August 28, 2007
You think I'm psycho, don't you mama?
8/28/07
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
-- M. K.Gandhi
-- Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1948
TWO FACE CHARGES IN DRUG CASE
Marquette Mining Journal: February, 1972
“Two Marquette residents charged with possession of marijuana made their initial appearances this week in Marquette District Court.”
“David Peano, 20, of 1426 Lincoln Ave., and Marcia Campbell, 21, of 1015 Waldo St., were released on bond, pending preliminary examination on the charges brought by the Marquette County Sheriff’s Department.”
“Outgrowth Of Probe”
“Arrest of the two was an outgrowth of investigation by the sheriff’s department of an incident in which drugs were smuggled into the jail.”
“Randall L. Tessier, 20, Waldo St., in whose cell the drugs were found, was charged with possession of marijuana and other dangerous drugs. When he appeared in district court, he requested time to retain an attorney and reserved the right to a preliminary examination, which is set for Feb. 17.”
Tessier was serving a 60-day sentence for use of marijuana when the drugs were discovered in the plumbing of his cell. They were believed to have been delivered by rope through a broken jail window, which has since been repaired and covered with new mesh screening, Sheriff Adrian A, Pequet reported.”
January 6, 1972
Mr. Randy Tessier
Marquette County Jail
Marquette, Michigan 49855
IN REPLY REFER TO: Our File No. 11865
….There is one other absolute requirement in my representing you in this matter. There may be facts and circumstances present in your case which would cause me to determine that it is in your best interests to involve yourself in one or more of a number of psychiatric counseling programs potentially available to you. We must have an explicit understanding that you will make yourself available for psychiatric counseling to whatever extent I request that you do so at any time during my representation of you. This boils down to the fact that I very well may require you to go into psychotherapy or be committed to a mental hospital or make yourself available for extensive medical and/or mental testing for examination.
This may be somewhat distasteful to you, but I must have this commitment for [sic] you before I can involve myself in any representative capacity whatsoever in your case. I don’t pretend to have the capacity to diagnose or even characterize your medical or mental condition, but I must have an absolute understanding that you will cooperate in an effort to have this kind of specialized information about you available to me. I do not intend to quarrel with you about whether or not you are to one degree or another mentally ill, and I do not intend to quarrel with you about whether it is or is not necessary to your case for me to obtain the opinion of trained people in the mental health field. If I want this kind of information, you must cooperate in an effort to provide it to me. This, of course, extends to treatment if some time during the case I request that you go into treatment on either an in-patient or an out-patient basis. I would expect you to do that, other conditions permitting.
Please do not read into perhaps the stern tone of this letter anything other than the fact that I regard you as a young person with a great deal of trouble who must have, in addition to the talents of certain trained individuals, absolute discipline within his own life during this time. I do not regard you as a person who is about to discipline yourself. Your situation is too frightening, the stakes are too high, and you have neither the prospective [sic] nor the training to act in your own best interests in many cases. For this reason, the discipline must come from or through me. This is the very best protection, and I want you to understand the motivation for the requirements I have set forth in this letter.
I would like very much for you to reflect upon all of these matters and make a list of questions you have for me. We will talk at great length about any matter of concern to you at any time.
Very truly yours,
WISTI & JAASKELAINEN
J. Kent Bourland
JKB/dt
January 25, 1972
Mr. Randy Tessier
Marquette County Jail
Marquette, Michigan 49855
IN REPLY REFER TO: Our File No. 11865
Dear Randy:
Thank you for your letter.
You strike me as a person who has enormous energy resources, which from time to time sort of boil over and make a mess. Energy is not only necessary for a full life, but it must be directed in the most shrewd and thoughtful ways if it is to effect change outside its origin. I guess energy is really very fragile because it can be dissipated completely in a very short time—and yet, it is capable of causing a great amount of work to be done. I think you have a tendency to ground yourself unnecessarily. I like seeing you learn to keep yourself from being grounded out and thus preserving the potential for work.
It seems to me that you have been operating as though the revolution were over. This can be a fatal mistake. You must learn to believe your own rhetoric and accept the fact that for now it’s a pretty dangerous world for people who are too enthused about life to maintain a protective posture as they go about their business.
Very truly yours,
WISTI & JAASKELAINEN
J. Kent Bourland
JKB/dt
Rain—
And pain—
Are both
For growth.
“An Australian entrepreneur was selling oysters raised in tanks laced with Viagra.”
Harper’s Magazine
‘Researchers announced that they can now use a woman’s butt fat to grow new breasts. Using standard liposuction, the ‘Celution’ therapist will extract fat cells, from which stem cells will be separated; in just one hour the cells will be ready for injection. The new breasts will fill out over the next six months.”
Harper’s Magazine
“What I’m trying to say, in language even more oblique, is that the human psyche can sometimes see evidence of what is not present to the senses. ‘Bosh,’ one hears you exclaim, ‘this man is writing about nothing!’ But is he? It could be that he is writing about something somebody said to him after he had regained his senses for himself and detected shreds of rabbit fluff here and there. Imagine a man coming round after five days in the human tank that denatures us all and finds no memory worth talking about. I suspected as much from my ten-day immersion in whatever I was immersed in.”
Paul West, The First Aphasiac Memoir
From Harper’s Magazine
“Washington, Aug. 27 --….According to a police report obtained by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call….a plainclothes police officer investigating complaints of sexual activity in the bathroom arrested the senator (Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho) on June 11 after what the officer described as sexual advances made by Mr. Craig from an adjoining stall. The officer said Mr. Craig had tapped his foot, in what the officer described as a known signal to engage in lewd conduct, and he had also brushed his foot against the investigator’s and waved his hand under the stall divider several times before the officer showed him his badge.“ ( He pled guilty to disorderly conduct)
-- The New York Times, 8/2807
August 27, 2007
An Unseen Presence
8/27/07
“Love…is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”
-- Iris Murdoch, 1968
What follows was written on or about August 7. Rather than try to pick up where it leaves off, about, March, 2005, I’m just going to publish it as is.
An unseen presence in this blog, unlike my life, is my wonderful companion, Brigitte. It’s time to talk about her. She is my lover, confidante, musical mate, advisor, editor, photographer, and all else that one who loves bestows on their beloved. Her unswerving devotion to my needs and desires makes it hard for me to describe the special place she occupies in the family of those nearest and dearest to me. Her beauty, intelligence, kindness, and consideration defy description. Much of the science based medical information in this blog is based on B’s (my affectionate name for her) painstaking research and intellectual diligence. If my rhetoric seems particularly eloquent it is in no small part due to her constant advice and assistance. In all things human we attach certain dates to our histories, mutual and otherwise.
Some chronology. We’ve been close since Labor Day of 2001. It was the weekend my towers came down. Given that she and I were married at the time (and not to each other), my attempt at damage control was about as effective as Bush’s war on terror. I had joined “The Magic Poetry Band” the previous spring. The drummer, Jim Carey, and I were playing in another band, FUBAR, and he asked if I might be interested in filling in for the recently departed guitarist in MAPOBA. Having always wanted to be taken seriously as a guitarist, I jumped at the chance. It was cool. I could literally play any thing I wanted so long as it fit the poetry. M.L. Liebler is, and has always been, the band in its various permutations. This guy’s talent lies in his ability to write successful grants. While we didn’t make big money for the actual gigs, we traveled to cool places and played hip venues, like “The Knitting Factory” in Manhattan, Café Picasso in New Orleans and Bumbershoot in Seattle. It was like nothing I had experienced before. We played a school assembly in Hancock, Michigan where the students treated us like Rock Stars. Since both Country Joe MacDonald and Jorma Kaukonen are buddies with M.L. we got to meet and play with them. He also knows Al Kooper and Michael Moore, among other counter culture dignitaries. Poets? He knows them all. But if our political philosophies were in lock step, our moral beliefs were vastly different. Homosexuality is not a sin. Add to this, his alarm and consternation concerning B’s and I/my mutual admiration society, the band, at least that version of it, was doomed to a short shelf life. As the band dissolved our love grew. And as our relationship blossomed, my family, which I love dearly, fell apart.
As I write this, B’s lovely and talented daughter, Amanda, is laughing with her auntie Lori, one of four girls, a quartet of comely downstate girls that have surely set many a cowboy’s heart aflutter. Brigitte’s German and Norwegian blood give her a singular beauty that, in certain moods and settings, is stunning in its effect. I’ve known Amanda since she was 7. We like each other, which is no small accomplishment given the suspicions children often harbor regarding their mother’s affections for others. One of my small pleasures of late has been watching Amanda’s softball career. Amanda loves Big Bay. She’s like some kind of a freshwater dolphin, constantly leaping and finning through the sparkling waves under the summer U.P. sky.
Back to the Brigitte story. About three years ago, B. was discovered to have a growth in her heart. As it turned out, it was a benign mass protruding from the left atrial valve, something called a Fibroelastoma. While not cancerous, this condition does pose the ever-present, and fatal, possibility of breaking loose. Were it anywhere else its removal would be a routine procedure. Given its location, however, major surgery was the only option. Being there. I didn’t ask for it, but this gave me a chance to step up to the plate.
BACK TO THE PRESENT
Day 13, Round 2:
The pattern goes like this: day 1, infusion, steroids, a hopped up feeling, difficulty sleeping; given the toxicity of the drugs, who knows what the initial shock to the system is? ; days 2-5, (the oral part of the R-C.H.O.P regimen, the steroid, prednisone, is taken during this period) hence, energy, appetite, and mood volatility; days 6-9, (crash from the steroids) fatigue, lethargy, depression, emotional swings; Days 9-10, sore gums, throat, and tongue, difficulty swallowing and speaking, tired and pessimistic….;days 11-12, sense of recovery, mouth is healed, energy on the up…
If all goes as last time, I will feel better as this week progresses. I think this is typical, in that once your body has somewhat recovered from the toxic assault, you’re ready for the next blast, which is next Tuesday. If I haven’t said much about the cancer itself, it’s because I haven’t experienced any of the initial symptoms, abdominal pain, that led to my diagnosis. This Friday, as a part of a research study being done by the U-M Cancer Center, I’m undergoing a P.E.T. scan that should provide some indication of how things are going.
Chemo brain? Chemo dreams? Pyrex glass measuring cup. Csuttling…err…scuttling, Kafkaesque, dust mop sized bug on the ceiling. That’s a big bug. The measuring cup appeared out of context, like a Magritte or Dali, surrealistically. Talk about 60s shit run amok! What am I on? GRE preparation, that’s something I was worried about the other night. I can’t remember if I was asleep or awake. The bug was a furtive thing, a paranoid glance. It was black. Once, after being overcome by a kinder poison, alcohol, I shot bolt upright from a blackout sleep to the sight of a menacing, onyx temple dog, snarling and gnashing. The thing had to be 8 feet tall. But why the measuring cup? Dreams are, by convention, non-linear, anachronistic, jumbled and chaotic. But convention is the wrong word, you say. Convention implies a set of rules, as in the conventions of a genre: the western has cowboys, the comedy has gags, the mystery has clues. But if a dream can be realistic in chronology and depiction, as well as surreal, then anything the human mind can conjure is a convention of the dream. Or, put another way, the dream narrative knows no conventions. So, why the measuring cup?
August 26, 2007
Collar of Correction
8/26/07
“Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years of our own lives.”
-- Galsworthy, on dogs
Memories, 1914
“I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.”
-- August Strindberg
A Madman’s Diary
Some years ago one of the neighbors left an anonymous letter in my mailbox complaining about my dog’s barking. The language contained a trailer dialect I was unfamiliar with. Was it Bellevillian or Ypsituckian? After deciphering exactly what this three toed, banjo player’s problem was, I decided to buy a shock collar for Shadow. However, before visiting this corrective on my canine, I wanted to make sure the therapy was humane. After all, I live in Ann Arbor, where the very thought of doing this would be tantamount to joining Mike Vick’s posse. Even now, when telling this story, I am greeted with dagger-like stares of moral outrage, the likes of which no God-fearing man, woman, or child outside the borders of Washtenaw County should ever have to suffer. But tell it I must. Yes, I, your humble cat doo-doo eatin daddy, decided to try the collar on. Yikes! This particular accessory consists of a strap on collar, black or red. Attached to the strap is a small, black, rectangular box. The collar fits in such a way that the snuggly fitting strap presses a small metal stud, which protrudes from the box, into the dog’s trachea. The stud is, of course, connected to a battery in the box, which, when stimulated, delivers an eye-popping jolt to any hapless barker who happens to be wearing it at the time. Laughingly, and after having quaffed a few judgment suds, I strapped on the collar and commenced, through various degrees of yowling, to test the infernal device. It didn’t take long for me to achieve that cruel, imperfect pitch which sent me to my knees. Mine was now a pitiful scream for mercy, a blood-curdling, mournful cry unlike any this neighborhood has ever heard. I tried it on Shadow for a day, and as I listened to her sad, twisted howls, I asked myself, is this dog, this noble mastiff, best friend of man, rescuer of alpine mountaineers, saver of drowning Labrador swimmers, sniffer outer of cancers and boxcutters, finder of truffles, leader of the blind, this loyal companion who has faithfully kept my secrets and borne my many abuses and injustices, trying to tell me something?
SHADOW’S LAMENT
Don’t make me wear the collar of correction
I didn’t mean to bark like that last night
Give me one more chance
I’ll find a new direction
This old hound will disappear from sight
Do you remember on the day you brought me home dear
Your old daddy said that I would be a test
Now you’re shocking me at will
Even though I’m sittin still
Please take it off and I won’t be a pest
If you catch me eating trash
You can give this dog a thrash
If I chew your shoe
Confine me to my cage
Won’t you keep that thing away
Lectric torture’s inhumane
I’ll report you to the SPC2A
If we come back in another life I’ll get you
Even though in this one I’m your loyal friend
You will wear a collar too
All that yappin that you do
Will result in words that have a shocking end!
“Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years of our own lives.”
-- Galsworthy, on dogs
Memories, 1914
“I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.”
