Category Archives: Cancer

Cancer, Far Right, Health, Politics, White Supremacy, Writing

Reading Right

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Samain and the Shadow Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Paul and Christopher. Findlay and Sarah. Kate and Clare. High Winds. Shadow away. Arrival Day yesterday. Joe. Working out again. Cancer. Dr. Bupathi. Kristie. Dr. Carter. Jenna and Alise. Andouille. Kielbasa. Shrimp. Pork. Sheetpan recipes. New York Times. Ground News. Washington Post. LA Times. Vox. ProPublica. Ezra Klein. No despair.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Protein

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:   Netzach   “Endurance and Tenacity: Netzach represents the inner strength and fortitude required to pursue a goal or a passion over a long period, especially when faced with obstacles.”

Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Oh, these cancer days and cancer nights, long have they stayed, often indolent no worries, ordinary sleep, ordinary waking, once in a while, at least every three months, a bit fraught, will the numbers be good or bad, sometimes, like as of late, ordinary sleep, but some edgy days with moving numbers, m.r.i.s, pet scans, radiation.

 

Health: Got my new PSA numbers over the weekend. A big jump. Uh-oh. Couldn’t ask the question until Monday a.m. Sent a note and Hannah said she’d make sure Dr. Bupathi had seen those results. Thanks, Hannah.

Not long after, again from Hannah, “The team thinks this could be the result of inflammation after radiation. Recheck in six weeks.” That’s also the time frame for my next pet scan. So, ok. Part of the process.

What matters here is whether I have transitioned from hormone treatment sensitive cancer to hormone resistant which requires the next step in protocols, new drugs, stronger ones. If my psa goes down, that is below 0.3, I continue on androgen deprivation therapy-hormone treatment-as I have since 2019.

This has my attention. Not worried yet not placid. Things not definitive. Six weeks of this. I appreciated Hannah understanding my concern, following it down. There are no small roles in this personal life and death drama.

 

Just a moment: A continuing commitment. I will read and comment on the news, especially news originating from non-traditional sources like the conservative Bulwark, the liberal Vox and Propublica, Groundnews, the Atlantic, and the Guardian. For my own original reporting I will continue to take you inside texts like Yasem Hazony’s Conservativism Redefined and the Violent Take It By Force, Matthew Taylor on the New Apostolic Reformation.

This week I’ve purchased two that will occupy much of my time for a while. Abundance by Ezra Klein, a progressive political agenda for our time, and Furious Minds by Princeton scholar of the New Right, Laura K. Field, which analyzes the Making of the MAGA New Right.

This is a project I began a while ago when reading Patrick Deneen’s, Why Liberalism Failed, followed by a book on the John Birch Society, another on Christian Nationalism, and yet  another on thinkers who have impacted the New Right.  Renaud Camus, for example, the French political philosopher who developed Replacement Theory. That was 2023. Well before the return of red tie guy.

Replacement theory shows up in the recent Trumpian National Security Strategy as that document’s warning to Europe about “civilizational erasure.” It also shows up among America white nationalists associated with MAGA.

I’m beginning to trust my sense of what drives the new far right, now I want to understand how its rise will effect our future.

Cancer, Dogs, Far Right, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, US History, White Supremacy, World History

Link Arms Against This Sea of Troubles

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Samain and the Shadow Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Rising PSA. Shadow, seen. Natalie and Dr. Josy. Winter is coming. (next week) Hanukah. Ruth and Gabe. Joe. Seoah. Murdoch. What I want. Death. Other life punctuation points. Hawai’i. Nathan and the Dog run. Venezuela. Latin America. Central America. North America. The Gulf of Mexico.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Joe

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:   Netzach   “Endurance and Tenacity: Netzach represents the inner strength and fortitude required to pursue a goal or a passion over a long period, especially when faced with obstacles.”

Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Shadow cast her presence toward me, casually, too absorbed in other nearby dogs and her trazadone pall to greet her Dad when others of her kind, so many of them, were nearby, crossing behind Natalie’s FJ Cruiser with its DOGS4LIFE license plate, in the Flying J parking lot human companions holding leashes, some pulling toward Shadow to say hi, I’m here, too.

