Not so bad, this life thing

I had cancer a few years ago.  Took a while to sort it out - two episodes and about 18 months, actually. And then, when things seemed to be running off track again last Fall, the first question was whether it was a recurrence of the old neck cancer.

Then, as we went through surgery and the information it revealed, it became as clear as things get in this world (which isn't 100 percent clear) that I was dealing with a new cancer, brain version, that really didn't have much to do with the old one.  Number two (or three?), and about four years later.  Bad luck Mikey!

Ah well.  You know, you go through these things two or three times and really, at least in my case, it just gets to... here's the deal, play your best hand.  Not a terrible hand - hey, I didn't just get hit by a truck and pulverized - if not a great one.  The consensus at this point seems to be that I'm not looking at clearing things up 100 perfect and living for decades.  More like holding things off and living well for some time.

Since I'm now 63 and a half, well, it's not terrible.  The final number isn't what most folks seem to be looking at these day  - it could be kind of cheezy on post-age-65 retirement benefits  - but it sure could have been worse.  There was a time in my 20's when I really doubted if I'd make it to 30; the parties were pretty dangerous.  Then, law school, marriage (one), foreign work, marriage (two and still pumping), children, Europe in the 80's, Asia in the 90's, kids graduating from colleges, getting married, having babies, and me, more or less throughout, practicing law... really, not sure how much more than that I deserve.  Many people much finer than me have had much less.

So, here I now go into more treatments, some well established and maybe some experimental -  and after that, maybe lots more time and law practice and maybe not.  Either way, lucky me, as ever, lucky and blessed.

A new life.

So this one is it.  It.

I will try to get it out - but it will be many days.  My able to write has gone into a strange place, and who knows how it comes back.

So you know... I start today, December 26, 2013.  I am 63 ages old.  And I am now as young as I have been in many years.

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(1/13/2014... seems hard to believe.)

OK I really couldn't write for beans at first, nearly three weeks ago, and I still have some amazing flaws.  Like I can't remember names.  NOT AT ALL.  Amazing stuff.  I do seem to remember the people, and I do seem to want to talk to them.  Writing?  Emails?  Even Strays, Morgan's written word? We'll see.  I'm going down the road into a new life.

So below is what I sent out to lots of folks yesterday and today.  Says what it says, and for today. Tomorrow will be... tomorrow.  And many tomorrows to come, they will be what they are.  No predictions; no promises; nothing but joy to be alive.

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I have been trying to stay quiet about Morgan's latest medical adventure, but just cannot any more. Each of you is important to me for reasons that in some cases go back decades. I want you to have an idea what happened.

Just a quick first note: in the past, with these sorts of status reports, I have done carefully different versions for different groups. No more. You're all on this one.

On December 23 I went in for surgery on my brain. It was a big deal. Five hours later they had pulled out about a baseball's worth of cancer.

The amazing part is that since then I have never been more in love with my wife and family or more fond of my clients, partners, and friends.  So hey. There is a really interesting dynamic going on here. I have a batch of issues to come, and my doc says I have to take at least month off. So I will. But in the meantime I hope to hear from each you a lot,  legal stuff or other.

From here:  It may not be a long future but I sure plan it to be interesting.

All the best to each of you.  I will forget a few pals on this  - hey, I never was perfect and still ain't - so please forward to anyone you think might want to know.

M

And walking into the sunset, grabbing the sun, and pushing back

After a life of having so few serious issues, so many great days, so much luck on friends and family and career... then, the last few years, especially the last few months, especially the last few weeks, especially the last few days...  facing the possibility of a drop, into an ocean, into some level of loss of all the things that used to fly me high up over the water.  Yes?

No.  No.  No, not going there, not giving it up, not even a mild concession.  Not letting any of this take me, or pull me down, or slow me down, or be a last chapter.  It is not the last, or the second last, or an end in the farthest sight.  Showing me the bottom and asking me, hey, ready to cave in?  No.  Me, pulling my head up, dropping the smile, giving instead a stare of eyes back to the devil, to the death angel, and saying once again, now, tomorrow, next month, next year - not even close, not now, not ever.  Will fight on and on and on.