-- August Strindberg
A Madman’s Diary
Some years ago one of the neighbors left an anonymous letter in my mailbox complaining about my dog’s barking. The language contained a trailer dialect I was unfamiliar with. Was it Bellevillian or Ypsituckian? After deciphering exactly what this three toed, banjo player’s problem was, I decided to buy a shock collar for Shadow. However, before visiting this corrective on my canine, I wanted to make sure the therapy was humane. After all, I live in Ann Arbor, where the very thought of doing this would be tantamount to joining Mike Vick’s posse. Even now, when telling this story, I am greeted with dagger-like stares of moral outrage, the likes of which no God-fearing man, woman, or child outside the borders of Washtenaw County should ever have to suffer. But tell it I must. Yes, I, your humble cat doo-doo eatin daddy, decided to try the collar on. Yikes! This particular accessory consists of a strap on collar, black or red. Attached to the strap is a small, black, rectangular box. The collar fits in such a way that the snuggly fitting strap presses a small metal stud, which protrudes from the box, into the dog’s trachea. The stud is, of course, connected to a battery in the box, which, when stimulated, delivers an eye-popping jolt to any hapless barker who happens to be wearing it at the time. Laughingly, and after having quaffed a few judgment suds, I strapped on the collar and commenced, through various degrees of yowling, to test the infernal device. It didn’t take long for me to achieve that cruel, imperfect pitch which sent me to my knees. Mine was now a pitiful scream for mercy, a blood-curdling, mournful cry unlike any this neighborhood has ever heard. I tried it on Shadow for a day, and as I listened to her sad, twisted howls, I asked myself, is this dog, this noble mastiff, best friend of man, rescuer of alpine mountaineers, saver of drowning Labrador swimmers, sniffer outer of cancers and boxcutters, finder of truffles, leader of the blind, this loyal companion who has faithfully kept my secrets and borne my many abuses and injustices, trying to tell me something?
SHADOW’S LAMENT
Don’t make me wear the collar of correction
I didn’t mean to bark like that last night
Give me one more chance
I’ll find a new direction
This old hound will disappear from sight
Do you remember on the day you brought me home dear
Your old daddy said that I would be a test
Now you’re shocking me at will
Even though I’m sittin still
Please take it off and I won’t be a pest
If you catch me eating trash
You can give this dog a thrash
If I chew your shoe
Confine me to my cage
Won’t you keep that thing away
Lectric torture’s inhumane
I’ll report you to the SPC2A
If we come back in another life I’ll get you
Even though in this one I’m your loyal friend
You will wear a collar too
All that yappin that you do
Will result in words that have a shocking end!
August 24, 2007
Nadir
8/24/07
“The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.” 8/21/07 New York Times
On my mind: What do China and Utah have in common? Greed. Marx had it right. Capital is the ultimate ideology. The China story, as I recall, had to do with their market in organ transplants. It was reported that the harvesting of organs was being done in conjunction with public executions of condemned prisoners. Immediately after, and in some cases before, the executed had expired, medical teams would rush in and harvest eyes, skin, kidneys, hearts, livers and whatever else the highest bidder might pay for. Think about this, you are being eviscerated while still alive. In this particular story the emphasis was on the skin being flayed from living victims. So, what does this have to do with Utah? In a similar example of how profit knows no morality, the Murray mining company has too quickly decided the workers are dead, or at least entombed, and it’s time to move on. Much like the hapless prisoner whose skin is commodified even while he dies an agonizing death, the miners are given up to the altar of commerce even as new and unsafe holes are being dug. How craven are the wheels of progress, of industry, of capital.
“Napping is tiresome.”
-- R. Louis Tessier
“I was like, ‘Oh, we got hit. We got hit.’ And then I had blood on my face and the flies were landing all over my face. So I wiped my face to get rid of the flies. And that is when I noticed that my fingertip was gone. So I was like, ‘Oh, O.K.’
“So that is when I started really assessing myself. I was like, ‘That’s not bad.’ And then I turned my hand over, and I noticed that this chunk of my hand was gone. So I was like, ‘O.K., still not bad. I can live with that.’
“And then I went to wipe the flies on my face with my left hand, there was nothing there. So I was like, ‘Uh, that’s gone.’ And then I looked down and saw that my legs were gone. And then they had kind of forced my head back down to the ground, hoping that I wouldn’t see.
“Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq” – HBO Documentary
Dear Dr. Ahmed:
It’s Friday, August 24th, and I just came from a blood draw (it’s the nadir in the 3 week cycle). After our cell phone conversation yesterday, I thought it might be best if I composed my thoughts on e-mail. Regarding my meeting Kaminski, maybe it’ll happen maybe it won’t. Truth be told, the story of my cancer is losing its newness. The emotional swirl of being sick, researching the disease, bringing attention to the cause, and lobbying for better health/cancer care is slowly fading into the mundane, day to day reality of morning elation, mid-day optimism, late afternoon malaise and evening resignation. Life goes on. Someone gets cancer, there is a pause in their worldview, and life moves on, with or without them. I’m 10 days into the second cycle.
So how’s it been? While I only have the first treatment’s experience to draw upon, I can draw some conclusions. The ten day point signals the beginning of an emotional period in which the late day fatigue and stress of life (finance, family, romance, health) conspire to thwart all optimism. The depressed feeling that one is ill becomes inescapable. Not accidentally, the 10 day depression point immediately follows the cessation of the 4 day steroid regimen. The energy affected by the prednisone gives way to an emotional crash where, in the words of Hamlet, life seems “stale, flat, and unprofitable.” Yesterday my tongue and throat were sore, the gums and mucous membranes in the mouth, rough and irritated. The same crazy bald head in the mirror who’s ready to save the world now sees through sad eyes. Nobody knows what it’s like. I’m not done with lobbying Kaminski.
Let me try to clarify my point about the medications. Sometimes I have specific pain. Gout, for instance, can be excruciatingly painful. The throat and tongue can get so tender that talking (and I love to talk) becomes a moot point, and oftentimes embarrassing since the constriction affects a kind of slurred speech. In these cases the pain medication acts in a very specific way. Now I don’t know if it’s beneficial for a drug to mask symptoms. It may be that the pain that keeps us off of our feet, or the irritation that prevents idle chatter, or the sensitivity that keeps us from eating spicy foods, is a good thing, in that it prevents us from doing more harm to ourselves.
My point is this: the medication (oxycodone) that allows one to be comfortable in the face of these very specific side-effects is also reducing the psychological consequences of suffering these aches and pains. The pain being gone makes me feel physically better, and the absence of pain makes me feel stronger from the perspective of attitude and psychology. The knowledge that I have and can take the pills on a prescribed basis, whether the pain is specific or otherwise, gives me a sense of security. The cessation of pain makes me feel better emotionally. As much as we’d like to think it, the mind and body are not discrete entities. Physical and psychological wellness go hand in hand.
Long story short: I think your policy of prescribing a three week supply is sound. No, I don’t have a history of addiction, yes, I’m aware of how tolerance and intake have to be balanced. This is what I was alluding to about the double issue of being miserable from, a) the lack of pain medication, and b) the effects of the chemo. Yes, I would like you to provide me with another prescription, either today or Monday, and, No, this won’t be an issue again.
Peace - Randy
“The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.” 8/21/07 New York Times
On my mind: What do China and Utah have in common? Greed. Marx had it right. Capital is the ultimate ideology. The China story, as I recall, had to do with their market in organ transplants. It was reported that the harvesting of organs was being done in conjunction with public executions of condemned prisoners. Immediately after, and in some cases before, the executed had expired, medical teams would rush in and harvest eyes, skin, kidneys, hearts, livers and whatever else the highest bidder might pay for. Think about this, you are being eviscerated while still alive. In this particular story the emphasis was on the skin being flayed from living victims. So, what does this have to do with Utah? In a similar example of how profit knows no morality, the Murray mining company has too quickly decided the workers are dead, or at least entombed, and it’s time to move on. Much like the hapless prisoner whose skin is commodified even while he dies an agonizing death, the miners are given up to the altar of commerce even as new and unsafe holes are being dug. How craven are the wheels of progress, of industry, of capital.
“Napping is tiresome.”
-- R. Louis Tessier
“I was like, ‘Oh, we got hit. We got hit.’ And then I had blood on my face and the flies were landing all over my face. So I wiped my face to get rid of the flies. And that is when I noticed that my fingertip was gone. So I was like, ‘Oh, O.K.’
“So that is when I started really assessing myself. I was like, ‘That’s not bad.’ And then I turned my hand over, and I noticed that this chunk of my hand was gone. So I was like, ‘O.K., still not bad. I can live with that.’
“And then I went to wipe the flies on my face with my left hand, there was nothing there. So I was like, ‘Uh, that’s gone.’ And then I looked down and saw that my legs were gone. And then they had kind of forced my head back down to the ground, hoping that I wouldn’t see.
“Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq” – HBO Documentary
Dear Dr. Ahmed:
It’s Friday, August 24th, and I just came from a blood draw (it’s the nadir in the 3 week cycle). After our cell phone conversation yesterday, I thought it might be best if I composed my thoughts on e-mail. Regarding my meeting Kaminski, maybe it’ll happen maybe it won’t. Truth be told, the story of my cancer is losing its newness. The emotional swirl of being sick, researching the disease, bringing attention to the cause, and lobbying for better health/cancer care is slowly fading into the mundane, day to day reality of morning elation, mid-day optimism, late afternoon malaise and evening resignation. Life goes on. Someone gets cancer, there is a pause in their worldview, and life moves on, with or without them. I’m 10 days into the second cycle.
So how’s it been? While I only have the first treatment’s experience to draw upon, I can draw some conclusions. The ten day point signals the beginning of an emotional period in which the late day fatigue and stress of life (finance, family, romance, health) conspire to thwart all optimism. The depressed feeling that one is ill becomes inescapable. Not accidentally, the 10 day depression point immediately follows the cessation of the 4 day steroid regimen. The energy affected by the prednisone gives way to an emotional crash where, in the words of Hamlet, life seems “stale, flat, and unprofitable.” Yesterday my tongue and throat were sore, the gums and mucous membranes in the mouth, rough and irritated. The same crazy bald head in the mirror who’s ready to save the world now sees through sad eyes. Nobody knows what it’s like. I’m not done with lobbying Kaminski.
Let me try to clarify my point about the medications. Sometimes I have specific pain. Gout, for instance, can be excruciatingly painful. The throat and tongue can get so tender that talking (and I love to talk) becomes a moot point, and oftentimes embarrassing since the constriction affects a kind of slurred speech. In these cases the pain medication acts in a very specific way. Now I don’t know if it’s beneficial for a drug to mask symptoms. It may be that the pain that keeps us off of our feet, or the irritation that prevents idle chatter, or the sensitivity that keeps us from eating spicy foods, is a good thing, in that it prevents us from doing more harm to ourselves.
My point is this: the medication (oxycodone) that allows one to be comfortable in the face of these very specific side-effects is also reducing the psychological consequences of suffering these aches and pains. The pain being gone makes me feel physically better, and the absence of pain makes me feel stronger from the perspective of attitude and psychology. The knowledge that I have and can take the pills on a prescribed basis, whether the pain is specific or otherwise, gives me a sense of security. The cessation of pain makes me feel better emotionally. As much as we’d like to think it, the mind and body are not discrete entities. Physical and psychological wellness go hand in hand.
Long story short: I think your policy of prescribing a three week supply is sound. No, I don’t have a history of addiction, yes, I’m aware of how tolerance and intake have to be balanced. This is what I was alluding to about the double issue of being miserable from, a) the lack of pain medication, and b) the effects of the chemo. Yes, I would like you to provide me with another prescription, either today or Monday, and, No, this won’t be an issue again.
Peace - Randy
August 21, 2007
Plain of Jars
8/20/07
“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
-- C. J. Jung
“Let us not seek our disease outside ourselves; it is in us, planted in our bowels, and the mere fact that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick makes it harder for us to be cured.”
-- Seneca
-- Letters to Lucilius, 1st century A.D.
What to write?
Joybubbles, a blind genius with perfect pitch, and minister in his own Church of Eternal Childhood, is dead. Joybubbles, 58, had chosen in 1988 to remain 5 forever, and had the toys and teddybears to prove it. Joybubbles felt that being abused at a school for the blind and being pushed by his mother to live up to his 175 I.Q. had robbed him of his childhood. So he amassed piles of toys, Jack and Jill magazines and imaginary friends. Joybubbles was most famous for his uncanny ability to make free phone calls by whistling tones. Joybubbles’s parents had no phone for five years because of their son’s obsession. An avid collector of Mr. Rogers’s television shows, when asked why Mr. Rogers mattered, he said: “When you’re playing and you’re just you, powerful things happen.”
Reporter, Darren Everson, writes, “Tales of sweaty waits on un-airconditioned planes, smelly bathrooms, dirty seats and tray-tables smeared with mysterious schmutz abound this season.” What the hell is “schmutz”? I went to the dictionary. Nothing. Looking at Everson’s story from the Wall Street Journal reminded me of my last plane flight to Marquette. As 5 Roman Catholic priests and I awaited departure, the boarding agent announced that anyone having to use the restroom should do it before we took off, since the lavatory would be off limits during the flight. Given that I had actually used that bathroom two days earlier, I wasn’t surprised.
So what happened in the interim? Here’s the story as it was told to me by a gnome on the wing. The Saab 340 jet hit an air pocket, causing the sewage to overflow and spill down the aisle. Upon seeing this, I, in my chemo weakened condition, suspected a terrorist plot. Why this backwater? Why Sawyer? What kind of Fox hating, anti-Christ would plague me with this shit-storm on a flight to the U.P.? How low can you go, you Eastward facing limbo boys? Sure, the priests, and, as it turned out, bishops and cardinals, got through it fine; but think about what might have happened. What if these good fathers had ignored the signs (sign, sign, everywhere a sign…). Sandal deep radioactive shit, no problem! Allah be praised! Make no mistake, these men were pros, trained in Laos at a secret camp on the Plain of Jars. They calculated the timing of the spill to the second. It was pre-ordained that the acne scared steward would break his heel as he sprawled face first in the toxic goo. As a way of protecting himself from the world’s homophobia, he only wore his Gucci’s on domestic flights. And they, of course, knew this.
So it was no coincidence when Chaim Heffenlincke threw himself on top of the commode just as its Krapatowa payload erupted. Their meticulous planning had paid off. He knew that waiting just that split second made all the difference in the world; that the steward was now infected by the Milk of Mecca; and that this insignificant act would have earth shattering consequences. The test run of the perfect dirty bomb had gone off without a glitch. Sure, Heffenlincke was humiliated, but the idea that this was the germ of a new paradigm gave him immense satisfaction. Was it possible the nexus between disease and subjectivity might be exploded so completely that the enemy had become a purely biological entity? These are cells as psychopaths: twisted, clever, self-destructive, taking victims down along the way. But where are they from and what are they keeping me from doing? What strange alchemy do they deny me? What transmutative prolongation of life are they fixed on sabotaging? What strange, foreboding land do they beckon me toward, and why do I so dread their visit? It no longer matters, I’ve entered its un-holy borders. Here the enemy is invisible, bald P.O.W.s plod the streets, pushing IV poles while articulating the incomprehensible through graying surgical masks. Where should I, the priests, the doctors, the “Cytotoxic” legions, be deployed to thwart this scourge? Should we train our longbows on the crabby cockroaches in a way that gets them to leave the ground? Fly!
