… meaningless observations from a half-deaf introvert navigating cancer and the noise all you other people make
I’ve mentioned before that I use this blog mostly as a repository of things I want to remember since, you know, chemobrain. Here’s an example. I don’t know a black hole from a pot hole, but I know it mattered that he did.
An extraordinary human (and fellow atheist) left us today. Thank you Stephen Hawking for your beautiful mind, your amazing work, your humor and your hope.
Just kidding.
My opinion is worth about two cents, so unless it would result in some real change, I won’t add to the debate except to say that change will never happen as long as the NRA owns the U. S. Congress. More power to the Parkland kids, though. I hope they don’t give up.
Two notable links this morning:
— El Jefe at Juanita Jean’s has this thoughtful piece called “The Tipping Point on Gun Violence.”
— The Thoughts and Prayers Make-up Look. (H/T to YouCallThatArt)
Hope to post more regularly soon, but I probably won’t. Real life seems to get in the way, and I just can’t seem to focus anyway.
There. Aren’t you glad I kept my opinion to myself?
Dear Maizie:
I hope you, Emma and Ellie are running through some soft, high grass and stopping to discover new smells. I hope the sun is shining on your velvet head. I hope you are eating those little cheese chunks you like and taking long naps under an old oak tree on your Coolaroo bed. I hope you are looking at the moon and remembering me.
Speaking of the moon . . . the sky this week was worth a deep breath in and long look up.
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If only you could be a little bit more positive. The marketing gimmick that just won’t die and the pressure cancer patients can do without it. Not just cancer patients, anyone who’s struggling with disease.
*****
Research news. Possible new approach from researchers at MIT for LC patients with a KRAS-driven genetic mutation, like mine.
*****
Cancer heroes. Nice profile in the Washington Post on immunotherapy pioneer James Allison and Padmanee Sharma, their work at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (shout out!) and their unlikely life together. Kinda cool when I’m there knowing these two are on some floor above me working to cure cancer.
*****
National education hilarity Betsy DeVos schools us on what it’s like to be really, really smart and stuff.
*****
If you missed Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War on PBS, all episodes will be streamed until October 15th. Don’t miss it.
*****
Perspectives. There is no breathing room with lung cancer (no pun intended). Make it through treatment, mark an anniversary, maybe two, contemplate making it to the next one, hope some new drug comes along to make it even further. If you’re lucky, only a few minutes of every day are spent wondering when when the cancer will come back.
Truth. “He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” — Immanual Kant
Shout out!
Geez. Two months since my last post? I know, hard to believe, and me such a prolific poster.
No health-related reason for my absence other than, apparently, my mind has descended to the point where I am no longer able to multi-task, or even find the words to complete a coherent sentence. Hey! Who does that remind you of?
Other reasons could be . . .
— Ennui, perhaps? In medical record notes they sometimes call this “anhedonia,” though the two aren’t really the same. Smartasses. Always gotta have some word they think nobody else knows. Well, I took Latin, bub. I know what anhedonia means.
— Summer and grandkids make for stuff to do besides blogging, or even reading other blogs. You don’t dare try to sneak a little blog reading time on your computer. When you sit down they descend on you like locusts wanting to play some game.
— Whatever I might have thought to blog about couldn’t have been too important, or somebody else blogged about it better and I didn’t see a need to repeat it.
— Kidding aside, it’s been a time of struggle and sadness for a few family and friends. My heart just hasn’t been into blogging lately.
So, in case you were wondering, no health scares. Still NED. Just the minor lifelong litany of ills chemo and radiation bestow on various body parts that can result in a periodic good day-bad day thing.
In September, I’ll be two years out from treatment. That’s when my chances for survival are supposed to increase “markedly!” “dramatically!” “exponentially!” Though I’m not sure about that last one, at least in a true mathematical sense.
Then again, I heard an oncologist say the other day that 28 months is the window for recurrence, so who knows. I’m just glad for every extra day I get so that I can claw my way out of . . .
The Department of Sh*t I Don’t Understand . . .
Like everyone else I suppose, I’m just trying to survive whatever sick game your president* is playing with North Korea, though my gut feeling is it’s just his way of distracting us from Mueller’s investigation. Also, enduring the stench of raw sewage he calls his Administration.
If I had to bet on what would kill me first, today I’d say it won’t be my cancer.
It is beyond my comprehension that this overbooked ship of fools is still docked. Rather than evoke the 25th Amendment, Republicans in Congress are willing to risk the lives of millions of people — Republican people, I might add — to keep this psycho teed up.
For what end?
And back to first world . . .
Our AC went out at 5am.
High today here in Hell: 100 degrees.
Pulled out the floor fans, closed the shutters and drapes and blinds, cranked up the ceiling fans to High, turned off any device that emits even a joule of unnecessary heat and now trying to convince my dogs to breathe through their noses and not their mouths. Do you realize how much heat two big, hairy dogs and one medium-sized dog panting produces? Why aren’t they following my instructions?
I forbid all doors in my house to the outside to be opened and even a microgram of diminishing cool air to escape. “In or out, we’re not air-conditioning the neighborhood!”
