Somewhere Between Music and Words

• 

December 9 marks an anniversary worth commemorating for however many years I have left on this planet: One year ago today, my right leg fell off.

Perhaps I exaggerate but from the standpoint of walkability it was, like, effectively gone. There was I on my way to a session to record Jeffrey Ryan’s Arbutus when I felt a sudden crunch from somewhere deep within the hip socket, and in that instant the short distance from escalator to approaching Skytrain seemed inestimably far. But like a pro, I made my way to the studio on my one good leg.

Say what you like about suffering makes…art…better, I do remember composer Jeffrey Ryan saying—as he piled me into the waiting taxi bound for home—that it had gone…very…well.

Daniel of course nearly fainted with horror at the sight of me, but I smiled a “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” grin of denial about the whole leg affair and demanded we pull out the champagne to celebrate the victory.

Little did my besotted brain realize at the time how this little mishap with the right leg would catapult from fender-bender into the car wreck that is cancer. But then, who imagined last December, as they drained magnums of bubbly and extolled over their resolutions, what a 365-car pile up 2020 would turn out to be? We were so innocent back then.

Fast forward half a year later. Half a year of radiation, chemotherapy, crutches, walkers, canes, intravenous zolodronic acid treatments, Hickman line insertions, blood clots, blood thinners, shingles, tooth extractions, a stem cell transplant, the loss of family (my mother) and friends (my dear friend Caryn) to cancer, all etched in high relief against the backdrop of Covid-19; all of these things that made that day in late September when my beard and moustache floated away like milkweed in an autumn wind seem like a minor inconvenience. As indeed it was.

It was recently pointed out to me by someone with a more balanced view of Facebook than I possess that I am remiss in not providing an update of my cancer journey. In response, I’m happy to report that most of the tribulations I describe above are history and that I am on the road to recovery. Apart from some pain killers (for residual shingles-related neuropathic pain), and a blood thinner (for that blood clot that’s taking its sweet time to dissipate) I’m not currently on any treatment, although the nature of Multiple Myeloma (it’s treatable, but not curable) means that I will be going on to a programme of mild chemotherapy for the next couple of years.

I have heard that some people experience a health crisis in their early senior years (I’m 61 now so I think I qualify) but then once that’s dealt with, enjoy several more decades of excellent health. God willing, and some investment in a naturopath to keep me in tip-top shape, I’m working to stave off the return of the beast for many, many years to come. That’s my plan and I’m sticking to it.

Today marks the beginning of a new phase in my Multiple Myeloma journey. Multiple Myeloma is a form of blood cancer that affects blood production in the bone marrow, most notably the right hip and a couple of vertebrae down my back.

I finished chemotherapy a couple of weeks ago — a process I more or less powered through with few negative effects. This next leg of the journey is designed to wipe out the remainder of the cancer and give me a spanking new immune system.

When	What
23–31 August	I’m receiving Grastofil injections to coax stem cells out of the bone marrow and into the bloodstream where they can be collected. In the old days they used to perform a bone marrow biopsy, but now they give Grastofil injections. These mobilize blood stem cells out of the bone marrow and into the bloodstream where they can be collected more easily.
1–2 September	Once all my little stem cells are mobilized, I’ll be hooked up to a gizmo similar to a transfusion machine, which filters out stem cells from the blood where they can be put into cold storage (for up to seven years I’m told, so I can perform a reboot if I want and install a younger me).
4–5 September	I’m also going to have a Hickman Line (a type of catheter) inserted into my chest to facilitate injections and IV insertions over the coming weeks. To insert the Hickman Line, doctors make an incision in my chest into which they insert a tube that makes its way down my jugular vein to “just above my heart”. I’m a little freaked out about this procedure, but I’ve been told it’s really no big deal. Still, the Hickman Line will protrude from my chest for a month, during which I must not accidently whack the tubes sticking out of my chest or open one of the little plastic shut valves and allow my “blood from gush out”.
8 September	With all this gear in place, I’ll be ready to receive a super blast of chemo down the Hickman Line to destroy all stem cells — the good and the bad. I’m told this may also destroy all body hair so good-bye covid hairdo and that lovely lockdown moustache I’ve been working on. More importantly, zapping those stem cells performs a factory reset on my immune system, requiring extreme vigilance against viruses or infections. My childhood inoculations also get tossed so at some point — once my new immune has rebuilt itself a bit (say, to that of a three-month-year-old) — I’ll need to be re-inoculated for chicken pox, measles, and polio, and so forth.
9 September	The day after the chemo blast, the doctors will transplant those preserved stem cells back into me. If all goes well, I’ll be good to go (less that all-important immune system) after a few weeks of recovery.

Recently I listened to a Simon Sinek talk in which he described courage as something that requires a community (it’s not solely an individual’s responsibility). Sinek aims his talks primarily at business leaders, but what he said rings true for me when I think about how my sense of courage has increased each time I receive a call, a text, a prayer, or a delivery of cookies. Having a community cheering me on has helped me power through whatever pain and difficulty the treatments have presented. And for that, I’m deeply grateful.