One of the places where we searched for the j-tube
Out of the house at 5:35 this morning. Headed for the j-tube placement. This procedure had reached almost mythic status. It was said to exist. Some where. And it was said that some could find it if only they searched diligently among many, many medical offices. In one of those offices the one who would say yes, it not only exists, but we will do one for you, surely dwelled.
And lo, finally, on this day, in a land to our south, Littleton, suburb of the city Denver, this fabled one, named Edwin Smith, took matters into his own hands and did in fact do the surgery. As we expected, it went well. None of the demons claimed to bar entrance manifested. Her lungs did well. Her weight and overall stamina proved more than adequate. No barriers from previous surgery like mesh and transflaps, no stomach adhesions. All was well.
She’ll come home tomorrow. Not sure when we actually begin the feeding using the j-tube. There is some weaning off the tpn apparently. But soon. Later, when this whole process has calmed down, we’ll head back to Gupta and the issue of lung disease. Diagnosis and treatment of that will end this no good horrible 8 months.
Just where we’ll be after that we can’t know, but a calmer, more stable place we both hope. Of course, there is the issue of my cancer and its treatment, too. We’ll know more about that after Friday.
Yesterday was Miss Ruth again. I can help with that. And, she does. A bag full of pruned Russia Sage by the garage door. The dogs fed. Pancakes for breakfast. Plucking the chicken off the carcass for the leek and chicken pot pies. Pitting a quart of cherries and baking them into a pie.
How did you get interested in baking? I read a Jodi Picoult book about a baker. After that, I just wanted to bake. Ruth’s the sort of reader I understand well. She reads and wants to inhabit the world she’s conjured in her mind through the words. She’s building multiple places she can go, people she can be, things she can do. It’s the trick to a versatile and imaginative life.
Kate. Ruth’s learned at an early age how to stop doing something if she’s frustrated. And, she has. When she comes back to it, she’s ready to go again. When you consider the trauma she’s been through over the last three or four years (and the conflict in Jon and Jen’s marriage even before that), she’s adapted and learned from it.
I forgot to tell her yesterday, but I admire her willingness, eagerness to learn, to help, to get in to something new and stay with it until she gets it. She does this with academics, sewing, art, friends, grandparents, dogs, food, life. Unless I’m missing something big, she’s gonna do/is doing fine.
Ruth remembers who taught her something. And thanks them. She has gratitude at her base. All she needs to thrive, really.
The Cancer Moon is a sliver, headed toward a new moon. June 3rd will be the new moon, Kate’s surgery date. On June 7th I see Dr. Gilroy to discuss radiation therapy, probably get scheduled to start. By that time yet another Recovery Moon will be shining over Shadow Mountain. We had a healing moon last October after Kate’s bleed and a Recovery Moon in March following my flu/pneumonia.
A third recovery/healing moon makes sense to me. That lunar month will encompass Kate’s recovery from the j-tube placement and our getting used to this new method of getting nutrition for her. It will include much of my radiation. By the end of it we should both be in better places.
Rigel’s nose
Ruth came up yesterday. She pruned the Russian sage, flattened all the boxes for the trash (Chewy, Amazon, Option Care), and got Kate back into her sewing room. This morning she’s going to make pancakes, a cherry pie, and help me make chicken and leek pot pies.
We went to Sushi Win yesterday for lunch to celebrate my CT scan findings. Ruth had a Sushi platter. She ate it all. Dad says I have a teenage appetite. She does.
She’s a scholar, loving Mandarin and math. She’s an artist working in oils, photography, prints. She’s a cook and a good one. She loves animals, brushing Rigel and Kep each time she comes. Ruth has become a sweet, loving young woman. May it continue.
Under the Cancer Moon I’ve wrestled with the news of cancer returning. Death and its meanings. At the Journal workshop I wrote in one exercise, death has found me. I still feel that way, that this is a mortality signal with little ambiguity.
Even so, I’m feeling upbeat, happy right now. Why? CT scan showed negative for metastases. So did the bone scan. That means the reemergence has happened in the prostate fossa. Localized. An easier place to treat.
Ozymandias, Shelley
Death may in fact have found me, but prostate cancer may not be its agent. The word cure comes back into the vocabulary with these findings. If the radiation is successful, I’ll be a 72 year old guy with no cancer. Wow.
