How to Raise the Dow by 5000 and Add 1,000,000 Jobs
"I think it's time to set the record straight. There has been all this nonsense thrown around about how I'm a socialist, that I hate business, that my agenda is for government to take over the economy.
"It isn't true. Yes, I flirted with a lot of left-wing thinking in my youth. Who didn't? But history's verdict over the past four decades is completely undeniable. The free market, on a global scale, is the path to prosperity for the USA and the rest of the world.
"I am not an ideologue. I'm a politician, and a pragmatic one. The best politics for me and my party is to convince the US business community that the Democratic Party is a better vehicle for prosperity than the Republicans. That isn't a strange idea. Look at Jack Kennedy's tax cuts, and Bill Clinton's commitments to free trade and welfare reform.
"So, starting right now, here's the message to the US business community: we are with you. We get it. We know perfectly well that government doesn't create jobs, and that we aren't going to prosper and compete in the world economy unless government is the wind under the wings of the free market.
"I'm announcing three steps today. First, I am issuing an executive order that requires our agencies to implement the recommendations from leaders of the information technology industry that should save us $1 trillion dollars over the next ten years by going after waste, duplication, fraud, and abuse in federal programs.
"Second, I'm going to push for federal litigation reform. I'm going to propose rules that say if lawyers bring frivolous claims to court, they and their clients will have to cover the other side's legal fees. Contingency fees will be capped, so that we aren't going to have lawyers getting multi-million dollar fee awards.
"Third, we are going to push to change our tax laws to ensure that if you take your company's profits and put them back into the business, they won't be taxed. Period.
"And that's just a start. From here on, so long as I'm President, I'm going to do what it takes to see that the federal government listens to business. Here at the White House and in Congress, we are going to stop treating business people like criminals and start asking their advice."
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
Samizdat, sort of
I let myself down a little when these posts don't come out regularly but right now I'm writing mostly for the drawer.
This is different from something I've blogged about before, somewhat erroneously: samizdat, the self-publication that Soviet authors were forced to engage in. It was quiet publication, circulating manuscripts hand to hand. Both for some level of protection, and because the authors probably couldn't get the materials published in the USSR even if they wanted to. It isn't really writing for a drawer, where they stay.
Samizdat may be at the other end of the same scale as blogging, which is conspicuous self-publication at the click of a mouse.
Writing for the drawer, making a journal, whatever you call it, is writing for other reasons.
There is the ancient one: writers have to write like breathers have to breathe.
Also to make a record, published or not.
Also to exorcise demons.
As to the last, exorcism, it's double-edged. If the point is therapy, then the more right down-to-the-bone personal, the better. But then the less likely you'd want anyone to see it. If no one sees it, what has been revealed? If nothing is revealed, does it just swirl around and go nowhere, and do nothing? The Franz Kafka - Emily Dickinson problems... ah, next post, or the next, or the next.
I let myself down a little when these posts don't come out regularly but right now I'm writing mostly for the drawer.
This is different from something I've blogged about before, somewhat erroneously: samizdat, the self-publication that Soviet authors were forced to engage in. It was quiet publication, circulating manuscripts hand to hand. Both for some level of protection, and because the authors probably couldn't get the materials published in the USSR even if they wanted to. It isn't really writing for a drawer, where they stay.
Samizdat may be at the other end of the same scale as blogging, which is conspicuous self-publication at the click of a mouse.
Writing for the drawer, making a journal, whatever you call it, is writing for other reasons.
There is the ancient one: writers have to write like breathers have to breathe.
Also to make a record, published or not.
Also to exorcise demons.
As to the last, exorcism, it's double-edged. If the point is therapy, then the more right down-to-the-bone personal, the better. But then the less likely you'd want anyone to see it. If no one sees it, what has been revealed? If nothing is revealed, does it just swirl around and go nowhere, and do nothing? The Franz Kafka - Emily Dickinson problems... ah, next post, or the next, or the next.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Darkness and Light
Two pieces that came out last weekend provide a cautionary tale and, to my mind, a bolt of light.
The cautionary tale is about Japan and how it has fallen in the last twenty years. Martin Fackler at the NYT looks at not only the technical reasons for the fall - deflation being the biggest, evidently, although it's hard to tell if that's a symptom or a disease. But more interestingly he writes about the failure of Japanese grit.
Japan’s loss of gumption is most visible among its young men, who are widely derided as “herbivores” for lacking their elders’ willingness to toil for endless hours at the office, or even to succeed in romance, which many here blame, only half jokingly, for their country’s shrinking birthrate. “The Japanese used to be called economic animals,” said Mitsuo Ohashi, former chief executive officer of the chemicals giant Showa Denko. “But somewhere along the way, Japan lost its animal spirits.”
The light, to me, is from a piece in the weekend Journal by Jonathan Haidt that associates the Tea Party movement with karma. It corresponds with everything I've seen about this middle class movement of people who are sick of our failure to accept consequences. These are the folks who don't buy the idea that every kid on the team gets a medal and every team wins the league. They are prepared to accept their own failures, but don't want to pay for everyone else's. Losers should lose, gracefully, and winners should win, gracefully, so long as everyone plays fair.
Putting the two together - optimist that I am - I am persuaded that we Americans can pull out of this slump because we have the stones. We can suck it up, roll up the sleeves, and believe in the future. But crappy handouts will not work, nor will get-out-of-jail-free cards, and unless our leadership stops offering them, it will be sayonara for the next decade.
Two pieces that came out last weekend provide a cautionary tale and, to my mind, a bolt of light.
The cautionary tale is about Japan and how it has fallen in the last twenty years. Martin Fackler at the NYT looks at not only the technical reasons for the fall - deflation being the biggest, evidently, although it's hard to tell if that's a symptom or a disease. But more interestingly he writes about the failure of Japanese grit.
Japan’s loss of gumption is most visible among its young men, who are widely derided as “herbivores” for lacking their elders’ willingness to toil for endless hours at the office, or even to succeed in romance, which many here blame, only half jokingly, for their country’s shrinking birthrate. “The Japanese used to be called economic animals,” said Mitsuo Ohashi, former chief executive officer of the chemicals giant Showa Denko. “But somewhere along the way, Japan lost its animal spirits.”
The light, to me, is from a piece in the weekend Journal by Jonathan Haidt that associates the Tea Party movement with karma. It corresponds with everything I've seen about this middle class movement of people who are sick of our failure to accept consequences. These are the folks who don't buy the idea that every kid on the team gets a medal and every team wins the league. They are prepared to accept their own failures, but don't want to pay for everyone else's. Losers should lose, gracefully, and winners should win, gracefully, so long as everyone plays fair.
Putting the two together - optimist that I am - I am persuaded that we Americans can pull out of this slump because we have the stones. We can suck it up, roll up the sleeves, and believe in the future. But crappy handouts will not work, nor will get-out-of-jail-free cards, and unless our leadership stops offering them, it will be sayonara for the next decade.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Why I Read Paul Tillich
"...there is no other way of judging time than to see it in the light of the eternal. In order to judge something, one must be partly within it, partly out of it. If we were totally within time, we would not be able to elevate ourselves in prayer, meditation and thought, to the eternal. We would be children of time like all other creatures and could not ask the question of the meaning of time. But as men we are aware of the eternal to which we belong and from which we are estranged by the bondage of time."
From "The Eternal Now" (1963)
"...there is no other way of judging time than to see it in the light of the eternal. In order to judge something, one must be partly within it, partly out of it. If we were totally within time, we would not be able to elevate ourselves in prayer, meditation and thought, to the eternal. We would be children of time like all other creatures and could not ask the question of the meaning of time. But as men we are aware of the eternal to which we belong and from which we are estranged by the bondage of time."
From "The Eternal Now" (1963)
Monday, September 13, 2010
Chop Chop Square
Eons ago, in 1982, I was doing a stint in Saudi Arabia for my law firm. Riyadh was dreary. When it rained, which was very seldom, it rained mud. The law practice was like a war campaign; long periods of boredom interspersed with brief episodes of frantic activity.
One way to relieve the boredom was to go to the gold souk, but on an associate's salary the trip couldn't last long. Or, near the souk, on Fridays after prayers, there was Chop Chop Square, where they beheaded people.
Curiosity took me there only once. There was a big, shouty crowd, all men, mostly Arabs. Agitated and looking for entertainment. Lore had that I would be pushed to the front - they'd show the Westerner how they do it in the Kingdom. Not me, but they did part as I approached. I thought it was simply because I was viewed as an alien, which I most certainly was.
They brought out only one proposed victim, a terrified-looking young man. The handlers struggled to keep him upright, as if he'd lost his ability to stand. (He was probably drugged, I was told later.) The crowd's noise swelled in anticipation. After what looked like final rites, a flurry of consultation among the handlers. Then they marched him back out of the Square and it was over. The crowd was not happy; I figured it was a good time to move on.
Someone later told me it had been a kind of shock-punishment - take him to brink, then let him live. Maybe it was. Or maybe his crime (I have no idea what it was) had a victim, whose family may have settled for a last-minute cash payment.
A medieval atmosphere, and one which modern Saudi Arabia must have outgrown over the last 25 years, right?
Nope. Chop Chop Square, at least as of 2009, is still in operation.
Eons ago, in 1982, I was doing a stint in Saudi Arabia for my law firm. Riyadh was dreary. When it rained, which was very seldom, it rained mud. The law practice was like a war campaign; long periods of boredom interspersed with brief episodes of frantic activity.
One way to relieve the boredom was to go to the gold souk, but on an associate's salary the trip couldn't last long. Or, near the souk, on Fridays after prayers, there was Chop Chop Square, where they beheaded people.
Curiosity took me there only once. There was a big, shouty crowd, all men, mostly Arabs. Agitated and looking for entertainment. Lore had that I would be pushed to the front - they'd show the Westerner how they do it in the Kingdom. Not me, but they did part as I approached. I thought it was simply because I was viewed as an alien, which I most certainly was.
They brought out only one proposed victim, a terrified-looking young man. The handlers struggled to keep him upright, as if he'd lost his ability to stand. (He was probably drugged, I was told later.) The crowd's noise swelled in anticipation. After what looked like final rites, a flurry of consultation among the handlers. Then they marched him back out of the Square and it was over. The crowd was not happy; I figured it was a good time to move on.
Someone later told me it had been a kind of shock-punishment - take him to brink, then let him live. Maybe it was. Or maybe his crime (I have no idea what it was) had a victim, whose family may have settled for a last-minute cash payment.
A medieval atmosphere, and one which modern Saudi Arabia must have outgrown over the last 25 years, right?
Nope. Chop Chop Square, at least as of 2009, is still in operation.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Labor Day
We all used to read old Karl Marx, back when his thinking seemed to control 50 percent of the world's population. One thing that struck me was his exhaltation of the value of individual work - its nobility, even, although I doubt he would have said it this way.
It seemed to belie one line of critique about socialism - that the system does not spur, did not reward, people's work. Hard workers thrive under capitalism, so the thinking went, while in a socialist world they would just be suckers.
He also seemed, from the lofty vantage of an enthusiastic teenager in the '60's, to be celebrating something that sounded pretty much like a drag. I figured he was touting the value of work only because it gave him cred.
It added up, so I thought, to a kind of a fraud. He really didn't believe that work was a virtue, or that the system he proposed would reward it. He just used the idea to get across his larger pitch, that he had an inside track on how the world's societies would evolve.
