Sunday, May 5, 2013






I use this picture to communicate my exodus from my marriage.

A picture is indeed worth a thousand words and nothing I've ever seen more fully embodies my emotional state at the moment of my departure.

Life is often reduced to grim choices.

"Do you wanna be right, or do you wanna go on with your life and hopefully find some peace and happiness?".

After answering that question it was just a matter of waiting for the court date.

Although this morning for some reason, I am reminded of the time I received an unexpected call from my lawyer.

I had just returned from a month long stay at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center where I had gone to have a second surgery to remove my tumor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chordoma

(Against the advice of my neurosurgeon at Emory, btw.)

My neurosurgeon at Emory, Dr. Olson, had performed the first surgery in January of 2006 but was able to remove only 30% of the tumor.  I was scheduled to begin 8 weeks of radiation therapy when "El Duecey", thru a series of connections and contrivances, managed to get my MRI in the hands of one Dr. Liebsch at Mass General.
However much I enjoy and fully intend to continue to enjoy teasing my big brother, he was 100% on my side when I needed him.
Not many people can say that their big brother saved their life.
I can.

(I'm still ticked about that Scorpions concert though.)
(You're not off the hook, "Duecey"!)
(Seriously, my 14th birthday!?!)
(The Scorpions!?!)
(Bar none THE best rock 'n' roll band in the history of Always and Forever!?!)

http://elpinchepirata.blogspot.com/2012/06/coming-up.html

http://elpinchepirata.blogspot.com/2012/06/updated-eppdf-brothers-bracket.html

http://elpinchepirata.blogspot.com/2012/06/return-of-el-duece-bu-bah-buuuuuuuummmm.html

(Ok.  Maybe we'll call it even if you pay for dinner when I come to D.C. ,))

A week or two before I was due to start having my head microwaved at Emory, Dr. Liebsch called from Boston.  He had reviewed my MRI and recommended that I cancel my radiation and go to Pittsburgh to see Dr. Amin Kassam.
Dr. Liebsch was positive that Kassam would be able to remove the rest of the tumor.

So, the first week of May (I just realized why I'm thinking of this this morning) (duh) in 2006, I flew to Pittsburgh to have a second surgery.
UPMC is an enormous, confusing, scary hospital.  Not that you shouldn't go there if you need medical attention but, something about the way it's laid out makes it really intimidating.  There've been so many additions to the original building over the years that you need a GPS and a valet to navigate the halls and there is something to be said for Emory's southern hospitality - you don't realize what an improvement it makes until you feel it's absence.

The surgery was long and brutal but successful.
I was under all day, something like 10-12 hours, if I recall correctly.
The days after are foggy.
Between the anesthesia, the pain meds, and the nurses coming and going, it was hard to tell which side was up.
I spent 3 days or so at UPMC immediately after surgery and was released from the hospital but had to stay for a few more days for check ups and until it was safe to fly home.
Everything seemed to be more or less normal until I woke "Duecey" one night.
I was tired, in pain, and periodically, a thin, sticky stream of yellow fluid tinged with blood would seep out of my nose.
This turned out to be cerebral brain fluid.
Not good.
I would get cold chills and my temperature would fluctuate wildly and then my body began to tremor so hard that the metal frame of the bed would jump off the floor.
"Duecey" called the EMT's at 1 in the morning but when they came he took me to the ER himself.

Shaking, terrified, and leaking brain juice is no way to go thru life and the only thing that could make it worse was when the ER surgeon announced that I would need a spinal tap.
Sheer panic set in.
The answer to exhaustion, pain, worry, and confusion is not, "Let's put a needle in your spine."
Just take my word on that one.
But "Duecey" held my hand and when the nurse gave me a shot of Delaudanum things got substantially better.
There's a second when an opiate hits the bloodstream  that you feel as if you're going to suffocate and terror grips your heart.  I had the sensation of a big, wet dog sitting on my chest squeezing the air out.
After that passed, you could have chopped me into bits and fed me to tigers.
Opiates are that good.
I got thru the spinal tap with "El Duecey's" help and a medium sized pharmacy full of sedatives.

