jackwhitebread-blog

[jackwhitebread-blog]

My Story, part 4, in which it starts to get interesting.

April 21

I bought my first pack of marlboros when I was 16. I still remember where, when and why. It seemed necessary at the time and to this day I believe that it was. I also believe that smoking is part of what shaped the person I would become. I bought that pack around three in the afternoon and smoked four or five before lights out for the night. The next day I was a steady pack a day smoker. Around '86 or '87 I switched to winston for awhile because Emily B convinced me that "winston tastes good like a cigarette should". Last year I switched from marlboro to pall mall to save a couple of bucks a day. Now, after an average of 1 1/2 packs per day for 39 1/2 years, and recent health issues, I have decided to give them up. All of them. Nothing to gain or prove by continuing but plenty to gain by quitting. Or as T Webb told me - nothing about quitting smoking is ever not good for you.

I've decided that May first will be my official quit day. So if you see me out and about in the month of May, please approach with caution. 39 1/2 years is a long time.

April 22

This morning at the UNC GI clinic I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. I have a two inch long tumor in my esophagus, part of which goes all the way around the circumference inside my esophagus. In other words it's pretty big. I will be seeing an oncologist soon who will do more tests, figure out the actual extent of it, assign it a stage number, and figure out the best way to deal with it. This is why I haven't been able to swallow food for the last month. The endoscope wouldn't even get past it, they had to switch to a neo-natal scope in order to check my stomach which seems to be fine. Don't know yet who I caught this shit from but when I find out (and believe me they can trace this kind of thing now) there will be hell to pay!

My quit smoking date just got moved up from May 1 to April 23 (tomorrow). Yes I am enjoying my last few this evening, not chain smoking, just enjoying. Don't like it? You'll get over it.

As many of you already know I haven't really been able to work more than an hour or so per day lately. No food = no energy. This is likely to continue for awhile and for that reason I will probably start a go fund me campaign in the next day or so. I'm trying for charity care from the hospital but there are still bills to pay, supplements to buy, etc.

My lease ends Aug 1 and I will be looking for a small room to rent for a few months, possibly longer. I just need space for a bed and dresser, kitchen privileges, that kind of thing. Everything else I have can go in my storage unit with my tools. Please keep your eyes and ears open for me.

I will update here whenever I have more information. Please feel free to comment below but please don't inundate me with phone calls, texts, private messages. That's reserved for now for family. If you already heard from me personally today then you ARE family.

I'll see you at the bar!

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My Story part 3

April 14 Getting a complete physical tomorrow for the first time in about 35 years. A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that it's been that long but I honestly didn't know that you're supposed to get one every, what, ten years? Once in a while? I still don't know. A week from tomorrow I get the endoscopy. The meds are helping quite a bit with the reflux but I still have quite a bit of difficulty swallowing solid food so no weight gain yet but no more loss either. Getting very tired of protein shakes/smoothies but at least I learned how to make my own ( thanks again Missy! Mel Lee) so at least I'm not having to drink the bottled chalk they sell in stores. A couple of people recently said that bone broth might be really good for me too so I'll pick some of that up today. Still limiting myself to about two hours of work per day, any more completely wipes me out. I got the HBO! Just gonna keep it for the six weeks of Throne Games then cancel and see about some kinda MLB package. April 15 Flying colors on the physical today. In pretty damn good shape for an old man. April 17I don't even remember what hunger feels like. Just force feeding myself peanut butter, ice cream, yogurt, tryin to last until Monday. Clarification: Even though I haven't been able to eat solid food for about a month now and am at an all time low weight for my size, I no longer get hungry. I have to force myself to drink a bit of food a couple of times a day. This is not fun.

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All that shitty day today still led to a two and a half hour nap making it damn impossible to sleep tonight. Even with beer. Problem with not really being able to exercise at all is you sleep when you can and watch tv the rest of the time. At the bar at least I get to walk from the patio to the bar to the mens room and back. It’s not so far from the couch to the fridge to my bathroom and back. So I get tired from the sickness but not from much else. And I don’t really make much sense at 2:45 am.

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Two heart events today so far. An extreme blood pressure drop that forced me to the floor with head between knees and caused puking, shortness of breath, dizziness, and clammy skin for 15 or 20 minutes this am. That was unexpected and rough. Then this atfernoon I kept going in and out of Afib for close to an hour with heart rate topping out at 177 bpm a couple of times but just for a minute or so and then dropping to about 65, up and down and up and down. Scary but not as bad as this morning.I think the added bonus of puking one’s guts out intensifies everything. Just woke from a nap and all is fine now.Hoping it stays that way for at least a few days, Both of these events are simply caused by the way my tumor happens to be pressing against my heart at the time and are not really predictable.   But Jennifer Curtis came over and played some violin for Mom and I this afternoon and that made things better. I’ve asked her to play during my Going To Ground Ceremony whenever that may happen and she has agreed as long as she’s in town at the time. That makes me feel good!

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My story, part 2

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April 6

Thank you everyone who has been paying some attention to my health problems. Here is an update -Wednesday I went to UNC E room where they took blood, chest x-rays, did ekg and gave me two prescriptions to combat the acid reflux. They said the reflux MIGHT be causing my swallowing problems but couldn't be sure. Therefore I need to go to the UNC GI clinic and let them put a camera down my throat. Fine with me but not quite as simple as that. You see the clinic won't see you without a referral and they don't take e room referrals, it has to come from a primary care physician (henceforth called PCP because that's fun!). Now I've never had a PCP, at least not since I was a kid and not having insurance makes things a bit different. But now at my age I figger maybe it's finally time to give PCP a try. So I've been looking around and think I may have found one that might be a good fit. Should know by Monday, then things can proceed. Local folks - I am NOT looking for PCP recommendations!