 

Dog journal: First I’d seen Shadow since a week ago Friday. She greeted me, but with little enthusiasm. A little bit of my heart broke. My hope for an enthusiastic smile, a jump, kisses set aside. I noticed, in a bit, that she moved a little slowly, that spark in her personality tamped down.

I’d forgotten the trazadone/gabapentin she was on while the prozac reaches therapeutic levels. Didn’t like it, but I understood the rationale. Reduce her reactivity and help her learn new behaviors. Like letting a leash on. Like easily crossing thresholds. Temporary. Similar to chemical constraints for humans in an agitated state. Shadow exists in an agitated state most of the time.

Natalie said Shadow acted the same at her place as she does at mine, vis a vis thresholds. Made me feel good. Not me. Some psychic gremlin gripping Ms. Shadow when faced with crossing from the outside to the inside.

Natalie, an empathetic and kind person, said she’d come pick up Shadow if I had appointments, keep her for the day and return her. How blessed am I. So many loving folks in my orbit.

We parted after about twenty minutes, Shadow with Natalie.

Good-bye.

 

Health: Yes. My labs showed my PSA jumped, in spite of the radiation, from 0.3 to 2.7. At first I saw the 2.7 and thought, yes! Only later wondering, opening the lab report again. Oh. Not 0.27.

Probably means new drugs. New side effects. Still many options between me and ordinary chemotherapy. Erleada is technically chemotherapy, says so on the pill container, but its side effects have been slight.

There again, blessed. A cancer with many treatments, slow progression. And, for me so far, no symptoms. Happy Holiseason to me!

 

Just a moment: Make Western civilization white again. A sad dream, a dream of the desperate, of the frightened and deluded.

Even the Asian civilizations with which I have some familiarity exhibit strong evidence of liberal ideals. Look at the young women of Korea on a virtual Lysistratan sex strike, wanting their autonomy. Or, young women and men in China. Many of the women rejecting traditional Chinese female roles, many men disillusioned by them and the job market, pushing back against their heritage of centralized control. Taiwan, too.

And here’s the paradox, the irony. Those of us strong with the force of liberal/enlightenment/renaissance ideas of no kings, individualism, small d democracy, individual freedoms and rights as human beings are the ones that recognize most the need to link arms against this tide of civilizational troubles and by opposing end them.

Yes, the liberal journey is not toward a fractious libertarianism, but toward a democratic socialism where the commonweal balances as best as possible with liberty and freedom for all. Not an easy project as our imperfect America has shown since its birth, but an inevitable one pushed forward by the creative tension between individuals and the collective. That’s what I see, what I have lived for.

 

Aging, Cancer, Dogs, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Humor, Judaism, Mussar, Politics

Humor as Moral Compass

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Samain and the Shadow Moon  (2 sessions to go)

Wednesday gratefuls: Rich. MVP. Shadow away at boarding school. Clement weather. Polska Kielbasa. Bananas. Tangerines. Celery. Baby Potatoes. Andouille sausage. Scallions. Cherry Tomatoes. Pork loin chops. Sheetpan dinners. Nathan and the Dog run. His next summer move to Kalispell, Montana.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rich

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:   Malchut   Wonder.   A feeling of surprise mixed with admiration caused by something beautiful or unexpected.

Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Made a mistake, went to MVP, my only night out during the month; even though Marilyn drove, a combination of radiation fatigue, head drop, and this damned hernia acting up made me first lie down on a couch, then ask for a ride home. Geez.

 

I knew better. I’m exhausted from driving to radiation and getting radiated. But I love these folks: Jamie, Susan, Joanne, Ron, Marilyn, Laurie, Rich. Missed last month and missed seeing them all. When Marilyn asked to meet at the usual place, I said yes. Should have said no.

Rich drove me to my car, followed me home, shoveled my deck, and saw me into the house. What a kind and loving man.

Not the return to the group I wanted.

This just in. Marilyn texted me, offered to drive me to my radiation today. Rich must have gone back and reported to the MVP group. I feel blessed to have so many who love me, care about me.