Last night was Gabe’s continuation. The Denver school system marks the transition from elementary school to middle school, middle school to high school with a continuation ceremony. Continuation is Latinate, ugly, and denies a sense of completion, of finishing. Why not graduation? Or, finished. Or, done and dusted. Or, thank god. Or, anything but continuation.
There was cake afterwards on the school yard. “Cake is only for continuators.” Continuators? Ugh. Graduates. New middle schoolers. Our former students. Completists. Finishers. OK. Curmudgeoning officially over.
This will be the last event at Schwigert Elementary in Stapleton. A rush hour traffic jam through the entire Denver metro has always preceded them. A 45 minute trip last night was 2 hours. Not much way around it without going a couple of hours early.
Gabe gets his certificate from his 5th grade teacher
Peaceful this a.m. The imaging work is done. At least for now. Three days now with no medical interventions or doctor appointments. And sunny blue skies.
On Monday at we leave Shadow Mountain around 5:30 am to get Kate over to Littleton Adventist for her j-tube placement. She’ll be there over night. Since she’s stronger now, we’re not anticipating any major issues. This is laparoscopic surgery so the recovery should be minimal.
We got the first j-tube feeding accessories in the delivery yesterday from Option Care. Jumbo size plastic syringes for flushing. The j-tube will be a major change from the tpn. No more aspectic procedures. No more bag to carry. Not nearly as much risk of infection. And a consistent source of nutrition.
Looking up at the paneled ceiling tiles from the ct scan table was a tile made of plastic and full of butterflies. Leftside. On the right, another plastic ceiling tile of clouds. Between them the circular ct machine through which I was fed on a moving slide.
I’d drunk a bottle of orangia like liquid 45 minutes before, but getting the iv in for the additional contrast material was painful. The gal who poked me twice didn’t have it down. She, in her words, tapped out and got a new wrestler to come and put it in. The new nurse was an old pro. She twhacked my elbow crease, looked, then put the iv in place.
“You’ll have a warm feeling in the back of your throat, then you’ll feel like you’re peeing, but you won’t be.” An interesting introduction. Sure enough though the back of my throat warmed up, a flush of heat that spread to my groin. The dye working.
Osiris and early ct
“Take a breath and hold it.” That was the ct scanner. In case you didn’t get it there were little faces, one blowing air out, the other with plumped out cheeks. They lit up.
Took no time at all. When will it be read? You’ll have results in a couple of days. Oh. It’s Thursday, so next week. Oh, well. Been waiting this long. Gilroy’s out of town until next week anyhow.
When the first try for the iv went in, it hurt. A lot. Lying there on an imaging machine, in a hospital, a serious illness underway, I cringed. Will I have to have lots of these? I got back to the moment, looked at the butterflies, then the clouds.
Some heaviness in my walk. Taking out the trash for its delayed pickup. Memorial Day. Getting the Denver Post in its orange plastic wrapper. Putting it at Kate’s place.
The sun rise has begun to melt the frosty crown on Black Mountain. All conditions are impermanent, disappearing in the sun, blowing away in a Chinook.
Gabe called last night and wanted to know if I was coming to his continuation. Fifth grade to McCauliffe. I’m not sure, buddy. I have this procedure tomorrow. In his world fifth grade matters as much. I had already taken my thc for bedtime, tired.
It overwhelmed me. His need. Ruth’s. Who wants to go, but had planned to be up here today, to help us, the conflict hidden until it wasn’t. Jon’s navigating their worlds and ours.
My view on the ct today. The cancer is already there. This is just a pair of special binoculars that can peek inside the black box, see where it is. Once this gets read, a treatment plan will fall into place. Unless it’s equivocal, a finding I don’t want. I could know by tomorrow what’s next.
It’s been this kind of May. And it looks as if June will be cooler and wet, too, according to Weather5280. Good news for us, not so much for those lower down when the huge snowpack starts to melt.
Got further along on print Ancientrails. Am now in late 2017, quite a ways in. Then, print spool error. Again. Well. Gotta go back to whatever I did that solved it once. Tried so many things I’m not sure which one worked. Something did. For a while. Soon though. Then, I’ll take everything for three hole punching and decide what kind of binders I’m going to buy. Each folder with month tabs.
Also figured a way to unzip Superior Wolf and focus on Lycaon’s story. Don’t know whether I’ll follow up later on Christopher and Diana. The hunt for immortality is almost a cliche these days. And the central conceit of their story, a hedgefund group that funds Diana’s research, is not fiction anymore. Geez.