If you haven’t guessed by now, Heffenlincke was a double agent. Sure, he could pretend concern at the septic deluge, but this was really a dry (excuse the pun) run to see if airline sludge-floods might be an effective way to disrupt infidels. He had obviously decided to consult the ancient texts, “The Alopecia,” “The Teratrogenic Verses,” and “The Chronicles of Mutagenia.” Chaim was clever, a shape shifter who could morph from Christian, to Muslim, to pagan at will. Whether saying rosaries, reciting the Koran, or doing bong hits, his affect was flattened in such a way that he never, not even for a moment, doubted who he was. The only thing he couldn’t escape was the dream of Eisenhour. Eisenhour had killed himself. He had run out of negotiations and immunities. The germs in his guts and on his skin; the fungi and molds on his sheets and window sills; the kiss of his lover, were now deadly. He was a victim of myelosuppression. Ordinary life had become his nemesis. He had died of himself and the world. Avoiding produce, flowers, pets and children had been to no avail. Fearing bleeding, he banished razors, dental floss, tampons, barefooting, and sex, from his shrinking fiefdom. He had put on the masque of the red death and it wouldn’t come off.
The doctors had dismissed Eisenhour’s “chemo brain” as a symptom of stress. Pooh-poohing his cognitive dysfunction, they dismissed his inability to find the right word as a sign of age. Stepladder, cappachino, dill pickle, who cares? Eisenhour had seen it all: the tall, gaunt-bald prisoner in leg chains dwarfed by a storm trooper guard; the mentally ill patient who thought the configuration of the infusion tubing was the sign of a coming messiah; the dying supplicant who saw the chemo as a form of Extreme Unction, that last rite of the Catholics which ensures a pass through Heaven’s gate. All hail, Hale Bop! Eisenhour had been in Africa, where the leukemic blood-sludge was so thick the capillaries refused it. He was a veteran of war and disease. And so it goes.
“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
-- C. J. Jung
“Let us not seek our disease outside ourselves; it is in us, planted in our bowels, and the mere fact that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick makes it harder for us to be cured.”
-- Seneca
-- Letters to Lucilius, 1st century A.D.
What to write?
Joybubbles, a blind genius with perfect pitch, and minister in his own Church of Eternal Childhood, is dead. Joybubbles, 58, had chosen in 1988 to remain 5 forever, and had the toys and teddybears to prove it. Joybubbles felt that being abused at a school for the blind and being pushed by his mother to live up to his 175 I.Q. had robbed him of his childhood. So he amassed piles of toys, Jack and Jill magazines and imaginary friends. Joybubbles was most famous for his uncanny ability to make free phone calls by whistling tones. Joybubbles’s parents had no phone for five years because of their son’s obsession. An avid collector of Mr. Rogers’s television shows, when asked why Mr. Rogers mattered, he said: “When you’re playing and you’re just you, powerful things happen.”
Reporter, Darren Everson, writes, “Tales of sweaty waits on un-airconditioned planes, smelly bathrooms, dirty seats and tray-tables smeared with mysterious schmutz abound this season.” What the hell is “schmutz”? I went to the dictionary. Nothing. Looking at Everson’s story from the Wall Street Journal reminded me of my last plane flight to Marquette. As 5 Roman Catholic priests and I awaited departure, the boarding agent announced that anyone having to use the restroom should do it before we took off, since the lavatory would be off limits during the flight. Given that I had actually used that bathroom two days earlier, I wasn’t surprised.
So what happened in the interim? Here’s the story as it was told to me by a gnome on the wing. The Saab 340 jet hit an air pocket, causing the sewage to overflow and spill down the aisle. Upon seeing this, I, in my chemo weakened condition, suspected a terrorist plot. Why this backwater? Why Sawyer? What kind of Fox hating, anti-Christ would plague me with this shit-storm on a flight to the U.P.? How low can you go, you Eastward facing limbo boys? Sure, the priests, and, as it turned out, bishops and cardinals, got through it fine; but think about what might have happened. What if these good fathers had ignored the signs (sign, sign, everywhere a sign…). Sandal deep radioactive shit, no problem! Allah be praised! Make no mistake, these men were pros, trained in Laos at a secret camp on the Plain of Jars. They calculated the timing of the spill to the second. It was pre-ordained that the acne scared steward would break his heel as he sprawled face first in the toxic goo. As a way of protecting himself from the world’s homophobia, he only wore his Gucci’s on domestic flights. And they, of course, knew this.
So it was no coincidence when Chaim Heffenlincke threw himself on top of the commode just as its Krapatowa payload erupted. Their meticulous planning had paid off. He knew that waiting just that split second made all the difference in the world; that the steward was now infected by the Milk of Mecca; and that this insignificant act would have earth shattering consequences. The test run of the perfect dirty bomb had gone off without a glitch. Sure, Heffenlincke was humiliated, but the idea that this was the germ of a new paradigm gave him immense satisfaction. Was it possible the nexus between disease and subjectivity might be exploded so completely that the enemy had become a purely biological entity? These are cells as psychopaths: twisted, clever, self-destructive, taking victims down along the way. But where are they from and what are they keeping me from doing? What strange alchemy do they deny me? What transmutative prolongation of life are they fixed on sabotaging? What strange, foreboding land do they beckon me toward, and why do I so dread their visit? It no longer matters, I’ve entered its un-holy borders. Here the enemy is invisible, bald P.O.W.s plod the streets, pushing IV poles while articulating the incomprehensible through graying surgical masks. Where should I, the priests, the doctors, the “Cytotoxic” legions, be deployed to thwart this scourge? Should we train our longbows on the crabby cockroaches in a way that gets them to leave the ground? Fly!
If you haven’t guessed by now, Heffenlincke was a double agent. Sure, he could pretend concern at the septic deluge, but this was really a dry (excuse the pun) run to see if airline sludge-floods might be an effective way to disrupt infidels. He had obviously decided to consult the ancient texts, “The Alopecia,” “The Teratrogenic Verses,” and “The Chronicles of Mutagenia.” Chaim was clever, a shape shifter who could morph from Christian, to Muslim, to pagan at will. Whether saying rosaries, reciting the Koran, or doing bong hits, his affect was flattened in such a way that he never, not even for a moment, doubted who he was. The only thing he couldn’t escape was the dream of Eisenhour. Eisenhour had killed himself. He had run out of negotiations and immunities. The germs in his guts and on his skin; the fungi and molds on his sheets and window sills; the kiss of his lover, were now deadly. He was a victim of myelosuppression. Ordinary life had become his nemesis. He had died of himself and the world. Avoiding produce, flowers, pets and children had been to no avail. Fearing bleeding, he banished razors, dental floss, tampons, barefooting, and sex, from his shrinking fiefdom. He had put on the masque of the red death and it wouldn’t come off.
The doctors had dismissed Eisenhour’s “chemo brain” as a symptom of stress. Pooh-poohing his cognitive dysfunction, they dismissed his inability to find the right word as a sign of age. Stepladder, cappachino, dill pickle, who cares? Eisenhour had seen it all: the tall, gaunt-bald prisoner in leg chains dwarfed by a storm trooper guard; the mentally ill patient who thought the configuration of the infusion tubing was the sign of a coming messiah; the dying supplicant who saw the chemo as a form of Extreme Unction, that last rite of the Catholics which ensures a pass through Heaven’s gate. All hail, Hale Bop! Eisenhour had been in Africa, where the leukemic blood-sludge was so thick the capillaries refused it. He was a veteran of war and disease. And so it goes.
August 19, 2007
Scatological Thinking
8/19/07
“Often a noble face hides filthy ways.”
-- Euripides
-- Electra, 413 B.C.
Nobody’s wish washy about scatological humor. You either like it or you don’t. But from whence does our disgust over the lower bodily functions come? What is it they remind us of? Is our disgust context bound? Why is a hair on the head less offensive than a hair on the yolk of our fried egg?
“The Family! Home of all social evils, a charitable institution for indolent women, a prison workshop for the slaving breadwinner, and a hell for children.”
-- August Strindberg
The Son of a Servant, 1886
Max Roach died and it’s a rainy day. As an experiment, I thought I would simply sit in front of the keyboard and write all day, sort of a cyber-stream-of-consciousness. I’m listening to Jack DeJohnette. Got a call earlier complaining about my blog. It was from a relative. She wondered if Jesus was really my hero. The satellite guy was here. As it turns out, the trees in my neighbor's yard are blocking the signal. Great, it’s fall and I’m a compulsive football gambler with no T.V.….Just got a call from my brother (Paul) in the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan). Marquette set a record yesterday, it was 36 degrees. He caught two Walleye and two Pike. They were too small, so he released them.
“Rather know nothing than half-know much.”
-- Nietzsche
-- Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1883-92
After an interim in which David Swain and Dave Clark came over and helped me out, I’m back at it. Swain’s rock, funk big band, “Orange Door Hinge,” is going to play at the Heidelberg Club Above happy hour on Friday, October 19. Clark came over and tightened up the kitchen faucet. While he was here we talked about the art of flushing. One of Clark’s last two tasks here had to do with a clogged commode. Before we headed north after my first treatment, my friend, Don Kuhli, who, by his own admission, is a master of the super giant, sub-prime, bowel movement, left a memento of his brief stay. Unfortunately, my toilet was unable to accommodate his gift. After hearing the disgusting details from my intrepid roommate, Kim French, I decided it was time that I had a talk with Kuhli about the art of flushing. Apparently Don has never heard of the courtesy flush, that dual-purpose mid-visit evacuation of the bowl which ensures that innocent bystanders be spared the initial stench, and eases the carrying capacity of the throne’s total workload. Had he practiced this clog free, pre-wipe ritual, Clark’s visit would have been unnecessary. Visualization is also very helpful in these endeavors. Talking things down, tempered with a willful imagining of exactly where the effluence is going, provides an effective way of maintaining psychic control over a physically volatile situation. He also admitted to a serious toilet paper addiction. Much like my roommate, Don apparently feels that one can never wipe enough. Cleanliness is next to Godliness!
Goodbye!
“Often a noble face hides filthy ways.”
-- Euripides
-- Electra, 413 B.C.
Nobody’s wish washy about scatological humor. You either like it or you don’t. But from whence does our disgust over the lower bodily functions come? What is it they remind us of? Is our disgust context bound? Why is a hair on the head less offensive than a hair on the yolk of our fried egg?
“The Family! Home of all social evils, a charitable institution for indolent women, a prison workshop for the slaving breadwinner, and a hell for children.”
-- August Strindberg
The Son of a Servant, 1886
Max Roach died and it’s a rainy day. As an experiment, I thought I would simply sit in front of the keyboard and write all day, sort of a cyber-stream-of-consciousness. I’m listening to Jack DeJohnette. Got a call earlier complaining about my blog. It was from a relative. She wondered if Jesus was really my hero. The satellite guy was here. As it turns out, the trees in my neighbor's yard are blocking the signal. Great, it’s fall and I’m a compulsive football gambler with no T.V.….Just got a call from my brother (Paul) in the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan). Marquette set a record yesterday, it was 36 degrees. He caught two Walleye and two Pike. They were too small, so he released them.
“Rather know nothing than half-know much.”
-- Nietzsche
-- Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1883-92
After an interim in which David Swain and Dave Clark came over and helped me out, I’m back at it. Swain’s rock, funk big band, “Orange Door Hinge,” is going to play at the Heidelberg Club Above happy hour on Friday, October 19. Clark came over and tightened up the kitchen faucet. While he was here we talked about the art of flushing. One of Clark’s last two tasks here had to do with a clogged commode. Before we headed north after my first treatment, my friend, Don Kuhli, who, by his own admission, is a master of the super giant, sub-prime, bowel movement, left a memento of his brief stay. Unfortunately, my toilet was unable to accommodate his gift. After hearing the disgusting details from my intrepid roommate, Kim French, I decided it was time that I had a talk with Kuhli about the art of flushing. Apparently Don has never heard of the courtesy flush, that dual-purpose mid-visit evacuation of the bowl which ensures that innocent bystanders be spared the initial stench, and eases the carrying capacity of the throne’s total workload. Had he practiced this clog free, pre-wipe ritual, Clark’s visit would have been unnecessary. Visualization is also very helpful in these endeavors. Talking things down, tempered with a willful imagining of exactly where the effluence is going, provides an effective way of maintaining psychic control over a physically volatile situation. He also admitted to a serious toilet paper addiction. Much like my roommate, Don apparently feels that one can never wipe enough. Cleanliness is next to Godliness!
Goodbye!
August 18, 2007
The Flax Dog
8/18/07
“All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.”
W. H. Auden
A Certain World, 1971
A Short Story:
The Flax Dog
The opening between the low concrete wall and the Sherwood’s garage, the path that led into the Flax’s backyard, was only used by neighborhood insiders, mostly kids who knew, as it was possible to know 50 years ago, the layout of every backyard on Ridge street. At the front of the house stood a ramshackle seasonal porch, a dilapidated wooden vestibule that served as a coatroom and shelter in winter. It was, however, impossible to use this entrance, since an old refrigerator, 2 stoves and a toaster atop a dresser allowed no hint that the place had a front door. In fact, the back stairs off the kitchen at the side of the house were the only way in, and gaining entry meant going around the block, walking through the playground of St. John’s School and following the path through the cinders, between the garages and into the Flax’s backyard. Once there, the climb to Adolph’s kitchen was easy.
The hunched old man ran to greet Zeke, nodding and beckoning for him to come in. “Ezekial! Come into my pantry: I have something to show you,” he said with a knowing nod and a coaxing wink. Adolph usually promised food, and Zeke loved sweets, as he was always hungry. They quickly descended the stairs at the rear of the pantry into a musty, dank basement. Once there, they sat amidst mason jars and tool benches, two shabby wooden dressers flanked them as they talked. After rummaging in a small drawer littered with old screws, nails and rusty bolts, the old man found a small key. With this he opened a rusty metal box he had taken from above the furnace ductwork. “Look, look,” he said with glee. At first the boy could see nothing in the dim light, but gradually, a shape slowly emerged out of the shadow. “It’s a gun! Is it real?” “Of course it’s real, And look, something else,” the old man wheezed. Again he scrambled above the ductwork. Unraveling a sooty bandage he revealed a leather holster embossed with the Swastikas, Eagles and Iron Crosses of the Third Reich. “There,” he said. “This, my boy, is the Lugar I took off of a dead Nazi at the Battle of the Bulge—or was it the bridge at Aachen? Isn’t it something”! He encouraged the boy’s cautious fascination. “Here, feel the weight, it’s a real gun, how smooth the barrel, how soft the leather,” he went on. “And you have such beautiful small hands,” he continued, as the boy, now mesmerized by the physical presence of the gun, caressed it longingly. “Such delicate white hands, a tidy little soldier.” “No one has ever looked at my hands,” said Zeke. “Such exquisite hands: you must be joking. How could anyone ignore such hands?” Unequipped to respond to this flattery, Zeke was speechless. He could only follow Adolph upstairs to the fetid parlor off the pantry.