 

Dog journal: Nathan came by from a project just up the road. We discussed the Dog run. He’s built many and has his tricks for working in the Snow on frozen ground. Relieved. Now if that doghouse I want will come back in stock…

 

Just a moment: Sleepy Donald. I can relate. I’ll be 79 in two months and I just had a night. Glad I’m not working hard to cancel the political work of the last century or so. Gotta be tiring, making up enemy lists, figuring which shithole countries to diminish and ban, which cities to occupy, deciding how you can gig the poor yet again. Not to mention acting as warmonger and peace maker in chief. The contradictions alone would level a lesser man.

Don’t know if you watch South Park. Don’t recommend it even though the real South Park lies only an hour’s drive from Shadow Mountain. A former Conifer resident is one of the pair who created it.

It’s gross. Over the top. And, yet. They’re satirizing Trump, Vance, Bondi, Stephen Miller in ways that do make me laugh. Especially Stephen Miller who is portrayed as a creepy, I may lead to your doom, sycophantic butler.

If you can stand it, the satire is spot on.

Humor has always had an uneasy, even dangerous relationship to power. I’m sure more than one court jester lost their head by taking a joke too far.

I admire the South Parks, the Colberts, the Jon Stewarts of our time. Laughing at tyrants exposes them for what they are: weak, petty, cruel leaders who seek power for power’s sake with no moral compass. Humor, oddly enough, is exactly that: a moral compass.

 

 

 

Art and Culture, Cancer, Dogs, Health

Boarding School and Radiation Vacation

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Samain and the Shadow Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow. Natalie. Dr. Josy. Concerned friends and family. Boarding school. Shadowless. Grief. Darkness, my old friend. Respite care. Joe. Seoah. Murdoch. Vince. Nathan. Dogloo. Preparing an outside space for Shadow. Men’s group. Straw. Hard insulation. Heating pads. Heater for Water bowl.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Resilence

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah: Malchut     Wonder.   A feeling of surprise mixed with admiration caused by something beautiful or unexpected.

Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Natalie easily clipped on the yellow leash, Shadow calmed after an excited greeting of her old friend and followed her up the stairs and into Natalie’s truck where she waited while Natalie came back down to grab the food, carried it upstairs and I was Shadowless for the first time in ten months, no curled up doggie beside my pillow last night.

 

Dog journal: And so. Shadow is gone. Off to boarding school for a month. Natalie says she is: “A little overwhelmed, but handling it well. All the dogs here accepted her immediately.” She’ll send pictures today.

Dr. Josy examined her and drew blood in preparation for prescribing doggie fluoxetine for her PTSD. Which we all agree she must have since she has stayed outside in bitter cold (for Colorado) in spite of being offered food, warmth, and love. Animals act in their self interest unless something intervenes. Bizarre behavior.

Natalie has found a fifteen pound dog, Alfie, who needs a new home. She will introduce him to Shadow, then to me. Might be of the yappy sort, but if he can help Shadow learn normal doggie behavior, I’ll adapt.

I’ve most often cared for multiple dogs so that will not be a challenge. Question of fit with Shadow and me is the primary issue.

Have to find someone to build the outside dog run. Vince. Nathan, or Joe. One month. I’ve figured out the heated shelter for her and the fencing, the design. Have to settle on a gate. Of course, it is winter but I doubt the ground’s frozen yet. It’s not been cold enough for long enough.

 

Clinac iX. My photo

Health: Got a call from Alise yesterday morning. The Clinac had issues and I couldn’t get my radiation. Not surprised after learning annual maintenance costs on these hyper sophisticated machines runs between three and five hundred thousand dollars.

That would be a high paying blue collar job, technician for radiation machines. Requires a minimum AA degree in biomedical engineering with more complex responsibilities requiring a BS in biomedical engineering. Experienced techs can make a hundred thousand a year or more with additional money coming from overtime pay. I would imagine overtime is plentiful. When these machines are down, patients aren’t getting treatments and hospital/clinics are losing revenue.

Which all means my treatments now extend through Thursday.

BTW: Not sure about home plate in the mid left of this picture.

 

Just a moment: You make think Ukraine, Gaza, whack a drug boat, gerrymandering, or the Supreme’s on tariffs are big news. Well sure they are. But one story rules them all: Netflix buys Warner Brothers, HBO, and HBO MAX. Come on folks, priorities.

