newsornotnews (noticiaononoticia)

Pet Scans are a diagnostic tool which require you to be injected with nuclear material. Rather than bestowing super powers, the material mimics sugar in your body. Tumors and lymphomas eat a lot sugar so the nuclear material is drawn to them and make them visible in a scan. In order for them to work effectively, there can not already be sugar circulating throughout and that requires that you do not eat beforehand. My colonoscopy earlier today required a cleanse which in turn required my drinking very large quantities of laxative which, as you might imagine, resulted in large and frequent defecation last night. The endoscopy yesterday required that I only have clear liquids prior to the test. The upshot of all of this is that between my delicious variety burger from Hearth Tuesday night and now I have only eaten/drunk chicken broth and jello and not a whole lot of that. So, as I lie here in the nuclear prep room, giving the material an hour to flow through all the nooks and crannies of my body, I am hungry. Really, really hungry. It’s about 3:00 now. I’ll be done with this around 4:00. Oh by the way, the colonoscopy which revealed diverticuli? They weren’t bleeding so we have still not solved the anemia issue. When I am done with this scan I will be able to eat. I will also then get a transfusion which will take a few hours. Accordingly I will be able to leave Lenox tonight at about 7:30. That means I will not make it to the May edition of the Cabinet of Wonders at City Winery where the author  of “My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist ” will be reading. Additionally, I must return to the hospital on Monday at which time I will swallow a little camera. The camera will photograph my entire GI track (or is it tract) looking for the source of the bleeding. Please get in touch if you’d like to join me for a weekend of gourmandaise  gluttony, excessive alcohol consumption and veritable clouds of marijuana smoke but only until 6:00 pm on Sunday which is when I will begin the prep for the little camera (nobody debauches  with Jolean but me).

It was never my intention to be writing a medical blog so I’m going to make this short (also because I’m writing this from a stretcher in the recovery room). Turns out, no surprise, I’m a bloody ass, as the Brits would say. Yesterday’s endoscopy revealed nothing but a couple of  sutures left over from the cancer surgery so, accordingly, today I had the colonoscopy which, as Soupy says, sounds so romantic in Turkey, and which revealed bleeding diverticuli which, further, if you’re not familiar, are sort of pimples on the colon. Why were they bleeding? Stigmata is my guess but probably a diet low on fiber is more likely (though, based on last night’s cleanse, I’m good on solids).  So that’s the story. O! Anemia, city in the sky! It’s time for me to leave you (and Lenox Hill). Sorry Jolean. No more strap-ons. 

Generally speaking, any day you receive anal stimulation three times is a good day. This time, no. Three doctors have pierced the booty looking for blood in the stool…and they found it. Hence my shortness of breath – anemia. Dr. Horbar examined me in his office and then sent me to Lenox Hill to get a scope put down my throat to examine my stomach (there’s a word for that ending in -scopy but I don’t remember what it is) to see if any of the several surgical sites from last time are bleeding. We arrived at 11:00am. I got a bed in the ER at about 1:00 and waited for my exam. At about 3:00 I was told I had to stay overnight because not only was I getting a downyourthroatoscopy but a colonoscopy in the morning under sedation. At 5:00 I was moved into a room (private thanks to Jolean – more on that to follow). At 6:30 I was told no colonoscopy tomorrow which means only the down the throat thing which, of course, I could have had as an outpatient during the day today. So here I am, back at Lenox, where I resided for 86 days in the fall of 2014. It sucks. As I said, I have a private room and a delicious container of chicken broth from Pastrami Queen and those are the least of what Jolean’s taken care of today. She came home last night despite my wishes that she not fuss and, truth be told, I greeted her in the most disagreeable asshole way. It was a little ugly for a while. She wanted to be with me though because, well, she’s my wife and loves me. And, really, I was grateful she was there because I love her madly. And and I would have had a difficult time getting through the day without her and not because she bought me soup (though I can’t recommend the soup highly enough). It’s because I’m lonely for her when she’s not with me and it would have been impossible to endure that in addition to of everything else.

