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.

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!