You're Gonna Do What?

The whole interaction between Doctor and cancer patient is a sitcom waiting to happen. (And thanks to The Big C we can start laughing a little about it).

While it didn't seem that funny at the time, I can now look back and laugh at the insertion of my feeding tube three years ago, almost to the day. I had to go through a ton of prep for my treatments--2 oral surgeries, a series of scans, consultations--and the most intrusive of them all, a feeding tube shoved into my stomach. Think of something that looks like that cable wire that connects your TV to your box or dish. Except it was blue. With a foot long clear extension from the machine to the 18 inches of blue line that went straight into my skin, through the stomach lining so I could live. I had to have that fucker in there before I could receive any chemo or radiation. And I've posted before about how NO ONE knew how it worked--except for the Doc who stuck that bastard in--after 3 shots right in my gut and 6 weeks later of shooting liquid food into my tube with a syringe. Yeah, it was a party.

I had Doctors, Nurses, the company that was administering and distributing the cans of food and Google trying to help me out to get that thing pumping into my body for 12 hours a day. No one could figure it out. I finally went back to the hospital again and found the dude who put that baby in--ya think he would of told someone? Ten long months that sucker was in. Actually, I had to have it replaced because of 2 painful at the time but funny now "incidents". My dog, Tedi, got caught in the line and started to freak out and run. SON-OF-A-BITCH did that hurt. I had to practically tackle him to make him stay put. The other time, a client got up from his chair in a meeting, slipped a little and his chair rolled over my line and he got tangled up in it. Yeah, a client. He freaked and started to run out the door––hey man, stop! He then got pissed at me. "Can't you control that thing? Why are you sitting so close?" Dude, you're the idiot that couldn't gracefully get out of your chair and wigged out.

Now, three years later, I laugh my ass off when I think of the look on his face. He never treated me well after that, which I thought was strange because I thought he was a good guy. Wrong. Oh well. (I should have opened the line and squirted some of the liquid in his seat just to see him really lose his shit). I laughed about that today. And I also remembered when the Radiation Oncologist told me they were going to have to put the tube in. I remember my 2 reactions: "you're going to do what?" and then almost blurting out loud, "no fucking way".

Thank God for my sense of humor.