Infusion #3

9/12/07

AGENDA:
Disease
Music
Politics

“This nation is ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be, when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!”
-- Mark Twain

Thank you, anonymous blog responder, for the “Sicko” props.

DISEASE

I’ve been here since 11AM, in the chemo area since 3PM. It’s now 6:42PM and the infusion is running. The joint is jumping. Two cubicles to my left, there’s an older man, alternately moaning, groaning and whimpering. The combination of a groan and a whimper produces a peculiarly, eerie sound. His name is Lafayette. He is with a caretaker of some sort, who’s dressed in institutional garb: a light blue hospital type smock and dark blue scrub pants. Being the nosy type, I’ll get the skinny on this later. If necessity is the mother of invention, boredom is the father of curiosity.

Earlier I spoke with a man, Bob from Grand Ledge, who has been battling multiple myeloma for 3 years. He is on his second stem-cell transplant. Because of donor match issues, a bone marrow transplant was not an option. This is a particularly insidious disease that attacks the bones, making them brittle to the point that they often develop holes, giving them a swiss cheesy sort of appearance. Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the plasma cells. Three things happen, all bad: 1) the bone marrow is interfered with, thus compromising the immune system; 2) anemia and infection pose an ongoing threat; 3) the susceptibility to kidney problems is greatly increased. Symptoms: bone pain, abnormal monoclonal protein counts, elevated blood calcium levels, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite, mental confusion, unexplained bone fractures, weight loss, weakness and numbness in legs. Regarding the bone degradation , I’ll simply relate what Bob told me. After telling me about his 3 month experience in the hospital, I asked him what happened. He said he had broken his back and 3 ribs. When I asked how this occurred, he calmly told me the fractures were the result of his turning over in bed. As horrible as his 3 year battle has been, Bob seemed very upbeat and resolute. I dig you, Bob.

Meanwhile back to the later, you know, the then then, I mean post-Bob, but no, not now now. Peck.Peck.Peck. Layfayette is calm for the moment. The lady between us is readying herself for a marrow transplant at the Karmanos Cancer Institute. She orders the new Wendy’s Bacon Wizard, or Delight, or something like that. As her partner leaves she shouts to her, “remember, no bun.” You know, I was beginning to feel old, as if life were passing me by, those old Cytoxan sniffles were getting me down. And then, suddenly I looked up and there he was: no, not Dorian Gray, Jerry Hodak, the perennial channel 7 weatherman, once again reassuring me that a celebrity other than Sonny Elliot could still make me feel young. But I’m digressing.

To my right, one cubicle away, a young woman is having, in medical parlance, breakthrough nausea. For about 45 minutes to an hour she puked uncontrollably before finally getting some relief. Knowing that severe nausea can occur during the infusion, I asked the new shift nurse if she was having a reaction. Without batting an eye, she says, “Oh no, she doesn’t get the treatment for an hour. She’s vomiting in anticipation of having the chemo.” Oh boy!

MUSIC

Given my passion for music, I would be remiss if I failed to talk about the “Air Guitar World Championships.” Held in Oulu, Finland, this event has held a certain fascination for me since its inception 12 years ago. No doubt a number of my friends wish I had stuck with this specialty. Which in many ways makes sense, since I undoubtedly have the intellectual qualities specific to this discipline. I would be hard pressed to top the contestant who, when asked why he likes air guitar, answered “To me, it’s like a guitar, only it’s made of air, so you can’t see it. Pretty much.” As reported in The New York Times, the United States champion “came to air guitar when, in the typical manner of hopeless American pubescent boys, he air jammed with his friends at high school dances instead of dancing with actual girls.” One of the hazards of this competition involves getting too caught up in your adopted persona. Witness the French competitor, Guillaume de Tonquedec, who dived into a mosh pit apparently filled with air catchers” “Instead of enveloping him in a warm embrace, the crowd drew back in fear, leaving Moche Pitt (stage name) to belly-flop directly onto the ground. Apparently recovered from his ill advised Iggy imitation, Moche had this to say, “I’d rather be stupid with an air guitar than a gun,” At which point the competitors serenaded the audience to a final rendition of Neil Young’s, “Rockin in the Free World.”

Did anyone cover an “Air Supply” song? Make air, not war!

THIS SATURDAY NIGHT CATCH FUBAR AT DYLAN FEST, BLIND PIG, ANN ARBOR, MICH (2 songs, “Positively Fourth Street & Pledging My Time)

POLITICS

One of the fundamental myths about the United States is that of a clear separation BETWEEN church and state, which allows us to roundly condemn Islamic theocracies that mix their orthodoxy with political policy. I suppose our medieval notions about abortion, same sex marriage and stem cell research bear no relation to that fundamental Christian morality which underpins our present administration’s policies. So obsessed are we with distancing ourselves from the charge of religious fundamentalism that it was recently decided to purge books on faith from prison libraries. It seems that prison chaplains across this wide land were told to remove all books, tapes, CDs and videos not approved by the Bureau of Prisons. Ridiculous. Take heart Senator Larry Craig, if you stall…er…wait long enough perhaps the government will give up on staking out airport urinals looking for deviant, homosexual behaviors. "Sir! the bad news is a terrorist just boarded the plane; the good news is we caught another queer. Fact is, this country was based on Christian values. In “The Americans in their Moral, Social, and Political Relations”(1837), the eminently philosophical observer, Francis Grund, writes, “The religious habits of the Americans form not only the basis of their private and public morals, but have become so thoroughly interwoven with their whole course of legislation that it would be impossible to change them without affecting the very essence of their government”(69). Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, Jim Baker, had you only been familiar with Grund’s keen understanding of the American sensibility you might have avoided moral condemnation: “The moment a candidate is presented for office, not only his mental qualifications for the functions he is about to assume, but also his private character are made the subject of criticism. Whatever he may have done, said, or listened to, from the time he left school to the present moment is sure to be brought before the public. The most trifling incidents which are calculated to shed a light on his motives or habits or thinking are made the subject of the most uncompromising scrutiny; and facts and circumstances, already buried in oblivion, are once more brought before the judging eye of the people”(72).

Regarding the war:

“You, my imperialistic friends, have had your ideals and sentimentalities. One is that the flag shall never be hauled down where it has once floated. Another is that you will not talk or reason with people with arms in their hand. Another is that sovereignty over an unwilling people may be bought with gold. And another is that sovereignty may be got by force of arms….
What has been the practical statesmanship which comes from your ideals and sentimentalities? You have wasted hundreds of millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives, the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest, bringing their sheaves with them, in the shape of thousands of sick and wounded and insane."(82).

No, this isn’t related to what’s happening in Iraq, or even what happened in Viet Nam, this was written in 1902 by Mark Twain. He was responding to the sham war--remember the Maine--which took place in the Philippines in the early 1890s. What Iraq, Vietnam, and the Spanish American War all have in common is their implied religious justifications: our involvement in Iraq is a cultural crusade to install democracy and western values in a backward society (see William Bennett for more on this); Vietnam was the place where we would right the falling dominoes of godless communism, and the Philippines was where America’s manifest destiny would be played out on a world stage. Consider this speech given to the senate by Indiana Senator, Albert Beveridge: ”God has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America. The Philippines are ours forever. We will not repudiate our duty to the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world”(83). WOW! Not much has changed.