What Don't Kill Me Just Makes Me Strong by Stewart Francke

Author:Stewart Francke [Francke, Stewart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2013-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Anger and Impatience: Sometimes only The Pissed Survive. It’s OK to be angry. The world stops for nothing—not for heartbreak, illness, death, not a thing. But then let it go and let the healing begin. Give up attachment to the results of your treatment and remain open to the infinity of outcomes, including the reality that most people either don’t care or can’t relate.

By Thanksgiving I was in very rough shape, with my counts returning very slowly and the stem cells taking their time to engraft. I was susceptible to infection and other complications. A couple days before the holiday and nearly a month past my transplant, my family gathered in my room to watch a movie on The Temptations that was airing on NBC. To coincide with the nationally released film, the local NBC affiliate WDIV had me cut a live version of The Temptations’ immortal “My Girl” in the famed Studio A at Hitsville, the Mecca of Detroit music down on Grand Blvd—now the Motown Museum. We recorded it just two days before I entered the hospital and I was proud to be involved with something so historic. As I sang Smokey Robinson’s gorgeous melody, knowing what was ahead and where I was, I couldn’t stop the tears welling in my eyes and the chills from shivering up my spine. This is where my heroes all stood—Marvin, Smokey, Levi Stubbs, David Ruffin, Mary Wells, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, James Jamerson, everyone.

That seemed like it was years ago when it was just two months. On this night I was struggling with myriad troubles that overwhelmed me quickly. Methotrexate and Cytoxin had achieved their ugliest end, with the former giving me those excruciating mouth sores. The Cytoxin caused what we learned that night to be pericarditis, a heart infection that affects the sac around the heart itself.

As we were jammed into my room watching The Temps special, I began to feel this rolling weight, like a thousand-pound barbell, pushing down on my chest with a force I’d not thought possible to live through. The pain began in my upper back and chest until it surrounded my whole rib cage, leaving me gasping for air, unable to adjust the bed or find a place to adjust my body to lie comfortably. “Stew, what’s happening?” my dad said with alarm. “Can’t…breathe…” I whispered. My sisters and mother quickly left and nurses and the floor doctor were called in stat. I was now panicked, feeling the car parked on my chest and unable to gasp for air and unable to sit up or lie down.

My hair had fallen out in the shower two days before, my counts were all hovering down around zero—no platelets, white blood cell count at 0.1, hemoglobin at 7. I’d ceased trying to ride the bike and walk the halls—I was entering into a critical area but still had some spiritual chutzpah tucked away somewhere. Julia has always called me The Tortoise, because I’m dogged,

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