Mississippi
Chris Sharp
Just glad to be here!
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Just glad to be here! |
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I was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in October of 2008. Below I write about some of my experiences with this new event in my life. As far as I am able, the facts as they pertain to my CLL are presented here, but they may be occluded behind the cloudy substance of human experience and recollection. If you want to learn more about the clinical mechanisms of CLL and the means by which it is treated, you will not learn much from this blog; I suggest you visit www.clltopics.org, which certainly has been and continues to be a beneficial site for me. There are other sites as well. There is a literal mountain of information for a CLL patient to misinterpret when he is searching the web for information, without any supervision; One can depress himself right to the point of death. Be careful what you read! Being thus warned, read on at your discretion. My goal here is to inform my near and distant family, friends, and fans, of my status, and to do that in a manner that is hopefully an entertaining read. If any one feels so inclined, Drop me an e-mail, most particularly if you also have CLL and something you read here was beneficial to you.
Though they are thinly disguised, real people are written about within this blog. If you want to learn how ONE person is thinking about the personal-human experience that is CLL, then read on with the understanding that somewhere between the facts and the experiences I write about herein, lies the truth . . . sometimes sacrificed on the altar of bruised and jaded perception. The list of things I don't know is very long . . . the list of things I am sure of is getting shorter and shorter. You are welcome if you choose to stay here a while. 7/20/10 Mo' Magic This is a magic place. I think I may have already said that. The magic comes from the fact that this is a private festival. It is not advertised to the public, nor is it open to the public. I have never seen such a thing. This is a community of musicians and music lovers who had an annual camp grow into a 10 day festival of music, workshops, art, children’s activities, consisting of artists and musicians from all over the world. Mississippi has never seen such. I have taken photos, but cannot publish them here without the permission of the people who are the photo’s subjects. I have shot some video, but it is only for my own personal consumption. I can mention my son, Canaan. He is having a large time. New friends, new activities, California weather, exotic types of music, real belly dancers from the middle-east or of middle-eastern descent (I think he REALLY likes them), and the exploration of different cultures. Though he already knew this (because I have made sure of it), he is experiencing the fact that the rest of the country and the world is much larger than Mississippi!
7/18/10 This California Fest-Fer-All This place is a magic place. It has been here a long time. Somehow, through the miraculous working of human interconnections, I found myself invited to come here. Others try to come, and they can’t get in, but must first work as busboys, dishwashers, laborers and fetch-alls for as long as three years before they will be allowed to become regular attendees. Apparently the list of those wanting to come is long. Again, through the marvelous ways of providence and fortune, here I am, as a performer on the bill at the Cantina. I cannot even mention the name of this place at this time, since it is a private event; and for a private event, it sure is a large one. There are people here who have been coming to this place for as long as I have been alive, and legions who stared coming here in the sixties, during the folk music boom. It became an anchor for the California Folk Music scene, the professionals, those who made this music their avocation, those who were just learning to play, and those who just wanted to listen. They apparently came here in an idyllic frame of mind, which, though impractical in our real-world, everyday lives, is evident in all those I have thus far met here as their frame of mind while in this place. There are people in their eighties here. Multitudes in their 70’s, 60’s, and 50’s. The 40 30 and tewnty-something crowd cannot be easily counted. There are teenagers and there are toddlers. There are single campers, and there are whole extended families. Amidst all that, Canaan and I have been made to feel most welcome; a true, warm, welcome. We hear of Southern hospitality, and as a Southerner, I know this to be true. It would be embarrassing to me to think that someone, for just about any reason, had thought that I was inhospitable. While I can’t speak for California in general, I can vouch for this place. The hospitality it has shown to me and my son has known no bounds. Of course, our lovely friend, Rita, is here. She is also the reason that we are here. I would not have known about this place except for her. When she visited my home during Ed Dye’s memorial celebration, of all the other musicians that were there, I was the only one she invited to come to this place. Perhaps I was the only one interested in the passion she seemed to show about this place. Perhaps it was because I indicated that I might like to come to a place like this. I cannot remember, though this is certain: a turn of the knob sure helps open the door. I have met Mayne, Gail, Bob, Fiddlin’ Will, Larky, Lini, Peter, George, a delightful fellow who plays a hurdy gurdy and his wife who plays the accordion, and a legion of others, all gracious to me. If you have never heard a hurdy gurdy and an accordian played together, with impeccable timing and taste, and listened to the drone of the hurdy gurdy’s strings, as that drone, that drone, so precious to and sought after by the human spirit pulls your spirit in to a place where the inside seems bigger than the outside, and heard the rhythmic pull and push of the accordion, making the chords and being percussive at the same time, you have missed out. Is you life less complete if you haven’t heard this? Only you can answer that, and anyone might rightfully answer that their life is no less complete. I would have answered the same way, but I cannot do that any longer; I have heard it now. Though not loud, the power of the music, the soft music, struck a chord in me that itself was powerful. I was overwhelmed. It is easy to be overwhelmed here. I can’t think of a single thing that would be better than to spend several days in a place where being overwhelmed by music and art, and also overwhelmed by people who are kind, gracious and soft-spoken who are working together in a way to make something wonderful for everyone to share. The realities of this place are this, though: this does not happen without a lot of human input and work. There is planning. There is preparation. There is much to do, and always things to do which have not been done. There is much human interaction to get this to happen. There are committees, those dreaded committees! There are those who feel their job is to advise, who feel shunned when their advice is not taken. There are those who never offer advice in the planning stage, but who are vociferously critical after the fact. There are those who say they will do and then don’t. There are those who say they won’t and they do (God bless them!) There are those who are literal dynamos of human energy and endeavor, who will try to everything unless someone stops them. There are those who push, and those who pull; and some who do this simultaneously on the same object, wondering why the work seems so hard. There are veterans who want to continue to do things the way they used to be done. There are newcomers with good ideas who question the logic behind the defense of, “Well that’s the way we’ve always done it!” There are nurturers. There are exhorters. There are backbiters. There are murmurers and complainers. There are those who have a vision greater than any single point of their desire. There are those who know the synergy that can and will happen when the sum of the pieces, so seemingly tiny as they are counted and reviewed by those who count and review, come together in spite of all the difficulties mentioned, and give us all something much, much larger than the sum of those parts. This is the way humans work. We plow, we sow, we till, we water, we sweat, we reap, but through it all, God gives the increase. I have made some friends here that I will keep the rest of my life; Mayne, Gail, Peter, Ray, Mitch, Markie, so many others. One of my goals was to come to California and meet some PEOPLE, not just see the natural beauty that is California. I have seen natural beauty that overwhelms. I have heard music that overwhelms. I have met people who have become friends in a miraculous way, more than mere acquaintances. That can happen when you have time to talk, time to sit, no TV to distract, and the ability to communicate with each other with more than words, but through the powerful medium and universal language of music. The hustle and bustle of everyday life seems like a distant, unpleasant memory, but one to which we know we will have to return, and soon. But today?? Today is here and now. Today I am in this place. It is early in the morning, and I am not waiting for he magic to happen at some later point in the day, I am experiencing the magic right now, as I sit here at this computer and try to explain it to you. But words cannot do it. I am failing to explain this place. I am not ashamed that words fail me as I write this, I don’t think anyone else’s words could explain it any better. Though words are very powerful tools, there are times when they just can’t get the job done. This is one of those times. It’s Sunday morning. I must offer this prayer for myself and all those who will come into my sphere of influence today: Heavenly Father, help me to be the person that I want You to think I am. Help me to show the grace and love that You have shown me. Help me to do and say the things You would have me say. Help me realize that in Your presence I have much to be humble about. Help that humility follow me everywhere I go. And help me always seek Your truth. Give me the wisdom to know the right thing and the courage to do it. Help me to continue to know the joy of Your presence, and the overwhelming joy with which You have filled me. Help me to be continually mindful of the needs of others, and how I might serve You by serving them. Thank you for everything You do for me, those things that are seen, and those things that are unseen. Thank You for this day. In the name of Jesus, Amen. July 17, 2010 At the California Folk Music Fest Yep, Canaan and I are here, but I must finish telling you about the trip before I get to the music fest.
Idaho is not like I expected. It is far more beautiful. Until I looked at the map, I did not realize how far North we had gone into Idaho. We were way on up there. Greg said he like the hillbilly part of Idaho better than the Southern Part. I can see why. Monday morning, it was time to head on West, working our way further South, to our ultimate goal of California. I have always wanted to make the drive from Elko, Nevada, through Reno and Carson City, to Lake Tahoe. It is a long was from Missoula to Elko. We did it all on two lane roads, as Greg advised, until we got to Boise. Though it was a long day, the beauty of the drive was worth it. We had said our goodbyes to Greg and Laurie the night before. Greg insisted that we wake him and he would make us breakfast before we hit the road. This was most kind and gracious, but we snuck out before daybreak and were far along the road before anyone roused at the Boyd house. I had already warned Greg that this is most likely what I would do. I stuffed a sleepy Canaan into the car and off we went. Around every bend was mountainous beauty. How do I describe it other than that? It was beauty without failure. It was beauty without compromise. It was beauty without ceasing . . . until we got near to Boise, which is just a city, like every other city. The part we drove through was the par that had been developed in the last 15 years or so as real estate boomed everywhere. The subdivisions were all the same. The houses looked like houses in newly developed areas everywhere. They obviously had passed an ordinance that prohibited anything but minimal signage, so it looked as much like Madison and Ridgeland, Mississippi as it did Boise and Meridian, Idaho. It this what America wanted? It looks like every other new place in America. It had no character: at least the part we got to see. Perhaps I am unfair in my description of Boise. All I can describe is what I saw. The part that I saw looked like everywhere else. I’m sure that there are parts with much character, but I didn’t get to see them. I do have one funny story, though. We stopped at a Perkins restaurant in a sort of new shopping center. It looked like every other new shopping center in every other town in America. When the waitress seated us and asked what we’d like to drink, of course, the first thing she asked was, “Where are you guys from?” We said, “Meridian?” She said, “No Way!” Then we added, “Mississippi,” and she laughed and said that she knew it couldn’t be Meridian, Idaho.
Character in the look of Boise? I didn’t
see it. I’m sure it’s there somewhere. I know it’s there in the blue football
field of Boise State, but that is character of a sort of which Canaan doesn’t
approve. I asked him, “Wanna go see that blue football field at Boise State?” He gave me a look that would curl your hair. He does not like that blue field. He says that is unnatural. I reminded him that the new artificial grass (Astroturf is a thing of the past) on the field at Ole Miss is unnatural. He replied that at least it’s green. Soon, Boise was a memory and we settled further and further into high altitude desert as we now moved along on the interstate. No more two lane roads. It was still a long way to Elko. And when we got there, we were able to see that this was a city that had some flavor. Parts of it were Boise-esque, and everywhere else-esque, but parts were earthy and genuine. One of the things I have noticed on our trip is the proliferation of casinos. They seem to be everywhere. If there aren’t casinos, then the state runs a lottery. I guess Alabama is the only state left that has no form of legalized gambling. Surely there are some others (Utah??). I’m really not interested enough to go and find out, but for certain, all along the way here, there were casinos; if not state licensed, then casinos in tribal lands. The number of casinos we did not gamble in was legion. Attached is a photo Canaan took with his Blackberry out of the car window. This Harrah’s Casino at Lake Tahoe is one of the many that did not see any of our money. Gambling can be fun, but it is an expensive form of fun. It has ruined many a person and family. And for what??
The expanse of high altitude desert from
Elko to Reno looked just like I thought it would. On a map, Nevada seems to show
a whole lot of noting. I am always interested in what that noting We stopped for a bite in Carson City and observed extremely loud and rudely behaved teenagers. This can happen anywhere, of course, but I am always shocked at loud, foul language in a public place. The language was no fouler than we hear at home, but it certainly was louder. There will be more on loudness later.
From Carson City, we drove on to South
Lake Tahoe. It was as commercial as any Nevada casino town, and was a tourist
trap like so many others, with this exception: Lake Tahoe was a near religious
experience to me. I cannot explain it now, the experience being too close on me.
I am nearly reduced to tears as I write this. I will explain later about my
attraction to and affinity for
Later: From a purely geographical standpoint, the things that look like low hills in the background are nearly 30 miles away. They are actually the High Sierras coming right down the crystal water’s edge. I cannot even explain the geography of Lake Tahoe right now.
Even later: Canaan and I made it to
Oakhurst, California the next day. I used my TomTom navigator and kept making it
select alternative routes until it gave me what appeared to be curvy mountain
roads. It was right, and they certainly were. The route I had inadvertently
selected took us right through Yosemite National Park. I was not aware of that
when I selected the route. I knew we would be in its vicinity, but not through
it. We had planned to go there the next day, but found ourselves at the gate on
the road that was taking us to Oakhurst, where our hotel reservations were. It
would be pointless to turn around. Though there was some traffic, it did not
seem to be as bad at the gate as I was prepared for it to be. I was later to
learn that most people come in to Yosemite from the South entrance, not the
North. Traffic??? There was plenty. There was too much. With the road
construction financed by the American Recovery and Reconstruction Act, Barack H.
Obama, President, it was absolutely awful. It was also beautiful. And through all the beauty, let me assure you of one thing: In spite of all of the National Geographic photographs you have seen (fabulous), and the coffee table photography books of america’s natural wonders (even more fabulous, and the Ansel Adams platinum/palladium prints (the most fabulous), let me assure you that you are not prepared for the dynamic scale and space and wonder of what you will experience when you round one bend and see El Capítan, Half-Dome, and Bridalveil Falls all in one, incredibly scaled, breathtaking vista. It will catch you by surprise. You will feel like your pants have fallen to the ground. Your jaw will hang slack and continue to do so until you drool, drunk on the heavenly vision that sweeps before you. You will turn in the first parking area. You will rush to get your camera and take a photograph of something of which no photograph can do justice. You will learn, later, that if Ansel Adams cannot fully capture it in a photograph, you will not do so with your point and shoot digital camera, or your Nikon; yet you will do so anyway. Then, you will realize that you are beset with worrisome tourists. You are one, to, of course, but that is different. You want to appreciate the majesty of this place, but everyone is in your way. They are speaking Japanese. They are speaking German, Urdu, or Hindi, or Uzbeki, or some other language. You don’t care, they are all just n your way. The more you wait for the crowd to thin out, the more busses and cars seem to turn into the same parking lot, until there is no room for anyone. There is nothing but a sea of still cameras, video cameras, and smiling faces, rebukes to children, and loud talking, in the midst of majesty. Of course, I exhibited none of those behaviors, me being the superlative tourist. I am being facetious. I am guilty of all the things described above but the noise. I wanted silence, but it was impossible. I wanted to be alone with view, but that was not possible either, since everyone there also wanted that view, and it was, by their every right, their view, too. But I didn’t want them; nevertheless, they and the view was what I had. We enjoyed it immensely though, asked another tourist to take our picture with the view in the backdrop, which I was glad to get.
“I think I’ve seen enough. What we are looking at is what we really wanted to see,” he said. “Yep. Let’s get out of here!” That was easier said than done. All the road construction in Yosemite was being done from the valley to their South entrance, which was the way we were going. Due to a flagman right at the parking lot, which was at the entrance of a tunnel, it took us nearly half an hour to get OUT and go South, since more and more people were pouring IN, the rest of them trying to get out of the parking lot continuing North. The exit was not set up to take folks South. It was a problem for us and the road construction crew. The 30 mile trip South was designed to favor the mountain of traffic moving North, and a one lane mountain road is a slow go. It was a horrendous drive out. So glad were we when we got out that we decided not to go back the next day. Enough of those gawking tourists. Enough of those noisy people. Enough of the awful traffic. I say this laughing at myself. We we glad we went? Of course. Are we glad it’s behind us? Equally. When we got checked into the motel, we decided (actually I decided) that we would go to Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park, just a bit to the South. When the next morning came, I looked at the map again, recalled our previous experience with two national parks (Yosemite and the Badlands) and decided against it. Just a few curvy, unpaved miles of mountain road from the motel was a grove of giant sequoias and redwoods called Nelder Grove. The trees there were no doubt not as spectacular as those in the National Parks, but they were certain to be less crowded. Off we went.
Here, in the midst of these gallant and majestic trees, I was being pressured to be silent. Canaan felt it, too. Whatever it was in the majesty of these trees that was demanding our respectful silence, it went unnoticed by the family on the trail with us. We did not want to travel this trail anywhere around them. We turned around and left, selecting another trail just a bit further down the road. There was no one there but Canaan and me. We hiked down the short trail in silence and were just content to be among these trees, trying to hear in the silence what they seemed to be saying to us. Perhaps it was that the trees were saying that they were old when the nation was young. Perhaps it was that the trees were saying that they were old when Europe was young. Perhaps it was that the trees were saying, “Just slow down and be. Be quiet. Be still. Don’t make so much noise. Don’t be so hasty.” They certainly were saying something. I think it was a combination of the above. It was intimidating at first, to be in their presence, but they gradually warmed up to us when they saw we were willing to be still, and in the silence of the grove, I think Canaan and I got it. What was it that we got? I can’t tell you. You’ll have to get it for yourself. I’m sure it’s different for every person. It was sure different for that family of six. It was sure different for the two Dalmatians. I’m sure they treasure every memory they have of that experience. We then made a trial run to the festival area so that we would know how to get there the next day. It was not far from out motel and a beautiful drive. We then had the rest of the afternoon off to lollygag about. We enjoyed each other’s company. The next thing I write about will be the magic of this place we are camped in, and this wonderful gathering of people at this place called Sweet’s Mill. 7/16/10 Remedy for Can’t Sleep This is the second night I have awakened at midnight, springing awake, ready for the morning. Canaan was still up watching TV. “What time is it?” I asked, rising from my bed. “Midnight,” he said. “Dang! Well, I’m up and ready for some coffee,” I said, already moving towards the coffee pot. “Well, I’m going to sleep,” he muttered, throwing the TV remote over onto my bed. Rather than watch that TV, I’ve got duties that need to be attended to. Namely, duties like writing in my blog which I enjoy so much. Once I get started, it’ll be morning before I know it. Time just flies when I get absorbed in my writing. As I stated before, telling about the trip to Greg Boyd’s house will take me some time. We arrived at Greg’s house on Friday, July 9, and departed on Monday, July 12. Not only are Greg and I friends from back home in Meridian, we are both banjo players, both interested in vintage musical instruments (That is how he makes his living), and he is an excellent guide for the sights in the country of Western Montana and Northern Idaho, since he came there 30 years ago as a fire jumper with the Forest Service and never left. He and his gracious wife Laurie were wonderful hosts. Here is a link to his website: http://gregboyd.com/ We first had some business to attend to. I had brought several instruments to get Greg to sell for me. They were all excellent instruments that I would never play. It was time to turn them loose, put them back on to the market, and hopefully in the hands of people who are musicians who will make enjoyable music for the listeners of the world. Three excellent banjos and two excellent guitars were left with Greg for sale. He has a world-wide business. Our first night, Greg and Laurie took us downtown in Missoula to a restaurant called Ciao Mambo. They have excellent Italian food. The music was too loud, though. They had Frank Sinatra blaring far too loudly, and the crowd was trying to talk over the top of the music. We had to shout at each other just to hear. It made dinner conversation awkward. When Laurie asked the manager to turn the music down a bit, he replied that the music and its level was part of the charm of the restaurant that made them so popular, and that it would have to stay at that volume. Funny: I thought it was the FOOD that made a restaurant popular, but I suppose they wanted the whole packaged process. Private restaurants in college towns are always started by business majors who are alumni of the college, who never dream of running just ONE good restaurant. They are looking for the formula for a franchise system. I wish they’d just focus on running he ONE restaurant very well. The food there was very good though. I just had one slight problem. I am a crushed red pepper addict. I just had to have some on my creamy Alfredo sauce and Prosciutto pasta. I picked up he crushed red pepper shaker, and someone had loosened the top, and the top stayed in my hand while the bottle full of pepper hit my plate, broke, and spilled pepper allover my food and onto the floor. The waitress came running over. She looked at the mess I had made and said that I could just rake the excess pepper onto the floor with the rest of the pepper and she would return and clean it up. That would have been fine except for the broken glass in my food to go along with the pepper. Too much red pepper is one thing, broken glass is another.
“The top on your pepper shaker came off.
As you can see, it hit the plate and broke, and there is glass in my food. I
cannot eat it!” I said. She peered at the broken glass in my plate of pasta and said, “I will go and tell the manager and get them to make you a new plate. It’ll be just a few minutes.” And she was off. This manager was the same one who thought the too loud music was good for his restaurant. Maybe he thought the glass seasoning would add some spice to the food. He waitress came right back and said my new plate would be out in about 10 minutes. When the plate came back, it also contained sautéed mushrooms to go with the prosciutto. Was this an added bonus? Or did they not make it right the first time? Or does them recipe vary with the whim of the chef? In any case, it was excellent, and I enjoyed every bite, though the sauce was a bit runny. I read some reviews on this restaurant, and it seems that too loud is a common complaint, and it turns out that it is not a franchise, but an expending chain headquartered in Whitefish, Montana. I wish them luck. They be more enjoyable if they could make it so that their guests could enjoy each other, rather than Dean martin and Fran Sinatra turned up way too loud. After that it was back to Greg’s house and lights out for me. I was up EARLY for mountain time. About 3:00AM, but I had everything I needed: My camp coffeepot and coffee fixings. If I have that, I can pass a whole night and morning without having to disturb anyone. Greg roused about 7:00Am and we took off down to the farmers market in downtown Missoula where I met several of Greg’s friends. We ate something at nearly every booth and enjoyed every bite. Everything was fresh, organic, and delightful to look at as well as eat. As I looked in the parking lot for the farmer’s market, I saw that every other car was a Subaru. They like those Subaru’s out here in the west. I suppose the 4 wheel drive is what makes them so popular. Of course, everyone was impressed that the Nissan Murano that I was driving had more ground clearance AND 4 wheel drive. If Debbie saw some of the places we would up taking her Murano, she would have a fit. It is all time 4 wheel drive, but with the push of a button, it’ll lock them in for positive traction 4WD. It’ll climb a hill like nobody’s business. It has climbed many since we left home. It’s going to climb a few more before we get back.
After the Farmer’s Market, we went back to
Greg’s house. By that time, Chad, Greg’s helper and mandolin go to guy was
there. We decided we’d better get the instruments I brought checked in and
described for sale. That took us a while as they had to be expertly inspected by
Greg and Chad, and described accurately for listing on his website. No monkey
business here. When you have a reputation to protect, you want to make sure that
the folks you are selling to are getting what you sold them. Greg has always
been, and still is, a man of impeccable character. I would like to say that we
are a lot alike after that statement, but I’ll have to leave that to others.
Some time later, another text came in saying that this had been hard work, but he had made it and was enjoying the view. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be. We work hard to climb to the top . . . shouldn’t we enjoy the view once we get there? When he got back and had a shower, we loaded up and went downtown to get the best burritos I have ever eaten. I don’t even remember the name of the place, but they had burritos as tightly wrapped as the tortilla could stand, and every bite was delicious. On our return, we made plans for the next day, which was a trip up into the mountains. I am done now. I’ll save the mountain trip and photos for later. It’s off this morning to Sweet’s Mill, the real reason I am in California. If I can get a cell phone signal up there, I’ll be sure and write every day. Thursday, July 15, 2010 Uploaded from California!! I think that is the day! They run together after a while on an extended road trip. Canaan and I have driven miles and miles (3,700 so far!), and we aren’t even at our destination, yet. I really think that perhaps the trip itself was my destination and along the way, I am completing my bucket list (you saw the movie!) That may sound moribund and morose, but it isn’t, really. If one has a bucket list, there is no better time than now to make preparations on getting those important items checked off. Canaan and I left home on Wednesday, July 7 at about 6:30 in the morning. I had the car packed, and I mean packed, like Norwegian brisling in a King Oscar sardine can. To a country boy, those King Oscar sardines were the delicacy only rich people could afford. We usually had to stick to the Lighthouse brand, that had two big slabs of some sardine-like fish. Still, we were glad to get that. Now back to the car: after we had stuffed, pushed, cajoled, browbeaten and otherwise shamed the stuff we were carrying into submission, we were able to get all the car doors shut, but daren’t open them again for fear of an explosion. After several kisses to her men from my wife and his mother, Canaan and I were off: North and then West; way, way West. Our first day was uneventful and long. Our drive was eventually going to carry us through the Badlands in South Dakota, but we didn’t have to go that far to get to the Badlands. Just North of the Mississippi line, just across from those two Mississippi Cities, Southhaven and Olive Branch, lie the badlands of Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis, the master of the river perched atop her cliff. Memphis, named for the famous river city of old. Memphis, the home of Rock-and-roll. Memphis, that foremost of cities of Tennessee, larger, by far, then her counterparts across the state. Memphis, now reduced to a series of run down buildings, trash on the roads, and an overall post-war scruffiness. It was Canaan’s first real thing to see on our trip. He was disappointed in everything but the near the airport area, after I explained o him what a hub of distribution Memphis was. Thank goodness for that. If not for that, what would Memphis be like now? Poor Memphis: She has had to watch Nashville replace heart the foremost city of Tennessee. A sad state of affairs is Memphis.
“Have you seen photographs of the Great Arch?” I asked. “Yes sir,” he said. “Close your eyes then,” I ordered. He did. When they were closed (I was driving, of course), I said, “Now, recalling all the photographs you have seen, imagine the Great Gateway Arch perched on the Western bank of the Mississippi River, proudly overlooking the city of St. Louis.” Canaan, his eyes still closed, in apparent deep concentration at working up the vision said, “OK. Got it!” “Well, that’s what it looks like,” I said as we sped on northwestward, getting caught by a thunderstorm that was bound and determined to follow us all the way to Kansas City. If my casual dismissal of the famous Gateway Arch raises the ire of the Greater St. Louis Tourism Commission, I’ll beg their indulgence. Half of the traveling team enroute to California has seen the great arch on more then one occasion. Between the two of us, we have seen it an average of eight time by my way of reckoning. It is not like the great arch has received no attention at all. Canaan can come back and see it one day, perhaps with his family, and take in a Cardinals game, or perhaps a Rams game. That devilish thunderstorm was successful in following us all the way to Kansas City. The more I cursed at it, the angrier it became until we were forced to stop a couple of time due to such bad visibility that you could see beyond the windshield wipers, plus there was a hazard of water on the road surface. Canaan drove all the way, and I was coaching him non-stop, much to his consternation. He didn’t like it very much and I sure was a bundle of frayed nerves like a cat in a clothes dryer before the rain stopped. Many of the other drivers failed to consider the road conditions. In their haste to continue on with speeds that should be reserved for dry roads and good visibility, they encountered hazards which reminded them of the laws of physics in a most unfriendly way. Tow trucks and Missouri Highway Patrol men were everywhere getting cars out of ditches, picking up pieces of cars, and there were even a couple of Ambulances on the scene. Motor Homes explode like a hand grenade when they hit the ditch and turn over. At one place, there were motor home parts scattered over an acreage that was akin to one of the rice-fields we saw in Arkansas. No ambulances, though. The state troopers and two trucks and sad looking victims wrapped in Space Blankets provided by the Troopers were all milling about/ I’m glad nothing but feelings appeared to be hurt.
Kansas City, the city of fountains. I wanted to see it, but no time. I had been there on business once before, but even then had no time to see the city. It is also the home of one of my favorite singers, Kathy Chiavola. I waved in her honor as we flew through. We later spent the night in Mound City, Missouri, finding a delightful local motel called Audrey’s. It was just what we two tired fellows were looking for. We had driven about 800 miles. That was enough. The next day, as we passed through Iowa, we learned something about it that is more than anecdotal now. CORN! They plant corn in Iowa. They plant it in the medians and on the shoulders of the road. They plant it right up to the edge of the gas pumps. If they don’t sell enough premium gas, they’ll pull out the premium tank and plant corn there. IF you happened to be simply standing on a patch of ground that was otherwise unoccupied, someone would no doubt come along and ask you to move so they could plant some corn there. “Sir, are you going to do something on the nine square feet of personal space you are occupying, or are you going to just stand there and continue to SMOKE that cigarette even though it’s bad for you?” an Iowa Johnny-Cornseed-ess might ask me. “Well, madam, this is the only place left in the entire state of Iowa that one is permitted to smoke. I expect I’ll stand here until I finish this cigarette, then maybe I’ll have another one!” She, impatiently waiting, says, “I’d like to plant some corn there, but you’re impeding my progress.” “You’re going to plant a total of nine square feet of corn. With the thousands of square miles of corn in this state, I am somehow a detriment to a good corn crop in Iowa, and all because of this cigarette I am smoking in the only place I have seen thus far that is permitted to me by the state of Iowa?” “Ever kernel counts!” she said, undeterred, scratching the ground around my immoveable feet, and planting the corn none-the-less. Had I been barefooted, she would have planted corn between my toes, such is their love for corn here. As we neared Council Bluffs, Iowa, on our way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, there were a tremendous number of signs saying Council Bluffs Exit so-and-so, and Council Bluffs Downtown, Council Bluffs this and Council Bluffs that, etc. Though we were seeing al those signs, the city I was seeing looming up in the distance was way too large to be any Council Bluffs, Iowa. Finally I saw ONE, count that, ONE sign that said “Omaha I-80 West.” As we rounded the bend I realized that right across the narrow Missouri River, was Omaha, Nebraska. Apparently Council Bluffs is so overshadowed in the sphere of influence of Omaha, they prefer to ignore its presence. Seems sort of silly to me. How many folks from Iowa work and earn their livings in Omaha, you reckon? Thousands, no doubt. As we passed along, on my left and to the west, Omaha was so close I could have shot a fat man in the rear end with a BB gun, though no mention was made of that. From where I was traveling, Omaha looked pretty good. All in all, the Council Bluffs/Omaha area was in a beautiful setting, though where there wasn’t concrete or pavement, or maintained turf, there was corn. On North, until we got to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The ladies at the South Dakota welcome center were very helpful. They gave me more brochures that I could use, despite my protests. Once the nice lady started her spiel, she could not be stopped. I looked allover her for a reboot button. I’m sure I was distracting her as she continued telling m about all the wonderful sights in South Dakota. “Sir, do you mind? I am trying to tell you all about the wonderful sights here in beautiful South Dakota. You seem to keep looking at me in a most unsettling manner!” She exclaimed. “I’m sorry ma’am. I was looking to see if you had a reboot button. You seem to be locked in an infinite loop. I must have fount it, though. I was beginning to be afraid it was located in an inaccessible location.” “No, that won’t be necessary. Now to continue, there are so many beautiful sights here in South Dakota. You’ll want to be sure and visit the actual Sioux Falls, and as you travel west, our fabulous Corn Palace, where every single work of art is made from different colored kernels of corn. And of course, the famous Wall Drug, where you get free ice water.” “I can get free ice water from my ice chest. I just want to see the Badlands and the Black Hills.” “But you simply Must see the Corn Palace and Wall Drug,” she said, insistently. “I’ve seen enough corn to last me a lifetime.” We left, her head shaking at our callous treatment of her suggestion of visiting the Corn Palace. All the way across South Dakota, in a manner that would shame Burma Shave, we saw signs of the Corn Palace and Wall Drug. Wall Drug this. Wall Drug that. Wall Drug Ice Cream. Wall Drug 5 cent coffee. Wall Drug free ice water. Corn Palace this. Corn Palace that. We even saw DUAL billboards, one half dedicated to the Corn Palace, the other dedicated to Wall Drug. This went on for 300 miles. It’s a long way across South Dakota. The interesting thing was watching the corn thin out and the grasslands appear. Before long, there was nothing but grassland and widely spaced rolling hills. Canaan and I could imagine thundering herds of Bison stomping across the plains. There was an offer to see genuine bison, and every place you could stop that sold food offered Bison burgers. When we got to the badlands, we detoured South and made as quick a romp through them as we could. Road construction, thanks to the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, made this more time consuming than we thought. We enjoyed the badlands and were surprised that they were not rock, but just dirt that had been eroded. They are still eroding. If they got more rain out there, the badlands would just melt away into a non-descript dirt pile. We laughed at the signs that warned of Rattlesnakes. We laughed harder at the signs that warned that the Rattlesnakes were real and not pets. I suppose some tourist from some other country picked one up to have his photo made at one time. I hear that some tourists treat bears in the same manner. Maybe a dim-witted tourist could mistake a wild bear for a tame one, but who would pick up a rattlesnake?? It takes all kinds.
