Mick McKellar Update -- Day +1821

How can I smell a rose,
with a hose in my nose?

Testing, Testing…
     Guess who didn’t pass this afternoon’s test? My doctors were unwilling to simply accept the “one-off” results from yesterday, so today the Mayo Clinic giveth and it taketh away. My arterial blood gasses test this morning revealed my O2 at 88.2%. Uh oh...
     So, they put me on a treadmill and tested my oxygen saturation under dynamic stress. Under moderate stress and load (walking quickly uphill) I dropped below 87% and all the red lights and beepers went off at once. It seems I now need minimum oxygen when in motion.
     The nurse/technician explained all the dangers of the 88% drop off, including heart disease, organ damage, and risk of injury. I guess I have joined the oxygen for lunch bunch. At least, I don't need O2 when at rest. I maintained quite well when sitting still. 
     Also, they were concerned about my travel home in an unpressurized plane without portable oxygen. Next time you see me, I will likely be sporting my new nasal cannula. (Not a fashion accessory!) The only company available to me, Lincare, provides the portable oxygen concentrator only for the flight. Otherwise, I will work with a home concentrator and 2-hr bottles of compressed O2.
     It seems that once again my life hands me wondrously ripe fruit (a curable infection, not a worsening of my underlying lung disorder) with a nasty, little worm in it (a 50 ft. plastic worm called cannula). I can take heart from this bit of wisdom from the Lincare web site: “Patients may live for years on home oxygen.”
     It shall be my goal to improve to the point where I don’t need the supplemental oxygen. BTW, that concentrator? It sounds like an old asthmatic gasping for breath…

Mick, with a hose in his nose…

Mick McKellar Update -- Day + 1820

I made it to Gift of Life!

Once Again at Gift of Life

I made it! Rochester Methodist discharged me to stay at Gift of Life Transplant House until I can connect with a Lifeline flight to home. As usual, it took nearly an entire day to get all the permissions, files, and red tape in order. And as usual, I had to stop at the Eisenberg Pharmacy to fill four new prescriptions that cost an arm and a leg. Just like old times!

They tested me today, to verify how much supplemental oxygen I will need. Well, I had a real surprise for the respiratory technician and the doctors -- my O2 level stayed up, even while exercising in the hall (walking in circles, etc.). Because it did not dip below minimum and recovered almost immediately, I do not qualify for supplemental oxygen at this time!

Tomorrow, they will test me once again. They want to be certain (as do I) that I won't get into trouble flying around in an unpressurized plane on the way home. So, I go back tomorrow for outpatient blood tests (with ouchy copays and deductibles) and outpatient pulmonary tests. I have also had word that my physicians in Hancock have requested to see me ASAP. Lord, I am a popular fellow these days!

In any case, I am resting in my room and breathin' easy. Your prayers and good thoughts sustain and raise me up.

Good night and God bless!

Mick

Mick McKellar Update -- Day +1816

 Early AM Impressions: One would call it morning, if one had a job and a place to perform. In a hospital room, it is merely dark, with a slight shading of anticipation -- or maybe that’s fear raising its standard on the daily battlefield.

I still feel as though poised on the edge of a sword, balanced against the awful coughing on one side and the gasping for air on the other. I desperately want to get better, and return home to a new pile of arcane bills from this place for series of fantastic tests and magical medical methodologies that discover the hidden reason I feel like I’m breathing from the bottom of a pickle barrel. Yet, my focus is drawn elsewhere...I remain fascinated by performance of staff here.

The efficiency of the new breed of medical personnel and their technology is frightening. Electronic sensors in my room detect if I have risen for any reason, and they can swoop in to gather their blood samples and status data quickly, all the while looking exceedingly cool and collected. The newbies are nervous and the long-suffering veterans appear resigned to the new paradigms. All is watched. All is measured. All is evaluated.

When they are not in the room, all is silent...

Underneath

I sense that, underneath the nervous competition of the younger medical staff and nursing personnel, there remains something of the true calling I have found so evident in my conversations with, and in help from, veteran nurses and doctors in the past. Not everyone is altruistic, of course, but this is not a profession you choose because you want excessive free time, or a lot of money for your services. Oh, some doctors may do quite well, but for the most part have expenses to suck up all traces of salary and it takes time for the investment to pay off. Nurses, on the other hand, tend to be paid from the shallow end of the money pool.

As I was wheeled from the air ambulance into the local ambulance, I noted that the joviality of the fellows transporting me from Calumet to Rochester was not entirely shared by the transportation staff on the receiving end of my Hail Mary pass from Keweenaw to Mayo. The guys from Up North were garrulous and fun, yet ruthlessly professional. The guys from Gold Star were professionally pleasant, or maybe just professional.