 

 

Cancer, Dogs, Health, Politics

Boarding School for Shadow

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Samain and the Shadow Moon

Friday gratefuls: Dr. Josy. Natalie. Boarding school for Shadow. Mountain folk. Tara. Snow. Radiation. T4. Nuclear fission for good. Small nuclear reactors. Good one’s built by a guy I know, a big one in Japan. Garbage people. All one. Garbage president. Cedar-Riverside. A welcoming neighborhood. Affordable housing. Built there. Cedar Riverside PAC. Economic development now at the service of Somali’s.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dr. Josy and Natalie

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah: Malchut     Wonder.   A feeling of surprise mixed with admiration caused by something beautiful or unexpected.

One brief shining: Crying washes the soul, purifies it with the holy salt Water of love, of caring, of devotion, and my soul went through its holy car wash more than once yesterday as I decided with a terrible and miserable reluctance to try giving Shadow to Dr. Josy, who asked me to call her and explain, and when I did, offered to call Natalie, Shadow’s most recent trainer, see what might come next. I called her.

 

Dog journal: Yesterday Shadow had been with me to the day, ten months. And I tried to give her to Dr. Josy. Overwhelmed, sad, frustrated, confounded I couldn’t see how I could keep Shadow safe from the cold if she wouldn’t come in. She wouldn’t. My love for her meant she had to go somewhere else.

She will. Dr. Josy called Natalie, who used to be her vet tech, and they talked, cooked up a plan. Instead of going to Dr. Josy Natalie will take her for a month’s boarding. Train her with her Dogs on coming in and out, going on a leash while Dr. Josy will do a blood test, then put Shadow on doggy Prozac.

During that time I will have built an enclosure a bit larger than the foot print of my upstairs deck with a heated shelter. Then, when Shadow comes home, she’ll have a much smaller part of the whole back until she has coming in and staying in down at home, too.

Both Natalie and Dr. Josy want to make it possible for me to keep her. Both were concerned about my health and my mental health, too. I am so touched by their caring, both for me and for Shadow. Malchut.

 

The other side: On Tuesday at Rocky Mountain Cancer Care Pat came out from the radiation suite, his long mustache curled up in a smile.

“You next?”

“Yep. Did you leave any radiation for me?”

“Sure did. Asked’em to turn up for you, too.”

“Well. Thanks, dude.”

Later when I had finished he had just seen the doc, I smiled at him and his wife, Sandy. “I felt that, dude.” He laughed. “See you next time,” he said. “Yeah, for the same thing.” He laughed again.

A genuine connection at the heart level. Pat’s a short guy, wore a Western vest under a barn coat, jeans. And that hat. A baseball hat made of American flag cloth with an Eagle on the bill.

Not so different after all, left and right.

 

 

 

 

Cancer, Health, Politics, US History

Riders in the Storm

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Samain and the Radiation Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Ruth. Sugar cream pie. Driving me to radiation today. Luke and Leo. Anne. Waxing crescent Moon. Christmas lights. Jackie and Rhonda. Shadow the mystery. Dog Poems. Billy Collins. Cold night. Darkness growing. Alise and Jenna. Skiing at A-Basin. Jon and my son. Brothers. Gabe, accepted to Montana. Black Bears. Mountain Lions. Wolves. Canada Lynx. Bobcats. Fox.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Linear accelerators

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah      “While Chesed is associated with flow, Gevurah provides the structure that allows this flow, acting like river banks to channel energy. It is seen as essential for establishing healthy boundaries, creating space for important work, and preserving what is most valuable.”

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: With Hannukah presents, Christmas presents, a kitchen stool, a ceiling fan, sheets for my bed all delivered, most still in their boxes, my living room looks like a receiving dock, a few opened, those Silence Please mugs for Gabe and Ruth, the Tuskegee Airmen hoodie and baseball cap plus the crystal ball with the planets suspended in it for my son, jigsaw puzzles, a color chart for the wall for Ruth, the kitchen stool, the ceiling fan, the sheets, mechanical puzzles of the most difficult category still taped and sealed shut. Holiseason

 

Alise and Jenna pull me a bit this way and that, put the plastic mesh on, and get me a warm blanket to cover my bare chest. Then they leave the room, closing the foot and a half thick lead and concrete door, and I am alone, offering my cancer as a sacrifice to the gods of radiation with my hands gripping metal rods behind me, keeping my arms out of the way.