Soon the Black Hills were behind us, but
the hills continued on into Wyoming. As we approached a sing that said DEVILS
TOWER and pointed north, we considered it, but just kept on heading west. After
a few minutes, as we topped some hills and reached a plateau, I looked to the
North and there was Devil’s Tower, probably 15 miles or so off in the distance.
We got out and took some photos. We got to see Devil’s Tower after all. The area around Sundance, Wyoming is the most agreeable area I have seen so far on my trip. Of course, I’ve only seen it in the summertime, but it was beautiful. It is a place I would consider living, based on my summer pass-through. I could see the snow barriers placed at strategic points around the highway. I suspect that it gets far too cold for me there in the wintertime. I had friends who lived in Custer, South Dakota one time. I suspect Sundance, Wyoming is even colder than my friends said Custer was, since the heights at Custer were about what the plateau elevation was around Sundance. No doubt too cold for this Mississippi boy. But it was beautiful. Before you knew it, large mountains loomed in the background. It doesn’t take long to get from the Black Hills to the Rockies, because that was the Big Horn range looming in the background. We saw snow covered peaks for miles and miles before we got there, winding up at about 9PM in Buffalo, Wyoming, finding a room and bedding down for the night. When we checked in, I tried to get my ASCAP discount at the Comfort Inn, since ASCAP has a discount program with Comfort, Clarion, Quality and Sleep Hotels. Though this program is a constantly touted benefit for us ASCAP members, apparently the only ones who know about it are ASCAP and its members. None of these hotels I have ever tried to use this with have heard of the program. “No, we don’t have a discount program with ASCAP,” the lady said. “Are you AAA?” “No ma’am.” “AARP?” she asked. “No ma’am.” “NRA?” she asked, hopefully. “I WAS an NRA member at one time,” I said. “That’s good enough for me,” she said, trying to be helpful in some way. When she told me the rate, I could see why. “That’ll be $136.95 plus room tax and occupancy tax,” she apologetically said. “Ma’am,” we just wanted to spend the night. We didn’t want to purchase an ownership stake in the hotel chain,” I said. “Oh! I’m sorry. I just hate to tell people what the rates are here, but it’s summertime, and tourist time. This is a jumping off place for visits to Yellowstone,” she said, sadly. Times sure have changed in the hotel industry. They charge us a hundred dollars for just a cheap room, but give us a free breakfast that’s worth about 2 dollars. And for that you have to stand in line in a tiny room with lots of tourists, and tourists children, all hoarded up with no situational awareness that there’s anyone else in the room that would like something to eat, too. They seem oblivious to their surroundings. Complete strangers will fight over the last waffle, and will curse each other over the last 3 day old bagel. A 45 dollar motel room is a thing of the past, unless you like to stay in those places frequented by meth and crack addicts. The hundred dollar plus room is here to stay. Our room at the Comfort Inn in Buffalo, Wyoming was delightful, though. The kind lady hotel clerk, after I explained to her, to no avail, what ASCAP was, and how I was a member, told me about a regular Thursday night bluegrass show at the Occidental Saloon just a block down the street. Before I could stop her, she was dialing them up telling them that she had a banjo played in her lobby. Before you know it, I was all set up to go and play with this banjoless bluegrassband at the Occidental Saloon. “Ma’am, I wish you hadn’t have done that. I am dead tired. You say that they will start playing in an hour, but by then, I will have been asleep for an hour. I regret that the bluegrass band will be banjoless again this week, but I’m OUT!” I said as I suppressed a yawn. I WAS tired, and nothing was going to keep me from sleeping. As it turns out, a songwriter friend of mine from Mississippi is friends with the Buffalo Bluegrass Band. I would have been glad to have made his acquaintance, but I was just beat. Though I am feeling more and more like my old self, when I run out of steam, I am out of steam. Rising early the next morning, we continued west, through Cody and Gillette, Wyoming, then on into Montana. Now be prepared for this: When you get to Eastern Montana, you are just scratching the surface. It’s a long, long way across Montana. Billings, or “Billin” as the locals say, is a long way from the Little Bighorn Battlefield site. Missoula is a long way from Billings. Everything is a long way from everything else. They sky is big there.
In the history of mankind, every time stone met steel, stone lost. Someone will wield steel against us one day, and we will lose. If we think it cannot happen to us, we are deluding ourselves. It happened to Rome; but in these modern times it cannot happen to us. If anyone really believes that modern times are any different today than modern times in any other time, they are further deluding themselves. Today’s modern is yesterday’s science fiction, and tomorrow’s quaint history of a simple people, living in the delusion of their own enlightenment. It’s easy to see through the lens of history. I wonder why we can’t seem to remember history, or why it is that we think its lessons are not applicable to us. We are just as foolish as those who came before us; perhaps more so. My visit with Greg Boyd and his family in Missoula must wait until I can write it in great detail. We had a wonderful time there. Then there is our wanderings in California. The Sweet’s Mill Music Festival starts tomorrow. IT is located high in the sierras. I probably will be off line for a few days. More Later!!!! By the way, I neglected to mention that July 4 was my 53rd birthday. When you have CLL, another birthday is a good thing. Another birthday is a good thing even if you DON'T have CLL. We did not stop for that free ice water at Wall Drug, nor did we see the Corn Palace. Somehow, I do not feel like I have neglected myself in any way. I'll ask Canaan and see if he feels like I have slighted him. 6/25/10 News Overdose I have overdosed on news, a dangerous thing. I think the world suffers from this malady as well. We have 24 hour around the clock news – it invades our space, assaults our ears, and damages our thinking. We have news (very little) that consists of the facts, but mostly we have news that has been slanted to a particular worldview. I am so tired of learning of the worldview of others in this sneaky manner. I have my own worldview. It belongs to me. I like the comfort and safety of it and do not like it threatened, though it is safer than one might suppose from the starting tone of this missive. We have statistics (read that as “facts”) reported to us that are cited on the news as evidence of a particular thing, but those statistics reported as facts, upon examination, come from a particular advocacy group, and since the stated function of ANY advocacy group is to bring awareness and relief to the cause being advocated, is it unreasonable to think they would filter the statistics so that only those that advocate their cause be allowed to be visible to those would look? Of course not, since the primary goal of advocacy groups seems to be to advocate for their own survival and prosperity. I am so tired of being “made aware.” I don’t want to be aware anymore. I want to be an ostrich and hide my head in the sand so that the rest of the world will disappear. We recently had two egregious examples of advocacy run amok, though the examples of advocacy run-amok-ness are legion. The European scientific committee charged with the worldwide collection of data on global warming, a term now in the process of being conveniently rehabilitated as “climate change” since the term “global warming” raises the hackles on the backs of so many necks it has become counterproductive, intentionally suppressed data that mitigated the data they chose to release for public and scientific view. This is science turned to politics. Data is data, and evidence is evidence. Those who interpret it have a heavy responsibility to interpret it according to the best scientific means. They do not have the right to filter it. When science chooses to collect, interpret, and release information based on a preexisting belief, that is no longer science, but scientific manipulation for political purposes. This bad behavior finally caught up with the scientific community and they got their hand slapped, but not nearly hard enough. Then, our current political administration got together several peer-reviewed scientists and experts in oil production and operations, and with a single unilateral out-of-hand move issued a moratorium on offshore drilling because of the Deepwater Horizon incident and made it seem that the peer-reviewed experts has unanimously recommended this action. It turns out that they didn’t recommend this at all. They actually said the opposite, and that stopping production and drilling was less safe than continuing, using the analogy that you don’t ban airplanes because one crashed. It turns out that a federal court overturned the administration’s moratorium on the basis of the skewed language the administration used in the issuance of the moratorium, and further ruled that oil production and services companies that have contracts with the government based on leases and permits already in place cannot be deprived of their rights without due process. The administration is angry over this check on its power and no doubt will seek some favorable court that is apt to rule it its favor. Since our president has already pissed off the Supreme Court in his first state of the union address, he may find manipulation of the judicial system an arduous and unrewarding process. Good for the judicial system if he does. Thanks, government, for being so helpful as to interpret the data in accordance with your wishes. I digressed there. I started talking about an overdose of news which led to reports from advocacy groups being reported by the news media as facts which lead to policy, and after having written that, I suppose that is the thing that I am most tired of. Imagine this exchange at a congressional committee hearing on FDA oversight, about a new, controversial drug a pharmaceutical company wants to get on the market FDA Congressional oversight committee chairman: Mr. Phamaceutical, this committee has reviewed the reports of testing and cost/benefit analysis that have been submitted, and quite frankly has found no evidence that this drug has any benefits whatsoever, produces dangerous side-effects, and is extremely expensive. Mr. Phamaceutical: But, Mr. Chairman, did you read Section 171.25.678.9115.d.3 Paragraph 4 on page 3,457 of the report that this new drug would be extremely beneficial to the stockholders of the company at large, not to mention significant benefits to me, personally, and offers a wealth of benefits to the medical community since they, like all other businesses, work on a markup percentage of their cost, and the more cost, the more gross margin in dollars. And I would like to point out, if I may, that while the drug might not be particularly effective, the recurring visits of those with the chronic disease this drug was developed to address, not particularly treat, would keep them coming back for years and years for more expensive treatments. Mr. Chairman: We did notice those benefits, but are concerned that they seemed to be lacking in something that was good for the PATIENT. Mr. Phamaceutical: Obviously, Mr. Chairman, treatment of the patient was an ancillary goal, one on which we had hoped to make more progress than the report indicates, but when we observed that the treatment costs for the mitigation of the serious side-effects alone, using other potent medications, many of which are still under patent by the company, the overall benefit to ourselves and the medical community at large were just too good to pass up. Mr. Chariman: Well you certainly have a good point there. Mr. Committeeman #1 [interrupting, and adjusting his glasses in a scholarly, thoughtful gesture]: Mr. Pharmaceutical, I must ask you about the statistics that have been provided as independent documentation of the efficacy of this drug. Tell us the details about this INDEPENDENT SCIENTIFIC PHARMACEUTICAL STANDARDS RESEARCH INSTITUTE, and why it is that we should accept their findings as fact. Mr. Pharmaceutical: Well, Mr. Committeeman #1, I’m glad you brought that up. The INDEPENDENT SCIENTIFIC PHARMACEUTICAL STANDARDS RESEARCH INSTITUTE was founded by Big East University, and was started as an independent verification organization of research that was to be submitted to the FDA for consideration of approval. It was originally funded by a 3.2 billion dollar direct grant from Congress and had the government’s overwhelming support. Big East University, as you are aware, has an impeccable record of scientific achievement, and their commitment to this institute has brought it to the very forefront of modern scientific thought and achievement. After the original grant money ran out, I am proud to report the Institute has been supported, almost unilaterally, by grants to Big East University from the company I represent. Mr. Committeeman #1 [looking somewhat uncomfortable now]: Tell me how it is that the institute can maintain its independence when reporting on a drug being proposed for approval, when the company requesting approval is the same company that underwrites the existence of the institute. Mr. Pharmaceutical: Oh, Mr. Committeeman #1, the institute was created by an act of CONGRESS, and we make no direct contribution to the institute. We merely provide an annual gift to Big East University, in the impressive amount of 1.15 billion dollars. We have no control over how Big East University chooses to use the money, but we have noticed that they very wisely use half of it to support the institute, and the other half they use as they wish. There is no compromise of the institute’s independence here, since, as you know, academia is not interested in mere money, and their thoughts and motives are purely in intellectual pursuits in the name of pure science and research. Might I also mention here that this drug has the overwhelming approval of the TRAIL LAWYER’S ASSOCIATION? This is an ancillary benefit that will inject millions of dollars into the economy, and help provide some wealth redistribution in the way of settlements and payments that the government thinks is so important right now. Of course, that money will come from the deep pockets of the insurance companies, and not from my company or the government. The insurance companies have plenty of money. Mr. Committeeman #3 [longing to sound intelligent and now seizing his chance]: Mr. Chairman, I can vouch for Big East University, since I matriculated there, graduated from Big East Law School, and hold several degrees in addition to my JD, most of which are honorary. You know, they recently completed the COMMITTEEMAN #3 building of the PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY research park and let me say, as an alumnus of Big East, I am proud that this company here before us, with their impeccable record of service to the medical community was able to make those contributions to Big East which makes a tremendous amount of medical research possible, not to mention that big sky boxe at Big East-Pharmaceutical Company Stadium we all enjoy so much. Mr. Chairman [banging his gavel]: Well, that settles it. With credentials like that, if the INDEPENDENT SCIENTIFIC PHARMACEUTICAL STANDARDS RESEARCH INSTITUTE of Big East University recommends the approval of this drug, who are we mere mortals to interfere? This new drug, known under the trade name of Avaricium, is hereby approved, the previous rejection by the FDA notwithstanding. [banging his gavel again] This committee meeting is forthwith adjourned. Everyone rises to leave as aides toting Blackberries, laptops, and mountains of files and paperwork begin to gather all their belongings and scurry out. The committee members linger, shaking hands and smiling for the cameras, looking important and proud of the significant contributions they make to all of mankind in their work on this committee. Mr. Pharmaceutical turns to Mr. Chairman and Committeeman #1 and #3 and asks, “We still on for that ten o’clock tee time tomorrow?” Mr. Chairman, “Sure!” Mr. Committeeman #1, “And Beni-Hana’s tonight?” Mr. Pharmaceutical, “Oh, yes. Reservations at eight in the private upstairs clubroom. I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Bring your wives or your girlfriends, but don’t bring BOTH!” Everyone laughed at this except Mr. Committeeman #1 who thought they might have been referring to a particular incident in his recent past. He frowned for a moment, and then decided that this was just innocent good ol’ boy fun, and his smile returned. Mr. Committeeman #3 said, as they were all walking out the door, “Did I tell y’all that Committeeman #3 Junior has been admitted to Big East graduate school this fall? He is going as the recipient of the PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY FELLOWSHIP, and will be studying abroad his first semester. All expenses paid!” Mr. Chairman, smiling, a hand on Committeeman #3’s shoulder, “A chip off the old block! We know you’re proud of Junior.” Everyone smiled and congratulated him, and the sound of laughter could be heard as they exited the committee room, patting each other on the back, their voices trailing off, turning into mere murmurs as they strolled down the hall until finally, not a whisper of a sound could be heard in the now empty room except for the rustle of papers as the custodian began picking them up off the floor, preparing the room for the next day’s meeting of the Congressional Investigative Harassment Committee for the Political Wishes of the Administration, a similar committee to the one that investigated Howard Hughes; a committee similar to the one which so correctly accused him of contempt of congress. Ol’ Howard and me have that in common, with this difference: If this Congress called me to testify before them, they’d be able to accuse me of contempt before I even got there, because I’d throw a congressional summons in the garbage. They’d have to fetch me; and they would, they certainly would. CLL? They tell me I still have it. I know that I have been depressed about it as what I have been through for the past year and a half sinks in, even though I am doing well right now. I have never dealt with any kind of depression before and this is new for me. I am in a funky malaise which is completely unlike any me I have ever experienced before. I used to meet challenges headfirst and just dive in. Now, it seems like I see challenges and just want to shrug my shoulders, and just sit quietly on the front porch. This new me is so unfamiliar, I seem to be merely a distant, almost casual observer of what is going on in me. I am watching it with great interest, though through the lens of a distant resignation. Maybe this new me is the one that just accepts and observes, without wanting to DO. If this is how the new me is, then I don’t like it. I want the old me that DID, that thrived on DOING. I seem to have misplaced him somewhere. If you see him, would you let me know his whereabouts, and admonish him to come right back home, where his absence has been noted. Maybe, like all Mississippians, I just forgot about the humid heat of summer. It is always hotter than our memories of the heat. We should know better than that. Maybe, I’ll talk this over with Hemosapien when I go see him on Monday. Maybe he’ll have something to say about it other than, “Hmmmmm.” If I have ever suffered from depression in my life, I am not aware of it. Is this what it is like? I don’t know! I’ve been depressed for a couple of hours many times, a full afternoon on numerous occasions, and a full sleepless night a couple of times, but it never felt like this for this long. I am in uncharted waters, but I am not alone. As our federal government, our Gulf state governments, and the oil companies try to deal with a blowout of a deep-water oil well, they have all realized that they are in uncharted waters. The script is being written as the play unfolds. Having just come to that conclusion, the writing of it has made me feel much better. Isn’t that simply the way life is? I do know this. BP’s Tony Hayward has had his hands full. He has had his hands so full he lost his presence of mind. He whined that he would like to get his life back. I cannot think of a worse complaint for any human being to have actually had the gall to vocalize. The eleven men who died when the Deepwater Horizon exploded might like to have their lives back, too. I know the families and loved ones of those killed would like to have their lives back. With all the problems he is facing, Tony Hayward should be glad that some big, normally good-natured Louisiana coon-asses haven’t looked him up and delivered to him a first class ass-whipping. It’d only take one, but they might like to form their own committee. I can see them now, all decked out in purple and gold, maybe black and gold wearing their LSU and Saints tee-shirts and perhaps a cap that says, “Burkhalter,” or “Halliburton,” or maybe “Exxon,” making their way from Heathrow airport through the streets of London, their faces white with terror as they zoomed through the city streets with everyone driving on the wrong side of the road, getting out at BP headquarters, and going into the building, their spokesman, in his NOMEX coveralls, an embroidered patch on his breast saying “Kirby Marine,” politely saying to the lobby receptionist, a sweat-stained band around the rim of the cap he has taken off his head and holds in his hand as he speaks to her, “Ma’am, my name is Broussard. We yawl here from sout’ Loo-zee-Anna, From Laf-FAH-yette, from New Iberia and Breaux Bridge, from Pierre Parte and Labadieville, from Houma and N’awlins, from Plaquemines and Head-of-Island. We come here to see dat tam Tony Hayward! If you would be so kahnd as to fahnd him farrus, we’d ‘preciate it, ma’am.” There are things far less plausible! God bless them, each and every one!! 6/14/10 Making Acquaintances with myself, Isaac, and Izaak
Acquaint yourself with your own ignorance. Isaac Watts
“Pleased to meet you,” I said to my formerly non-ignorant self. “Where have you been all these years?” “I have been laboring under the self-inflicted millstone of a misconception that I was less ignorant than I actually am,” my former self replied. “Thus placing yourself at a terrible disadvantage?” the new, ignorant me asked. “Exactly,” I replied, “But, unfortunately, I didn’t realize it until now,” the new me said back to the old, less-ignorant me. “Why have you been unwilling to admit that there is very little you know?” I asked me. “Pride . . . arrogance . . . a lack of humility . . . a false humility . . . vanity! All of the above, none of the above. I don’t know. I am too ignorant to have an intelligent answer to this. The only thing I am not ignorant of is that I seem to have wasted a lot of time with information that was without knowledge, and knowledge that was without wisdom . . . just a false bravado, an inflamed chutzpah to which I had no title, without any substance,” I replied. "What remarkable insight led you to this revelation?” the new me asked the old me. “I don’t know that the insight was remarkable. I suppose the remarkable thing was how long it took for me to realize that the things I read that dealt with man’s ignorance were applicable to ME,” I said, “I somehow thought that I was exempted.” “A common mistake. One sees this all the time. Those most in need of self-ignorance recognition seem to be those who look only for ignorance in others,” I said. “Ignorance sure is easy to spot in others,” I said, glassy-eyed, gazing off into the distance as the ignorance of others flashed before my eyes like slide film from an old, school slide projector before the slides of others all morphed into stills of me, saying and doing ignorant things. I dropped my head at the sight of this and added, “It sure is hard to see me up there on the screen.” Both of the ME’s present were having the same vision, of course; one of me not appreciating the things spotlighted on the projector screen, and the other me just beside myself with the exposure and revelation of ignorance that, now brought to light, could be corrected. “Where to begin?” I sighed. “You’ve already begun,” I said. “But how do I fix things?” I asked myself. “You can’t fix things that are beyond your grasp. You can only address them differently as they come back into your sphere of influence. You can apply whatever new knowledge and wisdom that has replaced your ignorance, but you can’t be too sure. You can only do your best. If you are too confident and curt, you will be relapsing into your old, ignorant ways from which you have just recently been liberated. You don’t want that!” I said. “No, I don’t want that. I just don’t know what to do,” I said. “You don’t have to DO anything, except to not reinforce your own ignorance in the future,” I said back. “But can’t I get educated?” I asked. “By whom would you be educated?” I asked myself, sort of with a snort, “Who can you trust to give you information that you can assimilate into knowledge which when combined with experience will yield wisdom?” “Then I must educate myself,” I said. “You can certainly do that. But you must always have the TRUTH as your goal, and that is a moving target for humans, based on our perceptions at the time. There is an absolute truth out there; you should always strive for it, even if it leads you to places where you would not go, and not be satisfied until you have apprehended it. You must also be unafraid to admit that the truth you once thought absolute has now shifted itself into a truth that is not the same as when you started. This is not because the truth has changed, but because YOU have changed and can see things now that were once occluded,” I said. I thought about this for a minute. I seemed unable to wrap my arms around it. It was elusive and dangerous. I was not comfortable with the whole idea. “It might seem to some that I was now basing my faith on a truth that is changing, not absolute. That somehow I was incorporating ‘relativism’ into my faith, endorsing ‘situational ethics’ as it were, which I cannot rationally reconcile.” “How it seems to some is not your responsibility. They could be misinterpreting you from within the basis of their own ignorance which they have not yet seen in themselves. And besides that, you are speaking of faith, not knowledge. We cannot be ignorant in our faith. It is our faith. Faith is not knowledge. Faith is not based on knowledge. Faith is faith. We can only successfully modify our faith as our wisdom increases. We never modify or faith based on information or knowledge, alone.” “You seem somewhat sure of yourself,” I said. “I am at the moment. It may be that I later realize my ignorance about all this and change my mind. The only thing I am certain of is that if we think God has changed, then we should examine ourselves very closely. It is entirely likely that God is not the one changing.” I said with a smile. “I just hope that God shows me mercy in this ignorance of mine, and shows me what He would have me do when my wits fail me and seem to point in separate, diametrically opposite directions,” I said. “Now, the new, ignorant you is starting to come through,” I said. “I thought that the recognition of my own ignorance was the first step of an ascending non-ignorance,” I exclaimed. “Another common mistake,” I reminded myself, “one likely to be repeated, often. Keep you eye on this lest it grows within you, unchecked, and becomes a monster you cannot handle.” I just sighed and turned my thought to other things, wondering against all wonder how does one become successful when battling a terminal, unyielding ignorance. I had access to my own thoughts and could tell what I was thinking. Before I could come up with an answer that would contradict my recent self-revelations, undermining what has been so poignantly taught to me recently, the scriptures were brought to my memory, the words of Jesus, Himself, and I quoted them silently to myself, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” I decided to let it lay right there for the moment. Perhaps, forever. Before I sign off, let me leave myself another quote from another famous Isaac/Izaak. Izaak Walton, from THE COMPLEAT ANGLER.
The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping.
I think I’ll go fishing. Saturday, June 12, 2010 The Gulf oil spill is a terrible, terrible disaster. I have lived close enough to the Gulf of Mexico to catch the smell of a salty breeze all my life. I live as far away from the Gulf as I ever plan to right now. I never want to be too far away. The people who live along the Gulf have survived many disasters, all of them, to my recollection, were natural disasters, except this one. The people of the Gulf will survive this one, too, but it is certainly of a different character. Everything is cause and effect, with the variable here being that mankind is operating outside of the zone of knowledge in an extremely hostile environment; we may as well be operating on the moon as operating at a mile deep. I am absolutely astounded, though, and deeply troubled, not only from this disaster, but also by the comments I am hearing from some segments of the American people, particularly those who are calling for the government to seize the assets of BP. I don’t think some truly realize what they are calling for, while some others are completely cognizant of the gravitas and import of their statements, which I find even more worrisome. Our schools have failed us if American citizens who passed through any civics class think for one single instant that our government should seize ANY assets belonging to others, FOR ANY REASON. If any BP executives have committed a crime, then let them face criminal charges and have their day in court. If BP has committed civil offenses, then let those who have been damaged file their lawsuits for damages and argue their cases in court, then, if a judgment is forthcoming, let BP pay up or have their assets seized in the manner according to law. Generations ago laws were written to give corporate entities the status of a person, thus any violation of corporate rights becomes a violation of personal rights. If the government can just seize BP’s assets because the government is angry and thinks it is necessary, then what will YOU do when the government is angry at you and thinks it is necessary to seize YOUR assets? Where is the ACLU on this issue? Why have they not spoken out about these clamors for asset seizure, some of which are coming from congressional delegates and other government leaders? Even worse that those who call for this out of ignorance are those who call for this who believe that our government (or any government) is a benevolent entity and should have its hand in controlling everything. This is even more dangerous and disingenuous. There are those who despise capitalism to the degree that they would love to see the institution fail. Capitalism is our source of production. It is those who produce something of value that give us an economy. Government produces nothing, Government adds value to nothing. Government does not create wealth. Government can only tax wealth and redistribute it, mostly to perpetuate itself. It is the government that placed restrictions on drilling near shore and allowed oil companies to drill in deep water in compensation for those restrictions. It has been indicated that the government failed to supervise and regulate the rigs as they should (not to say that BP is not culpable). It is the government who chose to stand back and let BP give its best efforts to mitigate the damages of the well, which was probably the best thing because no one in the government has any experience in deep water drilling operations or salvage, other than in the collecting and filing of permits and paperwork. If BP chooses, they can invoke their maximum legal and congressionally approved maximum liability limit of $75Million. If I were BP’s corporate counsel, this is exactly what I would recommend, and if I were the board of directors, exactly what I would do. This is precisely why that law was passed, since oil companies knew that there could be tremendous difficulties in dealing with problems in deep water, and no prudent way to mitigate the damages. What a tangled web has been spun around us! In the calls for a moratorium on deep water drilling, which has been implemented amid further calls to stop all offshore drilling, how many of those who clamor for greater restrictions have parked their cars and started riding their bicycles? We are addicted to energy, and portable energy means petroleum. Get ready to pay more. A LOT more. A century ago our government thought it beneficial to break up Standard Oil due to the monopoly it held on petroleum production and distribution. That proved to be a wise idea. Standard Oil was split into seven independent companies. Somewhere along the way in the past twenty years of so, the government decided that it was OK if some of those sister companies got back together. Exxon and Mobil merged. And though BP was not a Standard oil spin off, it merged with AMOCO, which was. Guess what we have now? You’ve heard this before, and recently . . . companies that are too big to fail! The already overburdened government will have to bail out BP, who, being too big to fail, will be prevented from filing bankruptcy, unless it’s just the US subsidiary that is allowed to do so, which is only PART of BP and not BP itself. I am also watching the conspiracy theories developing around the Deepwater Horizon incident with great interest. Obviously, there are those with creative, imaginative minds who simply have too much time on their hands. Those developing conspiratorial explanations I have heard thus far include:
How long are Bush and Cheney going to be blamed for everything? (By the way, it was during Bill Clinton’s tenure that BANKS were deregulated!)
