critbritlit

Guest post

2010-08-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Critbritlit fans - just a quick post to let you know that your usual host will be back up and posting anon. She's just taking care of a little brain business. Stay tuned for more of her words of wisdom.

Respectfully yours,
The Other Half

new possibilities

2010-07-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

So the news down home is that there may be the possibility of getting me back on my feet and walking again. This would be amazing, because as of right now, I cannot walk at all. I can barely even get around with a walker.

But we met with a new oncologist, whose specialty is neuro-oncology, and he thinks he can get me back on my feet again. It's almost too much to hope for.

The problem, he thinks, may simply be fluid build up in the brain. Excuse me if this is a TMI moment ("if"! I already know it is!). But what this means is that they can fix me, and it might not even be that hard. Getting rid of the fluid build-up wouldn't get rid of the tumor (which according to all reports was already smaller), but it would get me a long way back to where I was before I lapsed again.

Could it be possible?

guilty confession

2010-07-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

I kind of have a thing for trashy celebrity magazines. I love reading about who's dating whom (English teacher alert: note correct use of the accusative!) and who's done what utterly frivolous and silly thing lately. Don't ask me to explain or justify it. It doesn't make sense to me, either.

This week I am enthralled by Lindsay Lohan's pallid and spotty druggy skin as she finds herself posting bail once again. I find myself thinking that a brain tumor might be rather good for her. That's a horrible thing to say, of course. At the very least, it might make her wake up so she could see how badly she's blown her tremendous opportunity.

I think it all the time, reading these over these people's antics: "A good brain tumor would set her right!" Or at least, maybe it would teach her to be thankful for the gifts she's got, because you one day it could all just disappear and that will be that. That's a horrible thing to say, of course. At the very least, it might make her wake up so she could see how badly she's blown her tremendous opportunity.

But poor, pathetic Miss Lindsay won't need to learn any appreciation, because Lindsay Lohan will always have second chances aplenty.

Or at least, I hope she will...because she's going to need them.

what the heck is a slate card?

2010-07-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

I've just received my new credit card from Chase Bank, and it seems I have been demoted from platinum to "slate."

Slate? What the heck is that? It's not even a metal. As per usual, they have increased the amount I am allowed to borrow to the entire domestic product of small economies. So it's not like they're limiting my credit or anything. They apppear, if anything, to believe that slate is better than Platinum. I guess I don't get it. Slate? Isn't that a form of rubble you frequently find at the base of tall hills?

Way to go, Chase. I guess the next level is poop status. I wonder what color they'll choose?

summer!

2010-07-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

So things are still humming along here... we're up to July, and already I can see it's going to be a gorgeous summer day. Although I'm doing much better than I was, we've decided to clear my schedule for Fall, so I guess now it's going to be Spring semester before I come back to work. By then, the hope is, I'll be back not just at partial capacity but at nearly 100%.

For me that's going to mean when I can type half-way competently again (and, of course, when I have hair again!--no way am I leaving this house without hair!). The intellectual skills seem to be fine; my memory is intact (thank God--can you imagine?). It's the motor skills that are at issue for me now. Typing, meanwhile, is probably the skill I have relied on most as a teacher and writer. I can't do anything without it. I'm not nearly as good as I was--I've lost too much muscle control for that. I'm more of a hunt-and-peck type now.

But I'm working on it; I work on it every day. I'll get it back at some point, I'm sure; everything seems to be coming back, albeit much more slowly than I'd hoped.

But I've got lots of time.

updates

2010-07-09T13:34:00.000-07:00

So we're all the way up to July now; I'm finally up and about (sort of), and.....it's gloomy and overcast! What gives? It hardly seems fair to lose six months of your life to a glioma and then to lose even more of it to this cold and gloom. I'm ready for summer to start already.

Mustn't complain, however. It's heavenly to be able to walk (however clumsily) and to sort my own needs. I guess it's a case of the more you can do, the more you want to do. And of course not sleeping so much means I have more time to plot trouble.

Fortunately I've still got lots of books and magazines here to keep me busy, if not entirely intellectually engaged. But even so, I'm just be so ready to be done with this.

And what about nose jobs?

2010-06-29T16:14:00.000-07:00

One of the things I keep noticing in my post-necrotic state is my propensity to misread a headline and think I'm going to read a story about something entirely different from what from it's actually about.

Example: I just read the headline "What About Those Jobs?" But my necrotic brain saw "What about Nose Jobs?" instead, which is, I think you'll agree, a very different thing altogether.

However, I'm going to hold that my headline is much more interesting than the Weekly Standard's, which disappointed me in the end, and mine probably poses just as relevant a question, so therefore I win.

there's all sorts of stuff clogging up my brain

2010-06-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

The only thing worse than having a brain tumor is having a brain tumor and a cold at the me time. Geez--talk about adding insult to injury! Here I am, barely able to walk in normal fashion, unable to feel my right leg at all, and on top of it all I'm dripping snot and rubbing my nose raw.

I feel thoroughly sorry for myself.

At least I have hair again. Mostly.

Sniff.

wolves of joy

2010-06-17T18:37:00.000-07:00

A prominent metaphor in the graduation speech delivered by the principal of my daughter's elementary school today had to do with wolves. According to my daughter's principal (who claimed this was an old Cherokee story, though I have my doubts about that part as she pretty much claims everything is an old Cherokee story), we each have two wolves in us: a wolf of pain and a wolf of joy. The wolf of pain is angry, jealous, and greedy, and full of regret and sorrow.

And the wolf of joy isn't, obviously! 'Cause it's way, way better to be a wolf of joy than a wolf of pain.

Duh. WELL okay....(she strains her memory, despite the pain it causes her necrotic brain) the wolf of (what was it....joy?) feeds on joy, love, kindness, and some other stuff we can't remember right now, whereas the wolf of pain, you know, pretty much DOESN'T. And therein lies the rub, but of course that's a quote from a different era, a different genre, and blah blah.

Anyway, I can't help but notice that call them what you like, these are Dante's wolves, the ones from The Inferno, although of course Dante treated them rather more poetically than my daughter's principal. Dante's wolves are the BEST.

As for my dad, he says he's going to nurture his inner wolf with wolf kibble.

And the worst, most poorly constructed sentence of the day award goes to:

2010-06-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

THE RANCHO COAST NEWS!

"For many San Diego high school seniors, they will graduate either this week or next."

http://sdranchcoastnews.com/rsf_pages/rsf_feature

Jesus! Who graduates these people!? And don't they pay editors to catch these things?

It's 11:15 am right now. Let's see how long it takes them to fix it!

2010-06-14T09:08:00.001-07:00

Do am I the only person who thinks Abby Sunderland should have to pay back the costs of her "rescue"? I use the italics to indicate my contempt for someone so ready and willing to make the world not only stand still for her latest stupid idea, but to pay the bill on top of it. I mean, come on? This was self-imposed and self-motivated from the get-go. I'm not sure we have any business romanticizing such a selfish, costly and narcissistic enterprise any further.

And frankly she's lucky it worked out for her. Kids set out every day on their surfboards, their tiny boats, and the their whatevers, they get into trouble and they never return.

We don't hear about those poor kids. But I'll tell you what: we're not doing anyone any favors by romanticizing this event.

