Don't want to see you no more:)

My "Five Year Check up" was yesterday.  Looking back I wonder what I have achieved.  Cancer survivors are not unlike those who survive a plane wreck and wonder, at least at times, "why me"?
I have been asked and even recently, "how did you do it?"  Well, I tell them, it wasn't an asparagus diet nor kerosene and I attribute most of it to just plain luck.  Although "lucky" is not actually how I would describe the process that I went through.  Through the blogging world I have learned of far younger people who failed in this struggle and many others now, as I am, "Cancer-Free".  Nice sound to those words. 

Last Day of July!

It has been two years since my last chemo cocktail, that voodoo combination of lethal drugs administered by the nurses while adorning hazmat suits in the cancer ward.  I am a survivor!
I am sometimes asked what advice I might have for someone newly diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma or even some other type of cancer?
   Maybe see your doctor sooner might be at the top of my list.  I had noticed a small lump on my neck while shaving at least six months before I went to my doctor!  I kept my eye on it as it grew and became bigger and harder, always thinking that it might go away.  By the time I went for my physical it had spread throughout my lymph system, into my spleen and down my spine.  An earlier visit and I might have gotten away with six chemo sessions.  I had twelve.
   There are some things I would do differently.  I would go to my dentist before I began treatment and get my teeth cleaned and a dental check up.  I developed a blood clot along the way, not all that uncommon, and was given warfarin, made from rat poison (these chemists don't work with fine Scotch!) and because of the potential of bleeding, the dentist didn't want to see me.
   I would have gone to the eye doctor to get new reading glasses.  There will come a time when you will not have the energy to do much else and a good book can become very important.  In fact, I would line up ten or twelve good books and get them in advance, knowing now that I wouldn't even have the energy to look for them.
   I would eat!  I would splurge on food and wouldn't care whether it was healthy or not. During this chemical process I pretty much quit eating and lost almost sixty pounds!  I would find a friend (we all know one!) who has access to marijuana and ask them to roll me a couple joints...just in case!
   I began Blogging during this time and that might have saved my life.  You never know why you survive and someone else doesn't?  The guy who played Sparticus on the television died from Hodgkin's Lymphoma or died from the cure!  Stronger people and those with more faith than I have succumb to this cancer.  I liked blogging.  It was a world without time or direction and I could become reflective or jubilant and my reader's would not care.  I met a lot of friends in the blogging world and always looked forward to their encouragement.  While I might fall asleep in front of the television, blogging kept me awake and I had stories to tell.  And questions to investigate.  I did it this way, how did you do it?  Surviving cancer is best as a shared experience.
    Oh yeah, if I had to do it again I would win the lotto first!  I was lucky and had great insurance but cancer is very expensive.  Health issues are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the USA.
   Anyway, July 31st, two years and here I am!  Still after that "perfect tomato" and once again, strong and welding, making my metal art.  Who would have known?  I post here sporadically now, updates.
My main blog, day to day art and what I am thinking is http://www.jerry-carlin.blogspot.com and, if you are curious, my very first blog was on my ArtWanted site and that will give you a day to day, blow by blow view of the experience I went through.http://www.ArtWanted.com/slate
   Mt next check up with the cancer doctor isn't until October.

It is a Burn or a Cut or a Scrape

I am not sure.  It does not hurt.  I have no memory of when it happened, sometime yesterday.  I didn't notice it until I went to bed last night.
   So it is an excuse to talk about neuropathy today?  It is probably a little worse than I describe it.  My main method of dealing with neuropathy is to ignore it as much as possible.  I do take a vocodine first thing in the morning and the last thing at night but this just takes the edge off, reduces my focus on my hands and allows me to do stuff during the day.
   It has been a year and a half since my last "chemo" and this is my on going souvenir, the only reminder that I once had cancer.  It is mostly in my hands and it is very hard to describe.  Conflicting messages.  Like being asleep, like being electrocuted, like stirring a bucket full of cut glass, that is it mostly.  It travels up my forearm and while not as intense, it leaves them a bit numb.  No pain there just not what they used to be, not sensitive to the touch.
   I would describe the bottoms of my feet the same way, no pain, just a bit numb.  I could walk on coals.
My Voodoo Doctor tells me that a nerve cell can be four feet long and take along time to grow, to heal.  He says that in eight years I will be a lot better.  My regular Doctor tells me that in eight years I will be used to this.  Either way there is hope, huh?

