Uncooperative white blood cells hand me the world's greatest doctor's order

Yesterday's regularly scheduled chemotherapy session was canceled. It seems my white blood cell count has not recovered sufficiently from the last session, making chemo too dangerous. This is not bad or good...it just happens sometimes. We'll try again next week.

The good news is two-fold. For one thing, I have been able to eat normally and feeling fantastic for about four days now, and yesterday's chemo reprieve presumably presents me me another week of feeling (and eating) good.

Here's the best part: given my low WBC count (and the danger of infection that comes with it), along with my reborn ability to eat, I have been given what must be the greatest order from a doctor ever received. What follows is a list of things I am forbidden to do, as they carry with them a risk of infection:

• Ride the MBTA
• Go to Walmart
• Yard work
• Clean the cat's litter box
• Clean the dishes
• Clean anything at all, for that matter
• Watch "Toddlers & Tiaras"

And here is the list of things I am obliged to do:

• Eat anything and everything I can, the fattier, saltier, and meatier the better

Um...okay. If you insist. 

So thank you, white blood cells, for making one man's gluttonous dreams come true. In closing, here's a summary of every conversation between my wife and me over the next seven days:

Cindy: "Josh, could you..."

Josh: "No, doctor's orders. Sorry. However, I'm ready for another quarter pounder and milkshake."

Just a simple trip to the hospital

Wow, where to begin. Since I last wrote I've had two stays in the hospital, dozens of injections, countless pills, a team of doctors poking and prodding me, and a blood transfusion. One more hit of steroids and Mitt Romney could've entered me in the Olympics and then claimed me as a tax deduction.

I won't get into all of the gory details but, in summary, my "simple" procedure that should have kept me in the hospital for four days turned into two weeks of hell. When I finally got out of the hospital the first time, I had my first round of chemo, then ended up in the emergency room with persistent nausea and vomiting--the exact same thing happened to me when the Red Sox hired Bobby Valentine--which turned into another few days in the hospital. 

Alas, I have come out the other side. I now eat almost exclusively through a tube in my stomach which, as you can imagine, is just super! And I would've written an update sooner, but I'm suffering from what my dad calls "Chemo-brain", which is this weird state of confusion, anxiety, and forgetfulness you fall into after chemo treatments. I believe another term for this is "Kardashian."

Anyway, here are some random thoughts about the past couple of weeks that I've collected for your horror and amusement:

• I had three roommates during my stay at the Brigham:

1. The first one was "Guy Who Grossly Overstates His Pain." When you're in the hospital, they're constantly asking you to rate your pain on a scale of 1-10. This guy was always saying "9" or "9.75". Mind you, "9" on that pain scale is roughly the equivalent of being hacked to death by a machete while you're on fire. He didn't sound like much of a "9" when he was ordering takeout from Legal Seafoods, I can assure you. 
2. The second one was "Nice Guy Who Got Hit By A Car"
3. I had my own room for a day then, at 3:00 AM, the nurse knocked on my door to tell me that I was getting a new roommate right away. I asked if it was the guy who had been screaming for the past three hours. "No, it's his roommate," she told me. Anyway, he was a nice enough elderly man whose first words to me, at 3:12 AM, were: "I just learned that Eisenhower once had to be treated for ingesting rat poison." True story.

• There is an epidemic sweeping across the nation's hospital rooms: substandard television remote controls. As such, when you find something even remotely reliable on TV, you leave it there. This is how I managed to watch approximately 70 hours of the Olympics. And if I learned one thing from that experience, it's this: the vast majority of the Olympics sucks.
• Weird things happen to you in the hospital if you're there for more than a couple of days. After the initial 48 hours or so, the anesthesia wears off and the pain meds fade away and you regain some clarity. And with that clarity comes the realization that you're in some sort of horror movie where they won't let you eat, where you cannot sleep for more than one hour without being woken up for vital signs or an injection, where you hear random screaming from far-off corridors at all hours of the night, and did I mention the remote control? I'm not too proud to admit that, by day five, I had a legitimate mental breakdown. I was a blubbering bowl of jello. Here is a sampling of things that made me cry during days 5-7 at the Brigham:
• The final scene of "Dodgeball"
• An infomercial for the "Insanity" workout
• The whistling scene at the end of "The Muppets"
• The existence of synchronized diving as a sport
• In a true testament to the power of marketing, my TV/hospital room captivity exposed me to the new Taco Bell Cantina Bowl commercial no less than 437 times. I am absolutely obsessed with eating this thing but, sadly, it's not in the cards. So, if one of you would kindly eat one (with chicken, and no guacamole) and let me know how it is, in excruciating detail, I'd appreciate it.
• As with my mother's fight with cancer, our family has been overwhelmed by the kindness of the people around us. Unlike my mother's fight with cancer, however, I cannot eat all of the amazing food that people have sent to our house. And, somewhere, my mom is laughing her ass off at that.

