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

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

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.

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!

Psychology of Being Poor

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

Cancer Societies...

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

Death Panels

   Yes, I would want to know.  I used to think that the best way to go would be an unfortunate encounter with a cement truck.  Lights out.  Suddenly over.  I don't think that any more.  My dad died a horrible and protracted death by cancer and it seemed as if it took a year.  He was on powerful painkillers and morphine for much of that time, until the last week.  Between fogged moments of dying he told me he wanted off the morphine.  He wanted to die with a clear mind.
    I remember one year ago when I began my 12 sessions of the voodoo ABVD chemo-cocktail. I remember telling my doctor that I didn't want to go through what my father did, that I couldn't. Didn't have it in me.  One try was all I could do.  "Give it your best shot," I remember telling my doctor.
    During this time, this six month train ride to hell, I am sure I did what my dad did when he was off his morphine.  I thought.  My life didn't flash before my eyes, I painstakingly dug up the most minute details and relived almost every single moment, the good, the bad, everything.
   It is all a math game, percentages, chances, roulette.  Odds.  At some point you are "betting the farm".
I suspect when the last hand is played that we know this.  Accepting it is another story.  We so want to cling to life.  Survival, it is in our DNA.
   I had great odds.  Much better than the lottery, there was a fifty percent chance of winning the jackpot!
That makes everything that I am saying theoretical.  I don't know what I would do.  I don't know.  For sure I would want to know the rules and regulations, what game I was playing.  The chance of winning and the penalties of losing.  I would want someone to explain the situation I was in.  Then, if I were strong like my father, maybe I would chose at that last moment to see clearly for one last time, one more sunset and to know what I was looking at.  Maybe.  I don't know.
My Other Blog is Here.

Hands Down!



 My right "bad" hand



Where did that expression come from?  Hands down?  Anyway, on a good day my hands are pretty bad.

My right hand got the worst of it and slowly I am learning to become left handed!  I just changed the bandages on my left hand and the fingers decided to bleed again, self cleaning of the wound I suppose!



 My left "good" hand with bandages!

I can't do what I used to be able to do and I am sure we all complain about that!  But I can still do things, just a bit slower, with a little more deliberation, yeah, and with some pain.  I force myself.  "Just do this," I tell myself, "for ten minutes."  Sometimes at the end of ten minutes, that is all I can take and other times it will stretch to 15 or 30 minutes, or longer, for hours.  If I am liking what I am doing the pain is sufferable, almost forgetting it at times.  Creating "Art" does this for me more than anything.  It is a huge satisfaction just getting dressed in the morning. I still can't button buttons!  I can't zip the zipper on my pants and I am waiting patiently for the fun in that!

I need "art".  I need the satisfaction of implementing my dreams, to create something that was just a thought.

I can do it in many forms.  On really good days, in my shop, working with metal.

When my hands are in rebellion I can paint, maybe

put on canvas what should have been steel.  I am a good

cook and on bad days I create art in the kitchen, if only

a breakfast for one!  The point is, art takes me outside of myself

and away from any pain and into another world.  It alters

my focus.  Focus is everything in life.  If you believe you

can't, soon enough you won't be able to.  I believe that

with all my heart. So I move forward because I believe I can.



 Here I am this morning!
My Other Blog is  HERE.



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!