As I was wheeled into the hospital, the images of the marching throngs once again saturated my view. Hundreds of staff, mostly young, were mostly dressed in either nursing uniforms or in the ubiquitous suits worn by doctors everywhere on campus. Mixed in with this wellspring of professionalism are the earnest faces of the lost ones. These people are patients and visitors with a purpose, but also a heavy dose of uncertainty. All look bewildered or bemused. Chief among the bewildered and bemused is yours truly, riding his magical gurney into uncertainty.

  Thanks for the prayers and good thoughts...More to come...

Mick 

Mick McKellar Update -- Day +1800

1800 Days Ago

 

1,800 days ago: Controversy continued over the Oscars problems, Mike Huckabee was deciding to run for President, Blockbuster announced it was for sale, Libya's regime launched an attack on Tripoli, there was a deadly earthquake in New Zealand, and oh yes...Mick McKellar had a blood and marrow stem cell transplant.

That last item did not make the early or late news, even in Rochester, MN—where the wonderful medical staff of the Mayo Clinic hooked me up to two small bags of chilly yellowish stuff. Those two bags of gold were truly a gift of life from my brother, Kevin. After weeks of preparation and some nasty chemicals to destroy nearly all of my immune system, the magical moment was rather pedestrian and simple. They also left me with the unmistakable odor of creamed corn—fortunately, a temporary condition caused by the preservative for the stem cells.

That night, after returning to the Gift of Life Transplant House, I sent out an email to my friends and relatives:

Well folks, the transplant took place this morning, between 9 and 10:00 AM CST. I am now back at the Gift of Life Transplant House, dealing with the side effects as they arrive. The nurses and doctors said it went very well. Very tired now. Will post more tomorrow. Thanks, everyone for the prayers and good thoughts.

Mick and Some of Kevin McKellar

It was a few days after, when things became exciting.

Still Here, Still Fighting

I posted this update because I could not let a number like 1800 pass by without noting its sheer size. 1,800 days have passed since the transplant and I was allowed to live them all, despite several rather scary and disruptive digressions from the direct path to this date. Last time I checked, all but one of my compatriots at Gift of Life—those who grabbed the brass ring at the same time—have died fighting for their lives.

Blood and marrow stem cell transplants, while a marvelous, almost miraculous medical treatment, are not guaranteed life savers or life extenders. They are a gamble, but against an alternative that has a terrible downside. I had a choice: Have the BMT or have about 8 months to live.

Well, I am here and looking forward to February 21, 2016, which will be my 5th rebirthday. Thanks for everyone's good thoughts and good prayers.

God bless,

Mick

Mick McKellar Update -- Day +1795

2 X Good News

I had blood drawn and tested, then visited my local oncologist today. Once again, the numbers are within normal ranges! Each time I visit, however, my usually benign blood pressure makes a small jump. It seems likely that I harbor some apprehension which doesn't cloud my conscious mind.

Today was 2016's first test of my capacity to function outside the warm bubble of our home. Walking about was only slightly more difficult than I remember from warmer weather, so fears of collapsing in paroxysms of wheezing, gasping, and coughing were not realized. This also was good news. So, from where did the apprehension arise?

Poignant Flashback

By nature, I am not a fatalist, but I can be overwhelmed. May 26, 2010 was such a day. Prior to that date, six years of cold baths of reality—from the sting of lost jobs, to the ache of rejection letters, to the burning irritation of patronization by those who truly believed themselves a class above—enticed me to drift a short distance from shore, tethered only by a golden cord.

On that day in May, hearing my own name and the word leukemia in the same sentence severed that flaxen cord and sent me adrift on rough seas. Voices from my past echoed across the water, insidiously reminding me that leukemia is a death sentence. My initial response was conditioned: Roll into a ball and ride the tide to a messy and painful end.

That dread reaction lasted until I flat-lined, in the ambulance, on the road to Marquette. Everyone froze for a microsecond. The shock evaporated when we simultaneously noticed that one of the electrodes on my chest had fallen off because I was sweating. The resultant laughter broke the death spell and resurrected my Celtic fire and integral stubbornness.

Thus began the fight for my life.

Waiting for Shoes to Drop

Since that time, each visit for testing and evaluation, each time they look under the hood to ascertain the need for maintenance or overhaul, is like waiting for the other shoe to drop. (Folks lived in apartments where you could hear the upstairs folks taking off their shoes. One hit the floor and they awaited the inevitable drop of the other shoe.) Well, leukemia removed my first shoe in 2010. The second has not fallen yet, and I pray it never will.

