Another Check-up

At noon today I have another appointment with my cancer doctor.  I had forgotten about it, an appointment scheduled over four months ago that I had failed to write on my calendar. They called to remind me, a good thing too because I never think about the doctors or my cancer anymore.
   In a way I feel caught up in a Franz Kafka Novel, a single soul traipsing through corridors and maneuvering the hallways, placed in and out of little examining rooms, blood tests, striped naked and
interrogated.  What crime did I commit?  Will they discover the truth?
   I am sixty six years old now and have all of the pains of growing up, over thirty hard years in the construction industry have left their mark.  My body hurts.  Which pains go in which categories?
Pain is always a symptom that I am not telling the truth.  Something else is going on.  Doctors are doing their job and want to investigate, further interrogations, more exams, get the machines out, really
look into you!  I have avoided these so far, feeling strapped to a chair, beaten and chastised, the doctors saying, "We will find out!" and having me come back every two or three months until they do.
    I have given them my hands and they would have my feet except for the fact they are tough as nails from years in the construction trade, pouring concrete, framing walls, moving steel, all in sandals, the only thing that I have worn for the last 40 years.  The "Cure" got my hands and made my feet numb.
Peripheral Nueropothy they call it, collateral damage.  Fighting Cancer with hand grenades. Two years later it still feels as though my hands were stirring a bucket full of cut glass.
   I get Vicodin for that and refuse to admit it helps all of my other pains.  I never mention the "other" pains for fear of more interrogation, more examinations, more exploring.  It is not a belief in "what you don't know won't hurt you", that isn't it.  I know my pains, some gotten through misdeeds and accidents and others developed and hardened through overuse.
   I do have a tendency to believe that we get what we want out of life with a few exceptions. Of course, I didn't want cancer.  It is still a mysterious illness creating caution while talking about it.  It still has a aura of Biblical Deserving, like what did I do to get this?  Why was I stupid enough not to prevent it?  I am supposed to accept this guilt and I don't but I still feel as though I am in the chair being interrogated every three months until I admit my guilt.
   I choose not to focus on this process.  I would have missed the appointment entirely had they not called me.  I will give them their wanted blood samples and let them push and prod my body and then they will ask:  Do you want the machines?  The MRI and PET and CAT scans?  These are free offerings, I have good insurance but they are still expensive and I choose not to spend someone else's money.
   It has been two years now since my Voodoo Chemical "Cure" and the cancer is gone but the collateral damage remains.  I like to think that is even getting better.  My cancer doctor say it can take up to eight years for the nerves to heal and my regular doctors say in eight years I will be used to it.
I suspect that my regular doctor is right.  I can button my own shirt now although not the cuffs. That is a big improvement. I don't focus on this much, go about my business, plant seeds in the garden and watch them grow.
   The hero in the Home Box Office rendition of Spartacus died of Hodgkin's Lymphoma or more realistically, he died from the cure.  It is pretty barbaric, like putting boiling oil in a wound, Mustard Gas to cure cancer.  He was younger and stronger than I was and it makes me realize that this is all a crap shoot, like LasVegas, a number's game.  It all come down to odds and maybe fate itself.  You live because your number is not up and you die because it is.
   Four more hours and I will walk the halls and sit in the chair.  "How are you feeling?" the doctor will ask, and I will begin the lie.

Immune?

   I sometimes wonder whether a person can be immune to cancer?  Some people don't get it.  Even smokers don't always get it.  There seems to be a thousand ways to get cancer and yet, some people don't get it.

   I don't have it now.  I have been thouroughly probed and prodded, examined from the inside out.  I have none.  It is all gone!  All but the idea.

   I don't know whether my cancer was fast and I caught it in time or slow and methodical and I caught it in time.  I know I had it pretty much everywhere.  What began as a lump on my neck had spread to my spine and spleen and my entire lymph system.  50-50 odds is what I was told, or maybe a little less.

  Six months later, 12 Chemos later, $130,000 later, all my hair gone later, and fifty pound light, it is gone.

I may have starved it to death!  Certainly what had become a comfortable host became uncomfortable.

   The cancer was always like an alien being, something that did not belong.

   I feel fine now and sometimes that worries me.  My hair is back.  My weight is back.  My strength is back.

In a way it is like I never had cancer.  Just a dream.  A nightmare really.  I am just like I was before cancer!

Why it snuck up on me in the first place I will never know.  I always wonder whether it could do so again?

   Maybe I am immune now.  I think that too.  Like sometimes a severe case of poison oak will give you future immunity.  Or you only get "chicken pox" once.

There are certainly days when I never give it a thought and I wonder if lack of gratitude will turn back to bite me!  Although I don't think the cancer was caused by a deplenishing well of gratitude.

   I am living now and welding, creating my kind of art and having fun.  It is summer and even with a late start my garden is doing well.  I ate the first tomato yesterday!

