Monday, November 15, 2010

J.C. vs. The Big C


With typical macho Cleland stubbornness my brother J.C. put off going to see a doctor until his pain got unbearable. At first the doctor thought that he just had a kidney infection and an enlarged prostate, but when treatment for that didn't help, J.C. went in for more tests. They catheterized him and when he began bleeding into the catheter they sent him to our local hospital.

The doctor at the hospital couldn't stop the bleeding so they decided to send him to the Corvallis hospital, a much larger facility. Carol arranged for him to be transported by our local Waldport ambulance (which she drove for many years.) They hastily put together a crew to transport him but unfortunately none of them were very experienced and he didn't have a very good ride. The driver got lost in Corvallis and the EMT attending to him got car sick.

After countless ultra sounds, x rays, and blood tests they found cancer in his prostate that had spread to his ribs and shoulder. They put drainage tubes in both kidneys and started him on chemotherapy. In the meantime his daughter Brandy drove up from Elko Nevada and stayed overnight at the hospital with him. A few days later, much to everyone's surprise, they sent him home.

The next morning Brandy and I went to Newport and after leaving the prescriptions at Walmart to be filled, she drove me to the hospital parking lot to retrieve J.C.'s Honda. We were worried that it might not start after sitting so long, but it started right up and I drove it back to J.C.'s house with no problems. It turned out that when Brandy went back to get the medicine she left her lights on and had to get a jump start in the Walmart parking lot.

That afternoon J.C. And I had our first visit since he was transported to Corvallis and he seemed to be in pretty good spirits, despite the kidney tubes and the medicine he was on. When he began to tire I asked him for his fancy cell phone so I could call Carol to come and pick me up.

My history with phones of any kind is that if any thing can go wrong it will, and it's especially true of cell phones. I once tried to call Carol on J.C.'s fancy cell phone and somehow ended up having a pleasant conversation with Cheri, his ex wife in Elko, Nevada. This time proved to be no different .

I listened for a dial tone, didn't hear anything and handed it back to J.C. “It's not working!” I said.

He looked at it and said, “Well, you just took a nice picture of your ear!”

I let him dial it for me.

The next day, Sunday, I put on my rain coat and walked up to J.C.'s. I found him in the living room watching football on his big screen (3 inches bigger than mine) HD TV. He was having problems with one of his kidney tubes not draining right, and he had a lot of swelling in his legs and feet from water retention, but he was feeling pretty good because the Broncos were beating the crap out of Kansas City. We watched football for a couple of hours until Brandy returned and I walked back home.

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