Rebels

An excerpt from my very first blog post…


“On the way-too-early morning of Monday, September 15, 2003, I checked into the university hospital’s critical care oncology unit to begin my first of four rounds of biochemotherapy. After nearly three months of diagnostic work and surgery, I was ready to finally do something, perhaps anything, to start putting up a fight. Put me in coach, I’m ready to play, today.

I really didn’t have a clue what was in store for me over the course of the next five in-patient days. That’s not because the nice folks at the clinic didn’t tell me all about it, because they most certainly did. Call it a healthy state of denial born from desperation. I was so scared of the alternative, i.e. likely and imminent death, that I’d probably have swallowed plutonium if that’d been the recommended treatment regimen.

A couple of hours or so into the initial blast infusion, the sense of bravado was way gone. Had I been physically capable of doing so, I probably would’ve hightailed it out of there never to return. I’ll spare you the details of the brutally toxic side effects of this treatment. Suffice it to say there’s a good reason they only do this on an inpatient basis, which allows constant monitoring and treatment of side effects; otherwise you’d probably die. A fine nurse named Johanna eventually knocked me out with a nice dose of Demerol into the infusion line. Thank you and goodbye. Unfortunately, my wife was still wide-awake and had to watch what has happening; I think the rest of the week was harder on her than me.

The week ended with nurse Johanna deciding I needed to take a walkabout around the unit, to help bring my blood pressure and blood oxygen levels up to a safe enough level for discharge. I recall slowly shuffling down the hall, propped up on either side by my wife and Johanna—both are short and of convenient crutch height—with somebody dragging the IV pump tree stand along. The walkabout worked, and I thank her for that.

I think the hardest thing about chemotherapy is going back for more. I’m still not sure how I talked myself into returning for rounds two, three and four. My best guess is it was some combination of desperation, determination, and the sense I’d be letting everybody down, including myself, if I’d failed to show up.”

I know of several rebel mole mates in the midst of biochemotherapy right now. So with my hopes that you are a more obedient patient than me, my prayers for your successful treatment, and my apologies to nurse Johanna, I’ll leave you with my rendition of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ “Rebels”…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-Sc9Rsp2XM


Nurse, please don't walk out I'm too drugged to follow
You know I won't be this way tomorrow
Well - maybe I'm a little rough around the edges
Inside a little hollow
I get ‘fused with some things sometimes
That are so hard to swallow - Hey!

I was prone to rebel
Down in C.C. on a Monday morning
Yeah - with one foot in the grave
And one foot on black devil
I was prone to rebel.

Well she hooked me up in the morning
And she laid out her wish list
IV’s streamed in my arm
And drew C out on the hit list
Well - I never would've dreamed
That cure part was so wicked
Oh - but I keep coming back
'Cause it's so hard to kick it.
Hey, hey, hey

I was prone to rebel
Down in C.C. on a Monday morning
Yeah - with one foot in the grave
And one foot on black devil
I was prone to rebel.

Even before the doctor’s bothered
They showed us their mettle
Heard our call pleas
And kept our BP’s level
I can still feel kind eyes
Of those blue nursing angels
When I'm blogging sounds at night
For the defeat of black devil.

Hey, hey, hey
I was prone to rebel
Down in C.C. on a Monday morning
Yeah - with one foot in the grave
And one foot on black devil
I was prone to rebel.

Hey, hey, hey
I was prone to rebel
Down in C.C. on a Monday morning
Yeah - with one foot in the grave
And one foot on black devil
I was prone to rebel.