Before this whole thing started I had been slowly losing weight and muscle mass for about six months, simply from not taking very good care of myself. I was down to about 165. Since I started having trouble swallowing solid food I rapidly lost another 15 in about three weeks flat, putting me at the frighteningly low 150. That's about 68 kilograms for any Europeans keeping score. Thanks to a few friends I feel like I'm on the right track now to reverse this alarming trend. Mel Lee gave me a quick tutorial on homemade protein drinks, along with some recipes, My buddy Dino is married to a nutritionist and she passed along a bunch of high cal/ high protein recipes, and yesterday Davis Stillsondropped off some supplements. In an hour or so I'm seeing Olympic wrestler (and two time National Champ in women's freestyle 48 K) Haley Augello who is giving me some top of the line protein powder. Plus I get to see her wrestle today. She is in town training for the next Olympics.

My immediate goal is to get back to 165 fairly quickly. Then I will feel like I can safely start lifting and trying to rebuild muscle mass. Long term goal is 180.

That's it for now. Thanks!

[jackwhitebread-blog]

Starting to transfer all my writings and some photos from hospital etc from fb to here so that if you want you can get reacquainted with how this all went down. They will all be titled My Story part (whatever) and be dated from when I first wrote them. Should be a lot easier to read in this format. Might take a while though.

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My story and I’m stickin to it, part 1

April 1 2019 After nearly three and a half weeks of almost non-stop burping and what seems to be a pretty bad swallowing disorder I have decided to go to the doctor. Not tomorrow, too many loose ends to tie up with work before I go sit in the E room for 8 or 12 or however many hours. Probably wednesday am. I really can't afford to lose any more weight than I have recently. Running out of steam pretty quick everyday too from lack of food. Will post again after talking to the MDs. UPDATE: checked into E room this am at 10:15. They ran blood tests and lots of other shit. The entire thing MIGHT be caused by the acid reflux, including the upper esophagus problems so they gave me some medication. However, the upper throat stuff may be a separate problem so I will go to a specialist in a week or so and get a camera stuck down my throat to find out. Feeling fine. Thanks for all your concerns. Remind me not to get drunk and post about my medical issues!

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Same guys, same place, different glasses.Photos taken about 15 or 18 years apart.

Stoke N Stroke

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The Cane gang. Day after the party.

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Changing over

For some time now I’ve been getting more and more tired of looking at fb. Most of the folks that I know who are not on fb seem a lot happier to ujst let that shit go than those who remain glued to it daily. While I may not be a daily poster I’m definitely a daily user. My problem with stopping is that it has been quite an effective tool for letting family and friends know what’s going on with with my health issues. Wanting to replace that instead of just stopping cold I’ve decided to try this medium for awhile. The idea is to be able to keep in touch with those who are interested while not having to look at political ads etc. We’ll see how it goes. I think that all you have to do is go to Tumblr and type in whitebread and then follow me. Not sure though so let me know if there is a problem.I figure I’ll leave this here for a couple of weeks to give folks a chance to get adjusted and then go ahead and delete my fb accounts.It will take a couple of weeks just to archive what I’ve already written onto this site and save some photos, etc, so no real hurry. But my fb entries will be going away. Perhaps then I can write a bit more on a regular basis without feeling distracted  We’ll see. Thanks Mary Gunn for helping me get this far,

[jackwhitebread-blog]

This is the new site that was set up for me.

Trying to figure it out.

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Stoke N Stroke

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The hunger

At 2 am the hunger returned. Looking around the kitchen the sweet denture quickly took over, even though I had removed the dentures by 11. There they were on the counter - the last of the Kolaches my folks had brought up from Texas. 4 of 'em, 1 cherry and 3 peach. Just a bite or two, then bed. Save for breakfast. After all you're not that hungry, it's just late. And you know the minimum delivery order from Texas is 3 dozen. Don't do it Jack! Oh sweet jesus I did it! All 4. Down the hatch. And now it's 3 am and I'm so tired but bouncing off the walls from the sugar. Goddamn they're good! Maybe I get lucky and they cure cancer too.

[jackwhitebread-blog]

If you're enjoying the new Ken Burns (I've seen episode one and I thought it was fairly ok) and you're fairly new to country music I have good news for you. There's a lot more out there and it's easily accessible. And not all shot through Burns' rose colored glasses. The panoramic views of blown up photographs may be missing but the archival footage is there, a lot of it the same footage that Burns uses. In this particular piece the musicians describing songs and acts don't use such sickly sweet flowery language. Bill Monroe is accurately described as the bastard he was. Incredible musician but impossible to work for. This one jumps around a lot but it's a really good starting piece. The biggest problem here is having to put up with The Whites (an important country music family in their own right) doing a several minute long sup par imitation of The Carters. But you can fast forward through that, I always do. And from here you can just keep going for as long as it holds your interest. Lots of documentaries, lots of info, lots of great music. I believe this one was made in 1997. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvhmqdWXusE&fbclid=IwAR1H12XqJXyHsJB0AN7OAY0HuG-if5Haqm2P_uaHpX8YY3mk6h3aLnvVa9g

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