The next couple weeks were spent recovering from another surgery to patch the leak which necessitated putting a tube into my spinal column to relieve pressure on the brain.  I spent a week hooked up to a little bag of CSF on a rolling stand.
The antibiotics that I was given on the off chance that my brain leak resulted in bacterial meningitis were so strong that the veins in my arms and hands were completely blown out at the end of the week.

All in all we spent the better part of a month in Pittsburgh.

I had been home exactly one day when I received a call from my lawyer.
My ex had been in touch and, "She just knew that I had made up the whole "brain cancer" story and that I had secretly gone to the islands to party with hot young girls."

It's one of the few times during the entire divorce/tumor process when I genuinely lost it for a few hours.
I'm not sure what words or collection thereof would fully encompass my emotions during that time:
Fury, outrage, incredulity......

None of them quite hit the mark.

I faxed an encyclopedia sized copy of medical records to my lawyers office to prove that I did, in fact, have brain cancer, and that I was, in fact, in Pittsburgh for a month receiving treatment and, since I could not have been both, in Pittsburgh having surgery and, in the islands with hot young girls, and since both of these statements could not be true at the same time and having proven that only one of them was, "ipso de facto" true and by the powers of both observation and deduction, one of the statements must therefore be untrue, that is to say, "False", I am fairly confident that I had proven her to be a complete "wing-nut".
Although, she never made any concession or comment indicating that maybe she was a touch out of line.
She certainly never apologized.
I'm sure that day cost me $1,000 or more in legal bills.

And no, the similarities between removing a cancerous mass that is trying to kill me from my brain and removing a cantankerous woman who would like to kill me from my life is not lost on me.

7 years have passed since then and fortunately my health has remained strong with no signs of recurrence of tumors.
Now it all seems like a lifetime ago - like it's a story about someone else that I read in a magazine on an airplane.
If they only had chemotherapy to permanently rid oneself of ex-wives.

Funny....
This little walk down memory lane was prompted by this story:


___________________________________________________________________________________


I was swallowed by a hippo

'There was no transition at all, no sense of approaching danger. It was as if I had suddenly gone blind and deaf'

Paul Templer
The Guardian, Friday 3 May 2013


Experience: I was swallowed by a hippo
'Hippos' mouths have huge tusks, slicing incisors and a bunch of smaller chewing teeth.' Photograph: Peter Hoffman for the Guardian



















The hippo who tried to kill me wasn't a stranger – he and I had met before a number of times. I was 27 and owned a business taking clients down the Zambezi river near Victoria Falls. I'd been working this stretch of river for years, and the grouchy old two-ton bull had carried out the occasional half-hearted attack. I'd learned to avoid him. Hippos are territorial and I knew where he was most likely to be at any given time.

That day I'd taken clients out with three apprentice guides – Mike, Ben and Evans – all in kayaks. We were near the end of the tour, the light was softening and we were taking in the tranquillity. The solid whack I felt behind me took me by surprise.

I turned just in time to see Evans, who had been flung out of his boat, flying through the air. His boat, with his two clients still in it, had been lifted half out of the water on the back of the huge bull hippo.

There was a cluster of rocks nearby and I yelled at the nearest apprentice to guide everyone there, to safety. Then I turned my boat and paddled furiously towards Evans.

I reached over to grab his outstretched hand but as our fingers were about to touch, I was engulfed in darkness. There was no transition at all, no sense of approaching danger. It was as if I had suddenly gone blind and deaf.

I was aware that my legs were surrounded by water, but my top half was almost dry. I seemed to be trapped in something slimy. There was a terrible, sulphurous smell, like rotten eggs, and a tremendous pressure against my chest. My arms were trapped but I managed to free one hand and felt around – my palm passed through the wiry bristles of the hippo's snout. It was only then that I realised I was underwater, trapped up to my waist in his mouth.

