hwan.com

I got my Remicade infusion on Friday, August 12, a seemingly simple enough procedure. The nurse said it was chemotherapy, which stuck in my head. I guess I'd imagined chemo to be more involved or multi-stepped or something. The next day was mixed, and I had a couple bouts of nausea and retching, squeezing my innards past empty, so that by the end I screamed putrid gusts of air. Sunday is when things got serious: I had a fairly regular bowel movement in the early evening but it was soon followed up with a flood of blood BM. And then another even more urgent, even more torrential evacuation, so much so that I lost my vision for a second. And lo, as I washed my hands I experienced a head rush strong enough to make me stop, to make me slouch over the sink and slowly slump onto the bathroom floor. I rolled my head around, attempting to shake this heaviness off, this foreign dark fog of the mind. I awoke to find my face on the floor at an distressing angle. I lay there a few moment...

I don't remember having to deal with such incredibly strong musical hallucinations the last time I was sick with colitis in the hospital. I really think I would, as it's currently driving me quite mad -- I keep hearing the same lame guitar riff fading in and out, some tired 80s rock ballad that is better left on tape. It is of course just my hearing's interpretation of the constant fans in my room, but the illusion is so damn convincing. And it is keeping me up, alongside the bubblings in my abdomen and the prednisone sweats. Yes friend, I have once again tread back onto that murky path of pain, nausea, suffering, insanity that is ulcerative colitis. That I find myself so deep inside makes one's spirits fall, that all light should shudder so suddenly, so fully. The same disdainful nurses, the same apathetic system, the same curious doctors and their repeated questions -- all have passed before me as they do now, and having done so does not make the repetition any eas...