Of course I'm thankful to be alive and here, watching the dog watch Charles eat pizza. I'm thankful for the meta categories, friends, family, relative health. I spent the first part of this week fighting an errant bug that led me to sleep about 16 hours a day. Today, I spent the first part of the day at chemo as my nurses get a day off on my usual Friday--isn't that good? I figured my pals would have to work and I'd show up to oppress them on Friday but they get to be human and real, and I'm thankful for that.
In considering thankfulness, most of mine is rather specifically focused. So here's a partial list, and by far not exhaustive:
Bridget
I'm thnakful my niece decided to lose weight for herself. I'm happy she's grown up to like herself, everything else is either cake or static. She bangs out her makeup like a pro, and looks like a model. No mere boy is going to be good enough.
Amanda
My little niece has two adorable children and a husband I like to fuck with. I really couldn't ask for much more. Well, I would like to eat when I go to her house, but I do get to bitch about everything, which she encourages, because she is a bitch and I'm proud. In our family, we own it.
Kathy and Chano
My niece used to just be irritated by me, but we've both grown up. I enjoy her eye popping bitchiness and she enjoys mine. I like her husband, a sensitive intellectual traveler. Kathy was the first of my nieces and nephews, my sister Barb's first. She carries her mother well, and I miss her less when I'm around KJ.
Jim and Debbie
My oldest brother doesn't let me down. He took me to the drive-in in his cool Mustang in the Sixties, fed me potato soup when my mother couldn't make it home to fix dinner. He married a quiet woman named Debbie who turned out to have a wicked sense of humor and the biggest heart. I love them both because my life at every step has been better with them in it.
Jason, Jeremy, Jennifer
Jim and Debbie brought this tribe to life. They are foul mouthed, vulgar, loving, fabulous people. I couldn't enumerate the number of times they have amused the hell out of me. Like their parents, they've only made my life better . They continue to fascinate me, Jason with his beautiful daughter and his two sons, Jeremy in his first house, Jennifer who married my sweet Roller, a Debbie-level addition to the family, their boy Logan who is polite and sweet and 15-and I can't wait until he goes as wild as his uncle...
Dale
When my sister married Dale in 1966, I thought he was a tool. Well, however a six year old thinks an adult is a tool, I thought it. Growing up, Dale would say things like "practice makes perfect" that made me want to smack him, but as I grew more, I came to appreciate the qualities that drew my sister to him: steady, predictable, knowable. Further, I came to know the greatness of Dale's heart, and i am still amazed by it. We often say we don't know the heroes amongst us. I do. Dale is one of mine.
Charles
18 years after meeting a long haired, wire rimmed glasses wearing organ student at The Other Bar in Bloomington, there's still no one I'd rather bitch talk with, sit in front of the television and scream at commercials with, criticize grammar in the Times with, or have sit with me when I'm in chemo. I don't think everyone gets to meet the person with whom they have compatibility, empathy, and a great deal of love. I did.
Friends
I don't predict I'll like people, but I usually instantly know that I do. I knew it the first day of SLIS 505 when I sat next to Galadriel and Donna came in wearing a sweet dress and heels to class when the rest of looked like denim warmed over. I loved Karen in 503, who studied Farsi because she dug Iranian guys and was a mess who was a genius. I worked with Katie but that was because in her interview she was awesome and I just wanted to KNOW that woman. In my India Studies interview with Dr. G and Lil Jan, I wanted the job, but I wanted the people more--Dr. G because he's international level brilliant and Jan because she has international level love for others, and it shines through her, and you can see it and feel it.
Healh is wondrful, happiness is great, Without people, these people, and alot of others, I wouldn't have survived my first round of cancer. I had moments of intense doubt, intense grief, I felt intensely how much I'd lost and thought I didn't want to live without those things. But I thought of how much the people in my life would be disappointed that I went down like a bitch, without a fight. I thought of how I told them I was though--was I now going to be a liar?
Well, no. And I love you all, and I'm thankful for that.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
54!
Richard tells me I've been quiet. This might be true. Lately I've been dealing with weird sleep patterns due to effluvia, coughing due to effluvia, effluvia due to effluvia. I seem to be a teeming mess of snottiness that has nowhere to go and only me to bother.
I thought this would improve after we had a few good freezes and the moldiness and dust of Autumn was behind us, and perhaps it is better. My nose runs less, that's true. But my recent effluviamania seems to simply be a new wrinkle in what proves to be a dynamic, not static, system. We learn to our disadvantage, kids, that cancer isn't a one-shot, one-trick, one-act fuck up: it just morphs itself to new problems, new ways that effluvia gathers.
