Health

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No jokes

June 19, 2008 in Health, problems, VRM | 2 comments

[Note: I wrote this yesterday, 18 June. But the blog wasn’t working. Now (1pm, 19 June) it is.]

Yesterday, when I started feeling better, I had dozens of one-liners about the absurdity of hospital life. Crapping in “hats” for example. One’s humor gets low here. Mine especially. It also helped to have friends stop by, chew the fat and joke around.

But by late evening I was at the “one step back” stage, after two forward. Since then, lots of pain, barfing, discomfort and worse.

I’m maybe getting better now, at least in some ways. I also have so much “fluid retention” that I look like the Michelin guy. My weight is now well over 200. I’ve never broken 190 before and was dropping below 185 when I got in here. Given the fact that I’m eating my body rather than food, who knows what my “real” weight is, other than absurd in any case.

Finding the time, and the means, to take or make calls is nearly impossible. Blogging and twittering are hard too. So this is a group message of thanks to all who wish me well (and there are so many of you… I’m lucky that way). Not sure how much more can be done. I am sure that the hospital folks and local relatives and friends will try to do it.

And we’ll see how it goes.

Novel norms

June 17, 2008 in Health, News, Places, Science | 47 comments

So here I am at 3am for the second day in a row, taking a moment betwen hits of Dilaudid to do something that was for many years normal for me: writing something.

I have a new normal now, and it’s getting old. I’ve lost count of the wires and tubes running from my body to mechanical and electrical instruments. I haven’t eaten in close to a week, and my intake is entirely from bags of liquid dispensed by “smart pumps” that beep loudly and often for what seems most of the time to be no reason at all. I’m creepily cool now with being 90% helpless, even as I’m close to 100% hopeful that I’ll get past this thing, which remains pancreatis, with complications, the latest of which are fluids in my abdomen, with encroachment on my right lung: the same one that took a hit from a wayward embolus a couple months back, when I first made my acquaintence with this hospital.

It’s a Harvard teaching hospital, which means that a procession of young doctors come through, each with a fresh line of inquiry, few of which, when fulfilled, contributes to an institutional memory. Most of the doctors I’ve seen here have been only once or twice. Nice folks, all, however. And all less than half my age, it seems.

My new room is a solo one. I miss the company of other patients, but I do like some of the posh features, such as a toilet that has more than five square feet of flooor space. They moved me here so they could monitor me more closely. I do appreciate that. But the reason creeps me a bit: so I won’t get pneumonia or chronic pancreatitis of the sort Suzi reports here.

Well, that’s about all I have energy for. Look for another report in a few hours, I hope.

And thanks again for all your kind wishes. I’m really looking forward to returning to normal normalcy.

Getting scarier

June 16, 2008 in Health, problems | 30 comments

They’re putting me on this now, so I’ll feel no pain and breathe more deeply. Which I’ll need to prevent a slightly collapsed lung from turning into pneumonia. That’s on top of the pancreatitis.

All from an inconclusive diagnostic procedure.

Back on drugs again

June 16, 2008 in Health, problems | 17 comments

Well, my experiment with staying off morphine didn’t pan out. An x-ray that required laying on my very tender belly this morning put me over the edge.

More reporting (and hopefully on matters other than health) when I feel like it. Pretty spaced out right now.

Up the tubes

June 15, 2008 in Future, Health, problems | 44 comments

I have three bags hanging from a rolling pole next to my bed here at the hospital. These Y down do a pair of IV needles, one in each arm. The two big bags are for hydration. The third? I dunno. (The nurse just told me it’s magnesium.) Since visiting Amsterdam two Wednesdays ago, I’ve shed a lot of liquid, to be polite about it. Now I can’t take in any liquid, or food, at all, which is one way they calm my innards and stop my pancreas from freaking out, which is what it did yesterday morning as a delayed reaction to the endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (aka ERCP) exam I had here at the hospital the day before.