The president is in over his head. Congress is in over their head. BP is in over THEIR head. The mile deep water is over all their heads. We are in uncharted territory. We’ll have to trust others to get this done. In the long run, whatever is accomplished, it’ll be the best creative efforts of scientists, engineers, mechanics and laborers (most of whom will come from the private sector, not the government) that gets it done, not political rhetoric. Seizing assets? What will you do when the government comes to seize YOUR assets? “But this BP thing is different. This is a major deal,” you might say. “You’ll think it’s a major deal when the government comes to seize your minor assets,” I might rightly say back. “It’s not the same,” you may persist in arguing, but me, not being persuaded by the validity of your arguments will just sit there, shaking my head, wondering where in the world is the ACLU on this issue. The citizens must demand that the government operate within the limits proscribed to it by the Constitution. I think the citizens are beginning to take that concept seriously, except for an extremely loud, obstreperous few, who have no idea of what it is that they are wishing for. I see this grassroots clamor for less government intrusion from the Tea Party activities. The same congressmen and senators who, in spite of all the polls that indicated otherwise, refused to believe that we citizens really did NOT want this juggernaut of a health care bill passed it anyway, all while exempting themselves from it by allowing themselves to keep a much better insurance. They further infuriate the public by continuing to say, to themselves and publicly, that they have simply not done a good job of EXPLAINING it to us, as if to say that we are simpletons, unlike them, and just can’t understand what a wonderful thing they have done for us. No wonder the Tea Party seems to be gaining momentum. If our president waves his presidential finger and declares, “BP, your assets are forthwith seized,” you’d better stand back and get ready for your own assets to be seized. Poor President Obama. In spite of all his immaculate Ivy League education, he is so far over his head he can’t grab his ass with both hands. He is not alone, though, and has plenty of company. I find that terribly disappointing. He has to bribe members of his own party to support legislation that he thinks is important. He seems ashamed of the very nation he is the president of. Circumstances revealed to him only after becoming president have made it impossible to keep many campaign promises he made as a candidate. He was forced to come to grips with the realization that those detainees in GITMO are DANGEROUS. He snubs our allies and bows to those who despise us. He wants to be a good guy. He wants to be a good president. He moves to the center and his real base on the left raises mortal hell. He moves further to the left and the very people who got him elected abandon him (that would be independent moderates). He can’t, or is unwilling, to protect our borders, not wanting to offend Hispanic voters, when OVERWHELMINGLY, the polls indicate that Americans think this is important. He can’t even give a high school commencement address without a student falling asleep as he is telling them how important it is for each of us to be personally responsible and not point fingers or look for scapegoats, as he was doing his damnedest to point fingers, not be responsible, and find that scapegoat. Perhaps he would fare better if words were something he used less and heard more. Perhaps if he really believed what came out of his own mouth it would serve him better. Perhaps if he actually STOOD for something we could all have more respect for him. I sure would like to. He is our president, after all. I hope and pray that he is our one-term president, and unless the economy dramatically improves, he will be limited to that one-term; but I don’t think so. I think it will get worse, and I think that after Republican and Democrat incumbents alike get sent home, it’ll be a while before any liberal gets elected to anything. Maybe he’ll want his cabinet secretary to get the boot off of ANYONE’s neck. Maybe he’ll stop looking for an ass to kick and simply ENFORCE the law (including the immigration laws), which is the responsibility with which he is charged as President of the United States of America. I wish him the best. Barack Obama, in all fairness and candor, has done as bad a job, and as good a job as anyone else could have on the gulf oil spill. He is not personally the culprit of this disaster. There is an old adage that says, “May you live in interesting times.” That is us. These are certainly interesting times. “What has this got to do with CLL?” I heard someone shout out above the roar of the rock throwing illegal immigrants who were foolishly throwing rocks at armed US Border Patrol agents along the banks of the Rio Grande between El Paso and Juarez as Mexican soldiers pointed their guns at our federal agents; I heard it above the noise on the Turkish ship as it was being boarded by the Israeli soldiers who, holding guns in their hands were being foolishly attacked with steel rods and broken bottles; I heard it above the cries of distress beacons set off by a 16 years old girl whose foolish (perhaps criminal) parents let her attempt to sail around the world in an inadequate vessel and into the Southern Indian Ocean in the summertime; I heard it above the wails and mourning of pelicans, terns, dolphins, Redfish and Red Snapper, oystermen, shrimpers, and other fishermen, oil rig workers, tourist industry workers, and all those whose livelihoods depend on a healthy, thriving Gulf of Mexico; I heard it above the cries of those who think it is a crime of the highest self-serving hypocrisy for our government officials to respect the JONES ACT at this very time while simultaneously ignoring our immigration laws; I heard it above the noise of public relations grandfalloons spewing forth from the mouth of Tony Hayward in 60 second TV commercials; I heard it above the shouts of traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as the sell orders continue to come in, and the assets everyone thinks BP has an unlimited amount of dwindle before everyone’s eyes since the largest part of their assets is wrapped up in the value of their stock;. And moreover, I heard it over the cries of those who continue to demand that they get something for nothing, which is always a BAD trade. One day, you’ll stop asking me that. 5/30/10 A Reluctant Writer I have been needing to update my blog, but reluctant to do so. My last writing I left like a Saturday matinee serial. It's like I left Gene Autry right in the middle of being surrounded by the bandits, his six-gun empty (a very RARE thing in a western . . . I wish I could get a pistol like that!!!), Champion hobbled, the stagecoach stationmaster’s helpless daughter a hostage being menaced by an unwashed bearded man, and Pat Buttram knocked unconscious. The suspense! The Suspense! The fever subsided at sunrise. I have had no hint of fever since then. The chest cold diminished into weeks of coughing to remove its last vestiges, which still linger. This has been a durable, persistent malady passed around my entire family. It turned to strap in my wife and my son-in-law. I have avoided it thus far, absolutely not wanting any trace of strep. Things are returning to normal, though. In the midst of the sufferings with the cold, I had an old friend return for a visit, and I spent all Wednesday night, May 19, in the emergency room with a kidney stone. It was a small one, but it felt like a baseball. I managed to pass it in the hospital. The CT scan they gave me indicated that I had another one, a small one, but it was located in a place where it would be content to remain until it got much larger. Lucky me!! I am not complaining. I am merely observing and reporting. Over the years I have had occasional bouts with kidney stones, having had lithotripsy twice. I’ll take this as my banner, just like Harding’s presidential campaign slogan, “A Return to Normalcy!” Occasional kidney stone or active cancer?? Hmmmmmm! Let’s see . . . . .! What to do? It’s certainly not like trying to decide what kind of dessert I want after a big dinner. It’s not like trying to decide what color paint to put on the walls in the guest room. It’s not like trying to decide which household chore I will tackle first. It’s not even like I can make a decision at all. It just is what it is. If I could choose, I’d take the kidney stone, though they can be an egregious violation of comfort and a quiet, peaceful existence. All in all, as I have said before, I still feel my old self returning. I am thankful for that!!! My friend Margaret has received a cancer-free green flag from her recent CT scan. Margaret will continue to take chemo on a maintenance basis that will harass and destroy any free floating cancer cells that may be loose in her body. I say that there are none, but the maintenance doses of the chemo are an insurance that her doctor (and mine) thinks is wisely applied. Many prayers went up to heaven for Margaret. They were offered in faith. By faith, the prayers were answered. Here’s to Margaret returning to NORMALCY, with a new and improved perspective on what’s important in life; and may that life with her husband and family be lived out of an abundance that flows from heaven so that there is not room to gather it all in. May that abundance spill over to fill other’s lives in the most real, and fulfilling manner. In all honesty, the better I feel, the less I find to write about. I must not let this happen. I have been busy at work, and looking forward to my trip to Montana and California in July. Canaan and I will have a good time on our road trip. One thing has certainly changed for me. If you get me home, it has become extremely difficult to get me to leave. I have noticed that it can be difficult to get others to leave here, too. I am so thankful to have a home in which me, my family, and my friends find peace and plenty. Debbie has adopted a new rule, though. She got it after reading a small book of Ben Franklin quotes that had been laying about the house. Ol’ Ben said, “Fish and visitors begin to stink after three days!” I was already familiar with this. Debbie got the book out and pointed to the phrase. “I have a new household rule or two,” she said, her finger indicating just which rule she had in mind. She showed me the book. “Your rule is that fish and visitors begin to stink after three days? ” I asked, my usual smart-aleck self. “What action is required by this rule which is just an observation?” She patted her foot in impatience and said, “My rule is that since I seldom have guests, I want YOUR guests back to their own homes before they begin to stink in mine!” “That’s just one rule. What is the other one?” I asked. “There is a big difference between our friends and our friend’s pets,” she said. “And?” I asked with raised eyebrows. “In all our years of marriage and travels, we have never inflicted our pets on our friends and their homes. We have kenneled our dogs, or made arrangements for them to be looked after in our absence. We have never traveled with our pets.” A moment of silence ensued as I reflected on what she had said. She was right, we have never traveled with our dogs. We both would have thought it such the height of discourtesy to inflict our dogs on our guests that it never occurred to us to do so. “Continue, please ma’am,” I said. “Their dogs and cats are not welcome here or in our house,” she said. “Well, being the country, it should be an easy thing to keep the dogs out of the house.” I said. “No, it’s not. We have country dogs. Our dogs will not enter the house except upon certain invitation. They run free all the time. They either learn at an early age the hazards of the road, or at an early age they meet their demise. It is the way of free running country dogs. Our guests dogs are invariably city dogs and house dogs. They must be supervised or restrained at all times. If restrained, they whine and cry until their master's hearts are breaking. They are then gathered into the arms of their loving masters who look at me like I am an evil person cause I don't want their FiFi in my house. Invariably, their inattentive masters let their dogs slip in between their feet and enter the house with them inadvertently. Or the dog sits at the door and whines and scratches my front door, paws at my porch furniture, harasses and barks at our own dogs, who LIVE here, and wind up inside, on my furniture, marking their territory in the most conspicuous and inconspicuous places, having my human food containers used as dog watering and food dishes, which I do not like, and leaving their dog hair all over the place. Even worse, our dog-toting guests say, in a very imposing and discourteous manner, ‘Well, I’ll just hold FiFi in my lap while she is inside so she won’t bother anything,’ making me feel guilty for their inconsiderate behavior, when the truth of the matter is that I don’t want FiFi in my house, at all. Not in a lap, not in a box, not in a pet carrier, not in a garbage bag. My asthma notwitstanding; I don't need a REASON, medical or otherwise, to NOT want something in MY OWN HOUSE. “I do not like it and no longer want friends to bring their dogs here at all. Invariably FiFi or Spot or whatever the dog's name, has, as the dog whisperer would say, an owner that needs to be rehabilitated. They treat their dogs like they were people and not like the dogs they are. I simply no longer want to be bothered with them. Dogs are not welcome. And cats are not welcome because our own dogs are liable to kill them, and I do not want this as a liability or blemish on any friendship when a cat is killed by our dogs and I am not even remorseful. Neither of us care anything about a damn cat!” “You realize that this will make our home off limits to some of our friends,” I said. “I no longer care. I love our friends and your music friends, but I do not want their dogs and cats here. Period! I will consent to be inconvenienced by the CHILDREN, but no longer their pets,” she adamantly said, hands on her hips, glaring down at me as I was sitting in a chair on the porch from which, broom in hand, she had just chased one of our own dogs. How would it be that she will not allow our own dogs to sit on her porch furniture, but must allow this of the dogs of others; too graceful to even say anything, much less chase them with a broom. It was truly more than any adult should have to bear in their own home. Debbie doesn’t ask for much. She is a marvel of grace and forbearance, but I think she has had enough. If I am a King in my own home, it is because I have a Queen who has made a home worthy of a King’s residence. I know when to defer to the Queen; all wise Kings do. I would not have my Queen feel like she is playing second fiddle to ANY dog. That would be a terribly misplaced set of priorities. Sorry, FiFi! 5/12/10 A New Development: Unwelcome but not Entirely Unexpected
This is a powerful statement. We have so much information at our fingertips, at every beck and call, that we are overwhelmed. Yet, has this glut of information produced more WISDOM? More KNOWLEDGE? It does not seem so to me. Here’s an interesting bit of knowledge, a significant bit of information: Hemosapien had long since told me that the chances of me getting a secondary infection and this being the cause of my demise were far greater than a death directly attributable to CLL. HE also has told me that it is remarkable that I have remained infection free throughout my whole course of treatment. It is unremarkable that I am remarkable! It seems those days are behind me now. A bad cold has been passed around my house and extended family for two weeks now. First my son, then my granddaughters and daughter, my son-in-law, then Debbie! Now it’s my turn. Saturday, May 8, early in the morning, I felt like a million bucks. It was exhilarating to realize that nothing ached, nothing hurt, I was well rested, and I felt as if I had never been through chemo. I felt so good I just had to tell someone, so I sent an e-mail to someone who would appreciate my feeling good. This is what I sent Hemosapien: This morning, this stormy, windy Saturday morning, I am at the very edge of recapturing my former self. I am so thankful for that. I got back a response from him that I won’t share here, because it was personal, and let’s just say that he was glad that I was feeling good and gave me a big AMEN!! Unfortunately, two hours after sending that e-mail, I began to get that tell-tale roughness in the back of my throat. Two hours later I was in a sneezing fit, and just a wad of nerves and dripping snot. I kept the bad head cold until Monday afternoon, when the cold decided to head South. I had no fever when this was a head cold, but the chest cold has led to a significant fever, and enough coughing that my entire rib cage feels like an old football must feel after having been punted and kicked throughout its life. I again e-mailed Hemosapien: For the first time since October 2008, I have a cold. Everyone at my house has had it, finally me. Last night, fever 102. This morning, fever 100. I also had hard shakes and chills with the fever. Ever the prudent doctor, here is his response: If fever comes back > or = 101, or if shakes/chills return, then you need to contact the office and come immediately for labs, x-ray and blood cultures. This would include the ER if after hours. I knew this is what he would say. The reason for this caution? An absolute neutrophil count of 1200 and an absolute lymphocyte count of 900 means that my body has no really effective way of dealing with this infection itself, and UNCHECKED, the infection could rage, easily getting out of control. So here it is, 1:00AM. Twenty minutes ago, my temperature was 101.8°F. I took some ibuprofen earlier, and am watching it come down. At the moment, it is 100.4°F. Unfortunately, the ibuprofen does not get at the root cause of the fever; it just reduces it, thus MASKING the true nature and severity of one’s infection. Had I not taken the ibuprofen, Hemosapien’s instructions would have me on the way to the ER right now. So right here, right now, I am making myself this promise: If my ibuprofen reduced fever gets to that 101°F degree mark, I am going to the ER. I hope it waits until morning to do so. I’d rather go to Hemosapien’s office than go to the ER. Of course, fever always declines with the daylight, so if it waits until morning, it’ll wait until tomorrow evening. We’ll see. I’ll keep you posted. Maybe you can use this bit of knowledge. It could turn out that the information I have is information without knowledge; and that the knowledge I have is knowledge without wisdom. Keep your fingers crossed. I am monkeying around with, and rationalizing my way around something that is dangerous. I must not be too flippant about it. 1:30AM: Temp 100.6°F 2:00AM: Temp 100.8°F 2:05AM: Temp 101.3°F I swear that 102°F is the get off my rear end mark, though it seems to me that this digital thermometer I have swings wildly. What it lacks in calibration and accuracy is made up in ease of use, however, I’m looking for accuracy. And while I am writing this, worried about a point or two in my temperature, I get an e-mail from a worried grandmother asking for prayer for her grandson who was rushed this evening to Children’s Hospital at UAB in Birmingham for complications with his diabetes. The complication? Ketoacidosis, his grandmother said. I will know more about ketoacidosis in just a few minutes. The prayers would not wait, but were sent forth immediately. 5/1/10 May Day! Nothing to Write
Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so. Cicero I could not let May Day pass without writing something, yet I have nothing to write ABOUT. Even though this places me on shaky, perhaps even dangerous ground, I decided to take Cicero’s advice and am writing and saying so. When there is (thankfully!) nothing happening on the CLL front, it is easy to neglect the blog, and sufficiently neglected, I will lose my readers. With no CLL news to report, today, then it is life with CLL I must write about, and there is plenty of life going on all around me, and though I am in remission, they tell me that I have still have CLL; consequently anything I write about life will be about life with CLL. I must enjoy life with CLL and make note of it while I am in its midst, lest I become ungrateful or negligent of the NOW happening all around me. I started this with a quote from Cicero. Marcus Tullius Cicero lived from 106 BC to 43 BC. He was a Roman philosopher, orator, Senator, and statesman. He served in the Roman consul in the republic before Julius Caesar became dictator. He was later invited by Caesar to join in the first triumvirate with Pompey. Cicero declined because he saw this as dangerous to the existence of the Republic. He was right. He later ran afoul of Mark Antony who, as a member of the second triumvirate, was the executor of Caesar’s intentions. It seems that Cicero and Mark Antony had never been on friendly terms. Cicero, always in defense of the Republic and crying out against the dictatorship of Caesar, was declared a public enemy and fled Rome. Mark Antony’s henchmen caught up with him on his way to board a ship bound for Macedonia. Under the direction of Antony, Cicero’s was beheaded. Mark Antony had also demanded that the hands which had penned so many attacks against him be cut off, and Cicero’s severed head and hands were put on display in the Roman Forum. Mark Antony later ran into troubles of his own, as later did Julius Caesar. Those were troubled times. Cicero’s letters to his friend, Atticus, are so plentiful and detailed in their descriptions of events and personalities, they still today serve as an historical account of the times in which he lived. I suppose that when Cicero was not led to write in general, he was led to write letters to Atticus. His writing cost him his head; mine costs me nothing. The reader is left to make his own decision as to the value of each writer’s work. It should not be difficult to decide which body of work has more value. There were so many great minds in Rome! We have been taught that Romans were never original; that they borrowed their philosophy, art and even their gods from Greece. I have considered this and have chosen to reject it, though the idea is not completely devoid of merit. The Romans were like everyone else. They did not live in a vacuum. Even the Greeks got the seeds of their thinking from SOMEWHERE, though it has not been sufficiently recorded for us to determine who their original examples were. The Romans built on what they had. While they may have been lacking in the originality of their religion and philosophy, they had no lack in their ability as engineers, though they derived the seeds of their engineering skills from somewhere, too. The Greeks built the Parthenon. This, no doubt, was an inspiration to some future Roman architect. Roads the Romans built two thousand years ago are still viable roadways today. Roman aqueducts still stand all across Europe, and some are still functional. In addition, some Roman engineer figured out that when you grind limestone into a fine powder, fire it in a kiln, then rehydrate it, it will set up like stone in the shape of the mold you have made. Today, we call this concrete. Can you imagine a world without concrete? Even steel bridges rest on concrete foundations. Steel buildings rest on concrete foundations. And reinforced concrete structures and bridges are between us and everywhere we would travel on a highway or back-road. Thank goodness for concrete. Thank goodness for the Romans. But, some might say, “Well, the invention of concrete was inevitable; the Romans were just lucky.” That is like saying the writings of Shakespeare were inevitable, that if Shakespeare himself had not written them, then certainly someone else would have. That is like saying that random chemicals in some tidal pool, somewhere, long, long ago, were provided the perfect conditions of heat and electrical stimulus in the form of lightning to begin to arrange themselves into increasingly complex chemicals, resulting in increasingly complex carbon-based chains that over eons of time became organic chemicals, then incredibly complex chains of amino acids, then cells, then cells capable or reproducing themselves, and then making the leap all the way to this computer I am sitting at while I am writing this. I’d say that’s a stretch. Call me an ostrich, but I think a CREATOR is a more rational explanation than a level of probability that expands into a nearly infinitesimal number of places to the right of the decimal. If it’s proof we’re after, we can’t find it either way; A measure of Faith is required. To use analogies that are relevant, I must borrow some I have heard. Given enough time, monkeys can continue to arrange notes in a random fashion until they have successfully composed Mozart’s Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra. It has also been said that given enough time, those same monkeys could successfully make a banjo and play Earl Scruggs’ Foggy Mountain Breakdown. While I have a serious problem with the whole monkey/Mozart theory, I am not capable of the imagination that will allow the monkey/Foggy Mountain Breakdown scenario. Not capable, I said. AM I limited by this confessed lack of imagination? I don’t think so. I do wonder where monkeys got all that musical talent, though. Perhaps that is my limitation. Science indicates what science indicates, and I am not anti-science, but THANKFUL for it. My life has been and continues to be immeasurable enriched by the achievements and advancements provided to us at the hands of science. I am reminded of this, though; someone wise once said, “Professing themselves to be wise, they have become fools.” Someone else wise once said, “The fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Having said that, I must now declare that I am wholly in support of science’s empirical method and that it is the job of science to continually limit itself to those things which can be tested and reproduced in a laboratory. Unfortunately, this excludes anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists who, like pure scientists, are observers and recorders, but unlike pure scientists must draw many conclusions where no experiments can be conducted, or experiments unlike those reproducible in a chemistry lab. Things are not so simple where humanity is concerned, as the experimenter or the subject of the experiment. Carry on, though. May every scientist follow his theories until they abandon him, and may they know at which point they have been abandoned. I am certain that this will not be before the grant money runs out. Scientists seldom declare that they have been exploring a dead-end path, and are forthwith RETURNING the grant money! A certain wise man said this: Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error That same wise man also said this: It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own. That man was Cicero. Remember him? I have written this having had nothing to say. Once begun, the writing produced something to say, and it has now been said. Others, having read this may think that having written, I still had nothing to say, or at least nothing worth reading. They are rightfully entitled to their opinion. It sure has a lot of fun for the writer, though, and not for a single instant have I lacked perception of my own faults. I am not a fool. “What has this got to do with CLL?” you ask yourself. Nothing and everything. I will leave it to you to ponder that, since I, having written, now move on to other things. I think I’ll grab a banjo and play Foggy Mountain Breakdown like Earl Scruggs (or as near as I can to Earl Scruggs, which is still lacking SOMETHING!) and think about the possibility of monkeys being able to accidentally do that, wondering how long it will take them, and reflect on my own monkeyshines as I play. It sure took me a long time to learn to play it. I suspect it will take monkeys even longer. I am not sure that monkeys have actually taken this on as a project, yet. I’m sure someone is studying this or something similar with some government grant money, somewhere. When monkeys play Foggy Mountain Breakdown like Earl Scruggs, I swear I will never pick up a banjo again! I laugh at myself! Before I go, I must add that many Facebook friends have wondered where I find all the quotes I paste on my profile. The quotes are all over the place. There are many books and websites which have famous quotations. The only problem one may have is knowing who is worthy of quotation. One does not learn this by watching a lot of TV. Turn it off and get a good book and read. If you don’t already have one (you probably do! At least a copy of Huckleberry Finn, or 1984 left over from your school years), get down to your local public library and get some books written by great thinkers where they tell us what they were THINKING. The folks at your local public library will be glad to help you! The value they represent to their communities is immeasurable. Use this free resource to the limit it is capable of serving you. That is what it is there FOR! (There, Steve McCartney, Chuck Steele, and Aunt Fleta, and librarians everywhere, is a plug for public libraries!) All the works of antiquity and works whose copyright has expired can be found at GOOGLE BOOKS. There is no copyright on works that are over a hundred years old, thus, Twain, Voltaire, Spinoza, Descartes, Rousseau, Calvin, Luther, St. Augustine, Josephus, Grant, Sherman, Lee, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Coleridge, Kipling, Poe, Cicero, Tacitus, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Aurelius, Sun-Tzu, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, Napoleon, Lincoln, Jefferson, Adams (Samuel, John and John Q.), Madison, Hamilton, and hundreds of thousands of others are just a download away. A whole lifetime of investigation and pleasure in it awaits you at the click of a mouse key! Go to http://www.books.google.com Google has books for sale, but the PUBLIC DOMAIN and FULL VIEW books are free. Go to ADVANCED SEARCH and it will give you the options to select only these books. Enter “TWAIN” as the author, and download a Mark Twain book for free. Mark Twain is, arguably, but always on anyone’s short list, America’s greatest author. He is a good place to start. If you like what you read so far, Cicero is there, too. You can spend the rest of your life just studying what Cicero wrote and the things Cicero inspires you to read further, but that’s not necessary unless you are so inspired you can’t help yourself. May you find the great non-fiction or fiction writer, philosopher, or theologian whose work consumes you! May you abandon yourself in a worthy pursuit! You will not find modern pop-psychology here unless you want to PAY for it. What you WILL find is the writing of all the people who INFLUENCED all modern thinkers, upon whose work modern political, theological, philosophical, and social thinking all rest. You will find what the Romans found, and your soul will find nourishment far greater than any modern-day chicken soup, I promise. 04/30/10 Less Haste; More Caution
Soren Kierkegaard Having felt rather poorly all week long, and in my race for the pleasure of my own bed, I made a mistake in taking medications the evening of the 28th, causing me to pass a miserable night and an even worse following day. It seems that the more tired I get, the more my Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) is exacerbated. Arriving home rather late after visiting a friend who had come home to Meridian from his new home on the island of Leyte, in the Philippines, I rushed in to take a shower and go to bed. After my shower, without my glasses on, I reached for the pill bottle that holds the Mirapex, the medication I take to ease the RLS symptoms. The dangerous part here is HASTE and NO GLASSES. I take three (3) Mirapex tablets every evening. They are small white oval pills which the pharmacy usually puts in a small brown pill bottle with a white cap. On my last visit to Hemosapien, he had prescribed some Lasix, which is a diuretic designed to rid the body of excess fluids. Excess fluids have built up in me as a result of the steroids from the chemo, and my feet and lower legs had shown an inclination to painfully swell in the evenings. The Lasix has helped ameliorate those symptoms. I take one (1) Lasix every morning. Hemosapien had warned me not to take it at night since it would interfere with my sleep. The Lasix are also in a small brown pill bottle with a white cap, exactly the same size as my Mirapex bottle. Hmmmm!!! Can you see what’s coming here? The Lasix and Mirapex are both very small white pills. They Lasix is round, the Mirapex oval, but to a farsighted person without his glasses they look identical; just a fuzzy white, soft roundness. In my haste, I grabbed up the Lasix bottle and popped three (3) of them into my mouth and swallowed. They and the Mirapex are so small one does not need any water to take with them. Now, one (1) Lasix gets your bladder working overtime, and three (3) Mirapex may or may not get your RLS under control, but I am here to confirm to you that three (3) Lasix taken in lieu of Mirapex at bedtime is absolutely unacceptable. In my breathless haste in search of the pleasure of sleep, I rushed right past it and went headlong into an all-night vigil of an irritating, restless sleeplessness, loud ringing in my ears, and what seemed to be a garden hose running with reckless abandon attached to my bladder. I managed to drop off to sleep at 6:00AM. It was a fitful, fretful sleep that was welcomed, nonetheless, but interrupted at 6:30 by the ringing of my phone. The workday had started and an employee was returning a call I had made the previous evening. Normally this is not a problem, since I usually am never asleep at 6:30 in the morning. Today, it seemed a harsh intrusion but I could not let this show when talking to an employee who only wanted to verify my instructions in the message I had left the previous day so he could be sure to deliver what I had asked for. It would be bad form to show annoyance at this interruption, particularly since the nature of human words and human communications means that sometimes others do not find the clarity we intended in our words. We all despise ambiguous instructions from our superiors. I managed to suppress my grumpiness, recognized my own fallibility with words since it became clear to me that any reasonable person might have misinterpreted what I meant in my message, and tried to go back to sleep after the cal ended – a foolish endeavor. Once awake, my overactive bladder again reminded me of its own insult, and the phone, as if it were a thoroughbred racehorse ready for a morning’s workout at the track, began ringing non-stop. The day had begun in earnest. My sleeping was over, though my feeling bad was not. I was as miserable yesterday as I have ever been with THIS exception: I knew that my misery was of a self-induced temporary nature. “This, too, shall pass,” was running through my head all day. It was passing all right; right through my kidneys and into my bladder. I looked forward to its complete passing with great jubilation. Last night, with my glasses on my face, I held both pill bottles in my hands. In the left, the Lasix, and in the right, the Mirapex looked back at me. I carefully placed the Lasix back in the bag that hangs by my lavatory. I then took the Mirapex. I then went peacefully and soundly to sleep. This morning, everything seems completely different., perhaps because last night, I did not hurry past my pleasure in a breathless haste. Hemosapien will think this is funny. I think it's funny, too, now. I did not think so yesterday. I laugh at my own folly. From the far-side, this all seems much ado about nothing except for this: May we all be more deliberate with less haste. 4/25/10 Lions 10, Wildebeests 0 The restless, hungry lions claimed a current total (as of this writing) of 10 wildebeests yesterday evening. Three of them were young wildebeests. The wildebeests claimed yesterday were fighting their own personal battles when they were overtaken by the lion shown in the link below, which resulted in the loss of their final battle which was not necessarily the one they had planned. So is it with wildebeests; so is it with lions. http://news.yahoo.com/video/jackson-wapt-18211534/caught-on-camera-yazoo-city-tornado-19307267 The lion has moved on to other things, never giving a second thought to chaos it caused. The remaining wildebeests in that community are mourning. Today, the rest of the wildebeests have returned to normal. Even with the knowing that the lions will one day, perhaps soon, strike again, the grass and trees look a beautiful dark green, the gentle breezes blow on a sunshiny April Sunday afternoon, and they who last night were just merely frightened by the lion’s roar, are putting their heads to the grass and grazing in rich fields; last night’s terror now just a distant memory. “Out! Out! The Buzz-saw snarled!” said the poet, as the others turned to their own affairs. If the wildebeests could talk, they’d say that life can be hard sometimes. I am not making light of the people who had tragic losses in Yazoo City, Mississippi, yesterday. It could have just as easily been me and my family. We had three separate tornado warnings here last night. I watched as one violent storm passed through, one that Doppler radar indicated had a possible tornado, watched the wall cloud descend from the storm cloud, but it failed to produce a funnel. The storm passed on into Alabama, carrying its tornado warning with it. It’s the vacuous wake of this powerful storm came another, very similar. While they were passing over, I felt like the wildebeest that heard the lion’s roar, but was not personally the wildebeest being roared at, and not the lion’s object or particular intention. The lion could have just as easily been after THIS wildebeest. I was just fortunate to escape its attention. My final battle was left for another day. While DEATH GROUND was nearby, it was not the actual ground upon which I found myself, this time. Others, no different than me, and in fact very much like me, were not so fortunate. May the victims of this foul weather and their families know that Peace Which Passes All Understanding. 4/24/10 The Battle Lost; The War Never Changes We fight battles in life, but the outcome of the war never changes. Battles present themselves and we race head-strong to accept the challenge, or when our enemy allows, retreat to fight the battle another day on the ground of our choosing. We do not always have this luxury as sometimes the battle comes to us and with the enemy to our face and the river to our back, we must then stand and fight or face certain defeat, and perhaps face certain defeat anyway. Sun Tzu said: Throw them [the troops] into perilous ground, and they will survive; plunge them into Death Ground, and they will live. If Sun Tzu cannot be fully accepted here, the following things must be stipulated.
