meds

Ho Hum.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 5 Comments

I guess it’s not really ho hum, but my life is definitely just ticking along. The ‘injuries’ I’ve sustained via myeloma and chemotherapy have prevented me from doing a lot of physical activity, but I keep getting the medical people telling me to stay active! It’s a tightrope I walk. Well, not a real tightrope, but you know what I mean. Do exercise? Pay for it afterwards for days with pain and joints that do not want to move. Don’t do exercise? Shorten my life and make moving around increasingly difficult. This is no fun. Well, it’s true that it’s no fun. Pain is no fun. But who promised me that I would have fun all the time? Fun is for the young and healthy, or at least for the healthy (of all ages). I really don’t expect to have ‘fun’ anymore. Should I be having fun? What kind of fun should I be having? Is there more than one kind of fun I should be having? Is reading a book fun? What kind of fun can I have when my left knee keeps wanting to fold on me without warning? If I get down on the floor, I may not be able to get up again. That’s no fun…I guess, although it might be fun for somebody to watch me try to get up off the floor. Is betting fun?

I really like this time of year. It’s cool in the shade and warm in the sun. We walked on the River Walkway this afternoon. It was cool in the shade and warm in the sun. We had iced coffee. Yummy. Is having an iced coffee on a warm, sunny afternoon on the River Walkway fun? I don’t know. Maybe I was having fun. I’m not sure.

I was going to write about pain and death today, but then I decided to keep it light. Pain and death are heavy. Fun is light! Long live fun! I DO really want to have fun, to possess it, to keep it close to me and give it a big hug but I’m not sure that’s the way it works.

You might think that chemo is no fun. Well, you might be wrong. Being hooked up to an infusion machine for a couple of hours has its moments. There’s no pain involved, but being tethered to a ‘tree’ with bags of saline solution and meds flapping around presents certain challenges when the need for a pee break presents itself. Thankfully, the ‘trees’ we use have battery powered brains and can be unplugged from the wall sockets. That way we (I in particular) can wheel them around to the bathroom and pee while we hang on to them and try not to pee on the lines. It’s difficult because the lines hang down quite far, often right in front of my pant zipper. It’s fine for women because you sit down to pee but for us guys the danger is omnipresent. Of course I can sit down to pee, but my anatomy resists that. The issue is compounded because the toilet seat in the bathroom attached to the Cancer Care Centre won’t stay up. That means I either have to hold it up while I also hold up the lines and other things or pee on the seat. Yes, the damned toilet has a slot in the front/middle but I’m not that great at aiming my stream which is erratic at the best of times. I don’t have the straight-as-an-arrow powerful stream I used to have in my youth. I used to be able to control my pee stream with little effort. Now I’m just glad when I can pee at all. I’ve gotten very used to just standing in front of a urinal or a toilet for several minutes at a time just waiting for pee to happen. It always wants to come, it’s always right there…but no. It can get embarrassing if there are other people around also waiting to use the ‘facilities’. It’s especially bad in theatres when at half time break during a musical performance or a play when peeing is so important but I just stand there with ten guys in line behind me waiting. Damn! So embarrassing. But what a relief when it finally happens. Now that’s a lot of fun!

The nurses in the Chemo Centre are a lot of fun. We joke around as they try to find a vein in my arm to poke. My veins resist entry. They hide very well. It’s a challenge for the nurses to find a vein in my arm on the first try. It gets a bit messy if it goes to three tries. If it does go to three tries the first nurse generally gives up and lets another nurse have a go. Whoa. That’s a lot of pressure to perform! I freak them out by pointing to good possible spots then watch them stick the needle in. They think that’s weird. Most people look away when they get poked. One of the nurses gave me a soft ball the size of a tennis ball to squeeze all day long. That, apparently, makes the veins stand out. I think it may be working. She got it first try last time I was in.

I talk to my local oncologist next Wednesday. That will be fun. He’s a nice guy. We always have pleasant conversations. Did I say I like this time of year? Well, I do. Summer is almost over so I can get back to regular blogging. I must say, I’ve been lazy this summer and have been hooked on cat videos on YouTube. I’ve also gotten tired of writing about chemo and the life of a cancer patient. Oh, I’ll still write about those things, but I’ll also throw in lots of other bits of stuff. Stay tuned.

Happy birthday, David.

Ship (a canoe, really) of fools!

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

Ship of Fools.

Alright, I have a confession to make. I’m not always the most reasonable person around. The photo above is of our fifty-year-old, sixteen foot “Huron” canoe outfitted with outriggers, a mast and sail, along with a deep-cycle battery and an electric motor, and paddles of course. First off, it’s a canoe, not a sailboat, but it did sail very well in moderate to somewhat higher winds. It’s tied here to a stump on Buttle Lake near Ralph River Provincial Campground where we recently spent a few days. The lake was relatively calm. We probably paddled and used the motor to get to this spot not far away from the campground. 

