Good Blood, Bad Blood

Baseball, hot dogs, and the American Flag symbolize our country’s national holiday. My sons will be together in California attending a game between the Giants and their arch rival, the Dodgers. My wife plans to do Hood River’s annual Fourth of July run/walk, a 7.2 mile event from mid-valley to downtown. Years ago, when I was a runner, I raced this hilly route. But I will not participate this year.

As it is, my cancer, multiple myeloma, keeps throwing curves at my determination to be physically active. I feel like a baseball player who can’t get off the disabled list. Currently, I’m nursing a foot injury. I strained a tendon on the bottom of my left foot while swimming, of all things. The irony is that I started swimming to assist in healing an injured back. I’d hoped to stretch and tone those hard to reach mid-thoracic muscles weakened by my drug cocktail. Alas, I hurt my foot in the process.

Then, not long ago, I tripped and fell in a parking lot. Clumsiness comes with the peripheral neuropathy in my feet. This condition is directly related to toxic drugs I’ve taken to combat the cancer. The soles of my feet feel as if they are half asleep, though the half that is awake usually guides me along just fine.

In this instance, I was hustling back to my truck for something I’d forgotten. Down I went. Had I been skiing, it would have qualified as a “yard sale.” The things I carried went in all directions. Somehow, I managed to slow the fall with my hands and knees. Otherwise, it would have been a “yard sale” with a “face plant,” and probably a hospital visit.

I lay on the ground for a moment, distraught as Humpty Dumpty. The obvious injury, aside from my pride, was a nasty scrape on my left knee. Within a few hours I returned home, slathered on some Neosporin and a 4×4 bandage. Five days later, glowing inflammation lit up the knee. Fortunately, healing proceeded, albeit slowly.

(Double click on any photo to view carousel of Flags gallery)

Seattle Skyline

Dee Fire Hall

Wasco County Courthouse

Red, White, and Blue

High in the sky

Tattered, but still flying

Motorcycle

California Dreaming

San Francisco Tour Bus

Mount Hood

Ready to party!

Gehrig’s Chevron

Another incident, indicative of my eggshell fragility, occurred when my wife and I went shopping for an 8 x 10 rug. The carpets laid flat, 20 deep on a large platform. As we rolled them back to see the various patterns of each rug, I brushed my shin along the tightly woven edge of one. I was wearing shorts. No big deal, yet an annoying side effect of the steroids I take is thinning of the skin. This, coupled with the tendency of other oral chemo to lower the count of the clotting factors in my blood, leads to easy bleeding.

Sure enough, what seemed like an insignificant touch immediately became an unsightly trickle of blood hurrying toward the absorbent home of my white socks. I stepped aside and used tissues to stop the flow without grossing out any store personnel. Once again, though, my well being took a hit, adding to the litany of reasons to persist in beady-eyed scrutiny of my body.

MM is the equivalent of biological sequestration. It thrives in the absence of the armed guards normally patrolling our blood and lymph systems. The disease causes cutbacks in defense that lead primarily to physical consequences.

Secondary consequences are worries I’m becoming ultra sensitive, lamenting tiny boo boos, or, perhaps worse, the fear that I trend toward hypochondria. Neither is true. This is just what living the life with myeloma is like. The disease keeps waving its own little flags, attempting to get my attention. And the remedies can be as problematic as the cause.

I am happy. I am not sick, per se. But unpredictable mishaps keep denting the fenders of my confidence. I hammer them out, laughing at how delicate I’ve become. There are moments, though, when the unceasing interruptions try my good humor.

It’s a tantalizing dynamic for cancer patients: grin or grieve. So far, I’m still leaning toward the laughter.