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.

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.



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.










Some the earthworks remain.

They appear to be as originally sited, although evidently they were reestablished by the WPA.












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.

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.

This Man's Best Friend



It's been cold, New Hampshire cold, here in St. Louis and I think Valerie has needed the sweater. She is not completely convinced. But it seems to add a spring to her step - OK, this is his idea of fashion, I'll make the best of it.

Adios 2009

Not a bad year. I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, but I'm a better guy than before. In ways covered in previous posts.

Plus, and this may not make me better: I'm not going to sit and just watch myself age any more. This is not just a year-end, decade-end resolution. It's life and death; choosing life.

I'm now figuring out where to focus, how to boil it down, then heave myself out of the chair and do it. As I reach conclusions about the two or three or four things I have to do, I will amend the words at the top of Strays, and report.

Happy Days. Happy New Year.

The American Bottom


"The American Bottom is that 60 mile strip of lowland lying between the bluffs and the east bank of the Mississippi River. Its ealiest recorded history is written in the annals of France, England, and Spain, and the wars these nations fought against each other, and against native Indian tribes for dominion of the New World.


"Following the discoveries of Jolliet and Marquette in 1673 and the exploration of LaSalle in 1682, France claimed possession of the entire Mississippi valley, extending from the Appalachian Mountains in the east to the Spanish Empire in the west. Here in the center of this vast expanse known as the Illinois Country, Louis XIV erected a fort and settlers from Canada and France established the village of Cahokia in 1699, and the villages of St. Phillippe, Fort de Chartres, Prairie du Rocher, and Kaskaskia early in the eighteenth century... ."




From a sign on Illinois Route 3 to Chester.