Part 46. Flirting with Death

Please do not cancel me.

I start with a quote from a politically incorrect yet somehow beloved film star of my youth: A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.

Now, apply that credo to urinating.

The thought of self-catherization had been depressing, but the actual process was not as bad as I thought.

It required a ritual similar to performing a mass.  (Please don’t cancel me, Catholics.)

Here’s what I mean:

Each cath packet comes with a sterile, papery blanket — made of the same material that medical people use for hair nets. 

My procedure:

Spread this papery blanket on the an available altar.

The cath packet includes lubricant, an alcohol swab, a gauze landing pad for the lubricant and the catheter itself.

I can’t handle anything until I put on my surgical gloves.

To make the packet more compact, the catheter is folded inside the envelope. This causes some discomfort.

First, I put on the gloves. Then I spread the blanket. I use the alcohol swab to clean all parts of the Throbbing Python of Love* and try not to enjoy it too much.

I put the landing pad on the blanket. I open the packet of lubricant, spreading most of it on the landing pad, but leaving a dollop for the hole that marks entrance to my willy. That makes the entry a little easier.

Then comes the big finish. I unfold the catheter, grease it down with the lube, then insert the tube into the hole at the end of my manhood. 

The real fun begins then. The fold in the catheter makes travel upriver a little difficult. I move my body to follow the curvature of the plastic, making what looks like a piss-poor arrhythmic dance worthy of a Grateful Dead concert.

Then I slowly navigate my interior river, much like Marlow heading into the heart of darkness.

I suck in my breath to allow Marlow past the prostate rapids before reaching the pool of my bladder.

The urine begins flowing and either it goes into a toilet or a into portable urinal. Dr. Tracy wants me to use the urinal so we can measure how much urine is not coming out on its own.

When I do all this, I urinate until I am “done.” Then I catheterize myself and ::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Holy Moses! Here comes a River Ganges of pee. 

The urinal holds 32 ounces and I regularly produce eight ounces … after I was allegedly done.

This is a complicated and time-consuming process and when I began self-cathing I knew it was going to be difficult to accomplish at work. 

Sure, I could do it in my office but what would I do with a full urinal? I’d have to march through administrator’ Sarah Kess’ office — the only path to and from my office — then walk down a busy hallway with my golden pee. 

I could catheterize in the faculty bathroom, but the stalls there were cramped. I’d have to stand and try to manage this task in the restroom’s demilitarized zone. I’m not sure my colleagues would respond favorably to me standing in the middle of the bathrroom, shoving plastic tubing up my dick.

Plus, the faculty bathroom didn’t have any flat space for me to spread out my sterile blanket.

So I took my problem to our assistant dean, Maureen Mahoney.

I liked and respected Maureen. Among other things, she was a great problem-solver. She’d served 20 years in the United States Army and reminded me of people I’d known as a child, my dad’s friends at the hospital.

She solved my problem almost immediately. There was one bathroom that could be outfitted with a deadbolt. It was a faculty can way up on the third floor, and that remote location, along with the deadbolt, would offer me privacy. 

She got one of our colleagues, Jake Kassen, to make me a legless table, which I could store next to the bathroom radiator. So when I needed to cath — which I did four or five times a day — I’d hike up to the third floor, set the table on the double sinks, then spread out my blanket and drain the contents of my bladder.

Problem solved. It was great to have such support and understanding from my colleagues.

Alas, no tube existed that could be stuck in my skull to solve my other problem. 

I was so physically fragile that fall that I would easily fit in the category of “pathetic.” I was also cognitively slow. I hate to use that word but I can’t think of any other way to put it. 

I was okay with the teaching, but still foggy when it came to other things. Luckily, we got the dean’s approval to have my colleague Susan Walker serve as co-chair and she brought a lot of energy and new ideas. Sarah K was the third member of that team.

That was a good year. In all of my jobs, my favorite part involved brain storming with my colleagues, which we did a lot that semester.

It took two or three months, but I finally got the hang of thinking again. And I was loving work more than ever, thanks to the troika. Work was always fun for me, but that was a special time.

When I felt fully recovered, unfortunately Susan had to go back to full-time teaching. I missed the camaraderie. 

And in addition to my urinary problems, I had another issue.

So much had been taken out of me, during my surgeries, that I was prone to dehydration. I had trouble keeping vertical. 

I often just . . . fell.

This was similar to what happened to me during the week after my initial cancer surgery — falling in the driveway, then later hitting the bedroom floor like a concrete block.

During the post-knee surgery recovery, I began suffering those dehydration seizures again.

Once, riding the Green Line, I felt one coming on. I decided to get off at the Government Center station. I need water — badly. 

This is what happens: My brain becomes untethered. I can’t think. I can’t read words, just see letters.  I can’t discern colors; they bleed together.

I came up the escalator from the subway, but couldn’t cross the street because I was unable to tell the color of the crossing sign.

Eventually people began to cross and I followed, like a sheep. Baa baa.

