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. 

I am alive!

I have no idea why I got cancer and no idea why I got rid of it.  It's a number's game.  I had a six month checkup today and passed with flying colors.  It has been four years!  Hard to believe. Two more six month checkups then he will switch me to once a year.  My hands are still in pretty bad shape but I am getting used to them.  Pain is funny that way when it becomes normal.
   I am painting my house this summer, already started.  I divided it into about ten sections and one day I will owe wash an area and the next paint it.  It will take me 20 days at that rate.  What would happen in 20 days if I did not do this?  This way it will get done.   That is a big improvement over the last few years when activities like this were not even on the table.
   My garden is in!  The earliest ever.  I planted 3 tomato plants and the normal other stuff.  And 50 potted plants with flowers!  It will be the best ever this year, a celebration to health!
Won't be back here for six months, find me on the other blog:  http://jerry-carlin.blogspot.com     HERE                          

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.

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.

As Good As...

How does that expression go?  Not as good as I once was but as good as I was once?  That is me, had my check-up today and short of taking apart my atoms in a MRI I am still "Cancer-Free".  I am pretty sure the doctor only knows this because that is what I tell him;  it was not as though my cancer was warn on my sleeves,
pretty much all invisible inside stuff.  I have no symptoms, no swollen lymph glands and most of the chemo symptoms are gone too, except my forever, it seems neuropathy in my hands!  My price of survival and small one at that.  I keep a photo of me above my desk, taken a couple years ago at my worst.  The cancer never did that to me, it was all in the cure, a beast at best.
   I really can do almost anything now, anything from my younger, stronger days, just in shorter bursts but that can be good too!  I tilled my garden, normally a four hour job that took me two days and I just finished spreading a yard of mulch along the paths to designate walkways.  It will take another yard but that can wait until tomorrow.  Time seems to move in increments now like a watch that stops then jiggles ahead to catch up.
I have discovered that it will wait, all of that capturing and saving time was a lie.  There is no hurry.  Tomorrow will be here soon enough and so much that used to be important and cause me to rush just isn't there any more.
Not that I could hurry,  I am just learning to relax.
   I think that for Cancer People (we are NOT victims!) and maybe all retired people, someone should offer a class in "how to do nothing", there is a certain art in accomplishing nothing.  I am still amazed at how the day disappears and I didn't even get to make a "to do list"!  I am learning to not do that too.
   So my next check up isn't until September and I think my doctor and I chose that date because I could bring him some dried tomatoes!  YES!  It is going to be a good tomato season this year!

Two Years!

It  has been two years almost to the day. Two years ago I had known about the lump on my neck for at least six months.  I had been watching it carefully every morning when I shaved, still there, a little bigger, maybe on both sides, never any pain, not even tender. Finally I went to my doctor.  He knew what it was within five minutes but sent me to the specialist anyway.  The Process of Discovery. Twenty thousand dollars later, lots of tests later, biopsies, pushing and pulling and looking at me under a microscope later they all agreed with my personal doctor: I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma!
   The "Cure" almost killed me but somehow I got away with it.  Hodgkin's is the "best cancer" but a lot of people die from it or die from the cure.   You never see that in obituaries but my guess is that it happens all of the time. Surgery certainly kills people on the operating table.  Radiation kills everything in its path and "Chemo", what I had is like finding a cure with a hand grenade.  It is a poison without discrimination and kills a lot of stuff.
   In two years I met a lot of cancer people at the Cancer Center and met lots of others in the blogging world.
I have reconnected with childhood friends who have been affected by cancer.  Many are now dead and survivors always have that survivor's guilt.  What do I have left to do that could be so great?  You often wonder why you get to live while others die.
   I do a little "art" but nothing special.  No reason there.  I am reading cheap mystery books now.  I read some art books, some history books.  Learning to read all over again and now am stuck on dime novels!
There is some guilt there too.  Something is not quite right that I could while away the day reading dime store novels while people struggle with cancer.
   The World doesn't stop and I know that.  It is a good thing.  We would all fall off.  I find myself short on words.  I have friends struggling with death or looking after someone who is in the thick of this battle.  I think it is a bit like the private world of the alcoholic.  I can't tell you how to survive it or overcome it.  I can only tell you how I did it.  I am not good with links, not very computer literate at all.  Even now, two years later I am pretty amazed when I read my almost daily journal with this battle I did.  Those blog entries are from my original bloggings that can be found at the top of my ArtWanted site, HERE.  For them to make any sense at all you must scroll to the very bottom and read them backwards in the order they were written.
   I have "collateral damage" from this encounter.  My feet are pretty numb and my hands feel as though I am stirring a bucket full of cut glass.  "Periferal Neuropathy"...Me and Dr. House! I take a couple vicodin a day and that gets me through.
   March will be here soon and I am still after that "perfect tomato" so I will be in the green house, my hands in the dirt.  Looking forward to it.

