I told cancer to shut up...cancer said ‘make me,’ so I did (for now)
PART ONE
Most of you know, as chatty as I can be, I’m actually a pretty private person when it comes to my personal business and I don’t like to be a whiner or reveal too much or complain too much about the gift of life and what it brings and should leave us grateful to have.
But it feels like the right time to let go of a few personal secrets here in the safe and private pages of the chronicle of the whole dang county. Lol?
Last fall, I wrote a column around my birthday in October titled, “Shut up cancer, it’s my birthday,” revealing that I’d been diagnosed that January with CLL, or Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. Stage zero at diagnosis.
Well hold on, because it gets a little more complicated from here on out.
The disease is almost never diagnosed alone, but is discovered in the test results of other conditions, like in my example.
I lived in Tacoma, had a weird couple of days, and wound up, at the insistence of my kids, in the emergency room of Tacoma St. Joseph Hospital, where the bloodwork and EKG they had run told them and me both that not only was I having a heart attack- I had no idea- but that my very-high white blood cell count indicated CLL.
CLL is like a genetic mutation (admit it, you’ve always suspected I was some sort of mutant) that makes some of your white blood cells turn rogue, acting like spazzy jerk wads and replicating themselves like horny bunny rabbits.
It usually is very slow-growing, probably soaked up a little of my notorious mutant procrastination DNA and, like I said, was stage zero in January 2020.
So, before I left Tacoma, in fact it was within an hour of the time I arrived at the ER January 5, I had a shiny new stent placed in a 98% blocked coronary artery.
I moved back to Linton and began seeing the wonderful Dr. Brian Veerkamp and his ultra-capable Schedule Coordinator/Compassion Specialist/ Cancer-beating Badass Associate, Mickie Jo Anweiler at Greene County General Hospital.
Veerkamp and Anweiler have taken very good care of me, and I was scheduled for a cardiac catheterization at St. Ascension Heart Center in Indy, where Veerkamp primarily works and operates.
That test is pretty cool, they thread a catheter all through your coronary pathways with contrast dye and create a literal road map showing every side road and major highway and where slowdowns occur and traffic, like plaque and other aortic poop piles up and creates blockages.
And like my good buddy Angel Mikusak, by my side every time, commented, “Patti, you just GOTTA be extra, don’t you?”
Of course, they found an extra dang arterial branch AND two more pretty gnarly blockages, like 80% and 30%, I think.
Both located (extra, extra, get your devastating heart news here!) in curves where stent placement could not be done.
So then the crap hammer said boom.
Dr. Veerkamp, who is very easy on the eyes, ya might say, handed my case to his esteemed colleague, Dr. Giovanni Vanotti (who is every bit as smoldering and sexy as his Italian name would imply. Ahem. Hubba-Hubba, if I may so crudely comment. His brain is nice, too.)
Dr. Vanotti scheduled me for a coronary double-bypass graft (CABG if you’re a Greys Anatomy fan and of course you are. I mean...ferry boats, yeah?) and Angel and I trekked in the day before Thanksgiving last year for a pre-op appointment to ready for the surgery the day after Thanksgiving.
BUUUUUT Dr. Vanotti saved my life that day instead.
Rather than speed through test results and authorize the surgery, he took long looks at my numbers, saw how my white cell count was raising the roof, which was in fact on FI-YEAH (Did he in fact, let the mo-fo burn? He did NOT.), and he not only pumped the brakes, he stood on them and said “With numbers like these in a field I’m not a specialist in, I am not comfortable performing this surgery now, I’m sorry.” I immediately forgave his beautiful olive-skinned face and deep brown eyes and what was I talking about?
Oh right, the CABG.
So, dreadfully disappointed or not (you really psyche yourself up for surgery like this, and I had made all of the necessary arrangements at work blah blah blah), Angel and I headed back to Linton, sighed a lot, laughed even more, because that’s how we roll, and I made an appointment with the second Indiana specialist to save my life in the last six months, Hematologist-Oncologist Dr. Thomas Waits (TOM WAITS, AMIRIGHT? The hip people will understand my delight here, the slightly-less hip should really Google that name.) Unsurprisingly, he too is a hottie. Wait, maybe I’m getting my groove back or something...
Anywhoo, am I blabbering? I’m blabbering. Are you bored? You’ve gotta be getting there.
On that note, this blog entry will stretch to over 900 words soonish, which is getting torturously long for you and I’m not halfway there.
Since I believe investing in the future is a great idea, unless you have a faulty heart or some kind of funky cancer, ha ha, I will break my story into installments.
Ain’t I stinker, though?
Okay so installment number two of this rare deep dive into my personal bidness (or perhaps BADNESS!) Will appear next week. It will continue
If you’re lucky, or pray enough, you’ll only have to suffer through one more, maybe two.
As always, I sincerely thank you for reading and for being my neighbors and my people.
Love and crackers to ya,
Patti D.
A side note: I almost changed my last name to “Dracula” after my divorce; it’s funny and I really like the idea. Was not doing so a mistake? Tell me your thoughts at pattippdanner@gmail.com :-). I can be swayed...
Patti is Editor of the Greene County Daily World. She loves to laugh and also loves kitties. She’s kind of weird but has a heart of gold. If you would like to share a story or just make a friend, she can be reached at pattippdanner@gmail.com.
- -- Posted by sgreen30 on Fri, Jan 28, 2022, at 2:40 AM
- -- Posted by weewire on Fri, Jan 28, 2022, at 12:48 PM
- -- Posted by WMader on Tue, Feb 1, 2022, at 2:08 PM
Posting a comment requires free registration:
- If you already have an account, follow this link to login
- Otherwise, follow this link to register