I think this girl who so cavalierly believes that the entire world should stop for her should be made to pay every dime back. And if she tries to capitalize on her ugly trick (as she surely will, in the form of TV appearances, books, and the like), a judge should put an injunction on her that forces her to to donate all proceeds to charity, maybe to finance all the groups that will have to mop up after the next crop of copy-cats who are even right now thinking: hey, why didn't I think of that?

What a stupid, irresponsible girl. People could die because of her.

the body is an amazing thing

2010-06-12T07:58:00.000-07:00

The body is such an amazing thing. I am reminded of this almost every day. Of course this is pretty much the first thing you recognize once you start losing some of your former capacities, but the nice thing is, you appreciate it even more once some of those capacities start coming back.

Don't get me wrong: I've still got a very long way to go. This is an incremental process. I'm to the point now where I can't tell necessarily whether there's even been some improvement or not, although I know that there's been a great deal of improvement since my original diagnosis. But the day-by-day and even week-by-week improvements are very subtle.

I'd like to have my sensation back, but I've learned how to work around it. It's such an astonishing thing to me that I can still type, given that I have no sensation in my fingertips. It's just another reminder of what an amazing thing the brain is. I assume my brain is remembering my original body map and is still using it as if nothing ever happened or as if there weren't a huge necrotic blockage right in the middle of it. And for the most part the body adjusts to the new reality.

And so I type away, and for the most part the words form just as they ever did. I've even got my old speed back. Motor skills continue to improve, just as they did when I was growing up. In fact, much of this experience is like growing up again, except you get the novel perspective of seeing it all happen in high speed.

divergence

2010-06-11T13:03:00.001-07:00

So, "divergence" seems to be SDSU's word du jour to describe its own themes and trends. Themes and trends in what area, you ask? I've no idea. You know: just themes and trends. As in, the current ones, whatever they might be.

SDSU is currently advertising some art exhibit under the name "Divergence"; there's no description of the exhibit's themes or goals other than the name itself, which as you've probably gathered I'm having a hard time figuring out. However, they do state the following: "While the stylistic and generational differences between these important artists are vast, they share a commitment to conceptual acuity and visual strength."

Well, that was helpful! Come see this new exhibit, with all its attendant strengths and differences! The artists might be important! We're not sure why they're important, but we know they all have one thing in common: they're committed to showing something visual!

Of course, I'd have thought that kind of goes without saying when you're putting together an art exhibit, but I've been wrong about such things before.

Especially when it comes to art.

horse farts

2010-06-11T07:05:00.000-07:00

Apparently a well-known phenomenon among the horsey-folks' world is the situation in which a horse farts suddenly and spooks itself, causing it to break out into a startled canter across the field or even to knock its unwary rider off its back.

According to my daughter, this is a relatively rare occurrence, as most horses are equipped with, as she maturely put it, "fairly relaxed" sphincters. (As you can probably tell, my eleven-year old daughter has always been way more mature than I. She would never laugh at a fart joke.

Nonetheless, when, as a rider, you hear that sudden tooting sound, beware. The horse will have no idea where the sound is coming from, assume Armageddon is nigh, and throw you right off before merrily cantering off to escape the tongues of flame it expects to begin shooting out of the clouds.

Or maybe out of its....!

Best of all, I'm not the only person who thinks this is a fascinating subject! Check these out:

http://www.horseadvice.com/horse/messages/3/66358.html

gah

2010-06-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

Wow....I'm only on page 2 of Lev Grossman's The Magicians and yet already I'm so repulsed I don't think I'll be able to go back. Not that the book is or vulgar or gross or anything like that, it's just so completely repugnant to me. Here's one of the first lines: "Everybody knew what everybody else was going to say before they said it. Everybody who was going to sleep with anybody else had already done it. Julia--pale, freckled, dreamy Julia, who played oboe and knew even more physics than he did--was never going to sleep with Quentin."

Ugh. Why do I find this so awful? For one thing there's the old gender stereotype about what adolescent boys are thinking at any given time: sorry, but we've already been there and read all that at least five hundred times in the last year alone. Can't you think of anything a little less tired? Pulling out that old cliche in the first paragraph--let alone the first page--is already a very, very bad sign.

And then there are all the preciously integrated quotes and literary references laboriously worked into the seams. That's a tad wearisome, too, plus such tricks rattle my "PRETENTIOUS!!!" button, which really, of all my buttons, is the single one you shouldn't mess with, because I'm so completely unforgiving once I decide someone is a pretentious twit.

Which, sadly, seems to have just happened.

I'm so disappointed. I waited a long time for this book to come out in paperback. I even pre-ordered it on Amazon.

Now that I think on it, it's the pre-order that jinxed it. I should never have done that. It just raises the sense of expectation way too much.

What was I thinking?

prehensile toes

2010-06-10T08:03:00.000-07:00

Today I think I may be a tiny bit better--perhaps there's an incremental degree more control in my right leg. I can wiggle my toes and move some of them independently of the others.

Wait, you may be asking. Did she just say say she moves her toes independently of each other?

She did indeed. It's true: I have ambidextrous, prehensile toes--and I'm not just talking about that big toe, either (pshaw! Everyone can move that one!). I can move all my toes independently of each other to greater or lesser degrees, some better than others. This talent is a remnant, no doubt, from my ancestral period spent as a tree monkey, and I've always been very proud of it. I can pick things up with my prehensile toes. I can waggle my pinkie toe and make it wave at you in a rather creepy fashion.

And of course I have practiced most of my tricks for more hours than can possibly be good for anyone, so my toes are strong and limber. Don't try to steal candy from my toes! My toes will come after you. And for dexterity and strength, my toes will beat your fingers in a wrestling match nine times out of ten.

And they probably still can, loss of sensation notwithstanding.

So the fact that my prehensileness is still fully functional is very cheering to me. If I can get toe ambidexterity back, surely my other abilities will emerge with time, too.

the romantic pragmatist

2010-06-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

Part of me is always going to be this romantic pragmatist who says, there's a reason for this--there's a reason this thing happened to me. I know it's a bit irrational, but I don't care. I may not know what it is right now, or maybe even ever, but in the really big scheme of things, there's probably a purpose for my brain tumor, one ultimately beneficial to someone.

And since every someone is part of humanity, that's enough. Maybe my treatments will affect someone else's. Maybe--yes, it's remote, but this is why I write!--my experiences will be of use to someone else trying to get through similarly hard times. Maybe just reading my blog here will simply improve someone else's day a little bit--lighten their perspective, make them smile.

All of those on their own are worthy reasons for being, I think.

And, of course, there's always the off-chance that I'll have a much nicer head of hair once this all passes. Stranger things have happened!

Heck--they've happened to me.

unfortunate shot

2010-06-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

Does Meg Whitman's husband have a bloody nose? Someone hand this guy a tissue!

But seriously: come on, LA Times. I'm no fan of the lady, but this has to be deliberate.

what the heck is this nasty thing?

2010-06-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

I found this little nasty on my parents' patio this morning. It screams at you if you do anything to disturb its equanimity, such as, say, stare at it too long in a fashion it determines to be menacing.

Needless to say, we did not test its patience too long. But we did try looking it up in our bug almanac. We think it's a Madagascar beetle, otherwise known as the Madagascar hissing beetle.

Screaming...hissing....whatever. He's an ill-tempered little guy.

Ugly, too.