They passed the dark room where Adolph’s invalid wife, Ellen Flax, groaned softly and entered a parlor where her pump organ stood—silent and untouched. The gray light of the overcast day struggled through a grime covered double window, shading the thick dust on the black keys. Like the front porch, and for that matter every other room in the Flax house, the parlor was full of old things, most notably, an old drop leaf table from the Calumet Courthouse, three moth eaten wing backed chairs, and an antique card table with Enrico Caruso embossed on the centerpiece. Partially obscuring the window was a maple hutch, its binding slowly peeling away in the suffocating air. “Look at these treasures,” said Adolph. “So much wonderful stuff! And for what? How foolish we are! Come, sit and let me admire you. Your hair is so silky, isn’t it? So blond, and you never have someone to wash it and comb it?” At the stroke of Adolph’s hand, Zeke was suddenly aware of what it might mean to be groomed, to be cared for. “You must play the organ,” protested the old man. I’ll pump. Please try it, play something. How my Ellen used to play.” “But I can’t play,” Zeke protested. "I can’t”! “But those hands,“ pleaded the old man. For a moment he looked young, like Zeke, exhibiting the face of a boy-child trapped in the cocoon of a dying old man. His dirty brown pants had dropped a cuff and the beltless waist hung below dingy white boxers. But the little baby razor-face that enticed Zeke had soft, blue eyes, deeply set, and a gesturing smile that beamed with kindness. Since Zeke had arrived, Adolph had regressed in age; he was first 10, then 20 years younger. Now he sat on the organ bench, chattering away like a best friend, all the while scrutinizing Zeke’s every move and expression, lusting for approval—for acquiescence.
Zeke knew Adolph. The moral filth and the story of his wife’s accident were repulsive. The old man abused the sick wife, or so the neighborhood gossip had it, and Zeke felt pangs of conscience. Rumor was that Ellen could be heard wailing as he exited the back porch every morning, faintly screaming, “Adolph, Adolph! Help me. Stop! See the priest. Someone. Help!” Everyone knew the story, but no one ever did anything. They recognized no neighbors nor sought them out. But everyone knew (for Ellen had once kept Zelda in touch with the awful truth, filling her head with Adolph’s private cruelties and begging her to never tell a soul) that Adolph beat her, tortured her, and violated her, and that she was cut off from her family—Adolph had frightened them all off. The Demarests, to the west of them, and the Wests, to the east, had heard Ellen Flax’s plaintive moans, and his cruel shrieks and tirades in the early morning hours, and in the calm of some feast days. There was a pathetic kind of solidarity in their sad dialogue that perfectly suited their secluded drama.
And so it was that Zeke was irresistibly drawn to the sugar coated wickedness that swirled beneath Adolph Flax’s vile veneer. He listened with a feigned skepticism, an affectation of caution that disguised his eagerness; all the while observing Adolph’s habits -- and what customs there were in this hideous place. “Would you do me a favor?” asked the old man. “But you will hate me for it. You are strong and I can’t do this for myself. These old bones can’t carry it out.” Zeke eyed the old man with a combination of fear and curiosity. “What is it?” “Your hands. So sure. So strong…” Adolph paused, as if unsure of a way to discuss what he wanted done. He continued, “cruelty to an animal is a terrible thing. Would you be mean to an animal? Would you?” His piercing eyes demanded a certain truth. “No,” said Zeke,” “But sometimes you have to kill an animal, like if a wolf attacks or a crocodile pulls you under.” “True, true,” intoned the old man. “Yes, vicious animals. Even raccoons, and sometimes dogs and cats. Puppies are so sweet, their soft yips are nothing like the drone of a full grown yard-dog. Annoying, no doubt! But the absolute worst is the unfixed female: the bitch dog, yowling and bleeding through endless heats. Only last week my lawn was covered with dog shit and piss-spray. Her dirty habits foul my nest.” His icy eyes fixed on Zeke, their age commanding obedience. Zeke momentarily panicked, thinking Adolph was accusing him of something. “Why! Why is this happening?” the old man’s wicked tongue hissed. It’s horrible! Zeke said with false bravado. Adolph paused, wistfully noting, “I myself have always had dogs. Many times have I fed a stray while I myself went hungry. But there are limits to human kindness,” he trailed off, muttering angrily to himself. “Have you seen my handsome young dog? A mixed breed, black and white, spaniel and hound. You have seen it?” “Yes,” Zeke hesitated, “I know it.” The subterfuge was lifting.
The Flax’s dog, Mitsy, drew packs of mutts, dogs of every breed—although more mongrel than pedigree—to Adolph’s yard; Mitsy’s scent went everywhere, and where it went, there were her suitors, howling and whining at all hours of the day and night. The excreta was old and new, and the old man’s loathing was steeped in its fecal bouquet. “Ellen always tells me,” he whispered, “that I must never provoke the Demarests. Provoke! An old man like me—I am shy as a cockroach. But what shall I do about this dog, this full grown pup that has worn out its welcome,“ he pleaded with Zeke. Suddenly, Adolph’s look of concern turned to a pitiless gaze of such ferocity that Zeke’s will no longer had anything to do with who he was. “I must kill it! It is my duty and mine alone. But how? I hate killing! I release moths and flies, and even spiders that appear on my sill; I brake for squirrels, I love animals! But kill it I must. You, you Zeke could do it. You are strong and quick.” The old man paused. “Maybe you could get one of the bigger boys to do it. Maybe Rodney, he hates cats,” pleaded Zeke. The old man shook his head fiercely. No one but Zeke must know of his this deed, only he could be trusted to keep quiet. “I’ll do it!” said Zeke.
Adolph sat transfixed, content, self-satisfied. “You will,” he said. “Just tell me how and when,” said Zeke. The old man congratulated himself. “”Such a young man of honor, how noble, how selfless.” Adolph looked out the window and said matter-of-factly, “Mitsy’s in the back yard.” He quickly led Zeke out and pointed to a sad dog on a short chain; Mitsy lay forlornly amidst feces and rotting bones; baking in the mid-August heat. Now Adolph looked to Zeke for direction. When Zeke said they would need the big wooden pickling barrel Adolph used for his German Gherkins, it was produced at once along with the lid and clamps needed to seal it. “I’ll need a bacon strip,” said Zeke. Like an obedient child, the old man ran to the icebox eagerly. Zeke then proceeded, with little effort, to lure the dog into the overturned barrel. Once in, they clamped the lid shut on the now doomed dog. Instinctively apprehending its cruel fate, it whined piteously, pitifully mewling and crying. It scratched and clawed, its howl taking on an unearthly pitch of primordial woe. Zeke and Adolph, aghast at this otherworldly howl, were momentarily cowed, and then overcome by a fear that quickly turned to a malicious anger upon the realization that its frantic shrieks signaled an abject helplessness. “Here’s the hose,” the old man muttered disgustedly, as he hurriedly moved toward the laundry basin to turn on the water. Zeke directed the hose into a small hole in the top of the barrel. “Turn it on,” said Zeke. “Go ahead,” said the old man. “Do it Zeke. Do it!” and with that the old man disappeared, leaving Zeke as the barrel slowly filled with water. Zeke steadied the hose in the quivering vat. The dog frantically whimpered and squirmed. As the water neared the top of the barrel, Zeke struggled to ignore the awful sound of the dog’s clawing. Witnessing this produced a knot in the pit of Zeke’s stomach, but he held the hose fast as the convulsive spasms increased. The drowning death throes of the thing heaving in the barrel slowly abated. Time suspended itself as the drowning dog lingered in a kind of sad acceptance. Finally, it floated in watery repose, as if in an opaque specimen jar, a testimony to the vile capacity of human nature.
Zeke ascended from the basement into the arms of a smiling Adolph, silent, with tears of gratitude in his cold eyes. “I did it,” said Zeke. Adolph had changed. His kindly solicitude turned to mild disgust. His words now shaded with rebuke. “I would give you something, but it can’t be my German Lugar, not for such a cruel accomplishment. But I will give you a cookie.” “Okay,” said Zeke shamefully. “Come back when I’ve been to the grocery,” said the old man. “Then you’ll get your treat. Shouldn’t you be running along?” “No one's at the orphanage right now,” Zeke stammered. “I never buy cookies. Sweets are for weak children, like you,” the old man said coldly, venomously. At this, as if on cue, Ellen rang the little bell at her bedside. “Ah! Her silly distress signal,” said the old man, relieved. “You see. It’s feeding time,” Adolph said. He pushed Zeke out the back door and toward the path to Saint John’s School.
Zeke was confused that he had been invited in for the sole purpose of killing the Flax’s dog, but by his lights the old man loved him, and he had vanquished an evil from Flax house.
And now the news:
Washington, Aug. 16 (AP) – Ninety-nine soldiers killed themselves last year, the highest suicide rate in the Army in 26 years of record-keeping, a new report says. Nearly a third of the soldiers committed suicide while in Iraq or Afghanistan. It found a significant relationship between suicide attempts and the number of days deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops participate in the war effort. “Limited evidence” backs a theory that repeated deployments put more people at risk for suicide, the report said.
Paris, Le Matin, 1906 – Louis Lamarre had neither job nor home, but he did possess a few coins, At a grocery in Saint-Denis, he bought a liter of kerosene and drank it.
In the vicinity of Noisy-sur-Ecole, M. Louis Delillieau, seventy, dropped dead of sunstroke. Quickly his dog Fido ate his head.
There is no longer a God even for drunkards. Kersilie, of Saint-Germain, who had mistaken the window for the door, is dead.
Washington, Aug. 16 – Notes taken by director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. say that Attorney General John Ashcroft was “barely articulate,” “feeble” and “clearly stressed” shortly after a hospital-room meeting in March 2004 in which two top White House Aides (Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Jr., then the White House chief of staff) tried to persuade him to sign an extension for eavesdropping on Americans without warrants. Mr. Mueller said in the notes that he had gone to the hospital after receiving a call, arriving at 7:40 p.m. and departing at 8:20. His notes said that Mr. Ashcroft, who had undergone gall bladder surgery the previous day, was in “no condition” to receive visitors.
Kansas City, Mo – A man threw his seriously ill wife four stories to her death because he could no longer afford to pay for her medical care. Court documents say that Steve Reeder walked his wife to the balcony of their apartment and kissed her before throwing her over. She had been under treatment for neurological problems and uterine cancer.
Wyandotte, Mi. - In a horror story eerily reminiscent to that of the French woman whose face was eaten off by her dog, the decomposing bodies of a middle-aged couple were found partially devoured in a suburb of Detroit. Apparently, a despondently ill man inadvertently misidentified his medications, causing both he and his girlfriend to lose consciousness. Tragically, at this point it was conjectured that their loyal cat, Casey, overcome by the delicious smell of a beef stroganoff reduction simmering on the stove, ravaged the dead couple’s faces. According to the medical examiner, the close resemblance between two pills, Zolpidem (a sleeping pill) and Oxycodone (a painkiller), resulted in the victims’ accidentally ingesting too many of the sleeping pills.
Ziguinchor, Senegal, Feb 14, 2003 – A boat called the Joola, en route to Dakar, capsized into the Atlantic. 1,863 people died, putting the sinking among the worst maritime disasters ever. The ferry was the last boat to Dakar before school and university classes got under way. On board were an estimated 400 students: the brightest young minds of Ziguinchor, piled virtually on top of each other with their school books, new shoes and dreams by the trunkload.
“All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.”
W. H. Auden
A Certain World, 1971
A Short Story:
The Flax Dog
The opening between the low concrete wall and the Sherwood’s garage, the path that led into the Flax’s backyard, was only used by neighborhood insiders, mostly kids who knew, as it was possible to know 50 years ago, the layout of every backyard on Ridge street. At the front of the house stood a ramshackle seasonal porch, a dilapidated wooden vestibule that served as a coatroom and shelter in winter. It was, however, impossible to use this entrance, since an old refrigerator, 2 stoves and a toaster atop a dresser allowed no hint that the place had a front door. In fact, the back stairs off the kitchen at the side of the house were the only way in, and gaining entry meant going around the block, walking through the playground of St. John’s School and following the path through the cinders, between the garages and into the Flax’s backyard. Once there, the climb to Adolph’s kitchen was easy.
The hunched old man ran to greet Zeke, nodding and beckoning for him to come in. “Ezekial! Come into my pantry: I have something to show you,” he said with a knowing nod and a coaxing wink. Adolph usually promised food, and Zeke loved sweets, as he was always hungry. They quickly descended the stairs at the rear of the pantry into a musty, dank basement. Once there, they sat amidst mason jars and tool benches, two shabby wooden dressers flanked them as they talked. After rummaging in a small drawer littered with old screws, nails and rusty bolts, the old man found a small key. With this he opened a rusty metal box he had taken from above the furnace ductwork. “Look, look,” he said with glee. At first the boy could see nothing in the dim light, but gradually, a shape slowly emerged out of the shadow. “It’s a gun! Is it real?” “Of course it’s real, And look, something else,” the old man wheezed. Again he scrambled above the ductwork. Unraveling a sooty bandage he revealed a leather holster embossed with the Swastikas, Eagles and Iron Crosses of the Third Reich. “There,” he said. “This, my boy, is the Lugar I took off of a dead Nazi at the Battle of the Bulge—or was it the bridge at Aachen? Isn’t it something”! He encouraged the boy’s cautious fascination. “Here, feel the weight, it’s a real gun, how smooth the barrel, how soft the leather,” he went on. “And you have such beautiful small hands,” he continued, as the boy, now mesmerized by the physical presence of the gun, caressed it longingly. “Such delicate white hands, a tidy little soldier.” “No one has ever looked at my hands,” said Zeke. “Such exquisite hands: you must be joking. How could anyone ignore such hands?” Unequipped to respond to this flattery, Zeke was speechless. He could only follow Adolph upstairs to the fetid parlor off the pantry.
