Ari told me I’m doing this wrong, I should break this blog up into different posts so it should be easier to follow updates. Okay. I finished off my last thought and I am starting part 2. I will probably keep on switching back and forth from cancer part one to cancer part two. Not for any artistic reason but because I’m easily distracted.
CANCER PART II (Memories)
We are coming up on Pesach now and I started remembering last year Pesach. I had finished my run of chemo; I was bald and pretty weak. I was still pulling clumps of hair out of my head and beard and throwing them at people. Some people were horrified and some were disgusted; most people who knew me just laughed. People said that was how I coped, with humor. Maybe, but i still think it’s just that I’m shallow. Really, after the first moments of terror, and a couple more in between (needles) cancer was just another bump in the road to me.
Fern said I seem to have a God given ability to get out of helping her prepare for Pesach.
One year I broke my hand and was in a cast, another year I had “colitis” (turned out it wasn’tJ), a few years I HAD to go to the jewelry show in Basel, etc. last year, cancer. In fact when someone asked me how long I expected the pain from my surgery to last, I answered, “I don’t know, but I’m sure it will last at least until Pesach.” It did.
Speaking of the surgical pain reminded of an “incident”. I got home from the hospital on a Friday afternoon. Monday I went back to work, granted it was only for a few hours, but I was being lulled into thinking I had things under control. I was thinking, hey this isn’t bad, I can handle this, sure I’m weak and my right leg is numb (more about that later) and there was pain, but I can handle it.
Wednesday night I was sitting in the blue lazy boy chair and reached out for the box of Rainbow cookies and suddenly there was a flash blinding flash I was bent over SCREAMING (I SCREAMING in my head, in reality all that came out was a whisper) in pain and unable to move! I told Fern in a whisper (not much choice there as they screwed up my voice) call Hatzoloh (EMTs) I’m having a heart attack. That’s how sharp the pain was. One of our neighbors, Eli Shindler, is an EMT. I had his cell number and Fern called him. He was here in minutes. He immediately took my vitals and determined that whatever was going on was not a heart attack. Meanwhile the pain didn’t ease even one iota. We discussed going to the emergency room, but he felt that if I went to the emergency room I could spend hours in agony before anybody could see me. Instead he called the surgeon. It took about forty five minutes for the surgeon’s fellow to call back. Eli was amazing, he stayed with us until the doctor called back and then he spoke to the doctor. Guess what, another thing the doctors “forgot” to tell me about. Spasms after surgery like mine are common. They cut me open, cleaned out the left side of my chest and removed a rib. The doctor suggested Advil and a hot shower. One problem, on a scale of one to ten the pain was still a twenty and I could not move my arm to take my clothes off. Thank God Fern is so ingenious, she took a pair of scissors and cut me out of my clothing (what a waste of a good clothes cutting).
Just when the story gets juicy that's when youstop?
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