Today is the first anniversary of the first major battle with cancer... below and together, you'll find the record of that event - it makes for an interesting read, and some good lessons in there as well...
February 16, 2016, 4:00AM
I'll be out of commission today, going under the knife for a major, somewhat urgent and quite unexpected surgery procedure with a substantial recovery period. Surgery starts at 0730; as I type this the main worry in my mind is getting from my house to the hospital (arrival time 0530) with all the ice still all over my neighborhood's twisty and windy streets.
Not looking forward to the next 2-3 weeks. But like Clint Eastwood once famously said: "Hog's breath is better than no breath at all..."
There are lots of things that I am afraid of, but weirdly enough, death is not one of them. I think that the fact that if I were to croak today I'd still be leaving behind around ten thousand pieces of artwork which have been sold, traded, given away, left in hotel rooms, inserted into Goodwill stores and/or otherwise left to leave an artistic footprint, is rather a calming feeling.
This is a major, multi-hour, robot-not-a-human-in-charge operation, which I am told has an 80% success rate where the John Doe doesn't bite the bucket (and frankly, I picked the robot over the human, because of something called "tremors" when it comes to a surgical scalpel), soooooooooo.... If I do bite the bucket, I'd like a tombstone that looks like a Pictish Stone, sort of like this one that I did in Scotland in 1989:
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Clach Biorach Pictish Standing Stone
Edderton, Ross, Scotland
circa 1989 by F. Lennox Campello
Pen and Ink wash on paper, 9.5 x 6.5 inches |
February 16, 3:03PM
Nothing is ever easy! Last night's ice rain made for an interesting drive to the hospital this morning. Since I knew that the ice rainfall was coming, I put my van inside the garage and laid out plenty of salt. Around 4am I got up, sprinkled more salt and pulled the van out and warmed it up.
The walk from the van back to the house was quite an event, as I hugged the walls to try to make it back in one piece, slipping and sliding all over the place.
The drive out of my neighborhood was almost surreal. To start, the start itself took two tries to get the van pointed in the right direction. I then crunched my way out via an interesting new path that avoided most hilly streets in my very hilly neighborhood.... I slid a few times, but made it out and eventually to the hospital.
February 19, 2016, 12:14PM
Going home today! This is my hospital allegory to Frida Kahlo's "What the water gave me."
February 26, 11:58AM
I've debated over and over about documenting my recent and brutal prostate biopsy (the brutality comes in the bloody evidence after
the biopsy), the subsequent cancer diagnosis by a very aggressive form
of cancer, the recent hospitalization for radical prostrate surgery, and
the current harsh recovery.
And
I'm still not really sure why I started to do it here, because this is
an art blog, not Lenny's diary or whine-blog, but here it goes.
Why?
There are some excellent lessons learned in the process which maybe can
help someone; who knows. If I had read this ahead of my own surgery, it
would have made some things a lot easier. I also plan to print this and
mail it to the hospital, as there is some good feedback in here for
them.
It
has been over a week since the surgery, which was done on Tuesday,
February 16, and things are not all 100% good, but we're moving forwards
(I hope).
As noted in an earlier post, I arrived at Suburban Hospital last Tuesday around 5:30AM for a scheduled robotic assisted prostate surgery.
The road that led there was accented by multiple pokes, biopsies,
meetings with doctors, nurses, and deciding between chemo or the knife.
I
decided to get rid of the little fucker outright and quickly, rather
than cook it to death. The end results are the same: your prostate is
history, but with surgery at least it is out of your body, unable to
spread, and they can also biopsy the surrounding areas so that they can
verify that it hasn't spread. Surgery, especially the robot assisted
surgery which eliminates surgeon's tremors, also has a decent chance
that after recovery you'll be able to still get your crank up.
That's one giant-assed issue, know what I mean.
So, after arrival at the hospital, I was prepared for the surgery, which is done by a team of doctors and nurses and a robot.
I'm imagining this guy from Star Wars,
but I know that it must be something quite simpler looking; later on I
discovered that I was pretty close! At least the top half.
To the left is what the DaVinci Robot looks like (note the artistic name).