 A wound in the shop

   I don't think about this very much.  It would be consuming and I could easily become the pain that I am left with.

My other Blog is Here

As good excuse as any...

I passed my test!  I was pretty sure that I would but it is not exactly the kind of test one can study for.
My blood is perfect and I have no lumps or bumps, no signs of cancer returning at all.  And the MRI and PET scans will be talked about at the end of January, my next scheduled appointment.  I gave him my arguments not to have them now and he respected my reasoning.  I have no symptoms and therefore no cause to get these tests.  I don't have the strength for another, much more invasive "cure" than the last one!And they are expensive, weather my money or the insurance company's, money best spent somewhere else.
And I am welding again, in the process of living and would prefer to focus on that.
   It is interesting how we can take an illness and make it a life's focus, controlling everything that we do.
I think back over my life and I have never done that.  Oh, I have hurt myself for sure but never gave it much time, just never saw myself that way.  I remember once, years and years ago when I was working at the local cannery.  I was severely burned when a batch of cream style corn exploded, getting 2nd and third degree burns all down my back.   That sent me to the hospital but I heal fast and only missed three days of work.
On another occasion I was in a traffic accident when some thief stole a car and rammed into me going 80 mph.  This destroyed the car and smashed a disc in my back causing me to wear a brace for about six months.  I missed a week of work for that one and returned working along with the others in my cumbersome back brace.
   I broke my hand once, smashing it with a three pound hammer and boy did that hurt!  I worked another two hours, finishing what I was doing.  I did go to the doctor for that one too but not until the next day!  He put my hand in a cast which I was to wear for six weeks.  I didn't miss a full day over that, just a few hours!
   There were lots of other times I could have made an issue of an illness or accident.  A few years ago I fell off a Church roof, steep as any church, fell 16 feet straight onto a concrete sidewalk landing on my bottom.
It looked like you beat me with a baseball bat!  I never even went to a doctor over that.
   The point to all of this is that I am not my cancer and have never been.  It wasn't a fun process and the chemo took its toll on me, that is for sure.  But at its worst when I couldn't lift 20 pounds I was still in my shop every day, doing what I do, even if with a weakened effort.
   It would be easy to focus on what is wrong with me, dwell on my neuropathy, worry about my lungs and that I can no longer run, haven't the strength I used to have.  It would be easy but oh so boring.

My Other Blog is HERE

Doctor Appointment

I think I have a doctor's appointment today. I only remember that it is soon and in the afternoon so I will call them this morning to discover the time.  This is a three month check up, one year and three months after my last chemo!  He will have the blood suckers extract some samples and with the power of modern medicine, within five minutes they will know most everything about me, down to the parts per billion.
   I will be weighed and measured and stripped, pushed and prodded and poked.  They are hunting.
I know he will suggest another MRI and PET scan, something I successfully avoided three months ago.  My last scans were half way into the chemos and the cancer was gone then yet I continued with six more chemos
"just to be sure".  Enough chemical poisons to give me neuropathy for a lifetime and maybe chase away the cancer for good.
   I don't know what my answer will be.  I am still thinking about it this late, just hours before my appointment.
I haven't made up my mind.
   The down side to me, the reason not to get the scans?  They are horribly time consuming and boring.   You get them and wait, schedule another appointment, get some kind of analysis, make another appointment and you lose three days of your life just doing that.
   They are very expensive.  Oh, they won't cost me much, I have great health insurance.  One of the lucky few.  But money is still spent and they are not definitive.  Always that odds game one plays with cancer.
   The other reason, the other down side to getting these tests is the answer, any test results, will have very little significance to me.  I am living my life without cancer now.  As if I didn't have it.  I do what I want.  I do what I am able to do.  I never think about it.  It is not my focus at all.
   I have no strength to fight this fight again.  My hands cannot get worse.  I can't allow that.  I have my strength back but in a new limited edition.  I am good for short distances and short bursts of energy.  My lungs have taken a beating from this cure and more "medicine" would do them in.
   After the blood letting and looking up stuff in the computer, after feeling me up in a not nice way at all, he,
my Voodoo Doctor will sit me down and ask me how I am doing?  That is not an easy question from a doctor.  I have to be careful with my answers.  Guarded answers.  The wrong answer will get you sent to another specialist, more testing.  Cutting if sent to a surgeon, zapping if sent to the radiologist and more cocktails if sent to another voodoo doctor.  I am very careful indeed with my answers.
   I have always dealt with the uncomfortable in life with distraction.  As soon as possible I will get the conversation to art and hopefully it will be a fifteen minute appointment with my doctor that is not about me at all.
   I have no symptoms at all.  No lumps, no bumps.  Nothing that made me go to him in the first place.
I think I am going to be all right.