That means I’ve got months of work ahead, maybe years. My ikigai. A Japanese word that means reason to live. This article talks about ikigai in more depth as an explanation for Japanese longevity. Squares with my own intuition. Purpose keeps you alive and flourishing.
The Japanese have a lot about life figured out. Ichi-go, ichi-e is another favorite of mine. It comes from the Japanese tea ceremony and means each moment is once in a lifetime. No such thing as an insignificant experience with another person.
Sekkyakushi, 15th century, Muromachi period, Metropolitan Museum of art
Reading a book right now by the wonderful travel writer, Pico Iyer: Autumn Light, Season of Fire and Farewells. It’s a follow-up to his The Lady and the Monk, which I have not read, in which he recounts meeting Hiroko, the Japanese woman who would become his wife. He had moved to Kyoto to immerse himself in Japanese culture, sensing, as I do, that their approach to life is worth learning, perhaps adopting. Twenty-three years later he lives in Japan with Hiroko six months out of the year and six months in the U.S., caring for his mother and working for the New York Times. Recommended.
Each time I dip into some aspect of Japanese culture I find I want to know more. The MIA’s Japanese collection gave me a chance to interact with tea bowls, tatami mats, sumi-e, Buddhist and Shinto sculpture, put me deeper into my own Asian pivot.
Zen itself has not intrigued me, but I did follow Zen back to its roots in Chinese Chan Buddhism, a melding of Taoism and Buddhism. The Taoist aspect of Zen, and Chan. Yes.
Tomorrow. The CT scan. Probably the last of the imaging work. It will either show metastatic disease or a localized recurrence in the prostate fossa. If the former, one kind of treatment. And, prognosis. If the latter, 35 days of radiation and a possible cure. Hopeful, of course, that it will be localized, but aware that it might not be. In either case I’ll know. That’s been the hardest part of this time (well, no, that’s not right. The hardest part has been dealing with insurance and the hospital’s “benefits” office.), knowing the cancer has reasserted itself, but not knowing what that means for my life.
Will be glad to have this work done so I can move onto what’s next.
Things I think about while falling asleep. Life. A stream rushing down the mountain of time, a branch into a tributary, tributary to river, river to the gulf of eternity, a small part of the sea of infinity.
Project print ancientrails update. Got into May of 2015. Then, printer spooling error. Spent an hour on it yesterday, got tired. Learned long ago to quit at a point when I’m doing the same thing over and over. Come back the next day with fresh eyes. Later this morning I’ll be back at it.
Looked out the bedroom window this morning. Frost. Rained over night and the temperature is just below freezing. A nubbly ice covered the deck and the stall mats, but the driveway was only wet. Saw a mule deer crossing Eduardo and Holly’s yard.
The sun is now well up at 5:30. The victory of the light will peak in three weeks. I look forward to the Summer Solstice as the moment when night begins to claw its way back into prominence.
Jon and Ruth left Gabe here yesterday while they went skiing. A-Basin. It still has peak snow cover, may be open until July 4th. Unusual. When they got back, Ruth and I made spaghetti and meatballs. She’s turning into a sweet, loving person. A real pleasure to see.
While walking back to the house after getting the paper this morning, I thought about her and Gabe. We moved here to have these kind of interactions with them, casual and frequent. It was the right thing for us to do.
50th High School Reunion, Alexandria, Indiana
When I was in school in Alexandria, Memorial Day marked the end of the school year. Summer begins! Days of freedom wandering alleys collecting pop bottles for small change. Going to the field with Rick Meyers and the Kildow boys to play army. Playing blackjack every weekday afternoon in the paper boys shack of the Times-Tribune. The occasional pickup softball game. Riding bikes around town. Outside until well after dark. No thoughts of pedophiles, school shooters, terrorists. No climate change worries. No computers. No cell phones.
Here in Colorado school typically ends in June though Ruth, because of McCauliffe’s schedule, got out a couple of weeks ago. This is Gabe’s last week. They will both start school again in the second week of August, both at McCauliffe for this one year, Ruth in the 8th grade and Gabe in the 6th.
Ruth, as do most of her friends, has a season pass to Elitch Gardens, an amusement park that serves as summer day care for many Denver teens. They have rides named Brain Drain, Mind Erase. You can see the attraction after school’s over.