Some fight battle after battle, with no respite, only to have death claim them in the midst of their greatest battle. In the long run, there is always one battle we will lose in our personal fight – that is our last battle. The result of it is the same for everyone who is alive. That cheerful bit of human philosophy having been observed, please note the following for a view of someone ELSE’S very personal and real battle, fought valiantly, but lost, nevertheless. It was not my personal battle, but the news of the loss of this battle was painful for me to hear. I am still pained by it. John Donne said, No man is an island!” This bell tolled for me: TUPELO – Mona-from-Tupelo, 45, died Saturday, March 6, 2010, at the Big-as-Texas Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. She was born in 1964, in Houston, Mississippi. She was a homemaker and a member of the Baptist Church in Tupelo. Services will be at 11 a.m. Thursday at the Baptist Church in Tupelo. The Rev. David will officiate. Burial will be in the Chapel Cemetery in near Tupelo. The Funeral Home near Tupelo is in charge of the arrangements. Survivors include her husband; two daughters; her mother; and two brothers of Tupelo. She was preceded in death by her father. Pallbearers will be Tim, Tony, Wes, Rob, Bob, Gene, Rick and Mike. Visitation will be from 9 a.m. to service time Thursday at the Baptist Church and from 2 to 3:45 p.m. Thursday at the Chapel Cemetery. Memorials may be made to the Baptist Church Benevolence Fund. You have been previously introduced to David-from-Tupelo. Debbie and I met him at BATCC during my trip there to start my chemotherapy back in August. He had been there two weeks as the BATCC Allogenic Stem Cell Transplantation unit prepared him to donate bone marrow to his sister, Mona. David indicated that this was his precious sister’s last opportunity to survive her Lymphoma. It was not Mona’s first battle. There had been many. As a child, she had been diagnosed with and successfully combated a Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. David-from-Tupelo indicated to me during dinner one evening that this had been a hard fought battle for her and during that time he and his little sister had become very close. Now, the battle was raging again, but the circumstances very different. As a wife and mother of two young, lovely daughters, the number of people who loved her and depended on her had grown exponentially. Like all of us, she wanted to see her children grow up and present them to the world, armed and equipped to lead successful lives, all shiny and polished. Mona may have thought she had some more work to do, but I’ll bet a dollar to a dime her work on this project was far ahead of where she thought it was; she no doubt knowing from her own childhood battles how precious time was, and just how fragile life can be, and her investments of her precious time in her project carefully chosen to yield the greatest dividend. Now a bone marrow transplant is dangerous business. It is the medical definition of Sun Tzu’s DEATH GROUND. There is no turning back. The enemy is in your face, and a wide, raging river to your back. No retreat; only fight, fight, fight, until the enemy flees or you succumb. When I was first diagnosed, well meaning but un-knowing friends suggested a bone marrow transplant, and volunteered to be the donor if they were a successful match. This sentiment was much appreciated. However, a bone marrow transplant is very complicated and is only used as a last resort; but it SOUNDS so simple. “Why don’t you get a bone marrow transplant?” a friend might ask, adding, ”I’ll be happy to be the donor if I am a match.” “Thank you, but you don’t know what you’re talking about,” I might say back, and could have well had it said back to a well-meaning but misinformed me at one point in my life. Those days are behind me now. The implication here is this: it’s JUST a bone marrow transplant. It’s relatively simple, not major like a HEART transplant. Just take a little of the bad marrow out of the bone to make room for some of the new marrow, and just slip it in there and be CURED! It’s just not that simple. It is FAR more complicated. Here’s an example of just how complicated it can be. The average one-year survival rate for a heart transplant patient is 88%, so 88 out of 100 heart transplant patients are still alive at the end of one year. The national one year survival rate for a Bone Marrow Transplant patient is 54%; so at the end of one year, out of 100 people who had bone marrow transplants, 46 of them lost their final battle. There are so many potential life-threatening and life-consuming complications; I am not going to name them all here. You can GOOGLE yourself and read all about it. Go to GOOGLE and type in “Allogenic Bone Marrow Transplant +complications” and you’ll get page after page, some of which you’ll be able to understand, but lots that will be far beyond the comprehension of the layman except for this: The layman will understand that this is serious business. In battle, the outcome is NEVER certain, but if one were to ask me, I’d rather have the odds of the heart transplant patient than the bone marrow transplant patient any day. Who wouldn’t? For this, there’s no need to have an advanced mathatics degree to be able to decide which set of numbers is the better set. I knew Mona was facing a hard battle. I prayed for her every time she crossed my mind, which was frequently more than once a day. I prayed in faith. Not having heard from David-from-Tupelo with any updates, I decided it was time to e-mail him and inquire about her status. But this is a point in which my faith failed me, or perhaps better said that I failed my faith, because even though I prayed in faith, I had some serious doubt. I decided I’d check obituaries before I sent David the e-mail inquiry. Some faith! That’s when I found the obituary above. I was crestfallen. I called Debbie. Together, we mourned the passing of someone we never met, and now will never meet this side of heaven; though her brother made her, her family, and her battles known to us. Not only that, but Mona and I shared a common bond in blood cancer. Her battle, more immediate, desperate and challenging than mine at THIS MOMENT, was nevertheless my battle, too, in the long run. I shared that with Mona. We still share that, though she has faced her final battle, and her war is over. In the end, the results of the war all lead to the same place for all humanity: the final battle. May we all face the struggle in our battles, right up to and through our final one, with the determination and grace that David-from-Tupelo witnessed in his sister and so ably communicated to me. When I worked up my nerve I sent David this e-mail: Hello, David! I am so sorry to hear of your sister's passing. I know this was a terrible blow to you and her entire family. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but did she ever actually have the bone marrow transplant? If so, what complications did she face? I have had a lot of people inquiring about her after reading about her on my blog. Many people, whom she and you did not know, were pulling for her success. They will also be sorry to hear of her passing. You and your family will continue to be in our prayers. David-from-Tupelo, an eloquent and capable writer, was kind enough to respond: Thanks for your note about Mona. Her passing has been a tremendous loss to our family. We really thought she was going to make it. She left not only her husband, but two daughters, ages 16 & 9. She and I became very close when she successfully battled non-Hodgkins lymphoma as a teenager. Mona had been at BATCC since mid-August. She had only come home for a few days in September. When she got back to BATCC., she developed sepsis, spending over a week in ICU. After surviving sepsis, her transplant doc told her that she had heart damage, and would not be able to have transplant. After more tests, and persuasion from cardiologist, transplant was approved. She received transplant on 12/8, and everything went well. Her white count went up again, and everything seemed fine. (Of course I was not out there, so I did not see the things she had to do, as well as what she went through. My mom said that Mona had to be her own nurse.) But Mona had a great attitude. Sometime in late January, her white cell count began to drop. She also became lethargic, and started sleeping a lot. Then she could not keep anything down. She went into the hospital in mid-February. After one week, she was getting worse, and placed in ICU. About two weeks before she died, she began hallucinating. Right before this happened, she told her husband that she couldn't get a grasp on her body. She had always been in tune with what was going on within her, and could almost evaluate her body better than the docs. At the point she indicated that she couldn't get a grasp, she began to give up. Right after going into ICU, they sedated her to remove her port because of staph. She never regained consciousness. The docs at BATCC told my mom and brother-in-law that they couldn't conclusively say what happened to her. Right after she lost consciousness, tests indicated she had a clotting disorder known as TTP, which is in itself fatal. They began dialysis for the TPP. She also developed sepsis. Scans indicated no cancer, but the docs said brain scans were inconclusive, and the cancer could have gone to her brain. Her husband and I went to BATCC on March 3, and she passed on March 6. Her organs began to shut down over a week before she died. The decision was made on Friday morning to cease all attempts to keep her alive. The nurses told us that she could pass at any minute. The only thing given to her was a little oxygen and morphine drip. At that point on Friday morning, she already had multiple organ failure. She lived until 3:25 pm Saturday. Guess her heart was stronger than they realized. Looking back on it, we believe that infection was the culprit. Even though she did well through the transplant, she could never be off medication for infection for very long. I don't think the infection ever left her body. As you well know about BATCC, there are docs for everything. She had teams of docs seeing after her. I was impressed that docs at one of the best cancer hospitals in the world had the honesty to say that they didn't know exactly what happened. They felt it a good possibility that an infection spread swiftly through her body, releasing it's powerful toxins. She just wasn't able to fight it off. I remember last April, her doc at UAB told her that it would probably be an infection that got her, and not the cancer itself. BATCC is a great hospital. When my dad died with cancer three years ago, we afterwards wondered whether more could have been done at the different stages of his cancer. With Mona, we are at peace knowing that, if she couldn't survive at BATCC, she wasn't going to survive anywhere. I'm sure that they will review her case, and hopefully, they can glean something that may help the next person that has her type of lymphoma. My sister had a servant’s heart. She was always doing for others, and never wanted any attention called to herself. She even wanted a private funeral with no visitation. Thankfully, my brother-in-law didn't honor that. The church in Tupelo was full for the service. One of her pall bearers, whom I had never met, had just returned from Iraq after a 10 month tour of duty. He had only been cleared to return to civilian life two days before the funeral. He told me that while Mona was in Texas, she had made boxes of school supplies for Iraqi children, and sent to him. That was the kind of person she was. I check your blog every couple of weeks, and I'm so glad that you are doing well. And I don't say that lightly. Many of the things that you describe I can relate to through Mona. Hang in there and tell your wife hello for me. If you are ever going to be playing in Oxford, I wish you would let me know. Best Regards, David-from-Tupelo I cannot continue now after reading this again. I will be back in a moment. I have returned. A pause on the written page just does not do justice to the amount of time I had to take to think things through. Here’s a partial list:
That was a long pause, though. I came out of my malaise with this, which I will keep, rejecting the rest of my own personal digression as impertinent, irrelevant, or a whining self-indulgence: May we all have a servant’s heart – This is what the Lord wants from us. In the midst of her travails, Mona was spending her precious, dwindling energy and time in the service of others. This is a powerful testimony to the Spirit of the Lord within us. We all have a dwindling energy and time capital account from which we make constant withdrawals. When the capital is gone, the account is closed. How will we spend the assets we withdraw? May we all spend those assets wisely by investing them in others, where they will pay precious dividends, and not consume them on our own fears and desires! To those of you who have friends with cancer, you might take note of the following exchange I had with a recent acquaintance who I am sure is going to become a personal friend. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to talk sometime about my 20+ year song co-writer/best friend. He got diagnosed with ALL [Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia] a couple of weeks ago (he just turned 40, with 3 young kids). Prognosis is good and he's responding to chemo well, so far. He'll be going to Vanderbilt for a 6-month stem cell protocol. He's nervous as hell, but I'm trying to focus that energy on song writing. It’s new for me as well and I'm not sure what people going through this stuff want/not-want to hear. My work . . . is going to put me in Nashville a lot and we both want to take advantage of the time together and write. Any words of wisdom would greatly appreciated. I don’t have any words of wisdom, but I told my new friend this: Sorry to hear about your friend and his ALL diagnosis. ALL is tough and fast. I am glad he is responding to chemo. CLL is different, and moves much slower, allowing a "watch and wait" approach, though the wait time was rather short for me. ALL does not allow this. I'm glad he has a good prognosis. I'm sure he's as nervous as hell, and probably still in shock if his diagnosis was just a couple of weeks ago. You can call me anytime to discuss this if you'd like. This was stipulated: He is your best friend for 20+ years. You don't have to say anything. You can read up about ALL, its treatment, the treatment's side effects, and its outcomes. When your friend wants to talk about it, he'll talk; you can listen. Sometimes my friends would worry more than I did about my disease, and I would spend time and energy trying to comfort them and make THEM feel better about MY illness. I appreciated the fact that they were suffering with me, but this can become a bit tedious. Our friends who are really just mere acquaintances disappear. They are afraid to see us because they fear they might say the wrong thing, or that we may die in their very presence. Our illness makes them face their own mortality, which is unpleasant. Our REAL friends are simply there, still taking about fishing, hunting, common interests, songwriting, guitars, vintage musical instruments of all types, and SEC football, in addition to inquiring about how we are feeling TODAY!!!! When one has cancer, one's perspective changes to TODAY, though that does not mean that plans for the future are not being considered. Direct your friend to my CLL BLOG on my website if you're of a mind. I have lots of readers with all sorts of cancers, particularly leukemias. One can certainly channel their angst, fears, and pains into a new, very creative arena. The view of life from the cancer side of the street is completely different. This new perspective is certainly worth being recorded in prose, poetry, or better yet, in song. He should keep a journal as he goes through all of this. I keep mine on-line. I expose a lot, and some say risk a lot; but I am risking nothing. If your friend is like you - educated, smart, and savvy, then he must NOT do this: become OVERWHELMED with all the things his smart, savvy-self can GOOGLE on the internet that indicate to him just how ill he is. The amount of bogus information and genuine clinical information written for professional geneticists and physicians is truly overwhelming. The numbers are the numbers. The odds are the odds. He is in those numbers somewhere. He must not decide for himself where that is, but must simply learn to be here now. I almost consigned myself to the cemetery at first with worry over everything I read. When I had positive news and rejoiced, I'd have news that mitigated the positive back to neutral, or worse, just a few days later. When the chemo was working, the side-effects became dangerous. When the side-effects mitigated, the chemo became less effective. You learn after a while to duck each punch when it comes, and counter when there is an opening. It's a long-distance run, not a sprint. Though I am in remission, I am still in a danger zone of compromised immune system. I suppose when the compromised immune system returns to normal, the CLL will re-manifest itself. It sometimes works this way; sometimes not. I know this - - - I will not worry about it TODAY. If you're also of a mind: the book of JOB is extremely helpful (worthy of an entire lifetime of study, so rich is it!). JOB had terrible tragedy in his life. His friends came to help him. As long as they were silent, they were a great comfort to JOB. When they began to speak, however . . .! You just simply have to be there. If you and he are co-writing songs, he may have difficulty expressing what it is that he is feeling. If, in co-writing, you and he can figure out how and be bold enough to express the truth of how he feels about this, you'll have some powerful songs that will speak to the humans at the very core of their nature as humans, no matter how trite it may seem on the surface. This is risky business in a writer, but truth is truth and it spans across generations. If you can't get your friend to tap into this, bring him up to see me. We'll go into my studio (delightful, by the way) and lock ourselves in, write some songs, then come out and walk down the hill and go fishing. I've got lots of room. I’d enjoy meeting your friend. He sounds like he is in good hands at Vanderbilt. Though he’s in good hands at Vanderbilt, if he’s responding to chemo, I wonder why he’s on a stem-cell protocol, unless they are collecting and studying his stem-cells? I don’t know what the particular protocol is, but SURELY, if he is responding to treatment, they are not considering a stem-cell transplant. SO you readers will know, a STEM-CELL transplant and a BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT are the same thing. The two terms are used interchangeably. That’s enough for today. A thunderstorm rages in the distance at 5:50AM as I finish this. I have worked on it for hours. Today will be full of stormy, perhaps dangerous weather. Our chances for this dangerous weather are very great. Like the wildebeests on the plains of Africa, we will ignore the lurking lion until we become the particular wildebeest the lion is chasing. Then we will flee from DEATH GROUND until we reach the river. With the lion behind us and the crocodile in front of us, we will seek shelter perhaps where none may be found. Some people will face this today in the guise of a very real, and very dangerous tornado. A tornado five miles away is easily ignored. A tornado 500 yards away and closing is not so easily dismissed. Some will perhaps fight their final battle. Some with cancer, their anticipated final battle just months away, will perhaps find themselves fighting a final battle that in complete surprise has overtaken them. I will worry about my leukemia, which is in remission, about as much as I am going to worry about the tornado out there somewhere, but not immediately threatening. I’ll worry about it when I see it, or hear it coming. Like the wildebeest, I will keep on grazing as long as the lion is not chasing me. If the lion takes particular interest in ME, perhaps my appetite for the sweet grass of the plains may be somewhat stymied. Life is like that. Just be here now! 4/10/10 Hello, New-and-Improving Old Self Last night, I had the great joy to travel to Greenwood, Mississippi, the very heart-beat of the Mississippi Delta, and was just simply beside myself over the great fortune of playing at Turnrow Books’ Summer Songwriter series with the superlative songwriters Tricia Walker and Davis Raines. It was also great to have my friend, ol’ Sip, turn out to see us. I had planned on staying the night, not believing that I would have the energy after the show for the two-and-a-half hour drive home. Immediately after the show, I heard of plans to go and eat. Tricia asked me if I were going to go with them. I said, “Sure!” Somehow, during the course of everyone schlepping their stuff (it takes a lot of stuff, particularly for me!) to the doors for loading in the vehicles, and amid my joy of talking with Jamie (Turnrow’s proprietor), I got separated from the group. This could be because Tricia and Davis were parked out front and I was parked out back and we were all loading up stuff in different locations. When I finished getting loaded up, I went back in and Tricia and Davis were gone. Jamie was still there, but he did not know where they had gone to eat. I called Tricia on her cell phone, which, of course, was OFF (no performer leaves their cell phone ON while they are in the midst of a performance, only audience members do that!), so I got her voice mail. I spoke to the voice mailbox, “Tricia, I do not know where y’all went to eat AT!” (Now, at this point I must say this: I have a gracious lady whom I love very much who has very kindly volunteered to edit this lengthy blog, a not-insignificant undertaking for which I am truly grateful, but I must warn her in a most Churchillian manner not to mess with any preposition I end a sentence with!) I looked at my watch. I stopped to consider if my belly was complaining about any lack it may be suffering, and nothing registered as a complaint. I checked to see what my energy level was. I then paused to consider that I MUST get my taxes done THIS weekend. So, the horse, now properly saddled, was pointed towards the barn and began her brisk trot, as horses are wont to do when they know they are headed back to the barn. Some fifteen minutes or so later, my cell phone rang. “I am SO sorry you didn’t know where we went to eat. We are at the Delta Bistro just around the corner from the bookstore,” said Tricia. “The entire Mississippi Delta is behind me now, I am in the hills of Carroll County. This horse is headed for the barn!” I said. “You mean you are driving home tonight?” She asked. “Yessum! I decided that if I ate now I’d get too sleepy to make the run home, so I’m off.” And from there we exchanged pleasantries, regretted the lack of neck-hugs prior to parting but promised each other plethoras of future neck-hugs, and I sent my best and highest regards to Davis. The phone put away, I now focused on the drive home, pushing that horse as fast as I dared, seeing that there are those who might overlook a horse ridden perhaps a bit too fast, but won’t tolerate seeing a horse pushed too hard on their roads. I made it all the way to within about 30 miles of home before I began to get sleepy, and I mean really sleepy. Driving now with my left eye closed so that there is only ONE striped line speeding towards me, because when I get tired of driving my left eye just won’t seem to stay in sync with my right one. I top the next hill and see, from the distance, what seems to be a thousand flashing blue lights. A roadblock! Fortunately, the more tired I get the slower I drive, so I was driving about 59 in a 65 MPH zone. I was not speeding. When I see all those blue lights at night, old paranoias immediately come racing back and I am thankful that the only thing I have had to drink is a diet coke, and the only drug in my vehicle is the Prilosec I have sitting on the console between the two front seats, right there in plain view of anyone who wants to look. It seems that when you’ve gotten to the age where you don’t leave home without your Prilosec, law enforcement officers no longer view you as a perpetrator. I slowed down and cautiously drove up towards the officer flagging me forth, window open, driver’s license already in my left hand held out for the office to get. He took the license and then shined his flashlight in my face and into my truck, no doubt spotting the Prilosec on the console. He then looked at the license for the briefest of moments, handed it back to me saying, “Have a safe drive Mr. Sharp,” and off I went. This was a road block worthy of a felony man-hunt, and I did not fit the description of the perpetrator. I suppose the bulletin had previously gone out to the officers that the perpetrator was NOT known to be armed with Prilosec. This blue-light induced adrenaline rush enabled me to drive the rest of the 30 miles wide-awake. I am now persuaded that the Lord had placed them there just for my own safety and that of the others on the highway, because I think that perhaps that last thirty miles might have been hazardous. But I made it home safe, and actually drove further without getting tired than I thought I would. This is more like the old me. I liked the old me. The old me was full of energy. I enjoyed the old me’s company. Now I am stuck with the new me. The new me has less energy, but I feel it returning more and more, bit by bit, the leukemia no longer detectable and the side-effects of the life-restoring toxins being slowly purged from my body day-by-day. While I liked the old me just fine, this new me, after I get a full head of steam built up and can keep the boiler pressure in the green zone for longer periods, is perhaps going to be even better. The new me has a different perspective. The new me is fully cognizant of the fact that everything in life is not about me. The new me? The new me is just another clod making a part of the main. That has GOT to be an improvement! Women already know that everything in life is not about them, because women become mothers. It is MEN who must learn this. If we men are fortunate, we learn this from our women; if not, life has other, less pleasant ways of teaching this to us. If I am allowed to quote Kipling again (and just who can stop me?) it is this: If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose love would follow me still, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! 4/8/10 The News from Texas The news from Texas, according to the Texas Travel Bureau, is that “it’s a whole other country”. They are right. What a wonderful dichotomy is the Lone Star State! Texas, I salute you. From your Gulf of Mexico beaches and seafood (Oh, My! The Seafood!!!), to your mountainous deserts, to your prairies, to your Eastern Timberlands, to your world class cities, and world class medical research and treatment: SALUDO! I received this e-mail from Nurse Susan at BATCC: Sorry to hear your bone marrow biopsy gave you problems. . . . . . The flow cytometry [and] the bone marrow report all look great. Congratulations!!! Live well and enjoy life and yes we want to see you in 6 months, then yearly. Thank you for being my patient!! I have printed this and will fax to Hemosapien. And following that was the complete flow cytometry report from the Bone Marrow Biopsy (BMB) performed by PA (Physicians Assistant) Katie. I bragged on the skill and “in-charge-ness” of PA Katie earlier. I am still bragging on her, however I did experience a few complications with the BMB, and still am! I think this is more in the nature of the procedure than in particular the skill of PA Katie, who does BMBs all the time. The spot on the left side of my pelvis where PA Katie so intimately inserted her gemshidi (apparently spelled JAMSHIDI, and is the medieval instrument of torture with which they penetrate the bone and suck out the bone marrow) is as sore as if it were penetrated by a round of #00 buckshot. Now that may be an exaggeration, and surely pure speculation, since I have never had a round of #00 buck hit me in the hip bone, but this is the first time I have had this to be so sore this long. Since I explained to Hemosapien on my follow-up visit with him on Monday, April 5, that I had started running a low grade fever on the previous Thursday, which continued through Easter Sunday, and during the whole time I felt simply awful, further indicating that my wife said my hip looked red and puffy near the side of the biopsy, he said that I had no doubt had a low grade infection from it. Of course, for a CLL patient that is somewhat leukopenic and neutropenic, this can be disastrous. Throughout the whole course of my chemo, Hemosapien had me taking Bactrim (an antibiotic) three days a week as a prophylactic (which BATCC said they never did) so I began taking it every day after it became apparent (to me) that I had an infection. Hemosapien said that if I had called him, this is what he would have told me to do, anyway, unless my fever got too high. In my case, it hovered around 100°F, which was below any threshold previously cited to me as dangerous. I sure did feel bad, though. I did not even go to church on Easter Sunday. I slept and slept. My son was sent from the lodge to wake me up to tell me Easter Dinner was being served and to come eat. When I ambled groggily down the hill, there, at the table, sat my whole family. I sat down with them, ate a bit, and begged their forgiveness and excuse as I headed back up the hill to the house and went back to sleep. I slept on the sofa the entire day, off and on. I officially got in the bed at 6:00PM, and slept until 4:00AM. That was 10 hours. I probably needed that sleep as much as I needed anything! I am so thankful for it. I still think highly of PA Katie. BMBs are risky, that is why EVERYONE makes you sign those forms that state that you understand the risks and complications that may develop as a result of the BMB. I just had a complication of which I was already aware. Of course, DEATH, is a complication of which I was also aware, so comparatively speaking, a low grade infection is not too shabby. The buckshot sore hip is a real pain in the ass, though! (I laugh at myself!) Speaking of buckshot, my freeing Buckshot Steve, to whom you have been previously introduced, is having a hard time right now with his CLL. He can’t seem to get his blood counts right and goes from neutropenia to hemolytic anemia and then back again. Both of these can be severe complications. He is in good hands though. He gave me the name of his doctor and I checked him out. I’m sure that Buckshot Steve is glad that I approve of his doctor; and I am sure that his doctor will be absolutely beside himself, overcome with joy and sublime emotion, when he learns that he has met with my approval. I don’t know how he could have a successful medical practice and also serve as a professor at a large, large Southern medical school without having previously had this approval, his medical training at Johns Hopkins University Hospital and Medical School (one of the world’s leading medical institutions), notwithstanding. I am sure he will be an even better and more competent doctor now that he has my approval. He will wake up every morning feeling better about himself. I just hope he wakes up every morning and thinks, “There are those out there that love Buckshot Steve and want him to get better right away, so let me take the extra step, make that extra consultation, and be extra successful in choosing the right course of treatment for Buckshot Steve!” “You know, Dr. Gator-Professor, Mississippi Chris has approved of your medical practice and the way you are treating me, based on what I was successfully able to communicate to him of what I understand about what you told me about how you are planning on treating my current complications,” Buckshot Steve might say to Dr. Gator-Professor. Dr. Gator-Professor might then say, “And may I ask, just who is this Mississippi Chris?” Buckshot might say, “He is a non-famous musician living in complete impecunious obscurity in East Mississippi who also has CLL.” Dr. Gator-Professor then might ask, “A good question might be how does that qualify him to make any judgments about my ability or authority to practice hematology and oncology, since he has no such training?” Buckshot might indicate, “Well, he plays a pretty good banjo, has studied an awful lot about CLL on his own, and indicated that he has recently stayed in a Holiday Inn Express.” Dr. Gator-Professor might then say, “Well then, I am assured that my personal insecurities as a physician are all unfounded, thus I will be able to treat you more effectively knowing that I have the approval of this Renaissance-man, medical/hematological/oncological/banjo expert from rural East Mississippi, though the connection between banjo playing and hematology/oncology are unclear to me at the moment!” And he might additionally ask, “By the way, who is the Hematologist of this Mississippi Chris who lives in the rural East Mississippi utopia of oncology-knowledge-by-banjo-osmosis?” Buckshot would then say, “Hemosapien is his name.” Dr. Gator-Professor might very well say, “I’ll be sure to put him on the prayer list at my church.” Buckshot would say, “I know Mississippi Chris will appreciate that.” Dr. Gator-Professor would remark, “I was referring to Hemosapien!” Buckshot, eyebrows raised would exclaim, “OH!,” slurring and stretching the single syllable word into about five syllables, which with the raised eyebrows, said more than a hundred individual words could possibly convey. Dr. Gator-Professor might then add, “If this Hemosapien has a patient like that, he’s the one who needs the prayer.” Buckshot would reply, “You may have a point, there!” Dr. Gator-Professor, might then ask, one of his own eyebrows raised, the other forced down and his head turned slightly askew, peering at Buckshot with his left eye over the top of his glasses, “This Mississippi Chris Onco/Hemo/Banjo-oligist hasn’t put any funny ideas in your head, has he?” Buckshot would then reply, “No sir, carry on!. Just know that I want to get better, and SOON! I’ve got a new grandbaby I want to spend some time with.” Dr. Gator-Professor would then promise, “I will leave no stone unturned so that you may be a doting grandfather for a long, long time!” And from there, I will leave that conversation to the real participants, me being just an interloper and an inserter of fictitious words into the mouths of others. It is the one trait I have that helps prevent my total obscurity. As for me? I received the results of my BMB and last week’s visit to BATCC yesterday. This is what Vishinaihadderdrinkov Guttennauldfashunkindervisky, MD, MMDD (that stands for double-doctor) PhD, DDS, DMD, PharmD, ThD, DD, LLD, JD, BA, BS, CPA, CFP, CLSW, FACS, CLU, EMT, CRT, 33° F&AM, PE, RLS, Ed.D, DVM, et. al., (More letters after his name than you can put on a double-spaced typed page), the pathologist at BATCC who reviewed my BMB: BM CLINICAL INTERP: Specimen is Bone Marrow LEFT Interpretation: No residual chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small Lymphocytic lymphoma identified, using a standardized protocol for detection of minimal residual disease. Now THAT, my friends, is good news. If the is cancer still there, Vishinaihadderdrinkov Guttennauldfashunkindervisky, MD, MMDD, PhD, DDS, DMD, PharmD, ThD, DD, LLD, JD, BA, BS, CPA, CFP, CLSW, FACS, CLU, EMT, CRT, 33° F&AM, PE, RLS, Ed.D, DVM, et. al., cannot find it. Does that mean I do NOT have CLL anymore? No, I’m afraid that that is not what that means. CLL is not a cancer they can cure, YET! They assure me that all they can do is knock it back so that it’s now like a drunk small-town business-man on a convention in the big-city who, in pursuit of things not available at home gets himself separated from his group of friends and then rolled by local criminal establishment; a harsh, but temporary setback. The numbers say I could remain disease-free for many, many years, or the disease could re-manifest itself in just a few months, in the same manner or in a more malevolent one. I pressed Hemopsapien on this. I then pressed him harder. He would not take the bait. “Why don’t you use your own words and tell me?” He asked. “You, yourself, having read the same information that’s available to me said that the median life-span had not been reached on the FCR Protocol, since in the eleven years since its inception, there were people still living who were disease-free.” “Well, I had hoped for some magic words, or perhaps an over-commitment that I could later hold you accountable to, but I can see that I’m getting nowhere with that tack,” I said. “And why would you want anything else other than the truth?” He asked, knowing the answer, the same way I had pressed him, knowing the answer. We were even now. “I’ve taken risks with worse odds before and not been afraid, though the stakes were perhaps less high,” I said. “But this is not a wager you chose, or can even choose to take. Here you are and here it is, as tangled up as a billy-goat in a six-strand barbed-wire fence, scratched and bruised whether you get loose or stay stuck – either way!” he said. I reflected on that. I reflected on the soreness of my hip where PA Katie did the BMB. I reflected on others I knew who have cancer that have done well. I reflected on others that I know who have cancer that are not doing well. I reflected on others I knew who had cancer that are no longer with us. I reflected until my reflection disappeared in the reflecting pool, and all I saw was a troubled surface and a future, cloudy and gray, but filled with hope, possibilities, and promises. I poured some first-cold pressed extra-virgin olive oil (is there another kind?) on the water’s troubled surface, and I saw depth, not just a surface reflection. What I could see in the depth I cannot describe, cause I can’t be sure words can convey it, or even if I understand what I saw in the depth; only this, that the depth was there, and what was in the depth was real, and what was reflected on the surface was just an illusion. Perception is reality they say. Our illusions are based on our perceptions. Do illusions then become reality? Does how we view ourselves become the thing that is real for us? If we see ourselves in defeat, is defeat then our end? If we see ourselves victorious, is victory then our end? If our illusion shows us defeat, can that then serve to strengthen our resolve, forestalling the illusion? What do we do with the information provided by our illusions? How can we use it? Many, many times, I have had visions of myself as an old man: cheerful but purposefully curmudgeonly. In visions I have seen my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and myself and my wife surrounded by a great host of family, the fruit of our own loins. I was a young man when I had these visions. The Bible says that the young men will see visions and the old men will dream dreams. I still have visions. I must still be a YOUNG man because I still have visions; I have not yet begun to dream dreams. I am still in my vision period. Might I be wrong about this? Sure, but I am sticking with this path, unrelenting, persistent, undistracted from my purpose. “Your destiny has been determined from the very foundations of the world,” says John Calvin, interrupting me like a bad houseguest who wakes you up to ask you where the soap is when they want to take an early morning shower. “Luther said that there is no such thing as pre-destination. That what you are calling pre-destination is merely God’s ability to foresee!” I reply to Calvin, baiting him, but to some it seems I have cast my bait into thin air. Calvin takes the bait. “But Luther said that God’s foreseeing cannot be wrong, so technically, that is pre-destination, since it cannot be erroneous, or even altered.” Hoping to get him to take even more bait, I say, “But my present alters my future!” “You can no more choose circumstances of the present than you can alter the past or change the future. By the way, where is the soap? I need to take a shower this morning.” He says. “John, here’s my present choice. I am choosing to throw you out on your ear. I am choosing to say that there is a big difference in what you maintain and what Luther says. I choosing to deny you the soap you require. These choices are all being made in this very moment. They are altering my future,” I reply. “These choices we make in these trivial matters can have no impact on our futures,” he says. “Oh, yes they can,” I said, springing, the trap, “for YOU will be seeking other accommodations for your shower and your quarters for the night! Luther has been invited and I won’t get a wink of sleep with you two arguing all night. Out. Out. Out you go, and NOW!” “Such shoddy treatment from a normally accommodating host!” he says. “You should have seen it coming,” was my only answer to a fading, wavy apparition rapidly disappearing onto the mist. “You know I’ll be back!” “Sure you will, but not tonight!” I say, with some great satisfaction. Let him ponder on that for a while. Today, I am choosing. I am choosing to temporarily rid myself of Calvin, and I am choosing the visions I have had for myself for a long time. I ponder that for a moment. I say it back to myself – choosing the visions I have had for a long time . . . choosing the visions I have had for a long time . . . choosing the visions . . . long time . . . visions . . . time. Foreknowledge? Pre-destination? Now the difference is no longer so clear. I’ll wait until Luther gets here. I’ll let him explain it. I won’t think about it a moment longer. Right now, I will choose to think about something else. Immediately, visions of myself as an old man return, distracting me from any other thoughts. Somewhere, across the ages, across an eternity, like a bad mix-down and mastering job on a cheap record with the reverb turned up as big as all eternity, I hear Calvin’s guffaw of laughter in the background. He can’t read my mind, but he sure has been around enough to know human nature as well as if he could. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he shows back up again this evening, right about suppertime. Here’s something to ponder. Rudyard Kipling, the novelist, the poet, the adventurer, the manly-man, the cigar-smoker, the gin-drinker, the chauvinist, the racist, and probably the Calvinist, has been much maligned by the people who tell us the difference between good literature and bad. Kipling falls into the BAD category. I’ve often wondered why. Hemingway and Faulkner exhibited nearly all the same traits, but they are considered GOOD literature. Mark Twain exhibited some of the same traits, but he is considered good literature. Maybe these traits are acceptable in an American, but not in a Brit. Maybe good ENGLISH literature is W. Somerset Maugham, or Thomas Hardy. They say Chaucer is good literature, and the only reason he didn’t smoke cigars, I’ll bet, is because the British had not yet exported tobacco from the Americas. Here’s ol’ Rudyard. The author of Captain’s Courageous. The author of The Jungle Book. The author of Kim. All of these are on the top shelf of my library, waiting to be re-read for the umpteenth time. Here’s the ol’ Rudyard the poet who wrote Gunga Din and who said, “a woman is a woman, but a good cigar is a SMOKE!” When I first heard the Kipling poem below, it was Cher reciting it out loud (poetry is always best OUT LOUD) on the old Sonny and Cher Show. I was at first as enthralled as any healthy teen-age boy should be over Cher and her Bob Mackie dresses, but the poem was of an importance which has lasted far longer than memories of her in exotic, revealing dresses (though I remember those, too!). I would give every possession I own IF I could wish this on every human and have it come true. I wish this for my own son. I wish this for ME. I wish this for YOU. I wish this for everyone. IF people could only conduct themselves in this manner, then we would have a better world. IF a poet ever spoke to the heart of a man, this poem spoke to me. It still does. I hope it speaks to you, too. IF it does, you will be a better person, and the world a better place. God bless you, Rudyard Kipling! If
If you can keep your head
when all about you
If you can dream - and not
make dreams your master;
If you can make one heap of
all your winnings
If you can talk with crowds
and keep your virtue, All I can add to that is, “AMEN!” 3/29/10 So Far So Good This morning, I went to BATCC’s Fast Track Lab for blood work and vital signs, then off to see the extremely competent Nurse Practitioner Alice, to whom you have previously been introduced. As you may recall, I have seldom encountered such competence in a person. She actually listens! She asks you questions and then she digests the answers; a delightful response. You feel special in her presence. I still maintain that she has the touch of a healer; a wonderful characteristic that will serve her well. After she examined me, Gooday came right in with hugs all around. He said I will not hear results from my bone marrow biopsy for a few days. It is scheduled for later this afternoon, but that it was fully expected to show no evidence of disease like the last one I had in November. All my blood numbers looked good. Barring any unforeseen complications, he wants to see me back in 6 months, but wants the results of blood tests for the next two months. Nurse Susan indicated that Hemosapien’s office had not been forwarding blood test reports as they were supposed to. She had nothing back to September. I will send them to her myself when I get back home, then ask Hemosapien why this has not been done. So far, so good . . . .! They all know me here, too. It seems that writing the blog has been a good thing. They get to see what a patient is really thinking. Hemosapien and Gooday have both told me this. So did Nurse Alice. It has sure been good for me! The late, great Jim Valvano said, "Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul!" He was a great motivational speaker, the best one I EVER heard, having had the opportunity to hear him in person shortly after NC State won the Final Four National Championship. Cancer claimed him, as it claims so many. Hemosapien, Gooday, Nurse Alice, Nurse Jessica, Nurse Coy, Nurse Susan, and so many others have the job of stopping cancer from claiming our physical abilities. They do the best they can. We are soothed and comforted by their physical touch, but sometimes they are not successful. When this happens, they are not unmoved by this. They are trained to maintain a sense of clinical detachment; they have to be, else their jobs would be too depressing, but they are pieces of the continent, parts of the main, and in the long run, we all know for whom the bell tolls... It is up to us to live the words of Jim Valvano in spite of what our circumstances seem to be telling us. In any way one can examine his life, he was victorious, right up to the very end when he scored his ultimate victory. None of us pass completely through this life alive; we are just alive until the moment we cease living. It is how we live this life and ten meet our end that will define our existence here. What comes after cannot be measured except through our faith, though we have glimpses. We will all see it soon enough. How shall we greet our life, today?? That is the question we must deal with when we awake every morning. Back in August I said this: So many stories On masked faces valiant eyes Peer back like mirrors
This came hauntingly back to me today, powerful and poignant. At this place, it is inescapable, and greets you at every turn. One is never really prepared for it.
