Gerald Slept Here!

[Grumpy-1]

Gerald - let's go party!!!   

[Gerald Lively]

I will be on chemotherapy for the next two and a half years.  True!  However, I need one session every sixty days.  Not too bad.

Still have no energy, no ambition, no get up and go.  Still take a lot of pills and they almost did me in two weeks ago.  Wife found me unconscious and on the floor a couple weeks ago.  Had to give up weight training - for now.  Will be 74 in a couple months.

So, I watched both convention gavel to gavel.  Almost decided that Ryan should go on Dialysis.  He's a pipsqueak.  He needs humility, dialysis ought to do it.

[glitter]

He needs humility, dialysis ought to do it.

this reminded me of something my 73 year old Dad says-'Youth is wasted on the dumb!'

[Whamo]

Once every sixty days?  Sounds like a big improvement over three times a week for four hours like I do.  My time actually takes up five hours.  It takes a half hour for them to get me off because my fistula is a bleeder.  No energy?  Try CoQ10 in its most bioavailable form.   Read about it at Swanson's Vitamins website.  Try male hormone boosters?  But time takes its toll, that's the way of the force.

[Gerald Lively]

Well Folks, I'm still here, having survived dialysis, still on chemotherapy, getting over bronchitis, and if that were not enough, I am getting over a serious case of shingles.  When I get up to the Pearly Gates I'm gonna ask, "what the Hell I did I do to derserve all this?"

Last post was in September by a member who asked about the "60 day chemo" I take.  I have done the seven months of chemo but it came back, did the radiation, didn't work, getting some new stuff.

Still coughing, still complaining, still truckin' along.

gl

[boswife]

hey!!!!!!!! ole buddy ole pal!!!  Its so good to see you   I was getting pretty darn close to writing to see how you were and here ya are    Im sure sorry for that darn Bronchitis!!!  Bo was down with it too and still fighting effects. i've never seen him this bad and dr sais it can still be months before he gets strength.  It's AWFUL!!  Hope your not in that same boat... 
Sure hope to hear more from you... Im heading back to bed. Just got up to ..........start the machine  ................. (ok, im grateful we have it at home but!!!! ) cause bo wants to run early today as tomorrow hes off.  Up until this last illness, i was still battling whether he even needed it but im afraid that this last sic has done in his kidneys   At least to the point that i believe hes a D man forever.  Sounds like your still 'un hooked' ?  Man am i ever proud of you for sticken to your guns on that one..
Well, i'd better hush and get some sleep... rough night and will be up shortly to 'hook him up' and i think im kinda scrambled writing anyway.. nothin new huh   
Anyway, real happy you poped in and hope ya stay.. 

[cattlekid]

Glad to see you're still on the right side of the dirt with the rest of us.   

[galvo]

Great to hear from you!

[willowtreewren]

Glad to see you're still on the right side of the dirt with the rest of us.   

That is the best line! 

Gerald, it's good to hear from you.

Aleta

[Gerald Lively]

How nice to hear from all of the ladies I want to marry.  Gives me a tingle.

Bronchitis is stubbornly hanging on.  Shingles still gives me a sting now and then.  A lot of numb skin from that. I see the Oncologist next week, the kidney Doc gets a copy of my blood tests but I don't go in to see him.  Kidney's are functioning about 35% or a little better, creatinine is at 2.1.  I tried to pick up the weight training twice but I think it'll never work for me again.  What the heck, I'm 74.  I watch the news all day - boring.  Seen every movie ever made.

Everybody get well, ya hear?

[okarol]

Seen every movie ever made.

Every movie?? Hmmm how about High Fidelity? Or Living In Oblivion? Have you seen Mr. Blanding Builds His DreamHouse? The Man Who Would Be King? Never Cry Wolf?
Just a few movies I like.

[Gerald Lively]

Secondhand Lion, the original Twelve Angry Men.

[Rerun]

Glad to see you back.

         

[Gerald Lively]

Saw Life of Pi.   Maybe a #5.