They passed the dark room where Adolph’s invalid wife, Ellen Flax, groaned softly and entered a parlor where her pump organ stood—silent and untouched. The gray light of the overcast day struggled through a grime covered double window, shading the thick dust on the black keys. Like the front porch, and for that matter every other room in the Flax house, the parlor was full of old things, most notably, an old drop leaf table from the Calumet Courthouse, three moth eaten wing backed chairs, and an antique card table with Enrico Caruso embossed on the centerpiece. Partially obscuring the window was a maple hutch, its binding slowly peeling away in the suffocating air. “Look at these treasures,” said Adolph. “So much wonderful stuff! And for what? How foolish we are! Come, sit and let me admire you. Your hair is so silky, isn’t it? So blond, and you never have someone to wash it and comb it?” At the stroke of Adolph’s hand, Zeke was suddenly aware of what it might mean to be groomed, to be cared for. “You must play the organ,” protested the old man. I’ll pump. Please try it, play something. How my Ellen used to play.” “But I can’t play,” Zeke protested. "I can’t”! “But those hands,“ pleaded the old man. For a moment he looked young, like Zeke, exhibiting the face of a boy-child trapped in the cocoon of a dying old man. His dirty brown pants had dropped a cuff and the beltless waist hung below dingy white boxers. But the little baby razor-face that enticed Zeke had soft, blue eyes, deeply set, and a gesturing smile that beamed with kindness. Since Zeke had arrived, Adolph had regressed in age; he was first 10, then 20 years younger. Now he sat on the organ bench, chattering away like a best friend, all the while scrutinizing Zeke’s every move and expression, lusting for approval—for acquiescence.
Zeke knew Adolph. The moral filth and the story of his wife’s accident were repulsive. The old man abused the sick wife, or so the neighborhood gossip had it, and Zeke felt pangs of conscience. Rumor was that Ellen could be heard wailing as he exited the back porch every morning, faintly screaming, “Adolph, Adolph! Help me. Stop! See the priest. Someone. Help!” Everyone knew the story, but no one ever did anything. They recognized no neighbors nor sought them out. But everyone knew (for Ellen had once kept Zelda in touch with the awful truth, filling her head with Adolph’s private cruelties and begging her to never tell a soul) that Adolph beat her, tortured her, and violated her, and that she was cut off from her family—Adolph had frightened them all off. The Demarests, to the west of them, and the Wests, to the east, had heard Ellen Flax’s plaintive moans, and his cruel shrieks and tirades in the early morning hours, and in the calm of some feast days. There was a pathetic kind of solidarity in their sad dialogue that perfectly suited their secluded drama.
And so it was that Zeke was irresistibly drawn to the sugar coated wickedness that swirled beneath Adolph Flax’s vile veneer. He listened with a feigned skepticism, an affectation of caution that disguised his eagerness; all the while observing Adolph’s habits -- and what customs there were in this hideous place. “Would you do me a favor?” asked the old man. “But you will hate me for it. You are strong and I can’t do this for myself. These old bones can’t carry it out.” Zeke eyed the old man with a combination of fear and curiosity. “What is it?” “Your hands. So sure. So strong…” Adolph paused, as if unsure of a way to discuss what he wanted done. He continued, “cruelty to an animal is a terrible thing. Would you be mean to an animal? Would you?” His piercing eyes demanded a certain truth. “No,” said Zeke,” “But sometimes you have to kill an animal, like if a wolf attacks or a crocodile pulls you under.” “True, true,” intoned the old man. “Yes, vicious animals. Even raccoons, and sometimes dogs and cats. Puppies are so sweet, their soft yips are nothing like the drone of a full grown yard-dog. Annoying, no doubt! But the absolute worst is the unfixed female: the bitch dog, yowling and bleeding through endless heats. Only last week my lawn was covered with dog shit and piss-spray. Her dirty habits foul my nest.” His icy eyes fixed on Zeke, their age commanding obedience. Zeke momentarily panicked, thinking Adolph was accusing him of something. “Why! Why is this happening?” the old man’s wicked tongue hissed. It’s horrible! Zeke said with false bravado. Adolph paused, wistfully noting, “I myself have always had dogs. Many times have I fed a stray while I myself went hungry. But there are limits to human kindness,” he trailed off, muttering angrily to himself. “Have you seen my handsome young dog? A mixed breed, black and white, spaniel and hound. You have seen it?” “Yes,” Zeke hesitated, “I know it.” The subterfuge was lifting.
The Flax’s dog, Mitsy, drew packs of mutts, dogs of every breed—although more mongrel than pedigree—to Adolph’s yard; Mitsy’s scent went everywhere, and where it went, there were her suitors, howling and whining at all hours of the day and night. The excreta was old and new, and the old man’s loathing was steeped in its fecal bouquet. “Ellen always tells me,” he whispered, “that I must never provoke the Demarests. Provoke! An old man like me—I am shy as a cockroach. But what shall I do about this dog, this full grown pup that has worn out its welcome,“ he pleaded with Zeke. Suddenly, Adolph’s look of concern turned to a pitiless gaze of such ferocity that Zeke’s will no longer had anything to do with who he was. “I must kill it! It is my duty and mine alone. But how? I hate killing! I release moths and flies, and even spiders that appear on my sill; I brake for squirrels, I love animals! But kill it I must. You, you Zeke could do it. You are strong and quick.” The old man paused. “Maybe you could get one of the bigger boys to do it. Maybe Rodney, he hates cats,” pleaded Zeke. The old man shook his head fiercely. No one but Zeke must know of his this deed, only he could be trusted to keep quiet. “I’ll do it!” said Zeke.
Adolph sat transfixed, content, self-satisfied. “You will,” he said. “Just tell me how and when,” said Zeke. The old man congratulated himself. “”Such a young man of honor, how noble, how selfless.” Adolph looked out the window and said matter-of-factly, “Mitsy’s in the back yard.” He quickly led Zeke out and pointed to a sad dog on a short chain; Mitsy lay forlornly amidst feces and rotting bones; baking in the mid-August heat. Now Adolph looked to Zeke for direction. When Zeke said they would need the big wooden pickling barrel Adolph used for his German Gherkins, it was produced at once along with the lid and clamps needed to seal it. “I’ll need a bacon strip,” said Zeke. Like an obedient child, the old man ran to the icebox eagerly. Zeke then proceeded, with little effort, to lure the dog into the overturned barrel. Once in, they clamped the lid shut on the now doomed dog. Instinctively apprehending its cruel fate, it whined piteously, pitifully mewling and crying. It scratched and clawed, its howl taking on an unearthly pitch of primordial woe. Zeke and Adolph, aghast at this otherworldly howl, were momentarily cowed, and then overcome by a fear that quickly turned to a malicious anger upon the realization that its frantic shrieks signaled an abject helplessness. “Here’s the hose,” the old man muttered disgustedly, as he hurriedly moved toward the laundry basin to turn on the water. Zeke directed the hose into a small hole in the top of the barrel. “Turn it on,” said Zeke. “Go ahead,” said the old man. “Do it Zeke. Do it!” and with that the old man disappeared, leaving Zeke as the barrel slowly filled with water. Zeke steadied the hose in the quivering vat. The dog frantically whimpered and squirmed. As the water neared the top of the barrel, Zeke struggled to ignore the awful sound of the dog’s clawing. Witnessing this produced a knot in the pit of Zeke’s stomach, but he held the hose fast as the convulsive spasms increased. The drowning death throes of the thing heaving in the barrel slowly abated. Time suspended itself as the drowning dog lingered in a kind of sad acceptance. Finally, it floated in watery repose, as if in an opaque specimen jar, a testimony to the vile capacity of human nature.
Zeke ascended from the basement into the arms of a smiling Adolph, silent, with tears of gratitude in his cold eyes. “I did it,” said Zeke. Adolph had changed. His kindly solicitude turned to mild disgust. His words now shaded with rebuke. “I would give you something, but it can’t be my German Lugar, not for such a cruel accomplishment. But I will give you a cookie.” “Okay,” said Zeke shamefully. “Come back when I’ve been to the grocery,” said the old man. “Then you’ll get your treat. Shouldn’t you be running along?” “No one's at the orphanage right now,” Zeke stammered. “I never buy cookies. Sweets are for weak children, like you,” the old man said coldly, venomously. At this, as if on cue, Ellen rang the little bell at her bedside. “Ah! Her silly distress signal,” said the old man, relieved. “You see. It’s feeding time,” Adolph said. He pushed Zeke out the back door and toward the path to Saint John’s School.
Zeke was confused that he had been invited in for the sole purpose of killing the Flax’s dog, but by his lights the old man loved him, and he had vanquished an evil from Flax house.
And now the news:
Washington, Aug. 16 (AP) – Ninety-nine soldiers killed themselves last year, the highest suicide rate in the Army in 26 years of record-keeping, a new report says. Nearly a third of the soldiers committed suicide while in Iraq or Afghanistan. It found a significant relationship between suicide attempts and the number of days deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops participate in the war effort. “Limited evidence” backs a theory that repeated deployments put more people at risk for suicide, the report said.
Paris, Le Matin, 1906 – Louis Lamarre had neither job nor home, but he did possess a few coins, At a grocery in Saint-Denis, he bought a liter of kerosene and drank it.
In the vicinity of Noisy-sur-Ecole, M. Louis Delillieau, seventy, dropped dead of sunstroke. Quickly his dog Fido ate his head.
There is no longer a God even for drunkards. Kersilie, of Saint-Germain, who had mistaken the window for the door, is dead.
Washington, Aug. 16 – Notes taken by director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. say that Attorney General John Ashcroft was “barely articulate,” “feeble” and “clearly stressed” shortly after a hospital-room meeting in March 2004 in which two top White House Aides (Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Jr., then the White House chief of staff) tried to persuade him to sign an extension for eavesdropping on Americans without warrants. Mr. Mueller said in the notes that he had gone to the hospital after receiving a call, arriving at 7:40 p.m. and departing at 8:20. His notes said that Mr. Ashcroft, who had undergone gall bladder surgery the previous day, was in “no condition” to receive visitors.
Kansas City, Mo – A man threw his seriously ill wife four stories to her death because he could no longer afford to pay for her medical care. Court documents say that Steve Reeder walked his wife to the balcony of their apartment and kissed her before throwing her over. She had been under treatment for neurological problems and uterine cancer.
Wyandotte, Mi. - In a horror story eerily reminiscent to that of the French woman whose face was eaten off by her dog, the decomposing bodies of a middle-aged couple were found partially devoured in a suburb of Detroit. Apparently, a despondently ill man inadvertently misidentified his medications, causing both he and his girlfriend to lose consciousness. Tragically, at this point it was conjectured that their loyal cat, Casey, overcome by the delicious smell of a beef stroganoff reduction simmering on the stove, ravaged the dead couple’s faces. According to the medical examiner, the close resemblance between two pills, Zolpidem (a sleeping pill) and Oxycodone (a painkiller), resulted in the victims’ accidentally ingesting too many of the sleeping pills.
Ziguinchor, Senegal, Feb 14, 2003 – A boat called the Joola, en route to Dakar, capsized into the Atlantic. 1,863 people died, putting the sinking among the worst maritime disasters ever. The ferry was the last boat to Dakar before school and university classes got under way. On board were an estimated 400 students: the brightest young minds of Ziguinchor, piled virtually on top of each other with their school books, new shoes and dreams by the trunkload.
August 16, 2007
Chemo Gangsters
8/16/07
“The growth of large business is merely the survival of the fittest.”
-- John D. Rockefeller
“What is a man if he is not a thief who openly charges as much as he can for the goods he sells?”
-- M. K. Ghandi
Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1948
Dear Dr. Ahmed: FYI
Here’s the way the numbers are juggled (I’m sure the insurance companies/pharmaceutical lobbies/ corporate greed have nothing to do with this):
“Oncologists (cancer doctors) have financial incentives to use drugs other than Bexxar, which they are not paid to administer.”
“At least half the patients who get referred to me (Dr. Oliver W. Press) have had least 10 courses of treatment.”
“Both drugs (Zevalin and Bexxar) are very expensive, costing about $25,000 per treatment. But one dose is usually sufficient.”
“Because lymphoma is relatively common, and Rituxan costs $20,000 for a typical COURSE OF TREATMENT, it is the top selling cancer drug in the world.”
All quotes above are from the July 14, 2007 Times article
BULLSHIT!
A course of treatment with Rituxan includes a minimum of 6 infusions over an 18 week period. I received the bill for the first of the 6. The total bill was $14,097.59. The Rituxan portion of the bill was $11,768.51.
6 times 11,768.51 equals $70,611.06.
Twenty grand vs: seventy grand, do the math. Is it any wonder the drug companies don’t like Bexxar?
Best – Randy Tessier
P.S. Hi Dr. Ahmed, I’m doing splendidly!
“The growth of large business is merely the survival of the fittest.”
-- John D. Rockefeller
“What is a man if he is not a thief who openly charges as much as he can for the goods he sells?”
-- M. K. Ghandi
Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1948
Dear Dr. Ahmed: FYI
Here’s the way the numbers are juggled (I’m sure the insurance companies/pharmaceutical lobbies/ corporate greed have nothing to do with this):
“Oncologists (cancer doctors) have financial incentives to use drugs other than Bexxar, which they are not paid to administer.”
“At least half the patients who get referred to me (Dr. Oliver W. Press) have had least 10 courses of treatment.”
“Both drugs (Zevalin and Bexxar) are very expensive, costing about $25,000 per treatment. But one dose is usually sufficient.”
“Because lymphoma is relatively common, and Rituxan costs $20,000 for a typical COURSE OF TREATMENT, it is the top selling cancer drug in the world.”
All quotes above are from the July 14, 2007 Times article
BULLSHIT!
A course of treatment with Rituxan includes a minimum of 6 infusions over an 18 week period. I received the bill for the first of the 6. The total bill was $14,097.59. The Rituxan portion of the bill was $11,768.51.
6 times 11,768.51 equals $70,611.06.
Twenty grand vs: seventy grand, do the math. Is it any wonder the drug companies don’t like Bexxar?
Best – Randy Tessier
P.S. Hi Dr. Ahmed, I’m doing splendidly!
August 15, 2007
The Tongue of Turin
8/18/07
“Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart."