My Art is HERE

Three More Months!

All's well that ends well.  I had a great visit with my Voodoo Doctor!  He just got back from a short vacation so we talked mostly about Italy and that was just fine with me.  I did the blood test.  It is red and all perimeters are where they are supposed to be!  My blood pressure is perfect.  It has always been on the low side of normal.  I don't get riled easily.  and I have a pulse!  That is a good thing!
   He couldn't find any lumps or bumps either but had the audacity to suggest that I could stop gaining weight!
   I will have to think about that one.  I started this process weighing 225 pounds and went down to 170 pounds.  For awhile I lived on one Ensure a day, if you could call that living.  Now I weigh in at 217 pounds, not exactly welter weight but I am ready to get back in the ring!  I enjoy a good meal and none of this weight gain is from potato chips!
   We did discuss the PET and CAT scans and I went through my rationalzations with him.  They are boring.
I would rather be doing something else.  Anything else.  They are dangerous.  They cause cancer.  They are expensive.  No matter who is paying the bill.  They are not 100% conclusive.  There are no guarantees.
There is too much evidence that my fight with chemo-therapy worked.  I have had these PET and CAT scans before.  Three times.  The first was at the beginning of this mess and those were pretty clear.  I had cancer everywhere!  In well over 100 lymph nodes.  In my spleen and in my spine.  The cancer was thriving, living well and expanding wherever it wanted.  The second series of scans show the battle midway when I was halfway done with th chemo-cocktails and clearly the cancer was running scared.  In retreat. and my last one was a year ago when I finished with this "therapy" (it wasn't like a massage at the hot springs!).  The cancer was gone!  I want so much to say, "just like that!" but it wasn't easy.
   So, all the evidence says the cancer is gone and the issue really is, will it return?  No one knows how it got there in the first place.  I lead a dangerous life but there is no connecting.  No found reason for cause and effect.  It just doesn't sound right when the tool of discovery causes cancer!
   We agreed on a course of delay.  My next appointment is October 6th, three months from now.  Three months of summer that I didn't get last year.  I won't fret and worry over this and told the Doctor that I am likely to forget the appointment unless I am called to remind me.  I have way too much to do!
   So we talked about Italy and pizza and bottled water and little cafes in central Rome.  It was the best doctor's visit, ever!

Today is The Day!

Five hours from now.  I have my "One Year Check Up"!...and I still don't know what I am going to do!
I know my voodoo doctor will want to do more PET scans and CAT scans and I am still battling!
Should I? or should I not?  They are a bother; there are a million other things I would rather do.  I don't like doctors.  I don't like hospitals.  I don't like waiting rooms.  I don't...like waiting!
   And then there is the very big issue, what would I do if the cancer returned?  Taking "chemo" the first time is always a risk.  Maybe it will do this and maybe it will do that?  They don't really know, everybody is different.  Maybe it will cure you and maybe it won't?  It will make you sick though and that is for sure!
Some people have had "chemo" twice or even more and I just don't know how they did it?  Where did they get that kind of strength to enter the fire again?
   I start my day with Vicodine and end it with Vicodine when I go to sleep at night.  I have pretty bad neuropathy in my hands and a little in my feet.  I have enough pain.
   These tests cause cancer.  They are the same as getting 400 x-rays in a single day.  They are not fool-
proof, they don't see everything.  They wouldn't come with a guarantee.
   They are extremely expensive.  I have great insurance but that is only by luck.  It is still expensive whether
I pay for it or they do.
   I have no symptoms.  No lumps, no bumps, no chills, nothing.
   This time a year ago my garden was a mess.  I couldn't lift 20 pounds. I couldn't weld nor paint, couldn't make art of any kind.  Couldn't.  Couldn't do anything.  Nothing.
   Now I am strong again and my garden is weed free and perfect, all set up for "that perfect tomato"!  I can weld and work and make art.  I can eat again!
  I just don't know.  Four hours now and we shall see?
My art is HERE

A Year and a Day!

