Delayed Chemo Effects

I had a massive amount of chemotherapy in a short amount of time. Five infusions of cytoxan coursed through my veins via my PICC line in as many days. Some people on my floor lost their hair or exhibited other expected side effects of chemotherapy. My appetite disappeared, and that's about it for what I felt prior to the stem cell re-infusion. Even in the initial weeks after I left, I didn't display the usual outwardly visible effects like hair loss. The last two weeks, though, have been a different story.

After my first round of chemotherapy, a month before the hospitalization, I saw that my hair had begun to fall out. And onto my pillow. Because I knew that I had a lot more where that came from, with regard to the chemo regiment, I shaved my head prior to my admission. My hair stopped falling out noticeably while I was in the hospital, though.

Before I knew it, my stay ended. I still had much of my closely cropped hair. Recently, however, I've noticed that my hair--on my head and in more "intimate" areas--has started to fall out prodigiously. It's probably good that I shaved my head. It definitely has minimized the squeamishness that I'm sure I'd feel as I looked at my hairy pillow.

Since college, I haven't showered frequently. When I was in college, of course, I started to miss days here and there. Then, I strung along several days. When I was first diagnosed, then, I took it as an excuse not to go through the hassle of bathing. Soon, I cut back considerably, and now back-to-back shower days don't happen. It's too arduous to position the chair that I now use like a feeble old person, and then to fidget with the tap controls until the water is a reasonable temperature. Now, because I have no hair, I find that I don't have to shower ever. I don't smell, and this is both a blessing and a curse. It's nice not to have b.o., but showering is more of a chore than ever before. When the chemo ended, and I was discharged, I was relieved to shower. Since then, though, I've noticed that I emerge from the bathroom with less and less hair. I'm not totally hairless, but I can easily feel my scalp with my fingertips.

Then I have to check my eyes, because generally an eyelash or two has fallen beneath a lid. For the most part, I have my eyebrows (thankfully--that's a hallmark of chemo, and one of the ways in which to discern between chemotherapy and general baldness). Every so often, though, I peel back an eyelid and see a preternaturally long bit of hair there. This is a piece of brow, obviously. While I scoop that out, I make sure to check for other strands of hair. Most likely, this is an eyelash. I've always had long eyelashes, not unlike Dumbo, so I'm used to doing this, but never before has removal of one from underneath my lid been so certain. There's bound to be at least one.

At first, the nausea was manageable. It took a few days--after the re-infusion, really--for the telltale feeling of unease to come up (pardon the pun). When it did, I didn't eat anything for a week. This was normal, I was told. Nevertheless, it was unsettling that, for a week, I ate nothing but Ensure &/or Boost. I felt like Kanye West, without the facial disfigurement. Eventually, my doctor prescribed Marinol--a synthetic form of THC. Or medical, pharmaceutical marijuana. It sucked, and only made me sleepy, a reaction that my friend Sophie warned me about but which I shrugged off more as an extension of her light-weight-ness. Not so, it turned out. Marinol erases any psychoactive or psychotropic side of marijuana, aka the fun of it, and replaces it with Ambien. Or, in my case, Restoril (Ambien does nothing for me). Now, my nausea comes and goes. It's impossible to predict when I'll have that feeling, so I need something close to counter its effects.

What's more troubling is that there seems to be nothing to assuage the dizziness and exhaustion I feel after being upright for an extended amount of time. How can the big bad drug companies not have something that will quell this? I've mentioned this feeling several times to my doctors and my physical therapists, and still they have no response. A simple "Whatreyougonnado?" would suffice, but they seem to dismiss it like they didn't hear me. When I lie down, it goes away. Sitting up for more than half an hour causes it to increase exponentially, it seems.

Hey, Big Pharma--mach schnell! I know you're good for nothing altruistic, for the most part, but make something that will allow me to sit in a chair for more than an hour. You've done the Viagra thing, now do something less comical. Forget about curing cancer and everything else that should have been done already, and just let me sit upright.

R

Near-Perfect Stoicism (Days 2 & 3)

I forgot that I had physical therapy again today. Usually, there's a day off between appointments, but not today. I went on Monday and had a typically uneventful session with my normal guy, whose name I still don't know. Today, though, he switched with another therapist, so today I had her. Her name escapes me, shockingly.

I had the same basic regiment: 10 minutes on the bike to warm up, then exercises on the parallel bars, and then it's over to the table, where I do more exercises. It doesn't vary much, except the speed, ease, and fluidity with which I complete this routine. Since this was only my third proper session, nothing exciting or earth-shattering happened. Except my utter stoicism after groping my trainer.

Over the last year or so, I've almost perfected a look of complete stoicism. Part of this can be attributed to my mind's preoccupied concentration on menial tasks, but now it's my default expression because I simple cannot be shocked, and it's difficult to surprise me with a joke. Most of the time, I see it coming. This is not to say that I have silenced my internal monologue. Often, my face won't move but my head will tumble, either with laughter, appreciation, or even horror, among other things. Today, I realized that I may have broken down that let bit of self-consciousness that causes a face to contort.

When I was between the parallel bars, I grabbed my trainer's boob. I don't mean that this was an incidental brush or run-in. No, I squeezed. In my defense, I was wholly unconscious of this. What happened was that I was in the middle of the bars doing some balance exercises and my eyes were intently fixed on the door in front of me, per her instruction. She told me to try the exercises with my eyes closed, and with my hands off of the bars that I used for balance. I began to do this when I felt my body start to roll to the right, and I reached for the bar in order to right myself. I always scan a room and look things to grab, and I thought I was reaching for part of the steel construct. The thing was, though, that I didn't grab the bar, but her left breast.

