Ebbs and Flows
I still don't know a whole lot about what's going on with my blood. I have a half-finished blog entry from two months ago that I had outlined and was all set to fill in with detail once my doctor got the test results back from the last batch they took. Something about antibodies, and how they were keeping the procrit shots from working. Damage he's only seen in late stage leukemia patients (although I don't have leukemia, he assured me). I had it ready. Finally some news, for those who kept asking.
I waited a week. Nothing. Two weeks. Still nothing. After three weeks I finally got word from his secretary that the test was screwed up by the people he'd sent it to. More weeks. I asked my nephrologist Dr. Ouseph if I could go back to a previous anti-rejection drug I was on, to see if it would help. I notice my gums swelling up again, but not much else. The horsepills I requested no longer smell like sewage, and I can even dry swallow them. Even my pills have changed.
Time is still frozen for me. It's still winter. I'm still cold.
You know those scenes in a movie where you'll see a character gaze out a window or out into the city, and they see blurred lines of movement all around them? It's a cinematic technique to indicate the quick passage of time as the character stands still. That's how I've felt for a long time. Brian and Katie are together, about to start a new life. Jaime is leaving to start a new life in another state. Gerard started a new career recently. Everyone is moving on except for me. I'm still frozen in time.
I sat in the office earlier today. My Dr. came in to tell me he thought the test results he got back weren't really telling us what we needed to know, because they were measuring free-floating antibodies instead of the ones in my tissue. He seemed genuinely frustrated and concerned. Do we need a tissue sample, I ask? A pound of flesh, I think? No, the Dr. says, just more blood. I'll get it in the morning. He tells me that we will need to do another bone marrow biopsy soon, though. I say okay. I hear the sound of a drill.
This morning I lie awake in bed, unable to sleep. I start to think about the movie Inception, and what would happen if you killed yourself in Hell, like those characters in the dreams? You'd probably go to an even worse Hell, I reasoned. Hell has layers, Dante said so. I'm sure I'm hardly the first person in human history to entertain the thought that I'm really in Hell, and let my imagination drift from there. I begin to fantasize more, and I think about this- if you were to send me to hell, what would be the most fitting prison you could construct for me?
Why, it would probably look like a hospital. One I'd be continually trapped at. Forever.