-- W.B. Yeats, "The Circus Animals' Desertion" (1939)
Look closely. Look closer. That’s right folks, it’s Jesus. Where, but on the tongue of my loyal guard coyote, Jackie, would an icon so miraculous, so serendipitous, so blessed, appear. The photo you see before you was taken at a fishing camp in old Big Bay. The pelt itself, draped over the antlers in the image, hangs above a knotty pine portico that leads into the kitchen. As is my wont of an afternoon, I was gazing over the sparkling big sea water, when suddenly, the rough beast’s tongue caught my attention. Whence came this apparition? Was it possibly an effect of the steroid, a simple roid kill on the canyon highways of my mind? Why me, Lord? Blinded like the sinful Saul on the road to Damascus, I fell to my knees. Hamlet-like, I challenged the hallucination to make itself flesh. Recalling the many times as a child that I saw the blood dripping from the statuary at the stations of the cross, I kept repeating, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks…I do, I do, I do….A swarm of biting black flies shook me from my reverie. I shouted, Praise God! Praise God? Then, wincing, as my gouty toe rudely jerked me from the realm of the supernatural into the vortex of the real, I fell in a teary heap. I tried everything -- turkey rhubarb teas, energy massages, Ki therapy, macrobiotic diets, detoxifying ointments -- you name it, I still had cancer. What to do? Should I turn to conventional medicine? That’s expensive. Then it hit me: sell the Jesus image on e-bay and use the money to finance the best treatment available. But, first, I had something to do. Find out more about the American Healthcare system.
After finding out more, this is what I have to say.
With the economy in freefall, largely because we have poured billions and billions into a senseless war while at the same time neglecting a crumbling infrastructure, the upkeep of which would provide countless American jobs; and with the growing public unease about the continuing loss of jobs at every level of the employment strata, it’s no wonder that the American people are concerned about healthcare. How can you have, as President Bush suggests, “the best health care system in the world” while at the same time not have universal health coverage?
It is disturbing, if not unconscionable, that in a society we consider to be philosophically enlightened, modern, and founded on a Christian based morality, there are 45 million people without health insurance. While the hyperbolic claims of Michael Moore’s documentary, “Sicko” exaggerate the disparities between European national health care systems and the United States’, a closer look reveals glaring shortcomings in the way we treat illness.
In truth, the lack of a centralized insurance system puts the onus on disparate patients and providers to identify and coordinate their treatment. A national health care plan would result in the application of technologies and monies in a more efficient way, a way that standardizes treatments and reduces the confusion of a non-centralized system.
While the implementation of a national health care plan has been vilified as a form of “socialized medicine” and as an inept tangle of big government bureaucracy just waiting to be unleashed, the fact is, according to a study conducted seven years ago by the World Health Organization, in a ranking of 191 nations the United States ranked 37th. Similarly, surveys of patients and doctors conducted by the Commonwealth Fund rank the U.S. below Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom in terms of quality of care and access to it.
True, if one receives medical treatment at one of the many top medical centers in the U.S., the care is first rate. But should we really be surprised that having the most powerful economy in the world and having the world’s best medical care are in many ways incompatible? The rich will get the very best care while the poor remain neglected. For if having this powerful economy is a nation’s holy grail, and if this quest is geared toward lining the pockets of that small percentage of the wealthiest, is it any wonder that the U.S. health care system reflects this disparity exactly? Uninsured low-income families and those with skimpy coverage suffer the most.
Let’s look at two particular cancer cases, and compare them in the ways they relate to a number of problem areas under the American system. My friend Bill has no health insurance and is covered by a Washtenaw County Fund for needy families. I, on the other hand, have M-Care, a top-notch health insurance plan that covers many U-M employees. Bill’s story underscores what many studies have shown about the uninsured, they consistently resist seeking treatment. In doing so they not only risk allowing minor maladies to become major illnesses, but willingly compromise their own health and put a greater financial burden on the emergency rooms and social programs they utilize. In Bill’s case, before he was diagnosed with lung cancer, his wife, Martha, and I had to beg him to seek treatment. His response was typical, without insurance the visit would cost too much. Regarding physician’s access, when Bill pages his doctor he routinely waits a week for a return call. In my case, I have always been assured I would be contacted within a half hour, and it has never taken more than fifteen minutes. But even those U.S. citizens with above average incomes have a much harder time than their European counterparts in getting care on nights or weekends. In terms of top-of-the-line care, my P.E.T. scan was done in the modern comfort of U-M hospital’s medical procedures unit, while Bill’s was done in a mobile scan trailer parked in the back of a less prestigious local hospital. My chemo infusions are administered in either a private room or a space that accommodates two patients, both have windows. Bill sits in a windowless room where twenty patients in a circle receive group chemotherapy. Bill, whose cancer is much farther along, and of a different type, receives 7.5 Vicodan, a medicine that severely affects his already weakened digestive system, while I have been prescribed Oxycodone, a much more stomach friendly, and less adulterated , pain reliever, and one that Bill should have had access to long ago. The differences in palliative care between the rich and the poor are appalling.
The health care debate is real and it’s not going away. With this in mind, isn’t it time that Congress, as well as the potential presidential candidates, stepped up to the plate in terms of eliminating the vast numbers of our uninsured citizens, and leveling the playing field economically in terms of quality of care. Moreover, given our enormous economic might, and our claim to being the most morally enlightened society in the world, shouldn’t it be our duty to offer the best health care system on the planet.
“Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart."
-- W.B. Yeats, "The Circus Animals' Desertion" (1939)
Look closely. Look closer. That’s right folks, it’s Jesus. Where, but on the tongue of my loyal guard coyote, Jackie, would an icon so miraculous, so serendipitous, so blessed, appear. The photo you see before you was taken at a fishing camp in old Big Bay. The pelt itself, draped over the antlers in the image, hangs above a knotty pine portico that leads into the kitchen. As is my wont of an afternoon, I was gazing over the sparkling big sea water, when suddenly, the rough beast’s tongue caught my attention. Whence came this apparition? Was it possibly an effect of the steroid, a simple roid kill on the canyon highways of my mind? Why me, Lord? Blinded like the sinful Saul on the road to Damascus, I fell to my knees. Hamlet-like, I challenged the hallucination to make itself flesh. Recalling the many times as a child that I saw the blood dripping from the statuary at the stations of the cross, I kept repeating, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks…I do, I do, I do….A swarm of biting black flies shook me from my reverie. I shouted, Praise God! Praise God? Then, wincing, as my gouty toe rudely jerked me from the realm of the supernatural into the vortex of the real, I fell in a teary heap. I tried everything -- turkey rhubarb teas, energy massages, Ki therapy, macrobiotic diets, detoxifying ointments -- you name it, I still had cancer. What to do? Should I turn to conventional medicine? That’s expensive. Then it hit me: sell the Jesus image on e-bay and use the money to finance the best treatment available. But, first, I had something to do. Find out more about the American Healthcare system.
After finding out more, this is what I have to say.
With the economy in freefall, largely because we have poured billions and billions into a senseless war while at the same time neglecting a crumbling infrastructure, the upkeep of which would provide countless American jobs; and with the growing public unease about the continuing loss of jobs at every level of the employment strata, it’s no wonder that the American people are concerned about healthcare. How can you have, as President Bush suggests, “the best health care system in the world” while at the same time not have universal health coverage?
It is disturbing, if not unconscionable, that in a society we consider to be philosophically enlightened, modern, and founded on a Christian based morality, there are 45 million people without health insurance. While the hyperbolic claims of Michael Moore’s documentary, “Sicko” exaggerate the disparities between European national health care systems and the United States’, a closer look reveals glaring shortcomings in the way we treat illness.
In truth, the lack of a centralized insurance system puts the onus on disparate patients and providers to identify and coordinate their treatment. A national health care plan would result in the application of technologies and monies in a more efficient way, a way that standardizes treatments and reduces the confusion of a non-centralized system.
While the implementation of a national health care plan has been vilified as a form of “socialized medicine” and as an inept tangle of big government bureaucracy just waiting to be unleashed, the fact is, according to a study conducted seven years ago by the World Health Organization, in a ranking of 191 nations the United States ranked 37th. Similarly, surveys of patients and doctors conducted by the Commonwealth Fund rank the U.S. below Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom in terms of quality of care and access to it.
True, if one receives medical treatment at one of the many top medical centers in the U.S., the care is first rate. But should we really be surprised that having the most powerful economy in the world and having the world’s best medical care are in many ways incompatible? The rich will get the very best care while the poor remain neglected. For if having this powerful economy is a nation’s holy grail, and if this quest is geared toward lining the pockets of that small percentage of the wealthiest, is it any wonder that the U.S. health care system reflects this disparity exactly? Uninsured low-income families and those with skimpy coverage suffer the most.
Let’s look at two particular cancer cases, and compare them in the ways they relate to a number of problem areas under the American system. My friend Bill has no health insurance and is covered by a Washtenaw County Fund for needy families. I, on the other hand, have M-Care, a top-notch health insurance plan that covers many U-M employees. Bill’s story underscores what many studies have shown about the uninsured, they consistently resist seeking treatment. In doing so they not only risk allowing minor maladies to become major illnesses, but willingly compromise their own health and put a greater financial burden on the emergency rooms and social programs they utilize. In Bill’s case, before he was diagnosed with lung cancer, his wife, Martha, and I had to beg him to seek treatment. His response was typical, without insurance the visit would cost too much. Regarding physician’s access, when Bill pages his doctor he routinely waits a week for a return call. In my case, I have always been assured I would be contacted within a half hour, and it has never taken more than fifteen minutes. But even those U.S. citizens with above average incomes have a much harder time than their European counterparts in getting care on nights or weekends. In terms of top-of-the-line care, my P.E.T. scan was done in the modern comfort of U-M hospital’s medical procedures unit, while Bill’s was done in a mobile scan trailer parked in the back of a less prestigious local hospital. My chemo infusions are administered in either a private room or a space that accommodates two patients, both have windows. Bill sits in a windowless room where twenty patients in a circle receive group chemotherapy. Bill, whose cancer is much farther along, and of a different type, receives 7.5 Vicodan, a medicine that severely affects his already weakened digestive system, while I have been prescribed Oxycodone, a much more stomach friendly, and less adulterated , pain reliever, and one that Bill should have had access to long ago. The differences in palliative care between the rich and the poor are appalling.
The health care debate is real and it’s not going away. With this in mind, isn’t it time that Congress, as well as the potential presidential candidates, stepped up to the plate in terms of eliminating the vast numbers of our uninsured citizens, and leveling the playing field economically in terms of quality of care. Moreover, given our enormous economic might, and our claim to being the most morally enlightened society in the world, shouldn’t it be our duty to offer the best health care system on the planet.
August 11, 2007
Big Boo Hoo
08/10/07
“Until man learns to accept his fellow man with all his faults, as well as his virtues, there can be no peace, no joy, no real understanding.”
Henry Miller -- Ecco Homo, 1967
Today I want to talk about some issues surrounding having cancer: “the unknown,” “the future,” and “goodbyes.” I’ll also address the editorial published in the August 8, Ann Arbor News, “U-M doctor pioneering radical new, short cancer treatment,” and some of the comments it generated. First, the editorial feedback: one of my colleagues at U-M thought I should have mentioned my affiliation with the U and my positions in the English Department and Comprehensive Studies Program. I’m not sure why I failed to include this information, but consider it done. Another friend, Ms. Picard, was sweetly pissed off (mildly outraged is, perhaps, a more apt description) that she could have seen me working out at the gym (CCRB) so recently, only to find out that I now have cancer. I know, Allysia, it really sucks. Joannie K., thank you so much for your concern, I know you’ve had health issues for many years, and are familiar with living with illness.
I’m beginning to gain some insight on just exactly what people mean what they say, “You’re lucky you’ve got your health,” or, “At least if you’re not happy, you’ve got your health,” (that always brings a wince, since it implies that happiness is an impossibility) or, “Health is our greatest wealth,” (Oh! That’s nice, if you’re sick or you’re poor.). Last Friday at midnight, after having been up for twenty hours straight, I looked out over a crowd of happy dancers reveling to the music of George Bedard. I was tired and angry. A feeling came over me that I had yet to experience: “I’m exhausted and sick,” I thought. “Why don’t you all go home and let me do the same?” But then I realized something: Why shouldn’t they all be having fun? They don’t know how I feel, and I can’t blame or resent them for my misery, or for being happy, or for wanting GB&theKPins to play all night. We jog, eat granola, do yoga, etc., all with the idea of staying healthy, but when it comes right down to it, we take our health for granted. And why shouldn’t we? We’re hard wired that way, we’re programmed to survive, and by golly that’s what we’re going to do. And that’s a good thing, because when the shit hits the fan, and the cancer, gout, hemorrhoids, mange, mouth sores, and aching gums come a courting, it’s best that we didn’t spend a lot of time anticipating them. There lies the way of psychotic anxiety at best, and madness at worst. But while it may be good that we never truly contemplate our own mortality, we are ill prepared when the axe comes down. When the specialist walks in bearing grim news, no one wants to hear it.
Which brings me to the first of today’s topics, “the unknown.” A friend came over yesterday, and after having hinted around about my health -- I suppose he was waiting for me to tell my story—asked me what was up. Once I gave him the details, he responded with what I consider to be a very boring rejoinder, “Well, Randy, we all fear the unknown.” I thought to myself, “Listen Jack, your ‘unknown’ and my ‘unknown’ are two very different kettles of fish.” In terms of one’s health, the unknown is an abstract, intangible concept. In health, the unknown simply becomes a metaphor for the future, a future that is, well, safely out of sight and out of mind. It’s not like that when you are suddenly confronted with impending doom. There is a huge difference between idly contemplating the possibility that you might die of heart failure or a stroke, or a shark attack or lightning strike, and the reality that you are riddled with malignant cells bent on consuming the organism that is you. Certainly “the will to survive,” and “no one gets out alive,” and “life is terminal,” and all of the trite (I mean tried) and true aphorisms rush to our aid; but for the seriously ill, the “unknown” of the immediate future is a much more pressing concern than for the healthy.
Closely related to the “unknown” is the “future.” For most of us the future is something always just beyond our grasp, hence the homey admonishments that we “stay in the present” or “take one day at a time,” etc. This all sounds good, but as I’ve said before, what about when the moment sucks? And what about when the “one day at a time” is contemplated within the realization that one’s days are truly numbered? For the sick, the future offers that curious combination of relief and dread, but never the benign sort of uncertainty of the healthy experience. In sickness, the future holds the possibility of getting better or dying. The sick are denied the luxury of contemplating issues unrelated to their illness. Oh sure, we try to live as if everything were normal, but you know, I’m finding it doesn’t work that well. With regard to the longstanding philosophical debate about the mind/body split, I would have to say the two are inseparable. What I have found is that activities like playing music, exercising, and painting seem to be a better distraction than listening to music, reading, or watching TV. The difference being, the combination of the cognitive with the physical is more immediate and seems to require a different kind of focus. I need to think more about exactly what that difference is.
