DAY 025 -- "To Pull Or Not To Pull?"

It’s now tomorrow and I’m very late posting, but I’m doing this so you’ll have your dose of entertainment from my adventures in pre-closure.

As usual, there I go misdirecting and evasive, and because I’ve never been a good liar, here it is:

I’m up in the wee hours for … yes … a case of the literal capricious wees. Nothing to do with cancer; this is strictly an old man’s nighttime comeuppance (though comedownance would be more accurate). A little later-in-life jest from whatever head honcho runs the Cosmos, or whatever you think does.

Yes, it’s a lovely pissing reminiscing regimen, but it’s also an insomnia driven by 35 years of night-nursing shifts and whothehell knows what.

 And, yes, yes, I’ve had all the counseling, including the Freudian lookalike whose office even sported a Victorian psychiatrist’s couch. He wanted everything to be about my paternal murder or maternal seduction. He’s dead now, and I hope he died wearing a Depends.

Digressing again, but I’ll try to refocus.

We’ve talked about this before, but a heightened awareness of a possible cancerous pre-mortality permanently changes the way one sees the world. It’s very much like skydiving. I’ve made over 300 jumps, and once you’ve been up there in the clouds falling at terminal (an unfortunate adjective) velocity with nothing between you and eternity but a parachute, you never look up at the sky the same way again.

It’s the same with cancer, and I suppose a host of other interceptions that have the net effect of introducing the nearer and thereafter life waiting up ahead for all of us.

It changes everything. Forever.

Today was just another good bad day.

Once again, it's my new course of how the world now comes at me and how I plunge word-long into it. It’s finding deep meaning in the shallow, and simplicity in everyone else’s complications. My new role as a cancer patient. My long-pursued goal as a humorist.

So, a few more signs, deep and/or simple on this day with a fiery chest radia-rash, sore throat, and shifting internals that have upset the hell out of my ins and outs. I'm coping well via my breakthrough meds, but my new traveling companions are backseat brats, and it’s a long way to the next off-ramp.

In a world of increasingly lazier, meaner and dumber-downing language, I love this sign: It used to be a firm but polite request: “Please keep off the grass.” Today, don’t trash it, pal. With no respect and giving all the discredit to our braggadocian-in-chief, I can trash the tallest, greenest grass better than any green grass-trasher in the history of the world. That I can tell you.

Or, this one. The longer I look at this, the more I see it as the complete meaning of life. Right in front of me in the parking lot (check both signs. Isn't one or the other enough?). If we have respect for how we move and stop on this big marble, this explains everything.

And, this. Maybe it’s the mask I see, and the intervention sitting patiently behind it. To pull, or not to pull? That is the suggestion.

More as we go, El

DAY 024 -- "Two Leapfrogs"

Bad day today.

I should qualify that, because I did ride the Harley to work on this gorgeous summer day, and any time spent atop that rolling potato-potato beauty is a good one. So, I’ll qualify my opening:

It was a bad good day.

The joy of the ride aside, the rest of the day was a poopy head. No, not literally, just a juvenile, tantrummy, woe-is-me pity-party. A real wah-wah-wah kind of day, dipping into misery like a sponge.

So, naturally, by the end of the day I was waterlogged and couldn’t stop crying. Yes, even though the bike rumble-purred perfectly and never left me hanging.

Specifics?

--- Radiation rash on my chest/neck that only constantly burned when I breathed, Doc.

--- Sore throat particularly acky-gritty today, but only when I swallowed or thought about swallowing, or if I wrote a rough draft self-help column on how to swallow without using your mouth or throat, or when I looked at my reflection out back in the puddle pond, or when I shifted into sixth gear, or when I stopped to watch the porch hummers darting at the feeder like sparklers.

Okay, okay, I know that’s pushing it, but you get the idea. It hurt.

--- A nagging internal plumbing problem that would bring the Maytag repairman back from the dead.

--- A feeling that I’m taking two steps up and two leapfrogs back. 

--- A blast of humility, when I thought of so many others who are suffering so much worse than me, and wanting to wave that all-magic career nursing healing wand (the one that works, even when it doesn’t) and take us all out for banana splits.

Diane came home, caught me blubbering, and when I wailed my list of today's achy-breakies, did the right thing at the right moment: held me silently, let me sob it out, then asked if I wanted some slurpy, friction-less mac ‘n cheese for supper and a scratchless, easy slider-swallowing Jell-O chaser for dessert.

Topped with a soothy-smoothy banana split.

I’m a lucky man.

More as we go, El

DAY 023 -- "Making My Own Time"

I’m giving you yesterday’s report today because yesterday was a day off from treatments and I was out doing what I’d rather be doing all the time: riding the Harley (pacing myself, of course), and looking and sounding good (at least in my eyes and ears).