   I think once a month will be enough to post here.  It will remind me of where I have been.  To the very edge, looking over and not liking it one bit.

you can always find me HERE

When the World Gets Cancer

For those of you who do not believe in global warming I am not sure how much worse things need to get.
The "Snows of Kilimanjaro" are gone, melted into warming streams, the life blood of Lake Victoria and the water supply for much of Africa.  Three degrees makes a lot of difference.  There are dead Spruce Forests
in Alaska that stretch as far as the eye can see, killed by a beetle allowed to live because of the added warmth of a couple degrees.
   Joplin, Missouri, we all know where that is now, flattened by a tornado in a couple of minutes.  Worst tornadoes ever, the earth breathes hard.  Some of this destruction we have brought upon ourselves, like smokers who refuse to quit, knowing that is a source of their own illness.  We weigh the risks and continue dumping oil in the oceans, a little spillage in our endless greed.  We don't even know what dies or the suffering of sea creatures.
   The oceans continue to get warmer creating tsunamis, gasping, an attempt at self cleansing.
   Something is happening and we are not listening to the screams.  There is a "bad moon raising," and we enjoy our lattes, comfortable in ignorance.
   It is raining on my garden.  Yesterday we had a quarter inch of hail.  I thought last year was "the worst year ever" and this year will be worse yet.  My tomatoes are beaten promises and the corn will not bud.
The Mississippi roars and can't be contained, dumping millions of gallons into the Gulf of Mexico in a feeble attempt to dilute the oil we put there.
    I don't know what is happening but it is happening all over.  Strange weather.  Colder, warmer, wetter, dryer, some kind of struggle, some kind of stirring inside. The Earth crying, like there is meaning to an Earthquake.
   I sometimes wonder if we are just visiting and what will happen when it is discovered that we trashed the place?  Why was it necessary to add graffiti, dump our garbage, make a vile mark upon this paradise?
   We have created an island the size of Texas between Oregon and Hawaii all made of plastic. It will be there for a thousand years, our statement.
   How is your garden growing?
You can find me here too!

Permissible Risks

There is always a sense with cancer that you have done something wrong.  Somehow this is a self-inflicted disease and a punishment you deserve.  We secretly wonder what did they eat?  Were chemicals the culprit?
Smokers probably or drinking too much?  Part of the problem is we are living a lot longer than we used to and if you live long enough eventually you will die from something.  Younger people get cancer too and even then we wonder what was in the household, what is doing this to us?
    We have probably eighteen pounds of chemicals in us, poisons that are not supposed to be there.  We are all full of fire retardants and you can't hardly eat food that hasn't been genetically altered or spiced up with pesticides and herbicides. With the Nuclear escapement in Japan, they solved the problem in part by increasing the daily allowed allotment of radiation permissible!
   Cancer is just statistics.  We are allowed so many deaths per hundreds or thousands so the rugs we walk on won't burn.  We know there is death from plastic water bottles, but only so many per thousand and it is so convenient!  Permissible risk.  More people die from auto accidents than our wars going on now.  Permissible risks.  Cancer is very expensive to treat and yet it amounts to less than 5% of our National Health Budget. Permissible risks.  Even smoking, a known cause of cancer, raises billions of dollars in revenue.  Permissible risk.
    Cancer victims have become "parts per million", a permissible risk in our modern world of statistics and industrial development.  Statistics are verifiable and predictable and maybe you could charge a deposit?
If altered corn or chemically laced carpets, plastic water bottles, gasoline in our automobiles and cigarettes, and anything else is a "known cause of cancer", why not charge a health deposit?  A fee or tax to find the cure to cancer or give us the sensibility not to include these dangerous chemicals in our recipes?
   That would raise the price for everyone and that might not be an acceptable, permissible risk?  As it is it is sort of like gambling, isn't it?  Thinking all the time, no, not me, I won't be one of the "parts per million"!
You can always visit me HERE