It took a good five seconds before my brain fully processed what had happened. Five seconds, as in "One, Two, Three, Four, Five." All I knew was that that was not the bar. She ignored the whole event, thankfully. Then I began to think. Does this happen routinely? This clearly was not the first time that someone had accidentally grabbed her boob. She's not (how you say) mildly chested. (She's not overweight, either.) Did she view this as a hazard of the job? Like, "Yeah, whatreyougonnado? My boob was grabbed again"? Even if this were so, I couldn't imagine getting used to that. If someone accidentally grabbed my crotch, it could never be a run-of-the-mill interaction.

She didn't mention it, but I knew immediately what I had done. And I knew she knew I knew. It wasn't exactly difficult--steel bars and breast tissue are fairly disparate, texturally. Rather than call attention to the awkwardness, I chose to ignore it and proceed with my exercises. It wasn't like she could tell that I was actually cringing, because my face remained still and steady.

I've never had a face of rubber. In the past, though, such an event would cause me to furrow my eyebrows inquiringly, then hoist them in shock and recognition. Not so, today. I kept my eyes focused on the door and calmly removed my hand and resumed the exercise. The incident was over, even though it pierced my thoughts for the next half-hour, and still, obviously, lingers.

So maybe my impassivity is only external, for now. I don't think this is a bad thing, because once it becomes internal I could become really boring. And posts like this wouldn't exist because they wouldn't occur to me.

R

Football Is Absurdly Epic

I'll try not to lament the demise of my beloved Bears too much. I almost can't help it, though, because I can't stand Lovie Smith or his constant quizzical facial expression. No--you're not getting a treat, Lovie, so wipe off the blank hang-dog look. It looks like he's too dumb to feel anything beside carnal pain, which I wish someone would give him unremittingly. But I'll not dwell, other than to say that the Bears need a coach, finally, that is competent. I used to attack quarterbacks and running backs for their seeming ineptitude, but I think now that the problem lies with the coach. Jay Cutler may not be Tom Brady, and Matt Forte not Walter Payton, but they cannot be as disposable as they look in games. Formerly unremarkable Cedric Benson's 188 rushing yards confirmed this today, as the hapless Bears lost to a very beatable Cincinnati Bengals team, who they made look like Super Bowl contenders. I digress, though...

Many people shrug off football as yet another display of machismo and nothing more. They would have a point, but there's no way in hell they could play a game. Neither could I, for that matter. That's what I love about the NFL. I know I could never play in a game. I could step onto baseball field, and most likely could vanish into the periphery. This sentiment goes beyond the obvious MS restrictions. I could hardly play a boring game of European "futbol," aka soccer, and there's no way I could move in shoulder pads, ao clearly I couldn't play football. Even if I wanted to, though, I would have to be a freakish example of anatomy and resiliency. Since I'm not an evolutionary or eugenic marvel (far from it), I could never play professional football, and I'm fine with this. I never have the thought, "I wish I were in this game," or "What I would do is...," because I could never survive a single play in an NFL game.

Nothing else gives you the feeling of pure spectacle like an NFL game. Even the promotional music and that of the programming itself sound like everything belongs in the Roman Coliseum. I cringe when I hear Faith Hill sing the intro for Sunday Night Football, but I love the upright horns that nearly make me stand before a commercial break. Honestly, who okays the intros for this programming? That Faith Hill song is so bad that even wallpaper curls when it plays, and Bocephus's "Are You Ready For Some Football?" on Monday Night Football, before it went to ESPN, induces only feelings of laughter and mild nausea. The brass blasts that signal the end (or maybe the beginning) of a commercial break cut through anything and everything, though, as if to signal the entrance of an emperor.

The idea of 80,000 people, give or take, gathering for a sporting event may seem crazy, especially in this age of HD. I actually prefer to watch a football game on television, but I understand the gratification of physically being present in a stadium. If you watch the crowd, its cheers look like they emanate from an alien civilization. This is more of a phenomenon that's visible during a college game, but I am confident that you can skip this. You don't need to feel the displaced air from thousands of waving tentacles to know that they are there.

Nevertheless, people gather to watch these huge gladiators run into each other. They do a lot more than that, of course, but I'm playing devil's advocate.

I'd pay handsomely to see someone who criticizes football's brutality get on a field, with pads, and wait to get knocked down. You'd have to be insane to endure what these players walk into, voluntarily, each week. This is true, but you also need a little finesse to make it look good. A very tiny number of people can do this for an entire season, and even less for multiple seasons.

This is the reason Brett Favre's decision to shirk retirement only makes me shrug and shake my head in confused admiration. He doesn't have anything else left to accomplish, but still he won't disappear in the entrance tunnel.

As a Bears fan, his indefatigability puzzles me, but I can't turn this into derision. He may be most famous as the leader of the Bears' chief rival, the Green Bay Packers, and now is at the helm of division leader the Minnesota Vikings. He brings it, though, and oddly refuses to fade away.

I wish Lovie Smith would not do the same, however.

R

The Flesh Is Weak (Sort Of--The Mind Gets In The Way)

I had my first appointment of physical therapy earlier this evening, and it went about as I expected it to go. I warmed up on the "bike," and I insist on putting that in quotes because this "bike" is not a true exercise bike. There are no wheels, and the pedals only push down like a StairMaster. In truth, this is what it is: a recumbent StairMaster. The contraption even has metal handlebars that you grasp, and they too go back and forth while you climb fake stairs while you sit. Talk about irony. It was over in ten minutes, though, and then it was on to the parallel bars.

Think of male gymnasts, and how they have to contort and elevate themselves on this thing. Now remove the twisting and contorting, and you have what I had to walk through to complete a series of simple exercises. As I held on to both sides, I worked on coordination and muscle memory by raising alternating legs to a plastic chair. Easy enough, right? Then my therapist, an Indian guy whose name I forget five seconds after it's uttered, let me rest.