 One Year Ago, pretty much hairless!

Hard to believe, it has been about a year since my last "chemo", that voodoo batch of poisons they give you when you get cancer!
It is interesting how quick you forget all the misery that comes with "the cure".  I sometimes go back to my original blog HERE or I might forget the experience entirely. If you should check it out, scroll to the very bottom and read it backwards and you will discover the train ride I was on.
I lost almost 50 pounds, not a diet I would recommend. I lost all my hair including my moustache that I have had since I was 17 years old! My fingernails and toenails became claws and pretty much fell out.  These were all "good signs", proof the voodoo cure was working!  Chemo kills the cancer cells and a lot of good ones in the process!

 Photo taken today!

   I was lucky, I had a great insurance policy.  This "experience" cost about $130,000 and my share was a thousand bucks!  I am a big believer in National Health, some kind yet to be worked out.  Millions of Americans are losing their insurance every single day.  The worst stories I could tell you involve people with insurance who become too sick to work, losing their insurance and bearing this burden, selling everything they own in an attempt to stay alive.
   Today I took another photo of myself.  My moustache is back and so is my hair! and I have discovered the secret in getting rid of gray hair!
Although I wouldn't recommend that either!
July 1st will be my "official anniversary", that one year mark and  I have a doctor's appointment then with my main Voodoo Doctor!  He will suggest more Pet scans and Cat scans to "make sure" but I am thinking I might not do this?  I feel fine, I have no symptoms, no lumps and bumps which got me to the doctor in the first place.
   The year has come and gone.  I am welding again, doing my Art Stuff, working in my garden, always trying for the "perfect tomato" and enjoying the lazy days of summer!  I am left with neuropathy, a little in my feet and a lot in my hands, a constant reminder of where I have been.

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!
    

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!

Right Tools for the Job

I had my construction experience yesterday, tearing down and rebuilding a set of stairs.
They are up now, accurate and perfect, awaiting the wrought iron banister I am to build.
I went into construction 35 years ago. I lost my school teaching job due to a recession and a lay off of over 30 teachers. A friend had a large construction company building motels and huge apartment complexes and hired me as a foreman. I was in charge of a 20 man crew on my first day of work. I knew nothing about building anything. "You know about people," he said, "keep them working and happy." So I did that, for him for a year and then for myself for over 30 years.
There is a hierarchy among construction crews. The guys who could do lay out, the ones who could cut in the rafters were near the top. The guy who made the stairs was at the very top.
Always even, above the boss. There is a lot of math in a set of stairs and you have to know the total picture. What will the final job be? What are the final treads? What will be the top and bottom landing? Carpet? Tile? Hardwood floors? This all affects the outcome and alters the math.
You need a really good saw blade and America doesn't make these any more. We still make construction saw blades that are okay for everyday framing, but for precision work you need a blade "made in Japan." They use better steel and have a pride in their work left over from the Samurai sword making days. If you can imagine a perfect artist's paintbrush versus a house brush that is the difference.
I needed to learn these trades, layout, rafters and stair building if I wanted to stay in this business and make a living at it. I practiced them every night. I went through reams of paper with hypothetical problems, moving the stairs, moving the landings, changing the windows, adding this or that.
So I discovered yesterday that this is all a bit like riding a bicycle and I can still do it. The neuropathy in my hands made it all a slow motion procedure but the brain remembers and I had a great day! After Christmas I will build the railings and that will be a wonderful present to me!

my Steel Website is HERE

I am ending the year with a JOB!