Teri Garr

2010-06-07T18:55:00.000-07:00

I've just been reading about Teri Garr, who was always one of my favorite actresses when I was a little girl. I just saw her in the movie Dumb and Dumber, where she looks every bit as beautiful as ever, and was inspired to look her up.

Turns out she's been through a few things. She was diagnosed with MS in 1999. I only just found out and read about the story today, although apparently it has been in the news. Since then she has used what happened to her bring attention to the disease

So now I have a new role model. What a classy lady.

almost interesting reading

2010-06-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a story that would have caught my attention if its headline had been posted just a tad differently:

http://sdranchcoastnews.com/rsf_pages/rsf_community/6.3_community/6.3RSF-comm5RSF-Embalme-turns-author-to-share-her-experiences.html

See, I misread. I thought the headline said "Author turns embalmer to share her experiences." And you have to say: that headline has panache! That's a story I would have read!

But alas, no....turns out it's just another dead, mummified author selling her schtick.

Macgripes

2010-06-07T07:07:00.000-07:00

Macintosh has imposed yet another change to its latest OS upgrade that bugs the snot out of me. If you want to change the address of someone you want to send something to, and MacIntosh thinks it knows better than you what the address is, you're in for a helluva time trying to convince the operating system to go along with you so you can send your message where it needs to go.

What's up with that? Why has it taken me three attempts of typing and retyping to get the letters to want to stick?

Who's the boss here, anyway?

Long time nemesis: Barbara Boxer!

2010-06-06T07:22:00.000-07:00

Fer cryin' out loud: "long-time nemesis?"

What's with the cartoonish wording here? This isn't a Superman strip, although maybe our state politicians--and news reporters--have forgotten that part. According to the rhetoric, it would appear that we're on the final showdown between the forces of Good and Evil.

Except no one looks really that good or bad--they all just look kind of stupid.

You just have to wonder. Why do they want it so badly? What do they get out of it that makes it worth while to spend millions of their own money--as well as all the money of their friends and supporters, which is kind of worse--to get elected? When someone wants something so badly that they're basically willing to do anything to get it, you start wondering.

Or at least, I sure do.

Cameron Hughes has Hemorrhoids

2010-06-05T08:34:00.000-07:00

Cameron Hughes is a wine trading company with their own label. What they do is take the best wines of other wineries and repackage them at a greatly discounted price, to be sold at places like Costco. They make very nice and inexpensive wines, and I recommend them.

But at the same time, check out that logo! Is it just me, or doesn't that picture make you think of that old expression, "fire in the hole"? I'm not sure I'd want anyone associating hemorrhoids with my wine, but hey, that's just me.

Here, just for comparison's sake, is an advertisement for a British hemorrhoid cream.

You tell me!

August 25!

2010-06-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

So my fortune cookie says: "You'll have good news in three months!"

Good news definitely seems like something to watch out for. I could use some good news. Three months will mean.....August 25.

I'm marking it on my Calendar.

good morning!

2010-06-03T05:31:00.000-07:00

I really like getting up in the morning. Frequently I just can't wait.

I've always been an early riser, in part because it's always been like this for me: I just can't wait to see what's going on. I remember when I was a very little girl feeling the same way. I'd get up earlier than pretty much anyone in the family except for my dad, who was out the door for his morning run before anyone else ever woke up. But this, too, was part of the mystery of mornings: what was he doing? What was I missing? I hated missing anything when I was a little kid.

I still do. It may be even worse now that I know exactly what I'm missing: the coffee! The gradual lightening of the sky! The sound of the sprinklers as they turn on one after another! The morning news!

I just can't wait to start.

Nowadays the first order of business, as I trot down the stairs, is to see if I notice any difference in the way I feel or in what I can do. I still keep a hand on the bannister as I transverse the stairs, but now I can go down the normal way, one foot at a time. The right foot still feels a bit numb, and I assess that every day too. Is it more numb or less? Can I wiggle all my toes? I'm not sure how precisely I can assess the changes in sensation, but over time it seems to be getting incrementally better. Sometimes it's like my right legt went to sleep on me during the night and now I'm going to have to suffer through that prickly feeling as circulation comes back. I always hated that!

But it's not a circulation issue, and the prickliness never comes. There's this faint vibration, almost, as if the pins and needles are just about to start. Balance remains a problem--I can't stand on my toes yet, or on my right leg by itself. I expect riding a bike is going to be a problem for a while.

Good thing I don't ride.

intrusive politicians

2010-06-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

This right here is enough to make me refuse to vote for a certain candidate in the California elections: his pledge to rely on the internet and phone calls to reach voters.

Not to put too blunt an edge on it, but what a d***head. Please get the h*** out of my house. I am not interested in talking to you; I am not interested in having you clog my phone lines. I know you want to get elected. But I really don't care.

I wonder how many of these idiotic candidates alienate their constituencies by such tactics? I especially hate the automatic phone messages you get if you do actually pick up the phone--you know, those recorded messages that are designed never to turn off but to just replay indefinitely, sometimes to the extent that you still can't use your phone even after hanging up.

So listen, you politico wannabes:

I hereby pledge never to vote for a candidate who tries that tactic on me again. I'm writing down your names, and I'm remembering you--but not for any reasons I think you'll be pleased about.

O! Horrid day, when will thee be finished?

2010-06-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

This sucks: I have to fast all day. I'm scheduled to get a PET scan, which is some sort of special scan that will allow the doctors to see more precisely what's going on with my tumor, and it requires a 3-hour fast before they inject the necessary dyes.

As in any day when I'm not allowed to eat--or frankly, when I'm simply not allowed something, food or otherwise, to which I am normally accustomed to having free access--I can now think of nothing other than whatever it is I'm not allowed to have.

And since I have a very nimble imagination, it's torture.

Turkey sandwiches, made with that French batarde from Bread and Cie! A wee wedge of that cherry pie I made yesterday! It's amazing how my brain snaps right back into perfect working order when it comes to imagining food.

I am feeling most sorry for myself.

things I wish I didn't know

2010-05-31T15:24:00.000-07:00

So today's mail included the San Dieguito Water District's Quality Report. And since there really wasn't much in the report to assure me about the quality of the water I and my family are drinking, I'm feeling rather sorry I read it.

But what can I say? Nothing fun arrived today--no catalogs, no early birthday presents to myself, nada. It was a bad mail day. Which meant it was just me and the Annual Water Quality Report.

The first section of the report is called "Is my water safe?"

To which the San Dieguito Water Report responds with a vigorous and resounding "YES!"

And thus ensues a long list of the contaminants that actually have been detected in our drinking water, all of which our man Larry Watt, the head of the Encinitas Water District, assures us, are within legal ranges and probably not in the least bit harmful to our health.

Probably.

http://www.cityofencinitas.org/Government/CityD/PublicWSDL/

all days should begin with cherry pie

2010-05-31T08:15:00.000-07:00

I can tell today's going to be a good day. I feel fairly normal, which in my case means I'm already telling myself, "No, you may not have another piece of cherry pie for breakfast!"

And yes, I did just write "another." And yes, according to the clock on my laptop it is indeed 8:18 am, on this slightly overcast day in May--the last of the month, which means I've made it through not just another month, but another semester, with probably no more disasters than usual. Maybe even fewer, given all my systems for double-checking and redundancy.