The Nakedness of Cancer

   The process of discovering you have cancer and the resulting treatments to come can lead you feeling naked and examined to death, vulnerable and exposed.  Not much modesty going on here, you are a body to be examined.  A lot of this is done behind closed doors, under a microscope at the cellular level.  The x-rays and Cat Scans and Pet Scans offer a detailed, didgitalized image from head to toe.  Constant blood analysis
furthers this image and becomes a part of your chart.  Item by item you become this information and from it the doctors can prepare their line of attack.
    "Jerry, you have Stage 3 and a half Hodgekin's Lymphoma and a 40% chance of survival."
Forty percent is all I understood of this, a good 80 proof whiskey, 94% payback on the slot machines, more likely to be struck by lightening than winning a lottery ticket, a 3000psi concrete mixture.  I understood the math.  Stage 3 and 1/2 meant it had spread.
    It was just a little lump I saw while shaving six months earlier.  I noted it and looked at it and for awhile actually tried to will it away, but it took six months before I went to the doctor!  It wasn't bothering me, I felt fine.
   "It has spread into your spine and spleen and throughout your entire lymph system," the doctor was giving me the basics here.  "Here, let me show you!" he was happy with his didgital display and it looked as if my body had been seeded much like the gold mining days with a shotgun.  I had cancer pretty much everywhere.
    There is a lot that they can't put into that computer.  Me, for instance.
A friend of mine now has cancer and that is the reason I recount this story a bit.  My Blog on ArtWanted I no longer use but I keep it as a reminder to where I have been, on a train wreck to the very edge of hell.  If you ever look at it it reads best if you scroll to the very bottom and read it backwards.  It is a day to day from discovery to leaving the station and every step in between.  I read it from time to time myself, like life in a rearview mirror.  This is the site, you have to click "BLOG" at the top of it.

Psychology of Being Poor

I have decided that there is a psychology to poverty and the same idea apply to living with cancer or recovering from the horrendous voodoo cure.  This concept will be rambling because it is not fit for publication yet, but bear with me.
     Our first "brand new car" didn't last very long.  We were in a car wreck and I've told that story.  We replaced it with a Toyota Station Wagon, a new 1978 Model for $6,235.  It was a great car and never gave us any problems.  With some reluctance, in 2008, yes, almost thirty years! we were ready to replace it.  It was a great car and served us well, hauling the kids to their school stuff and soccor games, hauling hay even, and a series of animals, dogs, cats, chickens.  30 years old but with just under 200,000 miles and she still ran like a champ!
   I decided on a whim to give it to our neighbors, nice people, lots of kids, no job, no money, the proverbial
no pot to piss in.  They were thrilled and spent the day taking turns just driving this car up and down the street.  Now here is the part I never thought of.  Owning a car comes with responsibilities, like putting gas in it and having insurance.  Well, that never happened and the car, my trusted stead, got loaned out to someone and then abandoned in Eastern Oregon, about 200 miles from home!
   Now, here is one more related thought and then I'll try to tie these together.  I sell my "Art Stuff" and a lot of it sells right out of my backyard. I have an apprentise for about six months a year, a good chap who has been with me for a long time.  He has learned a lot from me over the years and I thought he was ready for a huge advancement.  So I tried to explain to him that the more attractive my backyard is and the cleaner and more organized the shop is, the easier it is to work and impress the customers.  It really isn't that bad, two guys for one week and it would be perfect!  My offer to him was in return for his investment of one week's time I would give him 50% of the business.  Now this isn't an offer I would make to anyone, he has been with me for 15 years.  I told him that I am getting ready to slow down a bit and am thinking of other interests.
So, 50% to him this year, 60% next, 70% the third year and after than I wanted 20% for the use of my studio and gardens for his business.  Now, I would have jumped at that.  He can't think beyond a week and thinks I am ripping him off.
    The upshot of all this is I am doing this Spring Spruce Up by myself and am enjoying the process. He is doing I have no idea what.  I am delaying further projects until I have completed these tasks, so basically he is out of work and he is happy with that.  I know there is a psychology to this I just don't understand it.
   How this relates to cancer I am not sure but I have never thought if I wasn't going to get paid that I wouldn't do something, have never thought that if something causes me pain or discomfort that I wouldn't do it.  I have always thought beyond tomorrow, beyond next week, that whatever inconveniences I am in at the moment would pass and better days will be here.  Cancer?  No, it didn't stand a chance with me!
My Other Blog is HERE

Lost the Recipe!

    I don't remember the dates but the Early Greeks of Plato's era had concrete and used it in their buildings and bridges that are still standing today.  Then some idiot lost the recipe!  For over 1,000 years no concrete was poured, anywhere!  It is a mixture of one part cement, two parts sand and three parts gravel, but where do you find the cement?   I don't know either and rely on Home Depot but it is a particular type of lime that has been burnt and then ground into a powder.   Anyway, I like it and seem to have a lot of it around here.

 New Concrete Entry to my Studio.

I can drive my little truck all the way to the back of my property where my studio is and that is a road about 150 feet long, and then there is a turn around.  The greenhouse floor is concrete and so are its stem wall up about three feet. And then there is the little plunge pool I made with my daughters, that took about six yards of concrete!  And my studio floor, about 20' by 40 feet is all concrete, and there are concrete curbing or little walls around each garden area.  I have poured a lot of concrete in my day and all with a little mixer that does about one wheel barrel at a time!