This isn't so bad, I thought. Then I fumbled through a batch of exercises that reminded me of how fucked-up my muscles really are. It's hard to ascertain how much of this has to do with MS, and how much can be attributed to the weeks of idleness that my muscles had to, literally, sit through while I lay in the hospital bed. First was an exercise whereby I had to reach, and touch with my toes, for complementary ends of a half-circle made of black tape on the floor. I get distracted easily, and I couldn't help but think that I was reaching for a large protractor. One of those half-ones that come in zippered plastic packages of school supplies. Do they even still have those? Anyway, this was more difficult than I anticipated. My body kept veering off to one side, so I had to clutch my trainer's arm. Then he waved me over to a table, and I breathed a sigh of relief because this meant I could sit.

As I lay flat on my back, I had to thrust my pelvis up and hold that position for five seconds, then lower it back down. I'm good at this, so infer from that what your sick mind will. Then I flipped over and propped myself up by my knees and hands before I stretched out one arm and kicked back the opposite leg. Both extremities would be held aloft for five seconds, and then I would switch sides. I was all right at this, but the narrow table bothered me. I felt like I could fall off either side. Luckily, I didn't, but this unease stayed with me for the next round of exercises. I sat up and faced the opposite wall, and stood up and then sat back down slowly. My trainer has a thing about inhibiting your vision, and he wanted me to do this without looking down (or holding the table for balance). He told me to keep my eyes on a fixed point on the wall.

These exercises are all pretty simple, but I was shocked to feel sweat rolling down my face. Again, I was reminded of how inactive I had been during the hospitalization, and how this idleness had eaten away my muscles. Whenever I'm examined, doctors, and even this therapist, have expressed shock at how strong my muscles are. Yeah yeah, I always think dismissively, and rightly so. The muscles themselves may be strong, but they do not move with ease and grace. Instead, they plod and plop. I struggle to control them, and the stream of sweat conveyed this. Luckily, the trainer noticed, which I'm sure is especially hard to do since I don't breathe with an open mouth, and assured me that I was almost done.

The last exercise was a basic standing push-up against a wall. I think mostly this was supposed to be a stretch, but at this point everything was an exercise.

What I gleaned from the hour was that the strength is there, but I have to learn to ignore any internal monologues of warning or hesitation. I can do these exercises, but my brain keeps getting in the way of their full completion. Don't get me wrong--I still complete them, but I have to silence my own caveats. I feel like a schizophrenic sometimes as I quash voices inside my head before I set out to complete simple tasks.

They get done, and afterward the effort is only an afterthought. The problem is with forethought. I must extinguish doubt before it has a chance to infiltrate my psyche, and subsequently doom whatever it is I want to do.

I detest it whenever someone quotes the Bible, and in this case it's maddening to think of that oft-quoted verse in Matthew: "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." I have to go Zen when doing certain things. Unfortunately, I can't stop objecting to the inaccuracy, or at least incompleteness, of phrases like this.

In my case, the flesh is willing, but the mind gets in the way.

R

Bad Books Make The Most Watchable Movies

The Shawshank Redemption ended about half an hour ago, and I shook my head when I considered how many times I've seen various parts of the movie. It's one of those movies, like Rocky IV , III, II, or even the first one, where you can watch certain parts of it for eternity. I can't think of another more pleasant "hell" than one in which I'd be forced to watch Ivan Drago beat Rocky to a pulp, only for the eugenic Drago to say, "He is not a man. He is a machine." about Sylvester Stallone. And then, the Russian premier gives Sly a standing ovation, to Dolph Lundgren's (who plays Ivan Drago) chagrin. It's such a horribly dumb moment. I can recognize this, though, and still appreciate the kitschy sentiment. The same goes for 1994's The Shawshank Redemption.

One of my verbal treatises, with which I annoy numerous people (I'm sure), is that bad books make the most watchable movies. Two examples just from the '30s spring to mind to contradict me. The Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind both came out as iconic movies of that decade, so I won't toil to make these movies fit into my offhand theory. Nevertheless, for the most part I'm right. Have you tried to stomach the movie of The Great Gatsby? Robert Redford ached to be put out of his misery there, so his ultimate demise should be refreshingly welcome.

The Shawshank Redemption, of course, is easily the most successful movie on cable regularly, and the story itself comes from an awful Stephen King novella. There are several instances in which some hackneyed lines come straight from his pen (I'm sure--I'm not going to read the small book to find out). The warden, played evilly by Bob Gunton, refers to Indians, or Native Americans if you want to be feebly P.C., as "Injuns." It's painful to see him utter this stale, anachronistic line. I know he's supposed to be cruel, but the warden doesn't also have to impersonate Yosemite Sam. Later, when Red (Morgan Freeman) speaks of the long night of uncertainty that precedes the truth about Andy (Tim Robbins, the main hero of the story), he says, "Time can draw out like a blade."

I know that you're not supposed to dissect each bit of prose until it loses meaning, but that is really trite. Mind you, I was an English major, so I'm very conscious of bad phrases that get dashed off with nary a consideration. Like a blade? Ugh--that is so stupid. Maybe it would make more sense if I were a samurai, but alas, I am not. It may sound okay, but that line makes no sense if you think about it for more than five seconds.

The same goes for Morgan Freeman's narration, as Red, that says that Andy Dufresne had been imprisoned for "nearly twenty years." Is it that hard to say exactly how long he was in the pen? "Nearly twenty" means "not quite," so you're far too close to saying, "Well, at least he wasn't in there for twenty..." Nineteen years and change sound mildly do-able when put next to this round, non-prime number. At least he didn't reach the 20-year milestone...

The lynchpin for Andy's prospective release comes in the form of Gil Bellows's glib story of a talkative inmate that he used to live with, some guy named "Blatch." The name is an onomatopoeia for something bad. He might as well be named, "Creep-erton." Of course, Blatch murdered Andy's wife and her golf-pro lover, the crime for which Andy was convicted and now is serving time.