One in twenty endoscopic probings of a pancreas results in pancreatitis, and it was my misfortune to hit the bulls eye. I woke up with Xtreme hunger-type pain in my belly yesterday, without the hunger. Nausea came later, and a visit to the emergency room not long after that. Now I’ll be here until the pain stops and hunger returns. Those are the Good Signs. So far, not even close. In fact, the pain remains bad enough that morphine doesn’t do the full job. It just reduces the pain to a point where I can do some of this. Which I’m doing between working on some writing assignments. We’ll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, the good news is that This Too Shall Pass. (Better it than me.)

Alas, I shall miss Supernova, and perhaps more than that. We’ll see. I still hve high hopes of flying west midweek or so, although that seems mighty ambitious from where I sit (actually recline) right now.

Giving it from both ends

June 13, 2008 in Health, problems, Travel, VRM | 13 comments

Two days ago I had a colonoscopy. The doctor found and removed a polyp. Routine stuff. Today it was what I guess is called an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography. The first looked up my ass, the second down my gullet, in this case to look inside my pancreas to see if cystic lesions appearing in an MRI were communicating with the pancreatic duct. Nothing was found. Not sure what that means. Probably nothing.

Both involved so much sedation that I remember approximately nothing from either. Well, I remember waking up enough to see the polyp on TV. It looked like a sea anemone. I slept through the second procedure entirely, or forgot it thanks to the drugs’ amnesiac effect.

There is a risk of pancreatitis with the latter procedure. Makes for icky reading. It does concern me that my tummy hurts a great deal — enough that the work I hoped I could get done tonight is nowhere near my mind. My tummy always hurts when I’m hungry, and it hurts the same way now, so I don’t know what the deal is there. All I can eat is sherbet; and all I can drink are broth and water, neither of which leave me feeling filled.

I can’t sleep. And all I can think about is health shit. Or vice versa. So I blog. Comes naturally.

Got a lot of travel coming up. Supernova in San Francisco. VRM-related stuff in Utah. “Home” for a day in Santa Barbara before going to London and Copehagen for business and more VRM-related stuff. (Reboot is at the latter.)

People tell me that travel is bad for me, but the truth is that I love it. The thrill of flying over and studying the Earth never leaves me. In fact it only gets more interesting every time I fly somewhere because every flight is a chance to learn more about what’s on the ground — and whatever else is in the sky. Such as rainbow ice and auroras.

Anyway, all this stuff is about getting older. The failings of the body and the enrichment of the mind. Another of life’s wonderful ironies.

[Later…] Meanwhile it turns out that Maarten’s tumor is a mediastinal germ cell one. It’s treatable, and he goes in for chemo shortly. As cancer goes, that’s good news.

New paths

June 12, 2008 in Art, Fun, Future, Health, Life, Places, Travel | 3 comments

I didn’t really know Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald before this last week, except by emails and a delightful interview he did with me at in December. But I fell in love with the guy after he and his associates brought me to Amsterdam to talk at Mobile Monday and do a couple consulting gigs there (which he set up for me). Besides being a smart guy and a great host, Maarten is just a good dude and a true mensch. Gracious, caring, upbeat and much more. You can see it in these two photosets from MoMo. Maarten, his family and whole social network made my visit to Amsterdam a joy from start to finish. It’s a great city anyway, but it’s lucky to be graced with folks as good as this whole bunch.

On Wednesday, the day I flew home, Maarten went to the doctor to check out a coughing problem. Turns out he had a tumor, bigger than his heart, right in front of it. Since then he’s not been far from my own heart, as well as my mind.

I wasn’t going to write about it, because I didn’t know how private Maarten wanted to be. But it turns out he’s both tweeting and blogging what he calls his new journey. So is his wife, Lori. So we’re together with him on this thing. Such is the nature of what Twitter calls following.

He’ll find out more about the tumor tomorrow. I’m praying hard it’ll just be an oddball thing they can cut out and be done with.

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