This is crazy and wonderful, I am ending the year with a job! I began my chemo last January and continued working until half-way through this voodoo process, about April Fools' Day. Then work became getting dressed and I got all the horrible symptoms of the "cure". I have done nothing monetarily, there is no renumeration in being sick. I turned down an interesting job because I couldn't lift a 20 pound piece of marble! All that is in the past. Except I have neuropathy in my hands. They hurt if I use them and they hurt if I don't.
So, somebody came to me and said, "Jerry, can you..." That is all it takes to wake me up.
During this cancer bout, fight, thing, is the only time in my life I have ever said "no". That was probably the hardest part of the whole experience for me. I had to learn the "can't"word, the worst word in the English language. I had to learn to do nothing.
I was on the job yesterday in my rabbit fur-lined gloves, tearing down a brand new set of stairs. This is a new and very expensive house and the stairs were not built correctly. The last stair and the first stair were different from the rest and I couldn't build a railing on that. The brain assumes. We go up and down steps without thought. To throw in a step that is ff an inch is a tripper and it wouldn't pass the building inspection. I told the homeowner that we can tear it out now or after I have made the railing and then replace both! He is an older guy, like me, and we are two old guys together, fixing this problem that young guys built. A little slower than I used to be but it will be dead right perfect when I am done. I will finish this construction phase today and then I get to build the railings!!
This will be a fun job. It is about 15 feet of stair railings and ten feet of balcony railings with NO rules except the minimum 4" open gap rule required from the building codes. I can do what I like! It is what I dream about. Visions of steel and iron and patterns and obscure bits and pieces from my shop. Things that I find and stuff that goes well together.
For me this is a wonderful Christmas present. There is the money, sure, a necessary evil.
But I am doing something! I am building something. I am creating! I am not my cancer, that is history!

My Cancer Blog is Almost Over

Two more weeks and my year will be over. It has been an interesting year to say the least.

Yesterday, while shopping with my daughter, we saw an old man using a shopping cart as a walker. Without it he would have fallen down. "You were much worse than that Dad," my daughter said. I know she was right but I can hardly remember it now. For over eight months

when I went to bed at night I knew the next morning would be worse. Two hundred and forty days that became a lifetime, always deeper into that tunnel where only darkness became my friend.

I lost all my hair of course, we all do. It is a members only club. There are a lot of jokes about it and all kinds of hats and even wigs for those who care. The fun part is no pubic hair but by then we are holding tenaciously to our humor. Not much laughter in cancer. I lost fifty pounds

but would not recommend this diet to anyone. I could hardly eat at all. My brain would literally say "spit it out or die," but you wouldn't understand that. I don't.

The hardest thing to describe is the fatigue and I realize why people die. We just get too damned tired. We have taken it to the end and there is nothing left. No reservoir, we are at the bottom. It becomes an incredible experience to just wake up in the morning. You know that you are alive but you are just waiting for night and the comfort found in dreams.

I have written this blog because I don't want to forget. It has been an interesting experience all this remembering and I realize that I have forgotten nothing. At least nothing that I remember.

My Other Blog is HERE.

There were no symptoms

Except for the lump on my neck I felt fine. I think I first saw it in September last year. I noted it every day while I was shaving. I tried to will it away. In October I went to Washington D.C. and spent three weeks with my daughter. We walked everywhere. Two or three miles a day was our normal routine. Two or three days a week she was in Court. Ah, daughter's can be so much trouble these days! No, she was on the defense side, mostly keeping young women off the streets and out of jail. These days I would walk on my own, just exploring the big city.
Then there was November and Thanksgiving, my birthday and the Holidays. I went to the doctor on January 10th finally running out of excuses. I've told that story the one I am remembering today is how cold I got. I began the voodoo ABVD chemical cocktails a the end of January. I received twelve total, every two weeks for six months. Half way through this process is when I got all the symptoms all at once.
I was always cold. In July on a hot day I remember sitting in the front room of my house with the heater turned on and blankets wrapped around me up to my neck, shivering! In the middle of the summer I would sleep with sweat pants and three wool blankets and awake in the middle of the night, shivering. It was a freight train all right, with ice tracks and a cold north wind and I couldn't stop it at all.
Today is December and all of this nightmare has passed, no more trains, no cold or icy winds
and it all seems like a far away dream. Something that happened to someone else.

My Other Blog is HERE

No More Testing!