A lot later, I now think he was not at all fraudulent. Completely wrong, as to how the world really works, but not fraudulent. Or at least I agree with the idea - individual work is noble. When you are really really rolling you go into the flow, and if you could build a society around that, you'd have something.
We all used to read old Karl Marx, back when his thinking seemed to control 50 percent of the world's population. One thing that struck me was his exhaltation of the value of individual work - its nobility, even, although I doubt he would have said it this way.
It seemed to belie one line of critique about socialism - that the system does not spur, did not reward, people's work. Hard workers thrive under capitalism, so the thinking went, while in a socialist world they would just be suckers.
He also seemed, from the lofty vantage of an enthusiastic teenager in the '60's, to be celebrating something that sounded pretty much like a drag. I figured he was touting the value of work only because it gave him cred.
It added up, so I thought, to a kind of a fraud. He really didn't believe that work was a virtue, or that the system he proposed would reward it. He just used the idea to get across his larger pitch, that he had an inside track on how the world's societies would evolve.
A lot later, I now think he was not at all fraudulent. Completely wrong, as to how the world really works, but not fraudulent. Or at least I agree with the idea - individual work is noble. When you are really really rolling you go into the flow, and if you could build a society around that, you'd have something.
Sunday, September 05, 2010
Bliss
Feeling pretty good, I Googled "bliss". Tells you a lot.
Mostly cosmetics. Some restaurants. But as to sites that might really glorify it - address it - locate it - or debunk it, for chrissake - thin, really thin.
I lost interest after about page five. Not much more than a 21st century version of thumbing through the Yellow Pages.
Feeling pretty good, I Googled "bliss". Tells you a lot.
Mostly cosmetics. Some restaurants. But as to sites that might really glorify it - address it - locate it - or debunk it, for chrissake - thin, really thin.
I lost interest after about page five. Not much more than a 21st century version of thumbing through the Yellow Pages.
Saturday, September 04, 2010
Earl the Swirl
Hurricane Earl. (What comedian names these things, anyway? The last one through here was Bob.) Earl missed us by a lot last night, here on the Rhode Island coast, and so today we sheepishly drag our lawn furniture back out on the lawn and witness a sparkling, windy day, very blue sky, grey-green sea, big surf, scrubbed beaches with neat piles of stone. A good end to a hurricane.
Hurricane Earl. (What comedian names these things, anyway? The last one through here was Bob.) Earl missed us by a lot last night, here on the Rhode Island coast, and so today we sheepishly drag our lawn furniture back out on the lawn and witness a sparkling, windy day, very blue sky, grey-green sea, big surf, scrubbed beaches with neat piles of stone. A good end to a hurricane.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Burying the Lede
I had always thought that the term "A-OK" was a NASA thing. I found a little support for this, in the following from NASA's history:
"The origin of the popular space term "A.OK" is a matter of widespread public interest. In reporting the Freedom 7 flight, the press attributed the term to Astronaut Shepard, and indeed NASA News Release 1-61-99, May 5, 1961, has Shepard report "A.OK" shortly after impact. A replay of the flight voice communications tape disclosed that Shepard himself did not use the term. It was Col. John A. "Shorty" Powers who reported Shepard's condition as "A.OK" in a description of the flight. Tecwyn Roberts of STG and Capt. Henry E. Clements of the Air Force had used "A.OK" frequently in reports written more than four months before the Shepard flight. Roberts attributed coinage of the term to Paul Lein, of the Western Electric Co., while the tracking network was being constructed. Lein, however, said that "A.OK" was a communal development among communications engineers while circuits were first being established downrange from Cape Canaveral. The voice circuits at first gave poor quality. The bands were narrow, and the systems operated on 1,500 cycles. There was much static and background noise. Words got lost in voice circuit systems checks. To make transmissions clearer, the communicators started using "A.OK" because the letter "A" has a brilliant sound. Other sources claim that oldtime railroad telegraphers used "A-OK" as one of several terms to report the status of their equipment. Be that as it may, Powers, "the voice of Mercury Control," by his public use of "A.OK," made those three letters a universal symbol meaning "in perfect working order." "
But Wikipedia makes no mention of this history, and for them (it?) it's just the verbal version of the well-known hand gesture. Among different cultures, the gesture has, uh, widely varying meaning. Suffice it that after reading the Wikipedia piece, outside the USA I wouldn't use it.
This is a long way round to the results of my latest PET scan, about 15 months after this Big C Odyssey began. From my radiation oncologist's nurse: "A-OK. No evidence of disease."
As I said once before, quoting from Die Hard, and this time with feeling: yippie ki-yay, motherfucker.
I had always thought that the term "A-OK" was a NASA thing. I found a little support for this, in the following from NASA's history:
"The origin of the popular space term "A.OK" is a matter of widespread public interest. In reporting the Freedom 7 flight, the press attributed the term to Astronaut Shepard, and indeed NASA News Release 1-61-99, May 5, 1961, has Shepard report "A.OK" shortly after impact. A replay of the flight voice communications tape disclosed that Shepard himself did not use the term. It was Col. John A. "Shorty" Powers who reported Shepard's condition as "A.OK" in a description of the flight. Tecwyn Roberts of STG and Capt. Henry E. Clements of the Air Force had used "A.OK" frequently in reports written more than four months before the Shepard flight. Roberts attributed coinage of the term to Paul Lein, of the Western Electric Co., while the tracking network was being constructed. Lein, however, said that "A.OK" was a communal development among communications engineers while circuits were first being established downrange from Cape Canaveral. The voice circuits at first gave poor quality. The bands were narrow, and the systems operated on 1,500 cycles. There was much static and background noise. Words got lost in voice circuit systems checks. To make transmissions clearer, the communicators started using "A.OK" because the letter "A" has a brilliant sound. Other sources claim that oldtime railroad telegraphers used "A-OK" as one of several terms to report the status of their equipment. Be that as it may, Powers, "the voice of Mercury Control," by his public use of "A.OK," made those three letters a universal symbol meaning "in perfect working order." "
But Wikipedia makes no mention of this history, and for them (it?) it's just the verbal version of the well-known hand gesture. Among different cultures, the gesture has, uh, widely varying meaning. Suffice it that after reading the Wikipedia piece, outside the USA I wouldn't use it.
This is a long way round to the results of my latest PET scan, about 15 months after this Big C Odyssey began. From my radiation oncologist's nurse: "A-OK. No evidence of disease."
As I said once before, quoting from Die Hard, and this time with feeling: yippie ki-yay, motherfucker.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Strike Three
Below I identified two causes of my cancer, smoking in "Smokey Joe" and anti-psoriasis medication in "Risky Business." Today the third: human papillomavirus, or HPV.
I guess I have, or had, HPV. It may sound brave to reveal my connection to a sexually-transmitted disease; actually it's common. The statistics jump around, but it seems safe to say that a majority of American women, and lots of American men, have or had it. This "have or had" stuff comes from the fact that it seems to go away - your immune system can take care of it. My immune system is pretty funky - hence the psoriatic arthritis - and maybe that's why HPV caught up with me.
HPV has become well known as a cause of cervical cancer. Accordingly it's viewed as a women's issue, and a girls' issue, where the discussion has focused on the need to vaccinate girls before they become sexually active.
The same strain of HPV seems to be a principal cause of my type of cancer in men. The research is compelling. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine lays it all out in detail, and there appear to be plenty of others. Plus my doc identified it, without much qualification, in my case.
So, two things to say.
The first may be important. HPV may be killing as many men with head and neck cancer as it does women with cervical cancer. So the vaccine should be given to boys as well as girls. I haven't heard that said much; I am way past that stage of parenting, so maybe it's well known. It should be.
The second point is that if this cancer wins, I will have been felled by an STD. Or, more romantically, killed by a lady.
Like Sam Cooke. Not so bad, right?
Below I identified two causes of my cancer, smoking in "Smokey Joe" and anti-psoriasis medication in "Risky Business." Today the third: human papillomavirus, or HPV.
I guess I have, or had, HPV. It may sound brave to reveal my connection to a sexually-transmitted disease; actually it's common. The statistics jump around, but it seems safe to say that a majority of American women, and lots of American men, have or had it. This "have or had" stuff comes from the fact that it seems to go away - your immune system can take care of it. My immune system is pretty funky - hence the psoriatic arthritis - and maybe that's why HPV caught up with me.
HPV has become well known as a cause of cervical cancer. Accordingly it's viewed as a women's issue, and a girls' issue, where the discussion has focused on the need to vaccinate girls before they become sexually active.
The same strain of HPV seems to be a principal cause of my type of cancer in men. The research is compelling. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine lays it all out in detail, and there appear to be plenty of others. Plus my doc identified it, without much qualification, in my case.
So, two things to say.
The first may be important. HPV may be killing as many men with head and neck cancer as it does women with cervical cancer. So the vaccine should be given to boys as well as girls. I haven't heard that said much; I am way past that stage of parenting, so maybe it's well known. It should be.
The second point is that if this cancer wins, I will have been felled by an STD. Or, more romantically, killed by a lady.
Like Sam Cooke. Not so bad, right?
Monday, August 16, 2010
The Big C
So now I'm a TV program. The name has been around for a while (see above, in my description of what Strays is about.) [True when posted - since changed - Ed.] I always associated it with John Wayne.
This show has Laura Linney, who is light years more terrific than JW or me, and I will be a watcher. But from the review I read this morning in the Times, although she's a cancer patient there are two big differences.
She isn't telling anyone. I, of course, have told everyone, puttin' it up on the Internet for chrissake.
And she, evidently, has a fairly near-term and terminal deadline. I haven't and don't.
The two are probably connected. I'm not sure how I would have reacted if the initial read was, you're cooked, but it may well not have been to go public. If it turns that way for me, how will I react? Don't know. I think the kimono, once open, stays open, but I don't really know. It's one of those things you have to experience first-hand, in real time, to genuinely understand.
So now I'm a TV program. The name has been around for a while (see above, in my description of what Strays is about.) [True when posted - since changed - Ed.] I always associated it with John Wayne.
This show has Laura Linney, who is light years more terrific than JW or me, and I will be a watcher. But from the review I read this morning in the Times, although she's a cancer patient there are two big differences.
She isn't telling anyone. I, of course, have told everyone, puttin' it up on the Internet for chrissake.
And she, evidently, has a fairly near-term and terminal deadline. I haven't and don't.
The two are probably connected. I'm not sure how I would have reacted if the initial read was, you're cooked, but it may well not have been to go public. If it turns that way for me, how will I react? Don't know. I think the kimono, once open, stays open, but I don't really know. It's one of those things you have to experience first-hand, in real time, to genuinely understand.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Risky Business
Below, in "Smokey Joe", I identify the first of three reasons I had (have?) cancer. This is number two.*
The second culprit is medication for another disease in my life, one I've posted on before, psoriasis. Psoriasis sucks. I've had cancer, and I've been obese, and I've had, and have, psoriasis. It's the worst of the three.
Not just skin psoriasis, which is a total drag, but psoriatic arthritis, which is scary. Eviller twin to rheumatoid arthritis. As to both skin and arthritis, there is a class of medications, called biologics, which have been approved for psoriasis. They are miracle drugs. I moved through two, Remicade and Embrel, and landed with Humira. (These are their commercial trade names. They have even weirder chemical names.)