My surgery was to be directed and done by a genial Mexican-born doctor who has loads of experience in this area.
The
staff at Suburban is like Whole Foods, there are people from all over
the planet, and the accents reveals Americans who were once Russians,
Ethiopians, Filipinas, Jamaicans, Asians, Indians, Central Americans,
Nigerians, and the Gulf States.
A
smiling tech wearing a hijab puts the intravenous needle kit into my
left arm, while a nurse reviews the pre-operative protocol for the 100th
time at different stages.
At some point the anesthesiologist
comes in and walks me through his part of the operation. Soon after, my
doctor comes in and we converse in Spanish. He tells me that all will
be OK.
As
I am rolled to the operation room, all that is in my head is the fact
that I will have to wear a catheter for 10 to 14 days. The thought makes
me shudder, but the mind (and the gurney) rattles on. But at least I
have been told by most people that I should be heading home the next
day, if everything goes well.
At the operation room a smiling nurse puts a hair net on my hair and that's the last that I remember.
I
wake up to a smiling and efficient Asian nurse who checks me out. I'm
not feeling any pain or discomfort, but have a very sore throat. She
explains that I had a tube going down my throat into my lungs. I am also
very thirsty and start drinking lots of water. I'm also beginning to
cough, the familiar feeling of phlegm in my lungs ticking my throat.
Each
cough feels like someone is stabbing my guts in five different places,
the result of the multiple robotic probes and the macabre tube coming
out of my stomach. I also know that it's there, but don't want to think
about the catheter tube up my crank and reaching into my bladder.
My
wife looks under the sheets and grimaces. "What?," I ask alarmed. She
describes the multiple angry incisions in my belly, the stomach tube,
etc. She also notes that I have been "manscaped down there."
Much
later, when I've had a chance to get a mirror, I inspect the
manscaping, which goes all the way from below my nipples to my
testicles. Curiously, whoever did all the shaving stopped halfway
through my balls, so the top of them are shaved, but the bottoms are
still covered in pubic hair, somewhat making them look like balls with
beards, or one of those Japanese haircuts where they shave your forehead
all the way up to half of the top of your head.
Eventually
I'm released from the recuperation ward and I'm taken to my room; and
I'm pleased to see that I'm the only person there. When I was a teen and
got whacked by a car running a red light in Brooklyn, I spent months in
a giant ward at Kings County Hospital; not pretty.
My wife is there by my side with a bag of essentials, such as my iPad. I use it to snap this photo and Facebook the image. She notices that my eyes are watery, and I tell her that they feel very odd.
With
the exception of my colleagues that were at Context Art Miami with me
in December, my wife's immediate family, and my two daughters, no one
knew that I had been diagnosed with cancer, much less that I was to
undergo major surgery.
And
thus, after the Facebook posting makes the rounds, the Cuban side of my
family is surprised that I kept them in the dark. My reasoning for that
is clear, as I explain it to them.
My
mother is in her 90s and doing OK in her apartment of 40+ years in
Florida; she doesn't need to worry about me, cancer, operations, etc.
My
plan was to tell her after the operation (I did); had I told one of my
relatives before the operation, I was afraid of the effects of Radio Bemba ahead of the operation
Radio Bemba
is a Cuban expression that literally means Lip Radio. It's news,
gossip, rumors, conjectures, etc. spread by word of mouth. In the Navy
an equal expression is RUMORINT (Rumor Intelligence).
As soon as the Facebook news spread, I get emails from DMV artists Tim Tate and Elissa Farrow-Savos: "Avoid the Percocet!," they warn. "It will really mess up your bowels!".
The
tone of their alarms gets to me and I insist to the nurses that I want
to stay off that particular painkiller, even though they tell me that
I'm on a stool softener. I also continue to drink a lot of water.
Considering
the trauma of the event, the pain is mostly manageable. As recommended,
I even get up a couple of times and do some walking zombie 15 minute
strolls through the ward. A couple of other patients are already out
there, and a nice nurse ties my hospital gown properly so that I can
stop showing the crack of my ass.
We
walk around in zombie patterns around the ward, rolling out the IV
tower for support, and holding the urine and stomach fluids bags in the
other hand.