Family Guy has made the point that Red most likely forgot the name of the Mexican town that Andy wants Red to add at the end of his itinerary, but I think the cartoon gets ahead of itself here. There's no way Red is going to remember to go to Zihuatanejo, but his location of the rock and letter that Andy left for him is equally crazy. During the same conversation in which he drops the long name of this Mexican city, Andy also tells Red to go to Buxton, Maine, and find the tree where the letter is buried. I'll let Red find the tree, because Andy describes it so eloquently as "like something out of a Robert Frost poem." At that point, I don't think a convict would be aware of the revisionist history of Frost's legacy as a poet of pastoral nursery rhymes and whimsical catchphrases. Beside this, the rock that Red finally picks up when he reaches the tree is wholly unremarkable. Dust and dirt cover it, so there's no way for Red to see what makes it so different from the other stones. Why does it jump out at him?

There are many such leaps of logic that the movie asks of us. For instance, what shoes does Andy wear while he crawls through the sewer? Forget that, for now. I defy you to change the channel if you land on The Shawshank Redemption. Or, for that matter, Misery or The Shining.

Or even The Green Mile. Yes, it's too long, but why would you watch the whole thing from start to finish? Pick and choose wherever the dial lands, like I do with Shawshank. Whether it's the scene in which Brooks feeds his similarly incarcerated bird, or he swings after having had enough trouble bagging groceries, I'm confident you'll forget whatever horrible reality show you were watching.

As someone who spent a summer bagging groceries, I can say that suicide doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

R

Drone In These Dog Days

These days, I try to fill my time during the day. Not with anything, mind you. I want the pages of the calendar to flip and fall to the floor, like in old movies. I'm not depressed--just impatient. Since I cannot catalyze the effects of the stem cell procedure, I have to bide my time and wait.

This is immensely frustrating, and sometimes my toes tap the ground like an impatient kindergartner. My sight still bobs back and forth, so reading is more of a chore these days, and my balance still thwarts my legs at, literally, every turn. So, until my symptoms become more normal, or at least level off after the trauma of chemotherapy, I must wait. And wait. And wait, as the unseen narrator's voice in Casablanca says.

Earlier, I didn't know what to do with myself. Today, as on most days, the afternoon made me sleepy. Luckily, I made a wise choice not to take my Provigil, which is an "anti-sleepiness" pill that really makes it nearly impossible to fall asleep. After I woke up, though, I still didn't know what to do. I could have gone back to sleep, but I'm not depressed, so I actually could not have. What soothed my mind was music, but not of the soporific variety, nor of the histrionic, explosive type. No, it was drone that did the trick.

I refer not to a Don DeLillo-ish, ambient hum that acts like a sedative, but to a sustained buzz that keeps you awake but doesn't annoy you. A good example of this is The Velvet Underground's magnificent, epic "Heroin." It has only two chords (for most of it--there's a third at the climax), but they are more than enough to fill the space. As Lou Reed keeps punctuating the song with them on his electric guitar, drummer Moe Tucker's tribal drumming punches through the chords until it sounds frantic. Of course, there's the more in-your-face effrontery of the band's "Sister Ray," but that song urges you to pay attention, and that's not what I'm going for just then.

Drone music does not have to poke you in the ears constantly for its efficacy to be felt. Instead, it's content to lie back and be, confident that you'll stay awake. Perhaps the standard by which I measure this kind of music is Kraftwerk's nearly 23-minute "Autobahn." It replicates perfectly the phenomenon that any good 15-year-old Driver's Ed student knows as "highway hypnosis." It's 23 minutes long, but it sounds, to me at least, like a whimsical pop song. I don't mean this in the Joanna Newsom sense, because she annoys me. With her caterwauling and erratic shifts in dynamics, I could never be hypnotized by her. Kraftwerk, however, might as well be spinning a pocket watch in front of my eyes, because I get completely entranced listening to "Autobahn."

Both "Autobahn" and "Heroin" drone successfully, but in very different ways. Kraftwerk, like the German literalists that they are, repeat the same figure of notes over the lyrics, "Wir fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn," which I assume countless people have taken to be a Beach Boys-ish "Fun fun fun on the Autobahn." They're wrong wrong wrong, though, and don't realize that Kraftwerk is really saying, "We drive, drive, drive on the Autobahn." Or something close to that. I don't speak German, and I'm too lazy to Google the literal translation, but that's the gist. All the while, an A Clockwork Orange-type sibilation rides on top of, and underneath, the quiet rustling and subdued whistling of the other instruments. The song sounds like, well, driving down a long highway with your windows up, then down, then up again.

"Heroin" opens like a reluctant, blooming flower. It doesn't want to open, but the drums almost overtake the song with relentless pounding. This doesn't happen, though, because each possible crescendo stops abruptly right before it seems to be on the verge of explosion. Instead, we hear a prospective implosion that never comes. Ever time that it sounds like a loud bang is around the corner, the song stops. There's no BANG, but there is a hint of collapse. It never happens, though. Then it starts again. Then it ends, after over seven minutes.

During the day, I prefer Kraftwerk's brand of drone to The Velvet Underground's. This probably sounds counterintuitive, but to me it makes sense, especially with respect to late afternoon and late night. I need a continuous, pulsing stream of sound to sustain me during the day, whereas at night it helps to get poked every once in a while, especially after a day of fighting lethargy.

I wonder if, like Whistler in Sneakers, I could successfully identify a stretch of road by its whoosh. I doubt it, but I might be able to come close.

R

More Baby Herman Than Swee'Pea

While I was in the hospital, a fair amount of my remaining hair (since, as I've mentioned, I buzzed off most of it preemptively) fell out and rested on my pillow. Each morning, a fresh batch of dark gossamer sprung up, and I could only shrug. I've written before about how my hair began to fall out from the chemotherapy, but now the extent to which this has gone is nearly complete.