Humira requires a self-administered injection. Kind of cool, in a junkieish sort of way. Shots twice a week. Insanely expensive, like three grand a month.
It worked like magic. All the symptoms cleared up completely. Except for the injections, I forgot I had the disease.
Then things got a little strange. Under stress, one evening at the office I gave myself the shot and the next morning I was in early, under a deadline, got the work done, and then fetched up with what was diagnosed later as vertigo. I had always equated vertigo with fear of heights and the Hitchcock movie, but it's a real bad thing - I wound up in the emergency room. Pretty clearly it was a side effect of the Humira. And at about the same time, my dentist noticed the lump, I saw the ENT doc, and I was off to my date with old man Mr. C.
As I careened through the medical establishment I asked lot about Humira and whether it played a role with the head and neck cancer, and nobody knew nada. It just seemed so probable. I plowed around the literature, and at this point what I know is this:
I'm not the first.
Humira's seller, Abbott, updates the risk factors, and I think theirs has evolved since I first looked at it, but the current version puts cancer right up there at the top of the list. It doesn't nail me, but it comes pretty close (again, closer than I think it used to) with language about "lymphoma and other cancers" (mine wasn't lymphoma, but it collected in the lymph nodes) and "squamous cell cancer of the skin" (mine was somewhere in my neck, we think, never did find the bugger).
What this gets me to is risk.
We all talk about risk. There is risk in everything, we all know that, but by definition the risk of bad consequences is something less than 100 percent. Otherwise it's not risk, it's the future. Most things, it's way less than 100 percent. But it's there, and the bad stuff does happen to some people.
I think you have to be one of those people to begin to understand risk. It's a little along the lines of the completely-true "shit happens" - a recognition that you will not sail through life without a scratch. Is all this obvious? It wasn't to me, not at 20, or 30, or even 40.
But now I've been there, in this medical context and others, and now I guess I understand that this is all pretty risky business. The best we can do is try to identify the risks, make intelligent choices, and move ahead.
*Could all three be true? What is number three? Stay tuned.
Below, in "Smokey Joe", I identify the first of three reasons I had (have?) cancer. This is number two.*
The second culprit is medication for another disease in my life, one I've posted on before, psoriasis. Psoriasis sucks. I've had cancer, and I've been obese, and I've had, and have, psoriasis. It's the worst of the three.
Not just skin psoriasis, which is a total drag, but psoriatic arthritis, which is scary. Eviller twin to rheumatoid arthritis. As to both skin and arthritis, there is a class of medications, called biologics, which have been approved for psoriasis. They are miracle drugs. I moved through two, Remicade and Embrel, and landed with Humira. (These are their commercial trade names. They have even weirder chemical names.)
Humira requires a self-administered injection. Kind of cool, in a junkieish sort of way. Shots twice a week. Insanely expensive, like three grand a month.
It worked like magic. All the symptoms cleared up completely. Except for the injections, I forgot I had the disease.
Then things got a little strange. Under stress, one evening at the office I gave myself the shot and the next morning I was in early, under a deadline, got the work done, and then fetched up with what was diagnosed later as vertigo. I had always equated vertigo with fear of heights and the Hitchcock movie, but it's a real bad thing - I wound up in the emergency room. Pretty clearly it was a side effect of the Humira. And at about the same time, my dentist noticed the lump, I saw the ENT doc, and I was off to my date with old man Mr. C.
As I careened through the medical establishment I asked lot about Humira and whether it played a role with the head and neck cancer, and nobody knew nada. It just seemed so probable. I plowed around the literature, and at this point what I know is this:
I'm not the first.
Humira's seller, Abbott, updates the risk factors, and I think theirs has evolved since I first looked at it, but the current version puts cancer right up there at the top of the list. It doesn't nail me, but it comes pretty close (again, closer than I think it used to) with language about "lymphoma and other cancers" (mine wasn't lymphoma, but it collected in the lymph nodes) and "squamous cell cancer of the skin" (mine was somewhere in my neck, we think, never did find the bugger).
What this gets me to is risk.
We all talk about risk. There is risk in everything, we all know that, but by definition the risk of bad consequences is something less than 100 percent. Otherwise it's not risk, it's the future. Most things, it's way less than 100 percent. But it's there, and the bad stuff does happen to some people.
I think you have to be one of those people to begin to understand risk. It's a little along the lines of the completely-true "shit happens" - a recognition that you will not sail through life without a scratch. Is all this obvious? It wasn't to me, not at 20, or 30, or even 40.
But now I've been there, in this medical context and others, and now I guess I understand that this is all pretty risky business. The best we can do is try to identify the risks, make intelligent choices, and move ahead.
*Could all three be true? What is number three? Stay tuned.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Smokey Joe
One thing about this cancer business that I've kind of avoided, until now:
What caused it.
Now, I'm a cause-and-effect skeptic. So many times things really don't cause things, or aren't the sole cause, or the principal cause, or even what we in the bar sometimes refer to as the legal cause. So many explanations are facile. Slavery caused the civil war; the clash of Islam and the West caused 9/11; man caused global warming. All have truth and a lot of untruth as well.
So, appropriately hedged, I have asked a passel of questions and read a lot, and now finger three causes of my head and neck cancer. In this post I light up the first: smoking.
My first cigarette was when I was 11 or 12, and I was smoking openly and regularly at 15. Unfiltered Camels. Compensating for something?
Whatever the underlying motivation, I sure loved cigarettes. Smoked about a pack a day. Opening the pack, striking a match, lighting the cigarette (and if she were there, my lady friend's) with a cupped hand. Playing with fire with slight of hand. Indoors or out, from breakfast until bed, and in bed until the lights went out. Surrounded by ashtrays and everything smelled like smoke, which means that to me everything smelled great.
The brand mattered. When my wife and I went on a drive south, I persuaded her to stop in Winston-Salem, so we could make a pilgrimage to the Camels plant. It was fine, redolent of smoke and machinery. And as you exited there was Old Joe, a Camel made of tobacco. The ancestor, I guess, of Joe Camel, the cartoonish mascot who came on about as I quit. Not sorry we missed each other; I always thought he trivialized a great product and institution. I took the stuff seriously.
I knew it was dangerous. We all did, and it was no problem at all. It was probably part of the allure.
Plus there is decent research indicating that smoking other substances was also unhealthy, and I sure did. Loved it. All the paraphernalia, the papers, the hookahs (later bongs), the roach clips. Pot was a pretty happy, peaceful world in the late 60's and early '70's. If you'd told me then it would still be illegal in 2010 I'd have called you crazy.
So things went until I was 33, when I stopped cold turkey.
So, some 25 years later, is it a credible cause of my cancer? The docs say yes. In fact I have a feeling they don't really know. But smoking today is so universally viewed as evil - well, it's a really safe answer.
If it was a cause of the cancer, was it worth it? You might as well ask if it was worth it being me, back in those days. If I'd had to identify who I was - you know, like lawyer/father/piano player/etc. - I certainly would have put smoker near the top of the list. Serious. Dangerous. Cool. Smoker.
One thing about this cancer business that I've kind of avoided, until now:
What caused it.
Now, I'm a cause-and-effect skeptic. So many times things really don't cause things, or aren't the sole cause, or the principal cause, or even what we in the bar sometimes refer to as the legal cause. So many explanations are facile. Slavery caused the civil war; the clash of Islam and the West caused 9/11; man caused global warming. All have truth and a lot of untruth as well.
So, appropriately hedged, I have asked a passel of questions and read a lot, and now finger three causes of my head and neck cancer. In this post I light up the first: smoking.
My first cigarette was when I was 11 or 12, and I was smoking openly and regularly at 15. Unfiltered Camels. Compensating for something?
Whatever the underlying motivation, I sure loved cigarettes. Smoked about a pack a day. Opening the pack, striking a match, lighting the cigarette (and if she were there, my lady friend's) with a cupped hand. Playing with fire with slight of hand. Indoors or out, from breakfast until bed, and in bed until the lights went out. Surrounded by ashtrays and everything smelled like smoke, which means that to me everything smelled great.
The brand mattered. When my wife and I went on a drive south, I persuaded her to stop in Winston-Salem, so we could make a pilgrimage to the Camels plant. It was fine, redolent of smoke and machinery. And as you exited there was Old Joe, a Camel made of tobacco. The ancestor, I guess, of Joe Camel, the cartoonish mascot who came on about as I quit. Not sorry we missed each other; I always thought he trivialized a great product and institution. I took the stuff seriously.
I knew it was dangerous. We all did, and it was no problem at all. It was probably part of the allure.
Plus there is decent research indicating that smoking other substances was also unhealthy, and I sure did. Loved it. All the paraphernalia, the papers, the hookahs (later bongs), the roach clips. Pot was a pretty happy, peaceful world in the late 60's and early '70's. If you'd told me then it would still be illegal in 2010 I'd have called you crazy.
So things went until I was 33, when I stopped cold turkey.
So, some 25 years later, is it a credible cause of my cancer? The docs say yes. In fact I have a feeling they don't really know. But smoking today is so universally viewed as evil - well, it's a really safe answer.
If it was a cause of the cancer, was it worth it? You might as well ask if it was worth it being me, back in those days. If I'd had to identify who I was - you know, like lawyer/father/piano player/etc. - I certainly would have put smoker near the top of the list. Serious. Dangerous. Cool. Smoker.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Early Check-Out
Back when I used to think about doing myself in, I called it "Early Check-Out". As in, maybe I'll just go for early check-out.
I haven't thought about it in a long time (probably a good thing). But I recalled it while biking this morning. Not sure why. I'd rather be dead than exercising? If I swing left about a centimeter I will impale myself on that street sign?
Whatever the origin, it bothered me that, at age 60, I probably could no longer call it "early." So what other flip expression can I use to confront something monstrous like suicide?
Back when I used to think about doing myself in, I called it "Early Check-Out". As in, maybe I'll just go for early check-out.
I haven't thought about it in a long time (probably a good thing). But I recalled it while biking this morning. Not sure why. I'd rather be dead than exercising? If I swing left about a centimeter I will impale myself on that street sign?
Whatever the origin, it bothered me that, at age 60, I probably could no longer call it "early." So what other flip expression can I use to confront something monstrous like suicide?
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Stingers
Here at the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers, the intersection of the continent's biggest watershed, it's hot. Steamy hot. I was worried that while off on vacation the garden would dry up, but nuh-uh. It's the Amazon. While trying to do a little pruning at 6 a.m. I was stung on the hand. I wondered what kind of tropical bug had invaded - maybe something big and green, with a curly tail? - but it turned out to be a plain Midwestern wasp. Waited for the rush of whatever these stings are supposed to bring to your head, but it was just a sting.
"Wasp" is the handle for Lizbeth Salander, currently the coolest woman in the world. It's funny to those of us who remember the old secondary meaning for "wasp" - an acronym for White Anglo Saxon Protestant, and kind of an emblem for the male power structure in America. Lizbeth's the polar opposite. Since it's in translation, I wonder if it's coincidence.
But there are no coincidences, right?
Here at the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers, the intersection of the continent's biggest watershed, it's hot. Steamy hot. I was worried that while off on vacation the garden would dry up, but nuh-uh. It's the Amazon. While trying to do a little pruning at 6 a.m. I was stung on the hand. I wondered what kind of tropical bug had invaded - maybe something big and green, with a curly tail? - but it turned out to be a plain Midwestern wasp. Waited for the rush of whatever these stings are supposed to bring to your head, but it was just a sting.
