My cousin’s son, Cole Letourneau (19yo), started Chemotherapy treatment for Stage 2 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma this August of 2017. His family set up a PostHope page for sharing updates on Cole’s fight against this cancer. These kinds of sites are not only helpful for caregivers who want/need to keep family and friends up to speed on a patient’s status, but are also a convenient way for the patients themselves to digest the inflow of support on their terms—late at night when insomnia strikes or during moments of pain and discomfort when an occupied mind is a much less destructive mind.
Cole is a brave and stoic young man, and recently I posted a message to his site to share my support and make him laugh. The following was my message to him, I hope he laughed:
From PostHope on Sept 1, 2017
Cole, this news about low White Blood Cell & Neutrophil counts really sucks. Keep in mind that you can’t always see and hear all the people that would be willing to trade places with you if it meant that you didn’t have to endure this treatment. Not all of us can take time to write a message or send a package. In fact, for every message or package you receive, you can bet there are 10+ times that many people wishing they could be by your side, helping you pass the time, keeping your mind occupied, and telling you bad jokes. Speaking of bad jokes (sorry, Barb),¹ here’s one for you based on a current true story about Yours Truly:
I visited the urgent care last week because I thought MAYBE I had a kidney stone moving from a kidney to my bladder—a common thing for middle-aged adults. Nothing dangerous really, but the discomfort made it difficult for me to be far from a bathroom. I kept feeling like I had been chased down and elbowed in the kidney by a forechecking 240-lb winger whose biggest accomplishment for the season was accumulating the highest penalty minutes. My lower back and kidney, my bladder, my bowels—nothing felt right.
Anyway, the doctor ordered an X-ray and, you betchya, it showed a kidney stone on the edge of my kidney ready to drop into my bladder. Then, for good measure, the doctor ordered an ultrasound of my kidneys and bladder, too, wanting to make sure not to miss any obvious other causes for my discomfort. And what do you know, the ultrasound showed a second kidney stone in my bladder. At which point the doctor spoke up,
“The bad news is you have two kidney stones. The good news is we can now see that you have more than one kidney stone to pass in your urine.”
That’s when I looked at the doctor, whom I’d never met prior to that day, and shared what was running through my mind:
“Doc, I’m not going to lie, I’m a little scared to pass two kidney stones through my penis. And while I’m being honest, I also have to say…this isn’t the first time I’ve wished I had two penises.”
Hey, sharing is caring.
Which reminds me how much I care about all of you who take time to read about our journey through Absurdville. For you, I have one more tidbit from my trip to Urgent Care.
For the X-ray, a youngish female technician quickly escorted me to a changing room and handed me a pair of grey gym shorts, like the kind issued at middle schools everywhere. She instructed me to remove my jeans, put on the shorts and step out into the hall when I was done. Then she left the room before I could ask if they had the shorts in pink. But I understood, she had patients to scan and work to do. Urgently.
So I made quick work of kicking off my shoes, losing my jeans, and putting on the shorts—hiking the waistband up high, to my nipples. Stepping into the hallway, with my shorts high and my mismatched dark socks at mid calf, I asked the technician loudly,
“Did I put these on right?”
She walked toward me stone-faced, having no part in my shenanigans. She reached one arm out behind me and the other straight out toward the X-ray room door, as if guiding a drunken pet out to the porch to sleep it off. “This way, Russell,” she said, using my full given name. And out the corner of my eye I saw one corner of her mouth curl up slightly in a brief smirk. Mission accomplished.
Please feel free to comment or share stories about your own visits to The Post Orifice in Absurdville.
¹ Cole’s mom
Absurdville 