Twelve Minutes

So yesterday I had my twelve minutes of fame. Andy Warhol stipulated I should have gotten fifteen, but I had to visit the restroom for three minutes. In case you missed this important event, you can bear witness at www.tinyurl.com/waposagnier.

I can tell you, I’m glad it’s over; celebrity is not all it’s cracked up to be. No one recognized me in the street; no one hounded me for autographs. The paparazzi stayed well hidden. I did not get a free goodie bag full of great stuff or even a breakfast discount at Panera.

I think my minutes were overshadowed by those of a bank robber who escaped custody close to where I live. He was known locally

as the bicycle robber because that was his preferred mode of escape after pulling a job. Yesterday, during my minutes, he fled from a hospital and led a horde of police and sheriffs on a merry chase. I think his fifteen minutes were more adventurous than mine. On the positive side, mine didn’t involve guns or handcuffs.

I got a fair number of emails, one or two of the heartbreaking variety from people with far worse cancer situations than mine. I heard from old friends. I notified those old friends I did not hear from that my minutes were rapidly elapsing and got a couple more emails. I am now on YouTube with, as of this morning, 647 views. I know. Impressive.

Last Friday’s surgery went well, as those things go, though I won’t be sure until biopsy results come in later this week. No pain since they took the tubes out and now I can again walk like a man.

My new book is on Amazon and appears to be selling. I decided that anyone buying the paperback would get an EBook free, so here’s your chance for a twofer. It’s available from http://tinyurl.com/thirstbook. Being painfully honest, I have to divulge that it’s not an entirely new book but a re-edited version of a novel I wrote a few years ago, Wasted Miracles. But let’s be honest, even if once upon a time you read Wasted Miracles, you’ve forgotten it by now, and this is a new and much improved version with a totally cool new cover. So you should buy either the eBook version or the paperback and write reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, because nowadays, writers really have to flog their works in order to survive, so I plan to beat the living hell out of this one.

My new song, Jesus My Friend, an equal opportunity wail against all gods great and small, was featured but not fully played on www.CancerCanRock.org. It’s available from http://www.reverbnation.com/cashcarry.

I think I need another fifteen minutes.

    

 

  

 

 

Well, Crap

Well crapola, here we go again. Surgery number nine is in two weeks. I had heard of the repeated surgical procedures often necessary following serious burns, or reconstructive work after an accident, but I never thought of it in terms of dealing with cancer. Nine is a lot. The pre-op nurse I saw yesterday said, “You again?” Yeah, me again.

On the positive side, I now have a very cool song that was recorded by the Cancer Can Rock people (see March 4 Epiphanettes), and if you’re interested, I’ll send it to you. The CCR (www.cancercanrock.org) folks are worth following. They’re doing worthwhile and little-known work.

Remaining positive, it looks as if the Washington Post may run the recording session blog I wrote. This is good, though it has that déjà vu feeling. Forty years ago, I wrote regularly for the Post. Now I’m beginning to do so again. Life is weird.

And still remaining positive (although now it’s getting tiresome) I have a re-edited book on Kindle, Thirst. Personally, I think it’s pretty neat and if you’re looking for a quick read, go for it. If you like it, please give it a review on Amazon. I’ll be grateful. It’s at http://tinyurl.com/thirstbook

Lastly, it looks as if winter is over. I know, compared to other areas in the States, we in Northern Virginia had it easy—barely a foot. But what people don’t take into consideration is that Washington, DC, and its suburbs have the second worse traffic situation in the country. Add to that a very large population of, er, non-natives, who truly do not know how to drive generally, much less in snow, and here’s a disaster in the making.

A couple of weeks ago, a sudden snowfall caught me as I was returning from breakfast with friends. The highway home became brutally slick. Folks in SUVs decided the road’s shoulders were less crowded than the regular lanes and all of a sudden, I was surrounded by largish SUVs doing arabesques and sliding this way and that. It looked like an elephantine ballet. I drove away slowly hoping no one would get hurt and highly pleased my ancient car, normally unusable in the snow, managed to crawl its way home.

You take your joy where you can!

Surgery No. 7

“Do you need to empty your bladder?”

 

No, but thanks. This is the seventh time I’m having surgery for a particularly resistant form of bladder cancer and I know the drill. Nothing to drink after midnight, which was nine hours ago.

 

“Do you need to empty your bladder?” This is another nurse, 15 minutes later. She is cute, Asian, smiling, and what she actually says is pladdah, as in do I need to empty my pladdah.

 

No, really. I don’t.