Mick

Mick McKellar Update — Day +1778

Chilled
I like to sleep in a cool room, and cuddle down under good, warm blankets. However, recently I allowed my room to warm to the level of the other bedrooms on the second floor of our home. There is no insulation between rooms upstairs, and my refrigerated room adjoins my daughter's room. It was sucking heat from her space. Consequently, I adjusted to only one blanket.

Last night, probably while doing my usual somnambulist Olympic gymnastics, I managed to kick my blanket off my bed and slept for hours under only a sheet. Because of medications I take at bedtime, I slept very soundly, and did not wake for a full eight hours. As I swam upwards toward consciousness, I realized something was wrong. My heart rate was slower than normal for waking, and I found it difficult to move. Confused, I struggled to sit up and noticed for the first time that I had no blanket. My first thought was, "Why am I not shivering?" Our house is old and cold in the winter, despite the best efforts of a new high-efficiency furnace, and I spend a lot of time shivering. I should have been shivering.

I pulled back my sheet.

My feet were bright red and my fingers were numb. I knew that meant something, but my brain refused to get into gear and start grinding facts. Although I'm certain it was less than a minute, it seemed hours before my mind's alarms went off—I was in the secondary stages of hypothermia!

Action
It must have been a ridiculous sight, like a mannequin dressing himself, but I finally dressed. I included my largest and heaviest old, fat sweater (from my over 300 lb days), and rumbled down the stairs. I stumbled into the living room, scaring Marian half to death, looking all pale and moaning like a walking toothache. I slumped into my rocker and pulled a heavy, warm throw up to my chin. Marian cranked the heat up to 74°F (wasteful, wasteful) and we waited for the shivering to start.

First came a massive wave of pins and needles in hands, feet, legs, and arms. Then slowly I began to shake and quake enough to frighten Dante. Marian called him up into my lap, but the shaking frightened him off immediately. It took the better part of an hour for my core temperature to recover enough to allow me to make some Earl Grey and take my first wave of medications.

As I write this, my hands still ache and shake, but hot tea and a bowl of Malt-O-Meal have worked their magic. I still shiver, off and on, and the normal level of pins and needles in my feet and hands has resumed. I also realize how close I came to a real emergency. Staying indoors during the winter is about my body's inability to generate enough heat to counter the cold air in my lungs, and to conquer the heat loss in my extremities—as much or more than it is to evade contact with pathogens I cannot resist.

I have become fragile—a being brittle and breakable, in an environment hostile to my health. I am well. I am alive. Just don't bump me from the shelf, for I may shatter on the carpet.

Mick

Mick McKellar Update -- Day + 1761

For Better and For Worse

I suppose we all think the years will be better when we marry, and don't really consider the worse side of the equation. When I married my best friend December 18, 1971, I knew there would be bad days—everyone gets ill, everyone gets angry, everyone gets tired and cranky and sad—for a day or two.

Married life was no picnic for Marian because of my short sojourns aside for a vascular migraine, for cataract surgeries, for various and sundry cases of pneumonia, for skin cancer surgery, for breast cancer surgery (benign), and for removal of a malfunctioning gall bladder. However, her biggest test came in May, 2010 as a suspected problem with my blood sugar levels suddenly blossomed into leukemia.

I was in good shape when we married. We had four healthy and intelligent children and things were good, despite the usual problems with jobs and moving and life in general. So we were looking forward to our retirement, making plans and setting dates, when my 17+ year job at Michigan Tech suddenly ended without warning in 2004. For six more years, as I struggled to rebuild both career and retirement funds, Marian was supportive and encouraging, especially as the flood of rejection letters continued to accumulate.

Then blood cancer changed everything. Through it all, my best friend weathered every test with me, even the ones that left me screaming in hospital beds until morphine stopped the pain. For over five years, she has spent countless hours in waiting rooms, hospital rooms, and emergency rooms. I've lost count of how many crossword puzzle books she has filled while waiting for me. She watched while my medical expenses devoured our retirement plans. She learned sterile procedures to change bandages. She stood quietly by when massive doses of steroids made me mean and chemotherapy made me sick. She held me close as I lay in bed, shaking and shivering, wondering if I would wake in the morning.

Now, as my lungs are failing, she does the heavy lifting and snow shoveling. Marian knows exactly when I need a helping hand and exactly when to tell me to shut up and shut down the pity party. After 44 years, she is still the love of my life and the best part of us. 

I am a lucky man.

Mick