A flashing red light signals danger, stay out, yet I remain. The Clinac iX whirs and buzzes, its looming bulkiness hidden from me, rotating, bringing the beam to bear on just. the. right. spot.

And. Over. Alise of the cold hands helps me get up while Jenna strips off the sheet, wipes down the hand rests and the neck rest, readying the sliding bed for another sacrifice already in waiting.

From reading yesterday I learned that a Clinac costs $1.5 million dollars and requires between three and five hundred thousand dollars in maintenance per year. The clinic or hospital also builds a concrete room with thick walls and doors to house it.

 

Just a moment: Comey and James cases dismissed. Presidential fatigue an issue. Red tie guy wants a bigger ballroom. Nobody seems to know whose page they’re reading from in Ukraine peace negotiations. Whatever happened to Gaza?

This clown car administration honks its horns, spins in circles, confuses themselves while the rest of us gasp open mouthed at matters never associated with the Presidency. Like his press secretary assuring us that the President does NOT want to execute members of Congress. Relieved to hear it. Like wanting to build a yet bigger gilded ballroom, one out of proportion with the White House.

Riders in the storm. Into his world we’re thrown.

 

 

Art and Culture, Back Pain, Cancer, Friends, Health, Music

All Alone Behind the Lead Lined Door

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Samain and the Radiation Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Todd. Alise. Varian. Clinac. Warm blankets. My plastic guide. Sniper rifle beams. Radiation entering my body, headed toward T4 bone marrow/lesion. Only nine sessions to go. Pain still gone. Hip, too. Wearing neck brace when I drive. My treatment November. Chart House. Luke and Leo coming today. Shadow inside. Yeah!

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Medical Engineering

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah      “While Chesed is associated with flow, Gevurah provides the structure that allows this flow, acting like river banks to channel energy. It is seen as essential for establishing healthy boundaries, creating space for important work, and preserving what is most valuable.”

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: No Cyberknife moving in its calculated dance around my body, this time a Varian Clinac iX, which Alise controls from a multi-screened room on the other side of the thick lead door that closes quietly, leaving me alone with a linear accelerator hulking behind me, and the precision locating beams-red and green-reading my location as the Clinac moves, buzzing and clicking.

 

Cancer: This session of radiation, my third, has a single target, the lesion in my bone marrow at T4. Instead of going all the way to Lonetree, I hop off 470 at Broadway and head up to Rocky Mountain Cancer Care (RMCC).

Most of the treatment in this case involves positioning my body accurately, using green and red lasers plus the plastic mesh that fits under my chin and over my bare upper thorax. Alise put it in place using the tattoos, small black dots inked on the sides of my chest by Todd during the CT planning procedure.

Since precision in aiming the beam of radiation is key both to killing the cancer cells and not damaging the rest of me, I get the need for multiple ways of saying go here, not there to the radiation. In and out in twenty minutes, less than five of which involved actual radiation.

 

Back and hip pain: The ablation continues to give me a pain free left lower back and upper left. The hip feels mostly good, too. Just a bit of tweak if I move in an odd angle.

Lower back right still has significant tightness, a little pain. Since the ablations only work on the arthritis, Kylie told me to expect pain from the bulging discs to continue. She was right.

Even so, a huge improvement. My driving stamina, which I will test each day going to RMCC, has improved, too, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. I was not in agony on the drive home, but I was still pretty uncomfortable. That’s with a fifty minute drive out, some sitting and then a drive back for fifty minutes.

I’m going to up my resistance work, stretching, see if I can do better with stronger core muscles.

This sort of adaptation, relief and its limitations, continue the journey of an aging body/self.

 

Opera: Not usually my thing though I love Wagner. I know, I know, an anti-semite, but what an artist! Watched an opera initiated by Yin, of Scott and Yin, with other members of the Chinese Heritage Foundation and staged by the San Francisco Opera.