I've been staying at home a lot, and I've missed a bunch of lectures I would have liked going to, but it's rude to cough as loudly as I cough in lectures, sometimes the echo of throat gunk sounds like a bullet shot through my trach tube. I can't predict it, I can't control it. At least not yet.
If that all sounds bad, it's not really so terrible. I like being at home, and Rally likes it too. We enjoy flagrant, long afternoon naps, light late morning power naps, heavy late afternoon fuck-this-shit naps, and any other nap we can think of to have. Effluvia, if I may again, typically wakes me up a few times during the night, hauling me to the bathroom to check the neck hole, the tube, to clean up or out, change the tissue in my mouth, sop out the face mask. Interrupted sleep is not happy sleep, and thus, the naps.
This year, I gave myself an early birthday present of an electric blanket. This thing is awesome--ten settings, ten hour run span, soft, pretty, and warm. This was the very best thing I could have done for myself, considering it's already in the teens here, and the snow has already arrived. I like winter, and last night when Charles and I made a late run to the grocery store, the air was fifteen degrees, still, and wonderful. That's when I like Winter best--without the wind. The snow? love it. The cold? enjoy it. The wind? fuck it.
I tell people that I'm made of chemicals, and without blood I have no hopes of being warm. I'm only half joking. I truly don't warm up the way other people do, and once I've caught a chill, you might as well get the hot water bottle because I'll stay that way until I'm warmed. I have my older electric throw in the living room for watching TV because I get cold sitting there doing nothing, I get cold when I drink cold water, my whole body taking in the temperature of what runs down my tube. When I pound hot coffee in the summer, I sweat; when I dump a cold bottle of water in the tube I freeze.
But listen--the worst I've been dealing with is an ongoing battle to get rid of snot that is annoying and cloying--but it's not killing me. Occasionally, especially lately, my face has hurt--and that's a real problem. Can you imagine your face hurting? and when I say hurting, I mean it feels like someone has smacked the shit out of me, everywhere, and then pinched me for good measure. When I was a civilian, I'm sure I never once thought of my face hurting, and I don't remember that it ever did.
Now, gravity pulls on what skin has no bone to support it, the system changes, my upper teeth are pushed together, sores form in my mouth, a film coats the mouth that has to be chipped off, nothing is quite where it was yesterday. My mouth, which hangs a bit, now hangs more askew, so that I truly do look more and more like a Scream mask. I could do Munch, and be famous for the uncanny resemblance.
But listen--that sucks hard but I take some Lortab Elixir and it's fixed for a few hours. If it's terrible, a bit of morphine sulfate and bitch just goes to sleep, and dreams of fried chicken.
As I'm writing, my 54th birthday is tomorrow. I'm going to celebrate it with a lunch with friends--the chili is concatenating in the kitchen right now, the potatoes for the potato salad are about to be boiled and marinated. I'm happy.
Happy is a construct, true, but it feels like a place. This place, now, here. This is happiness. The dog, the shitty old kitchen that I love, the shitty old ranch house that is one year younger than me--I liked this place the minute I walked into it that fateful day the realtor showed it to us. It was the first house we saw, and we went and saw others, but none of them had the least interest to me. This place, where it is in Bloomington, the yard, the neighborhood, it was exactly what I hoped for, and it has never let me down.
Happiness is a construct, of course, but it's also a choice. I choose it. On a wall of options this is what I most want--to understand what is happening to me, how it effects me, and still know that I'm here, I'm ok, that it will never touch what is truly me--I choose that.
I have decided, as I might have mentioned before, that I will at least make it to 70. After 70, all bets are off--by then my man tits should be somewhere around my waist and my dick might have shriveled to the silhouette of a peanut, but by hook or by crook, I want to see me there. I think I'll be a jolly old fellow--maybe I'll be talking again by then, eating again, celebrating my birthday with a fat slice of cake, one that would choke a pit bull, but no problem for me.
I hope, 16 birthdays from now, that I will have mastered happiness. I'm working at it diligently, I have hope of my achievement. To laugh the great laugh I'll have earned remembering that they told me people like me live 22 months on average after diagnosis. Oh, you silly doctors.