I wanted to do this last year but I got distracted with the cancer!  Actually I did pour a lot of concrete when I had cancer I just didn't know I had cancer.  The cancer didn't slow me down too much.  It was the voodoo cure of unspeakable chemo cocktails they give you that put my concrete pouring days on hold.  Well, they don't really give them to you.  It costs $130,000!!!
   For awhile I could barely walk and even the idea of pouring concrete would make me tired.  But I am here to tell you there is hope!  I am back at it again!  Yes, I got the souvenir of neuropathy in my hands and feet and my right hand especially is pretty bad!  I use to do everything without gloves!  Welding and concrete work.  I didn't own a pair of gloves!  Now I wear them all the time.  They soften the sensations and make my life a little easier.
At night I wear my fur lined gloves and even wear them to bed!  I think this might just be the way it is going to be. They hurt all the time whether I am working or not.  They hurt a little worse if I sit and feel sorry for myself and then I get nothing done at all.  I lie a little bit and tell myself this is a new type of orgasm. It is longer lasting than the old kind but just as extreme!
The next job is to clean the mess and get the power washer out!
If you haven't seen my studio, garden and all this concrete work, then you can visit me HERE!

My Project

 My Studio Entry Project

BC (before cancer), this would have been a two day job.  Dig it out, form it up and pour the concrete all in one go.  I just don't have the strength for that.  Rather than thinking that I can't do this at all, I divided it up into much smaller tasks.  On the first day I dug the footings for this little garden retainer wall that is critical to the new entry for my studio.  It is only about 15 feet long.  I dug the footings, placed the forms and got the gravel cement mixture there, ready for day two!
  Before Cancer, Day Two would have seen the completion of this job.  If I poured all the concrete at once, the footings, the little wall and a walkway about 5' x 15' it would be about two yards of concrete, something I have done many times in the past.  That would just be impossible now.
    As I was doing this I thought about all of the concrete that I have poured, not everywhere, just in my backyard.  It is a lot.

 Blueberries behind the little retaining wall.

I like concrete.  I put a lot of reinforcing steel in it and like the permanency of it. It is the defining edges of my garden and in a way, it's strength represents the defining edges of me.

On the second day I formed and poured the little retaining wall,
a boundary separating the path to my shop and a patch of blueberries. My hands are killing me!  Each effort a struggle of wills.  I admit that there is a part of me that would just like to sit on the curb and cry.  But there is another part of me that wants to see this done, wants to participate in the process, wants to create things and make a new entry to my studio.  That is the dog I feed.
   I can rest today and allow the concrete to cure, but I won't rest too much. I will get another truck load (think small truck!)
of gravel in preparation for the next phase. I have some more digging and forming to do for the walkway and then that to pour.  I have decided that it is okay to break this task into segments and do a little at a time.  I am in no hurry and it will get done.  As I progress I will tell you about it and post the occasional photo and when it is finished we can pick blueberries together and I think you will like the new entry to my studio.

My entire garden can be found here.

Difficult Tasks

   My cancer is gone but my list of complaints is still pretty big.  The neuropathy in my hands could easily bring me to a screeching halt.  My lungs suffered more damage than I am willing to admit and I am thankful that long distance running was never on my list of things to accomplish.  It would be pretty easy to sit in a chair and feel sorry for myself.  Well easy except that this would bore me to tears.
   I was in the construction industry for over 35 years and a welder now for the past 15 years.  I learned habits during this time that I carry with me even now.  At the end of the day I always plan tomorrow. What projects need to be done, the tools I will need and the process in which to do them.  There are always things in construction that aren't any fun but there is an order to things, foundations before floors.
   I no longer have a crew but I keep these attitudes.  I want to rebuild a little six foot by twelve foot entry way to my shop and what was once so simple is proving to be a large task.  I am not in a hurry. I divided it up into segments and little by little I will get it done.  Digging first, then a footing for a stem wall, then the little garden wall and a new walkway.  The digging is mostly done and yesterday I got the load of gravel and now it is waiting for me. I can't use my truck until I unload it.

 Brand new wheel barrel with two wheels!

   I did that on purpose.  I didn't want the pain of today to provide an excuse not to continue this project.

My Other Blog is HERE

Alive and Well!!!

   Oh, I saw my nurses yesterday!  I just had to visit them.  I am back to 200 pounds, need a haircut and I can walk without faultering!  Oh, I gave them the biggest bearhug and they squeezed me back!  It must be nice, in that profession, to see the success stories, to have patients come visiting who don't need anything, just to say hello and, yes, thankyou!  It is a bit dangerous what they do.  They wear hazmat suits as they administer the voodoo chemicals and inspite of everything, they are so cheerful.  You would never know their pains or bad days or what troubles are after them.  They are always so cheerful, a mask of the job. A job where half your customers die off can't be pleasant!
   There was no fear this time in seeing the main voodoo doctor.  I knew I was fine. You get to know your body pretty well when you go through what I did.  We are friends now and the alien beings who invaded are gone.  I am cancerfree.  Next check up, sometime in July and maybe another six months after that.
   This blog will probably slow down a bit as I have lost the evil that it encompassed.  I read other cancer blogs and may respond here to something that sparks my interest, maybe to say how I did it or to offer some kind of encouragement in an otherwise dark and scarry place.  A blog I no longer use but keep for my own memories of this trainwreck can be found on my ArtWanted site, where it says "Blog".  It is a day to day account, an attempt to find laughter in the wreckage.  For the best reading of this scroll to the very bottom and read it backwards. It is HERE.http://www.artwanted.com/slate I read it myself from time to time. I never want to forget where I have been.