And I managed despite the idiotically lenient and multiform list of opportunities and due dates I gave my students this semester: "Choose which of the papers you want to do!" "Choose how much writing you're willing to put in for your grade!"

Ay yi yi. What a mistake.

I've tried such systems in the past, but you know what: I think on some level students may just want to be told what to do. There's such a thing as handing over too much responsibility. I think most students are more comfortable being told "take this many exams and write this many papers" and "take the exams on these exact dates" than in being given too many choices regarding their assignments. I can even tell them up front that if they need a little extra credit I'll give them an opportunity somewhere--I'll allow them either to rewrite something or to do a little extra work. But they like to know the what the basic requirements are and be reassured that they're exactly the same for everyone right up front.

I've come back to this tried-and-true formula so many times. And each time you know what happens? I go to some teacher-training institute which fills my head with grand schemes and I make changes I regret!

But that's one of the things I like absolutely best about academia: the cycle. Every semester, every year you get a chance to revisit what you've done.

And then if you choose you can set it up all differently for the next time.

'scuse me: wet gas!

2010-05-30T08:47:00.000-07:00

One of the funniest things I think I've ever heard a child say is, "Scuse me, wet gas" as he unselfconsciously tooted. His parents had taught him his manners, of course, and everyone knows it's not quite okay to let loose in public.

But what can you do? Sometimes farts happen.

So you excuse yourself.

But yet I can't help thinking that it's not quite enough, is it? A fart is such a huge social transgression that it needs--shall we say--a certain amount of noise to atone for the offense. So yes, you must excuse yourself. But you must also have the grace to look inordinately ashamed and humiliated by the grand faux pax that you, well-intentioned civilian though you may be, have just committed.

After all, you don't get off the hook for killing someone just because you didn't mean to, do you?

Accountability matters.

And to help memorialize the event, of course, it is the prime duty of each witnessing family member to remember the incident and recite it, with increasingly colorful detail, at every succeeding family occasion.

This is what family traditions are made of.

It's a bonding thing.

2010-05-29T11:05:00.001-07:00

Well, it's a brand new day. I wonder what wh**y email I'll get from a student today?

I just got another really spiteful-sounding email from a student complaining about her grade. Here's what she wrote:

"I wrote it (i.e. the paper) on the Clerk's tale and emailed it to you three times as an attachment and then finally just inserted the text itself into an email. I know it had to have gotten to you that way."

Once I got that email, I apologized and corrected the grade immediately. I corrected it as soon as I got the email. But I'm still shaken by the venom and presumption about my intentions. "I know it had to have gotten to you that way?"

She is mistaken. If I had seen it, of course I would have read and given her credit for it. Why would I not?

Our students seem to believe we are out gunning for them. They want to believe it. And yet that's so not true: I want all my students to succeed, and I'm so proud and happy when they do. That's why I went into this field.

And it only takes one of them to take all that away.

big strides

2010-05-29T07:59:00.001-07:00

And then one day, in the space of a day, you feel almost entirely like your old self. You're getting dressed, fastening buttons, making yourself breakfast, trotting up and down the stairs, checking your email and writing letters to people. You're hoping no one's mad you've been out of touch.

What happened? I'm on the new drug therapy, of course: the Avastin. Maybe that's all it took: the old drug wasn't working for me, the new one is. Or maybe it's a combination of things as all the therapies they have tried finally come together.

The important thing I know is that today I feel like I'm okay again. Now I feel like I'm just recovering from some bad sinus cold that clogged my head for a while but is finally clearing. And I have this sense, as you do when you're recovering from a cold, that things will continue to improve.

And now I think I'll take a nap! Yep, it's 8 am and I'm going to take a nap. Because this is America and because I can.

I did hop out of bed at 5, though!

noticing little gifts

2010-05-29T06:51:00.000-07:00

I love noticing what I can do every day. Thankfully, it's all been in the positive direction so far (since starting the new therapy, anyway): every day I can do something a little more, something a little different that I wasn't doing the day before. It would be most disturbing if it were the other way around, I'm sure. But so far it hasn't been.

Well, no, that's not true! I remember quite clearly what it was like to wake up every day and find myself numb in yet another new area of my body, to find my muscles that much more frozen and unresponsive. It was terrifying.

Hopefully with this new treatment all that is behind me now.

And the really neat thing about noticing new stuff you can do is that you appreciate it all over again. How often do we appreciate our ability to walk down a flight of stairs by ourselves? To make ourselves a cup of coffee? To call up the the morning news on our computers and read it?

I'm even appreciating that feeling you get when you eat or drink something hot and then you eat something cold and your jaw kind of freezes and it hurts like the dickens?

Just did that to myself: a combo of morning coffee and frozen morning smoothie.

Okay, maybe we'll avoid that one in the future. I don't appreciate it that much.

Ouch!

more on memory storage

2010-05-28T08:39:00.001-07:00

The memory thing is especially interesting to me.

In my case, all the old stuff seems to be in there. It's just as if it's been put in a different place, and sometimes I have to look for it. I think that's why I have this one recurring image that replays through my dreams: that of the big house, with many rooms in it, and I'm looking through the rooms, the closets, the attics sometimes, taking stuff out, examining it, and putting it back again. It's a nice visual metaphor, and I like it.

It's not a unique metaphor, either. The idea of a house with many rooms was used frequently as a mnemonic aid during the Middle Ages, when, of course, you couldn't just jot down a little list of things you were supposed to remember to buy at the town market that day. Too expensive! No paper! Hi illiteracy rates!

So in the absence of writing you actually had to remember stuff.

All kinds of tricks and techniques were taught to people for helping them in this process, and there are plenty of surviving manuals on the "Art of Memory" still in print from the period today.

I find these manuals fascinating. One of the most common tricks was to imagine a large house, filled with many rooms. You would imagine yourself placing each thing you wanted to remember into a different room, so that when you needed to retrieve it, you'd simply walk into that room in your mind's eye to pick it back up again.

A couple of years ago I attended a seminar on memory techniques that pretty much repeated the same set of tricks, with the added twist that you supplied a bit of a storyline to help remind you of the order of the rooms to be entered. It helps to have a dynamic storyteller, as we did at the time, creating the drama for you as you go. I can't remember the precise details, but the story had to do with a series of misadventures that took our narrator through a variety of visual scenarios in this house, where he "picked up" each item to be remembered--usually off the floor, as I recall!--and did something with it. At the end of the story the narrator was able to rattle this list of some fifty-sixty random objects back to us, in the same order in which we had first presented it to him, all based on this linked storyline with its concomitant set of images and connections.

It was a pretty amazing show, and though I never mastered the techniques myself, I've been fascinated ever since by the idea that it's possible to train your memory in that kind of way.

advantages of brain tumors

2010-05-28T08:24:00.000-07:00

You have to look for them, but they're there: the advantages of brain tumors.

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. the same jokes are funny over and over again
2. same with books and tv shows: you pick them up, watch/read them, and it's like you've never seen them before
3. same with food: it all tastes new
4. forgotten memories pop up randomly, and they're nice ones
5. you get supersonic dreams
6. and of course, you've got lots of time to do all that stuff you used to say "one day!" about.

word use

2010-05-27T17:58:00.000-07:00

I'm helping my daughter with her spelling words this afternoon, and I'm struck by how tricky the nuances of language are. For example, why do we say "she moved to a charming" town," with "charming" being the replacement word for "picturesque," while the word "mirage," another option, is obviously wrong?

