The Vile Inside

“The vile inside”

July 3, 2019. Chemotherapy Round 2.

 

Concentrated toxins form pools beneath this skin’s surface

Emitting noxious fumes

Rivaled only by the

The chemotherapy stench

A new kind of vile: cancer, chemical, and fecal. 

I compare my IV medication cocktail

To drinking Drano

How much poison can one body take?

Chug it too fast, and my body loses.

Sip it slowly, and the cancer dies first.

My weight plummets as does my ascites bloated stomach.

The Drano has been winning.

I feel better today,

And this past weekend,

but hold my breath

Knowing I could feel much worse.

On June 19^th, the first round of this adventuring took my body from 152 lbs to 146 lbs in 6 days. And I was disheartened.  Then over the next 7 days I was feeling better and able to eat, but still had diarrhea occasionally but still colonoscopy caliber cleansing. Eventually, joyfully, with semi-regular soft stool, I went from 146 to 140 lbs today.  Now. Round 2. July 3^rd. Day one. Hour one. For the next 6 hours I will be hooked up to an IV going directly to my chest. Then I will be given a pump that will be hooked up to my chest for the next 46 hours slowly administering another drug too strong to take with this 6 hour injection. If this round is anything like my first round, as some people say it will be, I will start to feel poorly in 3 hours and will feel just okay in 6 days. Bracing myself for a potential week long ordeal of nausea, weakness, and round-the-clock diarrhea, I’m beginning at a new low weight.  I don’t know what I fear most, the physical discomfort or the psychological repercussions of the looming weight loss. And the knowing that it might be 5 or 6 days before I feel strong enough, to eat hearty enough, can stomach enough, to eat the high calorie, high protein, fatty foods my body needs to ward off the villain intent upon the liposuction of my soul.

Bellybutton, 3rd Nipple, Fecal Matters

28 June 2019

I have 3 announcements.

1)      Tonight is the first night in nearly 7 weeks I’ve had a significant bellybutton. 

2)      I have a third nipple. 

3)      The last part of this blog digresses into Fecal Matters, because for better or worse, these Matters provide insight into my illness, my treatment, and my recovery.

 

1)      Let me explain the first phenomenon. Since early May, the fluid collection (ascites) was so bad in my lower abdomen that it made my skin tight and unnaturally stretched.  One of my few early topics I could joke about was my bellybutton had almost become unnoticeable.  On May 9^th, when I went to my nurse, I laid down on the table without my shirt and that’s one of the first things she said was “you have no bellybutton!” to which in exasperation I replied, “I know!”  She asked if it’s always been like that and I continued, “No, I’ve always been an ‘innie’. This is why I know somethings wrong.”

This visitation from my old traveling partner is significant for several reasons.  There’s an Isaac Asimov science fiction story about a time when people live on many planets across the galaxy. Naturally one wants to visit these far-flung places either because relatives or for vacation.  Space travel is expensive, so one way to save money is to have a clone of yourself made there and your consciousness is projected into it. The only memorable detail about the story to me now (25 years since reading it), is that the clones are missing what? Can you guess?  A bellybutton! I don’t remember the plot or the intrigue.  I haven’t even remembered the story for almost as long until tonight, but I remember that fact.

Two more examples on the what a healthy belly button means.  I cut the umbilical cords of both my daughters. Actually, the nursing staff disconnect the cord from the placenta, but they leave about a foot of cord available so the partners can do the symbolic honor while the mother recovers.  Then there’s about an inch of cord left which slowly dries up and falls off in about a week.  Some forward thinking people collect this scar tissue when it falls off and perhaps put it in a keepsake Christmas ornament or vial.  I don’t remember what happened to ours.   

2)      Now about the second phenomenon. The third nipple. According to my trusty kindle edition of “Malleus Maleficarum”, the prime textbook for witch hunting since 1485, when a man or woman has a third nipple, it’s so the devils can latch onto him or her and infect them.  Much has been said in disproving this theory in recent centuries, namely the unhappy coincidence that a small percentage of people are born with them naturally. For these men and women born in the wrong centuries, good luck.