I haven't lost all of my hair. Many cancer patients who have to sit through the ravages of chemotherapy lose all of it, but I haven't. I look more like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'s Baby Herman than Popeye's adopted son Swee'Pea. It's hard to tell, though, how much hair Swee'Pea actually had, because the drawings were so crude and he always seemed to be wearing a bonnet, which I suspect existed merely as an excuse for the animators not to draw hair. Anyways, I still technically have most of my hair, but it now has the awkward patchiness and pathetic vestigial presence of a junior high student's pitiful peach fuzz.

I'm glad I shaved it, unlike a few people I saw who opted not to do this. Like I've said, they came to look like newly indoctrinated cult members. However, the problem is that it's fall--my favorite season, by far--and the brisk air necessitates a hat. It doesn't matter if I'm outside, with occasional gusts of wind, or inside, with nothing going on but what I can feel from heating vents. The slightest hint of a change in air currents can make me shiver.

Throughout the day, I will wear a plain black knit cap at different times, depending on how cold I am. You know that old grammar school teaching that says that something like 75% of your body heat comes from your head? I always scoffed at this, and thought it was just another manipulative ploy to make kids wear hats. This may be true, but I must say that a high percentage of palpable body heat comes from your head. Remember--I'm not totally bald, but I may as well be. (I just had to reach for the hat, by the way, because I'm fucking freezing, and I think it's around 70 degrees in my room.)

Realistically, a tonsure would provide at least a little more warmth than a completely shaved pate. Honestly, I think this is why Hare Krishna acolytes are scarce when compared to Franciscan monks. Maybe it's also why the former love airports so much. The air is controlled, for the most part. Now that I think about it, though, I'm not sure if Franciscan monks even do the tonsure thing anymore.

The allure of a tonsure vanquishes any brand of pity I may have felt for balding men. They don't need it. If anything, these guys are very shrewd not to hide their baldness by shaving their heads because they aren't completely freezing when the temperature drops. Besides this, guys who shave their heads to cover up their dwindling hair tend to be dicks.

My wisps of hair provide some insulation, I'm sure, but it is not nearly enough to make me comfortable consistently. It's only fall, mind you, and the biting cold of winter in the Midwest is right around the corner. Hopefully by then, though, I'll have enough length to guard my skull reasonably. Plus, I'd wear a hat anyway, because it gets cold, and I'm way beyond the too-cool-for-school phase of adolescence.

Until then, I'm stuck with a combination of the knit hats and the hoods that I pull over them. Just so you know--I'm not the reincarnation of the Unabomber or a member of some outlying religious faction.

I'm just cold.

R

More
than

"Today I Settle All Family Business"

So said Michael Corleone in The Godfather, played by a young Al Pacino, who kept his volatility behind his eyes rather than behind a strong exhale and an explosive tirade that has become the old Pacino's trademark. He had just presided as godfather at his sister Connie's son's baptism, an occasion that he used to "settle all family business." This meant murder. Vengeful, anonymous, quiet (for him, at least), murder. I'd like to do him one better and eschew the messy killing, but I still want to settle my own personal business finally and forever.

I will no longer hold any grudges. This is really easy for me to do, because I honestly have no grudges. Such is the beauty of apathy. You learn not to give a shit about most everything and anything. Why preoccupy yourself when it's so much easier to forget? You're thinking, "Don't you mean 'forgive and forget'?" No, prig, I mean the latter only. The former is not practical. Let's face it. You can't decide, apropos of nothing, simply to forgive an atrocious transgression. It's not real. If someone who you really want to strangle flashes you a smile, I figure you have two options. You can pretend not to see him/her, or you can flag him/her down and deliver a healthy open-hand slap in face. Or you can ignore the gesture completely and go on your merry way. Actually, that's three.

In certain instances, I am not opposed to physical violence. Sometimes you have to go a little crazy because you're so pissed off that words could not possibly do what you want them to do. Unless you're like me, and possess an acerbic tongue that can unflinchingly release a trenchant, perfectly placed, devastating insult. In that case, words work as well as fists. Wait--I think that makes a fourth option. Whatever. You get my drift. If not, you're too dense to drift, and will remain perplexed, furrowing your brow in non-thought.

But I'm done with all of that (for the most part--if provoked, I will reflexively react). My new modus operandi is staunch apathy. If I've done anything to piss you off, get over it. Rub some dirt on it, as a high school football coach would say, and resume whatever it is you were doing.

The other side of this is that I'll do the same, though this will be very easy for me to do because I already don't care. One of the things I've been told to avoid, with regard to the MS, is stress. "Can do" was my internal interjection when I was advised to do this by my doctor. For better or worse, I don't care about petty squabbling or backbiting. Why bother?, I figure. I honestly can't think of a reason to get all hot and bothered over something that someone else says. Does--well, that's a different story.

Words, though, don't bother me, for the most part. Say what you will, because I truly don't give a shit. If this whole MS onus has taught me anything, it's to ignore anything that may trouble me unnecessarily. Thus, prattle yourself into a fugue state, but know that I stopped listening, and caring, a long time ago.

Therefore, I have to insist on your forgetting about any grudges you may hold against me. I've done a lot of stupid shit over the years, so if you'd like a personal apology, I'd advise you not to hold your breath while waiting for one. Because it's not coming.

There is no acrimony in this sentiment, though. Apathy sounds like a very juvenile attitude. It may be, but it's the most true one that I can offer. I'm not going to apologize, and I don't expect any such apologies in return. In fact, I can't think of a particular one that I would hope to hear, because I have, most likely, forgotten what it is I'm supposed to be angry about.

So today I've decided to let whatever frivolous quarreling may have existed in the minds of others (as I've said, I don't care one way or another). And I promise that you won't be shot in the eye while getting a back massage. Or strangled with garrote wire when you think you're in the clear.