Part of it can be explained grammatically, of course: a "mirage" is a noun, while "charming" is an adjective. But I suppose "mirage" could be used adjectivally in a pinch: it's a little awkward-sounding and probably requires punctuation that self-consciously acknowledges its own awkwardness, but an adept writer could pull it off.

But what about the relatively common expression "shanty town," referring to makeshift or quickly thrown-together housing? Grammatically the words would seem to fulfill exactly the same function.

But meaning-ranges play into it, too. And somehow we innately know which word may be used in a given situation and which may not. What I really like thinking about is the way our common word choices for situations may constrain the different options we have for thinking about how those situations may operate in the world.

magic jack: the experiment that failed

2010-05-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

It makes me so sad. I was so thrilled by the idea of a phone and internet connection you could make work right through your computer. And it promised to be free once the device was installed: no monthly phone bills at all.

But as with most too-good-to-be-true deals, the "Magic Jack" just isn't there yet.

We've given it a good month now. It does assign you your own phone number, which is nice. But right now the connection isn't seamless: too many dropped calls or calls missed altogether, too many times it doesn't connect to your phone at all.

I love the idea, and I'll bet that one day they've got these kinks worked out. But for now, I've got to have access to a phone that works.

Here's our man!

2010-05-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

This is the accordion player who entertained us in Little Italy last night at the annual "Taste of Little Italy" festival. It's a wonderful event and I really recommend it. You pick up a pass and then move from restaurant to restaurant, getting a little sample of something tasty at each long the way. And if you're really lucky, you'll get some live music, too!

I mean, really, have you ever seen a live accordion player? Especially one who was totally into what he was doing? This is "Smiling Jack: Showman Accordionist." This guy would do slides onto his knees, swooping heartrendingly across the room on them, gazing soulfully upward all the while as if that cheesy sound were almost too much for his already-full soul to take.

It was marvelous.

embarrassing my neighbors

2010-05-25T07:56:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how ashamed my neighbors get if they get a peek of me without my wig. It's like they spotted me in my underwear or something.

And it's not even like I'm totally bald, either. I have hair; it's just shorn close to my head while it's growing back out again. But even that seems like too much a reminder for people.

So it's for their sake that I clad myself in scarves, hats, and wigs when I wander into the outer realms. If it were up to me I'd wander around in my bald-headed glory, because it's cooler, among other things, and I kind of like the way the wind feels on my scalp. I'm actually kind of proud of my battle scars; they're like a survivor's badge or something. And I find I also like that clean sculpted look.

But I understand! It's not for everyone, and so many people are afraid of anything that reminds them of illness or--god forbid--death.

It's too bad, because I think all of us would probably benefit by taking another look and rethinking their relationship to, well, to just about everything. This is all natural; it's all part of living.

And as I keep saying, I'm okay. And I'm going to continue to be okay.

2010-05-25T05:45:00.000-07:00

I woke up feeling great today. It's a beautiful day; my family is still asleep, and I am watching the sun come up and listening to the birds as my husband fries us some eggs and presses me another espresso.

Here's what I can do as of today: I can walk well--better than yesterday. I can write and type well, even on this totally crap Mac keyboard (it loves to jump lines on me--always has). I can think clearly and schedule time. I can read, grade, papers, and manage my classes.

And of course, I can bake a cherry pie! Priorities, don't you know.

Anyway, I never lost any memory beyond those first few weeks in the hospital, when I was pretty much sedated all the time anyway. Thank goodness for that. Wouldn't that be awful? Like losing part of yourself, I would think. So that's all okay. In terms of my muscle coordination I'm still a little awkward, especially in the right half of my body, which lost much of its capacity for sensation. That's right: I have no sense of touch at all in my right hand, and if you tap my right arm I might not notice. And my balance is still off.

So there are some things I still have difficulty doing:

I have to hang on to things to get dressed.

I can stand on one leg, but not confidently.

I can walk well, even fast, although the pavement must be regular.

I'm not supposed to drive.

Here are things that are almost back to normal:

My hair has grown back over most of my head.

I can cook (huzzah!).

I can type, write, use the computer, and do all that same old intellectual stuff I've always done. In fact, I love to sit at my kitchen counter in front of computer, writing, checking the news, and making cup after cup of espresso. Is there any better way to spend a morning?

This is one of the best things I can think of to do, cancer or no.

p.s. random thoughts: have you ever seen a pet fart and startle itself? :-D

chaparral yucca

2010-05-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

These are dotting our hilltops this month.

It's so nice to find you haven't changed that much

2010-05-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

A couple of student papers keep trickling in, some of which I've received and logged already. But I guess the students just want to be sure. I don't blame them!

What's nice for me, though, is that I'll open the attached document, remember the paper (professors have an uncanny ability to remember student work--I remember papers from years ago!), go to the gradebook to assign a grade, and find that I had already put in exactly the same grade.

It's nice to know I'm that consistent across readings. I always have been, actually. I generally "normalize" after I read a batch of papers, just to make sure I'm absolutely consistent. But I rarely change the grade by more than a "+" or "-" up or down at the very most.

Of course, at this point in my teaching career I've probably read several thousand student papers. And after a while I guess you know what you're looking for.

And what would that be? Clear writing with bit of sparkle (come on! You're English Majors!). Indication that you've done your homework and really tried to engage with the issues. Awareness of the assigned text and its historical moment.

And that's really it!

Not so tough, really?

Chase: the Stupidest Bank in the world

2010-05-24T10:58:00.000-07:00

Talk about a good way to alienate your customers, maybe forever. Send them an email instructing them to read the "important new legal agreements" that apparently your institution feels it has a right to impose, despite the lack of prenotification or mutual agreement. Then, when the customer follows instructions to find the documents and click on them, shut down the entire system and blame it on "user error."

Nice trick! But please, what kind of dumbass do you think I am?

The kind who gets really ticked off at these repeated games, that's who. The kind who's never missed a payment. The kind who financed her house through you and whose continued patronage earned you all kinds of dividends.

The kind who's been through a lot and has absolutely had it.

Do they not know I always kept other mistresses on the side? I can take out all my money and put it elsewhere in a matter of minutes. And I can do it all online, without stirring a step from my irritated position at my kitchen countertop.

Dumbasses.

No pick!

2010-05-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

Okay: so here's a very serious question. Say a certain part of your body itches. Okay, say it's your nose. Just inside your nose.

You know, the outer rim.

Scratching it doesn't really signify a pick, does it?

So how deep do you have to go before it becomes a pick?

Now I know you all have your tricks for pretending you are not picking your nose, when you know danged well that is exactly what you are doing. There's the nonchalant face dab, intended to look like a scratch to the outer nose area, which is of course still socially acceptable. I don't find the face dab very satisfying, myself, although it may buy you a little time. It really only works until you can get yourself around the corner and into a more reclusive picking angle.

And then there's the I'm-just-looking-up-into-the-sky while-swabbing-my-entire-fist-vigorously-over-my-face-routine. The idea there is to pretend you're just rubbing your eyes and somehow your nose got in the way.