Yes, I suppose I could leave and go to an air-conditioned movie or bookstore or the library, but then my animals would be left to suffer while I’m enjoying myself in icy cold comfort. What kind of person would do that? Hey! I bet I know someone who would.
So, I’ll stay here with them l until the AC guy comes this afternoon; hence, the term shut-in.
Also, anhedonia.
One summer, when I was 10 or 11, my older brother and I “borrowed” our father’s golf cart from the cart shed at the country club1. It was my brother’s idea. I was just along for the ride. Or not, as it turned out. (My father was playing golf at the time. He played golf so much I thought that’s what he did for a living.)
I wanted to drive the cart so I kept trying to grab the steering wheel away from my brother. We fought, the cart swerved, — lookout! lookout! — my brother lost control and I went flying off the side, hit my head on the concrete in the parking lot and blacked out. I don’t remember anything after that. I’m sure I got in trouble, but I’m also pretty sure I milked it the whole way.
Aside from the dementia I will surely suffer as a result of this wholly avoidable accident and ensuing brain damage, it might also explain my overall quirkiness, which includes a fun talent for making shit up — book titles, colors, songs, character names — that I’m sure will come in handy later on when the dementia hits and my mind is cooked cabbage. (If cancer doesn’t get me first. What a fun future: dementia or cancer.)
As an example, these are book titles I wrote down on the notebook beside my bed. Tell me you wouldn’t be dying to read these:
Any Number Less Than One
Paltroi
Twilight’s Blessing of Carnage
Vuk Proleo: The March Backward for Hungary
Zan Coco Sayer: My Years as a Feather Girl
Don’t ask me what any of them mean. Have no idea, I just make them up.
I’m guessing they are trapped in that space that was damaged when I blacked out, and they seep into my consciousness periodically, in a pathetic attempt to escape the curcoil of my mind. Maybe. Curcoil, another word I just made up.
Also. Don’t even challenge me to a game of Balderdash because you’ll end up on the pavement. I mean it. Champeen.
1 Yeah, I spent my childhood as a country club brat. Until my father left us. With nothing. Thankfully, I had a resilient mother and some straight up kick-ass grandparents who together saw to it that we had fine childhood.
I was working on a post about the persistent, underlying, aggravating, self-absorbing fear that takes over your life when you have cancer, but I’ll save it for another day.
I have quarterly CT/PET scans coming up in a couple of weeks, and I’m in the midst of fending off a little bout of “scanxiety.” It gets easier as time goes on, but it’s still very tiring and very annoying and there’s just so much you can stand of thinking about yourself, you know?
So… let’s talk about something else.
I know. How about cats!
My sweet neighbor sent me an email with the subject “To a great cat-saver.” (Hmm, wonder if she meant “cat-saver” as in cat rescuer or if she meant “cat-saver” as in hoarder? Could be both, I guess.)
Anyway, it’s cute and it made me smile in between the aches and pains I just know are signs of explosive metastases.
My great aunt was a writer and a cat lover (also a Christian Scientist married to a doctor, but that’s another story). She often wrote poems like this one, so it made me smile to think of her, too.
Stray Cat
Oh, what unhappy twist of fate
Has brought you, homeless to my gate?
The gate where once another stood
To beg for shelter, warmth and food.
For from that day I ceased to be
The master of my destiny.
While he, with purr and velvet paw
Became within my house, The Law.
He scratched the furniture and shed
And claimed the middle of my bed.
He ruled in arrogance and pride
And broke my heart the day he died.
So if you really think, oh cat,
I’d willingly relive all that
Because you come, forlorn and thin
Well . . . don’t just stand there . . . come on in!
Franic Witham
This morning I was dusting my computer keyboard with a cloth, pressing pretty hard on the keys, which opened up several apps at the same time. (“Apps.” They’re those things we used to call programs.) One of them was iTunes. My whole library of music started playing. I hadn’t listened to some of the songs in a while, so I let the whole library play alphabetically all the way through to the U’s.
I have many favorite songs, but I have to say I can’t think of a more beautiful one than “Unchained Melody.” I have about 5 versions of it.
I grew up in the 50’s so I’m partial to the first version I heard, by Les Baxter. But I also grew up in the 60’s, so the Righteous Brothers version (linked below also) is a favorite too. The prettiest is the orchestral version scored by Maurice Jarre, which is the one they used in the movie “Ghost.”
The great Sam Cooke had a voice like a bell. I don’t particularly like this arrangement of the song, but I do love his voice. Here’s his version.
“Unchained Melody” was composed in 1954 by Alex North with lyrics by Hy Zaret. Did you know it was written by North and Zaret for a prison movie? Interesting.
Don’t say you didn’t learn anything today.
I miss Patrick Swayze. He was a nice man.
Stop what you’re doing and take a listen to one of the versions above. Here. I’ll make it easy for you. Dancing is allowed.
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I bet James Comey could use a little music today.
Holy freaking hell.
Shades of 1973’s “Saturday Night Massacre.” It took them 10 months after that to get rid of Nixon. Let’s hope it doesn’t take that long to get these rats out of the pool house.
In honor of 1973, here’s one of the Top 100 songs of 1973.