On another day, however, we went out in relative calm and while we were out there, the wind blew up. It often does in the afternoons on Buttle Lake. We sailed very quickly to a spot down the lake called Auger Point, a three-kilometre run. Getting back from there was anything but pleasant. We should have known better. Happily, we had the motor that I cranked to full power but even with that we had to paddle at ramming speed to get back to the river mouth where we kept the boat tied up, maybe a kilometre to our camp site. That was one tiring run home. It would have been different had we been able to sail closer to the wind, but with the sail we had and the lack of a leeboard, we were in for a rough upwind fight. Carolyn and I are experienced canoeists and at no time did I feel like we were in trouble, but paddling as hard as we could was feasible even ten years ago, not so much now that I’m 72 and Carolyn is handicapped by arthritis in her hands. Still, we are strong paddlers and we made it without swearing and berating ourselves too much. Now, having done this once and also having promised ourselves to never do it again, what do we do? We go out there again on another day and get caught in the snottiest wind and wave conditions I think I’ve ever seen on the lake. What can I say? Again, we went out on a day that promised to be benign so we headed up the lake looking for a nice place to swim. We paddled down to a bay maybe four kilometers from the campground but there was someone on the beach playing music and fishing from shore. So, we headed down and across the lake to a bay still some distance from the campground where we knew we could skinny dip. As we enjoyed the beautiful lake water and the most enjoyable swim, the lake decided to turn against us, and the wind started blowing strongly from the north. We set out with the motor at half throttle, but we soon had to up that to full throttle and full on paddle to boot. Well, we’ve had some situations in the past where we paddled as hard as we could against a wind without making much headway at all. But we were young then and had much more energy and stamina than we do now. Coming around the point close to the campground we were hit with two-foot chop. That was fine as long as we were able to paddle directly into the wind, but that was not possible as we rounded the point moving east towards the campground. We were abreast to the wind, paddling as hard as we could with the assistance of the motor, and we were being beaten hard by the waves to the point where we started taking on water from the port side. Sensing that we probably couldn’t make it back to the river’s mouth where we would have preferred to leave the boat, we turned the boat downwind and took her into shore on a muddy, unpleasant part of the lakeshore, but still within easy walking distance to our campsite. That’s where she stayed overnight. 

The next morning, we took her around to the river’s mouth. We were exhausted, especially me, and I hurt everywhere. Silly us. After that episode, we got reasonable and didn’t do it again. Actually, we got our best swim of our stay on Buttle Lake a couple of days later with no trouble. 

The family joined us last Thursday and that was great, but I felt a pain in my right side and shoulder that was getting worse and worse. There’s no doubt in my mind that fighting the extreme winds on Buttle not once but twice contributed significantly to my injury. I was definitely injured. The pain got so bad (pushing 9.5 out of 10) that I was very relieved to know that I had some T3s in my toiletry bag. I took two and felt hardly any relief. Later, I took two more along with some CBD and THC (I have a prescription for them). I managed to sleep fitfully although some people might suggest I was not sleeping as much as in an altered state of mind. The next day the pain had not attenuated at all, and we had to leave the campsite and head home. I couldn’t help pack up at all and my son-in-law was conscripted to drive the truck home towing our old eighteen-foot Holidaire trailer. I could barely sit still on the way home, having to shift my weight often to try to lessen the pain. The drive home was uneventful, but I still hurt, easily pushing 6 out of 10. 

After being home for a bit and still at the end of my rope trying to deal with pain that prevented me from even taking a deep breath, I took two ibuprophen, went to bed for an hour or so and got up feeling fine. A miraculous recovery! I would have taken ibuprophen a lot earlier, but I was counselled in 2002 after my left kidney was removed because of cancer that I should avoid anti-inflammatory meds. I didn’t take any until this past weekend and just took two more a few minutes ago. The meds are still keeping the pain at bay, but I’m loathe to keep taking anti-inflammatory meds like ibuprophen because they are hard on the kidneys. So, tomorrow I call my doctor and make an appointment to see if there are any alternatives to ibuprophen I can take that might help mitigate acute pain. I’m used to chronic pain, but the acute pain brought on by the foolishness in our canoe was untouched by acetaminophen, even with codeine, and even supplemented with CBD and THC. My problem seemed to me clearly one of muscular inflammation. It’s clear that I need a solution to deal with acute pain because I can’t promise to always be reasonable in the future. My family was extremely supportive, and I love it for that, but I feel that I need to pull my own weight too. I will not always have my family there to support me if I get into unreasonable trouble again. I need good meds too!