I'm
not hungry, but I know that I must eat, so I consume some clear
liquids: chicken broth, lemonade, green tea and (as directed by the
nurse) some most excellent lemon ice. The food delivery people from the
hospital kitchens, both the tiny East Asian woman and the clean-cut,
elegant, young African-American youngster, are friendly and vivacious.
In fact, nearly everyone that I came across while at Suburban, starting
with the Central American and the Dominican ladies at the check-in
station, to the always-friendly, talkative and smiley (and pretty)
African-American cleaning lady who cleaned my room everyday, were an
unexpected joy at the kind of workplace that usually yields jaded, glum workers.
So
far, the only thing that it really bothersome, and pain inducing when
it happens, is the constant coughing to try to get rid of phlegm in my
lungs. It is mostly futile and my throat is really sore. Each cough
hurts my gut with multiple deep lances of pain, and a nice nurse brings
me a HUG ME pillow.
"Hug it against your stomach when you cough," she advises.
I cough a lot; it hurts a lot. Otherwise, everything else is manageable.
My
eyes have been feeling odd since I woke up, as if they were full of
eyelashes inside your eyelids. After dinner I zombie-up to the bathroom
to brush my teeth and look at my eyes.
What
I see scares the crap out of me. A jell like substance, looking like
the vitreous, jelly like substance that fills the center of the eye
accumulates at the edges of my eye lids. As I tilt my head, it quickly
slides around the eye ball to whatever direction gravity pulls it, but
never spills out of the eyeball.
I
am convinced that my eye vitreous has detached during surgery and is
now floating around my eyeball. I bring my alarm to my nice Nigerian
male nurse, a smiling, kind man always willing to help. He looks at my
eyes and is also somewhat alarmed, although he tries to hide it.
"I will get the Physician's Assistant to look at it," he tells me.
A
couple of hours pass, and I'm now obsessed with my eyes; even the
coughing fits take second place to my concern about them. I get out of
bed again, run into my nurse and ask about the PA. He assures me that
she's on the floor and will soon see me.
Around
midnight she shows up. She sits next to me and asks me if I get grossed
out easy. From her friendly and smiley approach, I am somewhat
relieved.
She
describes the operating procedures that took place, including the fact
that my eyes were filled with a thick lubricant, and taped up during the
operation; that's what's in my eyes. She cleans them with a warm wash
cloth, and tell me to do that gently over the next few days.
It
sounds from her talk that she was actually part of the operating team
that morning. She describes how my body is put into a 45 degree angle,
with my head lowered, and how my pelvic and intestinal area is inflated
with balloons to allow the robot arms access to the prostate, the
seminal vessels, and the lymph nodes.
The
main driver, in this case, my Mexican Doctor, sits at a console and
does the cutting, re-attachment of the urethra to the bladder, and the
stitching. I mention to her that the doctor had mentioned that the robot
does "beautiful stitches."
She clarifies that it is the doctor, using the robot arms, who actually does the stitching. "Baseball stitches actually,"
she mentions. She adds that prior to the robotic advance, a surgeon
could only do six stitches; now he or she gets to go all the way around
and baseball-stitch that connection.
I'm
curious as to how the prostate itself and other internal body parts are
removed from the body, and I ask her. Her eyes light up. Apparently,
that's her job at the operation; she "runs" the robot hand that contains
a expansible bag that accepts the prostate as it is clipped off by
another robotic arm. The bag is then closed and extracted from inside
the body.
I
go into a coughing fit and she looks alarmed at my pain. She asks me
where my Incentive Spirometer is; my puzzled look is her answer, and she
rushes out of the room and comes back with one of the devices.
"They were supposed to give you one of these when you came out of the operating room," she frowns as she teaches me how to use it. "It will re-start your lungs and help you get rid of the phlegm a lot easier."
I'm
directed to exercise my lungs ten times an hour. As I do it, I wonder
who fucked up the check list of what I'm supposed to do after a major
operation.
Within
a couple of hours, my lungs are a lot better and a lot of gunk has been
spit out. However, after ten hours of constant coughing, my throat has
been abused and it is sore and the occasional cough from that issue
still bugs me, but it's a million times better.