You're in the clear--I swear. So am I, for that matter. I've decreed it.

R
--I think I'm uncharacteristically buoyant, though very characteristically aloof, because I finished my first book today. For the most part. I'll leave the editing to others, and hope the release won't be relegated strictly to posthumousness.

Obama's Nobel: Like My Procedure, & Some Swing State Voting, It's Too Close To Call

This morning, I received an email from my mother that I quickly dismissed as probable spam, or at least the rudimentary beginnings of a bad joke. It declared that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Her work email address is relatively safe, I think, and she doesn't have that sophistocated of a sense of humor. No one does, really. What would the punchline be here? A hackneyed "NOT"?

I like President Obama, but I've written before about how his administration has not exactly set the world on fire with regard to his policies. Evidently, though, I was wrong. His win of the Nobel Peace Prize proved this, but I remain adamant that his presidency is too nascent to garner such an accolade. As such a young president, both in terms of his term duration and physical age, I scoff at this award.

I understand the urge to slap Bush in the face with this. He was, simply, the worst president in the history of the US, and this is no small feat in a country that elected Nixon. Twice. And Reagan. Twice.

Mostly, I think that this award is a slap in the face to any and every moron who voted for Bush in either of his electoral wins. Lest we forget, America, you voted for that dumbass. I can hear the caterwauling and whining of limp progressive voters protesting that this is a lie. Well, his first win was bullshit, but his second, over the pontificating John Kerry, was legit, though not exactly resounding. In the end, it didn't matter. He was reelected, and viewed his win as a "mandate" to enact some of the worst policies, both foreign and domestic, possible. Ugh, he was such a terrible president.

With the election of Obama, it looked like America had finally inhaled the smelling salt and been brought back to coherence. So far, it only looks like a good prospect. Nothing tangibly different has really changed. Numerous pundits think, and say, that this award is more of a clarion call to action for Obama than a current reward for diplomatic success.

I would agree, but not now. I would rather wait until some real results can be seen, and so far Obama's policies have been too cautious and not very bold. Maybe in a while we will feel and witness his greatness, but now not much is there.

The same dilatory patience is needed for my stem cell procedure. On Wednesday afternoon, I was told that it could take as long as two years for the full effects of the reinfusion to be felt. I expected this, and didn't expect to be running marathons within the month. This sort of thing takes time, and was never meant as a quick-fix solution.

Still, no one has thrown a sash around my neck that says "I BEAT MS" in big bold red letters. You know why? Because concrete results remain to be seen. In this terribly ephemeral, Twitter-centric world of instant gratification, we all need to slow down a bit. The monumental bunglings of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be fixed overnight, and we have to learn to wait before bestowing awards for the hope of accomplishment, as opposed to actual action, or else such honors lose their meaning. For a community that came to scoff, rightly, at Bush's stupid "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" declaration, is it not premature to bestow a Nobel onto someone who has not done much of anything? This distinction is far too premature, and Obama shouldn't let it lull him into complacency and a false sense of accomplishment.

Likewise, I have to wait until I can declare victory over MS. It's frustrating, especially for someone like me, to know that I have to wait, but c'est la vie. Sure, I would deign to accept a prize for defeating it just because I had the stem cell procedure. Don't get me wrong--I'd accept it, but I'd know I didn't deserve it. Yet.

The same goes for Obama. He can travel to Sweden and wear the brass ring, but he must know that he hasn't earned it.

Yet.

R

The Palliative Properties of The Sun

Sunlight rejuvenates, which is weird for me to say because I hate the sun. Actually, I think I hate all of the accouterments that go along with what is generally associated with bright, glaring sunlight. I'm talking about the sand, which inexplicably always finds a pocket to hide inside of, and the sunscreen, which never fails to make me crave a shower (& that in itself is quite a feat), and the conglomeration of people whose exterior shell runs the gamut from The Thing's unnecessarily chiseled abdomen to the consistency of moist bread.

Then, there are the sunbathers. They bask in the harmful ultraviolet rays of the battering sun and shun the protective sheath of the water. As a Lake Michigan local, I don't have to deal with the disgusting layer of salt that invades your pores when the dust, or, in this case, salt, settles. Freshwater is really the way to go, but I digress.

Each morning that I was in the hospital, the sun would hit me in the face until about ten, when it would be out of my line of sight. Then, I could finally appreciate the comfort and beauty it would both foster and, obviously, illuminate. Sunshine is like a draped blanket. It may miss certain corners and crevices, but ultimately it covers everything that wants to be spotlighted. For the most part, if you want what it has to give, it's there.

Ever since I was discharged, I have come to understand a new brand of the beauty given by sunlight. Ralph and my mother recently bought a house in the country, with picturesque, pastoral views visible from both the front and back windows. From the back porch, I sit on a swing and stare at the scorched-match rows of soybeans that begin just where the backyard ends. I've never seen anything quite like it. It looks like the backyard lies at the rim of a million paintbrushes whose tips have been seared.

This is not to say that I was immune to the nearly overwhelming brilliance of the sun in my hospital room. The way in which the buildings seemed to bend toward the sun's rays was breathtaking. At dusk, the mirrored top of the Prudential Building looked positively transcendent, as it reflected, harshly at times, the waning but still-vibrant sunlight.

To prove that I am, at bottom, a city boy, I loved to gaze upon the skyline at night and tried to think of an adequate metaphor to describe it. Eventually, I had it--sort of. I couldn't think of the name of the toy that I was thinking of, but luckily my friend Colleen--who I hadn't seen since college but who was incidentally visiting her sister, a patient for a different procedure at the same hospital--named it. The Chicago skyline, at night, was a massive Lite Brite screen.