This is December, the last month of the year and I have decided not to get further Cat and Pet scans. I could get them now for free as I have paid the thousand dollar deductible on my insurance. I had them at the beginning, eleven months ago, and they were pretty clear then. I had cancer everywhere. Stage three and a half Hodgkin's Lymphoma that has spread into my spleen and spine and just about every lymph node. I didn't even know I had that many.
My father died of cancer and it took a year to kill him. He wanted to live and did everything:
Surgery, Radiation and Chemo. The surgeons cut his tongue off and half the inside of his mouth.
The radiologist destroyed the rest of his face and his chemo finished him off. It wasn't pleasant.
I told my doctors that they only had one chance "to cure" me, that's all I had in me. They opted and I agreed to a series of 12 chemos, that ABVD stuff made from Mustard Gas, the poison made for trench warfare. I knew instantly that this was going to be nuts.
Three months into this program I had the CAT and PET scans repeated. These tests are dangerous, the equivalent of 420 chest X-rays, and are known to cause cancer! The chemo is no piece of cake and you want to know that it is working to acquire that strength to continue it.
It was working well. Half way through this chemo and the cancer was 80% gone! That was overwhelmingly good news. Six more to go and I lost all my hair, eyebrows, everywhere, lost 50 pounds, became a 90 year old man almost overnight.
It is nice to be alive and there is a lot I want to do, but I don't think I have another recovery in me. The last check up and blood work I had was all optomistic, the lumps are all gone.
My doctor says an additional CAT and PET scans are for reassurance, basically to make me feel good. They are never conclusive and often miss what they are attempting to see. and they are dangerous. As James Brown says, "I feel fine!" and will go about my life with every intention of living it. This is all a luxury anyway. I can get the test any time I choose to do it. After this month it will cost me that $1,000 deductable. I have already spent $130,000 of the Insurance Company's money.

My Other Blog is HERE

None of the Above!

I tend to put things in perspective. One of the stages you go through with cancer is the

"Why Me?" stage. That is sort of funny, there are probably a thousand reasons where I could have gotten cancer. Yes, I admit, I have had water from a plastic bottle! I confess to liking bacon and other smoked processed meats. My socks are only 50% cotton and the rest, OMG, could be anything. I don't even know what I have put on or in or near my body, unpronounceable

things for sure. I have learned that if you can't pronounce it you probably shouldn't eat it and that seems like a pretty simple rule. I am not even talking hotdogs here, we all know what is in them, but what do they really put in ice cream? We are importing food now from China! God knows what kind of murky waters that fish sandwich you ate were swimming in! Antifreeze is sweet, cheaper than sugar, and it is put into toothpaste!!!

What is funny is that I have smoked for forty seven years, have always spray painted without a mask, I weld in an almost sealed shop ( I leave a window open!) and and I never wear gloves or protective gear for anything! I have lived a very dangerous life and NONE of this "caused" my cancer! The voodoo doctors just don't know!

The dinosaurs lived on this planet for millions of years, humans, as we might recognize them,

for maybe 25,000. That is perspective. I see the war veterans coming home in wheel chairs and worse, I see very little children going through this same chemo-cure that I am and I see the homeless, the people who consider themselves "lucky" if they are living in their cars and that is perspective. I know there will be very hungry people, fighting the cold tomorrow when I am

feasting on a big turkey dinner with a few chemicals added. That is perspective!

My OTHER BLOG IS HERE!

All from Memory

I am writing these blogs about my cancer (Hodgekins Lymphoma) from memory as it has almost been a full year. I had an earlier day to day blog, that if you read backwards will take you through the emotions and everything I went through. It is HERE!
Writing from memory is so much easier and I have the leisure of picking through the debris to attempt a story. Sometimes I go back and read the day to day blog, pick from that nightmare
and relive it here, but it is never the same as it was the first time. It is as if I have skipped to the end of the book and having read that last chapter, I am a little disappointed at the ending!
There was no sailing off into the sunset. The dancing girls never appear, nor does the brandy solution. No light at the end of the tunnel and no revelations. However, the bad guys are defeated and it was a harrowing tale with some twists and turns, a lot of gore and the Hero (me!)
gets to live another day! I guess that is what makes a story, huh?

My Other Blog is HERE

Dancing Girls and...

campfires and midnight kisses! That is what I wanted! I wanted out. Out of this madness, out of the cancer and out of the voodoo world I had been in, all encompassing and surrounding me in an insanity of sickness. It would be nice but marijuana doesn't really do that for you. Mainly I knew if I wasn't going to eat I was going to die. Not to be rude but I hadn't had a crap in over twelve days! There just wasn't anything in there to come out. The tiny bit of food I gave my body it wanted to keep. The synthetic marijuana pills helped a little bit. but they had removed all the "good stuff" from them and they were very expensive. I had absolutely nothing to lose, I was grasping at comfort. I got three "joints" for $20, sat down here and lit one up!