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

To Die or Not to Die

   That is the question.  As far as I know I am still Cancer Free and because I have been thoroughly tested, prodded and poked and looked at from the inside out, I am more sure of this than most people.  Today, for sure, I will live without the cancer.
   But the whole experience was really interesting.  It has been almost two years now but the memory is with me like it happened yesterday.  I had the emotional experience, the intellectual and spiritual experience, that dreaded experience which comes from the news:  You have cancer.  That is an announcement that will ruin the very best of days.
   In my case there was a month of more testing between this news and the beginning of "the procedure".I knew something was wrong with me before I went to the doctor.  I was in no pain so I almost didn't go to the doctor at all.  I had these lumps on my neck that just wouldn't go away.  No pain, not even tender, just lumps about the size of a cherry when I first noticed them.  A small walnut when I finally went, maybe six months after discovering them.
   This month before treatment I was tested and poked and prodded, MRI'd and CAT scans and PET scans,
checking out my heart to see if it could take it.  The doctor's wanted to know how strong my body was and could it take the punishment they were about to inflict on it?  What type of cancer did I have and how far it progressed?
   I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma and it was pretty much everywhere!  Nasty stuff that had migrated from my entire lymph system to my spleen and spine.  I had it pretty much everywhere.

   THE CONFERENCE

When the doctor has acquired all the results, done his own research and collaborated with colleagues and has decided on a course of treatment he calls you in for "the conference".  This is worse than an Income Tax Audit.  It is sort of like a final exam.  I was one of the lucky ones with great insurance so everything was an option.  Whatever happened my total bill would come to $1,000 and the insurance company would pay the rest, well over $130,000.  I could tell you a hundred stories where cancer comes with financial ruin.
   Some Hodgkin's Lymphoma patients can get by with six "chemos".  The worst case can be a nightmare of dozens of repeated "chemos", radiation, surgery, bone marrow transplants and God knows what.
I was to get 12 "chemos" although he would have preferred, he said, 18 total but didn't think I could take it.
I started all this from a position of strength.  I have been in construction all of my life and began these treatments weighing 225 pounds and easily being able to lift well over 100 pounds.
   The beginning is really pretty simple and nothing much bad happens.  You have a lot of time to think, do any research you might want to do, discover fellow bloggers who might be going through the same thing, sort things out and think about your life.  What you did or didn't do, want to do, should have done.  Reflective stuff.  An attempt to discover what is important.
   I had a"port" installed in my chest, near my heart so these chemicals could be fed to me from there and not have to travel too far through my veins where they might cause too much damage.  I was knocked out for this and at the same time the doctors took some bone marrow from my hip.  None of this was painful because I was unconscious and under the operating table.  Didn't hurt the next day either.
   I am not sure if you should research this stuff or not.  The "Net" is explosive with gibberish, quackery, self help remedies, natural stuff, asparagus diets and alarming statistics.  There are a lot of cancer sites that are helpful too.  Cancer is no longer an automatic death sentence and if you have insurance the odds are pretty good.  Well, good odds for a gambler anyway.  I had "stage 3 and a half" Hodgkin's Lymphoma which means it has escaped my lymph system and discovered other places in my body where it was becoming comfortable.  My odds were slightly less than 50-50, much better than lottery tickets!
   I had a different Blog in those days and I will attempt to direct you there.
It is interesting in that it is a day to day accounting of this battle, pretty much everything I went through physically and emotionally on this train ride through Hell.  The experience was about one year, six months of "chemo" and six months to get my strength back, although I wouldn't say I am totally well even now, almost two years later.
   You will meet a lot of interesting people and most of them will die.  Being a "chemo" nurse has to be one of the hardest professions in the world, always upbeat, cheerful and smiling, knowing your patients are suffering and many will not survive this voodoo process, this chemical warfare.  The installation of Mustard Gas and chemicals so dangerous that the nurses wear hazmat suits while administrating them!
   I know there must be billions of cells in my body and most of them were perfectly good.  I saw cancer as the renegade cells, the few damaged ones surrounded by the good ones.  It was a fight I intended to win.
   If you are new to "chemo" your fingernails will curl, lift from your fingers and toes and most will fall out.  It is not painful.  Your hair will fall out, all of it, everywhere, no hair, no eyebrows, nothing.  That is interesting and of course, not painful at all.  You may have nausea, that is pretty common although I never did.
   In the first two months of this six month "chemo" process I gained eight pounds. Then I pretty much stopped eating.  I was never sick or nauseous I just couldn't swallow food.  Everything tasted like sawdust.
I pretty much survived on one Ensure and a little tapioca per day. Four months later I had lost over fifty pounds.  Not too much fun in that diet!
    I realized that I was getting pretty weak when I was unable to turn the key in the ignition of my truck.
I could do it with two hands, barely.  I couldn't walk around the block.  I slept a lot and was always cold.
I remember August and 90 degrees outside and I was cold.
   You have to discover other things.  I will continue this story.

