Attention whore

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Way back in the 1990s, my mother had her own adventure with cancer. Along the way, she managed to get herself dehydrated, and ended up in the hospital. To my surprise and that of my siblings, she seemed to love the experience. "I call the nurses 'the girls,'"she told me over the phone. "They are so sweet to me. They know I'm not supposed to have coffee, but oh, I wanted it so much, and one of them brought me a little cup of coffee, and - oh, Loren! - it was so good! And I asked her for one more little cup, and she brought it for me, and - oh, Loren! - it was so good!"

I listened to this story with a thin-lipped expression. Later I repeated it to my sister Susan, who grimaced. "I know," she said. "The nurses fell for it. Mom can be so damned cute when she wants to be. But you just wait: once the nurses catch on, it won't be so much fun for Mom any longer."

Which, in fact, happened a day or two later. "I don't know what happened all of a sudden," my mother groused on the phone. "The nurses don't seem to pay attention anymore. Sometimes I press the call switch and it's a couple of minutes before anyone shows up. It's like a whole new staff. I can't wait to go home."

This whole thing seemed very strange to me. Mom was normally the soul of staunch individualism; she lived all by herself at the end of a dead-end road, and most days she didn't see a living soul. Why should it be so much fun for her to be the center of attention all of a sudden -

  

Aha.

She finally had center stage with a whole retinue dancing around her, and she was loving it.

She had become an attention whore.

Flash forward to the other day. I'm in recovery, which means I spend days at home alone watching TCM and waiting for the mail. So then I have a doctor's appointment, and the doctor says, "You could use some fluids. We can give them to you today, in the chemo ward - "

I nearly knocked her down, I was so eager to get to that chemo ward.

"Chemo ward" doesn't sound appealing, but it’s nicer and more comfortable than you think. The chairs are all recliners. There's a TV in every little nook. There are chairs for visitors. The nurses are funny and make light conversation as they poke and prod you and stick needles into you. Snacks and beverages and warm blankets are available upon demand. In short, the staff waits on you hand and foot.

Does this sound familiar?

Ah, but I learned from my mother's experience. Her mistake was that she overdid it.

I will not overdo it.

I have another fluids day soon, back in the chemo ward with those nice kind attentive nurses. I hope I can maintain my composure.

I don't want the girls to know what an attention whore I am.

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Tremor and confusion

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My right hand has been shaking a lot lately. I took some of my student employees out for lunch recently – at a very nice restaurant! – and halfway through the appetizer, the fork flew right out of my right hand. “It’s fine,” I told them. “”See? If we get thrown out of here, it’ll be my fault, not yours.”

I made light of it for their sake, but it keeps happening. It happened twice last week: things just flew out of my right hand.

Naturally, my thoughts take the gloomiest possible courses. Now that I actually have something serious, I think of the most horrible things. . Multiple sclerosis? It usually happens to younger people. Parkinson’s disease? Oh yes: I’m in the age group, and I drool, and I tremble. (One of the other symptoms of Parkinson’s is “confusion,” which sounds very funny, but which is very sobering to me, because I’m far more confused now than I used to be.) Essential tremor? Maybe. It does happen when I’m stressed or tired. But sometimes it happens whenever it wants to happen.

I have a regular non-cancer-related doctor’s appointment in December. I’m sure he’s tired of hearing me whine about all of the things I think I might have, but this he’s gonna hear about.

When I was in the Peace Corps, I had a friend who had MS. She went into tremors occasionally, but she was funny about it. “I’m demyelinating!” she’d yell, and sit and tremble for a while.

Long story short: she got better. Her MS (thank god) got better, as sometimes happens.

What do I have? Possibly nothing.

But probably I need to be tested.

At my advanced age, you never know.

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Sense of taste

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One of the “minor” side effects of both radiation and chemotherapy is the loss of one’s sense of taste.

Well, not so much “loss.” More of a horrible transformation.

I had one of my favorite Japanese dishes recently: ahiru donburi, strips of grilled duck and bits of scallion scattered in a bowl of rice. Delicious! But a bit – hem – metallic.

Then wheat bread began to taste like cigarette ashes.

I tried a McDonald’s hamburger and fries recently. The fries were perfectly inedible, like pieces of uncooked leather. The burger tasted as if it had been marinated in Clorox.

Meat’s not good anymore, nor is bread.

What’s left? Chocolate pudding. Frozen yogurt. Lemonade. Soup. Rice Chex. Cheerios. Grape Nuts. Marshmallow Peeps! Mashed potatoes.

I told this to Apollonia, who was philosophical. “Take a lesson from Robocop,” she said. “Robocop ate a rudimentary paste.”

“A what?”

“A rudimentary paste,” she said carefully. “And now that’s what you’re going to have to eat too.”

“I wish I were Robocop right now,” I said. “I know what I’d do.”

“Calm yourself,” Apollonia said severely. “That’s the chemotherapy talking.”

So: anyone for some nice rudimentary paste?

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Dog collar

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I was walking home the other evening when I met a neighbor – a cute neighbor, sort of a younger Dan Hedaya – with his cute black-and-white dog.  The dog was wearing one of those awful lampshades around its neck.  “What happened?” I said, gesturing to the dog.

 

 

“He had a procedure,” the owner said.  “He's nine years old.  Look how he keeps bumping his cone!”

 

 

The dog came toward me, looking sad and winsome.  His collar was scuffed from previous encounters.  His eyes said: I had a Procedure.  Don't you feel sorry for me?