Cheating Death

    This time last year I was pretty sick from the chemo and voodoo chemicals I happily took in an effort to chase away the cancer.  My life then was centered around doctor's appointments, testing for everything, filling out forms and hospital visits.  There is nothing about this experience that I would wish upon anyone.
It was a train wreck in motion, on the very edge of Hell and just a horrible process that each day grew worse.  Last year it was my entire life, that and sleeping the only comfort I found.  Everything medical becomes important.  You never miss a pill.  You never miss an appointment.
   This year is different and it will be a great year.  I have lists of things to do, all fun and inspiring.  Doctor's appointments are not even in my thoughts.  I mention this because last week I had one and just plain forgot about it!  Oh, it was marked on the calendar all right but I never look at the calendar any more.  All days have equal significance, meaning and no meaning at all.
    It was to be and still is because I rescheduled it, a "three month check up".  Three months since I was declared "cancerfree", the name of this blog!  Funny that, I named the baby before it was born!  I knew what the outcome would be.  I am tough as nails and given a 50% survival rate, I knew I could do it.  No fun though!  and it does leave you with a feeling of cheating death!  A different time or a different place, a second twisted and it could have been me.
    My appointment is now for tomorrow and I wonder what that will mean?  At 2:10 pm. I wonder if there is any significance there?  An hour earlier than "The Train to Yuma."  Sometimes I think that "luck" has nothing to do with this and other times I think "luck" is everything.  It is a numbers game and my time wasn't up...
not yet anyway.  No bells for me, but I probably wouldn't listen anyway.
   It was a good appointment to miss.  It means that I am no longer thinking about cancer.  It has lost its control over me and I have better things to do.  Tomorrow will be an interruption, that is all, but it all makes me think about it again.
My other blog is here.

Fear

You have two choices when you get cancer:  you can get very fearful or lose fear entirely.  I have to admit I wasn't too please when told that I had "Hodgeskin's Lymphoma", stage three and a half, which means everywhere.  My entire lymph system and then into my spleen and spine.  It was growing, well, like cancer!
I had this alien being eating me from within!  I always thought that a cement truck might get me or that I might fall off a roof, something sudden, bloody, a tearing of the flesh and broken bones, a crushed skull and over.
Well, that may yet be, but first I had to deal with cancer.
     I did discover that no one dies of cancer.  I remember "cancer insurance" being sold in the 1960's, not insurance if you get cancer but insurance if you should die from it. What a cool scam that was!  You die from organ failure or pneumonia, that "old man's friend".  Or, as I discovered, you can die from "the cure".
     The "cure" is mean and that is all there is to that!  It is a voodoo concoction made from World War One Mustard Gas!  Yes, it really is.  It is designed to kill and it does so indiscriminately.  Surgery with a hand grenade.  It kills the cancer cells and a lot of good ones in the process.  I had 12 sessions of ABVD, horrible drugs that are mostly mentioned by initials only.  Every two weeks for six months!  It is all kind of crazy, you mark the dates on a calendar and get to look forward to the experience!  No, I can't go to lunch with you, I've got my chemo to do!
    I never got sick so you could put a name to it anyway.  I was never nauseous, never threw up, but I sure couldn't eat!  I began the process as a welder-construction worker, strong and able at 225 pounds and weighed 172 pounds when I got my final chemo shots!  It is not a diet I would recommend to anyone.
I never really thought much about the day after death but there were times when I didn't think I was going to make it.  You get pretty weak; I couldn't lift 20 pounds!  You get time to stand back and pretend it is all happening to someone else, like it is all a movie, or an unfinished book and you are not really sure how it will end.
    You sleep a lot.  You are always tired and I have never really found a good way to describe that, so someone not affected could really understand what you go through.  It is a tiredness where death would be welcomed.  My mind was always active even when my body couldn't cope.  I could still think!  I did lose a sense of "future", couldn't even think ahead to the next gardening season.
    What I chose to do or maybe did without choice is to relive my life.  I have done it all twice!  My earliest memories, all my school days, my first guitar, the poetry I used to write, old girl friends, my travels, adventures and disappointments and where I succeeded, all have been lived twice.  It is fascinating how in the deep recesses of your mind, you remember everything!  And I thought a lot about food.  I liked the idea of it even though I couldn't eat it.
    Death and taxes, right?  None of us are going to get out of this alive.  So you learn to cherish life, appreciate the now of it all, each breath, each flower and smell, each touch and every kind word.
I am left with pretty bad neuropathy in my hands but the cancer is gone!  I am not sure what "in recession" means?  That has the sound of still having it but it is getting smaller?  My doctor says he can't find any cancer in me and spent a few thousand dollars trying to do so.  It is gone.
     Some days my hands are so bad that I would just like to sit and hold them.  I don't allow this for two reasons.  The first is that in reliving my life I had no memory of pain.  Pain is not something we easily carry with us.  Too heavy, maybe, or just not important.  I remember getting the Pet and Cat scans and lots of x-rays and the doctor asking me when I broke my shoulder?  It was evidenced in the tests but not in my memory, certainly nothing I ever went to a doctor about. 
    The second reason I ignore my neuropathy is that there are things I want to do.  The will to do them is stronger than the fear of pain.  I do have a fear of atrophy.  I exercise my hands everyday, all the time, constantly.  My cancer doctor says nerves are slow to grow and it might take eight years for my hands to get better.  My regular doctor says that in eight years I will be used to it.  It is like stirring a five gallon bucket full of cut glass.  It is not pleasant but I can do it.
My Other Blog is HERE