I thought this would improve after we had a few good freezes and the moldiness and dust of Autumn was behind us, and perhaps it is better. My nose runs less, that's true. But my recent effluviamania seems to simply be a new wrinkle in what proves to be a dynamic, not static, system. We learn to our disadvantage, kids, that cancer isn't a one-shot, one-trick, one-act fuck up: it just morphs itself to new problems, new ways that effluvia gathers.
I've been staying at home a lot, and I've missed a bunch of lectures I would have liked going to, but it's rude to cough as loudly as I cough in lectures, sometimes the echo of throat gunk sounds like a bullet shot through my trach tube. I can't predict it, I can't control it. At least not yet.
If that all sounds bad, it's not really so terrible. I like being at home, and Rally likes it too. We enjoy flagrant, long afternoon naps, light late morning power naps, heavy late afternoon fuck-this-shit naps, and any other nap we can think of to have. Effluvia, if I may again, typically wakes me up a few times during the night, hauling me to the bathroom to check the neck hole, the tube, to clean up or out, change the tissue in my mouth, sop out the face mask. Interrupted sleep is not happy sleep, and thus, the naps.
This year, I gave myself an early birthday present of an electric blanket. This thing is awesome--ten settings, ten hour run span, soft, pretty, and warm. This was the very best thing I could have done for myself, considering it's already in the teens here, and the snow has already arrived. I like winter, and last night when Charles and I made a late run to the grocery store, the air was fifteen degrees, still, and wonderful. That's when I like Winter best--without the wind. The snow? love it. The cold? enjoy it. The wind? fuck it.
I tell people that I'm made of chemicals, and without blood I have no hopes of being warm. I'm only half joking. I truly don't warm up the way other people do, and once I've caught a chill, you might as well get the hot water bottle because I'll stay that way until I'm warmed. I have my older electric throw in the living room for watching TV because I get cold sitting there doing nothing, I get cold when I drink cold water, my whole body taking in the temperature of what runs down my tube. When I pound hot coffee in the summer, I sweat; when I dump a cold bottle of water in the tube I freeze.
But listen--the worst I've been dealing with is an ongoing battle to get rid of snot that is annoying and cloying--but it's not killing me. Occasionally, especially lately, my face has hurt--and that's a real problem. Can you imagine your face hurting? and when I say hurting, I mean it feels like someone has smacked the shit out of me, everywhere, and then pinched me for good measure. When I was a civilian, I'm sure I never once thought of my face hurting, and I don't remember that it ever did.
Now, gravity pulls on what skin has no bone to support it, the system changes, my upper teeth are pushed together, sores form in my mouth, a film coats the mouth that has to be chipped off, nothing is quite where it was yesterday. My mouth, which hangs a bit, now hangs more askew, so that I truly do look more and more like a Scream mask. I could do Munch, and be famous for the uncanny resemblance.
But listen--that sucks hard but I take some Lortab Elixir and it's fixed for a few hours. If it's terrible, a bit of morphine sulfate and bitch just goes to sleep, and dreams of fried chicken.
As I'm writing, my 54th birthday is tomorrow. I'm going to celebrate it with a lunch with friends--the chili is concatenating in the kitchen right now, the potatoes for the potato salad are about to be boiled and marinated. I'm happy.
Happy is a construct, true, but it feels like a place. This place, now, here. This is happiness. The dog, the shitty old kitchen that I love, the shitty old ranch house that is one year younger than me--I liked this place the minute I walked into it that fateful day the realtor showed it to us. It was the first house we saw, and we went and saw others, but none of them had the least interest to me. This place, where it is in Bloomington, the yard, the neighborhood, it was exactly what I hoped for, and it has never let me down.
Happiness is a construct, of course, but it's also a choice. I choose it. On a wall of options this is what I most want--to understand what is happening to me, how it effects me, and still know that I'm here, I'm ok, that it will never touch what is truly me--I choose that.
I have decided, as I might have mentioned before, that I will at least make it to 70. After 70, all bets are off--by then my man tits should be somewhere around my waist and my dick might have shriveled to the silhouette of a peanut, but by hook or by crook, I want to see me there. I think I'll be a jolly old fellow--maybe I'll be talking again by then, eating again, celebrating my birthday with a fat slice of cake, one that would choke a pit bull, but no problem for me.
I hope, 16 birthdays from now, that I will have mastered happiness. I'm working at it diligently, I have hope of my achievement. To laugh the great laugh I'll have earned remembering that they told me people like me live 22 months on average after diagnosis. Oh, you silly doctors.
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