Lite Brite, for those who don't know, is a black screen that gets lighted by small plastic pegs that glow upon insertion. After a few minutes, though, these individual torches recede into the larger picture that the child--it's a children's toy--is trying to depict. The same phenomenon happens with the Chicago skyline. At first, you can pick out individual windows, or pegs, but eventually this becomes impossible because they melt together until a building looks like a giant-sized fiber-optic battery. (Is that right? Remember--I was an English major, and know nothing about electrical engineering.)

Pretry as that is, it's an illusion. The buildings could look ghastly in daylight. Like Detroit (I couldn't resist). Fortunately, though, Chicago has the most beautiful skyline in the country (sorry, NYC, but it's true), so the sun merely has to shine and the beauty emerges.

This it does. Even on cloudy days (see below), the sun will shoulder its way through the clouds and flash the skyline. Like a camera, and not like a sunbathing co-ed on Spring Break.

So, even though I marvel at the fields around this house, I know that another, more resplendent, menagerie lurks a mere 30 miles away in Chicago.

R

Another Note From My iPod (w Phone Photos to Follow)

Different Kinds of Light: Urban vs. Rural
Electricity vs. The Sun
At night, a huge Lite-Bright configuration
Then the edges recede & the buildings look like fiber-optic batteries
Lou Reed's "New Sensations" ultimately falls to his "Dirty Blvd."
Paintings impress more than photography, though
Daylight makes the buildings glow duller and fuller
Natural light enlivens the skyline as much as the electric kind, but in a different way--externally, not internally
Sunlight washes over everything like a draped blanket
Electric light discriminates, & glows where it wants, as light switches pinpoint illumination


Sent from my iPod

A Preview, Courtesy of the Notes App on my Touch

Transcendent Corn Fields
Raveonettes
Writing in my head & on my iPod
Love the Notes app
I feel like David Hockney & the Brushes app article in NYReview
Scorched-match rows of soybeans
From Raveonettes to Ronettes
Phil Spector almost reminds me of Roman Polanski in my near-willingness to excuse
Almost. Spector had no Charles Manson
Or Holocaust
Now I want to annihilate Germany, but I'll settle for "Helter Skelter"


Sent from my iPod

The Re-Infusion (& Some Neutropenia)

After nearly a week of chemotherapy, which had decimated (again, not annihilated) my white blood cell count, it was finally time for my stem cells to be reintroduced to my body. As I mentioned previously, these stem cells had been inflated in number by multiple subcutaneous injections of Neupogen, a drug that does that sort of thing. A centrifuge had separated them from the rest of my blood, and now here they were, squeaky-clean and primed for action.

And smoking. Some dude in a lab coat that looked like the prototypical “mad scientist” wheeled in a white barrel that held my stem cells. Once he removed the lid, a diffusive cloud spilled from the chasm. Dry ice had been used to keep my stem cells cold and ready for the re-infusion. The anonymous scientist--I’m sure he had a name, but I don’t know it, and I don’t think he ever said it--reached a gloved hand into the smoke and retrieved a small red-orange bag that contained my stem cells.

Truly, the entire process was a bit anticlimactic. My favorite aunt (a small feat with regard to my “dad’s” side of the family, and marginally more difficult on my mother’s--mostly because most of them live quite far away), Terri, had come with my mother to watch the procedure, which lasted approximately twenty minutes. Maybe a few more, but the whole thing definitely did not run longer than half an hour. The bag was connected to my PICC line, and the stem cells flowed from the bag into my blood. It was a simple one-way transfusion, and nothing more.

The only minor bit of action happened when my face turned crimson after a few minutes. Apparently, this was expected, but for a moment I felt like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka. Except, you know, red. And pre-juice-inflation. My body or face did not grow tumescent to mimic the globular shape of a tomato, but my cheeks turned comically cherry-red. "Ruddy" would be an understatement.

Then, after not even half an hour, it was over. So that’s the big stem cell story.

What did happen, later that night, was that I became severely neutropenic, which means that my white blood cell count plummeted, and, as a result, I became quite weak. So weak, in fact, that I had no idea that I would not be able, later that night, to walk to the toilet for a routine round of urination. When I stood up, my legs crumpled immediately, and I fell to the ground like The Bride in Kill Bill when she emerges from her coma and tries to walk. Like her, I hit the floor, but luckily my cane was close by, and I was able to grab it and use it to reach the nurse call button. In the interim was a pathetic display of urinary incontinence that I had no control over.

Finally, the nurses arrived with a hydraulic lift that picked me off the floor with the help of a thick sling made of green fabric. It lifted me up and deposited me onto the toilet, although I didn’t need it at this point because most of what was meant for it had already been disseminated onto the floor by then.

I did have a new word in my vocabulary, though, which may have made the whole pitiful scene worthwhile: neutropenia.

Say it with me: new-trow-pee (very apt by then)-knee-uh.

R

Defending My Life

I had seen Defending Your Life before, at the urging of a (now ex-)girlfriend, but viewed it mostly as another whimsical, though disposable, Albert Brooks movie. I just finished watching it again, and saw it through the prism of the stem cell procedure, and its long hospitalization, I recently completed, and now have a new appreciation for it.

In the movie, which came out in 1991, Albert Brooks's character gets hit by a bus and dies. He then finds himself in a pre-Judgment, Limbo-esque resort town that looks weirdly like a generic vacation spot. It's not really a vacation spot, thouigh, because he's only there for the duration of a trial that examines his life in order to determine if he's ready to move on or go back to Earth and try again. Apparently this is his ninth such "trial."

"Fear" comes up repeatedly as the main thing that holds most people back from moving forward. In this context, considering the continuous batterings of the stem cell trial, I think--nay, I know--that I would have no problem moving forward through the trial. The one in the afterlife, I mean.

