Aphorism No. 1

You ain't a veteran until you get a few scars.

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.

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.

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.

"The Marine Ways - During the Civil War, the naval depot of the Western Fleet was located at Mound City. Here the keels of three of the famous Eads ironclad gunboats were laid, and a large force of workmen were employed to keep the fleet in fighting trim. The Marine Ways, still in operation, are 400 yards south of here. Erected by the State of Illinois, 1935."

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.

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.

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.

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.