"Wasp" is the handle for Lizbeth Salander, currently the coolest woman in the world. It's funny to those of us who remember the old secondary meaning for "wasp" - an acronym for White Anglo Saxon Protestant, and kind of an emblem for the male power structure in America. Lizbeth's the polar opposite. Since it's in translation, I wonder if it's coincidence.
But there are no coincidences, right?
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Where are the Grown-Ups?
Once again, current American politics is facing a serious problem: financiers in global firms that have way too little market or risk discipline. And once again the politicians answer by delivering us a piece of crap, the 2010 financial "reform" legislation. It didn't need to be; there were some interesting ideas floating around. (My own personal favorites are to breathe life back into the Clayton Act, and to pass a 21st century version of Glass-Steagall.) But the lawmakers in this sorry excuse for a legislative branch just want to make their political points and move on.
I think the Republicans deserve particular opprobrium from those of us who believe that the best solutions are free markets with goods and services that are properly priced. They did it before with Obamacare; they are doing it now with financial services legislation. These so-called conservatives think it is better for the country to let the Democrats pass massive legislation that is 80 percent crap than to fight and work to produce legislation that is 30 percent crap. Their calculus must be - let Obama and the Democratic hoist themselves with this stuff and we will pick up seats in Congress, and (oh joy of joys!) maybe beat the guy in his next election.
In the meantime, we get junk legislation that will never be repealed and the real problems in the country go unresolved.
What a waste. There are intelligent ways to address things like, say, over $30 trillion in unfunded Medicare liability. (That amount, by the way, is just about inconceivable.) Representative Ryan from Wisconsin, who is one of maybe ten grown-ups in the Congress, has such a plan, and it will probably lose him his job.
In the private world, a serious-sounding intelligent person with good arguments can usually hold the floor, change minds, and even inspire some measure of long-term perspective. Beats me why can't this be in the public world, but obviously it can't.
Once again, current American politics is facing a serious problem: financiers in global firms that have way too little market or risk discipline. And once again the politicians answer by delivering us a piece of crap, the 2010 financial "reform" legislation. It didn't need to be; there were some interesting ideas floating around. (My own personal favorites are to breathe life back into the Clayton Act, and to pass a 21st century version of Glass-Steagall.) But the lawmakers in this sorry excuse for a legislative branch just want to make their political points and move on.
I think the Republicans deserve particular opprobrium from those of us who believe that the best solutions are free markets with goods and services that are properly priced. They did it before with Obamacare; they are doing it now with financial services legislation. These so-called conservatives think it is better for the country to let the Democrats pass massive legislation that is 80 percent crap than to fight and work to produce legislation that is 30 percent crap. Their calculus must be - let Obama and the Democratic hoist themselves with this stuff and we will pick up seats in Congress, and (oh joy of joys!) maybe beat the guy in his next election.
In the meantime, we get junk legislation that will never be repealed and the real problems in the country go unresolved.
What a waste. There are intelligent ways to address things like, say, over $30 trillion in unfunded Medicare liability. (That amount, by the way, is just about inconceivable.) Representative Ryan from Wisconsin, who is one of maybe ten grown-ups in the Congress, has such a plan, and it will probably lose him his job.
In the private world, a serious-sounding intelligent person with good arguments can usually hold the floor, change minds, and even inspire some measure of long-term perspective. Beats me why can't this be in the public world, but obviously it can't.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Back to the Republic of Equity
Where I was when things derailed.
For centuries there was a huge societal bias against debt. Good Christians were not allowed to be moneylenders. Debtors went to prison, not Chapter 7. The attitude seems punitive, archaic, vaguely antisemitic.
But maybe there was some ancient truth at play, one we could rediscover and reapply.
Debt means you use property you don't own. You borrow land, or a lawnmower, or most frequently - money. And you take this property you don't own and you use it now, because otherwise you'd have to wait and use it later (if you acquire it at all). Otherwise, and in the meantime, you have to go without.
The alternative, the going without, interests me. Many times I've found not having things meant finding substitutes that turned out just fine. When you go somewhere where's no Internet, no power, no telephone: you go to candles, and reading by lamplight, and talking.
What would happen if all the non-emergency debt were liquidated? Would we go to candles and conversation around campfires? I don't think so. But we might go to no 3-D TV, no 5000 square-foot houses, no $200 lunches.
That may be nothing to fear. But it also could be more painful than that, much more, what we really do fear, and so we kick the can down the road.
Where I was when things derailed.
For centuries there was a huge societal bias against debt. Good Christians were not allowed to be moneylenders. Debtors went to prison, not Chapter 7. The attitude seems punitive, archaic, vaguely antisemitic.
But maybe there was some ancient truth at play, one we could rediscover and reapply.
Debt means you use property you don't own. You borrow land, or a lawnmower, or most frequently - money. And you take this property you don't own and you use it now, because otherwise you'd have to wait and use it later (if you acquire it at all). Otherwise, and in the meantime, you have to go without.
The alternative, the going without, interests me. Many times I've found not having things meant finding substitutes that turned out just fine. When you go somewhere where's no Internet, no power, no telephone: you go to candles, and reading by lamplight, and talking.
What would happen if all the non-emergency debt were liquidated? Would we go to candles and conversation around campfires? I don't think so. But we might go to no 3-D TV, no 5000 square-foot houses, no $200 lunches.
That may be nothing to fear. But it also could be more painful than that, much more, what we really do fear, and so we kick the can down the road.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Coincidence
For some reason, today I am settling for a client the biggest insurance claim of my career, on Monday we close one of the biggest divestitures of my career, and on Tuesday Valerie the Westie and I drive East, starting the longest vacation I have taken in 30 years.
What else can I say but
God is great.
For some reason, today I am settling for a client the biggest insurance claim of my career, on Monday we close one of the biggest divestitures of my career, and on Tuesday Valerie the Westie and I drive East, starting the longest vacation I have taken in 30 years.
What else can I say but
God is great.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Beetles
At mid-afternoon it's 95 degrees here in St. Louis, muggy, dreadful. The peak of the annual Japanese Beetle invasion. Every morning before the heat is up, while they are still groggy, I parade the grounds with a cup of gasoline, sweeping the little buggers in. Better for the birds than spraying them with poison, but it's major Zen activity. Beetle by beetle. Except that many are couples coupling and there are even a few three-ways.
Their favorite victims, way more than the roses, are the leaves of a big pussy willow and a Harry Lauder's Walking Stick. Which is nice of them, in a way - the best thing about the pussy willow is the catkins in the spring and the best thing about the HLWS is its branches in the winter. Still, the leaves are like catnip - or sushi? - to the little bronze and green samurai, and I drown them in BP's finest by the dozen.
At mid-afternoon it's 95 degrees here in St. Louis, muggy, dreadful. The peak of the annual Japanese Beetle invasion. Every morning before the heat is up, while they are still groggy, I parade the grounds with a cup of gasoline, sweeping the little buggers in. Better for the birds than spraying them with poison, but it's major Zen activity. Beetle by beetle. Except that many are couples coupling and there are even a few three-ways.
Their favorite victims, way more than the roses, are the leaves of a big pussy willow and a Harry Lauder's Walking Stick. Which is nice of them, in a way - the best thing about the pussy willow is the catkins in the spring and the best thing about the HLWS is its branches in the winter. Still, the leaves are like catnip - or sushi? - to the little bronze and green samurai, and I drown them in BP's finest by the dozen.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Sliding Left?
I've always been a libertarian, small "l", for domestic things like drugs and incarceration, but otherwise pretty firmly in the hawkish/curmudgeon/South Park conservative camp. Until lately - maybe it's been my close encounter with the hereafter, but for some reason I seem to be more sympathetic to some leftie stuff. Today's example: maybe we should get out of Afghanistan.
I have to say I am mystified by Obama's designation of this as a war of necessity. Maybe his statement is just cant - he has to say it, in order to support his I'm-Not-George-W meme. (We know! We know!) Maybe he believes it; I don't. In fact I can make an argument that the war in Iraq was more necessary than one in Afghanistan. But that whole choice-necessity thing is facile, and by now pretty tedious.
I think what we are trying to do is neutralize people who want to, and have a realistic chance of, killing us (again) on a massive scale. 9/11 must never happen again. I happen to think we've done a reasonably good job of keeping it from happening again, and with our improved intelligence and technologies - especially our ability to kill individual enemies remotely - I think we will continue get better at it.
Killing Taliban in Afghanistan, on the other hand, because they are Taliban, is probably a fine thing to do. Especially for the women and children of Afghanistan. I just can't see how it has a direct bearing, however, on how we neutralize our real enemy or prevent another 9/11. So, if this is right, the war doesn't fit the objective very well, and it certainly doesn't justify the cost and time of a successful prosecution.
I would focus on how to climb down from this war and make a graceful exit. Just as we can tolerate no new 9/11, we cannot ever be in a position of evacuating our embassy on short notice and leaving supporters behind to be slaughtered, as we did in Saigon in 1975. Avoidance of that should be the objective in Afghanistan.
How? We find a reason to declare Al-Qaeda crushed and declare victory. How that? Well, finally killing Bin Laden or finding his remains would be nice. And if not that, I bet there is something else the Pashtuns and/or the Pakis could serve up if they were offered the right mixture of money and guns (in their hands, at their heads, or both). Whatever it is, we follow it up with a nice parade through Kabul, us and our allies, and we're gone. With visas and a great evacuation plan for our local friends, who I'm sure will make fine Americans.
So am I now a leftie? Who knows. Maybe just a guy who is very unwilling to see young people die except for a very, very good reason.
I've always been a libertarian, small "l", for domestic things like drugs and incarceration, but otherwise pretty firmly in the hawkish/curmudgeon/South Park conservative camp. Until lately - maybe it's been my close encounter with the hereafter, but for some reason I seem to be more sympathetic to some leftie stuff. Today's example: maybe we should get out of Afghanistan.
I have to say I am mystified by Obama's designation of this as a war of necessity. Maybe his statement is just cant - he has to say it, in order to support his I'm-Not-George-W meme. (We know! We know!) Maybe he believes it; I don't. In fact I can make an argument that the war in Iraq was more necessary than one in Afghanistan. But that whole choice-necessity thing is facile, and by now pretty tedious.
I think what we are trying to do is neutralize people who want to, and have a realistic chance of, killing us (again) on a massive scale. 9/11 must never happen again. I happen to think we've done a reasonably good job of keeping it from happening again, and with our improved intelligence and technologies - especially our ability to kill individual enemies remotely - I think we will continue get better at it.
Killing Taliban in Afghanistan, on the other hand, because they are Taliban, is probably a fine thing to do. Especially for the women and children of Afghanistan. I just can't see how it has a direct bearing, however, on how we neutralize our real enemy or prevent another 9/11. So, if this is right, the war doesn't fit the objective very well, and it certainly doesn't justify the cost and time of a successful prosecution.
I would focus on how to climb down from this war and make a graceful exit. Just as we can tolerate no new 9/11, we cannot ever be in a position of evacuating our embassy on short notice and leaving supporters behind to be slaughtered, as we did in Saigon in 1975. Avoidance of that should be the objective in Afghanistan.
