What doesn't kill you...

Part II?

I had more thoughts to share in my last post, but I felt it was starting to get long so let's make this a continuation of me finding perspective. I'm still flying solo with only basic navigational support, no editor, no muse, and pretty much staying away from everybody because I've been in some foul moods lately. I think I need to change my M-spiration and switch my Pandora back to Maroon 5 radio when I'm driving, since Metallica radio (although it seriously rocks) has really got me hating people right now.

Reflections

Taking this trip down memory lane over the last few weeks got me thinking. (Not that I need any help, I'm always thinking and usually I am thinking too much...WAY too much.) But, since those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it, here we go.

I took a step back, employing the Heineken® Uncertainty Principle (when I can know either my location or my speed, but not both - a mongrelization  of science I know,) and I ventured back to this time of year back in 2012. Just so you know where we're going with this, I'm going to have to back up a little, come back to here (where we've started) and then hit the big finish. I'll spare no commas.

Every year I make vague New Year's resolutions. I lack the proper focus to do much beyond that and I like to give myself some wiggle room. Specifics lead to failure. So I simply start the year with, "This is going to be my year." My year for what? Don't know. Could change. Maybe it's fitness, eating healthy, career progress, self-enlightenment, but I have deliberately chosen to be non-specific. Again, pragmatism isn't my strong suit.

The year was pretty tame. My wife and I planned on making another trip to Orlando as we did the previous year. This time we were just doing EPCOT at Disney and two days at Universal. We were all looking forward to the Harry Potter experience. We didn't account for my son's deathly fear of dinosaurs, so passing through Jurassic Park was an experience unto itself. It was a great family trip. But it paled in comparison to the journey upon which my family and I were about to embark.

I am going to give you the short version here with some brief grabs from another blog that I started on blogger in 2011, posted a couple of times in 2012 and 2013 and plan to revisit soon to get it going again. So, there will be more detail regarding the story I am about to tell on occasionalramblingsofanoldman.blogspot.com. I would prefer if you didn't cheat on me here, so I'm trusting you to come back to this spot later. There are also some issues with the order of posts because I went back and corrected some horrible spelling and grammar (plus added some random commas...just kidding) so my post from around mid-January 2013 is showing for today. Arghhh! Anyway, moving on...

Family Vacations

I have to explain what a Karwacki vacation is like. It started with my parents and our family trips. It's jam-packed from the first minute to the last. We never flew so there was lots of driving involved and that's a Dad's job. Not being chauvinistic, it was just our way. I accept responsibility for the safe travels of my clan, as did my father before me. But it can be tiresome, all that fun having. Generally, it feels like you need a vacation from the vacation that just ended. So it wasn't all that unfamiliar to be tired following a trip.

We were home for two days when the fevers began. And the night sweats. At the time, I didn't know there would be more. Lots more. (sentence fragment - but it's ok - I'm self editing.) I muddled through and followed my normal work schedule. It was almost a week of this garbage before my wife made me go to see a doctor. A trip to a local urgent care facility followed by a trip to the ER proved uneventful. I went back to my normal routine, armed with a Zpak to help me get better.

Only I wasn't getting better. I had daily fevers for most of three weeks, and now I was starting September and I was still sick. I had a visit or two with my primary care physician, who was baffled. I was starting to drop some weight and other than an elevated white-cell count, there wasn't anything the tests were showing to point at a diagnosis. So I kept on working. That brings us to a funny story.

At that time, I was managing a 3rd shift crew at work.  I didn't take very good care of myself, working too hard and rarely, if ever, stopping for a meal. I was taking acetaminophen for the fevers and it wasn't bothering to slow me down. But around the 2nd week in September I had an episode.

Now this is getting ridiculous

It was almost 2 a.m. I started feeling nauseous and I wasn't near a bathroom. I was just hoping to make it to one in time. I was having enough problems without the potential embarrassment of my maintenance staff having to clean up after me. Well, I made it to a stall, took a knee and braced for the worst. I'd like to say nothing happened, and it's isn't what you think, or what I thought was going to happen, but something did happen. I didn't get sick. But I did pass out. My next recollection was thinking that there was a strange pressure on my torso. When I opened my eyes, I was looking directly at the floor...with my chest laying directly on the bowl. Ever happen to you? No. Me neither. I just thanked God that I didn't go in. I might have drowned. Not how I would plan on going out.