But, I’m pressed for time this morning, even though I’ve become quite adept at making my own time when I want it. So, let’s just enjoy a few artsy-fartsy pics from the ride.

One might need an explanation, but it could be more fun if you made up your own.

Oh, and things to ask the Doc today:

1. Has anyone ever had their lung cancer cured, but then had skin cancer move in? (I’ve acquired a sore, radiant rash where I’ve been getting the radiation treatments).

2. Should any cancer patient being treated with radiation and chemo go easy on the citrus? Must I give up orange juice?

3. How ‘bout those Red Sox?

More as we go, El

Day 022 -- "Clean Fill Wanted?"

Today on my walk---YIKES!

A man with cancer walks! What’s my world coming to?! I’d better be careful; this could lead to harder stuff. Before you know it, I’ll be laughing without cues, burping my wine, parallel parking, and ending sentences with prepositions before I know what I’m getting into.

I’ve been trying to do (most of) what the Docs have advised me to do in my ADL’s – Activities of Daily Living. Lenny Bruce called it eat, sleep and crap. A bit oversimplified, but we do all start from there.

But, when cancer drops into the mix, it sends those activities haywire, writes new rules, changes the game, moves the sidelines, deflates and overinflates the balls, bribes the players AND the referees, shortens the season, makes the impossible plays commonplace and the improbable penalties damned likely.

I know, my metaphor abuse slip is showing, but I’ve always been a sucker for a good juiced-up storyline. And sure enough, because poetic justice often wills out on its own, here I am.

Yes, I do continue with my ADL’s as do we all, but now with all the cancer caveats: I sit when I pee (especially on post-chemo days), stand when I scratch (you’ll just have to accept that one), eat and swallow like it’s a dress rehearsal, and just generally do everything I did before Rad Chemo came calling, but now with a red-penciled script.

Yes, I still ride the Harley, kayak the Connecticut, swim in the lake and eat what I want, but now the rides are shorter, the river is wider, I jump in the lake with an extra and bigger noodle, and the pursuit of sweet, sour & savory is a science project.

And, today, walking these country roads: Two miles instead of five, two walking sticks instead of one, and because I’m finding profundity in everything lately, I can turn every turn into my own rough drafts of wit and wisdom, including dirt.

Clean Fill Wanted?

Yes, yes, yes. I sure could use some of that.

More as we go, El

DAY 021 -- "Partners In Crime And Accessories"

I missed a day with you.

I’m keeping this numbered chronology intact, but a day and a night slipped by in there unrecorded.

It’s happened before in my professional life (for reasons better left in the vaults), where I found myself sunny side out. I remember a facility where I was working 12-hour nursing night shifts, and I showed up for work, as usual, about 6:30 p.m.

No problem … except it was 6:30 a.m.

After I was properly chided by my co-workers for turning my day on its head, they asked if I could stay. Another nurse had just called in sick, and I was caught standing there, inside-out of time, with no good reason why I couldn’t work, and any excuse would’ve been lame.

** Nurse’s Note: If you were a patient there on that day-for-night and I missed your bathroom call, or I was late with your meds, or I called you by another name, or I dropped your pudding on you, or you suffered in any way because of my temporal topsy-turvy, if you had a bumpy admission or discharge due to my diurnal daftness, I apologize.

Where does that leave us now?  Not so bad.

Not everything is notable. I know, that’s not where this self-absorbed technopop culture is heading, if it’s not already there, but not every picture is worth a thousand words; some aren’t worth half a bad limerick.

Can’t we leave bad enough alone?

Are you going to insist that I retrieve the day? Must I make everything reportage between us? Can’t we have a secret or two? A blank space not filled in? Why can’t you and I have an empty shelf, and instead of filling it up with kitschy knick-knacks, just step back and admire its openness, it’s purity, its promise?

Nah. That’s enough of that.

I took the time off from the muse because it was neutralized by the new rash, the nagging new developments going in, the missing ones coming out, the wax and wane of pain, the ebb and flow of relief, and the inability to sometimes make a getaway from this damned cancer’s partners in crime and accessories during the fact.

No further need for specifics; you get the idea:

It only hurts when I am, Doc.

I need this narrative for me, but I hope it helps you, too. Even if cancer is not a part of your life, it will almost certainly affect you somewhere along your journey, either remotely or center stage. I hope this accounting will be a resource for camaraderie, a work (and play) template for all our common community of illness and health.

As seen here, it is a thousand-word picture. I’m only trying to grab a few of them, for both of us, as they go by. And, now that I’ve mentioned it, might’s well give you that half a bad limerick (if you’d care to fill it in, have at it.)

There once was a man who got sick

A cancer became his new shtick

He was a bit peeved

But----

More as we go, El