If you happen to be lucky enough to be wearing something like a sweatshirt, you can pull it off and skillfully snag your finger on your olfactory appendage as you do so. Of course, that leaves the risk that you really will pull something out and leave it decorously hanging on your cheek afterward. This of course is much worse than leaving a dangler in your nose, where at least it belongs.

But I kinda figure that people who peer up your nose pretty much deserve what they have coming to them.

the deliberately exploding crap gadget

2010-05-24T07:57:00.001-07:00

I have a little whizzer thingy for frothing milk and such for cappucinos. Good idea,
but what a complete piece of crap. This thing explodes into a million pieces on me regularly, usually for no better reason than that I touched it with my pinky finger. Sometimes it explodes if you look at it the wrong way.

It's very sensitive.

Anyway, I like (or rather, WOULD like!) to use this little device to froth my daughter's morning cocoa for her. When it works it does the job very nicely, whipping out all the little cocoa clots and setting up a nice cappuccino-like foam across the top of the cup.

But I guess that's going to have to wait for another day, after I have a chance to buy a new one. 'Cause that's the saddest part of all: until someone else comes up with a competing product, I will indeed buy another one.

better and better

2010-05-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

And then suddenly one day you wake up, and the world makes sense again. You make coffee. You get dressed. You look out the window, and you admire the way the sun hits the hills across the street.

And then you know it's all going to be okay. I'm getting better.

It's another beautiful day

2010-05-24T05:56:00.000-07:00

Garrison Keillor once said that near-death experiences are good for the soul, and if it weren't for the inherent risk, he'd recommend them to everyone.

Garrison Keillor is a wise man. Every day now really is better. There are tangible differences.

And the best part of all--the one reward of having suffered through cancer, I'm going to say--is that you're so grateful for it. You're so grateful to feel good, to taste coffee, to feel hunger again. You're grateful to feel chilly and to wrap up in a robe. To make coffee and look out the window while you drink it. To read the morning paper.

It's like someone suddenly sprang the gift of life on you. It's everywhere, and you want to do and see everything--right now.

There's no time to lose.

So hey, isn't this supposed to be Southern California?

2010-05-23T15:38:00.001-07:00

It's May 23, almost June! And yet the sky is still cloudy, and it's cold, even though it's almost 4 pm and the sun is at its Southern California peak.

I guess this is what we used to call "June Gloom," and it's a particular phenomenon of the coastal areas of California. The rising warm inland air from the desert rises, creating a vacuum that sucks the cool moist air from the ocean. We end up with cloudy mornings that sometimes hang around all day. It can be quite grim some years. I remember some summers when we lived in Cardiff when it just never warmed up at all, although this year is not supposed to be too bad.

I have to say that looking down on the creeping fog from a high-up view spot is not a bad way to spend the afternoon at all. Especially with a cherry mimosa in hand.

haters

2010-05-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

My husband just got a really ugly and transparent email from a student for whom he had refused to write a letter of recommendation. Her virulent and hateful reaction to his declining to write for her hit me so hard it made my head spin. She even used profanity, calling him vulgarities I'm afraid I'm unwilling to reprint here.

I'm spinning, and weeping, too, because it upset me so much to read it. And yet it wasn't even directed at me.

These are the effects of hate and ugliness: they spiral outward in directions we can't possibly anticipate. I don't even know this woman; her venom was not directed at me, and yet it has affected me so profoundly that I can't work anymore and I'm practically in tears.

These people don't know what harm they do.

Sundays

2010-05-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

So we're all awake and ready for action here, preparing pancakes for breakfast. Yup! I made buttermilk pancakes, from scratch.

And they are quite tasty, too.

I like to make pancakes for all day long. I do a bunch and pile them up on a plate to nibble all day, like cookies. Of course the hot ones are best, dripping with melted butter and real maple syrup, but cold pancakes are pretty nice, too. And the cold ones can be slathered with fresh strawberries and whipped cream for a very grown-up treat.

But you pretty much can't beat pancakes any way you serve them. They're always good.

Oncozac

2010-05-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

This is the stuff that's supposed to make me well. It's called "Oncozac," made by Pura Pharmaceuticals, and it's an extract of the Yunzi plant. We learned about it from a friend whose father is a Ph.D. working in the industry; he said it was one of the most promising of the new therapies he'd seen.

Getting hold of the stuff was not easy, which of course somehow only added to its appeal. It is not widely available, but must be ordered directly from Dura Pharmaceuticals, the company that makes it.

I cannot determine cause and effect of any kind, of course, but here's the thing: I know I feel better today. Things are clear in my head. I can track time. I know when to expect people. I know what's coming up for the day.

All of these are things I could not do even a few days ago. So clearly we're doing something right.

2010-05-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

So today feels very normal so far. I really feel an improvement. I'm sitting here filing my nails and, I think, maybe the top part of my finger, and I'm keeping track of the time before my daughter's daily pick-up. My head is covered with fuzzy new hair, which people like to walk by and pet, like they'd pet the family dog. I know what today's schedule is. We're going to my daughter's horse show, in which she is going to ride and show off her moves, and then from there we'll proceed to a normal and quiet afternoon at home.

dental disasters

2010-05-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

So this poor boy in my daughter's riding class was wearing a permanent retainer--the kind that fastens to braces--and he lost a tooth.

A crucial tooth--the one anchoring everything else.

And so all these wires came exploding out of his mouth, some of them with other teeth attached.

Grandma to the rescue! The boy's grandmother reached into her purse, pulled out--get this--wire cutters (!), snipped the dangling ends, and voila, all was well again.

spring

2010-05-22T06:15:00.000-07:00

Each day is better than the day before. I'm clear-headed, all the parts seem to be moving normally; I'm getting back sensation in a lot of places. I can feel things on my fingertips again.

It's not quite daylight outside; the sun is just about up but it's still gray and overcast. The birds are squawking like crazy. One of them has a "whoop! whoop!" sound it makes, followed by a chirping cackle. I am shooting jet after jet from the espresso machine, and my daughter is lying on the couch, indulging in her slow morning afterburn.

It's a really good day.

And my brain seems to be working, even if it's not quite as clever as it used to be. I've just taken apart my cheap little battery-operated whisk thingy--the one that I use to froth my daughter's cocoa to coffee-house perfection every morning. It's a cheap little gizmo and explodes regularly, as it did today, to the consternation of my necrotic cells.

But this time I managed to put it back together. It's still not working, mind you, but at least it's screwed shut again.

And now I expect I shall throw it away, the piece of crap!

the avalanche

2010-05-21T11:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes these pieces of my reality hit me, and they hit me so hard I can hardly recover. They knock me sideways so that my head spins, and I lose my sense of who I am, where I am, what I can do to make myself feel better.

Recovering from the vertigo takes concentration. It takes sitting down, maybe eating a little something. Looking at my blog helps, because it reminds me how far I've come. And it reminds me that I've had moments of panic like this before, and that they pass.

And it reminds me that a life can always be made back up again. There's time: we have plenty of time.

That's what I really need to know to reassure myself: that it will all still be here when I get back.

sad

2010-05-21T07:32:00.001-07:00

For some reason I woke up feeling very sad today. I was remembering the circumstances of my being hired at San Diego State: they weren't pretty. Apparently there had been some sort of pitched battle over the candidates. Anyway, at the end of it I was the only one left standing, so the unfortunate university got me.