When
my wife comes by the next morning, she's pretty upset that I had been
Spirometer-less most of the day. Because she runs everyday, she actually
runs from our home to the hospital (and back) everyday as part of her
exercise routine; who knows how many miles this uberathlete logs on each round trip!
I'm expecting to be released later that day, but there's a problem.
It
seems that something called a Jackson-Pratt (or JP drain); which is a
soft, round plastic bulb that looks like a grenade and is attached to
the end of my stomach tube, and "sucks" the fluid out of my body (from
around the operated area), has been sucking too much fluid - there's a
lot of fluid in that area.
Tests
also indicate that there's elevated creatinine in that stomach tube
liquid, higher than the creatinine levels in my blood. That essentially
means that there's urine in the fluid. It doesn't take a medical degree to realize that the bladder (or something) is leaking piss inside my body.
I'm
to be kept overnight and monitored; no one has mentioned the word
"leak" yet - as in urine leaking from your bladder into your body. Later
that night, the smiling female doctor from my doctor's practice assures
me that things will be OK and that they just want to monitor the
creatinine to see if it goes down.
Day two arrives, and the wasps make their first appearance... right after lunch.
DMV artist Tim Vermeulen
has had a brutal couple of decades where his body has been wracked by
pain due to side effects of some medical issues a couple of decades ago.
He depicted this is pain in this chilling painting:
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| The Seat of the Soul, Mixed media on panel by Tim Vermeulen |
When I first saw it at Context Art Miami
last December, it scared and chilled me to the bone. Little was I to
know, that in a weird way, it would help me a tiny bit from Wednesday to
Friday of last week. That's Tim at the bottom of the painting, hugging
his stomach in quiet agony while the wasps go to town in his innards.
For
me, it started as a little crampy sensation in my right pelvic area;
suddenly one of my balls was in pain hell quickly and out of nowhere. It
happened fast, so fast that it floored my senses, but soon the worst
pain that I have ever felt was coursing through my pelvic region and my
stomach. It was so unexpected, intense, fiery and full of living
movement, that it surprised me and astounded me with the violence and
level of the pain.
It
felt like a million points of pain, each one a little needle poking
into the meaty parts of your insides, drilling into your pelvic bone,
and then moving quickly to a new spot to poke a hole inside your gut; it
felt like a million wasps, and I remembered and recalled the Vermeulen
painting.
The first time, after an agonizing 15 minutes, it was gone.
"Probably gas," said the nice nurse when I told her about it. "Call me if it comes back and I will give you some Percocet."
"Fuck that," I thought to myself, "I don't want to trade up to chunks of cement in my bowels."
The
wasps came back three times or so that day. I cussed them out, begged
them to leave, whined like an animal, and in my mind's eyes killed each
little motherfucker one at a time inside my bowels. But there were so
many! The clock became my friend, as I looked at the advance minute hand
expecting the end of the agony. Within 12-15 minutes the wasps were
usually gone and I was back to "normal."
That
Wednesday night the JP Drain is out of control, filling up about once
an hour. At one point it turns from the reddish, bloody discharge that
it is supposed to be, to the same color as urine. I'm alarmed by that
and mention it to the nurse. He tells me that it is not urine.
As
Thursday arrives, the decision is made to keep me overnight once again,
and my doctor comes in to visit. He explains that there's probably a
leak, but that this is not uncommon. He also changes my stomach dressing
and directs that the JP ball be changed to a gravity bag to hold the
body fluids coming out of the stomach tube. He mentions that since the
JP ball works with suction, it's filling out so quickly because of that.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
By now everyone is telling me not to worry that urine is leaking inside my body, because "urine is sterile."
"People even drink it," someone says grossing me out.
At
lunch, for the first time I sit down to eat. When I get up I notice
that I am leaking fluid on the floor. It is coming from the stomach hole
where the tube goes into my body. The nurse comes in, put me to bed and
changes the dressing; as soon as she leaves the wasps make an
appearance.
I
fight them with my own mental violence as I imagine pulling them off my
insides one at the time, their stingers stretching my stomach walls as
it refuses to release its penetration, and then the meat slapping back as the insect, angrily buzzing in my hand, is crushed between my fingers. But there are so many...
