where i'm calling from

Sorry for having gone AWOL this past week, but as Jon mentioned, I’ve been in chemo - my second cycle out of three or four. I originally started writing this by hand from my bed in the Women’s Ward on Wednesday after a three-hour wait. I guess they decided to upgrade me to make up for it, as the next day, I wound up in a beautiful private room with a view, a proper desk, lazyboy armchair, nice stereo and a flat screen television! Excuse me for a sec while I grab another carrot juice from the mini-bar...

Here’s a picture of me in the Women’s Ward. They pour the chemo directly into my head:

Just kidding. That’s just some pole they have on every bed to bang your head against.

Thursday was the three-month lunaversary of the beginning of this nightmare and it seems like it’s been three years. Yesterday was two months since the brain surgery and it feels like two years. Do I see a pattern, an algorithm?

When I brought the results from my first MRI to the neurologist, just hours after the exam, she popped the CD into her computer and we looked at them together. When we got to the giant tumor bit, she gasped, then grabbed and held my hand, which is what I needed at the time. It would have been obvious to a child that the baseball didn’t belong there and that it was very serious indeed.

I asked her, “Am I going to die?” and she said, “I don’t know.” A couple people, out of the few I’ve told this story to, found her reaction ‘unprofessional’ – I certainly did not. Had she reacted in any other way, I wouldn’t have trusted her or believed a word she said forthwith. Her reaction was honest and human and a helluva lot better than smiling broadly and saying something like: “We all gotta go some time. Hell, I could walk out of this hospital and get hit by a truck!” or some other asinine, pithy, pointless pleasantry you might hear from an American doctor.

As it happened, I was almost instantly prepared for the worst: resigned, resolved and ready to die, if it came to that. I had a Will and Power of Attorney drawn up in a matter of days and let people come over to get their books back (and then some!). In many ways it made the first two months much more tolerable, although my six-week long panic attack may have belied my true feelings. After the miraculously successful operation, though, I’m not so sure, not so confident, not so prepared. If you know what I mean.

But so far, so good after the second cycle, although it burned a lot more this time going in. Blood tests next week and the third cycle begins on the 30th (mikeFEST! Eve). There are only twelve slots left in the events calendar, but the MC position is still, sadly, vacant. Any takers?

mike(AT)xeno(DOT)cz
(+420) 777 352 024