How? We find a reason to declare Al-Qaeda crushed and declare victory. How that? Well, finally killing Bin Laden or finding his remains would be nice. And if not that, I bet there is something else the Pashtuns and/or the Pakis could serve up if they were offered the right mixture of money and guns (in their hands, at their heads, or both). Whatever it is, we follow it up with a nice parade through Kabul, us and our allies, and we're gone. With visas and a great evacuation plan for our local friends, who I'm sure will make fine Americans.
So am I now a leftie? Who knows. Maybe just a guy who is very unwilling to see young people die except for a very, very good reason.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Stepping Around
So how do you step from a parochial blog about a guy with cancer to what it used to be - stuff I was interested in, and didn't care who read it. I guess you can go in baby steps - write about other people's medical issues - health care - or doctors as an endangered profession. Or about life changes, and aging, and backwards aging - or the current distinctions between generations that seem so slight compared to the generational gap that was the crucible of the '60's...
Nah.
I'd rather go off the road entirely.
Brooks has a column today that circles around what I have long thought was the most important political issue out there. I used to put it as a thought problem in Cold War terms: what if the Soviet system worked better than ours, economically. Would we opt for that, or would we accept a lesser standard of living in order to keep our personal freedom?
The Brooks piece puts it in the 21st century context because the question is fast becoming non-hypothetical. That is, there is now a working, competing model of capitalism, especially in China - what he calls state capitalism - which may well seem more attractive to some populations than ours.
The state version may be more attractive because it makes people more personally secure, or because it is more nationalistic. It may be more collective, or cooperative, or it may require more sublimation of personal desire to the greater good. But whatever its appeal to these other ideals (if that's what they are), the rubber really meets the road if the system wins economically. If it makes people richer faster.
An older version of this was the worry about democracy, and how it could last. Lots of Greeks wondered about democracy, and posited arguments why it was bound to fail. Like the idea that the demos would eventually take over the fisc and drive out the wealth-creators, leading to dictatorship. Variations on that.
And state capitalism certainly isn't new - I had friends at Princeton who thought that state-sponsored and -guided capitalism, plus antisemitism, was fascism. And therefore, the logic ran, remove the antisemitism and you might have an interesting system.
Nontheless the debate seems new, after the triumph of the American Century and the notions that democracy is good, peace is good, free enterprise is OK because it enables democracy, and even (the neoconservative premise that few still buy) democracy makes the world more peaceful. I'm still kind of stuck there. But my guess is that this state capitalism idea will be re-branded in America, trotted before us and championed by some element of the elite. And freedom will come to seem old-fashioned and - as Jon Stewart once said to Rolling Stone - overrated.
So how do you step from a parochial blog about a guy with cancer to what it used to be - stuff I was interested in, and didn't care who read it. I guess you can go in baby steps - write about other people's medical issues - health care - or doctors as an endangered profession. Or about life changes, and aging, and backwards aging - or the current distinctions between generations that seem so slight compared to the generational gap that was the crucible of the '60's...
Nah.
I'd rather go off the road entirely.
Brooks has a column today that circles around what I have long thought was the most important political issue out there. I used to put it as a thought problem in Cold War terms: what if the Soviet system worked better than ours, economically. Would we opt for that, or would we accept a lesser standard of living in order to keep our personal freedom?
The Brooks piece puts it in the 21st century context because the question is fast becoming non-hypothetical. That is, there is now a working, competing model of capitalism, especially in China - what he calls state capitalism - which may well seem more attractive to some populations than ours.
The state version may be more attractive because it makes people more personally secure, or because it is more nationalistic. It may be more collective, or cooperative, or it may require more sublimation of personal desire to the greater good. But whatever its appeal to these other ideals (if that's what they are), the rubber really meets the road if the system wins economically. If it makes people richer faster.
An older version of this was the worry about democracy, and how it could last. Lots of Greeks wondered about democracy, and posited arguments why it was bound to fail. Like the idea that the demos would eventually take over the fisc and drive out the wealth-creators, leading to dictatorship. Variations on that.
And state capitalism certainly isn't new - I had friends at Princeton who thought that state-sponsored and -guided capitalism, plus antisemitism, was fascism. And therefore, the logic ran, remove the antisemitism and you might have an interesting system.
Nontheless the debate seems new, after the triumph of the American Century and the notions that democracy is good, peace is good, free enterprise is OK because it enables democracy, and even (the neoconservative premise that few still buy) democracy makes the world more peaceful. I'm still kind of stuck there. But my guess is that this state capitalism idea will be re-branded in America, trotted before us and championed by some element of the elite. And freedom will come to seem old-fashioned and - as Jon Stewart once said to Rolling Stone - overrated.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Back to the Desktop
I took a brief vacation from this enterprise, in part because I wanted to think of another approach to this stage of events. Last time, I said sayonara cancer but the bastard snuck back. I'm now tempted to say sayonara again - especially since I think the literal translation is something like, "if it be thus." Nicely ambiguous. None of the rest of the immediate candidates works - not good-bye, not farewell, not adios, and certainly not au revoir.
And hello... what. Again, lots of brave stuff last time, some of it now sounding hollow. Hello rest of my life, of course. But we all can (and probably should) say that every morning.
A few things have, in any event, changed.
- The music bands are disbanded. I am trying to work out my own style of piano, something St. Louis - a mix of New Orleans and ragtime, if I can. And if there is any way I can get the first phases of practicing the accordion behind me, it's theoretically perfect - a minstrel.
- I'm going to church, of all things, a relatively-high Episcopal place with the finest music you can imagine. A great place, I find, for my tribal connections. I went to an Episcopal church as I grew up, it was the place of my first paying job, and I went to an Episcopalian boarding school. I remember Mom and Dad so clearly while in the pew - ancestor worship, of a kind. So what if I'm an agnostic. If God makes any sense, God made me an agnostic. If God wants me to change, and if God makes any sense, God will. Inshallah, as we used to hear all the time in Saudi Arabia, with a shrug, an Arab version of whatever.
- And of course there's this new wardrobe. Only it's not really new. It's stuff I had in the basement, much from long ago. A double-breasted suit last night that I bought when we lived in London in 1985. Wait 'til I strap on my linen suit. Woo-woo.
So there's cause for celebration, and I look for ways. Today I'm thinking about splashing on some Obsession for Men, and going to the zoo.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Whistler
Been through the end of the process, the bad trough, but coming back up.
Reminding me of an episode from a much longer story:
It was the early '80's, I had gone home to Cleveland because my father had had a stroke. At the time he was separated but had a girlfriend (not the reason for the separation.) When I arrived at the hospital Dad was flat on his back, with the doctor, me, my stepmother, and the girlfriend standing around the bed. Three of the four at bedside were obviously wondering what their role in this drama was going to be.
Dad was down and aphasic, which means he couldn't talk. Over the many months that followed he never did regain his ability to speak in whole sentences, but it became clear that the brains were still there. I think he wanted us to know this right away - he certainly could see that there was a certain amount of, ah, tension among the onlookers, and he certainly hoped for support. He was bright-eyed and trying to buck us up but without words - this most verbal of men - he was struggling.
So he broke into a whistle. Not aimless - a tune - with his eyes moving to each of us to see if it connected. I'm OK, I'm here, don't give up. I thought I understood, and said yeah Dad, that's good.
As the months went by and the women bailed out, he continued to try to use music to communicate. He could sing better than he could talk. Once, as I explained again the lay of the land as to the ladies, he began to sing "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan." He was a tenor, really a fine tenor.
But the whistle is what sticks with me. Here now, from me, three years younger than he was then: a tune, whistled. I'm here, I'm OK.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Done with That
Radiation is over. Should be a couple of weeks of recovery, then Big C goes back into the rearview mirror and I resume motoring, looking for Margalo.
Apart from the massive machinery, the process involved a bunch of lovely people. Dot, Stefanie, Matt, Jeff, Kimberly, Leni, the always-cheerful Cecelia. They are receptionists, techies, nurses, who see a steady parade of people with cancer. The Siteman Center puts 200 people a day through the type of radiation I just finished, and those folks I named and dozens of others are the guides. Their jobs are not easy, with long hours, in a lower level with no windows. I sometimes think what I do is important, but not really, not compared to them. Ave.
Radiation is over. Should be a couple of weeks of recovery, then Big C goes back into the rearview mirror and I resume motoring, looking for Margalo.
Apart from the massive machinery, the process involved a bunch of lovely people. Dot, Stefanie, Matt, Jeff, Kimberly, Leni, the always-cheerful Cecelia. They are receptionists, techies, nurses, who see a steady parade of people with cancer. The Siteman Center puts 200 people a day through the type of radiation I just finished, and those folks I named and dozens of others are the guides. Their jobs are not easy, with long hours, in a lower level with no windows. I sometimes think what I do is important, but not really, not compared to them. Ave.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Prayerless
I dined this evening across the table from Jeff, a guy in the tree business. Jeff had a more interesting day than I had. While I did my usual Sunday combo of domestic chores and reading the Times, he was taking a massive Black Locust off the roof of a house, a tree so big that tomorrow he'd have to bring in a 100-foot crane to finish the job. (We'd had a mini-tornado in Webster Groves.)
But even more remarkable than his productive day in a bucket truck was his interest, once he found out my position, in making sure I knew he was going to pray for me. Told me over and over. In fact, as I was leaving and saying good-bye, Jeff grabbed my shoulder and engaged us in prayer right then and there, in the restaurant.
This was the most arresting example of the prayer business that seems to attend almost every expression of sympathy I hear. We are praying for you. Our prayers are with you. I have been hearing this for a year, almost every day, and get me not wrong: I am for it. I am flattered and grateful for the expression and perfectly ready to entertain the notion that it will do good. But - how to say this without sounding churlish? - I am skeptical of the idea.
I'm sure my problem is that I have only the simplest possible appreciation of the process. I understand it thus: you address a petition to God, God hears, God acts. But why does God act? Because of the prayer? Does God not act if there is no prayer? If I were unlucky enough to have no one praying for me, would God ignore me? Who prays for them?
Now I didn't raise this with Jeff. This guy brings down trees for a living, and judging from his build and his callouses he probably does a lot of the work bare-handed. He could strangle me with two fingers, but instead he's calling in the Deity on my behalf. Still, there's a problem. I bow my head as he prays and I thank him, warmly, gratefully. honestly, and... patronizingly. There's a hypocrite in the room. It isn't Jeff.
And I am doing great, and who am I to say that all these expressions of prayer, whose sincerity I do not for a moment doubt, have not made the difference? I can only think of one way to true things up a little. From now on I will pray - me, praying, ha! - for those who otherwise have no one praying for them, and hope for the best for all of us.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Nineteen
Nineteen radiation sessions down, eleven to go. I am fine. Much less impact than before at this stage - don't really know why. Maybe I'm getting used to it. I should be, since if you count the last go-round it's a total of 49 so far.
I also am getting used to it in the commuter/schedule/routine sense of things. I pull off the parkway at the last possible exit, slide into a non-obvious turning lane, roll up into the parking garage, punch in for a ticket, blast ahead of the other guys who are still trying to dope out the machine, go up a couple of ramps and usually am into the same space, a little off the track, you kind of have to know about it. Then walk into the hospital, plugging in the Ipod so I can listen to Fresh Air. Down to the lower level, click in with my bar code card, validate parking, then go back for zillions of electron volts. Ho hum. Another day at the lab.