One of the annoying things about being a cancer survivor is that friends and relatives, with the best of intentions, express their enduring anxiety about your health, asking, “Are you okay?” and “How do you feel?” and that makes you feel babied and weak and like a special case when you’re trying to be chill and leave it behind and feel normal and deny your own anxiety which, covertly, is probably even greater than theirs. It’s not the kind of thing you want poked at. Today and last night I became winded just getting out of a chair and started to feel the burn (the Jane Fonda burn, not the Bernie bern) in my legs after a block or two of walking. My endurance hasn’t been great since the 12 week hospital stay a year and a half ago but this feels a little different. I went to the IFCC at the Javits Center with Samara this morning and I stood up out of one of the thousands of lovely couches being displayed and walked ten feet over to the booth of a Spanish lighting manufacturer who was showing a beautiful hanging lamp and I was too out of breath to speak (they give out catalogues on thumb drives now!) so the saleslady went into her whole spiel and I was stuck there standing for five minutes at least. After that I needed to sit so I selected a couch (the covering of which seemed unusually durable, perhaps able to stand up to Toshi the cat) and, having seated, I start sweating like I had just done the 100 except that it would be inches, not meters. Sami gets very concerned and keeps asking, “Do I have to take you to the hospital?” and, of course, I’m not going to the hospital because I feel fine, I’m fine, I just need a few minutes. Then, when I’m not looking, she texts Jolean and snitches on me so Jolean calls, concerned, and I’m all “Relax, it’s nothing.” And it’s true. I feel perfectly fine except that I’m perspiring away on a well constructed sofa on the floor of the Javits Center. I’m trying to both triage and ignore what I’m feeling. I truly don’t want to be sick again, I truly, truly don’t. We get a cab, head home, I lie down. Sami’s gone off to work but she wants to stay over tonight. Jolean wants to come down from Tarrytown. I don’t want it, not either. I don’t want the tsimmes. I’ve spoken to the doctor and I’m going in to see him tomorrow at 10:15.  I can take care of this and I’m sure it’ll be nothing. Really – I can take care of this.

I love tuning my guitars. You clip the tuner to the guitar head, turn it on and pluck a string. The face of the tuner lights up, showing the note of the string you’ve played, and indicating, through lit bars on each side of the note, whether you’re sharp or flat. Then you adjust the tuning peg until the face turns green. It’s such a satisfying chore. The guitar sounds so great when it’s tuned right. Unfortunately, tuning is my area of greatest competence. I’ve been trying to teach myself to play since December and, honestly, i’m barely better at it now than i was the second day learning. There are about two dozen chords that I remember very imperfectly and it takes me about 30 seconds to switch from one to the other. On the one hand, it’s kind of pathetic and a bit discouraging. On the other, you strum your pick against the strings and it just sounds so beautiful. I’m amazed a beginner can make such a great sound. I really like doing it. Not only that – it affords you opportunities to buy things and I love buying things. Getting new stuff is one of my greatest pleasures. Hence, i’ve bought the new tuner. And guitars. I’ve kind of gone crazy buying guitars.

There’s also a smaller acoustic guitar I keep in my bedroom. That’s ten altogether meaning I average about two and a half chords per guitar. I’m sticking to it, though. I play four or five 15 minute stretches in the course of the day.  I’m also feeling like I have all the guitars I need for the time being so it’s all good. Nowhere to go but up. By the way, I can’t play saxophone either.

The NYT has posted an article online that purports to report on the Donald’s behavior with the ladies. It’s headed “Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved with Women in Private”. If that sounds soft, the story itself is a down pillow. A handful of women each relate their own separate anecdotes illustrating the Donald’s piggishness, condescension and self-aggrandizement. There’s a beaut about him having the Miss Universe contestants dress and parade for his own private viewing. There’s another creepy instance of him describing his daughter as hot. Basically, though, there’s no story here. I enjoy gossip and dirt as much as the next guy (more, probably) but there’s no cohesive story here. No smoking gun. And if you haven’t identified the orange man as a self-deceiving parody of machohood jerk by now, this article isn’t going to do it for you. Its greatest goal is to stay litigation-proof and it ends up pointless as a result, which is a shame. Next time, let’s start with Fred the father’s mistresses and move on to Donald’s.

I don’t get to L.A. often but, whenever I’ve gone, it’s been with the intention of seeing Jon Brion at his weekly Friday show, first at Largo and then at the Coronet. Never got there, though. Last night, however, Brion (who’s name is pronounced like the name Brian and not bree-on as I thought) took his act to City Winery. Tickets for the show only went on sale a week before and it was unannounced by the venue. Still, the house was full for a performance scheduled to begin at 11:15 but which didn’t actually start until close to midnight. He played over two and a half hours. Jon’s thing is to do covers, some selected by audience request, in novel impromptu, kind of nutty, versions. F’rinstance, having heard requests for a David Bowie and a Randy Newman song, he proceeded to play “Heroes” as a New Orleans barrelhouse and then  a spaceage “Dayton Ohio 1903” with a synthesized loop screeching throughout. He did a fantastically fuzz-toned version of the Duke’s “Solitude”. His musicianship is fantastic, moving among guitars and keyboards and vibraphone even. His voice is not a very versatile instrument, a little reedy, and he’s not so good on lyrics (he often invited the audience to do the singing, occasionally to great effect) but it was a wonderful show. I’d see him again anytime. I’m sure no two shows are remotely the same. He performs some of his own material too which is just fine but he closed with a haunting version of “These Days” on vibraphone. The repertoire had a New York spin (there was a boss nova “Pale Blue Eyes”) and this New Yorker left grateful he had come east for this Friday night. Jon promised future local shows soon and I plan on being there.