BIG ROCKS, LITTLE ROCKS, SAND

Playlist for three days out of hospital

Here are the drugs I am currently on. I must apologize. I am trying hard to find the humour in this anymore. There are 15 different drugs, which includes many of the ones I take “normally”, which is 6 plus supplements.

It has been three days since I said my goodbye and farewell to the NoName Nurses and the Nurse Practitioner/ Practising Beautician. Don’t get me wrong, I loved them all.

Especially the first day nurse and the first night nurse. Yvonne was the first nurse. We spoke of many things-of shoes and ships and sealing wax , of cabbages and kings. Actually we spoke of books we haven’t read, and music she hadn’t heard. I introduced her to Amanda Shires and Bobbie Lee Nelson, as Yvonne was already a fan of Jason Isbell. Amanda Shires is a member of The Highwoman. She is also Jason Isbell’s wife. Bobbie Nelson is Willie’s sister, she plays piano. I love her gospel piano style. Together tshe and Amanda made a record just before Bobbie Nelson left the building at age 91. Now Willie is 90!

My night nurse, his name escapes me. I know I surprised him with my correct pronunciation. We settled on me using his nickname. But after almost two weeks of the 24 hour daze of hydro morphone, my memory is suspect.

Alas I have become an unreliable narrator.

Let’s call him Nihar. I taught him how to do a saline soak for my radiation burns on my neck. He thanked me at the end of his shift for teaching him so much. Who me? Just expounding as I do while soaking in the saline and the hydro morphone.

After I got home, it was “ What just happened to me? I looked the release papers. Febrile Nutrapenia. Wow, that’s got to hurt, I thought. It is very common after treatments. Febrile means I had a fever, and nutrapenia is not a supplement I take for my old man’s penis. No, it is a condition when your white blood cells become so low, you are an open shop for fast acting bacteria or virus, or any other Superbad situation. AKA, you could have come all this way, and then die of the treatment.

I reflected on the food I couldn’t eat, and how my fever got better with the IV antibiotics. One action helping, one not helping. The carousel of care went round and round. When is it ever going to stop?

I see are those evil horse heads coming round, laughing at me. Yes, dear reader, I was losing my mind. I was literally starving myself. Yet I had been in a hospital. Had anyone been monitoring my food or liquids? If they were, then why was I so weak? There were so many different witnesses, yet here we are, still circling the drain, left with an unreliable narrator.

It is important to note, now that I am four days out, that I need to break up with the hydro morphone. I can really see how addiction and food issues begin. I call on the patron saint of anorexia nervosa, Karen Carpenter. I feel your pain, Karen. Your body says eat, but your mouth, throat, stomach and most importantly, your mind says NO.

These issues do not happen overnight. It is important to remember that all those folks on the street did not become with free will. They did not take a drug fir the first time, and then land on the corner. No, it starts with pain. Either intense physical pain, or extreme mental pain. And whether a doctor prescribes the first doses, or a dealer, it doesn’t matter. Self prescribing leads to self harm. Physician prescribed leads to physician based harm.

I feel adrift, cast away, and lost. What do you do when you are lost? You reach out and ask for help. I am feeling I am on the slippery slope. Painkillers are quite insidious, in that how they affect you, how they help you. But how effective or deadly also depends on normal fluid intake. Since I have also had the issue of not drinking enough water, I may be more susceptible to the effects of the hydro morphone.

When I got out of the hospital, I called BC Cancer. I noted that I had missed the last IV treatment, and felt a bit lost. They said,” Didn’t you have that at the hospital?” No, I had IVs, but they were filled with antibiotics, not electrolytes.

Remember NOTHING happens for you unless you follow up yourself, and gather the troops. I got an approval to come in on the next day for hydration. At the appointment, I would meet with my nutritionist, and my nurse practitioner. I felt like I was heard. I felt I had found found a way back to my happy place. The IV hydration is a happy place, because the nurses are all so patient and kind.

Was I becoming addicted to hospital settings? No. I was acting prudently in my own best interest. I was at 157 lbs, down from my original 175 lbs., and there was not much left in the tank. I touched the walls of the slippery slopes, as I slide to the bottom of the pool.

In the picture above, we meet The Swimmer, from the great film of John Cheever’s short story, The Swimmer. We see Burt Lancaster, before his climatic scene at the end when he is confronted with the truth of what really happened to his house and his family.

I can see the hand reaching out with help holding a glass. Is that gin and tonic?

But that is not what I need. I need to learn how to eat again, I need to go back to basics.

Big rocks, little rocks, sand. That is how you break down an insurmountable problem. Break it down to smaller problems. It helps to write it down. Also it really helps if you have people around you who you can trust. Here I am, suffering from lack of liquids and food, doped out on hydro morphone, which fir the record is 5 times as strong as morphine.

So I start counting calories and taking my temperature and taking my pulse and learning how to eat. I write it down. I am surprised when it is dinner and I am nowhere close to where I need to be.

New strategy. Big rocks, little rocks, sand.

Michelle cuts some fruit into smaller bites. I gingerly try to eat, but they feel like they are burning. I sip on meal replacement with ice. The texture is smooth, flavour is bland, only slightly nausea inducing. Made by Nestle, the world’s largest “food” company. Don’t read the ingredients. Stop at 477 calories. Take that in…….using quick math, I just need to force four meal replacements down in the day, and I have a good shot at making my 2000 calories for the day.

Then little rocks.

Then sand.

We are far from the beach at this point. Still in the quarry. Big rocks.

I found this hand written note from the research that I do from THE WOUNDED STORYTELLER by Arthur Frank. “Nobody asks the person who has experienced illness or injury what they want to become in their experience.”

What this sentence presumes is the concept that we can choose our experience or influence our experience by making a conscious choice on how to experience the experience.

In the book IMPACT, a very good book on the Impact of concussions in women ( primarily) one of the authors Jane Cawthorne says “This is such a beautiful question to me because it comes from a place of striving to go back to something that isn’t there anymore and we will never be there again. It doesn’t assume a place of nostalgia or wanting something that is lost.”

So here we are. Big rocks, little rocks and sand.

Like food, I just try to get it down and and keep it down. Learning how to eat. Slowly, notice my body and mind are healing. Being positive has kept me going, but I need all my reserve and resolve now.

Cancer wears you out. There is nothing easy about it. Another good friend had been diagnosed with the return of cancer, now growing in a different part of his body than the previous time.

Good news. Today I didn’t start my day with puking. One day at a time. One big rock.

I want to the thank all the friends, and readers who send their comments, who take time to sign up as paid subscribers. If you like a particular post, please forward it to people who you think might gain some benefit from reading it.