Maybe that's it. The orderliness. Anyway, an end in sight, and better along the way than expected.
Nineteen radiation sessions down, eleven to go. I am fine. Much less impact than before at this stage - don't really know why. Maybe I'm getting used to it. I should be, since if you count the last go-round it's a total of 49 so far.
I also am getting used to it in the commuter/schedule/routine sense of things. I pull off the parkway at the last possible exit, slide into a non-obvious turning lane, roll up into the parking garage, punch in for a ticket, blast ahead of the other guys who are still trying to dope out the machine, go up a couple of ramps and usually am into the same space, a little off the track, you kind of have to know about it. Then walk into the hospital, plugging in the Ipod so I can listen to Fresh Air. Down to the lower level, click in with my bar code card, validate parking, then go back for zillions of electron volts. Ho hum. Another day at the lab.
Maybe that's it. The orderliness. Anyway, an end in sight, and better along the way than expected.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Fool
Further to the last. Dark and ironic are not necessarily something to aspire to, and it's not my first encounter.
About 45 years ago I authored a piece in the Horae Scholasticae, the literary magazine that was published at my New Hampshire boarding school. The Horae and the boarding school are both, at least by American standards, venerable.
The piece was a poem, based in part on a bet. I bet another guy - I'll call him Wisner - that I could get a piece into the Horae. My idea was that if I goosed up the language and staggered the lines and avoided rhyme, but kept it morally upright, they would publish. I showed him the piece. Wisner made the bet because he thought it was a crappy poem, but also because of my creative use of upper case at the beginning of each line, which he did not think would fool the Horae's Editorial Board. It's also possible he did not care if he lost.
I won the bet. Here's what came out in the next issue:
That huge "F" was the Horae's idea.
I was an instant celebrity in that small, fraught world. Although the Editorial Board may have missed the irony, the masters - as we called our teachers then - did not. My English master, a wonderful Brit who loved booze way too much - said, "The last guy who did this was on a train home that afternoon."The Rector was not amused. An autere Episcopalian bishop, he called me in after consultations to which I was not privy. His offer, rather than to send me home, was to make me stay On Bounds (meaning you couldn't leave the premises) indefinitely, stay over two days into Spring vacation, and pay the republishing costs. I took the deal. It seemed to me, well, ironic that the most severe sanction was banishment, but the next one down was a kind of imprisonment on campus.
The poem was an ironic piece, if also adolescent and crude, and the local literati gave it a mixed review. The chair of the Editorial Board, no doubt miffed, said, "I can't believe you would do something so stupid." Another member of the Board was vague as to whether he had spotted the secret message and pronounced it the finest work ever printed in the Horae. In any event the edition was republished and the poem replaced with a drawing of a flower or a bucket or something. The originals were confiscated and, they say, burned. Except a few.
The poem derived not only from my bet with Wisner. About six months earlier, in the Fall of 1965, my parents had announced that they were separated. It was not really unexpected; my father had fallen rather conspicuously in love with someone else. Home in Ohio that Christmas, I saw him only for a little time, in a rented house. A sad holiday, and even I, the most hardened prep school toughie, came back to school hoping they would wake up and pull it together.In February, hearing nothing, I called my sister, who was married and lived in Connecticut. I said, "Are my parents divorced?" She said yes. She thought it was terrible they hadn't told me.
I wrote out the poem the next week.I'm sure I wasn't put on the next train home, and instead was roped to the school, because the Rector knew the history. He felt sorry for me, which I hated. But I did not hate him, and I loved my parents throughout. I was just blind-sided a little, and more careful thereafter.
OK Yeah the Last One Was April Fool's
Meant to be kind of dark and ironic, especially the reference to sunblock.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Amazing
Today's radiation was unbelievable. As soon as they turned it on, the raygun circled around my head, searchlights rose up, mellotronny music swelled up. A host - or at least a couple of dozen - of vestal virgins appeared before me. They escorted me up, up, up a celestial ladder and there before me, after all these years, was St. Peter. Who said, "What have done for the wretched of the earth? What have you done that had no benefit to you at all - was just the right thing to do?" I mumbled something about United Way. He pointed a bony finger toward the Down escalator. I descended, and at the bottom was Satan, I guess, although he looked exactly like Richard Nixon. Who said, "Hey, you didn't want to be up there anyway. All your friends are here. It will be like a beach in the Bahamas, only really, really, really hot. Wear sunblock."
Monday, March 22, 2010
Cocktail Hour
Three radiation days down, twenty-seven to go. In at 8:30 am, out in under an hour. The photo in the link from my last post is pretty close to me - but eventually I will ask my new techs to take one in my own Silence-of-the-Lambs-y mask.
As before, they really do screw your head down to the gurney. But the machinery is different - more like the PET scans - a big-ass white donut into and out of which you slide. Noisier than before, and a different noise. A shakey-grindey noise that circles around you - the raygun, blasting away. Does not sound like a gun, though - a lot more like a bartender with his shaker. A mixologist, as they say, orbiting around your head. My version of a Stinger, Mr. Morgan - I make it with gin...
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Guest Author
Well, for another take on this process you can go here. It's about the coach of the Denver Nuggets. Good luck George.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Speaking
The challenge here is to be a voice, not just words on a screen. It gets really tricky when you are hoping to be facetious, or sarcastic, or using some other emotion where tone and face convey something different or more than the words. Salinger, my hero (see my post 9/13/08) tried to get part way with italics, and I do too.
These days I see folks using emoticons, which strike me as profoundly creepy. My view isn't right, it's snobbish, the users are trying to improve the truth of their communication... but eew.
There are some things that just don't convey without the tone, or the eye contact, or the pursed lips. Take my response to the many good folks who ask how I am, and know that there may be a complicated answer. I say only, "OK." But kind of slow, with a lift at the end. Ooo-kay. Tired of the process, hopeful, grateful for the well-meaning question, not eager to get into detail, without irony. Can you pack that into two syllables that have no intrinsic meaning? I think so. I hope so.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
You Don't Have to Be Jewish
One of the best things about driving or biking to work on Saturday is the sight of Jewish families walking to or from their synagogues. I see them and think, peace and civilization.
Wouldn't it be great if we all had to walk somewhere one day a week. Sidewalks, even in the suburbs, with people. Fewer cars. Less machinery, more conversation.
So, by one's faith. Christians: walk to church! Muslims: walk to mosque! Other believers: walk to your congregation! Agnostics: walk to a bookstore! Atheists: walk to a tavern!
The weekends would come alive.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Tick Tock
We are all waiting for something, or more than one thing. Waiting for children to be born: cool, but kind of scary. Waiting for the demise of a relative who might leave you something: grisly, but we all do it. Waiting for warmer days. Waiting for the Second Coming. Waiting, of course, emphatically, whatever it means, for Godot.
At the top of my personal wait list is this radiation thing. I know pretty well what it will be like, and so it isn't really anxiety-provoking. Mostly it's just that the clock slows down, tick... tick... tick.. come on. Get me from here to there.
I'm sleeping a lot. It's a trick I learned from Tom, the lead guitarist in my band in boarding school. Back then we were all waiting, all the time, for the next vacation, really for graduation, really for what we thought would be freedom. Tom's theory was that the more you sleep, the faster times goes by. Of course it also means that you are reducing the amount of time when you otherwise could be conscious and alive. But we didn't think it much of a life (how wrong we were) and wanted it behind us.
I do want this next stage behind me, in that rear-view mirror and growing smaller, and there's a ways till then. Plus I gave up drinking for Lent. Bad idea.
Monday, March 08, 2010
Today I went in for the new mask. The old one won't fit my new less-cherubic face.
The mask is used, as those who have followed this saga will recall, to screw my head down to a table while they pull a VW-sized gizmo over me and blast away. Starts next week, ends late April, five days a week. Starts easy. Ends crappy, if it's like the last time.
The radiation oncologist raised the possibility of chemotherapy as a kind of cherry on the sundae, and I started to get rebellious. He opined that it was probably not worth the extra "toxicity". No kidding.
The old mask is in the garage, awaiting a new function. I am thinking of turning it into a birdhouse.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Badda Bing Badda Boom
OK so I've got to go back for more radiation.
The calculus is kind of interesting. The numbers are based on what I've heard and read but they are basically made up by me, because I am quickly becoming a class of very few on this particular neck cancer: occult primary, removed nodes from left side, radiated left side, found and removed nodes on right side, radiate right side. My numbers are: If no radation, odds of very problematic cancer emerging in the next two years: 1 in 10 to 1 in 50. So this radiation is 90+ percent likely unnecessary. If radiation, odds of this neck cancer emerging in the next two years: 1 in 50 to 1 in 1000. If radiation, odds of some kind of damage to the neck over the next 20 years that will be hard to cure: who knows. Probably signficant. If radiation, other immediate side effects: more whacks, this time maybe cumulatively worse, to taste and the rest of the things that one takes for granted in a normally-functioning bouche.
What I take from this is how much do I want to be on the planet over the next two years; what am I willing to trade to be sure. ("Sure", of course, subject to the possibility that I could otherwise be run over by a Zamboni.) The answer is I want it a lot, I'm willing to trade a lot.
The next two years will include at least the births of two more grandchildren, my son's graduation from college, and who knows what else. Just not going to miss them.
And there will be much more after, I'm sure. It'll be great. Watch me.
OK so I've got to go back for more radiation.
The calculus is kind of interesting. The numbers are based on what I've heard and read but they are basically made up by me, because I am quickly becoming a class of very few on this particular neck cancer: occult primary, removed nodes from left side, radiated left side, found and removed nodes on right side, radiate right side. My numbers are: If no radation, odds of very problematic cancer emerging in the next two years: 1 in 10 to 1 in 50. So this radiation is 90+ percent likely unnecessary. If radiation, odds of this neck cancer emerging in the next two years: 1 in 50 to 1 in 1000. If radiation, odds of some kind of damage to the neck over the next 20 years that will be hard to cure: who knows. Probably signficant. If radiation, other immediate side effects: more whacks, this time maybe cumulatively worse, to taste and the rest of the things that one takes for granted in a normally-functioning bouche.
What I take from this is how much do I want to be on the planet over the next two years; what am I willing to trade to be sure. ("Sure", of course, subject to the possibility that I could otherwise be run over by a Zamboni.) The answer is I want it a lot, I'm willing to trade a lot.
The next two years will include at least the births of two more grandchildren, my son's graduation from college, and who knows what else. Just not going to miss them.
And there will be much more after, I'm sure. It'll be great. Watch me.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Chomping at the Bit
A debrief with my cool cat surgeon, and the news is basically good.
The operation was a lot less intrusive than the last one, in part because evidently the right side of my, uh, oral cavity is much more navigable than the left was last year. This occurs, I suppose, afer years of talking out of only one side of my mouth....
What they found and pulled out were a couple of really small, 3-5 mm, lymph nodes. Small, in this context, means they don't have a lot of cancer. It may mean that they were found early but maybe not - in that maybe there is nothing left generating cancer cells at all, and that these are just the residual cancerous nodes left from the cancer that was coursing around before. So, on that front, either good or better than good.
He carved out more of my neck than just those nodes, in order to try to remove any "surrounding" nodes. (In quotes for an interesting reason. Evidently there is a basic, well-established understanding of the plumbing mechanics - the drainage system - of the lymph system in the neck. So his view of "surrounding" is not necessarily x centimeters from the suspect nodes. It is based on the system, and attacks those which are likely to be in the same drainage field.) All that stuff had no cancer detected. So it wasn't much in the first place, and it appears to be very localized.