Gooday said that he had just returned from Prague, yesterday, where he was the keynote speaker for a group of over 1,000 Hematologists and Oncologists from all over the world. That the FCR chemotherapy had become the standard treatment around the world for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. There was as yet no median survival or overall time for remaining disease free, because since they started the protocol 11.5 years ago, there were still folks who were alive and disease free. He said I was in a fortunate class that had gone into full remission just halfway through the chemo course. The bone marrow biopsy will reveal what it will reveal, though. The future will hold what it will hold. I am in the Lord's hands. Today has to be enough . . . today is all we have.
I also said this just a few days ago. Why would my memory be so short as to forget it?
Thank you Nurse Alice, for your healing touch! They all know me here, too. It seems that writing the blog has been a good thing. They get to see what a patient is really thinking. Hemosapien and Gooday have both told me this. So did Nurse Alice. It has sure been good for me! My bone marrow biopsy (BMB) was scheduled for 4:00PM. Nurse Susan, knowing that I would be sitting around all day just waiting for that appointment apparently got it moved up. I got a phone call from the BMB department just before 3:00PM. “Mr. Sharp,” said the lady on the other end of the phone, “We were told that you were just hanging out waiting for your appointment, but if you can come now, we can work you right in!” I thanked her, took TWO of the 10mg valiums I had with me just for this purpose and headed right on over to the 10th floor. I checked in and the young lady put an arm bracelet on me. I went to sit in the waiting area. When I looked down at my armband, It said JAY SHARP, Patient number 882XXX. That was definitely not me. I went back to the counter and told the lady that this was not me. She turned a whiter shade of pale and began rifling through the papers on he desk. "Oh my goodness, we have two patients here today named Sharp!” she exclaimed. “I am obviously the other one.” I said. For a moment I thought that she might argue with me, but that was just me recalling how on a previous trip they had me listed as a FEMALE, and questioned me at length about whether I was sure I was a male and not actually female. I offered to prove it on the spot but they declined. Nurse Susan got this straightened out for me. I confirmed my patient number as the young lady looked through the papers again. She cut off the old bracelet and put on the correct one. “I’m glad you noticed that,” she said. “So am I,” I replied. Now I don’t know Jay Sharp, and he doesn’t know me, but for a moment there, we were almost tied together in what could have been an extremely complicated manner. I don’t know what kind of cancer he has, or what stage it is in, or if he has cancer at all, they just perhaps suspecting he might. But had my BMB results been put in his file, they might have mistakenly thought that he had had a miraculous recovery, or, not yet knowing what my results will reveal, that he had suddenly had a turn for the worse. Had they put the results of HIS BMB in MY file, they might have been calling me while I was on the way back home telling me, “Mr. Sharp, things have gone terribly wrong. You must come back right away.” Confusion would have reigned in BOTH our cases, until we had more expensive tests run, sorting things out; and me full of belligerence, arms flailing about and using the most colorful language. It pays to be observant since it is OUR health care and OUR bodies. I am not complaining about this. I’m sure they would have caught it before they actually did the procedure, since they confirm your name and patient number before they do anything, but I might have saved that young lady some grief from her bosses. Jay Sharp, as I said before, I don’t know you, but I do know that you were there the same time as me for a BMB, which means that you have cancer and are being treated for it, or they think you have cancer and are confirming its nature in your body. Here’s my wish for you, since we were nearly closely connected: May the cancer in your body just vanish for reasons no medical professional can comprehend, and may you live a long, healthy, rewarding, joyful, and prosperous life, surrounded by the family and friends that love you and cherish your every breath, and be an inspiration and guiding light for all those you encounter in this adventure we call life, and develop and maintain a close, personal relationship with your Creator, apart from whom no happiness can exist. I cannot wish you any more than that. There is no where to go from there. It is all I have in me to wish; but it is yours. Reflecting on this, I heard my name called out from two doors down. Physicians Assistant Katie was calling me back. In dread, like a man walking to the gallows I sauntered over to where she was waiting. “Why the long face?” she asked. “This is not my first time for a BMB,” I said. “Oh? But it’s your first time here!” she said. “Yes.” “Well come on back,” she said, pointing to a procedure room. The first thing she did was to confirm who I was. We had it right this time. Then she took my blood pressure. “Your blood pressure is a little high,” she exclaimed, alarmed it seemed. “Well I’m about to have a BMB,” I said, “Tense as an over-inflated bicycle tire, why wouldn’t it be?” “That’s certainly a reason for it to be up.” She prepared me while another lady presented me with the consent forms which I had to sign. I signed them, and PA Katie got down to business. She explained the local anesthetic I would be getting and proceeded to administer it. The sting of the injection, sharp and pointed, was nothing, I knew, to what would come after. After the local took effect, she went to work, occasionally asking me about the pain. Was it sharp? Was it dull ache? Was it just pressure? When I winced, she said that she would look for another spot. I learned from her that there is a narrow area where the local does the most good on the bone itself. The skin would be completely numb over a much larger area, but below, the target was much smaller. She shopped around (I’m sure ‘shopped around’ is not the right way to describe this, but I am a layman!) until she found the spot that was more dull than sharp. Then she got the gemshidi (remember that??? It's the evil tool they use to pierce the bone and get the marrow out!!!) and went to work. She was surprised that I knew the names of the instruments she was using. The other lady in the room asked me if I was a physician myself since I seemed to know so much about this. I told her no, but I sure was an experienced layperson. They all agreed with that. I did feel a couple of sharp twinges of pain, but I could tell I was in the hands of a real pro. She laughed when I told her that I had decided that since old women and children had these, I could endure it without whining. She asked was it painful. When I said yes, she said she could try another spot, but I told her that since she was in there, just to get it over with. I would endure. She also explained that YOUNG men were the worst whiners. She said old women and women in general endured it very well. Old men endured it well, but less well than the women. “Are you daring to place me in the category of the OLD MEN?” I asked. Laughing, she said, “No, but you sure are enduring it better then the young men, all of whom seemed to be the worst cry-babies.” I found comfort in the midst of pain in that. After it was over she asked, “Well, how was it?” “As intense as a root canal,” I replied, “but not lasting nearly as long!” “I’ll accept that,” she said with a smile. Then she took my blood pressure again, declaring, “It’s even higher now!” “Well, I just had a BMB? What did you expect. I’m all tense and worked up, even though it’s over. And with the early call, the two valiums that I took haven’t really kicked in yet. No telling how high it would be if it weren’t for them,” I said. Incredulously she asked, “You mean you took TWO valiums before you came in here? You should have told me that!” “I just did,” I said. “I mean before,” she retorted. “Not a chance! That was my little secret!” I gave her my card and told her about my blog and invited her to read it, since she would be appearing in it soon. She no doubt does not think that she will be making an appearance the very same day. Won’t she be surprised? Physicians Assistant Katie, your competence and professionalism rates right up there with Nurse Practitioner Alice, whom we discussed (amicably) and for whom we agreed that we had the highest respect. I cannot think of a greater compliment that I can pay to you. From the moment I entered your domain, you made it clear in a disarming way that you were in charge. While relinquishing control is not in my nature, your easy self-assurance made it easy for me. Is it possible for one to enjoy a bone marrow aspiration? No, not really. But I enjoyed this one as much as a person can. Did I enjoy being served by you? The answer to that is a resounding, “YES!” Is my arse sore? Yep! Did I walk some to keep the soreness down like you told me to? Nope. About the time I was on the way back across the breezeway to the hotel the two valiums kicked in full time. I told you I didn’t take them early enough. My wife laughed at me. I laugh at myself. Thank you for your competence. May you serve each and every one of your patients with the confidence, competence and care that you showed me. You were in charge and I enjoyed abandoning myself to it! While I am operating under this truth serum called diazepam, let me candidly state the following: to Hemosapien, Nurse Jessica, Nurse Juanita, Nurse Marilyn, Nurse Dana, Nurse Practitioner Alice, Gooday, Nurse Abby, Physicians Assistant Katie, Phlebotomist Barbara and her colleagues, Business Manager Carolyn, Mainmost, Nurse Casey, Respiratory Therapist David, Nurse Sandra, and Nurse Scotty, and all the un-named and unknown health care practitioners and support people who have so actively been involved in my health care - - - THANK YOU for your competence, care and support. I fear now that the great health-care unknown into which we are now entering will move some of you beyond my reach and supplant them with government bureaucrats and those who cold care less about competent health care, and care far more about the positions they occupy and how they can get away with doing as little as possible. I have received the best health care that money can buy (or that insurance money can buy) and I have fought tooth and nail to conserve every dollar of it. Many of you have helped me do so. I have worked hard to get this health care, and will work harder to keep it. My very persistent nature has alienated me from some health care relationships, and endangered others, but to some I have been joined with a cement that cannot separated by any pressure or force, other than perhaps the gross monstrosity of an unwieldy piece of legislation whose framers don’t fully understand its import. The politically elite tell me that I am not smart enough to understand it; that they must interpret it properly for me. I shudder at the very thought of the restrictions this will impose on you, me, and our relationship. Time will tell if this was the right thing, but already I am hearing rumblings of competent physicians who are saying that they are thinking of an early retirement. Lord, protect us from those who would inflict confusion on us and tell us it is for our own good. It has been said that the worst tyranny that can be inflicted on a people is that which is for their own good! I fear this is where we are headed! Those who believe in the benevolence of governments would do well to study the history of governments more closely. In the meantime, I salute you all! May God richly bless you all in your efforts to serve those who come to you in their need, and may He give you the vision to see clearly those things which need to be done, the determination and decision with which to see them completed, and His healing touch manifest itself through your hands! 3/28/10 BATCC Beckoning Debbie and I traveled all day from home to Houston. We were going to leave yesterday, but I just ran out of steam. We are here, now. Staying at the hotel that is part of the Big As Texas Cancer Center (BATCC). Everyone is so nice here. You may recall from a previous installment, I was the one who behaved like a jack-ass to the parking attendant, but later apologized. Go back and look at the photo. It is funny. We stopped at Papadeaux’s Restaurant in Beaumont, Texas on the way. We ate our fill of boiled crawfish and I had Three (yes, three) fried soft-shell crabs. They were Texas-sized crabs, as large as a tennis shoe, but I ate all three successfully. Fried soft-shell crabs are my favorite thing in the whole world. Debbie doesn’t like them. To my palette, they have a richness that surpasses anything else, except for perhaps a well prepared and labored over crawfish bisque (which I can make excellently!) It was a delightful stop in a nice place with a good atmosphere and just what I was looking for in food. If one is watching one’s cholesterol, one might want to avoid the shellfish. To me, shellfish is what good seafood is all about. I sure ate my fill. I go to the Fast-Track Lab tomorrow morning at 7:30 for blood work, then off to see Gooday at 9:00AM. I see from my appointment schedule that I do not have my bone marrow biopsy until tomorrow at 4:00PM. I suppose I will be through after then. They will not get anything done on it that late in the evening. Gooday or Nurse Susan will let me know the results, but we’ll see. I am looking forward to seeing Gooday, Nurse Susan, and Nurse Alice. In the meantime, Debbie and I have decided that we will spend tomorrow night and head back on Tuesday and see what kind of shape Canaan has the house in. I’m sure all his buddies were over today and they were having big time. Last time we came here, he got his sister, Piper, to clean up for him. Piper is on spring break, so she will probably be tapped by her charming little brother to do this again. Debbie and I have a wager on it; we’ll see. In the meantime, I am thankful for a safe trip here. A beautiful day for a drive, even a long one; a nice hotel room with WiFi so I can update my blog, and a world class medical facility right across the street, where they have my name recorded and are waiting to see me - - not too shabby for a country boy. We'll also see if Gooday returns me to the New Normalcy! 3/18/10 Watch and Wait? The New Normacly?”
It's not hard to see how a truthful, rational, outspoken man, who was in the public’s eye might run afoul of Caligula and Nero, each of them filled with his own madness. Claudius was a better emperor, though not without his flaws. He was apparently afflicted with some sort of physical infirmity, which led to his being passed over for emperor in favor of his nephew, Caligula. After Caligula’s death, he was chosen emperor. Seneca was too young to run afoul of Augustus (the first real emperor), and perhaps simply not ready to step-up to the political pundit plate for his turn at bat during the reign of Tiberias (the second). Perhaps Caligula’s excesses triggered something in Seneca so that he could no longer be silent. If Seneca had difficulties with Tiberias, they have not been recorded for us. It was a dangerous time to be a Roman emperor. In fact, there seems to have been few safe times to have been a Roman Emperor. If one were applying for a life insurance policy and on the application form, under “CURRENT EMPLOYMENT,” listed “Roman Emperor,” one might find that there were no willing insurers. It was a dangerous job. Only the emperors who ruthlessly removed all challengers managed to die of natural causes. Many evils went with this job; but what man could resist the imperial crown when it was dangled before him? George Washington is the only one I can think of! Of the many, many things Seneca wrote, the above quote is the one that caught me today. If my trip to Texas and BATCC reveals that no further attention is necessary, then I will return to Watch and Wait status, which we have previously interpreted as Watch and Worry! I cannot allow Watch and Wait to turn in to Watch and Worry! If I allow it, I will be participating in the wretchedly foolish madness of expecting evil misfortunes before they come. Yet, here I am, worrying about whether to worry about Watch and Wait when I haven’t even been put back on Watch and Wait status by those who are the keepers of one’s status. The verdict: Guilty!
That gives one lots to think about. The danger at hand requires us to DO something and the DOING requires our minds to be occupied in a different way than a vague worrying over dangers that are lurking, but presently just imagined. If allowed to become the focus of our attention, the danger lurking in the future’s shadow is a nag that robs us of our present, which is our only REAL possession. If I allow this to worry me, my worry can turn to suffering, and I needlessly suffer before it is necessary. Seneca’s offering of the well-lived life being long enough is a harder meal to digest. Upon reflection of all the talented people we know of who died in their youth, this seems difficult to reconcile. Death has cheated us all of the benefits and talents of others. However, it’s obverse is easier to digest. Why would anyone want to cling to a bad, lengthy life, other than fear? It would be far easier to reject the thought that a life badly-lived is never long enough. That makes no sense, yet still does not make the original easier to chew: The more I chew, the larger it gets in my mouth, sort of like liver (I can’t eat it, but it’s GOOD for me therefore I MUST get it down!).
That is how we should all hope to govern our lives. I know that it is easier to govern my actions than my thoughts, but it is recorded that someone wiser than Seneca also said that what’s in the heart proceeds out the mouth. Our thoughts become our actions. The thought becomes the deed, for what evil deed was ever done without the seed sprouting and being nurtured our heart? It has its beginnings in soft, secret whisperings and rustles. Someone wiser than Seneca also once said: Sufficient for today is the evil thereof, therefore take no thought of tomorrow. Watch and Wait? Today I am going to watch what I think about. Today, I am going to wait until the fresh coffee gets through brewing and then I think I’m going to have another cup. I think I will immediately remind some precious people of how much I love them. I think I’ll go and wake up my sleeping-in son, just returned late last evening from a spring-break trip to the beach, muss his hair with a dry-shave and threaten him with yard-work, and then tell him I was just kidding and to go back to sleep. I will watch the sun shine. I will watch the Dogwoods in the act of blooming. I will have to wait on the Redbud trees, which are just now budding, to explode in their glorious arrays of scarlet. I will watch until then, thinking about them, though they will manage to successfully bloom without a single thought from me. Seneca? From what I can read, he walked the walk. His outspoken search for truth kept him in trouble with the authorities, ultimately resulting in his death. A well-lived life! Seneca would say that it was long enough! 3/17/10 A Return to Normalcy . . . Whatever That Is
Harding, during his campaign which led to his landslide election, made a famous speech in which he said, “America’s present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration .. . not surgery, but serenity.” That sounds like something a Republican candidate might easily say right now, because normalcy is not what we have in the executive or legislative branch, but an odd, grotesque Kabuki dance between an executive branch and a legislative branch that are of the same party who cannot seem to get anything done other than point at their opposition and accuse them of being obstructionists when there are not enough of them in town to stop anything the party in power makes up its mind to do. If this were not so insulting, I would find it amusing. If Harding were here today, and running for president, I’d probably buy in to his platform and vote for him. The nostalgia of a return to normalcy (or the GOOD OLD DAYS) is always alluring to us. However, the good old days are always an unattainable illusion. They are the carrot dangled before the mule. The mule will pull harder and harder as the plow bites deeper into the earth, but the carrot just stays slightly ahead, always out of reach . . . the mule unknowingly pulling, sweating, grunting, farting, and the carrot cleverly placed to wiggle just before his nose; its smell in his nostrils and its orange delightfulness just out of reach of his tongue and teeth. The good old days no longer exist; there is only now. In the good old days, I didn’t have leukemia. In the good old days, I did not have to deal with chemotherapy, oncologists, insurance, lab work, flow cytometry, bone marrow biopsies, phlebotomists, radiologists, big medical bills, nausea, Hemosapien, Gooday, BATCC, or sit in cancer clinics pondering others who were much more ill than me. In the good old days, only other people had illnesses like this. In the good old days, there was peace, health, prosperity and plenty. How I long for the good old days! Yet, if I dwell on this, I am dwelling on what I have perceived as loss and failing to dwell on and be thankful for what it is that I have. I am wasting my life on remorse by failing to live in gratitude. Neil-Earth planter told me not to do this and he is one who has traveled this path ahead of me, leading the way. It was good advice. I have chosen to see things this way. Remorse? We all have it! It is a thing to be recognized, pondered on briefly, extract from it the valuable lessons on how we might conduct ourselves in the future in similar circumstances to avoid having remorse afterwards; then to be shelved and filed way, perhaps for future reference. To have it constantly in front of us would be to place too much value on something worthless for any purpose other than the one described above. This is easier to talk about that to do. My blood has decided, for the time being, to have itself its own return to normalcy, for which I am truly thankful. My neutrophils have come up to levels that, while not yet within the normal range, are near enough that I no longer have to be a neutropeeny-meany. That makes me feel better. I am still a reckless hand washer, though. There are still things lurking that, though seemingly innocuous, would invade, complicate and destroy. I am not fearful of those things, but I am cautious. Normalcy? I am thankful for it. I’d like to have more of it in my body. If you could buy it at the dollar store, I’d stock up on it and use it liberally when things would get out of whack. “Debbie, things are just going crazy around here. The washing machine is broken, the sink faucet’s leaking under the counter, the upstairs toilet is stopped up, there’s a bad bulge on your left front tire, the dogs got into the garbage . . . and, oh, my leukemia has come back,” I might say one day. “Don’t you still have some of that new and improved Normalcy you bought at Dollar General a few years back, before they stopped making it?” she might ask. “Yes, but I can’t seem to locate it,” I’d reply, “else I’d have some in a spray duster and be dusting it all round the house right now. I can’t remember where I stored it. Have you seen it?” “The last time I actually saw it was back in the good old days,” she might say. “Boy, the good old days have claimed a lot of things. Once things get lost there, they never resurface,” I might muse to myself. Normalcy? I would like to have some in my politics, too, please! There is nothing new going on here. The return to normalcy was a cry against big-government progressivism ninety years ago. Any day now, I expect to hear this term being used in some conservative arena as a novel new approach. I will laugh out loud when this is suggested. History belongs to all of us. We should use it more: not to be sullen about the loss of the good old days, but to help us make choices that avoid the mistakes others made as they were sojourning through this life viewing through that clouded, dark glass. Debbie and I are off to Houston, BATCC and Gooday on March 29, for a final checkout on this course of chemo. I will have another bone marrow biopsy. It will be my first at BATCC. We will see how their technique stacks up with Hemosapien’s. They have a separate clinic just for this. I’m sure the people who do them at BATCC do them all day long every day. They should be outstanding at it. Regrettably, I cannot take a pistol with me there. They have a metal detector you have to pass through to get inside the building. I suppose others who have had bone marrow biopsies done there in the past were the harbingers of this precaution. I will keep you posted. By the way, happy birthday Lisa and Amanda (both former co-workers). I am sorry we have lost touch. To the rest of you, a Happy St. Paddy’s Day! 3/07/10 Neutropeeny-Meany That’s how I feel when I can’t shake hands. Not shaking hands is so UNLIKE me! Folks have been checking on me. I am delighted when they do. My friend Frank in Memphis, to whom you have been previously introduced, called a couple of times and left me a message. I sent him this e-mail, which brought him, and now you, up to speed.