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

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

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!

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.

We Are What We Eat

...and we don't know where it comes from!  The recent ecoili outbreak in Europe was pretty frightening, sickening thousands of people and killing hundreds.  They might have thought they were being cautious.
This outbreak is thought to have come from vegetarian fare: sprouts, maybe the kind you grow yourself from a packet of seeds?  They still don't know for sure, the source. 
   France now is recalling hamburger thought to be made in Germany, but that is a pretty interesting story in itself.  I like a good hamburger, that is the truth, but I never know what I am eating, where it came from or what is really in the package.
   Just yesterday I was shopping and paused in the meat isle, looking at the pretty red meat packages of hamburger.  It never has brown tinted edges any more, no packaged meat has that "aged look" to it. It has the look of freshly cut beef packaged this morning.  Each plastic wrapped package is puffed up with Nitrogen Gas.  Sealed away from oxygen it will remain red and brights for weeks.  Until you open the package and then it will turn brown almost overnight.
   The hamburger in my store said, "product of Canada, USA, New Zealand, Honduras", and four other countries!  I have been told that in a one pound package of hamburger there may be the DNA of 400 to six hundred cows!  Mass slaughtering plants from all over the world gather up the bits and pieces and send this flesh to processing plants to become hamburger.
   It is not a scene of contented cows munching on  meadows and Alpine grasses.
   There is no safety in being a vegetarian, fruits and vegetables are a huge source of diseases.  Almost everything is genetically modified not only to produce more but to be resistant to the very poisons we spray around them.  Corn that is resistant to Roundup and other herbicides.  and then, we eat the corn!
   Fish are contaminated, poisoned, full of mercury or positively radioactive!  Ice Cream is full of growth hormones and we wonder why ten year old girls develop and mature so fast these days?  Must be what they eat?
   Clean water is almost impossible to find so we drink bottled water in containers known to cause cancer!
   The fire retardant chemicals they put in clothing, our curtains, our beds are in us.  We are surrounded in a sea of poisons and it is amazing that we swim at all.
My other blog is HERE

Arizona Burning...

This is June and Summer isn't here yet.  The really Hot weather is in front of us.  Arizona is burning, forest fires, the largest they have ever seen are spreading into New Mexico.  Oregon appears safe for now.  It has been a cold, wet, Spring and there is still a lot of snow in the mountains. God help us if it ever gets hot in Canada, there are a lot of trees there!
    Australia has had floods the size of Texas.  Japan's tsunami that caused a nuclear meltdown is still spewing radiation all over the world.  Tornadoes have flattened the corn belt in America and you will see, soon the World will be starving.
   In Oregon we can't agree to ban plastic bags.  They take a thousand years to disintegrate and although we don't give it much thought we all know there is an island made of plastic bags the size of Texas between our coast and Hawaii.  It is a problem we wish to deal with...later.
   It is amazing what we will put up with for convenience.  We "fracture" the Earth, a last, desperate squeeze for that final drop of oil and destroy the water supply in the process.  We have our priorities and we can deal with other problems...later.
   Cell phones cause cancer.  We have no idea what ten million radio transmission towers might do and we don't really care.  A price of convenience that we are willing to pay.
   The World is getting smaller and we have no idea of how close we are.  We laugh at the lemmings and we are not that much different.
   It seems that the weather is getting angry and the World is rumbling and we keep stoking the fire, just wondering what is going on?  Maybe we "used it up", that is a concept that we can understand?
My other Blog is 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!

One More Time...

