Do You Have Anymore Room?

When I first decided to do a blog I said it wouldn't be all cancer all the time.  I've tried to make that true.  Like an annoying leaky faucet I always seem to have something to whine about though.  No one likes a whiner so in the past few weeks, for a number of reasons I've been posting my whines only about once a week.

Some people actually really and truly don't like that lack of entertainment.  Some can wait and still others just go to Starbucks.  I like all three groups.  Each and everyone of you gives me little nuggets of perspective that I would not normally perceive or prospect.  Yep nuggets just like you see in the bright red packages at Rite Aid, Beef Teryiaki Nuggets.  Seriously, Nuggets?  Who eats any food that is called a "whatever" Nugget.

Tonight's blog is so totally totally about cancer.  Your going to wish you started reading a blog about being a midget curler in the Olympics by the time you are done with this one.  Yep, you are right,  this blog I'm going to ask you all for a favor.  Stop it!  The favor will cost you nothing but a millisecond of your energy.

A near and very dear friend of mine has breast cancer. We all know them, have them or are one.  She's a  friend of decades for me and a couple decades for my wife.  It's safe to say we both count ourselves fortunate to be on her friends list.

She's been through her Chemo Regime and this coming week she is headed for the "Double".   Of course after that is Radiation.

So, here's what I'm asking.  You have all been so kind to me with your thoughts and prayers.  I'm hoping you have one more spot on your prayer and/or thoughts list for my/our dear friend.  I know as we all move along in this life our lists get long.  I get that.  

So.  I offer up this.  If your list is long, and by the time you get done it's time to go to work the next day, bump me and my spot on your list.  You've done so well for me I think I can forge ahead.  She, on the other hand needs everything she can be given including the thoughts of those who have taken such great care of me in these last two years.

Hell who knows?  Maybe I'll come up with something entertaining to thank you all.

Talk to you later

To Tap or Puncture That is the Question

This past Wednesday I arrived at the hospital bright eyed and bushy tailed for yet another procedure.  This procedure was painless, interesting and an earnest effort to define my new malady.  The procedure?  Just a Lumbar Puncture.  The most exciting part of my Lumbar Puncture was the head rush I received when they made me sit up because apparently my spinal fluid dripped about as fast as molasses in winter while I was laying down.

Some of you may be wondering, "Is a Lumbar Pucnture the same as a Spinal Tap?"

In the medical world it is.  Much the same as Bi-Polar and Manic Depressive are the same.  The name has just been changed to, well, the only thing I can think of is to confuse us.

When a friend asked what "they" were doing to me next I replied "Lumbar Puncture."  And, I explained what a Lumbar Puncture was.  Naturally she said.  "Oh you mean a Spinal Tap."

Then quite abruptly she laughed and laughed saying.  "Can you imagine the band named Lumbar Puncture?"

She's right!  Would the cult classic, the holiest of holies, Spinal Tap, become the legend it is today if they were named Lumbar Puncture?  I think not.

Of course, once again, I started thinking.  I wondered if I life would be the same if ny name was Frank, Bob or Jedidiah?  Seriously, think about it.  If you hear the name Wilbert you probably think pocket protector. How about Chip, Chris and Kip?  Yikes.  [No offense guys]

So like a dog worrying a bone I've been wondering more than I should.  If my name was something other than it is would I live somewhere else?  Be married to someone else?  Not have this disease?  Wow.

Truth be told.  I like my name and I wouldn't change it.  But, I do wonder......

Talk to you later

Orange Legs II

Hmmm.  It appears, in order to make them play fair, when making deals with lofty angry deities one needs to be more specific.  Upon waking I still seem to have my new affliction and now....

 ...orange legs.

Orange Legs

My apologies to my cadre of readers for my absence.  Cadre?  That sounds like a lot of readers.  I've been angry.  So angry that everything I typed with these fingers was so toxic I could never blog the words.  Truth be told I was duck angry.

Duck angry?  Yup, duck angry.  Have you ever listened to a duck?  Their quacking has the tone of the angry ninety year old neighbor yelling at the neighborhood kids to "stay off his damn grass."  The tenor of a bull's glare when you've trespassed into his field.  They sound like they are saying a gravelly "fricken fucken shit fricken fricken fucken shit" and you know why?  They have orange legs for God's sake.  That's enough to piss anyone off.

Obviously the ducks pissed someone off up above.  Who knows how they pissed off one of those lofty deities but orange legs are definite proof of the duck's errant ways.  Perhaps they shunned the God of Orange in some original way.  Who knows?  But piss someone off they did and blam...orange legs. 

As you know I have a fairly major affliction..  One would think that would fill anyone's plate to overflowing.  Ask anyone of us in this position and we'll smile and say something like,  "yeah that sucks doesn't it?"  Rest assured it is a full full plate for those of us with the disease and our loved ones who also have to live with the disease.

So imagine my anger as I left my neurosurgeon's office the day after my real birthday.  Why thirty days after successful research study results did I have no feeling in my right leg and a neurosurgeon telling me it could be a form of MS.  Wait damn it say again?  

"Bad luck" he said, "especially everything you've been through.

The unfortunate thing is they only give you one plate when you start out on this journey and my plate was just about full.  Angry.  More angry then I've ever been including my anger about my cancer.  Boy, one would think I'd have learned a lesson from Mr. Orange Legs.  Apparently not.


