Category: Medical Talk

CONNECTING THE DOTS (PART I OF II)

NOVEMER 12, 2024 – Life for me has been a huge connect-the-dots project. I’m not sure what the final figure will be once all the dots are connected, but if I were to guess—which I’m about to do—I’d say the final figure will be full of flashbacks, intersections, coincidences, circular side-trips and the inevitable open-ended …

WHAT MATTERS MOST

NOVEMBER 9, 2024 – At the personal, conscious level, our mere existence is a really big deal. In fact, it’s bigger than that. It’s everything. From an individual’s point of view, what could matter more than the individual’s existence? Okay, fine. I overstate things a bit or rather, a lot. What matters more than one’s …

GOD AS GOLFER II

OCTOBER 1, 2024 – Today in the Heartland fall was in the air, though the sun was bright in a cloudless sky. After reviewing convoluted legal descriptions all morning, I burst out of work mode and embarked on my daily power walk up and down the hills of Little Switzerland. On my second climb to …

HOW TO CURE PANIC ATTACKS

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024 – Blogger’s Note: I skipped posting yesterday because I was preoccupied or more precisely, anesthetized, while medical personnel jabbed a foot-long (I might be exaggerating that by a couple of inches) needle into the left side of my pelvis to draw bone marrow samples in a “routine” annual exercise to monitor the presence …

THE FLUTTER OF ANGEL WINGS

AUGUST 20, 2024 – Today I underwent a P.E.T. scan in the nuclear medicine department of the University of Minnesota’s Sprawling Medical Science and Services Empire (I’m making up the name but not its size or substance). The exercise was what I call “a data generator” in anticipation of my upcoming second annual check-up with …

A GIFT TO THIS CRYING WORLD

AUGUST 5, 2024 – As with many a plan that goes awry, its derailment or alternative can often produce a serendipitous result. Having booked a stateroom aboard the R.M.S. Titanic, for example, a couple misses the ship’s departure, and lo and behold, they get to avoid swimming with the icebergs. Or in my largely unremarkable …

ALL IN A DAY: TAKING STOCK

MARCH 21, 2024 – For yet another day I’ve been stuck in a neutropenic rut, but I’m treating this condition as far from hopeless. In the first place, what’s the alternative? Second, at around 11:45 this morning, just as I was about to lie down for a nap, my good oncologist, Dr. Bhaskar Kolla called. …

SCHUMANN, ARGERICH, MEHTA . . . AND THE EMERGENCY ROOM

MARCH 20, 2024 – I’m sick. And tired. Tired of being sick; sick of being tired. On the positive side, all test results on Monday, at least were negative: in my misery then I checked into the “Urgency Room,” where the staff took swabs for the possible suspects—flu, strep, RSV, Covid-19—and x-rays to rule out …

PLATINUM STANDARD

MARCH 28, 2023 – Today I had a medical encounter that bolstered my faith in the future. The occasion was a six-month check-up with Dr. Arndt, my pulmonologist, which went swimmingly (my transplant workup a year ago had revealed a lingering lung issue arising from a cat allergy,  channeling me to the pulmonology section for …

BIOPSY DAY

FEBRUARY 16, 2023 – Today I experienced another bone marrow biopsy ahead of my six-month-post-transplant appointment with Dr. Killjoy. The doc earned his nickname when he said last August, “No more downhill skiing for you.” I plan to show him a picture of S-turns I made recently on a downhill ski slope. I’ll explain that …

THE TRAVEL BOOK

FEBRUARY 13, 2023 – Amidst the day’s stresses, missteps, mishaps, curveballs, roadblocks, news headlines and yes, ice-canyons in the alleyway, the sun smiled—when I looked up long enough to notice.  Plus, there were the gems—my monthly, uplifting appointment with my hero, Dr. Kolla; a walk with a friend and scintillating conversation about the study of …

“BEING GREAT”

JANUARY 30, 2023 – The other day I attended to some light “work-work” against the backdrop of a recording by Itzhak Perlman performing Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D. I hadn’t heard the piece in a while, and it evoked many memories; nothing specific, just remembrances of how great music has edified my …

“ONLY” $653,680.19

JANUARY 24, 2023 – Yesterday I experienced sticker shock. I wasn’t reacting to the average U.S. house sale price in 2022 ($507,800) or the price of a 2023 Beamer – 520i  ($76,995) or . . . room, board and tuition at Harvey Mudd College, the most expensive private college in America ($77,449). No, I was …

MEDICAL APPOINTMENTS DAY: FUN PART, BEST PART

JANUARY 17, 2023 – Today I had my monthly follow-up appointment with Dr. Kolla, followed by an encounter with the “infusion center,” where nurse Patty administered two butt shots plus a rabies injection. In more professional lingo, the butt shots were doses of csxzysesisterkappalambdaiotazonifer and xylicriminelamndanumuomicronpiclomyaquavazine, otherwise known as mono-clonal antibodies packaged under the brand …

THE GLASS HALF FULL

JANUARY 15, 2023 – Today the weather gods smiled, and gave a taste of spring-skiing. As I skated down the ski track, up and down dale, I noticed a number of weekenders on the course—friends on a lark; parents with young kids; older folks, gliding along slowly but surely. Citizen racers were few. Doubtless they …

“TOO GOOD TURNS”

JANUARY 7, 2023 – Followers of this blog know that in the course of my stem cell transplant procedure back in late August, Drs. Killjoy (both of them) told me, “No more downhill skiing for you. Cross-country, fine; downhill, no.” Their perfectly sound reasoning was that the multiple myeloma had turned my skeleton into “Swiss …

INSIDE THE BUBBLE LOOKING OUT (PART I)

DECEMBER 29, 2022 – In retrospect, I’m surprised by my adaptation to circumstances, but a couple of days ago, behind my astonishment lay self-doubt and rising fear. For the past 13 months I’ve lived a “bubble existence.” It was that long ago that I was last inside someone else’s house—the Connecticut home of our son …

BAD NEWS, GOOD NEWS

DECEMBER 16, 2022 – Today, shortly after an hour-long ski workout in ideal conditions, I received a call from the coordinating nurse of a study in which I’d agreed to participate. The study is designed to test the efficacy of a combination of two medications in post-stem cell transplant, multiple myeloma patients. One of the …

DAY 100: REFLECTION

DECEMBER 1, 2022 – The days leading up to the transplant passed all too quickly. I was feeling great, but being very much a medical wimp, I dreaded the procedure that loomed ever closer and feared what could be an excruciatingly slow, protracted and unpleasant recovery process. Why couldn’t time stop where I was? More …