All this was shared with me with unkind detail when I was eventually hired. I remember being so excited to be at San Diego State. But I would pass people I had met during my interviews in the halls, and they would ignore me when I said hello. If they spoke to me at all they seemed angry. One guy asked me if I had read a certain book; I thought he was making polite conversation and said something to the effect of "No, that sounds like something I should read!"

He snapped, "Yes, you should," and walked away.

I don't think I've be ever been treated so badly by anyone as I've been treated by the the English faculty who were at San Diego State at that time. The department had a welcome party for me; almost no one came. Those who did brought obviously insulting food items, like part of a package (not even a full one!) of Oreos. And then they left. I think the only thing that got me through that period was that it didn't seem possible for people to be so rude to someone they didn't know at all. So I thought I must have misunderstood.

But there was no misunderstanding. They really did do all that.

Obviously things have gotten better in the fifteen or so years since I've been there, and all those people who felt so entitled to their resentment have long since retired. I have new friends now, and some of them are among the best I've ever had.

But it still bothers me. I don't think you get over inexplicable meanness like that.

intrepid grandmothers

2010-05-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

Today at my daughter's riding lesson one of the boys, who happened to be wearing his permanent retainer, lost a tooth. Apparently it was an important tooth: the one to which his entire mouth's apparatus was attached. Wires and braces sprang out everywhere.

But thank heavens for intrepid grandmothers! This young lad's grandmother saved the day. She reached deep into her purse and pulled out...wire snips.

Because don't all grandmothers carry around wire snips in their purses?

Two snips later and the offending assembly came tumbling out, wires, brackets, braces, and all.

And then from there I guess it was back to the orthodontist for a serious bit of discussion.

it hits me again

2010-05-20T13:57:00.000-07:00

I'm alive because I have a family. I have a family who looks out for me, and I have health care that ensures I get whatever I need: the medication, the radiation, everything. If I hadn't had that support system, I wouldn't be here.

I know I've posted on this before, but it just keeps striking me over and over again. It's a complete miracle that I'm alive. If I'd been living anywhere else or in any other time, I'd have died. Probably pretty quickly, maybe even in my sleep, and certainly before I even noticed anything was wrong.

These reminders make me woozy sometimes, like everything is spiraling outward from me into empty space. It's hard to really know your own non-existence. But I've gotten to know it intimately. I dream about it every night.

I don't like it. It frightens me.

nightmares from childhood

2010-05-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

I must have had the cruelest friends in the world.

Once they got me up in their treehouse, locked the door, and forced me to listen to stories they made up about my family getting slaughtered and me coming home alone to find them. I screamed and cried until finally they let me go and I could run home again.

The images haunted me for years, and they still make me sad, though for different reasons now. I still periodically even have the nightmares again. They don't bother me as much now, of course. Now I know where they came from. And that helps. But they still make me sad.

What inspires this kind of cruelty? I'm pretty sure I hadn't done anything, except had the hard luck to live next door and to be only eight years old. They were all twelve.

Those memories, in fact, were the strongest inducement I could come up with against having children of my own. And a very strong inducement they were. They very nearly prevented me from taking the risk. I just never wanted any child of mine to ever go through that. I spent many moments of my growing up years thinking of how I could manage to protect a child from something similar, and realizing that, if the child is cruel enough and determined enough, there's probably nothing you can do.

Today's Different

2010-05-20T06:58:00.000-07:00

I notice a difference in the way I feel. I'm much more normal today. I'm still not totally the same, but I'm feeling tangibly closer to what I used to be. Like within touching distance.

Here's one thing: I just indulged in a little pity party. Haven't done that in a while! I've been too busy being sick to indulge in self-pity, which--let's face it--is only for people who don't have better things to do, like nap all day while their brain repairs itself.

And I have hair! Now emerging in that typical u-shape of male-pattern baldness, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. I'll take anything I can get. It's hair, and hair is good!

So these are most excellent signs. I don't think it's going to be much longer now until I feel like I'm completely back. Or at least, back enough to feel like I'm a participant in that vast quagmire of humanity again.

'Cause I've missed it.

And if I can just keep myself from accidentally plunging off that narrow bridgeway on my morning walking path, I may be just about there.

english majors should know how to read

2010-05-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

I am considering making the simple act of "following instructions" a mandatory, graded aspect of every class I teach. I mean, seriously: when I say, "the final exam is in Blackboard," that is exactly what I mean. Go to Blackboard and take the exam. Do not email me some essay you just decided you'd rather write instead and hope that I'm going to know what to do with it. Do not write some paragraph or something I didn't ask for and put it in the so-called "digital drop box." I will never see it again.

FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS. GO TO BLACKBOARD AND TAKE THE EXAM.

It's just not that hard. In fact, it's so not hard I don't even know what to say. I don't know where people get some of their ideas about whatever it is they think they're doing.

But it seems to me that if an English Major doesn't know how to read, we've got a serious problem.

What's it like, having a brain tumor?

2010-05-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

What's it like, having a brain tumor? Sort of odd. In the beginning, especially, it was odd. Like floating down a river, in terms of the physical sensation. Nothing hurts, certainly, and generally I feel strangely relaxed.

But there's no bottom--nothing to stand on. You're just floating. Sometimes that can feel a bit relaxing, too, but I think the best way to put it is that you're just in a different mode of being. Sometimes I get a disorienting sense of panic, although that's rare. I just let go in such times--letting yourself cry a bit does wonders--and gradually it all sorts itself out again. I've become strangely accustomed to not knowing what's going on--to hearing a noise upstairs, checking it out, and realizing my mom is here tidying up my house, despite the fact that I don't remember her ever arriving. Sometimes it's the reverse: I think surely someone must be here with me--because there almost always is--but instead there's no one.

It's a strange way of being and experiencing. I keep thinking of just floating down a river....we're all floating, looking at the scenery, doing more with it if we want to. But we don't have to. There's no hurry and no urgency to any of it.

On Second Chances

2010-05-19T09:10:00.001-07:00

You get to do it all again--what will you do differently? What do you want never to change?

I'm going to put second chances up there with one of the best things in life.

Every day now I think about what it is I like most about right now: what I'm grateful for, what I want to do, both now and later, what I want to read, listen to, look at. It's all something to look forward to.

the drawer of things I don't have any idea what to do with

2010-05-18T13:22:00.000-07:00

Does everyone have one of these? A drawer full of kind of nifty things you have no idea what to do with? Except they look neat and kind of useful, so you know you should keep them for something.

Not that you ever do figure out a use for them.

I have some things in my nifty-drawer that have been there for years. Periodically I go through it just to see what's there, and sometimes I admire some of the items, because let's face it, sometimes I keep things just because they're pretty.

And who knows--I might come up with a really good use for them one day. It's doubtful, sure, but you never know.

This morning I found in my odds-and-ends drawer a pretty bright blue leather-covered notebook, small enough to fit in a purse; an extra car-charger for my phone (always useful!); a long chain of safety pins all clipped together; a plastic over-the-counter fountain pen inexplicably filled with purple ink; and some extra post-its.

Then there were the pocket-sized hand sanitizers (at least three or four of them); myriad disposable fountain pens, mostly broken; the medal for first place in the Encinitas marathon (that can't be mine!); a long safety-pin chain necklace; an extra USB device; a tape measure; a white-out taping device; and about five miscellaneous chargers that don't fit into anything I recognize.

