Middle Passage

Among the less-obvious advantages to losing weight is surviving crowded flights.

Travelling to my Favorite Place in the World last week there were two legs on the flight, to Orlando and then to Providence. Southwest, generally the best airline I fly, fell from grace this time. It kept us out on the tarmac in Orlando for 30 minutes after landing. By the time I disembarked they were stern voices in the concourse telling me to get to the Providence gate, and fast.

Those of us who fly SW a lot are obsessed with the assigned number in line, and because this time I e-checked in exactly 24 hours ahead I was number A 22, which is near as good as it gets on a cheap flight. But because of tarmac time it didn't matter, and as I hustled on they said we have one seat left we are holding. It's down there, about row 20.

I was not surprised to see the mildly well-fed guy on the aisle, maybe 225, who I learned during the flight (by eying his laptop screen, geez he did nothing to hide it) worked in IT outsourcing. The lady on the window, on the other hand, was breathtaking. A magnificent 400 pounds, had to be. Her bounteous right thigh oozed under the armrest a good three inches into my prospective territory.

I sat down and Mr. Strays, even the new more-slender version, was not rolling around in his seat. Her right thigh and my left one were burning through fabric for the next two hours. (Actually, after while, I moved my wallet to my left pocket. It was just too steamy. When I slid the wallet in she gave me a look. Since she was reading a novel about the End of Days, I'm sure she took refuge in the knowledge that I would stay behind with the heathen while she went up in rapture. That'll teach him, the weirdo.)

But I did make it, and I'm not sure pre-cancer, pre-losing-the-weight (at this point 35 pounds) I could have. A kind of silver lining. Maybe silver plate.

The SW flight attendant magnanimously waived off my coupon when she brought me a Bailey's Irish Cream (not, with my delicate condition, as benign as it sounds.) I listened to lectures on the Second Punic War and finally drowned myself in Erroll Garner. Blessings upon my daughter who gave me the Ipod.

Hunger

10 sessions with the radiators down, 20 to go.

Up until this latest adventure "hunger" meant, for me, the feeling I get when I imagine I am going to sink my teeth into a delicious hamburger. So really it is more like foodlove. Now, 10 sessions in, hamburgers are yuck and pizza is yuck and the world's greatest coq au vin would be yuck, so no more hunger. Except that there is a physical sensation, largely new to me: pain in the stomach and light-headedness. That is now my signal to eat.

I wonder if foodlove is a relatively new development in our evolution. Did Mooga the Caveman really drool over sinking his teeth (or gums) into a raw mastodon shank? Did he look forward to the next handful of berries (or were those the ones that killed Booga last week?) Did he just have a growly stomach and a headache?

There's a professor at Harvard, Richard Wrangham, who evidently argues in "Catching Fire - How Cooking Made us Human" that cooking - not harnessing fire, or the domestication of agriculture - is what brought us up to the level of homo erectus. Better nutrition, more efficient use of diet, etc. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was taste, and the evolution of hunger. Maybe it was Shooga, back in the cave, grilling that mastodon shank, that introduced Mooga to foodlove - and brought him home from the hunt.

Back to Milkshakes

Three sessions down, 27 to go.

Today I met with the the radiation oncologist and his entourage, and the theme seemed to be: you ain't seen nothing yet. Because at this point I feel fine, and they are pretty sure I won't. Whatever. I'll report it when it happens.

But a really hammered-home theme was weight. I'm going to lose it.

Don't treat it as an opportunity. If you're thinking now would be a good time to shed a few pounds, don't go there. In fact you have to increase your normal intake because the radiation is ramping up your metabolism.

Seriously. The nurse-practitioner said one of the last things to go was a taste for chocolate. Don't scrimp, go for Hershey's sauce and pour it on everything. I'm not kidding. (Hershey's, heck. Hasn't she heard of Christopher Elbow?)

Now, Mr. Strays is a guy who has always had weight issues. (Take a look at my 8/10/08 post, "Fat Kid.") For me, this is a little like: sorry, you're going to have to resume smoking crack. Oh rats.

Back to Steak 'N Shake! There's a pre-4 pm discount on milkshakes!

Zap Session

So this morning was the first day of radiation.

But before I get to that: when did "so" become a discourse particle? At the beginning of a sentence it used to mean "thus" or "therefore", and I guess it evolved to "And to continue my story..." which I guess is how I'm using it here and below. But now it seems to have become an opening pause word, adding some color, but with no real content. Maybe it's the more grown-up version of "like." If so, not for me:

Like, this morning was the first day of radiation.

It was kind of creepy. You are shirtless, flat on your back on a hard surface, with a gizmo that positions the neck and head. The mask they fabricated for the occasion is placed on your puss and screwed down tight. Very tight, so much so that it closed my eyes and mouth and as a result, a frisson of panic. Quickly I realized I could still breathe and the 20-something tech ladies were saying the right things. (And thinking, geez, another geezer - when are we going to get a hunky guy?) No big mercy, though. They intend to immobilize the head and neck, and they do.

Then for 20 minutes or so they rotate the ray guns around and you hear squeaks and see lights flash and things are repositioned and then the tech ladies return and say it's over. For today.

They keep a pretty rudimentary boom box off to the left, and today's offering was Elton John. I have nothing at all against Elton John. Indeed I have great memories of "Your Song" from college, and back then he really was a revelation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTa8U0Wa0q8.

The opening number was "Philadelphia Freedom", never before a favorite, but it has that "shine a light, shine a light" refrain which seemed to fit. After today I get to bring in my own music and I hope to impress the tech ladies with blasts of, like, Eldar, Back Door Slam, and Richard Thompson.

Ray Guns

So the radiation starts in a week.

I realized today - this is just one small example of how dense I am - that when I tell people I'm going in for six weeks of radiation, they may think this is really scary news. Hmm.. they can't find the primary cancer; he's going in for radiation; he looks really different...

But when I talk about the radiation, it's just another landscape, after another turn in the road. I'm not going anywhere except forward, usually in my aging blue Jetta. The handcart (I use it to drag the amp and piano around) has a flat tire and it's lashed to the bike rack. It's not scary. It's me.

Minus the beard, at least for now.



(Who is this guy? I have no idea.)