Sick and heartbroken

I have been feeling under the weather and coughing but not too bad until over the weekend I got a low-grade fever and called my doctor's office where the physician on call said it was probably viral.

But when I went in to see Dr. Berger on Monday and told him my chest hurt he said that given my history he would give me an antibiotic, Levaquin. He sent me for an X-ray which later in the day revealed I have pneumonia.

It is not terrible like the time two years ago that I had to be hospitalized, so I have been going out a little to do some things I need to do. For example, Jane and Jim are away so I have to take care of my dog. I called Joe to see if he could come home this weekend but he had plans, so I had to go to the store. Without my exercise-induced endorphins, I feel mentally as well as physically crappy.

Jennifer Sack

I came in on Tuesday so see this post on Facebook: NYPD Wants Your Help Finding Missing Bronx Woman.  I wrote WHAT? because I saw that it was my beautiful cousin Jennifer, 37 and a twin – actually my cousin Peter's daughter, technically my first cousin once removed, but to me they are all cousins – and I had just talked to her at our Hanukkah party in the Bronx. We had such a nice talk and she had said I should stay with her next year. She looked like a model. I had no idea that anything was wrong, but the story said she was depressed. Her cousin sent me the link. She had been missing since Sunday.

She sent her parents an email with the heading "I'm sorry," saying she was going to jump off the GW bridge. She left a long suicide note. I was hoping that she was wandering around and had rethought it or that somebody might have stopped her. Apparently it is way too easy to jump off this bridge, with someone attempting it every 3.5 days and only a waist high metal guardrail. A story stating that an anti-suicide fence was planned by 2024 raised the question of why isn't there one already. Talk about scandal and the George Washington Bridge. It is a scandal that suicides off the bridge are on the increase and that people so distressed and vulnerable know how easy it is to do.

Her body was found yesterday near the Manhattan side of the bridge. I keep looking at her picture and wondering how that could happen. She was so beautiful inside and out and so full of life. I remember back in our apartment in New York 37 years ago pacing the living room and looking out the window at Mt. Sinai hospital where their mother, Diane, was in labor, and wondering when the twins would be born. They were so cute growing up and such nice adults who I always tried to see on holidays. To lose a twin must be almost unbearably hard.

I would like to share my sympathies with the family at the service on Sunday in New York, but I will not be able to go. So I will have to send love.

Goodbye spot, hello penicillin

I have survived two very long days and a lot of needles, with good results.

I'll go backwards chronologically because the lip surgery is fresh on my mind. I was there for about four hours today because Dr. Neel had to make two passes to get all of the squamous cell cancer off my lip. I was most concerned about how it would feel to get the first needle of numbing medicine in my lip. I've been stuck a lot, but it's such a sensitive spot.

The doctor gave me a blue "stress ball" to squeeze. The needle stung, but it actually wasn't so bad. Then of course I couldn't feel a thing when he operated. When he finished, I started shaking. His assistant said it was from the anesthesia, and it wore off in a bit. I sat in the waiting room with other partially bandaged patients all waiting to see if he needed to take more. Last time I had the Mohs procedure done (on my neck) he said that for deeper skin cancers, he has had to take up to five passes.

The book I am reading, "Orange is the New Black," is just the right thing for a waiting room. Well-written, not too deep, and definitely an interesting story. So I read that and dozed until I was called in again and told he had to take a little more. Then he gave me seven stitches and a prescription for oxycodone. Diane had scheduled a meeting downtown, so she was there to take me home. I had meant to bring some of my own pills but forgot. (How do you get up at 6:30 a.m. and end up rushing at 11 when it's time to leave?) Big mistake. Diane had to listen to a symphony of pain sounds until we got the prescription from CVS. Now I feel OK, although my lip is swollen like a boxer's. I have to eat soft foods out of the corner of my mouth. Nice Nurse Diane is going to mush up some squash for me.

So, as for yesterday. I passed the penicillin "challenge," which also involved many hours and many needles. The doctor, a fellow, then looked at my chart and suggested I return for another long visit to check whether I am allergic to imipenem, an antibiotic that caused me to break out in hives when I got it intravenously to treat the pneumonia I had this spring.

I am not a doctor, but I ventured to ask why I needed to be tested to see whether I am allergic to a drug that caused an allergic reaction. He said that sometimes hives appear for no reason.

Hmmmmm. I said I would talk to Dr. Alyea and Melissa first. I think they will agree with me that another allergy test will fall into the category of unnecessary testing.

'This will only hurt a little bit'

Tami, one of my high school friends, was in the area today, and she spent part of the day with me. She came with me when I got my lung biopsy, and kept me supplied with tissues while I coughed up blood for about an hour afterwards.

This was a biopsy guided by CAT-Scan. The handsome doctor, who looked not much older than 20 (why do they keep getting younger?) said it would not hurt. Ha. It was like a bone marrow biopsy only not at the base of your spine but in your chest.

He also said I would need to return for an x-ray in about two hours, because he might poke some holes that were a little too big, leading to a collapsed lung. “Maybe you could try not to do that,” I said. He assured me that he would do his best and said that if the lung did collapse, they would put in a chest tube. Okkkkaaaaay.

He numbed several areas of skin on my chest and then went in to get samples of what appears to be a pretty large mass on my right lung. I didn’t look at everything he was using, but I saw him use a needle for an aspirate. He stuck some other probes in and wiggled them while I lay in the machine, apparently so he could get the exact spot. I couldn’t even do relaxing breathing, because he had warned me that at any time he might need to say, “hold your breath.” If I was at a nice cleansing outbreath, there wasn’t much left to hold.

In any case, I survived, though the next hour was difficult with the coughing up of blood. The blood finally stopped, but hours later I am still having trouble breathing. It’s nothing terrible, and it is worse when I’m on the phone, so I tried stay off the phone tonight.

The biopsy is supposed to show exactly what is causing the pneumonia. Hopefully something will grow in a few days so they can target it with the right antibiotic or antifungal.

Tami (known as Tamar to her friends from adulthood) had breezed in this morning with a smile, only to be met by Ms. Doom and Gloom. I muttered about death, finding that actually saying some of my thoughts out loud took some of the power away from them.

Tami then used her no-nonsense, I-mean-business Tami voice.

“I’m sick and tired of the D-word,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it anymore!”

OK, OK, OK!

It was great spending the day with her. I think she may have given me a jump-start.