Bad Trip*

(* Or, How I Kinda Halfway OD'd on the Wrong Meds)

Last week I was sick. It was a chemo week, so I expected to feel crummy, but this was worse than usual.

On Sunday, the first night of my five-day course, I woke up in the middle of the night barfing. All the next day and really for the rest of the week I felt either drunk or hungover: headachey, listless, loopy, uncoordinated, dizzy, sick to my stomach.

This is the 19th month now of the 24 months of chemo my doctors have scheduled for me so I'm used to some ups and downs. The side effects vary from month to month, but generally I can count on heavy fatigue, a general nauseous feeling and digestive troubles, lasting from a few days to a couple of weeks.

To combat the effects of the chemotherapy drug, Temodar, I take an anti-nausea medication, ondansetron, a couple of small, round, off-white pills, about half an hour before I down the pink and white chemo capsules. All that in addition to the oblong Keppra pills that I take twice a day to stave off seizures. You're supposed to take the Temodar right before going to bed, and my routine is to take the Keppra at noon and midnight, so on chemo weeks the last hour or so before bedtime is a flurry of ringing alarms and pill-popping.

No wonder that there might arise a little confusion, right? That's all I'm saying.

When the mail-order pharmacy sends me my monthly Temodar supply they always ask if I need more of the nausea meds. Over the months I'd managed to squirrel away a few pills here and there, and so for a couple of months in a row I declined the ondansetron refill and saved on the co-pay. In fact I rounded up several unfinished bottles of the nausea meds and put them together on the little desktop where I keep all my drugs so that when it was time I could just grab a container and go.

That was the mistake, I guess.

On Thursday, the last night of my chemo round, I reached for the nausea meds and happened to glance at the label. Wait. This wasn't ondansetron but Lorazepam, a muscle relaxant and anti-anxiety drug -- basically Valium -- that my doctor prescribed, before our big road trip, to take if I had a seizure and couldn't get to a hospital.

Damn! No wonder! Not only was I getting all the weird spacey "benefits" of Valium -- at twice the recommended dosage, since I normally take two nausea pills -- but I wasn't getting any of the anti-nausea medication.

In the above picture, the Lorazepam is the small white pill on the left; the ondansetron is the very similar (right?) off-white pill in the middle. The Keppra's on the right.

Michelle noticed that the prescription label says the original Lorazepam pill count was 15, but there are only six pills left in the bottle, so I must have been taking those suckers all week. What an idiot.

Michelle did me a favor and hid the rest of the Valium. Somebody lock up the Drano.

Brain cancer in the news

Kathi Goertzen, from komonews.com

On the off chance that your giant headache today isn't caused by the economic meltdown or presidential politics -- more about both in a minute -- I want to pause briefly to consider brain cancer in the news.

I always flinch when I see stories on this topic. Too much of it is the maudlin, over-the-top "Gloria"-style coverage I can't stand. But even when it's straight-ahead, brain cancer news feels like it's hitting too close for comfort. A couple of months ago, when conservative pundit Robert Novak announced that he had a brain tumor -- and said it explained why he ran over a pedestrian the week before -- a friend wrote to me, full of outrage on my behalf: Doesn't it piss you off that this idiot gets all this coverage and you get nothing, my friend said.

Well, no, not really, but I do get tired of seeing brain cancer everywhere. Is it just me, or is this disease more in the news than it used to be? And often with a kicker that makes me feel bad, one way or the other.

First there was the University of Washington football player who was diagnosed about the same time I was. That killed his football career, but by the following spring, hey, he had recovered and made the UW baseball team! The M&M Pie in the Sky tour hit the East Coast about the same time Sen. Ted Kennedy was found to have a brain tumor, and that news was inescapable for a few days, along with opinions of his "grim prognosis." At Barnes & Noble one day I noticed that Bobby Murcer, the longtime Yankee player and broadcaster, had written a book and I couldn't help rolling my eyes as I read about his brain cancer being a blessing in disguise, or the best thing that could have happened, or some such nonsense. He died in July.

Anyway, this week, the popular Seattle news anchor Kathi Goertzen, pictured above, underwent her fourth (!) brain surgery in the past decade, partially resecting, again, a tumor that keeps growing back. This P-I report says the surgery lasted eight hours. God. For some reason, though, this ongoing story hasn't make me wince like cancer coverage usually does. Maybe it's that I've met Goertzen several times and like her. It's true what they've been saying in the local reports about her warmth and dedication to her craft. She strikes me as a good and brave person, and I'm wishing her well. That's all.

In economic cancer news, I loved these two news-ish takes on the Wall Street meltdown.

First, with typical editing aplomb Jon Stewart compared President Bush's speech on the economy the other night with his strikingly similar warnings years ago about terrorist attacks.



Then, CNN's Campbell Brown dropped all pretense of objectivity in ripping Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson a new one. Again, the juxtaposition of old and new clips is what makes the case.