My friend Ed Dye promptly lost a brief, violent struggle with cancer last year. Ed’s passing left a hole that can never be filled in so many lives. One of Ed’s favorite artists was a black gospel singer who recorded in the 1920’s, Washington Phillips. Ed’s favorite Washing Phillips song was “What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?” I wonder what Ed Dye is doing in heaven today. As Washington Phillips said, “I don’t know, but it’s my job to stay right here and sing about it!” Like Washington, I’m planning on staying and singing. We performed this song on The Sucarnochee Revue last Friday night, March 5, 2010. This is for Ed Dye, his family and friends, and for everyone who lost their battle, or loved someone who lost their battle with cancer. Here it is:
You can read the YouTube comments if you'd like. I botched the intro to this song in the WORST way. This song is in 3/4 time. I started it off, and sng the first line in 4/4 time and IT WAS NOT WORKING. I was in panic mode. My mind was racing, and I'm sure my blood pressure was off the scale. I ad to fix this, somehow, and fix it suddenly and dramatically. I managed to pull it off with the help of a superb, professional band. Thanks, guys for making me look good. I salute you, each and every one. Though looking at the video, it does not appear that I was in a panic, but I assure you I was. Should I get some sort of award for my musical performance that night? Naw! But someone should certainly nominate me for some sort of award for ACTING! The ACT was the best part of my performance. This is a powerful song. It will speak to your heart, not because of me, but because of the anointed words of Washington Phillips Washington managed to pull of this thing I find MOST admirable in a song: that it is mournful and joyful at the same time. 2/25/10 Can You Say NEUTROPENIA? There’s fact and there’s fiction. They are both here. You must choose where one ends and the other begins. I have warned you before. Rick is in the hospital. He is having major complications from his chemo. Chemo is dangerous business, but then it must be. One doesn’t get out a .22 to shoot a charging lion, but a big bore rifle with a big kick. It must stop the charging lion in its tracks, or the lion’s charge can be fatal. With a suitable big-bore rifle, at best you’ll have a bruised shoulder and a dead lion, and less desirable, a gun malfunction that still kills the lion but maims the shooter, and at worst a gun malfunction that maims the shooter and leaves the lion unaffected. I’m claiming a bruised shoulder from a well placed bullet for Rick. A bruised shoulder is sore as hell, but it heals in time; perhaps, long after the lion is dead. “You are neutropenic,” Hemopsapien said to me, “Go home!” Now the Earth is not sterile. Mississippi is not sterile. My home is not sterile. Sterile is what I need. Mississippi is what I have. Mississippi may be at its most sterile point right now, though; the cold weather having put spores, bacteria and other microbes into a hibernation, a winter respite, a frigid isolation that will vanish with the spring sun and humidity. Life here in spring and summer grows with reckless abandon; the life that we can see, and the life that escapes our vision but affects our lives, nevertheless. Life is ever restless here, ever encroaching. An untended pasture left idle for two years becomes a tangle of briars and weeds through which only snakes and rabbits can pass unscathed. Pastures once grazed by cattle, leaving their own lively uncleanness to fertilize that which must inevitably come after, pastures through which one could have walk briskly last year, are now choked with wait-a-minute vines; the ones that grab you as you pass and seem to ask, “What’s your rush? Why don’t you just stay here and wait a minute?” That minute is required for disentanglement, alone. Stemming blood flow from briar-scratches and a chemotherapy induced low-platelet count can take longer than a minute. You can almost hear the saw-briars laughing at you. You can almost hear the rabbits laughing. You can rally hear the s-s-s-snakes s-s-s-slithering along though the weeds, hissssssing with laughter, but you can’t see them, your feet being shrouded by a damp thickness, through which you dare not peer lest you see something you’d rather not. For some reason, I am transported to the school cafeteria, in line with my tray, I reach for the silverware as I approach the food bar, hair-netted ladies placing food on trays ahead of me, food that looks like it might be leftover government commodities, canned and prepared by those companies unable to qualify for a contract to make MRE’s for the Army, and struggling to sell their manufacture to institutions looking for the lowest bidder. It’s lowest bidder food being dolloped out onto the trays by the hair-netted ladies, stern looks on their faces, always looking like someone else’s grandmother, never mine. How did I get in line in this school cafeteria? Why am I here? Still reaching for the silverware, and wondering why we still call it that, silver being as far from this place as food prepared with fresh ingredients and even further from the not-so-stainless steel utensils I am approaching. I see the forks, knives and spoons. Ahead of me, I also see hands, some merely unwashed, some seemingly filthy, handling the silverware. When it is my turn, I pause to inspect each fork and knife before I make my final selection, as if my eyes alone could tell me which ones were home to undesirable colonizations and which were not. After some time, the people behind me getting impatient, I make my final selection, more satisfied than a random grab, but really preferring to wait until fresh hot silverware came out of the dish washing machine somewhere in the bowels of the cafeteria. I could not wait that long, the folks behind me making impatient noises, so I take what I have and move forward toward the mostly gray and brown food, watched over like diamonds in a mine by the hair-netted other–grandmother ladies, afraid they’ll put one more gray-green bean on the tray than they should. The gray-green beans look less promising than the silverware in my hand, but I am hungry and press on towards the dollops which will soon be placed on my own tray. The lady behind me sneezes into her right hand, wipes off her nose and mouth with that hand, rubs it onto her pants leg, sniffling a time or two to re-claim into her own body that which would not be reclaimed. She sneezes again harder this time. Her left hand holding her tray and silverware, her right hand flying to her mouth, no doubt failing to contain all the particles flying from her mouth and nose faster than Nolan Ryan can throw a fastball and spraying all those around her in a manner akin to me spraying the lawn with weed-killer from an applicator at the end of a garden hose. At one time this would have gone without notice, but today I feel violated. This woman’s bodily fluids have now penetrated those around her. Perhaps “penetrated” is a harsh word, perhaps too suggestive. We’re just talking about two sneezes in the line at a cafeteria. I have no connection with this woman other than the cafeteria line. No connection, that is, until her sneezes. Now, perhaps, we are bonded in an innocent but very intimate and dangerous liaison. I wince at the thought but keep on moving through the line. The vivid redness of the beets catch my eye like a red ribbon around a box of chocolates amid the myriads of brown and gray on the buffet. “I’ll have some of the beets,” I said to the hair-netted lady number one, hovering over three bays of the buffet, “and some of the not-so-green beans.” She did not think this at all funny. She had no sense of humor. She dolloped the beets out onto my tray with a clang of the spoon, spattering crimson beet sauce over the tray, reminding me of the blood shed in untended pastures. She then scooped up the gray-green beans, a heaping spoonful, and cutting her eyes at me and flashing a missing-bicuspid evil smirk, shook beans off the spoon until I was sure I was at only 75% of my full bean entitlement, her way of punishing me for my remark which she apparently took as a personal insult of her culinary skills, which at this cafeteria consisted of placing gallon cans of army-reject green beans in a device that cuts them open, and the pouring of them into a 25 gallon pot already on the stove for heating, and now being served at a tepid less-than-140 degree temperature, which meant that any particulate ejecta from the sneezes of the woman behind me failing to be caught by the useless glass shield of the buffet warmer, since NONE of us sneeze while standing erect, leaning down to do so; and had she remained erect, she was too short for the glass shield to be effective; those particles were now growing in the tepid, warm moisture of the gray-beans, bacterial cells multiplying dividing as rapidly as nature would allow, prompted by the warmth, which, unable to be classified as HEAT, left them undeterred to do so.
“Beef Tips over rice, Salisbury Steak, or Chicken Spaghetti?” She asked. I looked at the beef tips. I looked at the Salisbury Steak. I looked at the tiny sweat beads on her lip. I looked at the hair-net on her hair. I wondered why it did not cover her eyebrows. Surely, there was a rule that that much hair had to be covered as well. I glanced around for a SERVE-SAFE certificate, which should have been placed somewhere visibly near where the food was being served. I did not see one. I’m sure one was there, somewhere, but a glance did not reveal it. “Beef Tips over rice, Salisbury Steak, or Chicken Spaghetti?” She asked, again, louder this time. I looked at the Beef Tips and Salisbury Steak, again. For the life of me, I could not see any difference between the two. Chopped up cull-brood-cow in brown gravy in food bay number 4, and ground-up re-assembled cull-brood-cow in the same brown gravy in food bay number 5. I then looked at the chicken spaghetti in food bay number 6. I shuddered at the sight of it. Now I love chicken. The contribution of that bird to human civilization is incalculable, but I will only eat chicken under certain closely held and sacred circumstances; I will almost NEVER eat it if someone else has cooked it. I will not eat fried chicken from a convenience store, Popeyes, KFC or anywhere else. I will eat it if I fried it, my mother fried it, or my wife fried it. I love and will eat smoked and barbecued chicken that I have cooked at my own home, but I will not eat it if it has been cooked by someone somewhere else. I haven’t always been this way, but I have become obsessive about it. I have no answer as to how I developed this obsession; it is there, nevertheless. I will not eat chicken at church pot-luck, I don’t care which good-sister-so-and-so fried it. I have a few non-home exceptions to this, but these all revolve around elderly black people who helped teach me how to cook, who are dying out now as that entire generation passes on into the ages, and their offspring, because I know whose hands and instructions they learned to cook AT. The chicken spaghetti looked like something that had already been eaten and regurgitated. It had the yellowness of saffron, but certainly not the elegance of saffron; more by way of powdered cheese mixed with powdered milk, and salted like a silver-mine straight from a Mark Twain story, with a big chunk here-and-there of a piece of old-worn-out-laying-hen carcass. I looked again at the uncovered bushy eyebrows. I looked at the sweat beads on the lip. I looked at the chicken spaghetti. “Sir, you are holding up the line! Now what’ll it be?” Her belligerence was nearly uncontrollable. She could tell I was amazed at those eyebrows. My mind now made up, “I don’t want any meat. I’ll just have a roll to go with these beets and green-eyebrows,” I said. “What!!!???” “”I mean green-beans,” my face now as crimson in embarrassment as the beet-sauce spattering my plate and hers just as crimson from anger. The first roll she bounced onto my tray bounced right off and onto the floor. “Those are some heavy-duty rolls,” I laughed, trying to make a joke and ease the tension, but it would not be eased. She looked down
at the roll on the floor. For a split-second, I could tell that it crossed her
mind to pick it back up and put it on my tray, which I am firmly persuaded she
WOULD have done had no one been watching. Oh, Lord, Protect us from what goes on
in food-preparation places when no one is watching! She ever-so-slightly leaned
down towards the roll, the greasy tongs in her hand making an ever-so-subtle
hint of movement towards the roll now on the floor. “You wouldn’t DARE!” I said, our face both crimson again, but the reasons reversed this time. Her crimson embarrassment meant that I had correctly read her mind. She WOULD have picked that roll up. Eyes down, now completely hidden by those eyebrows, she placed a fresh roll on my tray and I gave one more look at those eyebrows and beads of sweat on her lip and this time I stared long and hard; deliberate. Her face had turned crimson again, this time back to an angry crimson; everything now crimson-less except for HER face and the beets on my tray. I was beyond anger and embarrassment. I had read her mail. I had caught her with her pants down. I was sublimely superior to her, having caught her, one might say, inflagranti delicto. The color on my face was no doubt similar to the color on Napoleon’s face as he snatched the imperial crown from the hands of Pope Pius VII and placed it on his own head. I had all the confidence, vigor and power of a newly crowned emperor. Now, she could not help it that she looked like the child of Lee Marvin and James Coburn, but she could surely trim those eyebrows a bit as she brushes them back every day. I’d buy her some scissors. I moved on with my tray toward the cashier, now drunk on the wine of my own unparalleled, imperially superlative humanity. During all of this, the sneeze-lady had gone around me, and was now making her payment and getting her change as I was approaching. She had paid in one-dollar bills. I didn’t think anything about this. I did not mind that she had gone around me, I was not inconvenienced by that. Though I now looked around, suspicious of anything she might have touched. “Vegetable plate and tea. That’ll be $5.60,” said the cashier when I arrived. I handed her a ten. She counted out the four dollars and forty cents change and held it out to me. I went to reach for it automatically, but had an instantaneous frightening thought, and suddenly pulled my hand back at the same instant she was trying to place the money in it. The dollar bills and the change went straight to the floor, the coins naturally rolling into the most inaccessible places as the dollar bills fluttered to the ground. These dollar bills were the same ones that had been given to the cashier by the sneezing woman, who, holding her tray in her LEFT hand had used the same hand into which she had sneezed to give the cashier the money. “I’m sorry,” said the cashier, mistakenly and graciously thinking that this somehow must have been her fault. She reached into the cash drawer and got out some dollar bills that, while I could not be sure were NOT tainted by disease, microbes, or someone else’s precious bodily fluids, I knew weren’t the same ones handled by the sneezing woman. Still I was wary. Holding my tray firmly in both hands, gripping it as if it were too heavy to hold for an instant with one hand, I turned my side to the cashier. “Would you please just stick that in my coat pocket?” I asked. She smiled and did so, then closed the cash drawer and retrieved the dollar bills on the floor, the invisible coins having to wait until the lunch rush was over. Satisfied with how that worked out, I looked around for a place to sit. There was sneezing woman sitting by herself at the only table that was not crowded. I did not want to sit there. I looked around for a seat, not really wanting to sit too near anyone, but it was looking more and more like the choices would be to sit next to some stranger or sit at sneezing woman’s table. I gazed and gazed as more and more people passed by me. Across the entire room, I saw the wave of a white-sleeved arm with a beckoning hand. It was Hemosapien. Seated with him at a table way over in the corner were Margaret, Harrell, Rick, Mrs. Grace, Neil-Earth Planter, Johnny D., Phillip, Mike, Jimmy, Carolyn, and Dr. Cecil. It seemed like a lunch-meeting over which Hemosapien was presiding. There was one seat left at the table and Hemosapien pulled it back and invited me to sit down. “Well fancy seeing all you here!” I said cheerfully. Everyone at this table was a cancer patient, a cancer survivor, or a physician, or both. They all said hello back, and smiled all around as I dove into my beets and gray-green beans. “What brought you all together, here?” I asked., cheerfully. “We followed you here, knowing you'd be unable to stay put,” Hemosapien said in an ominous tone. “And with good reason,” said Dr. Cecil by way of reprimand, of he was never short on giving, nor at which he was ineffective, such is the respect I have had for this man-physician-surgeon-cancer survivor, who served me as my physician from the time I was a teenager until in my 30’s when I moved away. “You shouldn’t be here in this crowd of people,” said my friend and fellow cancer patient, Margaret, gently, sweetly, but firmly. “You should be at home,” said Mrs. Grace, with all the charm her genteel, South Georgia self could muster but in the voice she used when she expected to be obeyed, which I’m sure made her whole household step-and-fetch. Mrs. Grace, very ill herself, had gone to great lengths to be there. And you should do what Hemosapien tells you to do,” said Neil Earth-Planter and Johnny D., both two-time cancer survivors and close friends. "You don’t need any complications that, should they not kill you, eat up all your annual insurance limit,” said Carolyn, a cancer patient and clinic office manager, trying to help me stay out of a jam as they have done there so many times before. Rick, Jack, Harrell, Phillip, Mike and Jimmy all silently nodded in agreement. “So this is sort of like an intervention a caring group has with a chemically dependent friend or family member?” I said more than asked. “Similar,” said Hemosapien, “except your dependence is your independence.” “And why would you trade your leukemia remission for a possible death-by-numerous and/or various types of infections on a trip to a bad cafeteria?” asked and admonished Dr. Cecil? I looked at the even more unappetizing food on my plate. I looked at the friends and caregivers all around. While pondering this, Hemosapien’s cell phone rang. He answered it, said a couple of brief words, and then handed it to me. It was Gooday on the other end. “Go straight home,” he said, “Do not pass GO, do not collect $200.” It was an order, not a request. I looked at Hemosapien – He nodded. I looked at Dr. Cecil – He nodded, scowled, and nodded, again. Everyone was nodding. The phone went dead and I handed it back to Hemosapien. I thanked them all for their candor, their caring, and their courage to demonstrate it so. There was noting left to say. I got up and headed to the door. Approaching the door simultaneously was sneezing woman. I raced to the door to get there ahead of her, opened it wide, and she walked through like a queen headed for her carriage, nodding to me as that same queen would to her footman as she did so. “My pleasure, ma’am!” I said with a smile, more to myself than to her because I had prevented her from touching that door handle with that same, sneeze-catching hand. Perhaps she thought I was gallant. Perhaps she thought it was her right to have the door opened for her. Perhaps she thought I was an anachronism from an age when men still did things like that for women. She’d be right if she thought that. She’d also be right if she were the jaded type of woman, thinking that men always have an ulterior motive in their actions towards women. She’d be right, of course, about me and an ulterior motive, but she’d miss by a country mile the motivation. I laugh at the irony of that all the way home, my un-sterile but warm and inviting Mississippi home2/20/10 Deep Dark Foreboding Feelings Last Friday finished my chemo. For three days afterward, I felt pretty bad. While feeling bad, darkly bad, this went through my mind. Deepest darkest foreboding Of life-giving toxic chemicals Pushed through veins Tired of assaults and punctures Rolling, resisting, rebelling At indignities and attacks by others
MY body says enough! And more! MY mind races, MY mind races. MY pains. My woes. MY ills. ME. ME. ME. ME. ME.
But SHE. The labored breath and groans next to me come from one Also getting toxic cocktails That promise everything yet for her deliver nothing but pain Hairless with skin eruptions Stomach lined with concrete blocks And eyes colored like Haitian cement Looking at her worried mother Whose brow furrows like Soybean fields plowed Too soon by desperate farmers After winter rains Clumped up piles of wadded intractable earth No order to the chaos caused by the tractor Pulling a heavy plow through a field Not ready, not receiving, not responding Just like her daughter’s body. “She’s not doing well at all,” her mother said. “The doctor says that it’s just a matter of time now.”
Melanoma spreads to livers To kidneys To colons To lungs To other vital places Leaving jaundiced colors to skin Already insulted by a host of toxins Those promising toxins They promise all They don’t deliver for some Like congress Like political candidates Like TV preachers “Stretch forth your hand and send your seed faith gift of $49.95 or more plus shipping and handling for our free series of cassette tapes entitled “Faith and Healing and Why Your Personal Failings Prevented Yours’” The radio blares in frequencies harsh on the ears And words harsher on the heart.
Her real pastor immediately near Praying in earnest humility Before a Divine providence He doesn’t fully understand Yet moved by a faith that is genuine and real He holds her hand I see her hand clasp his urgently And then tighten further He offers a prayer to a loving God He asks for healing He asks for comfort He asks for peace. I pray with them. I pray earnestly
Through the tangle of tubes carrying chemicals To my own veins In mid-prayer I reach for her Mother’s hand. Her Mother grabs it like A starving man would grab A moldy piece of bread. She squeezes my hand hard and harder still But not at all like the hand-squeeze Of an intrusive life insurance salesman Whose handshake now would be As comforting and effective as Her application for a policy As comforting and as effective as the medicine Pumped into her veins. She squeezes more like there is some essence In me she would claim for her daughter. I give it freely. I give every microgram Every nanogram Every angstrom's length of it Every Joule Watt Newton Erg Calorie BTU By whatever unit it can be measured By whatever tools it can be measured with. Every grain and dram I can muster, withholding nothing If her squeeze of my hand During the pastor’s prayer Can somehow transfer any bit of it To the failing life of her precious daughter The product of her own body Her life’s biggest investment But how can faith be measured? How can faith be transferred?
Haitian Cement gray, jaundice yellow No color chips for these At Sherwin-Williams. Maybe paint-color names will help. We’ll call it “Earth Ochre” Perhaps “Battleship Gray” Or “The color formerly known as NORMAL” That’s it. Just a change in perspective. Just a re-definition of terms. Just a wave of the hand Just a denial of reality. Denial of reality, is that what faith is? Jesus said Faith moves mountains. Yet her mountain seems immoveable. It does not flee at the utterance of Words that sound faithful. Where is our faith? I’ll look at Sherwin Williams. Maybe they have a color called “Sure-fire Faith.”
What will kill her? Her lack of faith? Or perhaps it is the cancer? It’s the CANCER I wish that TV preacher were here So I could get my hands around his neck. I’d bitch-slap him right in front of the real pastor I’d take his own bible out of his hand And thump him with it until he cried “UNCLE”
I bless that humble man who is THERE That humble man who offers COMFORT That humble man who sheds tears WITH them In his own grief mourning his lack of ability To change the situation erroneously daring to think her impending demise Is somehow his personal failure In the face of faith we all face our own demise Why, then, would this be his personal failure?
Eliphaz , Zophar, and Bildad said to Job “Job, old buddy, you must admit to the secret sins that caused your great misfortune.” Job said, “I will admit no such thing.” God said, “Job is an upright and righteous man.” GOD said it. GOD said it. GOD said it. God never said that about Eliphaz. He never said that about me. He never said that about that TV preacher He never said that about the fervently praying Pastor Whose brow sports sweat beads akin To the furrows on the mother’s Eliphaz, et.al., or GOD. Take your pick. With the greatest confidence I’ll pick GOD over Job’s buddies. Yet Job suffered. Job suffered horribly Job suffered wickedly.
I suffer now because I am doing well And I feel guilty about it. I wonder why am I not the one who is dying? Why she? Why not me? How pointless is that? I expect any day to read a certain Young woman’s name in the obituaries In the daily newspaper. I look every day. I pray for her recovery every day Yet I look in the obituaries every day
When I find her name I will see it spelled out. It will spell out her name. It will seem to be a name that is not my name. But just as sure as if it were spelled just like mine It will be my name that I see and I will mourn my own demise with hers.
When her pastor finished praying SHE looked at me with those cement gray eyes And there was the spark of life in them Invisible for some, but I saw it clearly And then she smiled. With labored breath but a grace that filled the room With a sweet aroma I can still smell She said, “Thank you for praying with me and my mother.” “It meant so much to us both.”
My words have failed me now But others I recall that were recorded so long ago Now come fresh to my mind speaking without fail across ages of human loss and suffering.
For now we see through a clouded dark glass; but then face to face: now I just partly know; but then I shall know and shall also be known. These three things abide: faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love.
These are the words I will keep. I’ll reject the rest. Other than that, I'm doing just fine! a five mile hike yesterday through gorgeous woods along the creek. Just delightful. My old self is returning. I AM SO THANKFUL FOR WHAT I HAVE! 2/13/10 Delinquent in posting/Finished with Chemo I have been delinquent in posting. I apologize. Many of you have sent me e-mails worrying about me. I am OK. I have decided, on my own experience, that the effects of chemotherapy are cumulative; The more you have, the worse the side effects. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be the case that you get more conditioned to it, thus the effects are less. It is the reverse. The life-restoring toxins seem to build up in your body, and each successive round is harder and harder on you. I had some days after round 5 where I felt absolutely awful; not a particular awful, such as nausea, but a general malaise of awfulness, a covering tarpaulin of awfulness, a pool of awfulness in which I was dipped by unseen hands and held under until I inhaled awfulness after which I was let back to the surface, gasping, only to be re-submerged in mid-gasp. At least that’s how is seemed. This did not in Post-round-5 week 2, nor 3, but continued on through week 4, at which time I was to start round 6. Round 6, my final round for this first cycle, and hopefully my final round for many years, started on Wednesday, February 10. As the reader has learned, each round consists of three days. The first day of the round I get infusions of Rituximab (Rituxan), Decadron (a powerful steroid), cyclosphosphamide (Cytoxan), and Fludarabine (Fludara). The Rituxan cannot be given without the steroids because of the potential for serious adverse reactions, since it is a monoclonal anti-body, synthesized in mice, and my human body wants to reject the mouse anti-bodies, and can do so violently. It must be given slowly. I have tolerated it well along the course of the treatment, though, only having a reaction the first time I took it at BATCC. It takes me all day to get this drug. Rituxan, though terrifically expensive, is truly a remarkable drug. It is not a typical chemotherapy agent wherein it damages healthy cells along with cancer cells, but targets only the cancer cells by the recognition of a certain protein that exists only on the surface of the cancer cells and not on the healthy cells. It and similar drugs represent the future of cancer treatment. When they learn to synthesize Rituxan in humans, or have my own body synthesize it, it will work like a vaccine. I don’t think my friends at BATCC and the rest of the research facilities of the CLL consortium are far away from accomplishing this. While day 1 of a round is long, it has its benefits. I met and visited with Mr. Harrell, who is a retiree from one of the local power companies for whom my company does much work. He worked in marketing. I know his former boss well, but had never had the opportunity to meet Mr. Harrell when he worked at the power company. We have many mutual friends. He first came up to me in the waiting room to confirm that I was one of the musicians that played on the Sucarnochee Revue, indicating that he was a fan of mine, having attended the show for the first time on February 5. Of course, I liked him right away, since it is easy to warm up to someone who has just indicated that they like your music! After a brief visit in the waiting room, I was called to go to labs and he was called back to the chemo room where he was to receive continuing treatments for lymphoma. Not only did we share an interest in music, and things related to power companies and many mutual friends, we shared a common bond in that we both had blood cancers. This bond was growing thicker by the moment . . . a most interesting phenomenon that can happen easily in a cancer treatment center waiting room. After labs, I went right in to see Hemosapien. He walks in with a big grin. I’m sure my grin was just as big back. He asked me how I had doe after round 5. I told him, and he was not surprised that this one was more difficult than previous. I told him that the lack of sleep had been one of the most difficult parts. “Are you taking the medicines you’ve been prescribed to help you sleep?” he asked. “Ocasionally,” was my reply. “And when you take those medicines, is your sleep better or worse?” “I sleep better when I take them,” I said. Puzzled, he looked at me and very reasonably asked, “Then why don’t you take them as they have been prescribed?” I had no answer, just hung my head and shrugged my shoulders. I went on to explain that I hated to take those drugs, some of which can cause dependency, and was again admonished that I had shown no signs of developing dependency, and should take them as they had prescribed them so I could sleep, and to stop complaining about the lack of sleep if I wasn’t going to take the medicine. In former days, I would have had some smart-ass answer for Hemosapien, but I have learned to trust him, and I accepted his admonition in humility, though when he admonishes, he always does so carefully; he never knowing exactly how I might respond. When things have not gone my way, he has taken to holding his fingers up in the universal anti-hex sign when he sees me approaching, which now completely disarms me and the scowl on my approaching face turns into a smile when I see this. Hemosapien is not my enemy, he is my friend and close ally. I will take my medicine. I will be admonished. I will humble myself. After seeing Hemosapien, I was sent directly to the chemo room. Nurse Dana and Nurse Juanita were on duty. I was happy to see them and they were happy to see me. We have become close. They are so kind. I saw Mr. Harrell, all plugged into his drip machine and promised to come back and visit with him later as I trudged back to the corner of the chemo room that I like where I can spread out all the paraphernalia that I bring with me and not be in everyone’s way. There was no rush to get back to Mr. Harrell, he was taking Rituxan, too, and would be there all day. About the time I got hooked up, here comes my long-time friend Rick. He has Hodkins Lymphoma, and was here to get a shot of Neulasta to boost his white blood cells. They had threatened to give me this back in January, but my blood numbers recovered (miraculously, I might add) and I was not required to take this damnably expensive drug ($4,000 per shot!). Rick had not been so fortunate, nor had his chemo gone as well as mine. Though he was responsive to the chemo, one of the drugs in his particular chemo cocktail has caused a particular debilitating side effect, a rare one, which had reduced his pulmonary capacity to the point wherein for the past two months he had been unable to work; this causing an extreme hardship on him and his family. There’s nothing easy about cancer. Rick was doing better since his doctor had discontinued the drug, one typically given with his variety of cancer, but the one that was the least effective of the cocktail. With the chemo-cocktails, they usually have two or more drugs they give you. One of them will be the front-line, the one that does most of the work; the quarterback one might say. Usually there is a second, less effective, and working in a different biological manner, which is designed to catch and destroy some cancer cells that may be overlooked by the front-line drug,; like a wide receiver relied on and used frequently by the quarterback to get the job done. Frequently, there is a third drug, also working by a different biological mechanism, which hopefully catches the cells that the first two miss. This one works like the fullback who has run a short course out of the backfield, and when the wide receivers are thus covered and unavailable, the quarterback can spot and throw the ball to the fullback who has snuck out of the backfield unobserved by the defensive backs. From my layperson’s observation, those 3rd line drugs are older anti-cancer agents, available on the market for a long-time, are the least effective and do the mot collateral damage, tough they are also the inexpensive ones of the cocktail. In my case, the Rituxan is the front-line agent. It costs $12,000 per round. It targets ONLY the cancer cells. Then There is the Fludarabine (it costs about $2,700 per round). Then, there is the old stand-by Cyclosphamide. It costs about $225 per round. If they had to drop a drug from my regimen, I’m sure it would be the cyclosphamide, NOT the Rituxan! Rick stayed with me for a while after he got his shot of Neulasta, then he had to be off. I enjoyed his visit. Though he is feeling bad and cannot work, his treatment is WORKING! That’s a tremendous lot to be thankful for. In the midst of his pain, Rick has not lost his wonderful sense of humor. Though the lines on his hair-less head and face are deeper, and the pain shows through, a smile is quick to spread across his face; this has not changed. He has always had this. Rick is still in there. I also visited with Carla. Carla has a cancer which has metastasized. She is gravely ill. Her chemo was making her so ill she was nearly immobile, and curled up in a fetal position. I said hello, and she smiled and said hello back. We talked for a minute. Carla very matter-of-factly stated that her chemo was about to kill her, and that the devastating effects of the chemo, though nearly unbearable, was all she had to hang on to, and it did not appear to be stemming the tide of the cancer growing in her body. Her one chance was for this to work, and if not, her next step was a brief stay at hospice. I looked deep into her eyes. I saw resignation, I saw indifference, I saw pain, all in rotation, and then I saw a spark of defiance in them. It’s that spark of defiance, still alive in her as her body is failing, that will keep her alive and make the chemo work if it will work at all. Resignation will not do it. Indifference will not do it. Pain will not do it. Defiance certainly will. Of course, I offered no empty words of encouragement to Carla. She wanted to do the talking. I am everyday amazed at how cancer patients will talk to other cancer patients. After she was through telling me about herself, she asked me how I was doing. I could hardly speak. I opened my mouth and the words would not come out, just a croaking sound as a swollen lump developed in my throat and tears clouded my eyes. When I had recovered and was able to speak, I told her that I was in remission and that I was taking my final round of chemo, hopefully to be through for a long time. She smiled and said she was glad. She held out her hand, and I grabbed it. I asked her if I could pray with her. She said please do, so Carla and I and her caregiver who had accompanied her all prayed together. These prayers are hard prayers, but they offer comfort anyway. We get to a point in our lives where our prayers can only be, “God, I am in your hands!” Where else can we go? And in the long-run, or in the pre-run, where were when we when we started? We can only state the obvious. Morose and feeling guilty after my visit with Carla, I began to ponder the why’s. Why was I getting better and she I the process of dying? Why me? Why she? These are hard questions for which there are no easy answers, and if someone tells me that there must be some secret sin in Carla’s life that is causing her to not get better, they’d better be ready to duck. The righteous suffer along with the wicked. We are all in the same boat. Carla IS me, and I am SHE. John Donne Meditation XV11
Perchance
he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him;
and perchance I may think myse I am Carla. She is Me. We are all each other. I also visited Rick’s friend Jack, who came if for his chemo. He was in till in shock when I met him in January, having just received his diagnosis of lung and colon cancer. He was already responding to treatment. He has a long way to go, but his outlook was bright. We spent very little time talking about our cancers, but about solar cells, fuel cells, producing hydrogen by electrolysis, and Nicola Tesla. What a delightful conversation we had. I have plans on knowing Jack better in the future. He is going to become a friend, not merely the friend of a friend. I then visited with Mr. Harrell. Apparently I am a real gadabout. Mr. Harrell and I discussed all our mutual friends, and he went on to tell me of his hobby of woodcarving. I could tell from the way he spoke about it that he was no casual woodcarver. I am looking forward to seeing some of his work, which he displays in shows all around the Southeast. He then told me about a mutual friend who is also a patient at the cancer center. Margaret is one of the sweetest, classiest ladies I have ever met. She is the secretary of a close friend of Mr. Harrell and me. She has just been diagnosed with cancer and just started her treatments. It was too late in the day to call her when I learned this, but I called her yesterday morning. The first thing she did was to ask me how I was doing and congratulate me on having heard that I was in remission; no mention of her own troubles, and that she had been praying for me by name and I was on the prayer list at her church. She then asked me if I wanted to speak with Wayne, her boss. “No, Margaret, I called up to talk to you.,” I said. “Oh?” she asked. “I saw Mr. Harrell at the chemo clinic today, and he told me that you were also a patient there.” “Yes!” she said, sounding excited. I knew what was coming next. “Do you mind if I ask you what kind of cancer you have and how you are doing?” I asked. “No, I don’t mind.” And then she went on to tell me about her diagnosis, her trip to UAB in Birmingham. And her referral back to the cancer center in Meridian for treatment, and that Hemosapien was her doctor. I told her she had a good doctor, and that I was still helping train Hemosapien to be an even better doctor. She laughed out loud at this. “He certainly is a fine young man, and I have a lot of confidence in him.” she said. “So do I, though not so much at first. I had a lot to learn about myself, but I have watched Hemosapien grow tremendously in the past year. I think one of the reasons I have cancer is so that I would be able to help Hemosapien become he best oncologist he could possible be. I know I keep him on his toes. He has to study lest I come up with some questions for which he has no answer. He detests that, I’m sure, but I love it to try my best to befuddle him. It is getting harder to do so. I have to study hard myself.” We both laughed. We both agreed that we admired and respected our oncologist. We both agreed that our community was fortunate to have this cancer clinic. We both agreed that we would continue to pray for each other, for Hemosapien and his colleagues, and for all their patients. Then we said goodbye. On Wednesday, before the start of my treatment, Hemosapien challenged me. “Were you ever actually tested for IgVH mutational status? (That is the Immunoglobulin Heavy Chain Variable Region Gene’s mutational status for you laypersons . . . I’m sure that clears all this up for you!) It’s very rare that they actually test for this since only two places in the world do it, and it is so expensive.” He continued., “Or did they just make the correlation because you are ZAP-70 positive?” “They actually sent my bone marrow to the University of San Diego Medical Enter and did the IgVH. The report came back to Good from Dr, Kips himself, and I am bona-fide un-mutated.” I said. “Then it’s certain, for sure,” Hemosapien said. He already knew this, looking at my chart as he asked me that, but baiting me hoping to catch me in a trap. And out of nowhere, he asked, “And what does the ZAP in ZAP-70 stand for?” Without any hesitation I said, “Zeta Associated Protein.” “Very good,” a big smile on his face. “What did you think I was, a mere first year medical student?” in retort, smiling back. “You’ve been a good student.” He said. “So have you,” I replied. He smiled even bigger. He makes too much money to smile too much. I should get him frowning more often. Unfortunately, knowing this does not help me. ZAP-70 positive and Unmutated IgVH gene is NOT a good thing. It places me in a higher risk category and means that my leukemia is more likely to return sooner, and perhaps more virulent when it does. I am aware of the numbers, but I have learned to listen to Neil Earth-Planter, and I will get on with my life and not be morose and sullen about something I can do nothing about. Yesterday, Friday, February 12, saw the early morning hours begin with heavy snowfall. Previously when inclement weather had struck Meridian, they had closed the cancer center and directed all the chemo patients to the hospital. I asked Hemosapien before I left Thursday where I was supposed to report, the weather forecasts ominously and consistently indicating 4 to 5 inches of snow accumulation. “We don’t know yet.” He said. “Well, I’ll expect a phone call letting me know where to report.” “I will let you know. I’ll be on call this weekend, so I’ll see you whether you are here or at the hospital.” He said. True to his word (and why not?), nurse Jessica called me about 4:30PM. She had called the house first, but was not satisfied at having left me a message thus, and indicated that she could not be satisfied until she had spoken to me in person. “They have decided to close the clinic tomorrow. You are to report to the hospital any time after 10:00AM for your final round of chemo,” she said. So, in the heavy snowfall, I put the ol’ pickup in four-wheel drive, and headed off to Meridian to Jeff Anderson Regional Medical Center for the final day of the last round of chemo. After the admissions paperwork was filled out, I was directed to the 4th floor East and told to give the nurses the papers in my hand. Lo and behold, TWO of the nurses I had gone to school with. Sandra (whose entire family were friends of mine) and Scotty, whom I did not know nearly as well, but knew and liked nevertheless. I was in good hands. While they were getting my chemo medicines ready, I wandered over to visit with my friend and former bandmate Phillip, who was being treated for esophageal cancer. Phillip has just been diagnosed and they put him in the hospital for treatment because of come complications. Our mutual friend Amos was there, and we visited, laughed, chatted, gossiped, told jokes, and generally carried on until such time as I hear my name being urgently used on the intercom. “Mr. Sharp, Mr. Sharp, please return to your room. Mr. Sharp, return to your room!” I was missing in action. When I got back to my room, Sandra was there, patting her foot in that manner that a mother does to a wayward child. “They finally told you had gone to visit Phillip. I had no idea where you were. I thought you had left.” I was guilty, I did not argue. I accepted this rebuke. Then, Sandra hooked up my IV, and I was well on my way to getting the last dosages of this stuff for hopefully a long, long time. When finished, I went back to see Phillip. Amos had gone by this time, but he left me the nicest note. I then headed to the grocery store, and ravenously hungry, bought everything I could see that looked like it might be good to eat. Ribs and chicken for the grill. Some red beans and sausage for seasoning, all with the idea that being snowed in, I’d cook, and we’d have a nice family gathering. Today, the thought of me cooking anything, or enjoying eating anything seem much farther removed. I’m not going to cook anything. I’m not going to eat anything. I’m going to tote this small paint pail around, and every time I wretch, I am going to be thankful that I did not have to take extra steroids. I am going to be thankful that the chemotherapy they gave me has WORKED, and that every symptom of a side effect of the chemotherapy is something for which I am to be thankful. I am going to think about Carla. I am going to pray for her. I am going to thin about Mrs. Grace and pray for her. I am going to think about and pray for Margaret, Mr. Harrell, Rick, Jack, Mr. Riley, Mr. Hooper, and David-in-Tupelo and his sister. In wretched-ness I will rejoice. In discomfort, I will be cheerful. Though I will know despair one day in the future, I will not know despair today. Today, I will step outside the studio, and look at the sun shining on the beautiful blanket of snow that is covering the ground, and I will lean over, retch and throw up until my nose bleeds, and be thankful for every heave.