Now I'm back to whether or not to get radiation and if so how much. Which truly is deja vue, deja vue. Dr. Haughey is not decided on what to recommend, and so I'm off next to the radiation ongologist for his view. Which will be, as I said to my buddies at breakfast, like asking the candy man if I should eat candy.
It raises again the questions I struggled with before, and find that no doctor, even a brave one like Dr. Haughey, will weigh in upon with much firmness. Put simply: what's the benefit, and what's the downside. The problem is that the question is simple at this level but harder when you get past the generalities. At this point, I either have cancer that still threatens me or I do not. If I do, will the radiation kill it? Answer will probably be - probably. If I do not have it, will the radiation hurt me? Answer will probably be - yeah but not a lot. And we can do less this time, so it may not be so bad. Will it retard the ability to detect problems in the future? Answer is yes. Radiation is like leatherizing. Would doing nothing put me in a position from which I can't recover i.e. that will kill me? Answer will probably be - very probably not.
And after yes v. no on radiation, it will come down to calibration, as ever.
Today I feel pretty good. Still a very sore throat, and there seems to be no way to process food or drink so that feels good going down - but unlike last time things don't taste bad. I still have a wimpy and unsophiticated palate, however, which makes marriage to the world's finest cook a little tricky. ("It's all lost on me," I'm sure, is not a favored reaction to dinner...) Valerie the Westie, as a consequence, is dining better than ever, and I know she's grateful.
As am I.
A debrief with my cool cat surgeon, and the news is basically good.
The operation was a lot less intrusive than the last one, in part because evidently the right side of my, uh, oral cavity is much more navigable than the left was last year. This occurs, I suppose, afer years of talking out of only one side of my mouth....
What they found and pulled out were a couple of really small, 3-5 mm, lymph nodes. Small, in this context, means they don't have a lot of cancer. It may mean that they were found early but maybe not - in that maybe there is nothing left generating cancer cells at all, and that these are just the residual cancerous nodes left from the cancer that was coursing around before. So, on that front, either good or better than good.
He carved out more of my neck than just those nodes, in order to try to remove any "surrounding" nodes. (In quotes for an interesting reason. Evidently there is a basic, well-established understanding of the plumbing mechanics - the drainage system - of the lymph system in the neck. So his view of "surrounding" is not necessarily x centimeters from the suspect nodes. It is based on the system, and attacks those which are likely to be in the same drainage field.) All that stuff had no cancer detected. So it wasn't much in the first place, and it appears to be very localized.
Now I'm back to whether or not to get radiation and if so how much. Which truly is deja vue, deja vue. Dr. Haughey is not decided on what to recommend, and so I'm off next to the radiation ongologist for his view. Which will be, as I said to my buddies at breakfast, like asking the candy man if I should eat candy.
It raises again the questions I struggled with before, and find that no doctor, even a brave one like Dr. Haughey, will weigh in upon with much firmness. Put simply: what's the benefit, and what's the downside. The problem is that the question is simple at this level but harder when you get past the generalities. At this point, I either have cancer that still threatens me or I do not. If I do, will the radiation kill it? Answer will probably be - probably. If I do not have it, will the radiation hurt me? Answer will probably be - yeah but not a lot. And we can do less this time, so it may not be so bad. Will it retard the ability to detect problems in the future? Answer is yes. Radiation is like leatherizing. Would doing nothing put me in a position from which I can't recover i.e. that will kill me? Answer will probably be - very probably not.
And after yes v. no on radiation, it will come down to calibration, as ever.
Today I feel pretty good. Still a very sore throat, and there seems to be no way to process food or drink so that feels good going down - but unlike last time things don't taste bad. I still have a wimpy and unsophiticated palate, however, which makes marriage to the world's finest cook a little tricky. ("It's all lost on me," I'm sure, is not a favored reaction to dinner...) Valerie the Westie, as a consequence, is dining better than ever, and I know she's grateful.
As am I.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Aphorism No. 2
When in doubt, tell the truth.
Always thought this one was mine. I only learned recently that Mark Twain said it first. Mixed emotions over that - sorry to lose the invention, glad it's one of the two greatest Missourians.*
I use the expression a lot in practice, when advising people how to respond to questioning. It's a cousin to the old maxim of lawyers - never ask a question to which you do not already know the answer.
Twain, of course, had a lot more to say about truth, much of it brilliant. My favorite is another cousin - If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
*The other Missourian being, of course, Harry S Truman.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
Always thought this one was mine. I only learned recently that Mark Twain said it first. Mixed emotions over that - sorry to lose the invention, glad it's one of the two greatest Missourians.*
I use the expression a lot in practice, when advising people how to respond to questioning. It's a cousin to the old maxim of lawyers - never ask a question to which you do not already know the answer.
Twain, of course, had a lot more to say about truth, much of it brilliant. My favorite is another cousin - If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
*The other Missourian being, of course, Harry S Truman.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Year of the Tiger
I'm back home, out from surgery, a lot less debilitating this time.
I'm not sure why. Could be that the first time, I awoke with a log-shaped air tube down my gullet and a feeding tube in my nose. Meds up the wazoo, especially heavy-duty pain meds. Just before this latest event, I was asked if I had any questions and I said yeah, was all that invasion necessary? Well, maybe not, we'll see. This time, I awoke with no tubes, and right now I'm on percocet.
Plus this time I weighed a lot less. That probably helped.
So if you're going in for surgery, I guess the message is get fit and speak up.
Also the omens were good. Mardi Gras. Winter Olympics. Valentines Day. And we are going into my year, the Year of the Tiger. Doubly my year, in fact, since 1950 and 2010 are the years of the Yang Metal Tiger. (The Chinese add one of their basic elements to the 12 "zodiac" signs.) (I have no idea what any of this means, but as usual Wikipedia has a lot to say.)
I don't really know the details of the surgery yet - exactly what was found, what wasn't found, what comes next. Right now I have a sore throat and a droopy thing when I smile, makes me look kind of sneaky.
But I'm back, and best of all, as ever, were the hugely-appreciated words of support. Thanks to one and all. The tiger is back, grateful, and ready to prowl.
I'm back home, out from surgery, a lot less debilitating this time.
I'm not sure why. Could be that the first time, I awoke with a log-shaped air tube down my gullet and a feeding tube in my nose. Meds up the wazoo, especially heavy-duty pain meds. Just before this latest event, I was asked if I had any questions and I said yeah, was all that invasion necessary? Well, maybe not, we'll see. This time, I awoke with no tubes, and right now I'm on percocet.
Plus this time I weighed a lot less. That probably helped.
So if you're going in for surgery, I guess the message is get fit and speak up.
Also the omens were good. Mardi Gras. Winter Olympics. Valentines Day. And we are going into my year, the Year of the Tiger. Doubly my year, in fact, since 1950 and 2010 are the years of the Yang Metal Tiger. (The Chinese add one of their basic elements to the 12 "zodiac" signs.) (I have no idea what any of this means, but as usual Wikipedia has a lot to say.)
I don't really know the details of the surgery yet - exactly what was found, what wasn't found, what comes next. Right now I have a sore throat and a droopy thing when I smile, makes me look kind of sneaky.
But I'm back, and best of all, as ever, were the hugely-appreciated words of support. Thanks to one and all. The tiger is back, grateful, and ready to prowl.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Pre Op
Part of the industrial-strength medical world I now inhabit is a visit to the pre-operation screening department, where they nail your insurance, draw some blood, try to figure if you have sleep apnea, and let you know that You Can Always Say Stop.
Well, unless you're unconscious.
I did raise some of the crummier aspects of my last surgical adventure. There was some tut-tutting and at least one nurse who said if the air tube really is killing you, pull it out. If you're awake, you don't need it.
Part of the industrial-strength medical world I now inhabit is a visit to the pre-operation screening department, where they nail your insurance, draw some blood, try to figure if you have sleep apnea, and let you know that You Can Always Say Stop.
Well, unless you're unconscious.
I did raise some of the crummier aspects of my last surgical adventure. There was some tut-tutting and at least one nurse who said if the air tube really is killing you, pull it out. If you're awake, you don't need it.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Mound City
At the beginning of the Civil War the Federals moved quickly to secure Little Egypt, the land between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers at the bottom of Illinois. Strategic border territory, even though in a Northern state.
Once secure, the area was a headquarters and provisioner of the River War. Cairo was a communications center and Fort Defiance was at the confluence of the rivers. Just up the Ohio was Mound City, where much of the Federal fleet was built, anchored and maintained.
Today Cairo is a wreck of an old city, like a set for one of those post-apocalyptic films. And its even poorer and more wrecked little cousin is Mound City.
But Mound City was once a great river port, as it says on a marker that is one of the best things left in the town.
Boat ramps. They have a certain dignity. There is nothing else.
Who knows if they are Civil War era. But this was Marine Ways, certainly. Now unattended. One big flood and I doubt anything will be left.
I know a little of the history, though, and it is grand. To you, Mound City, home of the ironclads.
At the beginning of the Civil War the Federals moved quickly to secure Little Egypt, the land between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers at the bottom of Illinois. Strategic border territory, even though in a Northern state.
Once secure, the area was a headquarters and provisioner of the River War. Cairo was a communications center and Fort Defiance was at the confluence of the rivers. Just up the Ohio was Mound City, where much of the Federal fleet was built, anchored and maintained.
Today Cairo is a wreck of an old city, like a set for one of those post-apocalyptic films. And its even poorer and more wrecked little cousin is Mound City.
But Mound City was once a great river port, as it says on a marker that is one of the best things left in the town.
So I navigated the Jetta 400 yards south, more or less, down some shabby streets, through a gate in a levee, to a desolate stretch of the Ohio River's bank, looking across to Kentucky. The Marine Ways may still have been in operation in 1935, but no longer. There is very little there. No signs, no markers.
But there is something.
Boat ramps. They have a certain dignity. There is nothing else.
Who knows if they are Civil War era. But this was Marine Ways, certainly. Now unattended. One big flood and I doubt anything will be left.
I know a little of the history, though, and it is grand. To you, Mound City, home of the ironclads.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Long Drive
Today a drive to Indiana for a meeting, and back. Just me, the Jetta, my thoughts, over about 400 miles.
Not a bad way to review the bidding. What is odd is that with each turn, the project falls a little farther away from the general pattern. You begin to hear a lot less of the stock patter from doctors - "so, what happens when we are in this situation is...." To really mix up the metaphors: we have left behind the blocking and tackling, and gone to signals called on the field and broken field running.
It's OK. I was never really enough of a jock to do much broken field running. Happy to start, it has a nice leather-helmet stiff-arm college backfield sound to it.
About a year ago, before all this cancer stuff kicked up, I did a similar drive and stopped at Carlyle Lake, in Illinois, where it was mostly me and a lot of gulls, geese, other big winter birds. Some in line formations, high in the sky.
They were back in the sky today, in greater numbers. Sheets of them. We were south of the lake, and I think they were heading for open water.
Today a drive to Indiana for a meeting, and back. Just me, the Jetta, my thoughts, over about 400 miles.
