Faceless Blog

For those of you who don’t know me, or who haven’t heard this story already, let me explain.  

In the fall 2007, I started noticing that my right leg was starting to swell up.  To go with this, I was becoming short of breath just from my walk from the parking lot to my office at work.  This escalated, and added some abdominal pain just to be sure, until I was eventually forced to go to my doctor.

The doc, when examining me, immediately found a large mass in my abdomen, which was verified by a CAT scan the next day as a tumor, a little bigger than a softball and pushing against my vena cava (preventing the normal flow of blood out of my right leg), the right ureter (the tube leading from the kidney to the bladder) and the right kidney.  

Over the next week or so, I found that I was forced to use the word “tumor” a lot…and I didn’t like it.  It’s a very negative word, and negativity wasn’t how I was going to win this fight.  So, I named my tumor.  Specifically, I named him “Chuck.”  (It was just the first name that came to mind.)  Several visits to Allegheny General Hospital later, I was scheduled to have Chuck removed on January 16th, 2008.

On 1/16/08, I went in for what we were originally told would be a three or four hour operation.  Twenty-two hours later, I got out of surgery.  I apparently went through fifty-five units of blood on that day, enough to refill me completely five times.  When I woke up, a week or so later, I no longer had Chuck, but I was paralyzed from the waist down.  My kidneys had also shut down from the shock of being in surgery for that long, resulting in regular dialysis treatments.

Over the course of the first four weeks or so in the ICU, I regained feeling/movement down to my knees, which has been very helpful.  My kidneys also eventually bounced back enough that dialysis was no longer needed.  I spent a total of a little over two months in the ICU at AGH.  They were rough times, to say the least.  I don’t know how many, but I know that more than a few deals with God were struck out in the waiting room during that time.

Eventually, they moved me up to the sixth floor, so that my chemotherapy could start.  Because mine was such a rare form of cancer, they had a little trouble, at first, deciding on what type of chemo to use.  When they decided, they broke it to me like this: “Well, we found the perfect combination of drugs to use.  The good news is that they’ll totally get rid of any cancer left in you.  The bad news is that it’s going to destroy your kidneys.”  They were literally handing me pamphlets on starting the kidney transplant process at one point, they were so convinced that it was going to wreck mine.

Well, I surprised everyone when, weeks into chemo, my kidneys started working AGAIN!  Chemo was hell, and that’s all I’m going to say about that at the moment.

After getting discharged from AGH, I was sent to a physical rehab facility to work some life back into my muscles.  (At this point, I had been laying down for about six months.)  Unfortunately, my legs and feet were still very swolen (I had developed compartment syndrome after surgery, and it takes a long time to get that pressure out of your legs.)  When I got to this facility…which will remain nameless at the moment (I don’t want to get sued)…they stuffed my legs into tight compression stockings and my feet into slippers.  Three days later, when they removed the stockings and slippers, my skin just peeled off.  There were over nineteen wounds caused by that fuck-up, and it was all because they hadn’t completely read my chart.

I spent the next two years fighting those wounds, getting them to heal up one by one.  My right foot was the biggest problem.  The pinkie toe was a big problem, having healed in a curled up position under the foot.  The right foot also developed a bone infection around the end of 2009.  The infection made it necessary to go in, surgically, and shave off the infected bone, then treat me with IV antibiotics.  While they were there, they also took the right pinkie toe, as it was going to get in the way when I eventually restarted physical therapy after my wounds healed, and I would start walking again.  This proved to be a bit of foreshadowing, as the bone infection returned early in 2010.  This time; however, it was more serious, and based in the heel.  The doctors did three different bone scrapings, trying to get all of the infected material out and save the foot, but the infection was too extensive, and we ended up getting rid of the trouble-making foot.

That about brings us to present.  I’m waiting to be fitted for a prosthetic foot and restart my physical therapy.  I can’t wait to get back on my feet again, even if one of them isn’t real.  I’m working on the expanded version of my story, with all the details included, to eventually be released as a book.  I’d also love to start getting into the motivational speaker biz, once I’m on my feet again.  I’ll definitely keep you updated here as things progress.  :)