Jesse is a friend, you know he's been a good friend of mine

As I've mentioned before, cancer brings with it a wide variety of other physical and emotional tribulations. During my most recent sojourn at the Hotel De Hackensack I experienced two physical events for the first time; I passed out, and I hallucinated.

During the last week I was in the hospital, on Wednesday my doctor told me I would be discharged on Friday. When Friday rolled around, I was told I couldn't leave, maybe Saturday. On Saturday I was told I couldn't leave, maybe Sunday. On Sunday, blah blah blah, until I was discharged on Tuesday. The reason the carrot was yanked away so many times was because the level of a drug I regularly take called Coumadin, was not high enough. I take this drug to prevent blood clots, but when I'm in the hospital for surgery, they need to stop this medicine. Blood clotting is very important when it comes to surgery. Playing the "not today, maybe tomorrow" game has happened every time I've been in for surgery. Knowing this would be an issue, I tried to make it a point to let all my doctors know that we needed to start the Coumadin again early, so I wouldn't have to delay my discharge. Of course, nobody payed attention and so I spent an extra 4 days. Sure, 4 days doesn't seem all that long, but when you consider that I was laying in that bed for 2 months, those 4 days felt like an eternity. On that Sunday, a physical therapist came by to walk with me. Walking is a difficult process after you've been supine for 2 months, and so I needed therapy for it. Most times it's a pleasant enough experience. The therapists are nice, and it does feel good to get out of the room, if even for just a couple of minutes. But on that day I was pissed and determined to show everyone that I was fine; fine enough to be sent home and fine enough to take care of myself. The therapist wanted to try some steps, so I jumped out of bed and made my way, grunting and mumbling under my breath, to the stairwell. I went through the door, I looked up at the top of the staircase and started to feel light headed. I grabbed for the hand rail as I heard the therapist calling my name, yelling, asking if I was ok. The hallway went dark. The next thing I knew there were about 10 people all around me, the therapist was waving smelling salts under my nose, and a large orderly was trying to get me to sit in a wheel chair. I passed out. Not your "been drinking since 11 this morning and need to nap" pass out, but actually passed out. This is not something I recommend.

The other event was when I hallucinated. I'm not talking about when you've been sitting at the bar, it's now 3 am, the bartender is ushering the glasses through their three sink dance, the bouncer is flipping over the bar stools and placing them atop the bar so that the cleaning crew can have full and clear access to mop the floor and clean the grit and grime you and your friends trod around in all night, and OH MY GOD that chick at the end of the bar is the hottest thing ever!! I'm talking about my mind telling me that my sister is sitting right beside me, discussing the most recent insanity of our father, while in reality she is most likely tired and fed up at the end of her shift, and on her way home. The doctors at Hackensack, and probably other hospitals as well, are very concerned with a patient's pain. They feel that pain intrudes on the body's natural process of healing, so they are very generous with pain medication. After my surgery they placed me on a PCA (patient controlled analgesia) iv pump. The pump has a little button, which the patient is supposed to press to deliver the pain medicine. Depending on an assortment of factors, the pump is set to only allow a certain amount of medicine to be dispensed in a certain time period. The first few times I had this pca, the drug of choice was morphine. My sister said that I had a reaction the last time I had the morphine (it's these parts of my recovery, right after the surgery, that I have trouble remembering so if Chrissy says it's so, it's so) so this time they hooked me up to a drug called dilaudid. I stayed on the pca pump about two days too long. The last couple of days, I would be in the middle of a conversation with my sister, or my father, or one of my friends, my hands flying around in mid sentence, and I would wake up, clear up really, and realize that nobody was there. These weren't dreams, I wasn't asleep. The presence of another person was incredibly real. My mind vaguely understood what was going on and I had to force myself to not press that button unless I truly needed it. After a couple of days of lower dosing, I was clear enough to let people know that it may have been time to change off the dilaudid.

And they said cancer wouldn't be fun...