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.

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.

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.

Masque

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.

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.

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.

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.