Cancer Societies...

Let me tell you what I really like about cancer!  Do you remember reading or hearing about 19th Century Artists sitting around Parisian Cafes talking art?  Those were the days and they are hard to come by now.
We are secretive and private and not willing to share.  I imagine in those Parisian Cafes talking of art, talking of who got laid, who can't describe crap, inventing new styles on napkins, sharing your innermost thoughts.
Intimacy.  And no fear of being copied, that would be the highest honor!  Good enough to copy.
People went to Paris from all over the world just to join in this experience.  Now we have no time for such.
We have the idea that if I share with you I will be subtracting from me.  Or I may be quoted or misquoted.
You may steal my idea.  Funny in this modern age of instant communication that we are more isolated than ever.  We have become "private people", alone in our self imposed exile, unwilling to move from the safety of the island that we create.  A corner cafe was traded for the convenience of fast take out.
      The exception to this is found in Cancer patients!  We tell everybody everything!  There are more blogs about Cancer than maybe even sex.  We have created a community of sharing and caring, of giving and hope.  We will tell our stories to anyone who will listen, anywhere, anytime.  We are way beyond secrets, beyond embarrassment.  We will tell you how close to the edge we got, how hot the fires were and how tired we became.  We are a society and I like that part the best.
My other blog is HERE.

"Known to the State of California to Cause Cancer"

I see this title on everything now and wonder why I hadn't noticed it before.  I wonder if it would have made a difference?  It is on all plastic bottles yet we still deliver milk to babies that way.  Before a child reaches two years old they are full of fire retardants and god knows what else?  I couldn't weld, that warning is on all of my supplies and in big lettering on the wire I use.  I still weld, of course, and have been known to drink from plastic bottles. I like bacon and  char-broiled hamburgers.  We are optimistic in our sins and never think it is this one that will give us cancer.
     Cancer wasn't as common a hundred years ago because we didn't live long enough to get it.  Despite our lousy diets and lack of caution, we eat better diets than even Kings in the olden days.  Our bread is fortified with vitamins. 
     I would hate to live in fear, thinking this or that misstep will cause me cancer, would spell my doom.  That thinking will stop you from going for a walk because of the fear of being hit by a car.  So I have gone my entire life thinking "not me, not now."
   Then, of course, I got it.  Been there, done that, had the 12 chemos and it almost killed me and nothing has changed.  I am still welding!  My behavior has not altered but my attitude has.  I consider each day a gift and find enjoyment in the simplest things, everything is a pleasure.  Even the hardest of things gives me satisfaction that I am able to do them.
   I didn't escape scot free with no reminder of where I have been.  I have peripheral neuropathy, a little in my feet and a lot in my hands.  I can do things with pain or not do them at all.  So, I am back welding, creating art from steel and on each occasion when I open the box of welding wire I see the printed words:
"Known to the State of California to cause Cancer". Great.
My Other Blog is HERE.

Another Thought A Year Later...

