Monthly Archives: July 2015

Health

Surreal

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Summer                                                                   Healing Moon

While in Skyridge, I had several nurses, all interesting: Ron, Esther and Elizabeth. When the first of them came in my room I noticed on her security badge: Elizabeth and then Medical Oncology Nurse. Oncology, I thought? Why do I have an oncology nurse? This hours after surgery for prostate cancer. That’s how surreal this whole time has been for me.

I’ve not felt seriously ill, except ironically, after my surgery. I had no symptoms. The context was all new to me: Colorado hospitals, doctors, drives. It’s been difficult to raise my inner sense of alarm to the CANCER level. Yet I have it. Or, hopefully, had it.

The weather yesterday, the day after the surgery, was beautiful. Blue skies entertained parties of cumulus clouds, the eye could follow the unusually green plains as far as the horizon line. The world was unconcerned about my health or the health of anyone on the med-surg floor.

The hospital room was beautiful, too. Nicely appointed in woods and sandy textiles, it was a pleasant place to be.  And yet. There was that surgery. That biopsy. Those things that turned my world inside out and upside down. Strange. Surreal.

 

 

Health

Strange

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Summer                                                                   Healing Moon

So. Cleansing continues.

Talking to Kate yesterday I mentioned how strange I feel. Physically, as I’ve said, I feel fine. But tomorrow I’ll have surgery to remove a part of me. Gone forever. A disturbing thought, balanced only by the knowledge that if it stays, all of me might go.

It’s as if I’ve stepped into an alternative universe where I’m desperately sick and can be saved only by drastic actions. Oh, wait.

I’m not describing this well. The cancer is an abstraction, as I’ve said before. I feel no symptoms. My body is not telling me that anything is wrong. Only tests done inside my body, where I can’t see, have found it.

Trust has guided me to tomorrow. Trust in Lisa Gidday, my internist, trust in Kate, trust in Edward Eigner. That trust says this is serious. It’s now. And must be dealt with. Still, trust itself is an abstraction even though those people are not.

But. I feel. Fine. Yet tomorrow I’ll lie feet up high for 3.5 hours as a robot crawls around my innards snipping, cutting, removing, sewing. Very, very strange.

Family, Great Work, Music, Our Land and Home

The First of July

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Summer                                                                  Healing Moon

Hodges Plumbing came out yesterday. They will install the gas line to the generator. Gary or Mike Hodges, I didn’t get his first name, arrived in a red truck and wearing overalls, has a gray handlebar mustache, gets up slowly after visiting the crawl space, and has a train whistle as his ringtone. I liked him.

The generator has to get over to the breaker boxes first, of course, and that’s Eric Ginter’s job. He and 3 other guys will muscle it out of the garage and over to the west side of the house. Eric will install the automatic transfer switch and hook up the generator to it. The automatic transfer switch starts the generator when power goes out in the house and shuts it off when the power returns.

While waiting for Hodges to arrive, I cut down aspen suckers and painted them with an herbicide designed to take out heavy brush and poison ivy. In the wild aspens throw out suckers in a ring around a parent tree. When the suckers grow to a certain size, they throw out more. One of the largest living organisms is an aspen stand which began from one tree*. I’m encouraging certain aspens by not cutting them down, but leaving them enough space to grow large. They are fire resistant, as Jacob Ware, deputy chief for the Elk Creek Fire Protection District, said. “Water, not pitch.”

In the evening we went again to Dazzlejazz, having been there last Friday with Tom and Roxann, this time with Jon and Jen. It was a sweet evening. We gave Jon a large gift to help pay down his student loan debt, part of the house sale proceeds. They were both surprised. They asked about my surgery and how they could support Kate. We listened to groups of teen jazz musicians, two jazz bands and a choral group. One tenor sax player really caught my attention, an edgy growly sound.

We drove into the mountains, back home, with Venus and Jupiter in conjunction and a bright full healing moon hanging in the southwestern sky.

*The Pando (Utah) grove consists of about 47,000 tree trunks, and it covers a little more than 100 acres of land. Overall, researchers believe it could weigh 13-million pounds.

Friends, Health, Woolly Mammoths

BFFs

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Summer                                                              Healing Moon

Down to new Bent’s Fort in Morrison last night. Perched high in the red rock (Fountain formation) foothills overlooking a glittery Denver to the east, the Fort is an unusual Western experience. Tom and Roxann Crane took us out for a second wonderful meal and honest, heartfelt conversation.

This meal really started over 28 years on a cold January late afternoon when Tom and I were initiated into the Woolly Mammoths at Valhelga. No kidding, that’s the name. It’s the family retreat of the Helgeson clan, designed by architect and fellow Woolly, Stefan Helgeson. Tom and I didn’t know each other then, though in the six degrees of connection way we had mutual friends.

Since that time both Tom and I have married again, this time to the last partner. We’ve shared twice monthly meetings, annual retreats with this group of 11 men. The relationship among the Woollies now has decades of memories, intense and often intimate sharing, hard times and good times. The extraordinary piece of the experience is the durable and deep friendships we have formed with each other. These are not buddy relationships with a lot of backslapping, sports watching, gun shooting or fish line throwing; rather, these are bff type friendships, now irrevocable and unbelievably precious.

These men will be with me when I fade out on the morning of July 8th and when I wake up hours later. Their support and that of family, docent friends and high school classmates will make that isolated moment far from lonely. Too, they all constitute a reason to recover and continue living this one life.