Medical Musings: Off Topic: My cat shames me

Friday, February 6, 2009

Off Topic: My cat shames me

It was raining today, but something odd happened. My seventeen-year-old white cat, Yeti, who hates the rain, wanted to go out. He has sciatica, arthritis, is going deaf, and is having trouble with his hind legs. Why out?

But there was was a lull in the rain, so I let him out, and watched as he wandered over to the tiny pond. What did he want there? Was he fishing?

Nope. He was drinking. Why are you doing that, I ask the wall. Then the truth crashed on me. I checked, yep, the cat watering thing had run dry, I don't know when, and he can't jump up on the toilet.

Note to self: don't get so wrapped up in this cancer nonsense that your cat can shame you!

1 comment:

Lon NesselerFebruary 7, 2009 at 6:50 PM
I'm delighted that Yeti's lab tests are normal :)
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About Me

I have multiple myeloma, a rare, incurable, universally-fatal blood cancer. The average survival in 1998 for the newly-diagnosed was three years with conventional chemo, five years with a autologous bone-marrow transplant. Through a combination of diligent study and miraculous luck, I'm in good shape more nearly fourteen years later.

I've had just about every treatment medicine has to offer: chemotherapy, autologous transplant, allogeneic transplant from a matched but unrelated donor (a MUD), and a donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI).

I started blogging just before I was scheduled to have a second autologous transplant in early 2009, but there was too much cancer in the marrow. I was devastated. By November, my tumor burden was astronomically high: I had run out of time.

So I gambled on the rare and dangerous allogeneic transplant from a matched but unrelated donor, which is when I began this blog in earnest, but after a month I couldn't blog because I had become so weak I couldn't lift my hands to the keyboard. I was hospitalized for nearly three months; nearly died three times; and I continue in recovery more than a year later. My wife was once told to make "final arrangements" for me.

I wanted especially to describe my struggle with fear. Fear often leads to bad medical decisions: its acid eats away ones quality of life. Fear leads to too much treatment too soon, or to treatment too long delayed. I hope to explain the tools I've developed to neutralize it. I am writing a book on the subject which I hope to finish before I'm financially destitute: who plans to retire at age 53?

Along the way I'll try to provide the context of my life inside of which these tools work. Also, I can't resist the occasional digression.

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Friday, February 6, 2009

Off Topic: My cat shames me

1 comment: