Miss You So Gladly

I really, really hated biochemotherapy treatments and those many long days of hospital incarceration. But biochemo seems to have worked to fend off the enemy I hate even more, melanoma. Thanks to Jimmy Buffett’s “Miss You So Badly”, I have a great old song to borrow to bid farewell (I hope) to melanoma…



I guess it all blew up in my lymph nodes
Thank heavens no other place
After weeks of searchin' crazy, there was nothin' left to trace
And when the dust had finally settled
And the scare had quickly cleared
Whoa, things were better off than I had feared

And I, miss you so gladly, hey I hate you badly
Feelin' so glad now since you been gone, gone, gone
I went for infusin', it seems that I'm losin'
Track of the long days since I been home

I’m layin' in a hospital room full of students
I guess each studies for eight years
They exchange resident's stories
I get drugged with IV cheer
But they look like Jack The Ripper
With their hands glued to IVs
And I don't think that I should ever let 'em learn on me

And I, miss you so gladly, hey I hate you badly
I think I've been bad though while stayin' so long, long, long
And I'm, just watchin' those pumps flow , waitin' for furlough
Losin' the long days since I been home

I got a head full of feelin' higher
And a vein full of IV line
There is just no one drug to kill this
Hell, I'll try most every kind
Oh, crazy how things happen, it's incredible but true
The longer you’re gone the stronger I feel we’re through

And I, miss you so gladly, hey I hate you badly
I'm feelin' so glad just to be headin' home, home, home
I've been, rattlin' nurse’s aides, infusin' for four days
Countin' the hours till I get home
Whoa I been, countin' the hours till I get home

In the off chance that any of my nurses in the University of Colorado Hospital’s Critical Care Oncology Unit should read this, I apologize for being such a troublesome patient—especially to the student nurse I “took out” in a fall following an unauthorized attempt to get out of that hospital bed. Sorry 'bout that.