

DIAGNOSTIC STUDIES: CBC and metabolic profile are fairly unremarkable. CT scan importantly shows multiple mets with surrounding edema.

IMPRESSION: Mental status changes, pupil asymmetry, and left hemiparesis most likely related to brain metastases and subsequent edema.

RECOMMENDATIONS: Continue Decadron and Cerebryx, consult oncology. Unfortunately, the prognosis appears poor.

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