PICC Me Up

Hospital Journal

Nothing bad happened yesterday, but it was still a sort of hellish day. I spent twelve hours at Kaiser getting two blood transfusions and bloodwork. Basically, sitting in a chair watching the thick red liquid move from the bag into my open pocket on the right arm.

A PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) has two openings that allow chemo and transfusions to go directly into my body. I’ve been told that one of the ports goes to my heart, which sounds scary. I’ve had it since January, and it’s important to keep it clean. Once a week, either at home or in the hospital, a nurse re-cleans the area, and when they’re finished, they write the date on the bandage. Even though we’re going through a heatwave here in Los Angeles, I only wear long-sleeved T-shirts to cover the PICC from the outside world.

I know there will be a day when I will have nothing plastic or mechanical attached to me. Until then, happy days are here again.

The long day yesterday began with sitting in the hallway until they called my name. I was there for an hour and a half, eventually joined by patients coming in for their daily chemotherapy. All the women had scarves over their heads, and one of them greeted me by holding and shaking my shoulders. It was strange to have a total stranger touch me, but I smiled. I think it was her way of welcoming me to the chemo ward.

My chemotherapy is different in that I have five days in the hospital with chemo pumped into me twenty-four hours a day.

I was placed in a room separated from the others, where I sat down in a chair, already regretting that I hadn’t brought a book. I’m currently reading The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, a memoir of his travels before and between the two World Wars. It’s hard to put down because it offers insider information about Europe during that era, and Zweig captures it in a lively manner.

The only thing I don’t like about the book is that success seems to come too easily for Zweig. Everything he writes is a bestseller or widely published. I don’t quite believe him. Hitler, of course, ended his writing career in Germany. Still, his writing on Vienna before World War I is fascinating — a city totally devoted to the arts: music, literature, theater.

But instead of reading, I stared at the broken wall clock, set to 12:00 forever.

After the first bag of blood, they injected me with a drug through the PICC that made me pee. I was given a plastic container to collect my urine. Often, I had to pee while the door was open to the chemo ward, but as mentioned before, I’ve lost any real sense of privacy.

What’s really strange is that this morning I realized I have no pubic hair. Not just gone — but when did it disappear? I didn’t see any hair in my underwear or pants. So where did it go?

I actually like that I don’t have pubic hair anymore. I look like one of those models in gay magazines from the 1950s. It’s amazing how my body has been changing over these last three months — from no penis to a lot of penis, and now hairless in that part of the world.