Swimming to Nantucket

Spalding Gray died nine years ago but for me he's still around, still showing that life is humorous enough but maybe not humorous enough to survive.  When we were at the beach a few weeks ago I looked across to Martha's Vineyard, and knew that Nantucket lay beyond, over the horizon, but there.  It's a distance you can put in your head and wonder -  if that were the test, would you pass or fail.  Probably no sharks. But a long swim.

Spalding jumped off the Staten Island Ferry.  Was he going to see if he could make it, swimming back to Manhattan?  I guess not, but still  I'd like to think so.  Otherwise it's just too linear.

Back to summer

Every year I do a post of some kind about the summer heat in St. Louis.  But this year we haven't had it; you'd think we were Michigan.

Is that why we had practically no Japanese Beetles this year?  (Or was it the nasty chemical I sprinkled at the base of the most JB-savory plants?)

Now, late August, we seem to be back to days with that oven-like heat blast when you walk outside.  But with this very  decent summer, we seem to still have cool mornings and even the occasional dew.  This much hot summer, this late, before September walks in .  Good with that.

Isabel

I guess there is something pathetic about saying your dog is your best friend, but I do think that, as to Isabel now and as to Valerie before and pretty much back to my first dog.  Whose name I can't say because he's the answer to about 50 security questions.

But not really a friend, right?  Because a dog's a dog.  We don't know really what they are thinking, whether they are self-conscious, whether what looks like devotion is really a sense of making sure the relationship is strong with the guy who puts kibble in the bowl.

I have pretty much lost all attitudes based on what people are thinking, because I don't know what they are thinking.  I never did; I only thought I did.  Now, I basically try to base my convictions on what people do.  And why not the same with dogs.  I don't know what they think.  I know what they do.

Isabel hangs around me, most of the time.  When there are children or other dogs, she will hang with them, but come back to me when she's called.  She runs after varmints.  She sleeps.  She drags herself across the grass, looks up, rolls over.    She wakes me up in the morning by standing on my chest and licking my nose, once.  When we are out in new territory she sits and looks around, like a sentinel and a guard.

This is not doctorate thesis material.  It's just peaceful and doggy, and also it is doing things - not thinking things - that to me constitute friendship.  So yeah.  She is a friend, a great one.

Clambake

The idea was to do a clambake in a Weber kettle.  I looked, and of course there was a pretty good guide on the Internet.  Is there anything left with no guide on the Internet?

In fact there was a big complicated version that made you wonder why you wouldn't go a beach with a shovel and do the real thing.  But the simpler version... as elegant as beer can chicken.  Stuff a burlap bag with seaweed, lobsters, clams, spuds, corn, and onions, wrap the whole thing in aluminum foil so it's like a big ass pillow, and put it on the grill for an hour with a lot of charcoal.

Came out great, looked like we'd done it on the beach in Maine.  But not entirely lucky.  I did a trial the day before, and it kind of sucked, and I made adjustments.

• Not too riverine.  Rinse the bejeesus out of the seaweed.
• Hot.  You don't have to worry about too much heat.  That's a lot of moisture.  It will be hard to dry this stuff out.
• One lemon, not sliced, in the sack.
• Corn in the stalks but with the silk removed.

So the good part wasn't just that we could do a clambake without turning it it into a WPA project.  It went beyond the letter of the Internet.   A hundred bucks of lobsters came out looking right.

Dexamethasone

You'd think that when you go into the hospital and they think you've had a stroke, they'd give you more than an aspirin.  Or later, a couple of Tylenol.  Hey guys, I've got a big headache!  I need to develop my complaining techniques.

Finally a doctor in the field showed up and she said "you've only had that? Sure, we've got something better."

Indeed it was.  Called dexamethasone.  It didn't work right away, and I had to develop another nmemonic (my brother, whose name is like "dex", snorting meth in a school zone), but it turns out to be remarkable stuff.  While I was at the hospital, by injection, and since by pill.  A declining amount over a week.

No more headache.  After a few days, no scary word loss.  (OK, c'mon.  I'm 63!  I'm still going to forget where I left the keys once in a while.)  In fact I feel really good.  I think just as clear-speaking, if not more, and a lot of thinking about life and liberty.  And it clears up my nasty psoriasis.  I'm looking fine.

It's a steroid!  Finally I get to be like a pro athlete.

So........... how about I stay with this stuff for the next, oh, 15 years or so?