My third nipple is not natural. It’s a “Bard Power Port” according to the medical wrist bracelet they gave me. Tonight is the first night the incision point wasn’t too sore or I wasn’t so unsettled by the very fact of the Power Port’s existence in me, that I was able to gently prod it under my skin with curiosity. Before, just talking about the port made me feel uneasy because the mere idea of the port installed so close to my vital organs was unsettling. It was installed last Tuesday so that my chemotherapy IV can go straight into my primary veins in my chest. This is important because the chemo drugs are so toxic they often just burn the tiny veins in the arm.  And for those whose veins aren’t burned, it takes longer to take effect. They installed it and the following day I got my first dose of chemo blasted into my chest. After the mostly uneventful experience of the chemo treatment itself (I felt almost nothing except a slight nausea that ripened over the next day and half), they gave me a door prize of a pump to wear around my shoulder.  The pump is plugged into the port and over the next 2-3 days I wear it while another dose of 117. Mg of something (don’t remember drug) is slowly fed into my body.  Please notice I said “2-3 days”.  I had chemo on Wednesday and went back on Friday to remove the pump, per their instructions.  When I got there they said a clamp hadn’t been removed from the hose, and the pump’s pressure warning malfunctioned.  The LCD display not only didn’t say there was a blockage, but kept counting down the dose and making pumping noises AS IF everything was fine. They apologized by insisting “that never happens”.  Except to me. What’s the name of a dimly remembered James Bond movie? “Never Say Never.” (I know nothing of the film except the title because it’s so true to life.)  So, they gave me a new pump, insisted it would work right, and told me to come back the following Monday.

Let me tell you the best part about the port.  They say that once it’s installed, it can stay there indefinitely even though unsurprisingly people generally opt to remove it once they don’t need it.  So after all this is said and done, I could opt to just leave the port in my chest so when I need a rare IV or blood draw in the future, I can offer the medic some encouragement, “Don’t worry about the veins, I have a port here for your convenience!”

3)      Third announcement, Fecal Matters, begins here. Read if you want, or skip it.

Friday I was slightly less queasy (I drove myself), Saturday I was almost feeling okay but very weak, and Saturday night I began the painful experience of burning chemical farts with little to no poop.  Sunday morning they evened up to ordinary diarrhea that thank God didn’t burn or cause any of the other familiar strain (if its ever ordinary to have diarrhea that lasts 36 hours at a rate of every 15 to 30 minutes without anti-diarrheal meds, and every hour when taking strong prescription meds.). They didn’t burn, but they possessed a chemical smell and acridity that is a special category of vile. Monday morning I ask the nurses if my body experience would have been more intense if the pump was actually administering the meds when it was supposed to. They said no, it still would have been gradual. Today is Friday and when I have a stool it’s just as fluid as 5 days ago, but now it’s only every 3-4 hours.  From that first Wednesday with Chemo to the following Tuesday, I went from 152 lbs to 146 lbs. (bear in mind my healthy weight for nearly 17 years has been 165-170 lbs, and when I started this ride in late April I was 168 lbs. The effect of this weight loss on my psyche is almost as dismal as the physical discomforts I went through.    

The other night I went to sleep at 9:30pm and woke up at 4am. 6 ½ hours of sleep that was continual and not interrupted by back pain, stomach pain, or bladder issues.  When I went back to sleep I dreamt I was sharing this factoid with various people, so impressed and elated was I.  

2 Poems over the span of 3 weeks in 2013.

(7pm, 7 June, 2013)

“A Stranger’s Weight”

I’ve been walking
since before I can remember,
I’ve been walking
since before I left home.…
Until my friends call me
affectionately a traveler,
and I feel my body’s weight.

I grow stranger as I pass
from door to door,
from someone’s home to someone’s home.
I grow stranger as I wake
alone each day.

I often wonder what keeps me
from falling over, too tired
to continue.
It’s the walls that keep me up,
It’s forward momentum that keeps me up.
And passing words of courage
from sympathetic passer’s by.

They give me the strength to walk
and hope.
These are my gifts, and I am gifted richly.

Wanting a relationship my way,
my preferences, or not wanting
one at all.
Not knowing
what to compromise for and
from whom I can really learn.

Without having a partner,
I have only a vague idea of what I’m missing
except for myself, whom I know too well.
We’ve met intimately, my self and I.
In foreign places, living spaces.

I know the company I’m missing
because the company I have
and what I remember.

My self gets
closer and closer.
Too close for comfort.
Driving me to run away,
until my crowded mind runs blank
with fatigue.

I keep on passing, hoping,
anticipating, because I’m good at it,
and the act itself, the movement,
is familiar and comforting
when the streets are strange with
faces and to me,
and I grow stranger, tired
doing what I know
building my homeless sense of home.

 

(8:17pm, 26 June 2013)

“Living Room Fire”

You’ve brought me in
from out of the cold
into your home
to rest beside your living room fire.

It’s so different
than drifting through streets
lined through boutiques
where I can look but not have.
Where I’m moving through strangers
turned familiar
by formal politeness
or warm hearted visits
as I keep passing by.

Sometimes visits so brief
I don’t change
out of my traveling clothes
grimy from the road
grimy from myself.

But you’ve offered me a place
to stay longer than just passing.
You’ve offered me a place
to wash and air out
my dirty laundry
so that it’s clean again. And fresh.
So that I can feel clean again, and young.

Please forgive my strangeness,
my anxiety,
critical at minor details.
Three weeks ago
I knew where I was heading,
and apprehensive about
my reality slipping.
Guided by hope, a vague idea,
not a real person. Like you.

