October 13, 2000|

Crazy stuff here…

I write this update as I lay here in my bed, working on my laptop supplied by Goldman Sachs. It has been a LONG week.

It first started on Sunday night when, after laying down to watch TV, I got up to go to bed and my back started to spasm. I have been through a lot of painful experiences in the past year, but these spasms are the most painful on record, worse than the radiation burns, the kidney stone, the stomach sore, etc. It is like a charlie horse in the back muscles, but times 20.

So Thursday morning at 3am I woke up with terrible spasms, so much so I couldn’t move an inch without a spasm occurring. “Conincendentally” my roommate Brian got from work about 3:15am (I-bankers, typical 20 hour day…). I yelled out for him, he called 911 and a few minutes (and a ton of pain) later I was in the back of an ambulance taking me to New York Presbyterian Hospital.

At Presbyterian Hospital, they got me some morphine (which helped very little) and also did an MRI to find the root of the back spasms. 10 hours later we got our answer; enlarged lymph nodes hitting some vertebrae (L1 and L2 to be exact) which was radiating the pain. The spasms ceased after awhile and I was released.

Unfortunately, and rather comically, I went to the ER wearing only a pair of shorts, a wife-beater undershirt, and a fleece jacket that they put in the ambulance. Leaving, I had to figure a way to go 17 blocks to get home. At the ER they gave me a pair of green cutoff socks to wear- so here I was, couldn’t find an open taxi anywhere, riding the bus home in nothing but green cut-off socks, khaki shorts and an orange fleece. People gave me looks like I was crazy. It was pretty funny looking back.

Today I woke up fine, but after checking e-mail, the spasms kicked in again and I was trapped. I couldn’t move out of the chair I was in. Luckily I had my laptop from work delivered yesterday and I was able to do work while I sat.

My parents arrived at 1pm this afternoon and have been a big help. I may end up at the ER again today, we’ll see, depends on the pain, I can’t move right now, all I can do is lay here in bed and type 🙂

In other news, I will be going to Memorial Sloan Kettering on Monday at 2pm to see Dr. Craig Moskowitz, a specialist in Hodgkin’s and stem cell transplants. He wants to get moving on treatments, and I will be staying at MSKCC most of next week as an in-patient.

Thanks for reading, stay in touch!

Art