I will also think about what I posted on Facebook a couple of days ago. When you see others in grim circumstances, consider the mirror into which you gaze . . . then walk away in humility and thanksgiving for what you have. And you? How are YOU doing???? 2/8/10 Butt Dragging I have not posted in a while. I have some stuff stored up that needs editing before it can be posted. Thanks for your calls and e-ails checking on me. I am fine, but I my rear-end has been dragging. I have not slept well in weeks! Chemo round 6 starts on Wednesday. I'll have a full update then. Again thanks for your phone calls and e-mails. I am alive and well! 1/25/09 Still a Steroid Crash After Hemosapien’s blessing to forego the steroids on Chemo Round 5 Day 3, I thought I would be avoiding the steroid crash, or at least, that the effects of the steroids would be mitigated. No doubt, they were, somewhat, but on Saturday (1/23/10), during my granddaughter Maggie’s first birthday party, the steroid crash kicked in. About 4PM I simply ran out of steam. My boiler pressure was so low I just could not continue. I handed my video camera to my son and went and sat down on one of the sofas at the Lodge; I crashed and burned. When Debbie woke me up, everyone was leaving. I had missed most of the party. I then climbed the hill to the house, and exhausted, I went to bed. I spelt and slept. Woke up, then went back to sleep (unusual for me!) When I finally got up at 4:00AM, I felt pretty good. Sunday was a GOOD day! This morning, I am dragging a bit, but still the day offers promise. I am thankful for a day that offers promise. The steroids make you feel better than you really are. When the crash starts coming on, you notice that your joints are beginning to ache like they normally do with age, except those aches, having been masked by the steroids now come back with a vengeance, as if to make up for lost time. Then you notice a fever in your feet and hands. Then comes the crash. You watch the boiler pressure indicator go from red (where the steroids have you, running on a dangerous energy that is really an illusion) then down to green (where you should be, still feeling pretty good!) then down to blue (the level where things no longer work like they are supposed to!) until your pressure is so low that it won’t perform any useful work anymore. Then your motor stops! At that point, you have run up an energy deficit. The promissory note you signed for this energy loan reads “Payment on Demand” and is presented by your body for its immediate reconciliation. At that point, not only is your motor stopped, your eyes can’t even stay open. You are down. You are out. You have run out of steam; the last Foooossshhhh! of your engine sounds more like a whimper than a venting of useable steam to the atmosphere. If you pulled on the cord attached to the valve on the steam whistle, you’d just have a drip of tepid water down your arm, not the music of the whistle, not the warning of its blast to make way, nor the announcement of your presence on a foggy night. No one knows you’re there. You have become invisible. The only relief is that dreamless, black and dark state of sleep which overtakes you, but it is not a real recuperative sleep, more akin to not there-ness, a hibernation, a sulling, as if a ‘possum had been threatened, sulled, and thus sulled would not be awakened until left alone in silence. I have conflicting memories of that sleep. It seemed recuperative yesterday morning when I awoke, feeling pretty good. This morning, it does not seem nearly so refreshing, my memory of it having been dimmed by another 24 hours, I suppose. Perhaps it is because I am dragging this morning. Perhaps it is LAST night’s 3 hours of sleep which have dimmed the memory of Saturday night’s. Perhaps it is both of these things. Perhaps it is neither. I go to Hemosapien this morning to have blood work done. We’ll see how my numbers look. I will report back as soon as I can. I know you can hardly stand the suspense of having to wait! 1/17/10 Observations As you know, I finished round 5 of chemo on Wednesday. Hemosapien let me take the last day without the steroids, but indicated that I would probably have more nausea without them. He was right. I thought Wednesday afternoon was bad. Then, I thought Thursday was bad. Then, I thought Friday was bad. Then came Saturday. If Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were bad, then how shall I define Saturday? The word bad, previously used, now fails to describe, and worse somehow falls short of the mark and though I have many at my command, I refuse to reach for superlatives. The Zofran? Completely ineffective. It no longer even has any placebo value. Still, I’d do it again without the steroids. I have managed to sleep and not have that awful steroid crash. Now it’s Sunday. It feels like I have swallowed a concrete block, which is sitting heavily on my stomach. This usually yields to nausea after a while, yet it is not as bad as yesterday. This could change in an instant, either way. Bottom line? I’m just dealing with unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy. They could be worse. They side-effects could be worse and the chemotherapy could be completely ineffective. As it is, it’s just the ZOFRAN that is ineffective. I am thankful as I sit here and write this. My thoughts are turned to those whose chemotherapy is ineffective while the side-effects are simultaneously debilitating. There are many facing this today. It makes me ashamed to consider any complaints.
My discomforts are mere discomforts. I am even more ashamed. You will forgive me, though, if I don’t want to chat much. I am not yet very good company. 1/14/10 Steroid or No? This week's three days of chemo were unremarkable, except for the following things.
My wonderful sister-in-law sent me this e-mail at about 5 o'clock this morning: What time did you get up? I answered her back: About 2, but I slept well. The sleeping well was, I think, because of having not taken the steroids plus the fact that I had not slept for the previous two days. When I woke up at 2 o'clock this morning, though, it was not without immediacy! I sent my sister-in law this e-mail back by way of response:
While nausea, at the moment, has all of my attention, I rejoice in the endurance of! You see, my LEUKEMIA is already in remission. The nausea is just a side-effect of a the final stages of treatment which is putting the leukemia even further down a dark, deep hole, and hopefully pouring as much concrete on top of it as the Russians have poured at Chernobyl. Now, where's my bucket??? Quick?? I hurl with glee, but am not very good company right now. 1/11/10 Chemo is a Go! I got to Hemosapien's at 8:30 this Monday morning. They called m in to the labs and got ready to draw the blood. The kind phlebotomist told me that I was headed straight for chemo after the lab-work was done. I then looked down in her hand, and there were but two vials for drawing blood. I asked her if she had the vial necessary to send to BATCC and she looked at her orders and indicated that she did not have any orders to draw blood for them and could not do it without orders, but that she needed to go ahead her ordered blood-work so I could start the chemo. "I'm not taking any chemo unless we draw blood for BATCC before my first treatment and after my last treatment of this cycle," I said. I was not angry, but I may have said that a little to emphatically. She did not know what to do at that moment. I suggested that she call Nurse J and find out how to proceed. We waited for Nurse J to call us back, and they sent me back out into the waiting until the matter could be resolved. Coming out of the lab I saw Hemosapien, who made the "don't hex me" cross symbol to me, and waved me on back to see him. "It's a good thing you remembered about the BATCC's blood sample. Nurse J is calling Nurse Susan for instructions right now," he said. I could hear that Nurse J was on the phone with Nurse Susan. Hanging up, Nurse J said, "They said they over-nighted the blood sample kit to us on Friday and that we should get it this morning. I looked at my watch. Hemosapien looked at his watch. Nurse J looked at her watch. 9:30AM. I knew that Fedex would probably have it here by 10:00AM. "You can start after it gets here, or you can wait until tomorrow," said Hemosapien. "Fedex wil have it here any minute now. I'd rather wait for a while and do it today rather than start the cycle tomorrow," I said. "OK," said both Hemosapien and Nurse J. Before sending me back to the waiting room, Hemosapien explained a few things to me. "If your neutrophil levels go any lower," he said, "We can give you Neulasta to boost it, but it's about $4,000 per shot. If you need it, you need it. When we get the labs, if they come back the same or higher, we will proceed. If they come back lower, that will present a problem." After we talked a bit about this weekend's hunting (which HE enjoyed without ME getting to go!), he sent me back out to the waiting room until Fedex could deliver the kit. My friend Rick and his wife were in the waiting room (Rick has recently been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, along with a friend of Rick's who is a businessman in town. We enjoyed visiting and sharing where we all were in our cancer journeys. Rick's friend had, just three weeks ago, been diagnosed with colon, lung, and Liver cancer. They found this at UAB after inconclusive biopsies here, and sent him back to this clinic for chemotherapy. I could tell that he was still in shock at what had been revealed to him as a result of a screening colonoscopy, which he had only agreed to tae after the repeated urging of his family. His cancer, having spread to more than one place, he was already considered to be Stage IV. He has already had one round of chemo, and was here today for his second. Brother Davey, my pastor, who came by from making his usual morning hospital rounds, and I prayed for him, and our prayer was this: That because of the screening colonoscopy, they had found his cancer early enough that his chemotherapy would be completely effective Getting that cancer diagnosis, anytime, is rough. Getting the week before Christmas is even rougher. "They've only got one kind of chemo for this," he said. "You take it and it works, or you take it and it doesn't!" Obviously, he has a lot riding on the success of his chemo. We all wish him that success in abundance. He and Rick and I continued to chat for a while, then they called me back to the lab. "Y'all got everything you need now?" I asked. "Yes," they said, with one phlebotomist pointing out, in an imitation of me which sounded very bossy and petulant, "You sure said that you were NOT going to take your chemo until we drew the blood for BATCC. For a minute there, we didn't know WHAT to do!"" "Abraham Lincoln said, 'plant your feet in the right place and stand firm!'" I replied. "I was just standing firm. I did not mean to sound bossy or agitated." "You didn't," said the phlebotomist, "But you sure sounded like you were saying, 'I'll just take my toys and go home'!'"
"I didn't mean to sound that way. I could have said it n a
different manner. I did not mean to be bossy." "That's OK. You knew what was needed!" was the reply. After the blood draw, I was sent back to the waiting room with Rick, Nanette, and Rick's friend to wait until they called me back into the chemo room. We visited, we talked, we laughed. They then called me back for chemo. Nurse Juanita had a difficult time finding a vein this time. She said the more I use those veins for the chemo, the more "used up" they become, until it becomes hard for them to find one. She had to abandon one vein entirely after several tries, apologizing profusely, and finally selecting another one which offered promise. She was successful with that vein on the first try. So as I sit here and write this, I am getting the Kytril, the Decadron, and the rituximab. The photo at the left shows the IV infusion machine and my left hand with the tubes in NB=Nurse Juanita's vein number 2. It will take me most of the rest of the day. Rick and Nanette are across the hall. We will tell each other jokes later and laugh at ourselves. Rick has survived the initial shock of a cancer diagnosis. I see a different look in his eyes. The look is the look of a fighter; a competitor; "If this cancer wants a fight, it'll sure get one," seems to be what the expression on his face is implying to the non-casual observer. The casual observer may just see his expression as a cockiness, or a dynamic self-confidence. I am not a casual observer. I see victory in his face. I hear it in his voice. I see peace on the face of his wife. Speaking of wives, Debbie wanted to come with me today, but I persuaded her to let me come alone, since someone had to keep the grandbabies as Piper is returning to school. She packed me a lunch. She filled it with surprises. She loves me so much. I called her to tell her that my blood numbers were good and that they were proceeding with the chemo. "Good," she said, and added, "Guess What?" "What?" I asked. "Happy anniversary!" She said. Today, she at home with our grandchildren, and me sitting here in sight of a life-long friend with whom I share cancer, while both of us are being pumped full of chemotherapy drugs which we hope are killing the cancer without doing to much damage to the things which must remain, is the 30th anniversary of one of the best and most prudent decisions I have ever made in my life. I hope there will be 30 more. It's possible! The CLL is in remission. Maybe it will stay in remission for years and years. Maybe it will come back in a few years. Maybe it will come back next year. Maybe it will come back in a few weeks. So many maybes. So many possibilities. So many imponderables we are required to ponder . . . or not. I'm going for the NOT. I'm just here, getting these miraculous drugs which have done, and are still doing what it is that they were designed to do. That's what I am focusing on. Not the maybes. Not the worries. Not the fear. Just the here, now, and the pleasant memories of 30 years of a happy marriage. The benadryl is making me sleepy. I can't tell if it's a daydream or a real dream, but I have visions of Debbie, Piper, Canaan, Livi and Maggie; Nurse Juanita has checked my blood pressure a couple of times as I am writing this...she says every 30 minutes. Time flies when you're having fun. Time marches on, but I get lost in it, not aware of it's passage, only focused on those things within my reach. Sorry for the politics yesterday evening. I admit it was inflammatory to list Al Gore, Al Sharpton, and Al Qaeda, and Alferd Packer on the same page. I do not apologize about Al Neumann! Then again, why not have inflammatory excess? I watch FOX news! How could I help myself? I throw back my head i a big guffaw at myself, and drop off to sleepzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, my laptop precariously perched, Norse Juanita kindly securing it for me as I dream of 30 years! Happy anniversary, Debbie! Update at 1:20PM. I unplugged my infusion machine and went over to the next aisle to visit with my friend Rick. While visiting, I met Janice and her husband Mack from Philadelphia. Mack is getting treated for Lymphoma. He has had the hardest time with complications, but is well on his way to recovery from those complications, and is responding to his treatment. My prayers are with Mack and Janice. While talking with Rick, he, never one to let a opportunity for a funny and witty comment pass (he inherited a gracious plenty of these traits from his extremely witty late father, Bill, and his late Uncle Jim.) Rick said, "You know, here we are, just sitting around and talking while taking drugs." "Your point?" I asked. "35 years ago, weren't we were sitting around doing the same thing, only with different drugs!" We laughed so hard everyone in the room looked around to see what was so funny! Nanette had to make us stop to restore order in the chemo room! 1/10/10 House Arrest; Too much time on my hands. Debbie says I’m under “House Arrest.” She’d make me wear an ankle bracelet if she could find one. I’ve spent most of the last few days down at my studio, where I’m isolated and, thank goodness, INSULATED, from this cold weather. I haven’t done much in the way of music except pick around on a few instruments, but I have done some work, including preparations for a proposal one of our business clients asked us to provide, as well as some other work. I also watched Alabama beat Texas (Hallelujah!) to win the National Championship. I’m sorry that Colt McCoy got hurt at the beginning of the game, for two reasons: First, we should all be sorry when anyone gets hurt, particularly while providing entertainment for us [I hope his injury may heal quickly and he return to 100% ASAP!], which is what we all owe each other as humans. Second: Now Texans will be saying all year, “Well if Colt hadn’t been injured, the game would have turned out differently!” We’ll hear that until we are tired of it, which I already am. The game certainly might have been different had Colt been in the game, but he wasn’t, and that is the way the game is played. Some win, some lose; some are winners in spite of losing and some will be losers in spite of winning. It’s what we make of ourselves and how we bear our misfortunes that make us fit for human companionship. Right now, I’m not fit for human companionship, not because of my attitude, but because of my immune system, or the lack thereof. I’ll go back to Hemosapien tomorrow, and he’ll look at my blood-work and see if I’m ready for chemo round number 5, which I was unable to take last week. He and Gooday were going to talk. I don’t know if they have done so, since the last word I got was Friday morning and it being hunting season, I’m sure that by Friday afternoon other priorities presented themselves that took precedence over my case. I understand this completely. Mississippi not only has frost on the pumpkin, but the pumpkin is frozen as hard as a 4000psi mix concrete test cylinder. There’s ice covering the entire surface of the pond and swimming pool, the first time I’ve ever seen this happen. We Mississippians are not made for this kind of weather and resent it highly. It is an affront to our natural sensibilities. I am planning on writing to my congressman about it just as soon as the mail starts running again. I’m sure that Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) can get Nancy Pelosi to do something. It should be nothing for congress to pass a bill denouncing the cold weather in Mississippi and shame it into venturing back up North where it belongs. I don’t really mind it cold though, as long as it doesn’t get any colder than 65°F. I suppose the cold is caused by global warming. When it’s cold it’s because of global warming. When it’s hot it’s because of global warming. When it’s lovely outside, it’s because of global warming. “Why waste a perfectly good crisis?” Rahm Emanuel asks. The only certain about global warming are these two things:
Maybe Al could make even more money with a second movie and call it, “Making Money Like a Bandit”, or “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Global Warming.” Now Al already had a lot of moolah, his father being a long-time US Senator. It seems that one doesn’t get to be a long-term Senator without somehow enriching themselves. Between Al, Sr., and Al. Jr., there was no lack of moolah. (Now just how in the world does that happen?)   Al Gore? I have about as much confidence in him as Al Neuman. They both seem to have about the same amount of substance when they speak! That did it! Now I am on “Al’s” in general. Let’s explore Al’s and see of there are any that are worthy of out attention for their contributions or credibility. There’s lots of Al’s who have made contributions to world civilization and modern society. Some admirable, some not so. Let’s takle a look at some of them.
There’s Al Sharpton. How he has downplayed the very lie that brought him to national prominence is a marvel of media re-invention that should be studied in every university communications program. He is a very marvel of media manipulation. I salute him for his ability to continue to make himself relevant to modern society and for his foresight and chutzpah to seize the moment when Jesse Jackson was caught with pants down, thus abdicating the throne to Al. He is certainly capable of inventing a crisis when one is not handy, and a capable spokesperson and defender of that crisis. I personally can’t seem to reconcile him and the whole Tawana Brawley thing, but excuse me for displaying bad form because I have a MEMORY! Carry on Al. May you serve others as well as you have served yourself!
Al Capone! Now here’s an Al that one can admire for his integrity. He knew what he was. He knew he was a criminal. He was serious about how he handled those who got in his way. He and his colleagues have provided history lessons and business plans for scores of modern gangs on how to operate and defend their very successful businesses. Too bad Ol’ Al forgot to pay his taxes. Too bad he lived before the government passed out free condoms. He sure could have used one.
Al(ec) Baldwin, Here’s a modern day Al that is living proof of why celebrities who have every right to speak out on the issues facing the day should remain silent when they actually have nothing to say. I appreciate that celebrities think they should use their fame for the benefit of mankind at large, but most of the ones who seem to take that job seriously open their mouths and reveal that there is no THERE there. It would be best of they focused on the thing that made them famous, and entertained us rather that angered us, or worse, bored us. Alec is bold though, speaking out about things which he feels are important . . . I just wish he’d get some good advice first. Who does he consult with? Al Neuman?
Al(ex) McCord, from the insipid TV reality show, THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW YORK. Here are people who have more money than sense. Here are people who have more money than sense. Here are people who have more money than sense. It cannot be said enough.
Al(ice) B. Toklas. Perhaps the first and only lesbian Al on this list of Al’s. She was Gertrude Stein’s lifelong companion and an author in her own right. Her published recipe for hashish brownies is still a college favorite. Some say the word, "Toke" was a play on her name; though I think that is purely anecdotal. She was not an un-influential person.
Al(jazerra) The hallmark of journalistic excellence. There are some in this country who actually think the FOX network is less credible.
Al Goldstein. A celebrated pornographer. A champion of free press and free speech, even if his work enabled him almost single-handedly to bring pornography into nearly every aspect of our lives, from magazines and TV shows, to advertising, to video games. I have to admit, Al played a major role in defining free speech in this country, not that I like the direction it took, but do YOU want the government deciding what you should read? Taste is a personal matter. If Al’s work offends you, you don’t have to look at it. I am offended by Al Goldstein. Al is unconcerned by this. Look again at his picture to the left. Does he look concerned that he lacks my approval? We must be the ones to choose the materials we subject ourselves to.
Al Qaeda. Here’s an Al that will raise some hackles. These are the old men who encourage disenfranchised young men with the promise of dozens of young virgins for heavenly sex in the afterlife, to strap on explosive underwear and blow themselves up along with all the other passengers on an airliner. Funny how the old guys aren’t willing to do that. They are smart enough to get someone else to do it . . . but they can wave their finger and call us the great Satan, and some Americans tell us that if we would just learn to modify our behavior Islamic extremists would soon come to love us, and the world would be filled with peace, joy, and compassion for all. These men want POWER, and they want it ABSOLUTELY. Al Goldstein should be glad they aren’t in charge over here. So should you!
Al(ferd) Packer. Everyone knows his story. Let’s just say that he had a taste for exotic meats. Like Al Goldstein’s work, this would be a matter of personal taste, but unlike Al Goldstein, Mr. Packer was unsuccessful in arguing his case before the courts. He and the mullah shown above both consume human flesh. Maybe they should eat pork.
Al Lewis, aka Grandpa Munster. What’s not to like about Al Lewis?
Al Yankovich, Weird. He’s actually funny, with an extremely wicked sense of satire. His song parodies and videos are some of the funniest things I have ever seen.
Al Franken. Al got his start as a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live. Somehow, he got himself narrowly elected to the United States Senate. I wonder what Minnesotans could have possibly been thinking? I hope he serves his constituents well.
Al Roker. Everyone’s favorite weatherman? He’s right as often as our politicians, and changes his forecast just about as often.
Al Smith. Uncle Dave Macon had a song about Al Smith. Now if Uncle Dave wrote a song about you, you can’t be all bad, but you can be obscure, as most of you might be wondering, “Who is Al Smith?” and “Who is Uncle Dave Macon?” Al Smith was a four-term New York Governor who ran for president against Herbert Hoover. Hoover won!. He was also the first Roman Catholic to run for president and many felt that this worked against him in the election. Years later, many Americans felt that John F. Kennedy would never be elected president because he was also a Roman Catholic. Oops! I was one who thought that Barack Obama could never be elected president. We all learn as we go along. To live is to learn. The alternative to not learning is, at a minimum, mental death. The next thing you know, someone will be saying Mitt Romney can’t be elected president because he’s a Morman.
Al Kooper. Noted musician and producer who worked with and produced some of the greatest names in music. Not to be confused with . . . Al(ice) Cooper, who managed to re-invent himself and stay relevant in the world of Rock music for nearly 40 years. No small feat!
Al(exander) the Great. Many historians say that Al had the greatest military mind of all time. He died in his youth, long before the miracle of modern medicine
Al(fred) the Great. The second of our Great Al’s. England’s ninth century Saxon king. Successfully defended England against many Viking invasions. The only English King to be so honored as GREAT. He was no doubt a much better king than his grandfather, Ethelred the Unready
Al(fred) Nobel. A Swedish inventor who helped to invent modern warfare by making nitro-glycerin safe to handle. They called it DYNAMITE. He made so much money off of it and felt so guilty he established a foundation that awards annual prizes for medicine, physics, other sciences, literature, and PEACE, for crying out loud. It used to be a terrific honor to get a Nobel Peace Prize, but lately they have been as common as free car-wash vouchers. Al Gore, himself, won one for his highly visible and fiscally rewarding work on global warming, and Barack Obama won one this year for apparently no reason whatsoever. The next wave of 120 second TV pitch commercials may offer a Nobel Prize as an added reason why one should purchase their useless, plastic gadget . . . just pay separate shipping and handling.
Al(ton) Delmore, shown on the left, with his brother, Rabon. One of the most influential brother duets of all time. They were playing a bluesy rock-a-billy-esque music in the 1930’s. Obsucre to some, but worthy of further study by others. Many musicians were influenced by them whether they know it or not.
Al(abama): The great state from which the Delmore Brothers hailed, along with the Louvin Brothers, Hank Williams, Tallulah Bankhead, and many, many famous entertainers whose influence runs deep and long. If I were not from Mississippi, I’d want to be from Alabama.
Al(aska): A beautiful state, but far too cold to suit me!
Al Kaline. Played 21 years with the Detroit Tigers. Had over 3,000 hits and 399 home runs. HE was a hustler! I’ll bet he never used steroids! One of my childhood heroes!
Al(vin) with Theodore and Simon. It seems like they’ve come back around. I still have a 33 1/3 LP VINYL record of Dave Seville and the Chipmunks. I know all the words to the WITCH DOCTOR!
Al(vin) Toffler. He’s the man who let us know that the future was coning at us faster than we could handle it. He was right. The rate of change is accelerating. Alvin’s FUTURE SHOCK was obsolete before the final printing. I learned a lot from him. HE is still an interesting read.
Al(ec) Guinness, Sir: Ol’ Obi-wan himself. A great actor.