After Thanksgiving

The problem isn't lack of gratitude.  It's more like suspicion of New Year's resolutions.  What is there to resolve?  A graceful decline?  The late matinee?  What happened to... a killer band?  Bringing home justice?  Saving a stranger?  I'm thankful for what's home, but not for what I haven't brought home yet, or that it may never be.  Thankful for the future, but not convinced that it will be a new and righteous chapter, epiphany, celebration.  For now, not yet coming back, not yet fading away.

Early check-out

It was a term I used to use more often, back when I considered self-destruction a more arguable proposition, but didn't want to give it more seriousness than I thought it deserved.  OK to consider, but not OK to consider gravely, so to speak.

Now as I am sailing through completely different waters, with a lot more natives chucking spears at my ship from the shore, I am thinking more about involuntary early check-out, and wondering about a new term.  Early departure.  Early exit.  And maybe not so early?  If I go tomorrow, it isn't a case of the good dying young, even if I were to claim "good."  Not yet at three score and ten, but not early.  Lincoln was 56, Kennedy 46, Mozart 35, Alexander 32.  Now that's early.

So just, as my mother always recommended, leave 'em laughing?  Tipping the cap, glad for what you had, and with a smile?

There's the ticket.  The late matinee.

The tedium of old guy medical stuff

Once more into the ring.

Used to be that I was a healthy dude.  Always, for years and years, maybe a cold, maybe a broken bone or a gash, but nothing light's out.  Nothing even light's dimmed.

But for the last five years the dimmer has been twisting back and forth, letting me know that this health thing that everyone seems to know about is something I should know about, with big bills and scary prospects and a lot of science that is, at least, interesting, and language that catches on and catches up.  Like, a few years ago, vertigo, then cancer, metastasis, and radiation.  Last summer, a clavicle, then a stroke, or no maybe not.  A flock of acronyms: CT, PET, MRI, TIA, EEG.  And now a new one, a word that I never really thought medical, but now learn is.  Very medical.  Seizure.

I guess my first thoughts about seizures are combative, or at least physically assertive - he was seized. The platoon was seized.  Or credit remedial - the assets were seized.  Taking possession by force. 

But now I learn  that it's about a whole panoply of stuff that can happen to your brain.  The wonderfully European gran mal and petit mal.  Epileptic.  Partial.  All of it, more or less, an electrical fault across the circuits.

It is now my current diagnosis, this time of a short period of really falling off the vocabulary/grammar bus, unprovoked, just something that happened, just something.  Couldn't talk right for a while, then it came back.

J’étais saisi. 

But you really don't want a seizure, 63 years into the play.  You don't know the lines and you really, really don't know the last scene.  They really don't know how you got there, or if you will get there again, or was last summer a seizure, and this, or just this, or neither.

J’étais saisi.

Sounds better in French, non?

Baseball has been very good to me

I live in a great baseball town.

Just an example from the stats (and baseball is all about stats):

Boston has about 7.9 million people in its SMA, and attendance at Fenway Park this year was 2.8 million.  St. Louis has about 2.9 million people, and at Busch Stadium this year the total was 3.4 million.

And Boston isn't bad.  It's just that we are different here, the Cardinals are a civic asset that identifies us.  In Boston, the Red Sox are great but they probably define the city less than do the Celtics or the Bruins.  The Cardinals were for years the westernmost team and still are the team from just south of Chicago to north of Dallas, west past Kansas City (Oklahomans are big fans) and east into Eastern Tennessee.  It's not just KMOX and its amazing reach, it's all the territory of Cardinal Nation, with stations all over the Midwest.

So tonight there is a deciding game of the World Series, and if the Cardinals win there will be another, all at Fenway Park in front of a crowd that will be... well, impolite.  Boston may not be as bad as Philadelphia, where they toss batteries at the players, but they will show a lot more love for their team that for the sport.  As opposed to the fans here, who applaud when a guy from the other team makes a really good play. 

Whether we win or lose - and it looks like a tough road - the Cardinals will come home to a welcoming city, happy to know that the Winter Warmup for 2014 is less than 3 months away.