Conversations with Organs: The Liver

I often wonder, and by often I mean once last night, what my liver must be thinking about this whole thing. I envision an angry neighbor trying to watch the evening news, brooding to himself about those damned kids next door and their music. I imagine this until it all come to a head, and one day I half expect to wake up to see my liver ripping itself out of my body like the alien from Alien, except that my liver is more intimidating because he's holding a board with a nail in it.

He stares at me, and I stare right back at him.

"What the FUCK are you trying to prove man? I'm sittin' down there, minding my own business, when suddenly I start getting flooded with shit! I put up with a week of this shit and then a few weeks later, you decide in your infinite wisdom to give me some more shit! Then, in the following weeks, I go through another round of toxins, get blasted by radiation, and find myself to be the target of T-cells on a search and destroy mission.

"What. The. Hell.

"Was I a bad liver? How many times did I pull your ass off the ground when you drank too much? How many?!"

"You.. you pulled my ass off the ground quite a few times..."

"I'm not finished. And the other thing is... we go along like this 'ain't no big thang' when BAM! Eleven months later, you start doing it all over again! Now, I don't want to get involved with your politics, I don't want money, and I could care less about your business affairs. But I feel I have a right to know why you do... whatever it is that you're doing out there. But most importantly, I was just getting frustrated and needed to let that out."

"Well," I say to my liver, still slightly perplexed that it's both talking to me and not inside of me," I understand your frustration and I hope your grievances will soon be put to rest. I apologize that I haven't kept you totally in the loop. I made the assumption that you were not sentient, and that's my fault. That blame lies with me. Unfortunately, this routine will continue in the foreseeable future, and there is nothing you nor I can do about that now. I'm sick, Liver. From my chair here, this is our best option."

There is a moment of silence. Liver no longer looks like he's brooding. His large board with a nail in it rests quietly at his side. We have a moment, but I know there is work to be done. He just ripped open my entire abdomen and I have a platelet count of 6 (150-450 is normal), so not bleeding out was objective number one.

"So, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna get back into my abdomen, however you can. And we're gonna go over this thing step by step so there's no foul-ups. I don't have to tell you we're all a little tired out here. Transplant's getting awfully big in the window. And we're running out of options."

*credit due to my good friend, Crix Madine for helping me with this post.

That 70's Show

Well... we're back, in the hospital again...

Yeah, but at least we're out of the tree.


So I'm back at it. The biopsy results showed us that the leukemia was once again on the move, so I just finished another delicious cocktail of chemotherapy drugs. Hopefully by mid-March we'll know if it did the trick. The strange thing this time around is how well my body seems to be tolerating the toxicity of the chemo itself. The nurses and I got on a pretty good schedule with pre-medicating more nausea and appetite, and I also started something called Marinol.

For those not familiar, the active ingredient in marijuana is THC. It's fat soluble which is why it can show up on urine tests up to a month after use. Well, in our federal government's infinite wisdom, they decided that the plant itself should be illegal across the board, even medical reasons. BUT, a few folks figured out how to synthisize the THC in a lab and pass it off as a prescription drug. It helps with eating, drinking, and it decreases nausea. That seems to be a-ok with the feds and so here I sit.

Every other round of chemo had me losing weight at the get go, and losing about 15-25 lbs per treatment. This time, I'm not losing weight at all and might actually be gaining more weight back after the chemo I got in December. I'm also on prednisone which helps with appetite and energy.

I've been given permission to play the hospital's baby grand piano after 6pm, so that's on the menu for today if I'm feeling up to it by then. It's hard to say because things can change by the hour.

Well that's about all I have right now.