Not a bad way to review the bidding. What is odd is that with each turn, the project falls a little farther away from the general pattern. You begin to hear a lot less of the stock patter from doctors - "so, what happens when we are in this situation is...." To really mix up the metaphors: we have left behind the blocking and tackling, and gone to signals called on the field and broken field running.
It's OK. I was never really enough of a jock to do much broken field running. Happy to start, it has a nice leather-helmet stiff-arm college backfield sound to it.
About a year ago, before all this cancer stuff kicked up, I did a similar drive and stopped at Carlyle Lake, in Illinois, where it was mostly me and a lot of gulls, geese, other big winter birds. Some in line formations, high in the sky.
They were back in the sky today, in greater numbers. Sheets of them. We were south of the lake, and I think they were heading for open water.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Not Washington's birthday, more like Lincoln's
They moved the surgery up, to next Monday, President's Day. I guess the markets will be closed. Good thing, you never know what the global financial reaction will be...
One thing I have learned is that when the doc wants to move things up, you should. There is a little cancer bad guy in there shooting darts, and he doesn't hit the bullseye every time. In fact he misses the board a lot. So cutting down on his time at the mark is a good thing, even if it puts stress (which this will) on one's professional life.
Last year's events turned out great in many ways, especially the reactions of my partners and associates, how they stepped up and covered and kept our clients protected and their matters under control. Great. But I let it happen to an extent where I have had to kind of bust my way back into a couple of things, and that's not so great. This time I'm going to try to treat this more like the flu.
They moved the surgery up, to next Monday, President's Day. I guess the markets will be closed. Good thing, you never know what the global financial reaction will be...
One thing I have learned is that when the doc wants to move things up, you should. There is a little cancer bad guy in there shooting darts, and he doesn't hit the bullseye every time. In fact he misses the board a lot. So cutting down on his time at the mark is a good thing, even if it puts stress (which this will) on one's professional life.
Last year's events turned out great in many ways, especially the reactions of my partners and associates, how they stepped up and covered and kept our clients protected and their matters under control. Great. But I let it happen to an extent where I have had to kind of bust my way back into a couple of things, and that's not so great. This time I'm going to try to treat this more like the flu.
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Back At Bat
The main emphasis of post-cancer-treatment treatment is testing, to see if it's come back. Evidently the first year is very typically when it does.
In my case, evidently it has.
After the radiation treatment, we let things calm down for some months, then went back to the radiologists' kit bag and did CT scans, visual inspections, and finally a PET scan, my first since long ago. PET scans are where they inject you with a tracer, lie you down on a bed, and run you under a big machine. It detects metabolic activity that indicates cancer.
This new one, done about ten days ago, showed some faint activity on the right side of my neck. (The first time round was the left.) So my surgeon, the cool New Zealander, brought me in and did an ultrasound - the thing they use with pregnant moms to see their babies - and found two lymph nodes that seemed irregular. He did a needle biopsy, and the pathologists' results are now in. The tissues are "suspicious", which according to Dr. Haughey translates to something like a 75 percent risk of cancer.
So, back under the knife, with a procedure very much like last year's. Put me to sleep, remove a large sample of the nodes, test, and if cancerous go in and take out a lot of surrounding tissue. Plus the doc takes what he calls his "little telescopes" to look around the oral cavity and see if can find anything suspicious, which one often does with head and neck cancer.
In my case, of course, we will be resuming the hunt for the occult primary - the primary cancer that we never found the first time. I am starting to think of this as like the hunt for Osama Bin Laden - send in some Special Forces with lasers and get Occulta Bin Cancer.
I go in on Washington's birthday (New System, Julian Calendar), February 22. An auspicious start. Back up at bat, swinging for the fences again.
The main emphasis of post-cancer-treatment treatment is testing, to see if it's come back. Evidently the first year is very typically when it does.
In my case, evidently it has.
After the radiation treatment, we let things calm down for some months, then went back to the radiologists' kit bag and did CT scans, visual inspections, and finally a PET scan, my first since long ago. PET scans are where they inject you with a tracer, lie you down on a bed, and run you under a big machine. It detects metabolic activity that indicates cancer.
This new one, done about ten days ago, showed some faint activity on the right side of my neck. (The first time round was the left.) So my surgeon, the cool New Zealander, brought me in and did an ultrasound - the thing they use with pregnant moms to see their babies - and found two lymph nodes that seemed irregular. He did a needle biopsy, and the pathologists' results are now in. The tissues are "suspicious", which according to Dr. Haughey translates to something like a 75 percent risk of cancer.
So, back under the knife, with a procedure very much like last year's. Put me to sleep, remove a large sample of the nodes, test, and if cancerous go in and take out a lot of surrounding tissue. Plus the doc takes what he calls his "little telescopes" to look around the oral cavity and see if can find anything suspicious, which one often does with head and neck cancer.
In my case, of course, we will be resuming the hunt for the occult primary - the primary cancer that we never found the first time. I am starting to think of this as like the hunt for Osama Bin Laden - send in some Special Forces with lasers and get Occulta Bin Cancer.
I go in on Washington's birthday (New System, Julian Calendar), February 22. An auspicious start. Back up at bat, swinging for the fences again.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Fort Girardeau
Once the Civil War broke out, the cities of the border states came into play, nowhere more than in Missouri. The major cities were fortified and the populations - of St. Louis and elsewhere - were put under marshal law.
In connection with my interest in the River War, I checked out Cape Girardeau, where the Federals moved to secure the city with a system of forts - Forts A, B, C, and D - and batteries called Fort Girardeau. Fort D, the principal fort and the only one remaining, is on high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi, some miles upriver from the convergence with the Ohio River at Cairo. It has a commanding view of the Missisippi and the new bridge over the river (the handsome Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge) is a little upstream.
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Today's Fort D is located in a poor part of town, maintained by the city and the American Legion. A stone fort at the center of the site and stone gates were built in the 1930's by the WPA.
.jpg)
Some the earthworks remain.
They appear to be as originally sited, although evidently they were reestablished by the WPA.
.jpg)
I did find pieces of what could be the old stone fortifications, with no identifying markers, on the north side of the site
The town fathers of Cape Girardeau seems to position the place as a John Wesley Powell site, which I guess makes sense, as indicated in their website:
"In the summer of 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War, four forts were built around the strategic city of Cape Girardeau on the orders of General John Frèmont. Fort D was designed by German-American engineers from St. Louis. The forts were built by soldiers of the 20th Illinois Infantry, Bissell's Engineers of the West and local militia under the direction of Illinois Lt. John Wesley Powell. Powell, who would later gain fame as the explorer of the Grand Canyon, was detached from his regiment by a newly appointed general... Ulysses S. Grant, in order to raise a local company to man the forts. This Powell did, and his new Battery F served the forts until leaving for the Battle of Shiloh. Fort D featured as many as five cannons, the largest of which could fire a 32-pound cannon ball. The fort was manned throughout the Civil War. Of the four earthen forts only Fort D still exists, an intact survivor thanks to civic action in the 1930's..."
My own take is that Fort D is one of the last surviving examples of Civil War fortifications in Missouri. It is not grand, and its most immediate overlook is a big trashyard between it and the river. But if the trash and the views to the new bridge were cleared, it would be an amazing site.
Once the Civil War broke out, the cities of the border states came into play, nowhere more than in Missouri. The major cities were fortified and the populations - of St. Louis and elsewhere - were put under marshal law.
In connection with my interest in the River War, I checked out Cape Girardeau, where the Federals moved to secure the city with a system of forts - Forts A, B, C, and D - and batteries called Fort Girardeau. Fort D, the principal fort and the only one remaining, is on high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi, some miles upriver from the convergence with the Ohio River at Cairo. It has a commanding view of the Missisippi and the new bridge over the river (the handsome Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge) is a little upstream.
.jpg)
Today's Fort D is located in a poor part of town, maintained by the city and the American Legion. A stone fort at the center of the site and stone gates were built in the 1930's by the WPA.
.jpg)
Some the earthworks remain.
They appear to be as originally sited, although evidently they were reestablished by the WPA.
.jpg)
I did find pieces of what could be the old stone fortifications, with no identifying markers, on the north side of the site
The town fathers of Cape Girardeau seems to position the place as a John Wesley Powell site, which I guess makes sense, as indicated in their website:
"In the summer of 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War, four forts were built around the strategic city of Cape Girardeau on the orders of General John Frèmont. Fort D was designed by German-American engineers from St. Louis. The forts were built by soldiers of the 20th Illinois Infantry, Bissell's Engineers of the West and local militia under the direction of Illinois Lt. John Wesley Powell. Powell, who would later gain fame as the explorer of the Grand Canyon, was detached from his regiment by a newly appointed general... Ulysses S. Grant, in order to raise a local company to man the forts. This Powell did, and his new Battery F served the forts until leaving for the Battle of Shiloh. Fort D featured as many as five cannons, the largest of which could fire a 32-pound cannon ball. The fort was manned throughout the Civil War. Of the four earthen forts only Fort D still exists, an intact survivor thanks to civic action in the 1930's..."
My own take is that Fort D is one of the last surviving examples of Civil War fortifications in Missouri. It is not grand, and its most immediate overlook is a big trashyard between it and the river. But if the trash and the views to the new bridge were cleared, it would be an amazing site.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Dragons
Back in the old days of US v. USSR I used to wonder if it was their economic failures, alone, that made the difference. The sensibility - kind of articulated by an old Robin Williams vehicle, "Moscow on the Hudson" - was that the real failure of the USSR was its failure to deliver consumer goods. There was political and artistic repression, to be sure. But since Khrushchev, the people had found ways to read Ayn Rand and listen to Charlie Parker. The real problems were that they had to stand in line for bread and couldn't buy blue jeans.
Which took me to the next question, and I asked it many times: what if the communists learned how to make economics work? Would that ensure the triumph of the left?
The USSR didn't figure it out, of course. But has China? Has its ability to deliver goods, jobs, infrastructure, et cetera overwhelmed the public desire for a free plebiscite once in a while?
I think the answer is yes.
But that doesn't mean that China will sail bumplessly into the future. They have too much history of political violence. I think the violence, when it comes, will not be because people want a vote and a free press. The impelling forces will be darker - maybe nationalism, Han racism, regionalism - than a democratic instinct. I think - although I have no proof - that the bourgeois democrats have been bought off, and others will make the next revolution against the emperor.
Back in the old days of US v. USSR I used to wonder if it was their economic failures, alone, that made the difference. The sensibility - kind of articulated by an old Robin Williams vehicle, "Moscow on the Hudson" - was that the real failure of the USSR was its failure to deliver consumer goods. There was political and artistic repression, to be sure. But since Khrushchev, the people had found ways to read Ayn Rand and listen to Charlie Parker. The real problems were that they had to stand in line for bread and couldn't buy blue jeans.
Which took me to the next question, and I asked it many times: what if the communists learned how to make economics work? Would that ensure the triumph of the left?
The USSR didn't figure it out, of course. But has China? Has its ability to deliver goods, jobs, infrastructure, et cetera overwhelmed the public desire for a free plebiscite once in a while?
I think the answer is yes.
But that doesn't mean that China will sail bumplessly into the future. They have too much history of political violence. I think the violence, when it comes, will not be because people want a vote and a free press. The impelling forces will be darker - maybe nationalism, Han racism, regionalism - than a democratic instinct. I think - although I have no proof - that the bourgeois democrats have been bought off, and others will make the next revolution against the emperor.
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