A
couple of hours later, a nice PA comes in to check on me, and while
he's checking me, the wasps make another appearance. He listens to my
bowels as I'm whimpering in pain and talking to the little bastards. The
nurse is called and she injects some pain killer into my IV; it is no
of use, the pain is not affected by anything but time. Everyone has been
telling me that the wasps are either gas or bladder spasms. I am told
to be proactive, and that as soon as I feel the spasms begin to call for
painkiller.
These wasps do not listen to painkillers.
There's
a double nurse team on duty today. One nurse is young and pretty, the
other is much older and wearing a formidable tool belt of medical
supplies, sort of like a Medical Bat-belt for nurses. They are both
efficient, friendly and concerned.
Bat
Nurse is especially active. As I zombie around in my ward walks, I see
her all over the place helping patients; she never seemed to rest.
Later the young nurse comes in with the PA to switch my stomach bag and
there's some jury-rigging involved in switching the bags, and much tape
is employed in the process. By now I've noticed that my stomach
dressing is soaked because the hole in my belly, where the tube enters
my body, is leaking again.
Bat
Nurse switches my dressing efficiently; she's a nice lady on top of
being a very dedicated nurse; she tells me that she's only been a nurse
for six months.
Later
that day, my doctor returns and quickly disassembles what the nurse and
the PA had done and makes an efficient water-tight connection to the
new bag. He also changes my belly dressing, as it is soaked again. He
re-assures me that the leak will heal itself.
I sleep fitfully and then it's Friday; the wasps are not nocturnal.
On Friday I am to be discharged and sent home with the body bag. "Make an appointment for Monday to evaluate the situation and see if we can remove the stomach bag," my doctor advises.
I'm
feeling fairly decent, and that day I walk around a lot. The wasps make
an appearance after lunch, and then just a few minutes after they had
left, as if they knew that I'm thinking of going home, while I'm
standing in the room, they come back with the whole hive.
This
time the pain is not only outside the pain scale, but the wasps have
even conquered the clock! An hour passes and I'm still being attacked;
these are extra-terrestial wasps from the planet Waspathron; this pain
are a million Janices from 1959's The Wasp Woman;
maybe I should not have insulted them earlier; for every one that I
kill, a dozen more show up, their long stingers dripping with pain
venom.
They are joined by hornets, not just any hornets but those giant Chinese motherfuckers called Vespa Mandarinia. "Is there a difference between hornets and wasps?," I ask them as I fight them.
My
wife calls and detects the pain in my voice; she's alarmed. I try my
best to sound OK, but she knows better and she heads to the hospital.
This time she drives.
By
now I'm nauseous with pain and lay down; it's no use, the pain won't
leave me. I call the nurse and ask her to bring me the puke basin. She's
alarmed at the level of my pain, but reacts to the nausea as well. She
injects me with something and the nausea goes away, while I battle the
wasps and the Mandarin hornets.
A new PA walks by and hears me talking to the wasps, begging them to leave me alone, and she comes in and listens to my belly. "The pain is because of bladder spasms," she notes, "It's very common when you have a catheter." This is the hundredth time that I've heard that diagnosis.
"I'll order some muscle relaxer to treat the spasms."
Wait, what?
This
is the first time that anyone has mentioned something specific to treat
the spasms; so far it has been painkillers to treat the pain. A fucking
light goes on in my head and I warn the wasps that payback time is
coming. I also wonder why nobody has suggested this treatment the entire
three fucking days that the wasps have been attacking me.
She orders something called Oxybutynin which according to the Mayo Clinic: "Oxybutynin belongs to the group of medicines called antispasmodics. It helps decrease muscle spasms of the bladder."
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Memories of the Wasps Attacking at Suburban Hospital
2016 F. Lennox Campello
Ink and conte on paper 11x8 inches |
I get it into my system and the wasps and hornets die. This is Raid to these fuckers; it's over... technology and modern medicine have won.
But,
why on Friday? How come none of the other medical professionals
realized that bladder spasms are very common when a catheter is first
introduced? Why didn't anyone came to my aid to fight the wasps?