“Goodbyes” Whew! This is tough. Let me address this by example. Every goodbye is tough. Your friends or relatives come to visit, they stay the weekend, it’s time to say goodbye. Normally, this means you’ll see them next year. When you’re living with illness, the “goodbye” becomes freighted with emotion. I haven’t said much about the emotional component of being sick. Why? Probably because emotions defy description. They are, in many ways, ineffable. I find myself getting emotional at the weirdest times. It might be in the middle of a gig while I’m playing in front of a crowd. It often comes when I’m alone. Why? I don’t know. It comes when I see someone I haven’t seen in a while. The point I want to make here is that goodbyes, even the small ones, seem to make me cry. Goodbye All.
PS: Boo hoo
August 8, 2007
8/7/07
THIS JUST IN: Imagine, if you will, a land of toothless, barefoot denizens. Among them lives a transplanted, sad, aging, delusional woman who was once my brother. Imagine she waits for her mommy to rescue her after another in an endless string of dysfunctional domestic episodes; A narrow minded mother who can only be described as an amalgam of Amanda and Blanche Dubois from Tennessee Williams’s “Glass Menagerie” and “ A Street Car Named Desire” respectively. Add in a trashy, Gibralter Trade Center cleric so bare of moral scruple he watches C.O.P.S. for spiritual uplift. The scene is this, Jenet, Mommy, and Father Jaybird are spending a tense evening together before driving back to Iowa from West Virginia. They are trying to get out of town before the 28 year old boyfriend is released from jail. Stay Tuned, I’ll tell this story in tomorrow’s blog
(To those of you who want to hear about lymphoma, please direct yourselves to the letter at the end of this blog posting)
“Happiness? That’s nothing more than health and a poor memory.”
-- Albert Schweitzer
Did I mention that my hair has begun to fall out, not in giant clumps or anything like that, (at least not yet) but in gentle wisps and strands. One of the topics of the day has to do with my going bald. The debate concerns whether or not it is better to, as someone suggested, “torture” myself with watching the hair gradually fall out of my head, or shave my skull and be done with it. I wrote some stuff last night that some might consider morbid. I’m still deciding whether it’s suitable for posting. In some ways, I suppose, the ethical issues surrounding blogging are a different matter than journalistic ethics in the traditional sense. I’m still trying to figure out why. Meanwhile, I’m sitting at the birdseye maple kitchen table in the brown camp, staring out over Lake Superior and wondering what I might say to attract an audience, or hits, as they say. It’s a bit like fishing, except that instead of using lures or bait, the blogger offers keywords and clever topics to attract readers. Okay, so what’s the clever topic of the day? How about something uplifting, like optimistic Hallmark poetry that lifts the spirit and heals the soul, you know, that Bernie Siegelish, angelic messenger stuff that makes one want to throw down their crutches and begin training for the Olympics. Since much of my university study (I’m an English major) focused on literary criticism, I thought it might be good fun to explicate, or, as we say in the business, unpack, a few poems. Heeding Oscar Wilde’s sage advice that, “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written, “ let’s start with a poem by Jerry Hall:
he is a hollow hyperbole
the crowd plays him like a flute
a mythical icon
a Dionysian fluke
the crowd lives out their fantasy
through his mirror door they see
an image of the person
they wish that they could be
he fucks their women
and fights their battles against mediocrity
but when he comes home to me
all that’s left is v.d.
Now I suppose some of my more sophisticated colleagues might consider the rhyme scheme too obvious, but I kind of like this poem. If we concentrate on the content rather than form, we are presented with a chameleon-like subject who shape shifts according to what we want him to be. “[h]ollow hyperbole” has a nice ring to it, but can we really say why? I’m sure my mother would find this trashy, as she stands in the shadows, dreading the drag of old age, longing for a little helper, or, at least, a little help from her friends, (she never would say where she came from) she would be appalled at the profanity, as well as the venereal references. Oh well. Have I ever wished I could be like Mick? Absolutely!
Here’s a tried and true chestnut from William Carlos Williams (didn’t he go to school with Allen Ginsberg?)
so much depends
Upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Hmmmm…..Okay, I get it, the wheel barrow is a visual metaphor which the reader is asked to fill with meaning. Duh! This kind of semantic ambiguity is what makes poetry so vital in the world in which we live! So, the “red wheel barrow” has a totally different meaning for the medicinal marijuana grower in Mendocino County than it does for a street hustler in Hoboken (Frank Sinatra’s birthplace).
Here’s one by Frederick Seidel: (Regarding the ethics of blogging, is it okay that I simply say who the author is? Or, more specifically, how do copyright laws apply to cyberspace?)
Miami In The Arctic Circle
And the Angel of the Lord came to Mary and said:
You have cancer.
Mary could not think how.
No man had been with her.
And then there was the other time.
Remember how happy we were.
You were in my arms.
I still had arms.
The rain fell on upturned faces.
Stars rained down on the desert.
Everybody was body temperature.
Everywhere was temperate.
It was raining and global warming.
Spiritual renewal made it beautiful.
Desertification turned into desert.
The sky above was shooting stars.
The Martians rode across the desert
In their outfits and their armbands,
Clanging cymbals and banging a big drum.
Boom! Boom!
I am in favor of global warming.
I don’t care about great-grandchildren.
I won’t be here.
I won’t be there.
Angel, I can see your mouth wide open,
But can’t hear what you are singing.
The shaking roar of the liftoff
Does a vanishing act straight up.
Fiddles and viols, let me hear your old gold.
Trumpets, the petals of the antique rose unfold.
This is the end.
Testing, one, two, three, this is a test.
Regarding Sulfide mining on the Upper Penninsula’s Yellow Dog Plains: Isn’t it ironic how a gaggle of trolls, flatlanders from below the bridge, have to rescue the good sense of a bunch of U.P. ostriches with their heads buried so far in the sand that they think they’re getting real Chinese drugs and pet food; that “global warming” is a microwave setting; that France hates pasties; and that Hillary Clinton was on the grassy knoll in Dallas.
Here’s the letter:
Dear Doctors Kaminski and Ahmed:
Historically, those researchers who have provided the most benefit to humanity have undoubtedly subscribed to the utilitarian idea of “the greatest good for the greatest number.” What this means, I suppose, is that the scientist must always keep her eye on the big picture. Yes, there will always be individual pleas for small mercies, but ultimately, the goal is to make sure the data obtained results in the advancement of the treatment or therapy the researcher believes in. As a cultural theorist, of sorts, this makes perfect sense, but as a particular human being, a subset of the “greatest number,” the Darwinian aspects of my being must inevitably hold sway. And so, as futile as it may be, good doctors, allow me to continue my plea for what the literature I have compiled in front of me, and will cite in this argument, suggests will be the standard treatment for non-Hodgkin’s disease in the future.
Quoting from the medical journal, Leukemia & Lymphoma (July 2007; 48(7)) “Rituximab is a humanized murine antibody to the B-cell-associated antigen, CD20, that was first approved for the treatment of follicular lymphoma [1].” What I draw from this is that the trials with radioimmunotherapy follow the same research pattern (initial applications on the low-grade, follicular lymphoma) used in 1997, or shortly thereafter, when the R-C.H.O.P. treatment was first being formulated. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I assume that, then, as now with Bexxar, the (Rituximab) anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody therapy was used experimentally in patients with relapsed low-grade non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, as well as patients with transformed (faster-growing) non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In your last e-mail, Dr. Ahmed, you mentioned that Bexxar is currently reserved for those who are 60 or older. I’m assuming that, from the standpoint of clinical research, this is because Bexxar has only been approved by the FDA for patients who have already received chemotherapy or Rituxan, or a combination of both. Quoting Understanding Drug Therapy and Managing Side Effects, “This drug is for patients whose disease has not responded to therapy or has come back.” While I understand doctors must abide by various FDA rules and questionable bureaucratic parameters, you, Dr. Kaminski, have been quoted by globalhealthvision.wordpress.com as saying, “For years we have known radioimmunotherapy, such as Bexxar, is one of the most effective treatments for patients with relapsed follicular lymphoma. These data show Bexxar is particularly effective when used as a FRONTLINE [my emphasis] treatment.” Your use of the word “frontline” is one of the compelling factors in my petition for help. Yes, I realize that the effectiveness of the conventional treatment makes it easy to prescribe the standard R-C.H.O.P. regimen, but, again, according to you, Dr. Kaminski, “These results compare quite favorably with those achieved with state-of-the-art chemotherapy regimens that take months to deliver.” Rather than bore you with more of what you already know, allow me to offer this personal, emotional appeal.
Please direct your sympathetic imagination toward my case from a personal perspective: pretend you were me. Knowing what you know about the comparative benefits and drawbacks of both treatments, which would you choose? I was going to write, “in your heart of hearts” which would you choose, but then I realized your decision would have nothing to do with any emotional sentiments, it would be, rather, a logical choice, dare I say a “no brainer.” My hope is that you might find a way to fit me into your work as a part of the research (perhaps the complication of having hepatitis – C might work to my advantage in this regard) or in any other way possible. If there is anything I can do to affect this outcome please, tell me. One goal I’m committed to is spreading the word, and singing the praises of the Cancer Center, as well as the merits of Dr. Kaminski’s radioimmunotherapy research, regardless of how my case unfolds. By the by, this Wednesday’s Ann Arbor News (8/8/07) will feature an editorial piece on The Cancer Center, and Dr’s Kaminski and Ahmed.
Best – Randall L. Tessier
THIS JUST IN: Imagine, if you will, a land of toothless, barefoot denizens. Among them lives a transplanted, sad, aging, delusional woman who was once my brother. Imagine she waits for her mommy to rescue her after another in an endless string of dysfunctional domestic episodes; A narrow minded mother who can only be described as an amalgam of Amanda and Blanche Dubois from Tennessee Williams’s “Glass Menagerie” and “ A Street Car Named Desire” respectively. Add in a trashy, Gibralter Trade Center cleric so bare of moral scruple he watches C.O.P.S. for spiritual uplift. The scene is this, Jenet, Mommy, and Father Jaybird are spending a tense evening together before driving back to Iowa from West Virginia. They are trying to get out of town before the 28 year old boyfriend is released from jail. Stay Tuned, I’ll tell this story in tomorrow’s blog
(To those of you who want to hear about lymphoma, please direct yourselves to the letter at the end of this blog posting)
“Happiness? That’s nothing more than health and a poor memory.”
-- Albert Schweitzer
Did I mention that my hair has begun to fall out, not in giant clumps or anything like that, (at least not yet) but in gentle wisps and strands. One of the topics of the day has to do with my going bald. The debate concerns whether or not it is better to, as someone suggested, “torture” myself with watching the hair gradually fall out of my head, or shave my skull and be done with it. I wrote some stuff last night that some might consider morbid. I’m still deciding whether it’s suitable for posting. In some ways, I suppose, the ethical issues surrounding blogging are a different matter than journalistic ethics in the traditional sense. I’m still trying to figure out why. Meanwhile, I’m sitting at the birdseye maple kitchen table in the brown camp, staring out over Lake Superior and wondering what I might say to attract an audience, or hits, as they say. It’s a bit like fishing, except that instead of using lures or bait, the blogger offers keywords and clever topics to attract readers. Okay, so what’s the clever topic of the day? How about something uplifting, like optimistic Hallmark poetry that lifts the spirit and heals the soul, you know, that Bernie Siegelish, angelic messenger stuff that makes one want to throw down their crutches and begin training for the Olympics. Since much of my university study (I’m an English major) focused on literary criticism, I thought it might be good fun to explicate, or, as we say in the business, unpack, a few poems. Heeding Oscar Wilde’s sage advice that, “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written, “ let’s start with a poem by Jerry Hall:
he is a hollow hyperbole
the crowd plays him like a flute
a mythical icon
a Dionysian fluke
the crowd lives out their fantasy
through his mirror door they see
an image of the person
they wish that they could be
he fucks their women
and fights their battles against mediocrity
but when he comes home to me
all that’s left is v.d.
Now I suppose some of my more sophisticated colleagues might consider the rhyme scheme too obvious, but I kind of like this poem. If we concentrate on the content rather than form, we are presented with a chameleon-like subject who shape shifts according to what we want him to be. “[h]ollow hyperbole” has a nice ring to it, but can we really say why? I’m sure my mother would find this trashy, as she stands in the shadows, dreading the drag of old age, longing for a little helper, or, at least, a little help from her friends, (she never would say where she came from) she would be appalled at the profanity, as well as the venereal references. Oh well. Have I ever wished I could be like Mick? Absolutely!
Here’s a tried and true chestnut from William Carlos Williams (didn’t he go to school with Allen Ginsberg?)
so much depends
Upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Hmmmm…..Okay, I get it, the wheel barrow is a visual metaphor which the reader is asked to fill with meaning. Duh! This kind of semantic ambiguity is what makes poetry so vital in the world in which we live! So, the “red wheel barrow” has a totally different meaning for the medicinal marijuana grower in Mendocino County than it does for a street hustler in Hoboken (Frank Sinatra’s birthplace).
Here’s one by Frederick Seidel: (Regarding the ethics of blogging, is it okay that I simply say who the author is? Or, more specifically, how do copyright laws apply to cyberspace?)
Miami In The Arctic Circle
And the Angel of the Lord came to Mary and said:
You have cancer.
Mary could not think how.
No man had been with her.
And then there was the other time.
Remember how happy we were.
You were in my arms.
I still had arms.
The rain fell on upturned faces.
Stars rained down on the desert.
Everybody was body temperature.
Everywhere was temperate.
It was raining and global warming.
Spiritual renewal made it beautiful.
Desertification turned into desert.
The sky above was shooting stars.
The Martians rode across the desert
In their outfits and their armbands,
Clanging cymbals and banging a big drum.
Boom! Boom!
I am in favor of global warming.
I don’t care about great-grandchildren.
I won’t be here.
I won’t be there.
Angel, I can see your mouth wide open,
But can’t hear what you are singing.
The shaking roar of the liftoff
Does a vanishing act straight up.
Fiddles and viols, let me hear your old gold.
Trumpets, the petals of the antique rose unfold.
This is the end.
Testing, one, two, three, this is a test.
Regarding Sulfide mining on the Upper Penninsula’s Yellow Dog Plains: Isn’t it ironic how a gaggle of trolls, flatlanders from below the bridge, have to rescue the good sense of a bunch of U.P. ostriches with their heads buried so far in the sand that they think they’re getting real Chinese drugs and pet food; that “global warming” is a microwave setting; that France hates pasties; and that Hillary Clinton was on the grassy knoll in Dallas.
