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.