     I began blogging a year ago when I discovered I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  I called this blog right from the beginning, "Cancerfree" because that was my intention.  It was exactly one year ago that I began the series of ABVD chemo-cocktails, that stuff created by voodoo scientists from the leftovers of World War One mustard gas, that stuff that saved my life.  I had 12 of them, a series every two weeks and this "cure" almost killed me.  I lost 50 pounds, all my hair, of course, and every two weeks when I went for the blood work and more chemo I was a little worse.  It is not like you take medicine and slowly get better each time.  It is quite the opposite, they are trying to kill you.  A lot of you, all the cancer and a lot of good stuff along the way.  There is a lot of collateral damage.  Like doing delicate surgery with a hand grenade!
    You get to talk to the doctor, a little bit anyway.  He is more interested in the numbers, checking with his computer, analysing the blood work, seeing how much more you can take.  The doctor talks in percentages.
My cancer was pretty much everywhere, into my spine and spleen, growing, well, like cancer does, like a cancer!  My odds were 50/50.  Along the way, maybe half way through when I began to look pretty bad and felt worse than I looked, he offered to cut back on some of these chemos.  Maybe even stop the one that was beginning to do damage to my hands.  My feet were numb by then and my hands, well I couldn't pick up a dime and had trouble buttoning my shirt, the first signs of trouble to come.  I could save my hands by stopping one of the drugs.  But I couldn't help thinking, if it is killing my hands then it must be killing the cancer!  Sacrifices.  Collateral Damage.
     I was going to be "cancerfree" so I kept taking them.  It would be nice if they were to find a more reasonable cure, something made from a single malted Scotch or one of those rum fruit concoctions to be consumed on the beaches of Hawaii.
    Along the way you meet a hundred interesting people and they are all fighters, all in this same battle and all with interesting accounts on how they fought this devil.  Some put up a terrific fight and lost and I will miss them and miss their descriptive honesty.  Sometimes in death you discover what life is all about.
    There are people much worse than me and I am a little embarrassed when I complain at all.  This "cure" from cancer is practicing.  They don't have it right.  It is voodoo stuff with feathers and monkey tails, rat poison and mustard gas.  In the future this will be looked upon the same as blood letting and leeches, whispering chants and screaming the evil away.
    I am a statistic now, making that curve go to 51% maybe.  My cancer is gone, I am "cancerfree", the name on this blog, my intention from the beginning.
My Other Blog is Here.

A Bubble Bath!

           I do a lot of math in my business, pretty simple measurements and angles and degrees, but they are very important or the final piece won't fit.  You can go to a lot of work, sometimes weeks of cutting and welding and polishing and grinding, and then the final painting.  If it is off by an inch it becomes junk, wasted effort.  It is the very beginning of the job when I get the field measurements and initial design concepts that become most important.  When I am back at my shop I sometimes wonder about this.  Will what I am doing "fit" and be what the customer wants?
     Sometimes we do things that are counter productive to our goals.  Just as often, I think, we don't define these goals so everything we do leads us in six different directions at the same time.  We sometimes make things far more confusing than they need to be.
     I no longer have any real long term goals.  I have done just about everything and acquired far more than I could ever use personally.  I have boxes full of stuff and I don't even know what is in them.  More of anything I do not want.  Spring and my garden and starting my tomatoes from seed is far enough into the future for me.  I like to work.  I enjoy the challenge of creating something unusual and never seen before.
      My "typical" goal setting for one day usually begins in the bathtub.  I have a great six foot cast iron tub that is almost 100 years old and begin every day in a really hot bubble bath.  I start my day just appreciating the fact that I am there and enjoying it.  I think about mundane things, things to do, things to get, errands to run, what tools and supplies I will need to get a job done.  I think of the shape of what I want to build and where it will go, what it will look like when finished.  This all makes my day go pretty smoothly, it goes pretty much as I anticipated it would.  I am retired now and have the luxury that time is as I want it to be, fast or slow and just stopping so I can look around.  I am not in a hurry and it becomes most important to enjoy all the steps along the way.

 I begin all my tomatoes from seed in my greenhouse.

My Other Blog is Here.

Marijuana!!!

I wonder what the issue is with marijuana?  It has certainly been given a bad rap over the years but I think it probably saved my life.  Why is it that we will happily take Rat Poison (warfarin) and are thankful for chemotherapy made from left over World War I Mustard Gas and will take all kinds of other "medicines" that make us very sick and almost kill us, yet we are reluctant to try marijuana?
     It is pretty easy to get, you don't have to go through a lot of hoops and barricades to get it legally. You can find it on the streets and most of your friends will know where to get it.  I admit I was hesitant, did not want to be "stoned" nor dizzy nor "spaced out".  I went 12 days without eating. It took a lot of effort on my part and I could drink ONE Ensure a day and that was it.  I had been on Marinol for over a month, the synthetic and legal stuff with THC, the secret ingredient of marijuana.  It wasn't working and costs over $20 per pill.  A friend gave me some marijuana which I smoked and took me out to breakfast the next morning.
It worked like a charm.  Yes, it was a little weird but not as weird as Rat Poison. Not addictive like cigarettes or pain killers.
      You don't have to smoke it. You can make tea out of it or add to butter and jam or toast or even put it in cookies!  Takes about a heaping teaspoon.  The pain will go away.  You will eat.  You won't throw up.
You will probably laugh at nothing funny.  That is the one side effect, silliness and laughter!
I am in a Political mood, My Other Blog is Here.