When you read about it in places like Wikipedia it sounds strongish but not brutish.   But when you ask the doc about the idea of longer prescriptions they look at you like you are nuts. Lots of bad physical things and it could make you crazy.  Bad idea.  Bad results.  OK OK.

I don't want to destroy my body.  But the other thing - the mind?  Is this some kind of Awakenings? Once I stop taking this stuff, will I go to dumber and dumber?

We may find out soon enough, because today is the last day of the prescription and there ain't no refill. But they say no.

And I don't think so.  I think the drug is great and I'm sure it brought things around.  But I think that as to the mental consequences - I really have been re-examining life, and facing choices - I think it's about having had a second chance to seriously greet the Reaper once again and say nope, still not now, still not yet.

OK Mr. Death, here's your green-eyed boy, and he ain't on your plate yet

I had hoped to get back into Strays more frequently.  But something came up.  Over the past days I've been told I had a stroke, brain cancer, and maybe something else they really don't know about, and maybe it was stroke, or a TIA, or a not too important thing.

I guess the history matters.  About 10 days ago I woke up around 4 am.  Not odd.  Usual reason. But when climbing back into the sack, I stayed awake and found I couldn't remember some names.  And I had a headache, not a huge sharp one, more of a big one on the left side.  OK.

Up later, off to the regular breakfast at the diner.  And I found my story-telling ability just sucked.  Hard to remember names and places.  One of my friends said later that I was having a hard time "reaching for words", which is about exactly right.  Plus the headache, still.

So I got back to the house, nervous, and called my doctor.  He barely let me finish the first sentence before telling me to go the emergency room.  So I did, and into another trip through the American medical system.

I'm not going to dump on the fact that these places now look like some combo of a hotel and a fortress and a corporate headquarters.    I guess I just wish that all the hospitals in the world looked like this; so do we all, and maybe someday they will.  Our American versions reflect that they involve landslides, avalanches of money.

They figured, of course, that I'd had a stroke.  A lot of testing and holding out your arms and asking who the president is.  All my physical stuff seemed fine, but I was still having some word gaps.  And for a guy as proud, absurdly proud, of his ability to speak and write as I am, that was not good.

So then begins the series of being inserted on contoured platforms into very large machines.

As it happened, one of them said I had a thing in my brain.  So after day one - maybe not a stroke. Maybe brain cancer.   This is really not sounding good.

In fairness these guys were dealing with a guy who looked like he had a problem.  The two or three regular members of the Strays audience will remember that I had head and neck cancer a few years ago, a lot of surgery and radiology and lots and lots of words here about the whole trip.  But as to a stroke... there the issues are, they say (1) my smoking (again!  these docs just do not like the fact that I smoked 30 years ago, and started when I was 15.  OK!  Bad!); and (2) my parents.  I love my parents and their stroke stories are sad but kind of beautiful,  but not mine, so not here.  But they had strokes.  My dad's was at 63, it killed him, and I'm 63, so hmm....

Oh, the word "stroke."  Incredibly it was one that I had a real problem with.  I had to come up with a physical image  - a batter's swing, a strike - to remember it.  Worked fine.  But I also looked up the word and holy smoke what a widely used and differentially meaning word.

And another thing, similar, about this ability to remember words.  We aren't remembering most words, we are just using them.  I didn't have to remember "using them, " or in any event it doesn't seem like remembering.  I'm thinking and out it comes in words, boom, right away.  But then you get to this stuff - placenames, people's names, things in punchlines.  That's what was hit.

Back to the hospital.  Going well into a second day, and I was still pretty concerned.  I mean, a brain surgeon came around to talk to me about brain surgery.  This is not a confidence-building event.  I asked if there were different looks to the different stuff in the brain, so he'd know what to take out. Answer is not really.  All brain tissue is brain tissue.  You mostly do it by looking at what the images tell you, the location, and by research as to what stuff does when it's there.  Oh, and maybe if it's near a fold.

And in my case, not likely to be an operation that would make sense.  They are not sure that what's there is what's wrong, whatever is wrong.  So it's tough to decide to what to excise.  Plus the image shows it in there pretty deep, pretty near language central.  A place I care about a lot.

The next day I got out.  The cancer guy was busy, and my regular doc, a righteous guy, said go home. On Monday I went in and the cancer guy's judgment was, probably a "vascular event".  I love that. Sort of sounds like what teen-aged boys used to hope for.  But just to know, say the docs, how about a PET scan?  (Your what? tenth? in the past five years.)  Sure, why not.

Now, PET results are in:  no cancer, but man really you really did break your clavicle last month.

Next:  dexamethasone!