Obviously, there was problem here. But I was living in the great state of denial, attributing it to stress and whatever else I could make myself believe at the time. I was even getting too tired to play soccer.

I played in an adult soccer league on Sundays. As my illness progressed, I had almost no stamina and my strength was diminishing. Every kick I made was weak and every run took all of my energy. I new something was wrong, but I wasn't trying too hard to figure it out. Then there was the fitting for my brother-in-law's wedding.

I had been fitted in July for my tux. My son was to be a ring bearer so he got fitted at the same time. It was about three weeks before the wedding when I took my son back to the shop and make sure he hadn't hit any sort of growth spurt. It was right about the same time as the blackout episode. The gentleman working there measured my son. No change. That's when I had him check me as well. Some people had noticed that I had been losing some weight.

He measured me and was surprised to see that my numbers had changed dramatically. My jacket went from 42 to 38. I lost 4 inches on my chest and 3 on my waist. Part of his shock was that he was the same person who had measured me 2 months prior. Clearly I was not well.

I really thought I was going to be able to make this an abbreviated version of my story. It took me two posts on my other blog, and while they are more descriptive, they lack the sort of style I've been able to inject here (why are you laughing? Never mind.) It's clear that I need my editor back, but I don't have the patience to wait until Monday when she's back, so I'm going to press on, no matter how ill-advised that is.

So I had two more syncopal episodes (sounds more manly than fainting,) one in late September that took me out of work (and I hear it was spectacular) and one in October that almost gave my younger brother a heart attack. You can read about those at http://occasionalramblingsofanoldman.blogspot.com/2012/12/starting-to-get-betterthen-not-so-much.html. 

My regular doctor still couldn't figure out what was wrong with me and I was starting to see an infectious disease specialist. There was also a neurologist that was coming into play with the blackout episodes. I was out of work for about 10 weeks during roughly 16 where I was sick.

I had fevers, sometimes twice a day. I was carrying a thermometer in my pocket and taking my temperature constantly. (my boss appreciated that I was at least doing it orally.) Usually. I hit 100-101 before the pills kicked in. I had night sweats. I was sleeping on the floor at home, on top of thick bath towels. I soaked through two a night and we were constantly washing them. I was just burning up, inside and out. I will never forget that smell of the sweaty clothes and towels. It was terrible. I was losing weight. It was at least 30 pounds, perhaps even closer to 40, in less than two months. As a bonus, I was passing out, sporadically, with little warning. Searching the Internet for answers I found that I could narrow it down to nearly 13,000 potential maladies.

If you've stayed with me this long, you deserve a finish. So finally, my fevers had become uncontrollable. I had a fever of 104 on a morning after a fever of 103.7 broke. After a crazy visit to my doctor, my wife took me to the hospital. She refused to take me home and demanded that someone in the ER admit me for more testing.

Have you ever been sick with a fever and you take something for it and then when you get to the doctor's office, you have no fever because you took something for it? Well it happened to me. Got to the ER and had a perfectly acceptable 98.2. But within two hours, it was 102.7. My wife and I were so relieved that I was sick. We were both starting to think that we were a little crazy.

I had a biopsy of two swollen lymph nodes in my neck and spent the weekend in the hospital. I was pale and tired. I received three bags of fluid for hydration and two units of blood. At least my wife had the sense to know that there was something really wrong with me because I was just plain stupid.

I probably already lost you to the two links, but if you came back you've earned it to see where I'm going. After a weekend in the hospital I finally got a real diagnosis. That's when I found out I had Cancer. It was looking like Classic Hodgkin's Lymphoma. And I was so relieved.

I was relieved because I finally knew what was wrong with me. Relieved because now someone could treat me with a purpose instead of shrugging their shoulders and sending me home with aspirin and antibiotics. Relieved because I knew I could get better now.

But I'm dismayed because I know now that it's going to take another post to finish what I started in the last post. Part III coming soon to a page near you in the continuing saga of the Incomplete Writer.