Things To Do...

     I create "Lists of things to do" because I want a reason to get up in the morning and it is an old habit from my school teaching days.  If we didn't have a list the class would become chaotic and the kids would run amok.  You couldn't just put down three things to do either, you had to have a plan.  I found it best to also have an alternative plan.  What if everything went wrong?  This "things to do list" was to accomplish a goal, probably not much different from a coach wanting to win a basketball game.
    When I went into construction my list making skills were the key to my success.  The reality of business, if you are lucky, is that an employee will work for you about an hour in a day.  He is first working for himself to earn his wages, then the government for all the taxes involved and less than an hour a day belongs to the owner of the company.  Any fifteen minute stumble, any loss of time, any errors on the job always comes out of the bosses time.  You learn quickly to develop a lesson plan and deal with contingencies or you go out of business.
     Cancer did not stop this process in me.  In fact it become even more important.  You can't create a list that is impossible to do, that too is a recipe for failure.  Reasonable things that will off a measure of success and accomplishment are important.  At my sickest my list became smallest but it was always there, my goals for the day.  I think people require a sense of accomplishment, a reason to be, a reason to get up in the morning.  There are things to do.
Facebook Banned Me! I told that story yesterday!
    

Talking about strength...

         Here is the thing about "strength", and it has very little to do with muscle.  Always, forever in my memory, I have done what I said I was going to do. I have never been late for anything, never been late for work, always got my papers turned in on time, never missed a meeting.  I always get there early. I leave in plenty of time to fix a flat tire on the way: mine or someone else's.  If I say I am going to do something, the world would have to stop to prevent this from happening.  This is part of who I am.  I am this way because my word is good.  It is my greatest asset.  For you, you can count on it as the sun will surely come up tomorrow, but I count on it too.  It is important to me.
     Cancer of course limits what one can do and you learn not to make promises that you cannot keep, but it doesn't stop you from doing anything.  So, I admit, my lists become shorter, but they are still there as an obligation to myself.  If I think today only I can do three things, then I do them.  Even if I don't feel like it.
Even if it makes me miserable.  Even if it makes me sick.  and, especially, even if I don't want to.
     I make my list in the morning when I am at my best and I always make them for tomorrow when I am hoping for a better day.  Tomorrow I will weld for one hour.  Tomorrow I will paint one little painting, and tomorrow I will go out to breakfast.  I will do this no matter what and I can do this crying and miserable or I can do this happy and cheerful, but do it I will.  What happens in reality almost every single time is my one hour of welding will stretch to two or three and I will complete a project, get lost in time, forget about the pain in my hands and for awhile forget all about cancer.  Painting is quiet time, no grinding and obnoxious fumes.  My little painting can become big.  They have a life of their own and become what they need to become, happy to be out of the tube.  That hour will also stretch and I will find myself lost there too.

My Other Blog is Here. 

The breakfast is a fun treat and I have learned to be nice to myself.  It is always with friends, some have cancer and some don't and that is the one subject we never talk about.  We give it no strength.

Working Day

     I have things to do today, seems like I am always adding to the list.  Yesterday I helped a friend move some heavy machinery from one shop to another and today I will install a railing, the center section that I have finished.  In the old days, the precancer days I would build all three railing sections at once and then install them together.  I am slowing down and picking up speed at the same time.  Two months ago I could not have done this job, too weak, too tired, too sick and done in.  I can do it now even if I am cautious and do one at a time.  Part of this is strength.  These are heavy sections and I don't think I could install three in one day, so I don't even try.  The other part is a lingering fear of what if I get it wrong?  Self doubt is a horrible thing for well people.  It is what stops artists cold in their tracts and prevents cities from being built, anything from being done. It is all part of this chemical cure; it is chemo-brain.  The confusion with the cure.
     Sometimes the simplest things become more difficult and we have to write everything down, make lists of things to do.  Railings require a lot of math, angles and degrees, city codes to be aware of and design too right?  We want them to look nice and be strong.  What was second nature in figuring this all out becomes a task and all the little things that you never used to bother to write down become lost. It is so simple, like does the fork go to the right or left of the knife?  With chemo you might have to think about that a lot, maybe even draw a picture of it, write it down.  Remember the obvious. Pay your bills by the tenth and write that down too!
     Anyway, my hands hurt a lot today.  I don't have to write that down.  It is just over stimulas.  Too much touching.  I live in my rabbit fur lined gloves and don't know what I would do without them.  They are soft and protective and allow me to continue, do what I need to do.

On my other blog, HERE, I talk about my First Date!