Bored with Cancer

     I am getting bored with cancer.  I don't even know how long I had it.  It was exactly, as of today, one year ago that I went to my doctor.  I had first seen "the lump" about three months earlier but chose to ignore it.  I saw it everyday when I was shaving, sort of keeping track of it, but then when I got away from the mirror, I would just forget about it, go on about my day.  There was never any pain, nothing to remind me and if I didn't see it in the mirror it wasn't in my thoughts.  My daughters and my wife kept putting pressure on me to get it looked at. Three months of this (daughters and wife, not the lump) and I finally broke down and made the appointment.  I have a really good doctor although I don't see him very often, maybe four times in my life.  Why would you go to a doctor if you were not sick?  Anyway, my fifteen minute appointment stretched to forty five minutes and I knew I was in serious trouble.  Unless you are talking about golf doctors just don't do that.  He did it all by just touching me and looking at me and talking with me. It is the forty years of doctoring.  He had seen it before.  I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma, he was certain. In the following weeks I was sent to a gallery of doctors and had a barrage of testing, biopsies and blood work,
cat scans and pet scans and God knows what, all to the same conclusion.  I had "the port" installed in my chest and my tee shirts cut for easy access for this ABVD chemical cocktail they would be giving me. Twelve of them, every two weeks for 24 weeks.  Six months that would try to dominate my life. It was pretty serious, the cancer had spread throughout me.  I saw the scans, it was everywhere.  This alien form eating me alive had spread from the lymph nodes into my spine and spleen, looking like I had been seeded with a shotgun, fool's gold in a cave.  Fifty-fifty, those were my odds.  This would have been tolerable if, once given
"the medicines", I had any sense of getting better.  Quite the opposite happens.  The ABVD cocktail is made from World War I mustard gas and it will make you very, very sick. If I were a doctor I would be making this out of fine brandies or good Scotch but they have no humor and no taste at all.  Every day you wake up and it is worse than the day before.  This goes on for six months or more and is a bit oppressive.
      There is another side to this and that is the side I chose to take.  Every day I did wake up. Think about that for a minute.  Fifty-fifty odds became an even battle, not any kind of automatic defeat.  I must have had 50% good, strong and willing cells in my body, capable of putting up a battle and willing to fight.  I concentrated on those and every day gave them thanks and encouragement, learning to appreciate their strength.  They wanted to live.  I would give this cancer no quarters, no thoughts, none of my strength, nothing.  There were days when I could barely function, didn't have the strength of a kitten.  I did tons of thinking because that is all I could do.  I couldn't read or watch T.V. without falling asleep. I went back, like watching old 8mm movies and relived my entire life, stealing the strength of my youth.  I have lived twice.

     Now I am done with it.  The cancer is officially gone!  I have yet to heal from these medieval voodoo cures, the neuropathy in my hands is pretty bad but I can't dwell on that either.  I wear my rabbit fur lined gloves (you should try them!) and do what I need to do.  One nerve cell can be four feet long!  That is pretty amazing and tells me that it will be awhile before my hands get better.  I am on the other side now and each day it is getting a little better, in small increments.  I am alive.     What I do 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

The Symptoms with the Cure

I would develop a cure for cancer that involved aged Brandy, Bonn fires under a full moon, lots of music and the beating of drums and young maidens chanting and dancing circles around me. I should have been a doctor.

My symptoms came rushing all at once mid-stride through this process of twelve chemos. I have not found a way to describe the fatigue so you could really understand it. Those in our
"secret society" know it well and have equal difficulty in expressing it. It is just indescribable.

The first "sign" was when I fainted. It was the end of June and I was watering my overhead petunias, both arms above my head holding the hose and I just keeled over, thankfully landing between two tomato plants. From then on every time I received my chemos I got steroids. I don't think I would have made it without them. Within the next two weeks I lost all my hair and I do mean everywhere; it fell out in clumps, I didn't even have eyebrows! And then I couldn't eat. I never had nausea, a bit of luck there, but I just couldn't eat. I would put food in my mouth and literally my brain would say, "spit it out or die". I spat it out. I lost fifty pounds in two months and this is not a diet I would recommend. I aged five years every two weeks and became, like the "others", a very old man. I have no strength to walk around the block.

Then there are the finger nails and toe nails. I lost my big toe and thumb nails. They just sort of come loose and fall off. There is no pain to it. The nails I got to keep became curled and tight like claws. I didn't get neuropathy until the very end and it got worse long after I had finished my chemo. The day I finished chemo I was so happy and I was still alive but it would be at least a month later before the poison left my body and I began to heal, a long, slow process in itself!

Tomorrow I will tell you about the marijuana, it is not the same stuff you had when you were in college!