That's all for now. Thanks, as always, for your kind thoughts and words.

Shallow thoughts

Perfectly safe

I had a PET scan last night at about 10:30. The technician, after explaining that I was about to be exposed to an amount of radiation that would give Karen Silkwood the vapors, tells me this: "It's perfectly safe. But don't go near your kids for at least six hours."


"Perfectly safe" is the new "incredibly toxic".

On food and Fox

Naturally, the events of the past two weeks have me thinking a great deal about my mom (for those who don't know, she passed away from pancreatic cancer a couple of years ago). As I was sitting as still as possible during the PET scan, I remembered that my mother, while in the late stages of her brawl with cancer, would spend her days watching the Food Network (though she couldn't eat) and Fox News (though she was an even bigger pinko, socialist, commie liberal than I am). It never occurred to me to ask her why, but I think I understand it now: as the end drew near, she took comfort from the fact that she would soon no longer have to breathe the same air as Guy Fieri or Sean Hannity.

Thing One and Thing Two

One of the hardest parts of this process, of course, is in ushering two twelve-year-old kids through it. Sam, whose cognitive disabilities make it difficult to know how much of this he understands, periodically buries his head into my chest while rubbing my belly and saying "I'm worried about you." Otherwise, his energies are spent eating enormous quantities of food and hating Josh Beckett.

His twin sister Sara is a different story. A day after we broke the news to her, she (with the help of Cindy's parents) went to the mall and, with her own money, purchased an array of items with which she has created a sort of portable healing station. Each night, she sits me down by her table, on which she has arranged a series of scented lotions and oils, candles, medicinal herbs, various antioxidants (such as garlic and ginger), and other momentos she deemed as spiritually important (a necklace from my my mother, the satin bag containing the glass I stomped on during our wedding ceremony). She then runs me through the paces of a meditation and yoga session she developed, complete with a soundtrack of singing bowls and Tibetan throat singers.

It's both a sad and proud day when you realize that you're intellectually and emotionally inferior to your own child. What an amazing kid.

So-so news & good news

Interesting developments today. On the down side, my ability to eat solid food is changing and changing rapidly. As recently as last week, I went out to lunch with people from work and easily wolfed down a sandwich and fries. Over the weekend, I noticed that my ability to eat solids was greatly reduced. By this morning, it's clear that solids are completely out of the question. I'll spare you the details of how I learned this.


As luck would have it, we had a meeting with the surgeon scheduled for today. I explained the situation to him and he decided that we need to move rather aggressively. So, the plan now is that I will get a port put in (through which I will be administered chemo) and a feeding tube (through which I will be administered tequila) on Monday. The reason for the feeding tube is that I need to maintain my caloric intake (particularly in the form of protein) in order to withstand the chemo, and I am no longer able to do this through my word hole. All told, this will involve 3-4 days in the hospital.


Shortly thereafter, we'll start some form of chemo, followed by  daily chemo and radiation for five weeks. Then I recover for five weeks, followed by surgery to remove my stomach, part of my pancreas, and some other assorted pieces of plumbing.


Please, everyone, do yourself a favor. The reason I'm in this mess is, basically, heartburn. I've had a low level of heartburn and acid for years. It was never anything that a couple of Tums couldn't handle, and certainly nothing I ever felt required a doctor visit. I ignored it. Now I'm screwed. Please, if you have those symptoms, learn from my mistake.