I’ve become comfortable in
not being too close to people.
But you offer me closeness,
Like Springsteen’s ‘Human Touch’.
It’s different than my vague ideas
shaped through solitude
window shopping,
movement,
uncompromising,
and sleeping alone.

Your closeness is human.
It’s not an idea.
It’s flesh and heart.
It’s you. All you.

Some of your particulars may be different
than my vague notions,
as you are alive
and my notions are a figment.

Forgive me,
if I need time to adjust
to the you that’s offering me a doorway
out of the cold,
Away from my mind trap,
that’s keeping me cold
keeping me away from

someone warm and alive
like you
Human and inviting

---

4 July 2019. 6:39pm.  Between June 7 and June 26, 2013, I had a date and we hugged.  Then I had another and we kissed. When apart, we talked and talked. 6 years later, we are still hugging, kissing, and talking. 2 poems over the span of 3 weeks.

 

Freud’s Oedi and Jessie’s Girl

From July 4, 2015 Facebook

I was in the cellar for a couple hours cleaning out boxes. I’d tried to work on a job cover letter upstairs but my mind was dulled by the heat. So I read more of Freud’s Ego and Id instead. He was explaining the Oedipus complex and how the Ego Ideal is formed by repressing sexual urges. So “conscience” or “Law of the Father”, or ingrained social norms are reinforced.
But what’s interesting is that the Oedipus Complex can be positive. It’s only a neurosis if one doesn’t grow out of it. The child identifies with the father because they both intensely objectify the mother. Freud calls that sexual feelings for the mother, but that should be overlooked in the same way we can appreciate a covered wagon or prairie schooner without focusing too much on the use of wooden wheels. I use that analogy because he, like folks on the Oregon Trail, were pioneers.

So Freud in his prairie schooner sailing across the Midwest had lots of time to read and re-read his fave copy of Greek Tragedy. At first, the boy has intense feelings for the mother and is jealous of the father. Sigmund uses the term “ambivalent”. But the boy wants to become like his father in order to get the mother’s attention. But eventually he grows up and losing sexual feelings towards his mother, in fact becomes “ambivalent” to her, and identifies with the father.

Sigmund admits that it’s not always sexual feelings towards mom, but sometimes just familial affection in a best case scenario. But interestingly, the more the boy wants to feel his feelings, the more intensely he wants to identify with the father and emulate him, because “if I do what he does, then I get what he has.” In Freud’s model (remember, a model is a simplified miniature. You can’t ride a toy train to the countryside unless your Mr. Rogers), a person becomes neurotic when they let their desires get in the way of social convention. I’d say the neurotic isn’t actually a neurotic until they become obsessed with their drives or the suppression of their drives. Before then, they’re just a libertine in all their sexual fantasy glory. But there is a correlation between one feeling the heavy handed smothering of social norms and the suppressing of desires. As in, one starts to fear or obsess over their desires because of the social norms that prohibit those types of behaviors.

It’s interesting that he sees this suppressing as instrumental to establishing a normal socially conscious acclimated self. This is called “sublimation”.  Sublimation is essential to channeling behaviors or desires into socially productive activities.  Simple example.  A child says they want to become an artist when they grow up.  Their parents ask them how they will make money.  The artistic child eventually goes to college for graphic design and works in a respectable children’s book publishing house.  Bingo.  Or, as often is the case, the child gets a totally unartistic career and paints as a hobby. 

Back to Oedi. He doesn’t really desire his mother as a singular entity. He really just desires to get an awesome woman like the father has. So, if little Oedi wants a woman like that, he needs to put on his big boy toga and do what dad does. If he’s really good and follows all dad’s instructions, he can become a king too. And then he can also get a queen. The tragedy of Oedipus, however, is that he didn’t know that when he killed a random guy on the side of the road in a case of ancient road rage, he was actually killing his father and king. So when he got to Thebes, they needed a new king and he fit the bill.  He even got the king’s wife. He didn’t know the queen was his mother at the time. And when he found out, he gouged out his eyes with her broach out of remorse and disgust. 

But really, the best way to understand the jealousy of the Oedipus Complex is with the chart topping Jessie’s Girl. Because Jessie= King, Father, Cool Dude. Jessie’s Girl = Queen, Mother, Girl too cool for Jessie’s Friend. And Jessie’s Friend= Little Oedi, Son, self proclaimed “nice guy”, that fixates on Jessie’s Girl because he can’t have her. But, if Jessie’s Friend does in fact listen to all Jessie’s advice, he’ll learn to relax and understand that Jessie isn’t a King or a Demigod.  He’s just a regular guy that’s also nervous but ‘fakes’ it to sleep with hot woman. And if there’s any lesson learned about ‘faking’ being better than one is, is that eventually one becomes that faked image and truly is as great as he once ‘faked’ to be. In order to become great, one must first dream it.