Slogging On

Five interferon shots to go. Six weeks or so worth of ribavirin. It is indeed the last long mile. From the far frontier of 42 weeks on treatment I speak with some authority. For me, the dominant feature of this experience is boredom plain and simple. I can't do stuff. I want to do stuff. My body simply won't let me. I'm too tired. I'm too achey. I longingly picture myself running around the block. Cleaning my garage. Hiking in the desert. Going hunting. Things will get better.

I've been thinking lately how I got to this point. I recently found the accompanying picture, which has a lot to do with it. It's in northern Italy about 40 miles north of Venice. I spent all but six months of my three-year career in the United States Army in the "Administrative Area" marked above. It was a Lance Missile unit that worked with the Italian Army. The site was decommissioned in 1992, according to the site I pulled this picture from. It appears abandoned now. It was old when I was there, having originally been an Honest John site. There were about forty of us in this little area. I was the Supply Clerk.

The Italian Army owned the missile motors and launchers, while we maintained control of the warheads. The warheads were potentially nuclear (one option for the Lance was the infamous "Neutron Bomb," which allegedly would kill people and destroy electronics, but leave the buildings and machines intact). I can't say for sure whether they were or not, but we treated them like they were. The warheads were stored a few miles away, but I haven't been able to track the location down; Google Earth doesn't have high resolution images of the area yet.

Our wartime mission would have been to provide missile support to the southern Alps when the Russians came west. It didn't take too much time studying a map to figure out that our task would be to control the passes through the Alps. Of course, we took it for granted that if we ever had to fire the things something just like it would soon be on the way.

The Russians never crossed the line. We were fairly confident that they wouldn't, either. As a practical matter, Gerald Ford was the President, Nixon having resigned just two years before. Memories of Vietnam were still raw. The Soviet Union was beginning to show signs of internal strain. Our comrades-in-arms were the Italian Army. And the missile crewmen spent hours upon days upon weeks drilling in how to destroy the warheads, never how to mount and shoot them. Keep in mind that we were working with the Italian Army. It was not a time of heroics.

Personally, I had joined the Army to be a tourist. I felt I wasn't ready for college and I wanted experience. That's a youthful way of saying I wanted to drink, do drugs, and get laid without having to explain things to my mother.

I had a room in the barracks, but after a year, I got an apartment in nearby Conegliano. I had a pass from 1630 hours (4:30 PM, to you civilians) until 0630 formation Monday through Friday. Unless I had CQ (Charge of Quarters) duty, i.e. sit in the orderly room all night and do communication checks on the radio, the Army didn't much care where I went or what I did after work or on the weekend. I spent most of it getting -uh- experienced.

Which brings us back to the topic at hand. How I got it. I smoked, snorted, drank, ate and otherwise ingested every hallucinogen, stimulant, downer, or any other psychoactive chemical that came my way. Once, in 1977, quite altered and in a mood for something new, I injected something. It may have been morphine. It may have been heroin. It may have been sugar water — I don't recall getting that high, and I was really disturbed that I'd done something with a needle.

At some point during that year — maybe before or after the needle experience — I got sick. I knew something was up, but I didn't feel that bad. I had a bit of a rash and a fever. Sometime after that, maybe weeks, I remember noticing that my shit was the color of peanut butter and wondering what was up with that. Unpleasant, but we're dealing with unpleasant things here.

Nothing else happened. Whatever it was, it was gone.

Or so I thought.

Some twenty-odd years later I'm a pillar of the community, with a career, a wife, a mortgage, and three children, I sign up for the blood drive at work. I fill out a questionnaire. Of course I never used IV drugs. Never. Not me. Only a fool would inject drugs. Two weeks later, the blood collection agency sends me a letter saying, in effect, "We don't want your blood. Don't come back. Go see your doctor."

I spent the next couple of weeks in a fog. It's a singular experience to hear that you have a potentially life-threatening disease. I shared the discovery with a friend. He's a diabetic.

"Let me get this straight: You have a disease that might cause problems someday, maybe five, ten years down the road, maybe never."

"Yes!" I sobbed.

He laughed. "How has your life really changed? A drunk driver could just as easily take you out between now and then."

My diabetic friend had been living with the disease that he can safely assume will kill him for twenty years. He knows he's not immortal. I was just finding it out.

Since that time, about a dozen years ago, I've checked in at the lab every six months to a year for a blood test. Until September of 2005 every thing was normal and I went on with my life. Last year the numbers came up wrong, and I started this blog. So that's how we got here.

A friend of my kids' had to do an interview project for school. She knew I was getting treated and what for; her family put me in touch with a guy who went through the treatment five years ago (I've mentioned "Bob" here before). One of her interview questions was what teens should know about this disease. My answer was that teens need to know that they can get this stuff too. I felt very middle-aged hearing myself give that answer.