Having Cancer, surviving that battle, actually getting over it, healing from the horrible Voodoo Chemical
Cocktails the Voodoo Doctors give you, and well on the road to recovery gives one a new perspective on life.  What if this job, whatever I am working on, is my last job?  Eventually that happens to us all, that routine thing we do today could always be the last thing we do!  I am an artist, and, yes, I get lost and caught up in the picayune of daily chores just like others but I also make art, projects from my soul, the stuff I dream about.
   When I was in the thick of this battle, couldn't eat and slept all day, building "stuff" was mostly what I thought about.  Thinking about it was all I could do, couldn't lift 20 pounds.  I was about as close to being dead as one can get.
   Like waking up from a nightmere that won't go away I find relief that it all seems like just a dream now.
My garden is in, now waiting for better weather and it is the best it has ever been.  More stuff, better planted,
nicely worked soil, interesting paths.  I am welding, working again!

 Nice Job, just completed

   It seems that things come when you are ready for them.  I am busy now, with interesting jobs, wonderful clients and I am given "license to create".  Each job whispers to me, could be the last one?  I pay more attention now, marking details for the total effect.  I enjoy the whole process, even in the rain, and never watch the clock, never at all.

 Flowers in my garden

   In over 30 years of construction I was always after speed.  "Faster" was my mantra, the schedule was the most critical and I would always have enough employees to get the job done as quickly as possible. Finish and move on to the next job was all I cared about. This is a photo of a job I just completed, just me and one helper.  It would be okay if this were the last one.  It turned out pretty good.

Despite the weather my garden is pretty good.  The flowers are growing, eagarly waiting for that sunny day.  So far my tomatoes are just sitting.  They hate these rainy days and too cold nights, but they too will improve and thrive when the sun appears.

   I am alive now and my list just keeps growing.  I have dozens of last jobs to do, one at a time and I intend to enjoy every single one of them!

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

     I admit my hands are killing me but I would never tell you that.  You would never know from what I do.

 The Main Garden Entry

I think I am done with concrete for this year.  I have created a new entry to my studio, a concrete curb to contain my blueberries and replace the railroad tie skirting at the front of my garden with a little concrete stem wall.  I even gathered up some scraps and samples of metal work and made a fence for this section.  My entire garden is now fenced in and gated with three entry gates.  I am tired now.
   I had a complete physical from my regular doctor this week.  He is the one who originally discovered that I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma in January a year ago.  I passed with flying colors, mid-normal in hundreds of categories and not near
high in any of them!
   My hands will take years to get better he says, it is more of a process of getting used to it!  Not what I want to hear but at least I can still do things. This time last year I was in the middle of my chemo series, the
twelve sessions that almost killed me.  It is like a forgotten nightmare now.  If I hadn't blogged so much about it I might think this happened to someone else, or didn't happen at all.

Bigger Tasks, Done a little slower!

     Last year was the worst weather for my tomatoes in my memory.  Spring came late, wet and cold. Fall came early with winter rains making it the shortest season ever.  If I had to pick a time to get cancer I couldn't have chosen a better one.  I was officially retired and collecting Social Security, haha, just like old people!  But between the cancer and the cure I was just about wiped out.  I had no energy and pretty much left my garden to the weeds.
   It has been over a year now, nine months since my last chemo voodoo cocktail and I am regaining my strength.  That too is a very long process, day by day.  I am left with neuropathy in my hands and feet and a continuing shortness of breath, not so bad that I need a resperator but enough to keep me out of racing, no more marathons for me!
   I am discovering that I can do anything that I used to be able to do, just a little slower.  It is an altering of time and not chastizing myself for being slow to get there.  Except for the clean up and spit polishing I have completed the new entry to my studio and am happy with it.  Now I am on a roll.

 Job in process, new entry to my garden.

   My garden area is about 25' X 50' and the entire area is a raised bed, about 16" higher than the surrounding walkways.  At one time it was framed in used railroad ties, popular in the '70's and discovered poisonous in the '80's.  I have replaced them except for the very front section with concrete curbing. Now I am replacing that.
    These railroad ties are 9' long and might weigh over a hundred pounds each.  With the help of a steel bar, one by one they come out, like removing this cancerous crap from my garden!  I got them out in about four hours and then I rested.
For two days!  I am better today and will clean up this mess and set forms for the new concrete curbing. Then I will probably rest for two more days!  Then I will pour the concrete!  That's how I do it, little sections at a time and before I know it the job will be done!  It is not a fast job but it is a continous process.  When it is done I will post a photo of it.
Lots of garden photos are 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.