So here's the deal Mister Up Above That I Pissed Off.  I'll make you a deal.  I'll take back all the words I screamed at you from the emergency lane on Sylvan Hill.  You take away the numbness in my legs and we'll call it even.  Hell, I'll even sweeten the pot.  I'm willing to wake up tomorrow morning with orange legs.  Deal?

It's My Birtday and I'll Cry If I Want To

...because I have friends and family.  

One of my loved ones told me today how, with my illness, he's amazed how I function.  

Another said I'm an inspiration.

I received facebook, text, voice mail and a very very special card.

I have parents that think I'm somewhat as good as canned soup  

My grandson is right this very moment going through my night stand and asking....well he can't get into the fun drawer.

I have a new friend and her beautiful dog .

I'm sick but  I'm also the luckiest man in the world as I found out today my list of friends is long and the people that love me deeply isn't a short list either.

Why did it take getting sick to get this?

Six hour and thirty four minutes ago the clock turned and I'm another year.  Pretty good all considering

Thanks everyone.  You are all better for me than any drug I'm given.

Love you all.

Talk to you later

Homeless

Not too many weeks ago, as some of you may remember, I found myself on vacation.  Toward the end of this glorious time off in the mountains it was suggested to me that I take an additional day off, a Friday, thus buying us that day and the additional weekend.  Also, suggested to me was that we take the extra time, leave the mountains and go to my “home town” as I had not been home town for quite some time. 

The idea of going “home” appealed to me, up until 100’ from the city limits. As always trepidation set in.  I would get to see my best friend to be sure.  I would get to see another best who is fighting the female version of my cancer and of course I would get to see my Mom and Dad. 

But this town, as my father bizarrely once told me during a visit a few decades ago as I was readying myself for a night out on the “small” town  “Remember Mike this town doesn’t like you.”   Young and stupid I didn’t get it then.  Old and stupid I sort of get it.

Unlike many of you who may have moved from place to place I was the Norman Rockwell kid that grew up in the town.  Sure, for the first years during the summer we would move to whatever site my Dad was engineer and  I truly got to live in some really really cool places and once a really really hot place called Yuma.  In reality, except for being born in Seattle, because rural Eastern Washington only had veterinarians at the time of my birth, I lived in the same town for all my formative years.  The farthest we moved was up the hill, three houses.

So on this visit to my home town, I found myself leaning against a hillside guard rail overlooking town.  Of a sudden, this feeling of absolute “I don’t belong here” over came me. I felt like an alien.  I’ve always told people here in the city “back home”, “I’m going home to see my parents.” “Back home…”  Suddenly  “back home” took on a startling new meaning. 

I was shocked.  To be sure I got to see two people whom I love one of which I count as my best friend of decades.  If you are fortunate enough to still have your parents in this space, which I am, then their home is a haven against all ill so there are two more people that I love beyond belief.   

But, as I looked over this town that no longer knew me from Frank Adam or John.  This town that could care less now that I did whatever I did that made news, gossip, and back room “can you believe that kid.”  I didn’t know this town I once called home and the town certainly had no clue whom I was.  I felt homeless.

My wife and I moved from rural to the city because of work.  I’ve lived here for over three decades and am still amazed that I live in the city.  Everyday whether during a commute or sitting in a Sushi-Bar I’m in wonderment that I live here yet I do not and will not call this place home.  It is where I live.  Recently in the light of health things I count my blessings that I do live here but it is not home.  This city doesn’t even remotely feel like home.

So where is home.  My kids think of our house as home or haven [I hope].  My wife thinks of our house as home [She’s built a beautiful place].  Yet I feel homeless.  I’ve been thinking hard about this for the last couple of weeks since returning from what I once called home.  I think I have the answer.

Home is where the heart is.  Good god, how many times have you heard that?  Our Grandmas embroidered that ad nauseam on pillows infinite.  But!  It is true.  Home is where your heart is and there is no way we can misplace our hearts.  If anything, with each passing day our hearts  become more defined.  Our hearts become more sure.  I know where my heart is.  I know where home is.  I’m the furthest thing from homeless.

How To Survive The Tube

I hate The Tube.  Really really hate The Tube.  So when I walked into the room today I asked the nurse. 

"Is this really a three hour MRI scan?" 

She looked at the tech the tech confirming that it was a CTL with contrast.  Immediately my mind identified CTL as Cervical, Thorax and Lumbar. Poor Sacral area apparently was being left out of the fun. Just as immediately I wondered how the hell I knew what CTL meant?  Another phrase added in my growing vocabulary of things I wish I didn't know.

"Three hours.  Maybe two and a half."  replied the nurse.

For those of you that hate The Tube as much as I do here's a trick I thankfully learned from a nurse where I normally go for all my scans.  A wash cloth.  Seriously.  Ask you nurse for a dry wash cloth.  After they get done looking at you incredulously, lay down on the table as instructed and drape the wash cloth across your  face.

I have no clue why it helps with those claustrophobic responses that cascade through my psyche at the mere thought of The Tube.  But work it does.  For looking silly.  Trust me there is barely room for you in The Tube let alone any observers.

Try it.  It works.  

Oh yeah.  Don't forget the handful those Xanax pills thirty minutes prior to getting in the tube.  For some reason those seem to provide a calming effect too.

 Talk to you later