I went into the Panera Bread and asked for water, apparently with desperation and urgency in my voice. The guy behind the counter eyed me, then filled up a cup that looked like it was meant for an Icee Slurpee. 

“On us,” he said, then nodded toward the dining room. “Take a load off. Come back when you need more.” 

The dining room’s customers were scattered around the place. Seemed like everyone was sitting alone.. 

I disposed of half my Slurpee in one gulp. I got a cold head rush, so I decided to sit back and be patient. I sent Sarah Kess a note to tell her what was going on. My class wasn’t until afternoon, so I assumed I’d be okay by then. Sarah said to take care of myself and that she could handle the office.

I started sipping the Slurpee and checked my environment.

Most of the other guests were studying the contents of the cups before them. I noted a sign on the wall proclaiming this Panera as a refuge for the homeless. 

No wonder the manager was so swift with his compassion and understanding. Caring for others was his jam.

It took about an hour, but I recovered. 

Incidents like these happened every other week or so. It happened when driving a few times, but I pulled over and chugged a couple bottles of Propel  or Gatorade. When it happened at work, I’d close my door and lie on my couch, drinking bottle after bottle.

Seems to me that I drank water all the time, but it was never enough. 

Maybe the worst incident came when I went with son Travis to baseball camp in Florida. 

He had a week at the spring training complex of the Pittsburgh Pirates. For that week, he lived like a major leaguer. He and his associates played on the fields the Pirates used and had their uniforms laundered daily. They chowed in the Pirates mess hall. 

Parents were not to hang around and so I hung out at the Marriott. Once a day, we were allowed to see the boys scrimmage.

The first day there, I hit a bar. I was seated next to a nice woman who became slobberingly drunk and aggressive. Luckily, I made it back to the hotel alive. I did not eat dinner.

Travis came back to the hotel that night and collapsed into bed. Turns out baseball for 10 hours is tiring.

The next day I dropped Travis at the camp, then returned to the hotel. I read by the pool and did some work at the room. 

The open-air bar beside the pool had a good fish sandwich. That turned out to be the last food I would have for four days.

Travis returned that night — the boys ate all of their meals at the Pirates training table — and again fell on the bed and was out.

But I was busy. 

I had so many attacks of diarrhea that night that I began to count the bathroom trips.

Seventeen. I was up until the wee hours.

Travis’s routine continued. I tried to live a life, but spent most of the next couple of days writhing in bed.

I didn’t eat. Not a thing. I don’t know why. I just wasn’t hungry. I wanted no beer or soda, but did keep up my water consumption.

I missed one day’s parent-observation with the boys. I couldn’t get out of bed. Travis said he forgave me.

Saturday finally arrived and the parents would get to see actual games.

It was hot and humid, so I prepared myself with water. 

I got to see a whole game and then, as it was ending, I felt that thing — that thing that happened in the driveway and in the bedroom, when the floor suddenly came hurtling toward me. 

After days tossing in the hotel sheets, sweat pasting my hair to my forehead — after all that, I felt myself falling. 

Right there, by the dugout, at a moment of pride and pleasure for Travis and all of the boys, I fell over on the Gatorade table, knocking a cooler and cups to the ground.

I was out for a minute, then opened my eyes to see a member of the Pirates training staff over me. 

I couldn’t stand — my legs did not function —  but the trainer somehow got me to sit up. He asked questions, feeling my feverish forehead, finally concluding I was dehydrated and malnourished. 

All the water I drank and still I was dehydrated? What kind of shit is this?

Travis switched into 30-year-old mode. I’d taken care of him as a baby immersed in the world of drool and stool. Now, he was the the caretaker. He kept me supplied with Gatorade, packed for me, and started driving us to the airport, for the trip back to Boston. 

We stopped at a place to eat in Tampa, but I couldn’t hold anything down. In fact, I couldn’t hold anything in. I was visited by Our Lady of Perpetual Gastro-Intestinal Distress. In the restaurant. In the airport. On the plane. 

Finally, we got home.

I showed up at my doctor’s office when it opened at 8 Monday morning. I was wearing all black — my silent tribute to Johnny Cash. I was unshaven, unbathed and dripping with sweat, My filthy hair was pasted to my forehead. I was a wretched looking human being. Next to me, Quasimoto was George Clooney.

My doctor, Sofia Chu, looked at me for a moment and said, “Go to the hospital — now. Do you have someone to drive you or should I call an ambulance?”

And so there I was again, in the friendly confines of South Shore Hospital — dehydrated, malnourished and suffering from sepsis. 

Sepsis II: The Nightmare Continues.

I spent a week in the hospital, then went home. 

But I kept falling. I had no control over my legs. I couldn’t walk. 

So I was admitted to the hospital for another week.

Sepsis gnarled my brain. I couldn’t concentrate enough to read or even watch television. For those two weeks, I laid in a hospital bed. 

Maybe it was time to lower my standards. Maybe I’d never get my old life back. Instead, I’d lurch through the next decades with these occasional flirtations with death, via sepsis, and with these random seizures.

Maybe this was it. Maybe this was what my life would be, until it was over.