The photo is a placeholder because I don't really understand how to use an iPad. I'll put up the real pic when we're back in New York.
Actually, screw it. This can stay here. I love Mongoose dirt bikes, and I won't get to Eagleman till a later post anyway.
Glad I got that cleared up.
Anyway, uh...how ya been? Heard any good jokes lately?
OK.
Sorry.
That's kind of all I can say. Forgive me, reader, for I have sinned. It has been--jesus--more than two months since my last confession.
I can't particularly explain why I stopped checking in. Or, to be more honest, I am sure I could explain, and it might even make for some good writing or a couple of illuminative moments about living as a cancer fighter instead of living as a person.
I might go into to the likely psychology behind just kind of turning off the 'this is me, the guy in treatment, the guy whose day-to-day is all about fighting the disease, staving off recurrence, and being a fighter fighter fighter' role.
This list of missives has helped save me, helped ground me, helped N and I figure bits and pieces of the process, helped in many ways. But it only has one raison d'être: cancer.
And maybe I just got tired of that.
I can't shrug off the maintenance. I can't skip a trip to the CityState. I can't idly play hooky from the bone marrow needle or the little bag of Vincristine.
I am tied to those things and many others in a slavery that--while it means my likely recovery and my hopeful full resumption of life as a blissfully ignorant dumbass--is, like oxygen, iron, and love, escapable only by death.
But a blog post? He'll, I can skip that. Right? Right?
So I did.
Some of you gave me shit, and rightly so. One particular friend held himself to a monthly text: "___ months and still no new post. I hope you are OK." You don't know this guy, but I do: that was impressive restraint. Some of you just broke the 'he's using the blog to keep people informed, leave them be to fight the disease, don't bug them at home' unwritten rule and just started calling: "you guys OK? What's up? No posts in a while."
And I ignored it all. Sure, the occasional 'I should do a post.' But not with much conviction.
And you know what? I'm allowed. I know that.
But it doesn't make it OK. I made some sort of compact when I started this. It was all about me--shocker--but it was a controlled information stream that may have helped me get through the process with a bit more sense of control or discourse on the battlefield of my marrow, and was also a way to keep people informed without exhausting repetition or the blown-out conjecture and falsehoods of repeated tidbits passed mouth to mouth, or inbox to inbox.
And I am sure I had my reasons; my psychological weaknesses or self-oriented desires to pretend just a little that I was merely a regular schmuck again for a while.
But that's bullshit. And I hate when people pretend that bullshit is fact, especially when I do it. Unacceptable.
So herewith is my apology for bailing on this for two months. Or more, or whatever.
I'm sorry. I really am. I feel bad and I let myself and others down, and I am sorry.
And since I mean it, I can leave it behind: Cancer Lesson Five: dwelling on things can kill you.
So we're done. Back to business. Things have been pretty good.
I'll briefly start in the right now just so there's no silly, bad-movie suspense that I am writing this as only a jellied mind suspended in a mildly green liquid in a clear cylinder somewhere, my body eaten by the disease and my thoughts and spirit--'he had such a strong (sniffle) spirit'--reconstituted through a miracle of modern science so that I can teach the children of tomorrow the dangers of ignorantly getting leukemia, which we have since discovered is contracted solely by having good sex and/or not returning movies you rent until well after their due date.
I am typing this on my cancer-present iPad. I am looking out over the swollen Missouri River--N prefers to call it 'full,' like it's a friggin' soup mug--as it enters the town of Great Falls, Montana.
We're at my aunt's house, where I am still coming to terms with the devastating fact that my eighteen year-old cousin has longer hair than I ever did and likely ever will--and wears it pretty well, the snotty asswipe.
I am taking an antibiotic started yesterday to counteract the slight fever that seems to have come along with the really gnarly (and I say that word in the positive sense) bug bite that has produced a 'pustule.'
C'mon, 'pustule?' That's gotta be one of the best words ever. All the cool kids have a pustule! It's all the rage!
We were scheduled to get bloodwork in conjunction with Jim's regular appointment with his myeloma guy in town--we're models of efficiency--because I have been out of New York for a couple weeks now doing shit I'll explain later--fun shit, productive shit, and pretty much healthy shit.
So we went in and I got bled in a cancer center that likely uses about as many square feet as the CityState but only has one eight-hundredth the rooms--out West space is not at such a premium, and the building looks like, as N said, a Museum or Interpretive Center, and not a place to go be sick or ingest poison for fun.
So we figure while we'll there we'll see what the Drs think of what has become a fascinating huge red thing under my armpit on my ribs. When it was first discovered--sick or not, I'm a boy: I don't notice things like bug bites or, perhaps, if part of me has caught fire--it had this very cool ring about an inch and a half away from the bite, all the way around. And it was raised up a good bit. And tender.
All in all, I was pretty proud of the damn thing.
So we go to the clinic part of the Your Cells Hate You Interpretive Cancer Center and Museum, and N rightly points out that we should see what nurses think of the bite. Doctors are lovely, and quite valuable, but let's be honest: for any question that starts with something like "whaddaya think this is...?" or "should I be worried about...?" you go to a nurse. They often don't have a specialty because their specialty is 'everything.'
And, like a badly rehearsed high-school play, all three nurses to whom I present my little cutaneous Krakatoa make this mildly-to-deeply unnerving 'ewww!' face.
Note to whomever: anything that skeeves out three straight chemo nurses leads directly to medication, if not excisement (credit to my aunt Jean, who just provided that word in the space of my brain fart).
OK long story short, I've got a seven day course of antibiotics on top of the current chemo and general fistful of pills. The fevered nights seem to have broken, and later today, through the hook-up of an eighty-nine year-old gent with access to the airport, we're all gonna sit On The Goddamn Runway and watch the Blue Angels do their show for the Montana State Fair. So things are good.
I have one particular friend who hopefully, upon reading that line about the Blue Angels, will, with jealousy and indignation, poop himself. Just a little. And that makes me happy.
I have canoed, hiked, played in the South Fork of the Teton River, heard and made rousing Union speeches in Seattle, taken a train across the Rockies, sat quietly with N in lovely places, and run miles and miles.
And I am still not dead.
And I did a Half Ironman.
But, obviously, I'm not gonna get around to that this time, and I wanna get this posted before I find some stupid reason not to.
Talk to you soon. Promise.