I've mentioned this already, but the incident where I was told about the possible side effects of chemotherapy should vanquish any criticisms of fear that the prosecutor would lob at me. Dr. Burt sat across me while I was on an examination table and went through all of the side effects I could expect from the chemo--like baldness, sterility, and diarrhea. Blah blah blah. One possibility, though, should have rattled me. Which one? Death.

It wasn't probable, but it was possible. I shrugged it off immediately like a flake of debris that had fallen onto my shoulder. Not to toot my own horn, but this prospect really did not bother me. Fuck it--I'll toot my own horn anyway, because death honestly does not scare me at all. I would take a polygraph to confirm this, but I'm lazy, so you'll have to take my word. This may seem morbid, but I can think of nothing more peaceful. Since I don't believe in God, I also don't believe in a heaven or hell. "Give me a break" is my terse rejoinder to any talk of that. The entire concept of an afterlife seems primitive to me, a way for those who fear death to deal with mortality. I'd rather, as a pragmatic adult, face the facts. Yes, facts.

My regiment of chemotherapy was extremely aggressive, so I'm told. I had five infusions of cytoxan in as many days. I still have my hair--sort of. One funny thing was when I finally got released and my mother drove me away from the hospital. On the way, I would pinch my face around my beard, and remove my fingers to reveal a few strands of hair. It was admittedly disgusting, but comical in the ease and simplicity of the gesture. At least I didn't have to shave.

This reminded me yet again that I had been through quite an ordeal. Whatever. No Pain No Gain, like the refrigerator magnet maxim says. I don't think, through everthing, that I ever felt a twinge of fear. Really. This may sound like so much machismo, but it's the truth. I am not afraid of death, or anything, honestly.

Except maybe having to attend a high school reunion. Luckily, I have a choice with regard to that, and I will not go. Sorry, but I refuse to reminisce. I'd rather forget that whole ordeal. If I want to talk to you, I'll do so without the context of an organized reunion. If not, which is much more likely, I wish you well.

No hostility or acrimony is in this sentiment. Just indifference, which is my overriding modus operandi.

R

Chicago: Now Ain’t the Time for Your Tears

My computer is fucked and currently sequestered in the Apple Store, and I’m forced either to wait a week until they fix what I blame on my brother or use the piece-of-shit PC he bequeathed to my mother. He installed work software that rendered my computer completely useless. He insists that he deleted it, but that’s not the point. Ockham’s Razor, everybody: my computer worked, he monkeyed with it—including deleting files that evidently were crucial in order to clear room for the software he needed for work--and then it didn’t work. Pretty simple equation. Anyways, this computer has no left “Shift” key, and subsequently infuriates me each time I want to capitalize something on the right side of my keyboard. This is because I took word processing in high school, and that’s how I learned to type correctly.

Eventually I’ll chronicle the whole stem cell trial process, but for days I’ve been itching to say how thrilled I am that Chicago lost the 2016 bid. No sour grapes here, I assure you. Quite the opposite. When Chicago was eliminated in the first round, I sighed with relief from my hospital bed and grinned like a Cheshire cat as I saw Chicago get elimininated immediately. I'm now out of the hospital, and will detail that experience in the future, starting tonight (probably).

I can’t say enough how much schadenfreude I felt when I saw one older woman cry pathetic crocodile tears at the announcement. Only part of this has to do with the fruitless campaigning that the Obamas and Oprah did in Copenhagen to lobby for Chicago to win the bid. The former has come to represent everything feckless about the current government, and Oprah just annoys me. In vociferous Oprah voice: Your celebrity meant NOOOOOTHING!

This mocking tone that mimics Oprah is meant for both parties, but primarily for Obama. I’ve mentioned before how I think his administration is turning into a Jimmy Carter symbol of vapidity. I’m pissed at Obama. He has been in office for more than six months, and has done approximately dick. There was an opening skit on this week’s Saturday Night Live that laid out, in a stark checklist, what he has accomplished. Needless to say, everything fell in the “No” column. As in, “Has this been done? NO.”

Beyond my anger at the effectively lame-duck presidency of Obama, who still has three-plus years to make up for his administration’s lack of life thus far, I’m glad Chicago lost the Olympics because I live in Chicago. As a resident of this great city that thankfully slides under the radar, I could foresee the logistical nightmares that the Olympics, a truthfully dead franchise, would pose in five years. The already-slow and clogged traffic would rival that of my least favorite city (Boston, which I maintain is a non-city) during the debacle that was the Big Dig. It might be better now, but I have no idea and do not care enough to check.

Plus, the influx of more people like, I’m guessing, that female Cubs fan who cried would only stoke my anger. She had to be a Cubs fan, because she clearly needed some idiotic dubious thrill to make up for her reliably disappointment of a team. Ugh, the suburbanites would descend upon the city and marvel at ugly structures they know nothing about, and ignore the truly beautiful ones that comprise most of the skyline. Needless to say, the hybrid beauty of the Tribune Tower would not make an impression on their puny minds, which would undoubtedly be adorned with a visor above a bright Day-Glo orange “Chicago 2016” t-shirt, and, below that, a fluorescent fanny pack.

So, bullet dodged, Chicago. Let the decrepit and scarily dangerous Rio deal with that nonsense. We won’t watch, because no one watches the Olympics anymore anyway. Revel in the fact that we denizens can bask in the warm blanket of protective xenophobia.

Plug up your tears, because they piss me off, and enjoy the beauty of the lakeshore and the skyline. It’s ours, and we don’t need validation from anyone whose main form of exercise is stumbling through a shopping mall. It’s ironic to think of this when you consider the commitment and athleticism of Olympic athletes.

Stop crying, suck it up, and enjoy what our exquisite city is and has. We’re the best, and don’t need the validation of the limp IOC to know this.

R
--Before you condescendingly deign to assault my grammar, and my use of the non-word "ain't" in the title of this post, know that I'm aware. FYI--I'm quoting Bob Dylan's song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," so step off...