Will see Oncologist today, next week more chemo and a blood test will go to my Kidney Doctor who will make noises about not coming in to discuss my blood work.  I can read the chart just as well as he can.

 

[Gerald Lively]

Oncologist says I'm as good as it gets for an old fart.  He is a Dodger fan and I caused him some pain by discussing the World Series which my Giants won.  We discussed changing GP's because the GP missed the diagnosis of lymphoma and said it was constipation, and it has been six months with this coughing from brochitis.  Yep, Nephrologist gets a copy of my blood work on Wednesday when I do six hours of chemo.  This may be as good as it gets.

[boswife]

   Ya always make me smile... Not cause of the awful crap you deal with, but ya always have a way of making 'it real' ya know.  Wishen you good things on Wed....   

[Gerald Lively]

Chemo was okay today.  Measured creatinine and it is down to 1.8.  I am never ever, for sure, going back to dialysis.

[boswife]

Gerald, it just PISSES me off thinken you had to go through this D crap!  only thing good about it is it got ya here    Glad to hear chemo went ok 

[Gerald Lively]

50% function on my kidneys.  Getting better everyday.  Had a CT scan of my head to see if anything was there.  Strangely, nobody is talking.  Fired old GP, see new one in a week.  Saw a Teabagger the other day.  I was going to shoot him/it but my hunting license needed renewal.  The NRA was whispering in my ear "do it, do it, . . . "  Hearing test coming up. Still have chest congestion that leads to coughing spasms and fainting (ten months).  Cancer is in remission.  Still itch from shingles.

Other than that I'm doing okay.

Whatdaya mean everybody I knew here is gone?

My bucket list says I should be skydiving.  Has anyone ever done that?  Huh?  Tell me, tell me!

[MaryD]

I can recommend skydiving.  I was Australian women's champion back in the '60's.  Should I arrange to come over and we could go tandem?  Not sure what our chances of survival would be, but probably not worse than kidney disease and/or cancer.        

[boswife]

 Well hello   and, im still here and so not EVERYONE is gone    And G, it's So good to hear your kidney function continued to improve.. I curse at those who 'thought' they had ya hooked!!    As far as some of your other stuff.. well    Yea, thats what i think of it all.. ya know, Bo had that cough pass out thing.  they called it 'cough syncopy'.  I bet your wife is real fond of that one!  Used to scare the crap out of me.  He didnt seem to mind as he would cough, pass out, wake up (cause everything relaxed), and go on with it like nothing happened .  Me, well, every time he coughed i thought was his last.  I dont like it at all!!
I think ya ought to take up MaryD's  offer!!!  wouldnt that be a kick!  Im still a scardycat on even thinken of flyen from the sky.. I do enough of that in my dreams.. 

Good to see you, think of you often and hope your kicken the worlds butt.. 

[Gerald Lively]

How did it happen and how did I get here? Hmmmmmm!

I had two careers.  One was a partnership in a retail business, the other in government.  If you want to count my days as a spy for the military, then I had three careers.  I was a superior junior partner associated with a dildo of a senior partner.  I knew the business inside and out, he knew how to booze it up, fart in front of customers, and how to tap the till.   So, I did what nobody would do, I split.

I took my money from the partnership, divorced Vampira and went to college where I was elected Student Body President. Some crazy fool recruited me from the campus to work in Butte County Administration.  The big surprise there was about how many people work for government and have absolutely no idea what they are supposed to do.  Then I took a job, City Manager in Alaska, a place that was in total collapse.  Within six months I was diagnosed with cancer.  So, I retire at age 48 to have time to enjoy my ailment. 

Yep, my hair fell out – all of it – yes, down there too, my toe nails turned black and they fell out and after seven months there was no sign of the cancer (Hodgkin’s Lymphoma).  What was I going to do?  I had retired to be sick but now I was cured and unemployed.  Well, Hell’s Bells, I went and got an everything blood test.  And the doctors repeated himself, “You have cancer, Boy.”  I just HAD to get that blood test, didn’t I.  With the onslaught of bad things, my prostate began quivering in fright.  Against my better judgment, I had surgery.  This turns out to be a big deal: four hours in surgery, blood pressure almost vanished, and when they had me in post-op I was upside down on a slanted table.  This puts me in a good place to watch nurses.  To make a long story short, I may enter into competition for the World’s Smallest Penis.