I'm discharged later that day and sent home with two tubes in my body. An awesome Filipina nurse trains my wife and I on the process of keeping track of the fluids coming out of my stomach and my penis, and also the process of switching the bags around as needed. She then walks us to the exit and hugs me, and wishes us good luck.
I read somewhere that over 97% of the men who go through this operation
go home the next day and it's very rare when anyone has to go home with
a stomach tube.
Welcome to rarity.
Next: This is what a Borg feels like at home.
March 4, 11:22AM
At
the time that I checked into the hospital for my surgery, I was told
that I would be discharged the next day, at least 97% of the men who
undergo this type of surgery, get discharged within 24 hours of the
operation. However, as fluids continued to come out of my body in
prodigious quantities and the wasps continued to attack, I realized that
I was part of the 3%.
I
was released from the hospital on that Friday, three days after the
surgery and two tubes sticking out of my body and uncomfortably sending
chills of discomfort and pain every time that I moved. From there we
headed out to the drugstore to pick up all of the different drugs that
they had assigned for my return to home, including the anti-spasm
medicine for my bladder that the medical system has so miserably failed
to give me when the wasps first came at the hospital.
When
we got to the drugstore, after the drive, made uncomfortable by two
tubes sticking out of your body while you're sitting inside a car, I
decided to take a small walk to the drugstore. As soon as I stepped
inside, the tube from the catheter began to pull, making me really
miserable.
I
looked around to make sure no one was looking at me, reached into my
pants, adjusted my penis, and of course, as soon as I did that, an
elderly lady wearing a yellow turban give me a long look as she came out
from one of the aisles.
She
was quite a sight actually, only in Potomac do you get to see a
70-something older lady wearing a yellow turban, large loop earrings,
full make up on, Daisy Duke shorts, a black leather jacket, giant Jackie
Onassis sunglasses, and black Converse sneakers.
Daisy
Dukes in February! I actually smiled at her thinking "More power to
you! But I best get the heck out of here before I get arrested." I could
feel her eyes on me as I zombied out of Rite Aid.
As
soon as I got home I took a hot shower. This was quite an exercise in
controlled motion under the shower, as not only are there two tubes
sticking out of one's body, but also they're very sensitive to any
tugging and pulling. It also involves switching the large urine bag for
the smaller one, and tying them around your leg. But the hot shower felt
good, it was the first time since Tuesday that I had taken a shower. I
wonder if Borgs shower.
There's
a certain fascinating horror that comes with seeing the human body in
extremis. There is a perverse sense of visual pain in seeing things that
are wrong with one's body reflected in a full-size mirror for the first
time in front of you: The angry scars left by the robot entry points
into the body, the tube sticking out of your penis with a large bag at
the end of it, and the tube sticking out of your stomach with a smaller
bag at its own end. Each movement could be a disaster, each step a
coordinated dance to avoid or minimize the movement of the tubes.
Sleeping with tubes in your body is an art form in itself, but
exhaustion always wins in the end.
For
the next several days, I perfected the routine of switching the
bandages around the stomach tube entry point into the belly, emptying
and measuring bag after bag of fluids coming out of your body, and
performing the delicate dance shower in order to to avoid hurting
yourself.
At
some point during the week, a nice nurse from Suburban Hospital called.
She wants feedback on the stay, and as I relate the events detailed in
my earlier blog post, she is horrified by the fact that no one gave me a
Spirometer, that no one gave me medicine for the bladder spasms, and
that no one helped me to combat the wasps.
And
today, more than two weeks and three visits to the doctor later, I
prepared for another visit to the doctor to evaluate pulling the tubes
out and returning me to the human race, like Picard did from his time
amongst the Borg as Locutus..
As
the doctor pulls the stomach tube out, my wife's eyes widen as he does.
Later on she tells me that she could not believe how long that tube
was; it must have been coiled inside me.
The
process didn't hurt as much as it was rather noticeable to my alarm
senses, but quick. My doctor tells me that I need to return on Monday to
see about pulling off the catheter.
Will that hurt? You bet, but still I look forward to that day; Borg no more!