 

“Batroom ovah da,” she points down the hallway.

 

I am waiting for the surgeon to appear. We are friends by now, sort of. He knows my pladdah intimately well.

 

Surgery was supposed to be on Valentine’s Day but it snowed and the world shut down, which was too bad because I had written a little Valentine poem for him, which I was going to recite before the surgery.

 

I’m glad that I know you

I surely feel better

Secure in the thought

That you care for my bladder

 

The surgery was performed about five hours ago; it went well and the latest tumor was excised successfully. It was, I believe, non-cancerous, but I’ll find out for sure next week.  All told, good news.

 

My friend P drove me to the clinic, then back after the procedure, and he too knows the drill.

 

I’m home now, feeling woozy. The anesthetic cocktail that knocked me out so the doctor could do his work contains opiates and Xanax, a frightful combination for someone who once used those drugs far too often. Now I am drinking quarts of liquid trying to flush them out of my system. It’s weird. I have taken neither opiates nor benzodiazepines in almost a quarter of a century, but my body fully remembers their effects and is telling me, “Yowzah! Party time! This is good!!!” But it’s not. The quicker these addictive substances are out of my system, the better, so I am ruthlessly chugging bottled water, espresso and fruit juice.

 

It’s gonna be OK.

 

I’ll get checked out again in a few months and who knows, maybe there won’t be a recurrence!

 

That would be neat.

   

 

Done...

Is there anything more demeaning than a paper hospital gown? Every time I have to wear one--which has been far too often--I feel as if Cristo has attempted and failed wrap me. There was a middle-aged man at the hospital where I went yesterday morning, he was walking along the corridor looking for a rest room with his pale naked butt sticking out of the gown.

And what about catheters? I’m amazed no one has picked up their comedic potentials. They deal with pee, which is funny, and penises, which are always good for a laugh, and they make you walk funny and wear a frown as you do, because nobody, nobody, has ever smiled with a catheter inside them. Walking funny, we all know, is comedy gold. I’m sorry to say I’m not sure how much of this can apply to women while remaining politically correct, so once again being pc may lead to lost opportunities.

Yesterday, as the catheter implanted in me the day before was removed by a male nurse, I said all medical personnel should have to wear one of these humiliating devices at least one day out of the year. The nurse shuddered, said, “I don’t mind surgery; the only thing that scares me is having to wear one of those things.”

Also, I think Catheter would be a really great name for a little girl.  It sounds almost biblical: “And Catheter did say go forth and procreate safely because I am one with you, deeply held and the cause of relief and distress…”

So here’s what happened: It all went as planned. The day of the surgery, I got to the hospital at 6:15 a.m., driven there by my friend Paul who has now seen me through a half-dozen such procedures. I changed into a sky-blue hospital gown and was told to lie down on a gurney, shielded from the world by a curtain hanging from the ceiling.

A bunch of people came to see me.  Nurses, nursing assistants, two anesthesiologists, one anesthesiologist’s assistant, a person who put in the IV, and a guy pushing a mop around the hallway. The latter was possibly the friendliest of the lot.

I signed many papers, which is hard to do when you’re lying down. I didn’t have time to read them but I accepted the fact that if anything at all happened to me, including but not necessarily limited to an alien abduction, the hospital would not be responsible. I gave up my pants, undies, short, wallet and phone. I was festooned with little sticky pads attached to wires that went into a machine that beeped and burped. I went ahhh with my mouth wide open three times. I listened to the sounds endemic to a medical establishment, hurrying footsteps, rubber wheels on linoleum, pinging of machines, public address announcements, the wailing of an injured child, greetings from one nurse to another, telephones, faxes…

At 7:30 they hook up the IV and start the anesthesia drip (I’ll find out later they filled me with opiates, which truly pissed me off as I had specifically requested they not use opiates on me), and suddenly it’s 10 a.m., I am in the recovery room and I can feel the catheter scratching my urethra. My mouth is cottony, my eyes sandy and my groin hurts.

I wait. I wait some more.  Now that the operation is over, no one is particularly interested in my state of being. A nurse asks how I am, I say, “Just peachy…”

Around 10:45 the surgeon comes by.  This is unusual and I worry but he says everything went well, and it doesn’t look as if what he has taken out is invasive. Good news. Better news, he has already injected me with the chemotherapy solution. Intravenously, it makes you deathly ill, but shot directly into the bladder; there are few side effects save for a burning sensation that ebbs and flows.  I may not need to go through the six-week course of chemo.

It’s done.

Halleluiah.