Planning to watch the big debate tonight? Now that John McCain has backed back in everyone's back to preparing their debate preview pieces. I've scanned a few of them, and for my money the best guide is this piece by Judd Legum at Huffington Post.

Legum, whose old job was monitoring post-debate punditry for Hillary Clinton's campaign, said the main thing he learned was that pundits are full of it (duh). Turn off the post-game analysis, he advises, and figure it out for yourself. He offers a few useful rules for doing so, with examples from previous debates.

Finally, could any morning news meeting be complete without a little dig at one or the other of my former local employers?

Try this local-front taste test and tell me which lede makes you want to read the story.

Newspaper A:

BLAINE -- The second gubernatorial debate of the Gregoire-Rossi rematch proved to be another bare-knuckles slug fest, this time before a pro-business crowd that gave Republican challenger Dino Rossi a home field advantage.

But while several of Gov. Chris Gregoire's positions received icy receptions -- her support of Washington's estate tax, for example -- she touted her accomplishments with optimism and confidence.

Newspaper B:

BLAINE — Gov. Christine Gregoire and challenger Dino Rossi both pledged Thursday not to raises taxes to make up for the state's projected $3.2 billion budget shortfall.

But even on that point of apparent agreement, the rivals found plenty of room for dispute during a heated hourlong debate sponsored by a business group.

To my eye, the second story, by the Times, gets quicker to the point -- breaking some news with the tax pledge -- and tells what happened instead of characterizing it, as the P-I does with its it cliched "slug fest" take.

My lesson here: Write the news plain, people.

Even blessed with a brain tumor, I can see that much.

Flash from the past

Some of you might remember Mark & I made our way into Maine on our big trip across America. We ate a lobster sandwich, went to sleep, and Mark woke up with a swollen eye that -- to me -- looked a little like his eye did after his big brain surgery.

We went to the self-professed best hospital in Maine, where the decidedly distracted doctors on the ER staff decided six or seven hours later that Mark had an infection -- Cellulitis.

To this day Mark calls the swelling "a mosquito bite."

Here, now, for your viewing pleasure, photos from the day we spent at The Best Hospital in Maine.

The toilet situation in Mark's room in The Best Hospital in Maine.

The eye.

Mark watches baseball in The Best Hospital in Maine

Thank you, Mich

... for sending me this awesome post from the Slog, the Stranger's blog.

Mich knows me.

Scary

This lead story in the New York Times this morning gave me a start: Insurance companies are quietly beginning to charge their clients/patients a much larger percentage of the true cost of expensive prescription drugs, often without any warning.

There are plenty of horror stories in this article, enough to make me think of the $4,000 or so that my drugs cost every month.

The whole drug thing is a giant-ass nuisance enough without having to pay even more for the privilege.

For instance: I was supposed to be taking chemo this week, finishing off this month's course before heading down the road this weekend. But the stupid hospital forgot to schedule my MRI and doctor's visit last week, when we had agreed it would occur, and instead had my appointments set for next week, when we'll already be gone. I was able to get a pair of squeeze-in appointments for this week, on Wednesday, but given the UW's poor history of coordinating with my online pharmacy, Caremark, and its poor record of speedy delivery, I'm dubious about getting the drugs before Saturday. So that's a drag. And who knows, still, whether they'll come through with three months worth of pills -- that's about $12,000 to you and me -- as promised.

Annoying.

Things You Think when cooking for a Cancer Boy Boyfriend

It's funny, you don't even notice it unless you make yourself notice it -- the small accomodations you make every day for cancer.

I'm cooking a scrambled egg sandwich for lunch, and normally I'd throw out one yolk for every one I put in. Past tests show you get the same rich yolk taste even when you only use half as many yolks, so why eat that five grams of fat per yolk if you don't need to?

I'm fixin' to throw a yolk out and then check myself. Mark could use the nutrition. I put the yolk in.

Later, I'm stirring up the eggs, and get them just the way I like them -- just a little runny. I reach for the knob to turn off the flame, but check myself again. I have to cook these eggs through and through. Mark's slightly weakened immune system might not be able to handle the salmonella, if it's in there.

These are fleeting thoughts, I notice them out of the corner of my eye. These are the adjustments you make for cancer, our constant companion.

I think all the time that cancer is one of the first things in life I haven't been able to control or steer. We go through life exerting our will against things, and get to thinking that we pretty much are in control. And then cancer comes along and lets you know you were wrong all along. Control is an illusion. Here is a thing you can't do a thing about.

And so.

Stupid Chemo

Man, I was halfway thinking about cracking open one of the two soft and delicious looking avocados sitting on my counter -- forgetting that Mark starts his chemo tonite. Which means he can't eat a single bite or drink a darned thing after 8 p.m. For the next five days, the schedule goes like this:

Last bite: 8 p.m.

Anti vomiting drugs: 11:30

Poison/chemo: midnight

Start to feel that weird boiling blood sensation: 1 a.m.

From what I can tell of it from here, chemo sucks. Cancer too.

Thx to flickrite Nate Steiner for the avocado photo...