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CAPITOL BEAT
by Jay Gallagher

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

The best laid schemes of mice and men…

Tomorrow night was supposed to be the night when we had quite a gala - a Gannett Albany celebration! We were going to mark my retirement, Joe Specter's elevation to Bureau Chief, Cara Matthews' outstanding contributions over the last six years, and the hiring of Nick Reisman.

Instead, I'm going to be spending the night in the St. Peter's Hospital ICU with nurses watching over me closely to make sure most of my current systems continue to perform adequately.

The cause of this pivot in plans: the rough night I had last night throwing up blood, despite the fact that numerous tests had discovered no problem in recent exams. That's cancer for you.

Doctors tend to take such things seriously, since rapid blood loss is a major cause of death. So this morning we called 911, had the neighborhood deluged with emergency trucks, and got transported to St. Peter's hospital.

Best news is that they found some minor tears in the region of the stomach and esophagus that could have been caused by the deep retching I did. And the very clever gastroenterologists do have a way to stop the bleeding and heal the tears. Of course, it could also be that the tumor is causing the bleeding, which presents a whole new set of problems.

Meanwhile, we are hoping for the simpler explanation and cure.

2 comments:

MC said...

Best wishes, Jay. I am enjoying your LWV blog, and look forward to more. And thanks for the open way you talk about the cancer, which so many others must deal with and unfortunately sometimes have to - or feel they have to - hide. You are contributing to policy debates even when posting that personal information!

Ann M. Gardner, Long Island said...

Wishing you a simple recovery - enjoying your blog - the LWV is lucky to have you!