 

 

How could I not?  I patted the poor dog on the head.  “In nine years,” the owner said, “he's never gotten this much attention.”

 

 

So keep that in mind, all you young things out there.

 

 

Illness has its uses.

 

 

But you have to be at least a little cute to make it work. 

 

 

Walking with a cane

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Partner tore a muscle in his thigh at Thanksgiving; it pained him grievously, and made it difficult for him to walk comfortably.

 

 

So he used a cane for a while.

 

 

We’re a three-cane family.  We both own formal canes that are basically varnished tree-branches, and I keep a regular old medical-supply cane in the umbrella stand for occasional use.  I have occasional attacks of sciatica – one’s coming on right now, actually – during which I walk painfully, with a strange posture.  One of my very sweetest co-workers said some years ago that she always knew when I was having a sciatica attack, because I “walked like I had a load in my pants.”

 

 

Charming.

 

 

Anyway, Partner was using his fancy cane when he went back to work after Thanksgiving.  One of his co-workers called him “Gandalf,” which I thought was hysterical, and I wish I’d thought of it first.  Myself, I like to use the regulation old-lady medical-supply cane; it looks stark and grandfatherly, and it tacitly reminds the children I work with that time is fleeting and the body crumbles.  Heh heh.

 

 

(My friend Patricia, now living in East Deerswamp, Massachusetts, has a much prettier cane, tinted lilac and patterned with lovely flower designs.  She was always a bit of a princess.  When she was still in the office with us, she’d jab us with it, unless we grabbed it away from her and jabbed her back.)

 

 

So Partner and I are tottering on into old age together.  Good!  Why not?  I saw a wonderful YouTube video recently of two old football players on stage together at a banquet; they’d been enemies/rivals decades ago, and the feud has never died; one tried to josh the other with some flowers, and the other struck out with his cane, and a fistfight ensued.

 

 

Which is the other reason a cane is handy.  It’s excellent for bopping people on the head.

 

 

Patricia would agree.  So would Partner.

 

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The magic road to recovery; or, Look like a zombie in only three days!

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 Recovery from an illness is very nice, of course.  But there are very many things you have to take into account.

 

 

Your looks, for example.

 

 

I am not a beefy specimen to begin with.  So three days of fever and almost no food made me lose another three pounds.  I looked in the mirror yesterday morning before work and saw a cast member of “The Walking Dead.”  (The strange flyaway hair didn’t help, nor did the interesting green/gray/pale skin tone.)  It is almost a miracle that people didn’t rear back from me and shriek when they saw me.  Actually, one did, my Truthsayer Gaius Helen Mohiam AKA Apollonia, who lifted her eyes to me, bellowed, and said, “You look horrible!  But not in a bad way.”  (I tried lunging at myself and snapping when I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, and it was pretty effective.  If I can hold onto this look for another two weeks, I can save money on Halloween makeup.)

 

 

My posture, never good, has now become a staggering lurching horror, like the shadow chasing you down the hallway in a Hitchcock movie.  Again, I like this.  Anything to bring fear to the hearts of those around me. 

 

 

But you know what?  It’s all right.  One of the founders of modern common sense, Judith Martin (better known as Miss Manners), once wrote (I can only paraphrase, I don’t have the books here) that, if you must work sick (or as I was today, not sick exactly, but just not feeling terrific), you should look sick.  This will arouse Fear and Pity in those around you, and they will keep a dignified distance from you.  This will be good for them, in case you are still contagious; it is certainly good for you, because any bozo repellent is good bozo repellent. 

 

 

Sadly, I am continuing to recover.  Thank God I have some raw avocado in the fridge.  That should keep the green color going for a couple of days . . . .

 

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Contagion: the update

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 Only a few days ago I posted an entry about flying to Florida and back, and all the dangers of contracting an illness.  But I hadn’t gotten sick yet, so ha ha!

 

 

Well ha ha ha.

 

 

Let this be a lesson, kids: if you’re okay, keep your mouth shut about it.  Otherwise something will happen.

 

 

I felt more or less okay until about Thursday of last week.  I joshed around with Apollonia and the merry crew at lunchtime that day, and then I went back to my office and –

 

 

And I really didn’t want to be there anymore.  I felt bone-tired and listless and strangely aucch.

 

 

So I let my boss know, and I went home around 3pm, and I lay down and slept.

 

 

I maintained a pretty constant vegetative state for about forty-eight hours, mostly lying on my left side, my hands cupped under my head.  I got up once in a while to get some water or try to eat something (usually a mistake), but inevitably groped my way back to my little futon.

 

 

I was running a pretty high fever (which finally broke sometime on Saturday night, praise the Lord Buddha).  I alternated sweats and chills.  The sweats were just sort of non-aesthetic; the chills were actually scary.  I felt like I was having spasms. 

 

 

My dreams were stupendous.  They went so fast that they were exhausting.  Sometime I was having three at once!  One of them was entirely in the form of printed pages of dialogue flying all around.  They were literally exploding out of me: I’d just close my eyes, and it was like standing over the crater of a volcano, watching the lava rushing straight up for you.

 

 

On Sunday, I finally felt better, a little.  I had some meager Annie’s Shells and White Cheddar, which is not really my favorite food, but it sufficed.  And some of Partner’s much more interesting pasta dish with meatballs and Italian sausage, which I somehow managed to tuck away when he wasn’t looking.

 

 

Listen: I lost at least two pounds in the last three days.  I need sustenance.

 

 

Anyway: I’m still alive.  Just so you know.

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