An amazing, engaging, important work. The Journey of the Monkey King. If you can see it, take the chance. It will not disappoint you. Both libretto and the staging are, in my opinion, genius.

Aging, Cancer, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Hermitage, Memories, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Alchemical work

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Samain and the Radiation Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Joanne. Diane. The Alembic. Jung. Freud. Rogers. May. Frankl. Maslow. Satir. Fromm. Adler. Horney. Erikson. Paul Goodman. Adorno. Marcuse. Benjamin. Habermas. Unamuno. The hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricoeur. Guides from my student days. The theology of liberation. Cornel West. Shadow Work. Ivan Illich.

Sparks of joy and awe: A day of rest

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Hakarat Hakov   Gratitude.    “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their portion.” Perkei Avot 4:1

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Shadow, shadow work, the work done but unrecognized, unpaid, unappreciated housework, child rearing, transporting yourself to work, self checkout, pumping your own gas, making your own travel arrangements, assembling products that come in pieces, maintaining a yard and a vehicle noticed and named by radical thinker, Ivan Illich, in his book, Shadow Work. How much shadow work do you do?

Alembics. “…historically used by alchemists and for producing medicines, perfumes, and alcohol, the word can also be used metaphorically to mean something that refines or transmutes.” Gemini

I’ve begun to think of my life in terms of alembics. When was I thrown into a life situation, either by my own choice or by outside circumstance that resisted logic, yet compelled me to respond in unexpected, unusual, new ways?

A major early almebic? The death of my mother. No way to reason my way through that. A moment of dark transformation, carried without thought into the dark recesses of my heart, clashing with a changed world, and not well. In spite of being in a family, I sat in this alembic alone, feeling the fires of fear, doubt, grief lick up and around my stunned self.

This transmutation produced no gold. No, it produced a broken soul, one ready for abandonment, for sudden shifts from light to dark, from innocence to intoxication. Yes, the second alembic, which contained the first, grew from days at Phi Kappa Psi and Wabash where I learned to smoke and to drink.

An alembic that would not shatter until March of 1976 when I began treatment at a Hazelden outpatient clinic in Minneapolis. Getting sober allowed me to gather in pieces of the dark time and begin to transform them into psychic gold. To understand that the grief, the agony, the isolation (self-imposed) had forced me to mine my inner resources in ways and at a time most people went to prom and figured out what to do with their lives.

Other alembics. The Peaceable Kingdom. Seminary. Adopting Joseph. Vietnam era protests. Studying philosophy and anthropology. Marrying Kate. Andover with its gardens, dogs, bees. Writing. Shadow Mountain. Kate’s illness and death. Cancer. CBE. Converting to Judaism. Old age with a terminal illness, the fourth phase.

I like the use of alembic to describe these times because it recognizes that the pressures and fractures and falls and emergence shape us in ways unpredictable, unknown, yet in which we have no choice but to participate as best we can.

Are you in an alembic right now? Or, have you emerged from one recently? Or, long ago. How did it transform you? How is it transforming you?

Cancer, Colorado, Health, Mountains, Science, Shadow Mountain

An Inner Glow

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Morgan at Evergreen Orthotics. Neck braces. Abby Price, P.A., at Panorama Orthopedics. Steroid injection. Today. Looking forward to both. Cartoons. Anime. Manga. Horror. Fantasy. Science fiction. Mystery. Drama. Literary fiction. Albrecht Dürer. Arcimboldo. Breughel. Rembrandt. Poussin. Goya. Velasquez. Turner. Holbein.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: World Art

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Hakarat Hakov   Gratitude.    “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their portion.” Perkei Avot 4:1

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Once again under the beam of a radiation  device remember radiation poisoning from atomic bombs yet here I go exposing myself to even more high energy particles for their harmful effect on human tissue, yes, their harmful effect aimed not at enemy cities, but at enemy cells, rogue multipliers who want to consume every bit of my body.

If you went into the crawlspace under my house, you would see black plastic sheeting covering the floor and tight against the short walls. Outside a vented flying saucer like device with a whirling fan sucks air from beneath the sheeting and disposes of radon, a naturally occurring radiation contained in soil and rock and water. Many homes here in the Rockies have radon mitigation devices.