I wriggled as hard as I could, and in the few seconds for which he opened his jaws, I managed to escape. I swam towards Evans, but the hippo struck again, dragging me back under the surface. I'd never heard of a hippo attacking repeatedly like this, but he clearly wanted me dead.

Hippos' mouths have huge tusks, slicing incisors and a bunch of smaller chewing teeth. It felt as if the bull was making full use of the whole lot as he mauled me – a doctor later counted almost 40 puncture wounds and bite marks on my body. The bull simply went berserk, throwing me into the air and catching me again, shaking me like a dog with a doll.

Then down we went again, right to the bottom, and everything went still. I remember looking up through 10 feet of water at the green and yellow light playing on the surface, and wondering which of us could hold his breath the longest. Blood rose from my body in clouds, and a sense of resignation overwhelmed me. I've no idea how long we stayed under – time passes very slowly when you're in a hippo's mouth.

The hippo lurched suddenly for the surface, spitting me out as it rose. Mike was still waiting for me in his kayak and managed to paddle me to safety. I was a mess. My left arm was crushed to a pulp, blood poured from the wounds in my chest and when he examined my back, Mike discovered a wound so savage that my lung was visible.

Luckily, he knew first aid and was able to seal the wounds in my chest with the wrapper from a tray of snacks, which almost certainly stopped my lungs from collapsing and saved my life.

By chance, a medical team was nearby, on an emergency drill, and with their help I stayed alive long enough to reach a hospital with a surgeon. He warned me he would probably have to take off both my arms and the bottom of my injured leg. In the end, I lost only my left arm – they managed to patch up the rest.

Evans' body was found down river two days later. Attempts were made to find and kill the rogue hippo, but he seemed to have gone into hiding. I'm convinced, though, that I met him one more time. Two years later I led an expedition down the Zambezi and as we drifted past the stretch where the attack had taken place, a huge hippo lurched out of the water next to my canoe. I screamed so loudly that those with me said they'd never heard anything like it. He dived back under and was never seen again. I'd bet my life savings it was the same hippo, determined to have the final word.

• As told to Chris Broughton



___________________________________________________________________________________

\Ed. Note:

It's an odd thing this being sick/having a major medical crisis/issue/brain cancer.
I wouldn't wish it on anyone, not my worst enemy, if there were such a person.
But, I find myself more often than not, thankful for the experience.
As an event, it just plain sucks on every level.
As a life experience, in a weird way, it was possibly the best thing that could've happened to me.
You certainly are forced to grow and learn and change in ways that you didn't think or know you could and often weren't entirely aware that you needed.
But you come out a slightly different version of the person you were when you started.
Obviously (or maybe not) laying in a hospital bed contemplating your mortality and the type of person you might be or might have been and the type of memories or effect that you might leave behind has an outcome on a body.
I would like to think that that net outcome was positive.
For the most part, I'm proud of the way I handled myself throughout the experience.
I never prayed for myself, only my mother in the hopes that she would OK with whatever resolution waited for me.
Outside of that, I prayed that I have the strength to handle whatever happened "like a man".
Maybe that sounds odd but it was important to me at the time.
A couple months in the hospital will definitely give you time to think about what's important to you and I spent a lot of time contemplating my many mistakes and shortcomings and how I might correct them and change course.
It was time well spent, I think.











2 comments:

  1. Cardinal Martinalova de Los Muchachas TetonasMay 6, 2013 at 7:23 AM

    Now that time has passed and all seems to be well, when you look back on your spinal tap, even though it had to be scary as hell, do you quote a few lines from the movie? Even if only in your head?

    Nigel Tufnel: "It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black."

    David St. Hubbins: "He was the patron saint of quality footwear."

    David St. Hubbins: "Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported."

    Nigel Tufnel: Well, this piece is called "Lick My Love Pump".

    ReplyDelete