Did they take more than they should have?  Uh huh!  Whack-a-doodle doctors. They whacked my doodle. Made it a noodle and it hides the live-long day.  I should write that down.

A few months later it was emergency gall bladder surgery.  Then the prostate cancer came back – so they strapped me down on top of the atomic pile.  Radiation.  I recall a large lady who was there for breast cancer radiation treatment, this was her first time there.   She was very nervous.  The candy striper was having no luck calming her down, but the lady did ask me what it was like.  It was nothing, I tried to explain.  She wanted details.

You’ve gotta know that radiation therapy for prostate issues is, uuh, down there.  She knew.  So, I gave it all in great detail.  I slipped a nickname for the critical external organ, “Shaphotes”.  She looked at me for the longest few second, then exploded in laughter.  I asked if she knew what shaphotes was, and she put even more energy into her outburst.  Then her face turned red.  She couldn’t breathe.  The candy-striper and I latched onto an arm to keep her upright.  She was falling forward in laughing spasms, drool was running down her chin onto the floor.

Suddenly she caught her breath, looked up at me and started the laughter all over again.  I hope that lady survived.  I checked, my zipper was up so that wasn’t what made her laugh.  I never saw the lady after that.

In July 2008 our house burnt down in a forest fire.

A couple of Januarys later, I was having gut pains and my stomach was protruding out  further than it should.  Went to the Doc and he sent me to X-ray.  Later, over the phone, he told me I was full of shit.  Well, I know that.  He explained that I was constipated by an unusual quantity of waste product.  Well, okay!  So, I take some serious colon blast, lose a few pounds but the stomach is still out there.  This wasn’t working.  He and I went a few rounds for six months, then one day I began hallucinating.  The next day was worse.  Then I could hardly walk, couldn’t remember anything, so I finally said the magic word – hospital.  I remember having to get a wheelchair because I couldn’t get up the ramp to the hospital door. 

I have a vague recollection of being wheeled through a WWII Jewish prisoner of war facility just before someone  was pounding something into my collar bone (temp fistula thingy).  Whoever was doing this was cussing because I wouldn’t turn this way or that.  Next, I woke up in a hospital bed with tubes attached to me and a rusted machine that looked very much like a beer keg refrigerator.  Some scroungy guy who desperately needed a shave was reading a Good Housekeeping magazine.

It turns out that I wasn’t constipated, I had Lymphoma and that was doing something that blocked my kidneys.  A small mis-diagnosis.  Nephrologist said I had two weeks to live, a hokey-pokey comment at best,

Followed by eight plus months of dialysis and Nurse Ratchett.  Come here, Big Boy, I’m gonna take some water off your bod.

Then a bout with Shingles.  Then a continuing struggle with coughing and syncope.  One incident;  I passed out on my way in to the bathroom; hit my head on the toilet, broke my nose, and did something to my knees, one elbow and a shoulder.

I’m 74 now.  Retired when I was 48.  That’s 26 years of farting around with doctors.  I know I had different plans for retirement.


gl

[willowtreewren]

Dang, Gerald. This just outright scares the cr@p out of me. Here I am wanting to retire (been doing the same job for 35 years!) and have been nothing but sick for the past year. I want to get well so I can actually ENJOY that retirement!

Flying to New York to see a specialist every two weeks (not covered by insurance) is getting mighty old and giving me light pockets! But your story makes mine look like a winner of the charmed life award.

It's good to have your posts to read again! Adds interest to this ol' place.

Aleta

[galvo]

Good to hear from you, Gerald. Life's a giggle, isn't it? Keep posting, old boy. You're an inspiration!

[joval]

Hey, I am go happy you are still here.  You are the most interesting person on here, take care