Here’s the letter:
Dear Doctors Kaminski and Ahmed:
Historically, those researchers who have provided the most benefit to humanity have undoubtedly subscribed to the utilitarian idea of “the greatest good for the greatest number.” What this means, I suppose, is that the scientist must always keep her eye on the big picture. Yes, there will always be individual pleas for small mercies, but ultimately, the goal is to make sure the data obtained results in the advancement of the treatment or therapy the researcher believes in. As a cultural theorist, of sorts, this makes perfect sense, but as a particular human being, a subset of the “greatest number,” the Darwinian aspects of my being must inevitably hold sway. And so, as futile as it may be, good doctors, allow me to continue my plea for what the literature I have compiled in front of me, and will cite in this argument, suggests will be the standard treatment for non-Hodgkin’s disease in the future.
Quoting from the medical journal, Leukemia & Lymphoma (July 2007; 48(7)) “Rituximab is a humanized murine antibody to the B-cell-associated antigen, CD20, that was first approved for the treatment of follicular lymphoma [1].” What I draw from this is that the trials with radioimmunotherapy follow the same research pattern (initial applications on the low-grade, follicular lymphoma) used in 1997, or shortly thereafter, when the R-C.H.O.P. treatment was first being formulated. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I assume that, then, as now with Bexxar, the (Rituximab) anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody therapy was used experimentally in patients with relapsed low-grade non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, as well as patients with transformed (faster-growing) non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In your last e-mail, Dr. Ahmed, you mentioned that Bexxar is currently reserved for those who are 60 or older. I’m assuming that, from the standpoint of clinical research, this is because Bexxar has only been approved by the FDA for patients who have already received chemotherapy or Rituxan, or a combination of both. Quoting Understanding Drug Therapy and Managing Side Effects, “This drug is for patients whose disease has not responded to therapy or has come back.” While I understand doctors must abide by various FDA rules and questionable bureaucratic parameters, you, Dr. Kaminski, have been quoted by globalhealthvision.wordpress.com as saying, “For years we have known radioimmunotherapy, such as Bexxar, is one of the most effective treatments for patients with relapsed follicular lymphoma. These data show Bexxar is particularly effective when used as a FRONTLINE [my emphasis] treatment.” Your use of the word “frontline” is one of the compelling factors in my petition for help. Yes, I realize that the effectiveness of the conventional treatment makes it easy to prescribe the standard R-C.H.O.P. regimen, but, again, according to you, Dr. Kaminski, “These results compare quite favorably with those achieved with state-of-the-art chemotherapy regimens that take months to deliver.” Rather than bore you with more of what you already know, allow me to offer this personal, emotional appeal.
Please direct your sympathetic imagination toward my case from a personal perspective: pretend you were me. Knowing what you know about the comparative benefits and drawbacks of both treatments, which would you choose? I was going to write, “in your heart of hearts” which would you choose, but then I realized your decision would have nothing to do with any emotional sentiments, it would be, rather, a logical choice, dare I say a “no brainer.” My hope is that you might find a way to fit me into your work as a part of the research (perhaps the complication of having hepatitis – C might work to my advantage in this regard) or in any other way possible. If there is anything I can do to affect this outcome please, tell me. One goal I’m committed to is spreading the word, and singing the praises of the Cancer Center, as well as the merits of Dr. Kaminski’s radioimmunotherapy research, regardless of how my case unfolds. By the by, this Wednesday’s Ann Arbor News (8/8/07) will feature an editorial piece on The Cancer Center, and Dr’s Kaminski and Ahmed.
Best – Randall L. Tessier
August 2, 2007
8/2/07
Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 4)
Why don’t you get back into bed?
Yellow dog and holly
A bit of Tommy Jolly,
Alder Gators.
Hungry Hollow Jammies
Salmon Trout and Lammies,
Dump Day.
Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 5)
Why don’t you get back into bed?
I don’t have a Velcro face.
My dog is friendly.
We live in a time of clumpable litter.
I ‘m not on a transplant list.
I don’t live in Newark.
I don’t live in Baghdad.
I don’t live in the White House.
Of course, a Velcro face might be nice. I could snap it off whenever people say something so boring as to require my courteous attention. When people ask stupid questions like, “What are you thinking,” I could simply expose my faceless hole, allowing my gaping maw to leave them agape, sending them home to keyword land, “Ann Arbor, man without a face.” Legend has it that I was so unlucky as to have botched a suicide attempt, leaving myself with no countenance, no visage, no piehole, just two eyes and a bad attitude. Googling myself at Starbuck’s, I found out that I’m rude, belligerent and mean. I suppose I should always keep a rag stuffed in it, but it’s often (not all of the time) fun to watch the horrified look on their faces when I push my note in their face.
Who would want a mean dog? Maybe Michael Vick. Some redneck, cheeseball from Manitowoc, a Falcons fan, is aghast that their inner city hero from Newport News Va. (my birthplace) grew up in circumstances so desperate that dog fighting was one of the more respectable street activities. When the gladiator walks in the arena nobody cares where he came from. And when he’s finished, he’s disposable. But should we really expect an American public so ignorant as to think the concept of “civic duty” implies an obligation to vote on American Idol, to care about any of the minority supermen who reinforce the idea that the only way out of the ghetto is sports. It’s no wonder they identify more with Michael Jordan than Martin Luther King. HARPER’S INDEX: “Rank of golf and basketball, respectively, among the ten pro sports Americans view as the most ‘ethical” and ‘upstanding’”: 1, 10.”
Clumpable litter. What can I say? Thank God I have cancer, I no longer have to touch it. Just so you know I’m not above self-deprecation, I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret: I ate cat shit. It’s true. I was, shall we say, in my cups, when I dropped a chocolate turtle quite close to a cat with a clump of shit on its tail. In a strange, but yucky, coincidence, the turdy clump fell very near the choco goody (this was before my cataract surgery). Trying to be funny, as always, I jokingly pretended to eat the cat shit. Guess what? It was cat shit.
Transplant list. Can you get a personality transplant? Perhaps the day will come when this is possible. When it is, there will be a long waiting list.
Newark, New Jersey represents just how low the safety net is in America. Why should we care about the black, urban poor? Why should we care about providing basic health benefits to our most needy citizens? There’s more important work to be done, like spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world. Forget the murder, mayhem, and injustice that prowl the streets of America’s inner cities. HARPER”S INDEX: “Number of U.S. prisoners freed through DNA evidence since 1989: 201.”
“Percentage who have been mistakenly identified by eyewitnesses: 77%.”
Baghdad, Iraq: HARPER’S INDEX: “Percentage of Baghdad residents who have a family member or friend who has been wounded or killed since 2003: 77%.”
The White House: “Never have so few been responsible for the deaths of so many.”
-- R. Louis Tessier
Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 4)
Why don’t you get back into bed?
Yellow dog and holly
A bit of Tommy Jolly,
Alder Gators.
Hungry Hollow Jammies
Salmon Trout and Lammies,
Dump Day.
Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 5)
Why don’t you get back into bed?
I don’t have a Velcro face.
My dog is friendly.
We live in a time of clumpable litter.
I ‘m not on a transplant list.
I don’t live in Newark.
I don’t live in Baghdad.
I don’t live in the White House.
Of course, a Velcro face might be nice. I could snap it off whenever people say something so boring as to require my courteous attention. When people ask stupid questions like, “What are you thinking,” I could simply expose my faceless hole, allowing my gaping maw to leave them agape, sending them home to keyword land, “Ann Arbor, man without a face.” Legend has it that I was so unlucky as to have botched a suicide attempt, leaving myself with no countenance, no visage, no piehole, just two eyes and a bad attitude. Googling myself at Starbuck’s, I found out that I’m rude, belligerent and mean. I suppose I should always keep a rag stuffed in it, but it’s often (not all of the time) fun to watch the horrified look on their faces when I push my note in their face.
Who would want a mean dog? Maybe Michael Vick. Some redneck, cheeseball from Manitowoc, a Falcons fan, is aghast that their inner city hero from Newport News Va. (my birthplace) grew up in circumstances so desperate that dog fighting was one of the more respectable street activities. When the gladiator walks in the arena nobody cares where he came from. And when he’s finished, he’s disposable. But should we really expect an American public so ignorant as to think the concept of “civic duty” implies an obligation to vote on American Idol, to care about any of the minority supermen who reinforce the idea that the only way out of the ghetto is sports. It’s no wonder they identify more with Michael Jordan than Martin Luther King. HARPER’S INDEX: “Rank of golf and basketball, respectively, among the ten pro sports Americans view as the most ‘ethical” and ‘upstanding’”: 1, 10.”
Clumpable litter. What can I say? Thank God I have cancer, I no longer have to touch it. Just so you know I’m not above self-deprecation, I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret: I ate cat shit. It’s true. I was, shall we say, in my cups, when I dropped a chocolate turtle quite close to a cat with a clump of shit on its tail. In a strange, but yucky, coincidence, the turdy clump fell very near the choco goody (this was before my cataract surgery). Trying to be funny, as always, I jokingly pretended to eat the cat shit. Guess what? It was cat shit.
Transplant list. Can you get a personality transplant? Perhaps the day will come when this is possible. When it is, there will be a long waiting list.
Newark, New Jersey represents just how low the safety net is in America. Why should we care about the black, urban poor? Why should we care about providing basic health benefits to our most needy citizens? There’s more important work to be done, like spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world. Forget the murder, mayhem, and injustice that prowl the streets of America’s inner cities. HARPER”S INDEX: “Number of U.S. prisoners freed through DNA evidence since 1989: 201.”
“Percentage who have been mistakenly identified by eyewitnesses: 77%.”
Baghdad, Iraq: HARPER’S INDEX: “Percentage of Baghdad residents who have a family member or friend who has been wounded or killed since 2003: 77%.”
The White House: “Never have so few been responsible for the deaths of so many.”
-- R. Louis Tessier
First Nadir
8/01/07
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
-- Theodore Roethke, The Waking
I’m 10 days out. My intention in describing the particulars of that first treatment (see 7/25/07) was to provide my fellow sufferers with a detailed account of that day. In that same spirit, allow me to attempt a description of what I’ve experienced to date. No matter how the layman’s literature tries to sugar coat it, a look at the possible side effects is scary: fatigue; loss of appetite; nausea and vomiting; pain; hair loss; anemia; infection; blood clotting problems; mouth, gum, and throat problems; diarrhea; constipation; nerve and muscle effects; effects on skin and nails; kidney and bladder effects; flu-like symptoms; fluid retention; and effects on sexual organs. One thing to keep in mind is the human impulse/compulsion to confuse cause and effect. The non-specific aches and pains we dismiss under healthy/normal circumstance are now interpreted as the consequences of chemo; the roughness produced by hot pizza on the roof of the mouth becomes a symptom of the treatment; those weird tastes and smells that everyone gets become dangerous signals of insidious chemical processes. But sometimes the cause of sensations we experience have no explanation, they are non-specific and beyond the ken of science. A second thing to consider, and it pains me to say it, is that the treatments are cumulative. In the course of a 6-8 treatment cycle, number 4 would surely be more debilitating than 1. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s review where I am and what I’ve felt so far. Days 7 through 10 are when most anticancer drugs affect the bone marrow, making it harder to make white blood cells. One would think this condition of having a weakened immune system would be preceded by the side effects listed above.
This hasn’t been the case. Since I feel fine, so far, I have to assume my body is dealing with outside air and water borne disease agents in spite of my white blood cell count. Admitting that I was resigned to the worst from the outset, let me address the side effects listed above in terms of my case. One last caveat: consider the precautions listed on even the most benign over the counter medications. The list of possible contraindications and side effects is typically so long and daunting I doubt any of us would take anything if we thought we would really experience these consequences. My point is that the list of possible side effects in no way means one is going to experience each and every one, in fact it is possible, or so they say, to avoid many if not all of these unpleasant effects.
Okay, so what have I experienced? Here’s what I’ve felt:
-- Fatigue – minimal. I’ve swam a quarter to a half mile in Lake Superior every day and taken occasional (not daily) naps;
-- Loss of appetite – zilch. I’ve been eating tremendous quantities of food and enjoying every mouthful;
-- Nausea. They gave me some powerful anti-nausea drugs (Kytril and Compazine) which I haven’t taken;
-- Pain -- none;
-- Hair loss -- none;
-- Anemia. As I said, I’m not tired;
-- Infection -- unknown;
-- Blood clotting -- normal;
-- Mouth, gum, and throat -- Had a scratchy throat and high voice a couple of times but it passed. Mouth and gums seem normal;
-- Diarrhea -- normal bowel movements;
-- Constipation -- none;
-- Nerve and muscle effects -- none;
-- Skin and nails -- fine;
-- Kidney and bladder -- normal;
-- Flu-like symptoms -- none;
-- Fluid retention -- none; and
-- Effects on sexual organs -- minimal.
As I’ve said before, I hope none of this seems too boring.
Being a child of the sixties, I would be remiss not to talk about those medications ancillary/peripheral to the actual pathology of the disease. I am of course talking about painkillers (Oxycodone) and sedatives (Ambien). There’s a certain irony in the fact that we dissolute flower punks with a history of dabbling in opiates, hallucinogens, and other recreational drugs have entered a period of life where such medications serve a practical purpose. Having cancer allows me to get anything I want, which has put my hippy friends and acquaintances, all of whom I love dearly, in the delicate position of looking for a buzz while reassuring themselves they’re not denying me future relief. Of course, I always reassure them that my good health never stopped me from badgering cancer- ridden friends in the past. Truth be told, rather than copping a nod to a Coltrane CD, we, the afflicted hip, must ultimately resign ourselves to the idea that keeping our wits about us is advantageous to our progress. What I’m finding is this, since my energy seems to flag later in the day, a minimal dose (10-15 mg.) of oxycodone seems to give me (and I only speak for myself) a burst of energy that takes me up to bedtime. I anticipate that balancing the scale between comfort and dependence, while at the same time maintaining a fulcrum of energy and focus, will be an ongoing battle as my strength dissipates, as it inevitably will/must. I’ll be saying more about this along the way.
Many of you, I’m sure, are curious about my take on alcohol, caffeine and marijuana. Given that the anecdotal evidence on the medical benefits of medical marijuana is overwhelming, I’ll refrain from taking up this issue. As for alcohol and caffeine, I can think of no sound reason why we who enjoy beer and coffee should deny ourselves in a time of crisis and uncertainty. Given the vast pharmacopoeia of drugs and chemicals that constitute the various chemotherapy regimens, a cap and a brew seem fairly innocuous in the larger scheme of things. In terms of overdoing it, it seems logical that the combination of disease and treatment should induce a kind of moderating effect that requires no self-regulation.
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