When I traveled through southern Utah, several years ago, I stopped at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. When I got out of the Tundra pulling Merton’s last possessions (Kate’s Dad), I hiked around the area.

Small wooden signs in National Park style had yellow painted letters that read: Uranium Mine, stay out.  Chains across the entrances reinforced the signs. These were modest as mines go, more like human sized burrows reaching back into the rock of the Kaiparowits Plateau.

When Kate and I began to look for housing after we decided to move to Colorado, a good deal caught our eye, the Candelas Development. Cheap land, good prices on interesting homes, and midway between Boulder and Denver with unobstructed views of the Front Range.

What’s not to like? Its proximity to the long closed Rocky Flats nuclear production facility for one. Rocky Flats, now a Superfund site, blocked off by chain link and razorwire, made nuclear triggers for the military.  An ongoing controversy focuses on plutonium found in the unmitigated land surrounding the Superfund site, the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge, and the land under the Candelas Development.

It’s been declared safe over and over again by regulators, but critics say that no amount of plutonium exposure is healthy. We did not choose to buy there.

Radiation occurs in so many places, some of human artifice, most part of Mother Nature’s collection of elements distributed over the Planet’s surface and within her mass.

I’m glad some clever scientists figured out how to harness radiation for peaceful uses like nuclear power plants (looking at you, Bill Schmidt), smaller reactors that power submarines and aircraft carriers, and fighting cancer.

Starting on Monday of next week, I’ll have the first of ten doses of lower energy radiation to kill a lesion in the bone marrow of my T4 vertebrae. I will wear my red t-shirt with the radiation hazard logo in yellow.

 

 

Cancer, Friends, Health

The Missing Hour

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Nurse Marissa. Dr. (Kirk) Harter. Dr. Garapati. The Radiology Tech. The MRI machine that I never saw. Swedish Hospital. Kate, always Kate. The view from a hospital bed. Tara, my sweet friend. Eleanor, who played all day with Shadow. Being driven. Being helped. Rabbi Jamie’s birthday on the fourth. Mayo, helping my buddy, Tom.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Propofol

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Histapkot.  Contentment. Acceptance.                       I’m comfortable with who I am and with what I have.

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: A ritual of infantilization begins with go to this room on this floor, continues with a nurse telling you to remove all of your clothes, put on some of ours that tie in the back and let your butt hang out, now lie down in the bed and I’ll bring you a nice warm blankie before asking you so many, so many questions they will seem like a lullaby. Which they were.

 

The missing hour: After all of Marissa’s questions had been asked, the IV placed, an oximeter taped to my finger, and a blood pressure cuff attached to my arm, plus one more warm blankie for good measure, Dr. Harter, barely old enough to shave, came by my bed and asked me many of the same questions again. We chose conscious sedation and I signed a temporary reversal of my DNR just in case the anesthesia stopped my heart. That’s something easily and non-invasively fixed. Or so Dr. Harter promised. Happy to observe that was not necessary.

After a half an hour or so of watching people and beds come and go in the Ambulatory Care Unit, a Radiology tech kicked the lock off on my bed and pushed me, pretty fast and confidently, to a large bed-sized elevator to go down one floor to imaging.

A small bay in the room with POWERFUL MAGNETS ALWAYS ON, as the sign read, was the last thing I saw before my missing hour. The tech, an older woman, late sixties I’d say, hooked me up to a machine to read my vitals: heart rate 69, bp 119/72, O2 sat at 97 with a canula, a few other numbers I couldn’t understand. She then came over and pushed some saline into the IV.

Dr. Garapati mused about the advances in medicine I’d seen in my lifetime. I really wasn’t as aware of them as he seemed to think. Still, he seemed nice.

Dr. Harter came on my left, or IV side, and attached a line to my IV, then that line to a hanging bag. This will take just a minute to act…and then I was in recovery, wondering where my missing hour had gone.

A strange sensation, to have no memory at all of the MRI, a good sensation for claustrophobic me. If I have to have another MRI, this is the method I’ll choose. How many times in life can we bypass something terrifying (to me) with the help of so many nice people?