Al(exander) Solzhenitsyn: Won a Nobel prize for his book THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, which told of the horrors of Stalin’s labor camps in the Soviet Union. Communism, anyone? Maybe you should read that book first!
Al(fred) Lord Tennyson: Who hasn’t been moved by this great poets works? If not, you must have been sleeping through literature classes.
Al Jolson. Actor, Singer, Entertainer. Performed much of his early career in blackface, before it became politically incorrect. Al was in the first full-length talking movie. He had a very long and active career.
Al(Fred) Hitchcock: His work has stood the test of time, still influencing people, therefore it has passed into the realm of ART. The master of suspense who was able to do more with SUGGESTION than with blood, and gore, and special effects. THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY is still one of my favorite movies. He loved to make cameo appearances in his movies. Moviegoers waited anxiously to spot him. On his TV show, he loved to spurn his sponsors and say, "And now, unfortunately, we must pause for a kahm-merrrrr-shallllll interruption . . ."
Al(abama) Crimson Tide: 2009 NCAA College Football Champions. Roll, Tide, Roll . . . and my condolences to you Longhorn fans. Just goes to show you that SEC football is tough stuff. If Alabama hadn’t beaten Florida, then Florida would certainly have beaten Texas, too! Hotty Toddy! Hooray for the Southeastern Conference
Al-Anon: Of all the Al’s shown here, this Al is the one who has probably helped the most people. Many thousands of people owe their lives to this organization. Al Gore would have us think that we will all owe our lives to the stopping of global warming, and perhaps even to him for warning us so eloquently; but that is conjecture, unsupported by facts and scripted by those who would withhold the very information they are charged with collecting and distributing for the use of science. The group at the right, though, actually saves lives. I salute them! Honorable Mention Al's:
Can you suggest more? What has any of this got to do with CLL? Well, being under house arrest, I’ve got way too much time on my hands, am bored, restless, and have enjoyed every bit I have written about influential Al’s. Soon, there will be an Al coming near you. Make the most of your Al when you get a chance . . . you may never get to Al again. 1/7/10 Full Blog Text in Chronological Order If you'd like to read the full text of this blog in chronological order, all 157 pages of it, and read it on paper and at your leisure, you can download a complete PDF file of it right at the link shown right HERE. 1/7/09 No-Kee-Mo I arrived at Hemosapien’s office at 8:00AM yesterday morning to begin the scheduled Round number 5 of my FCR chemo. I was actually looking forward to it and moving one step closer to having the entire chemo course behind me. Having already received the good news in November after flow cytometry of a bone marrow specimen indicated that no detectable CLL could be found in my bone marrow, getting the balance of the chemo and moving on with hopefully several years intervening before any treatment would be needed again was no longer my goal, but my plan. Plans have a way of changing, particularly plans hovering around CLL since there is ever-present, looming and lurking, oppressive presence of complications. C-O-M-P-L-I-C-A-T-I-O-N-S. Compli-cations. Com-pli-ca-tions. Kahm-pluh-KAY-shenz. Sometimes, finding a place to park downtown presents complications. Coordinating a meeting between several busy people is fraught with complications. Dealing with one’s mother-in-law offers a plethora of unforeseen complications. The House and Senate Health Care bills are the literal manifestation of complications. The US Tax Code is synonymous with complications. Inter-stellar navigation even sounds full of complications. Middle-East politics renders ancient complications in modern reality. Carrying a valuable musical instrument with you into the cabin of an airliner yields frustrating complications. Explaining to the arresting officer that the contraband found in your pants pocket is not your is not without its complications. How GMAC can receive billions of dollars of government bailouts, announce that they are still on track to lose billions more this year and still be a sponsor of the GMAC Liberty Bowl is a marvel of complications. The mind of Nancy Pelosi has indicated nothing but vacuous complications. CAP AND TRADE Legislation is page after page of complications. How the government let Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae become insolvent is a wonder of complications. World economics has so many complications as to be merely a phrase, not a practice. Domestic Economic policy offers the same complications. Environmental policy is complications compounded. Proper presentation of a tiny dry-fly attached to a double tapered back weighted line attached to a laminated bamboo fly rod in a stiff breeze has complications of which the un-initiated is unable to conceive. Determining why a 115kV Transmission line went out on the coldest day of the season thus far, leaving 19,000 Alabamians without power and getting it back up and running quickly presents complex complications the average electricity consumer user has no clue about, its cause or restoration; sometimes the guys at the power company scratch their heads in wonder, but not being thwarted by complications, press on to solutions. Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia has complications, too. Some are complex, some are dangerously subtle, and some are fatally abrupt. How would we learn to face challenges without complications? Complications, though unwelcome, make us better in the long run, if they don't kill us first. Seldom does one who has CLL meet their demise as a direct result of the disease, though this does happen. MERCK has an excellent synopsis of the disease and its complications at this link: http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual_ha/sec3/ch51/ch51c.html I am more likely to meet my demise from this disease from a complication than as a direct result. CLL by its very nature compromises one’s immune system. The treatment of CLL can also cause damage to one’s immune system. When one complication meets another, then physicians can find themselves scratching their heads as to how to proceed. I seem to be at a stage of dual complications. My already non-functioning “B” White Blood Cells, called lymphocytes, are the cancerous ones. They multiply rapidly, refuse to die normally as white blood cells are supposed to do, and also fail to do what “B” cells normally do, which is to fight infections. Typically, more and more of one’s bone marrow, over the course of time, gives itself over to the production of these defective lymphocytes, and the marrow no longer produces enough red blood cells or other necessary white blood cells or platelets to allow life to be sustained. Death by this manner would be a directly attributable to CLL. Most CLL patients don’t make it that far; an encounter with a complication ushers them out of here first. I have been fortunate enough to be completely responsive to my chemotherapy, thus no detectable CLL can be found in my bone marrow at this time. That is a cause for celebration. Does that mean I am now off scot-free? I’m afraid not. It’s just not that simple. There are complications. My “B” cells numbers are low. Most of the ones left are GOOD ones, the chemotherapy having killed off the vast majority of the BAD ones, but the chemotherapy is not without its complications, either, having killed off many GOOD ones, too. All of our White Blood Cells are important, else why would we have them? Our amazing healthy bodies do not produce blood cells that we do not need. In addition to B-cells, there are T-cells, Neutrophils, and others. Wikipedia, while not always reliable, seems to have a good description of the various types of white blood cells and what they do: White Blood Cell Types. It seems that I have, as an additional complication (Bad “B” cells before chemotherapy, and now an overall low lymphocyte count in the post mid-stream of chemotherapy already compromising my immune system as a primary complication), now I am dangerously low on Neutrophils. If you went to the link above, you saw that Neutrophils represent the largest share of white blood cells in our bodies and offer our first line of defense against bacterial and fungal interlopers. I have extremely low counts of BOTH types. You’d think that that would make me TWICE as susceptible to an infection, but there are complications on complications. One is at an EXPONENTIALLY greater risk. The line on the danger graph is not increasing evenly as the numbers of these cells decrease; it is no longer a line but a curve, tangential in nature. “Good Morning,” Hemosapien said as he came through the door of the examination room. “I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year’s.” “I did. And you?” “Great!” We then talked a little about hunting and football. Made our predictions about tonight’s game and how Alabama was going to just chew Texas up and spit them out like a undesirable peach pit, then got down to the business at hand. I had already been to the lab and he had the results of the lab work in his hand. He did not look too happy. “No Chemo for you today!” he said. I was completely surprised and taken aback. “And just why not?” I demanded. “Your neutrophil count is dangerously low. Chemo now might take your neutrophil levels to zero, placing you in real jeopardy.” “Don’t you have drugs that will boost neutrophil production?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, but we give them to people right AFTER chemo if they become neutropenic. We can’t give them right BEFORE chemo just to have the chemo undo the results of the booster drugs.” That made sense to me. It seems that a significant number of persons develop a delayed neutropenia (Low neutrophil counts) from one month to six months AFTER chemo. I appear to be one of these people, but the complication is that I am not through with chemo yet. I’ve got two more rounds I must take. There are also darker, more sinister reasons for a low neutrophil count. We refused to consider these at this time. “What do we do?” I ask. “We must wait. I will talk to Gooday and see how this affects the research protocol. You will come back next Monday and let’s see if your numbers are better. We’ll go from there.” I sigh. I moan, Internally, I wail. I told him of other concerns I had, particularly with continuing tenderness in my right armpit and groin area which had been the site of enlarged lymph nodes, those lymph nodes now diminished in size to normal, but the soreness still there. He checked me over, tapped here, thumped there, placed a cold stethoscope on my chest and back, and looked at the rash on my chest. “How long have you had this rash?” he asked. “A few weeks,” I said. “It’s nothing but dermatitis. I’ve had it for years on my face and my chest. I seems to come and go with the seasons, particularly the transition from fall to winter. I went to a dermatologist once about it, and he said about a third of the people he sees come to him for that,” I said as I scratched my chest, it having come to my attention and was itself demanding my attention. “I haven’t been bothered with it for several years, but it seems to be back with a vengeance. I guess the chemo has exacerbated it somewhat.” “This rash is not dermatitis. It is fungal in nature.” “Nah. It’s just dermatitis, I tell you.” “Are you arguing with me, again?” He asked. I yielded, the wind already out of my sails. “No, I’m not about to argue with you.” "Fungal infections are one of the primary responsibilities of neutrophils. This will not get better on its own because you have no internal weapons with which to fight it off.” He then told me what to get at the drug store, stating that any selenium containing shampoo would be beneficial, and Tinactin on the places that seemed to be tenacious. He was right. The Tinactin has been a great relief. An all over body wash with the selenium shampoo is coming this morning as soon as I get this published. I asked him about the HINI vaccination and the regular flu vaccination. “Right now,” he said, “you don’t have enough white blood cells to develop the anti-bodies for the immune response the vaccination triggers your own body to produce. You absolutely cannot take the “live” strain of the vaccine, and the “dead” strain of the vaccine is not only less effective, but useless to you in your present state. If you wanted to take it for its placebo effect, you certainly can.”
“I prefer my placebos to have full effect.
They cannot work efficiently with one knowing in advance that they are
placebos.” “They might,” he said, then paused, adding, “and then again they might not.” Continuing, he said, “Here is what you must do in the meantime: You have no immune system. You must go home and stay there. Home is the safest place for you. A hospital environment offers exposure to all sorts of microbial things that are just waiting for an opportunity; you are the embodiment of that opportunity. You should avoid contact with other people, wash your hands constantly, avoid any uncooked foods or fruits. Even the mere CONTEMPLATION of sushi, raw oysters, a sunny side up egg, or a rare steak represents a real and present life-threatening danger for you. Crowds are out, hand-shaking is out, mask wearing is in if you go out but going out is out; staying in is in, and I’m not kidding.” He looked at me with as stern a look as he could muster, which is not very stern, he needing more practice with that and me thinking that I could help him one day as this is something I can teach very well; but he looked sterner than he had ever looked, which was clear enough for me to get the message. “My son-in-law was just diagnosed and confirmed with H1N1.” I said. “Then your daughter and grandbabies have all been exposed, and you probably have, too.” “I can’t even see grandbabies?” “Nope, not even grandbabies.” That, my friends, is a bitter pill. So here I am, alone in my studio, wishing that I could sanitize myself with alcohol (an internal sanitization!), but unable to do so for two reasons:
If the weather indeed turns bad and we are called, it could be that the power-lines we put back up and the power we restore could be YOURS. If that is the case, know that I had a hand in it from my home-base. Any other time, I would have been the first one out on the frozen ground with some automatic splicing sleeves in my hand. Not today. Not tomorrow. But I can talk on the phone. Being so immuno-compromised that even wireless communication represents danger is carrying things just a little too far. In the mean-time, I sit here, itching and scratching, wishing you could visit, but . . . . maybe not today. And if we do meet, excuse me if I don't shake hands, which is as foreign to my nature as anything I can think of. Complications! Why did I think I would be untouched by any? I'll stick to my original premise: For every bit of good news with this disease, there will be an offset. I mourned yesterday about this complication. Today, I am just itching from the rash. This writing brings SUCH release!!!! Author's Note: Where Hemosapien and I have actual conversations, for the sake of writing, these are offered as actual dialog. Some of it is actual. Other dialog is accurate as far as my memory can carry me, but not literal. I place words in BOTH our mouths which may not actually have been said, may be paraphrased, and may be purely fictitious. It is not my intention to put anything in here that is inconsistent with good medicine, or to attribute any words to Hemosapien which he would NOT say, though the possibility exists that I might have done so. I hope he will let me know if I do. He has earned my trust and respect as my physician. This is MY blog and I'll write it as I please, but I sometimes take dangerous risks. The reader has again been warned. 12/26/09 A Sad State of Affairs My Facebook friend, Rachelle McClendon Carver said this on a Facebook post. This is a wonderful piece of writing. Funny, sad, sarcastic, stinging, indicting, worthy of Mark Anthony, could be truly spoken by well-meaning but severely misguided people, says everything but says nothing, speech designed to conceal, revealing nothing about the speaker other than the speaker’s castrating spinelessness:
Jim Taggart (Atlas Shrugged) could have said this in a speech while Ellsworth Toohey (The Fountainhead) was listening in to assure his political correctness.
The omnipresent President Obama, appearing on TV after the “historic” Senate session on Christmas Eve (How many “regular” people worked on Christmas Eve, and why is the Senate working considered “historic?” It may be U-N-U-S-U-A-L, but HISTORIC?????), hailed the great Democratic victory and passage of the health care bill, as if he were signing a final bill into law, which is absolutely NOT the case. He should have brought along his Nobel Peace Prize to wave around for the cameras. I’m sure my “iffy” speech will get my name on Rohm Immanuel’s bad list, somewhere deep in the bowels of the White House.
There are several major differences between the Senate bill which was passed, and the House bill which has yet to be voted on. Many congressmen, Republicans, of course, and more than a few Democrats, the memories of hostile town-hall meetings fresh on their minds, facing their own re-elections in 2010, have indicated that they will not vote for the bill once it is presented on the House floor, nor do they see a chance to work out the differences in the two bills as presented.
There are several conservative democrats who are extremely uncomfortable with the clauses in the bills which allow for taxpayer money to be used to fund abortions. We’ll see if they can be bribed on that issue. It’s a woefully lamentable thing for Mary Landrieu (Democratic Senator from Louisiana) and others to be bribed by their own party to vote for a bill their own party says is “vitally important,” and others to vote for the bill if language is included which EXEMPTS their states from compliance with certain parts of the “Vitally important” legislation. (If is “vitally important” for the nation, why is it not “vitally important” for Nebraska?
It is a completely different matter to take a stance based on one’s personal ethics and then allow those personal ethics to be shuffled unceremoniously to the back of the bus for a bribe. If one’s ethics are for sale, then those ethics aren’t very closely held, and that person is certainly not very ethical. If not as ethical as one says, where does the line of one’s ethical standards and behavior get drawn, and how much money is required before the line will be moved?
“Just keep silent about it,” White House power brokers said to a Michigan Congressman. Not only was he not silent, he appeared to be livid.
I am reminded a Winston Churchill anecdote which I suspect is far more anecdotal than actual, however it certainly sounds like something he might have said:
Sir Winston leaned over and asked a certain lady, “Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?”
“Why, certainly, Sir Winston!” the lady remarked.
“Well, would you sleep with me for fifty pounds?” he then asked.
“Why, of course not!!” she said in a huff. “What kind of a woman do you think I am?”
He then replied, “We’ve already established that! Now, we’re just haggling over the price!”
P.J. O’Rourke called them the, “Parliament of Whores!”
They should all be sent home. Yours, mine, ours, everyone’s. They only exist to serve themselves!
Here's my wish for you: May the light of JESUS so shine upon you that you are overcome with His peace, His love, His knowledge, and His grace. I wish this blessing upon you in spite of any previous and closely held personal religious beliefs or lack thereof you may or may not have at the present, may or may not have held in the past, or plan to hold in the future. Does this mean that I reject you if you do not believe like I do, or if you reject my blessing just offered, or simply cannot receive it in the manner that it was offered? No, we humans rejected Jesus when he was here to deliver his message in person. What has essentially changed?
We are bound to each other. We must each walk in the light that we have received . . . we cannot walk in any other!
Many blessings upon you in the coming new year, 2010 AD.
12/25/09 What Have We Bound Ourselves to?
Why would we bind ourselves to anything less than the Christmas Spirit?
Families come together. Old friends and new friends unite and make contact. Warm greetings are extended to strangers, doors held open, small courtesies are sent forth in a variety of ways, producing smiles on faces never before seen, perhaps never to be seen again.
Then there is standing in weary tired-footedness in long lines, looking annoyingly at the person in the checkout queue six shoppers ahead of us, the clerk scanning their mountain of items then stopping and calling on the intercom for some non-existent, faithfully incompetent other store clerk to come and get an item for a price check, she making small-talk with the clerk while waiting, and we, eavesdropping on insipid conversations not meant for us, tiring of hearing about her grandchildren, knowing in our hearts that they really weren’t nearly as cute or as smart as the shopper was implying, and noticing the cheapness of the trashy things being purchased for those no-doubt delinquent, snotty-nosed, soiled-pants probably illegitimate children; the un-scannable item FINALLY cleared, the shopper fumbling in her purse for a check book, and slowly, ever-so-slowly writing out a check, then reaching again into that purse, that deep Grand-Canyon of a purse, fumbling all around until several eternal seconds later pulling out her wallet and showing her ID, and we wondering the whole time why in the world did she not have this all ready, she knowing she was going to write a check, and again knowing that she would have to show an ID, marveling at her inconsideration, thinking bad thoughts about her, speculating that no doubt, her worthless check would bounce, and knowing that this would be repeated several times before we get OUR chance at the register.
Then the shopper, oblivious to all those behind, fumbling her way with packages like she thought this was the old days when the CLERK actually loaded your cart for you, fumbles around with her packages, counting and re-counting, looking concerned that she might have misplaced something, STILL IN THE WAY, oblivious, completely lacking in situational awareness, and being very inconsiderate of others. We glare at her. We project bad thoughts onto her and her family. Then she looks up directly at us, catches our eye, and smiles at us. We, though agitated, automatically smile back, all of our bad thoughts about her and her family vanishing, and we suddenly feeling guilty about having thought those things, about having actually wished bad things upon her, realizing that she loves her family just as much as we love ours and has every right and reasonable expectation to do so. We lower our eyes. In our hearts, we ask the Lord to forgive us of our bad thoughts and are thankful that those bad thoughts did not lead to bad behavior. We seem so petty to ourselves. We are ashamed.
Then behind us, a shopper also in the queue asks us about one of our selections, and we, the expert, tell them all about it in such a way that the shopper wistfully gazes off into the distance as if daydreaming and says out loud, “I sure hope I can get me one of those one day!” Upon hearing this, for some unexplainable reason, we enjoy this approval from an unknown person and become so pleased at our own smartness for having made this selection, the envy of shoppers everywhere.
“They are right over on aisle three,” we say, being expertly helpful, smiling, more at ourselves and our superiority of store knowledge, superior to even that of the store’s own employees, than to the flesh-and-blood person right in front of us.
Sadly, they say with a shake of their head, “You must have gotten the last one. I looked, and they are out.”
“Too bad,” we reply, our smile even bigger at having beaten them to the last one, at our winning this competition, at our own superiority as a savvy shopper. Thus satisfied, we look at the item. We look at its theft-proof indestructible plastic packaging, which we read sends thousands to the emergency room every year with nasty cuts requiring stitches, cursing the inventors of such packaging, the socially inferior thieves and shop-lifters whose activities are the very reasons such packaging is required. We continue to look at the item: of plastic manufacture, in plastic packaging, printed in plastic ink, originating in some plastic third-world country run by a plastic dictator, where the workers are being paid in plastic, wear plastic clothes, stand on feet shod with plastic shoes, and feed on plastic food served on plastic dishes, eaten with plastic forks.
The fine print on the back of the package says, “Limited Lifetime Warranty.” We smile at that. Limited Lifetime warranty. What does that mean, though? We read further.
We are able to read and contemplate this without moving a single step forward in our checkout queue. We marvel at the translation from whatever language, and at the person who thought he was capable of rendering this in English. After our initial amusement at the poor English of the Burmese, Malaysian, Taiwanese or what ever person, we realize that this warranty offers us absolutely NOTHING. We can’t return it to the store. We sure-as-hell can’t pack it up, pay postage all the way to Burma for-goodness-sake, and wait for a slow-round-trip ship to get it all the way back to us, and do without this gadget we have desired for so long now thinking that they’d laugh in Burma at the American fool who sent this all the way back there for “inspector ruling.”
We have second thoughts, suddenly remembering all the other broken cheap imported gadgets lying around in drawers that look useful, but are mostly worthless. Is this also one of those things? Do we really need this? Must we have it? No! No!! No!!! Why are we buying this anyway? We have no answer. We feel foolish.
The person in the queue behind us misinterprets all this. He thinks we are looking at this item longingly. He thinks we are rubbing it in that he wants one, and we got the LAST one. He is already irked at the long, slow-moving queue, and now this insult on top. His face turns redder and redder, his pulse races; blood pressure skyrocketing. HE doesn’t want such a thing. It is really a cheap, crappy product. HE is glad that they are out of them, thus preventing HIM from wasting HIM money. We can take that thing and stick it up our royal . . .
We, oblivious to all of this, suddenly awaken from our trance; automatically extending our arm with the item towards him, saying, “Look, if you’d really like to have this, you can take this one. I don’t really need it right now. You take it! After all, it’s CHRISTMAS”
He turns red with embarrassment at his sudden internal dissolution of all the bad thoughts he had been readily assembling. We think his red-face is a cute bashfulness.
He sucks in his breath and receives the plastic gadget from us as if it is the most precious thing in all the world. We can almost hear a tremendous vacuuming noise as he sucks in his breath taking back all the bad things he thought. He turns redder. We smile bigger, mainly at our own generosity and grace.
“Thank you,” he humbly says.
“Merry Christmas,” our reply, and everyone in the entire queue is happy, touched with this magnanimous, superlative display of genuine Christmas spirit.
We finally get our chance with the check-out clerk. We start piling the rest of our plastic electronic, Sri Lankan, Surimanese, Eritrean, Malaysian, Banglaseshian, Dominican Republican sweat-shop items on the counter. The clerk starts scanning like crazy. The fifth item refuses to scan. The clerk tries it again. It refuses again. The clerk tries a third time.
“I need a price check on register 21,” the clerk says into a microphone, her monotonous voice echoing all over the store in an unintelligible high-frequency feedback as unpleasing to the ears as fingernails on a blackboard, or perhaps the sound of a dentists drill.
Recoiling in horror, we look at the long queue behind us. We see the glare in their faces, including the malevolent glare on the face of the person whom was the previous recipient of our overwhelming good grace. We feel violated. We curse them all: in-bred, ingrates, reprobates . . . . all.
The clerk tries to scan the item a fourth time and the register emits a pleasing beep. Everyone sighs with relief. We all smile. In our heart-of-hearts we all wish each other a very Merry Christmas, and health and prosperity, take back all the bad things we thought about each other in the queue, and most particularly: the poxes, anathemas and blasphemies with which we cursed each other as we were searching for a place to park.
We are all human. We are all each other.
Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen. Anonymous, but attributed to a 7 year-old child. 12/22/09 What I Have I have Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL), but it is not my master, nor do I serve it. It has a will and a life of its own, makes its own demands, and requires my resources and attention, but it does not have license from me. It does what it does against my will, but it does it within the confines of a paradox; with me serving simultaneously as adversary and unwilling accomplice. I am not thankful about having this disease, but I am thankful for what having this disease has made me more aware of, and I am thankful that this disease is not all that I have. What else I have:
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On
Sunday, July 10, with Greg as our guide, Canaan and me went up into the
mountains in Montana and Idaho. It was absolutely beautiful. We went places in
my wife’s car that she would make her livid if she knew, so don’t say anything.
That skiing area of the west is very fond of Subaru’s. They are everywhere! But
the higher ground clearance of my Nissan Murano, and the full-time 4WD with a
4WD LOCK feature makes it an excellent mountain car. Still, Debbie wouldn’t like
it a bit if she could see some of the roads it has been on. 
looks like. I suppose next I’ll be wishing to see central Nevada, which is the
only place left in Nevada I have never been. Much of that one can’t even get to,
but the drive from Reno t Las Vegas, or from Elko to Las Vegas is now intriguing
to me. Reno was Reno. There were lots of Casinos there that did not claim any of
our money.
Lake
Tahoe. I am unable to continue. . .
“Canaan,
do you want to actually go down into the Yosemite Valley, or have you seen
enough for today?” I asked.
The
day’s work being done, we then settled in to doing nothing. Canaan decided he
would take a walk to the top of the high hill that had an “M” for 
We
crossed the Mississippi river there and headed north on I-55. On through
Arkansas and into Missouri, passing through many square miles of soybean and
rice fields that were lush and green, into the bootheel of Missouri, and right
on through St. Louis. We did not pass through St. Louis, itself, but swept
through the suburbs. Canaan asked about the Great Arch that sits on the
riverfront, miles away from where we would be passing.
As we hit
Kansas City, we passed right by the Royals and Chiefs stadiums. Canaan thought
this was cool. We saluted Dexter McCluster, the star Ole Miss running back, as
we passed through his new home of Kansas City as he begins his career with the
Chiefs. We prayed for his good health and prosperity there, and that he would
become the star of the Kansas City Chiefs, become a great leader for the team,
become NFL Hall-of-Fame material, stay healthy enough to be able to have a long
career, help lead the Chiefs to a Super Bowl Victory, let none of that go to his
head, always be kind hearted, well-spoken, and a great representative of Ole
Miss, looked up to, admired, and emulated by sports everywhere, find a good wife
and raise lots of wonderful, well behaved, God-fearing children, and find peace
in a relationship with God that would give him the peace and fulfillment that
all those other things are just shadows of. There, Dexter - - - Go and get it!
There’s two of us who prayed that for you. There are others, but we have
admitted it publicly. It’s yours if you can claim it.
Our
first stop in Montana was the Little Big Horn Battlefield Site. All I can say
about that is that Custer was a fool. We looked the battlefield site over,
particularly the site of the Last Stand. We were able to make our own decisions
about what happened here. We were told to go in to the Interpretive Center and
listen to the Native American guides tell their stories about the battle, but I
resist any Interpretive Center. Who is going to Interpret anything for me? I
looked at the battlefield site and came up with my own conclusions. Custer
attacked a vastly superior number of Indians as they were camped on the Little
Big Horn river. He was a fool. There is no need to interpret the plight of the
plains Indians to me. The plight of the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, and the Cherokee
was no different; it just happened much longer ago. I am no more responsible for
this than I am for slavery. I will not feel guilty about any of it. As millions
and millions of Mexicans leave their homes and come to this country to work and
hopefully to prosper from the opportunities afforded them here that are not
available to them at home, I cannot feel sorry for any people who do not avail
themselves of the same opportunities. Worse than the stealing of their lands,
becoming dependent on the government, and the government offering them that
dependency was the greatest curse of Native Americans, if not smallpox and
syphilis. I have heard and read numerous treatises on the remarkable
horsemanship of the Native American warrior, but seldom any mention that horses
did not exist in North America prior to the arrival of the Spanish. Europeans
brought the horses that enable the Native Americans to become mobile, no longer
living in peace within the confines of their ancestral lands, but coveting and
envying the lands of other tribes. While Native Americans may have behaved nobly
when dealing within his own tribe, they were ruthless when encountering members
of other tribes. Murder, rape and pillage were a day's work during
intertribal raids; even the murdering of children who would grow up to breed and
make new warriors. It was a hard life. It was not an easy life. It was not s
noble and romantic as it is painted today. Before the arrival of the Spanish,
they went everywhere on foot. After the arrival of Europeans, their days were
numbered. It is regrettable and mournful, but I cannot romanticize any more than
I can romanticize the noble South and the Southern cause. The South fought a war
and lost. Even though they fought valiantly, they lost. None questions the
courage of Native American warriors, or of Southern or Union Cavalry. The
Indians lost. The South lost. Custer lost. I will not wax romantic about it, nor
make any of it more noble than it was. The responsibility rests on the shoulders
of men long dead. It is not mine and I will not accept it.
Most
men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Lucius
Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger) was a Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman.
He was full of wise sayings. He was also a tutor to the young Nero. He
continuously ran afoul of Roman emperors, first Caligula, and then Claudius, and
ultimately his former pupil, Nero himself. Accused in a conspiracy to
assassinate Nero, the charge of which he may have been innocent, he was ordered
by Nero to commit suicide. 
“A
Return to Normalcy” was the campaign slogan of Warren G. Harding in the 1920
presidential election. Progressives Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were gone
from the scene, WW1 was over, and now it was time to get back to business as
usual., which was business . . . with the taint of corruption. 
I
started to say something about the bean-shortage, but the bicuspid-less,
hair-netted, other-grandmotherly lady’s look stopped me dead in my tracks. I
moved on to the next hair-netted lady, hovering over her three food bays like an
emperor penguin father over the egg he faithfully tends throughout the darkness
of a desolate, howling Antarctic winter. This hair-netted lady presided over the
meat. She had a look about her that one might see in the offspring of a union
between Lee Marvin
and James Coburn; I suppose to some not completely undesirable in a mature man,
but absolutely remarkable in a woman. Her eyebrows were so bushy, she had them
combed back as neatly as she could, which was far neater than my moustache, but
not quite, just ever-so-slightly-not-quite, as bushy. Instead of a moustache on
her lip, there were tiny sweat-beads. I was so fascinated I was peering,
trying to count them. I lost count when her lips moved.
lf
so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may
have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic,
universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she
baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected
to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a
member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of
one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of
the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so
translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age,
some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every
translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that
library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell
that rings a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation
to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near
the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which
piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious
orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined that
they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity
of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours
by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his whose
indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it
intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is
united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes
off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell
which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is
passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of
itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be
washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as
well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death
diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to
know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a
begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we are not miserable
enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon
us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we
did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man
hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for
God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of
gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him
as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not
current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home,
heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this
affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine and be of no use to him; but
this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me,
if by this consideration of another's dangers I take mine own into contemplation
and so secure myself by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.