If you are not a smoker it will make you cough. The trick is to get it into your lungs and hold it there. Try a smaller breath but hold it if you can. Three or four puffs later you will get the hang of it and by then you will like it. Now, I don't want to misdirect you or lie to you in any way. Nothing beats bon fires, midnight madness, dancing girls and a fine single malt scotch!

Years and years ago, maybe twenty five, I was given some cookies, chocolate chip with walnuts, my favorite! That is all I knew about them and being the compulsive I am I ate three or four at one go. Twenty minutes later I knew something was very wrong. My head was spinning, the leaves and their trees would not stand still, and just everything was moving slowly.
Another twenty minutes and I remembered my college days, experimenting with marijuana. Then I knew what was in the cookies and knew I should only have had one!
Marijuana has never appealed to me, no drugs have. There is a particular loss of control
that has always been important to me that you lose while taking drugs. I like every 24 hours in a day and marijuana can make them seem like 40 or 16, altering time, surreal to the extreme.
One can sit and stare at a leaf for hours, not really thinking much, maybe feeling more, maybe not, and then this silence gets broken up with uncontrollable laughter! and here is the key part:
then you are hungry!
Pain will go away. I was lucky with my cancer in that I never had much pain except for my right hand which always feels, even today as I type this blog, as if it were stirring a bucket of cut glass. Marijuana will make all that disappear. The medical community and our society have long denied the "clinical trials" that marijuana users have known for a century. It can be fun so it has to be bad! I am still hunting for that doctor that makes chemo from fine brandy!
I really wanted to eat. My doctor wanted me to eat and he was worried. So, I did it and it was all pretty much like the above, a little laughter at nothing really, a lot of lost time, just a pleasant getting lost experience.
The next morning I went to breakfast with a friend! A real breakfast with real food! I had ham and eggs with gravy on the hashbrown potatoes and I ate everything except the toast!

HERE is My OTHER BLOG!

Marijuana! Yeah baby!

I have always been a big man, strong as an Ox,

moving 100# of steel was never a problem for me. When I began this chemo process I weighed

225 pounds and eight weeks into this twelve week circus I weighed 175 pounds, losing about 5 pounds a week! I lived on one bottle of Ensure, a small cup of tapioca, and a very small bowl of jello. That is less than 500 calories per day and it was all I could do to get that down. I was lucky in that I was never nauseous, but all food was cardboard to me: "spit it out or die"! I had my voodoo doctor worried!

He finally prescribed some synthetic marijuana pills for me, saying I could take five or six of these per day. These pills cost about $20

EACH! and with my insurance they still cost me $100 for a weeks supply, my insurance company paying for the other $600!!! There is no reason on this planet that these should be so expensive, except somewhere someone saw an opportunity to make a profit! Drug Dealers!

If I took five or eight of them a day they worked a little bit, enough that I could, under a lot of pressure, drink an extra bottle of Ensure. My doctor mentioned "medical marijuana"! Maybe that would help?

"Medical Marijuana" is legal in Oregon but you do have to get the prescription and go through a process and become registered. Did I want to go through that whole process and be known? I am sort of a hippy, definitely a drop out, but my experience with drugs is pretty limited to a single malt scotch! I did want to eat! What to do?

Marijuana is so easy to get now, probably easier than a gallon of milk and the local newspaper.

If you have this conversation with your friends, three out of five will know where to get it.

I wouldn't know how to roll a "joint" if my life depended on it (and it may well have!) and my hands were pretty bad by this time as the neuropathy was setting in. I didn't want a "baggie" or "lid" (see, I am learning the lingo!) around my studio, or god forbid, in my house! I talked to a friend who had a friend who knew someone. Really, it was just like that! Carlos, maybe?

And the next day I was given an Altoid box, those cute little minty metal boxes, with three nice and tidy and professionally rolled (tight packed!) marijuana joints inside! I had them!

They stayed in a drawer in my shop for three days. On occasion I would take them out, look at them and smell them, should I? The third night I was alone in my shop. My wife works graveyard shift, so I had the house to myself. I did not want this to be a celebratory, happy, party thing, although, looking BACK on this experience, among friends with laughter and smiles

is the best way to do this! Anyway, I sat right here where I am now, in the office of this shop, in front of this computer and "lit one up"! I will tell you that story tomorrow!