The only thing I know I can be really certain of here is that I better not throw any of it out. Because as soon as I do, it will become immediately apparent what that thing was for, and I'm going to need it RIGHT NOW.

Of course, if I don't throw these things out, they will continue to rattle around in my drawers baffling me. But that's just another variant of Murphy's Law. And probably of brain tumors.

But one day it will undoubtedly happen: in a moment of weakness I'll clean up, and by golly, I'll regret it forever.

is it possible?

2010-05-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

I feel so normal today I'm almost wondering if I've turned a corner. I almost dare not hope: It seems like for every good and optimistic day there's always a bad spot waiting to slap you across the face. But things feel good today: I'm optimistic, I'm awake and alert, I'm doing my work, I can remember things I did yesterday and this morning, and life looks pretty good.

Of course, I haven't read the morning news yet--maybe that'll knock this happy feeling out of me!

check it out: full coverage again!

2010-05-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

Perhaps not the shaggy locks I was sporting before, but I'll take it!

the 17th monday of the year

2010-05-17T16:47:00.000-07:00

Foiled! I'm so disappointed...we made a special trip down to Kearney Mesa to stock up on those delicious little pastry balls filled with some sort of nut paste that I love so much.

And there, to my chagrin, was a little sign in the middle of the door, explaining that that particular venue is closed on the second Monday of alternating months between all years ending with either zeros or odd numbers. I forget the precise specifications. But since the store was closed, it can be presumed that we are in one of those cycles now.

And I am most bummed!

Annoying things that foil necrotic brains

2010-05-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

1. The Arts and Letters Building of San Diego State. I can't believe how many times I've managed to get lost on my own danged floor with this stupid tumor. And this is supposed to be a "smart" building, in full compliance with the latest health and safety standards, and one hundred percent user sensitive!

2. Adams Humanities, which is, if possible, even worse. But I've been there longer, so I'm used to it.

3. Cox Cable's remote control.

Why grammar matters

2010-05-16T18:51:00.000-07:00

Today's Union Tribune headline caused me quite a bit of initial confusion: "Five beauty queens left after competition." Why did they leave, I wanted to know? Were they upset about something?

After some thought I figured out what the headline was trying to convey. But still, that's a nice example of why verbs are good. People should use them.

cherry mimosas

2010-05-16T15:29:00.000-07:00

We went out for dim sum this morning. For those of you who have never indulged in this particularly San Diego experience, you are MISSING OUT. Kearney Mesa is full of nasty-looking little warehouses and strip malls mysteriously jammed with some of the most delicious Asian eating experiences on this side of the hemisphere. I'll warn you ahead of time: it's not pretty. There are no nice walking areas. This is a barren strip full of soulless warehouses. And if you did not know ahead of time what was inside those grim-looking strip malls, you'd probably never stop to have a second look. Why would you? It would be like pulling off the freeway just to check out the 7-11 options. We are not sure how this strange mix of the utterly personality-less, plastic, and artificial happened to alchemically merge with an exotic cuisine worth driving into a skanky part of town for. We are simply grateful that it did and that it's so close by.

And the heading? Well, you can't have dim sum without a couple of cherry mimosas first, can you?

internet owls and other deep thoughts

2010-05-15T06:36:00.001-07:00

I don't like having come so close to death. I know what death feels like now, and I don't like it.

In most ways death is less scary to me now than it was before. Before death was sort of horrifying, in that unknowable kind of way. Now I know what it feels like--it feels like exhaustion, like being done with a very full day, and feeling relieved to let it all go, to let it all leak out of your mind.

It was kind of relaxing.

But that's not the scary part. That's not scary at all.

It's scary knowing in an intuitive and personal way that there is something else--a completely different state of being. And we're incapable of intuiting anything about it.

Yeah, yeah--I know Heidegger already wrote all about it.

But here is something that makes me feel better. Internet owls!

Thank god for the internet...whenever I feel blue, or lonely, or hopeless, I can always turn there to connect myself with humanity again.

But can she bake a cherry pie?

2010-05-14T19:34:00.001-07:00

I made a cherry pie tonight. It's been on my mind, ever since getting so terribly addicted to "Pushing Daisies," the Bryan Fuller creation about a pie-maker who has the uncanny ability to bring back the dead with a single touch. I love the show so much that I bought the boxed set, and most nights around my house we put on an old DVD to watch again.

So pie's been on my mind. Sitting in my oven right now is a double-crusted cherry pie, bubbling away and ready for eating in maybe five minutes. These days I mostly avoid sugar, as well as any other edible nasty that isn't strictly anti-cancer. I mean, I'll never know for sure if my sweet tooth had anything to do with my illness, but it seems best not too push too many limits these days, especially given I feel like I'm already on my second chance at life.

On the other hand, second chances don't mean total denial.

Do they?

I've even got a bit of Breyer's Grand to top it with.

Just a bite can't hurt, right?

on the joys of getting mail

2010-05-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

I love mail. I love it so much I'm willing to subscribe to silly gossip magazines (and serious high-brow ones!) just for the pleasure of trotting across the street to unlock my mailbox and pull out all the goodies.

Embarrassing mailings from today include the new People Magazine, with that terrible story about the beautiful young college senior in Virginia whose wealthy and sick boyfriend killed her because she dared to try to break up with him.

Geez.

And then there's my National Geographic--how I love that!--and the San Diego Reader, which I always enjoy. The Old Globe Theater is running King Lear this summer--that sounds worth doing!--and apparently it's election time again.

The elections? Thank God I didn't miss those.

My mortgage payment seems to be due (already?! I just got out of the hospital!), and there are friendly polls from the Scripps Clinic asking me how I've been liking my cancer treatments (uh, very nice). Is Jerry Brown really running for governor again? It's nice to know that if you oversleep and miss an election one year, you can always come back and see the same guy trying again ten years down the road. So you might as well roll over, catch a few more winks, and vote for him then.

In the mean time, I have my readables which must be dutifully scanned each day: the electronic versions of the San Diego UT and Weekly readers, of course, plus People Magazine, maybe National Geographic.

I love that it's all still going to be there when I want it and can enjoy it, and that I won't have missed a thing.

zen and the art of brain maintenance

2010-05-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

The trick to dealing with brain cancer, I've decided, is embracing the possibility that you really don't need a brain. Well, of course you do--there are certain vital functions, etc. that one's brain is very good at handling. But thinking? Do we really need that?

Thinking tends to cause me a great deal of distress these days, especially insofar as I tend to overthink things until they reach the Slough of Despond.

In other words, I'm thinking thinking's a bit overrated.

I've posted before about the majestic sea slug, that noble underwater critter who is possessed with a rudimentary brain that allows him to search the sea floors for a home. Once he decides upon his destination he attaches himself to something or other, and then he eats his brain...because, of course, he no longer needs it. Its purpose has been fulfilled.

What I mean to say is that there's a lot to be said for just sitting back and enjoying the ride...even if it is a bit jarring at times.

Random thoughts intended to look deep, that aren't really

2010-05-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

I wonder how many people have this thought every morning?

"Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

being

2010-05-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

Now I just want to write about how happy my morning coffee and bagel make me. I don't know why. I just love them, and I can feel the little smile-wrinkles crinkling out on either side of my face as I take that first bite and swallow.

One thing you notice about near-death experiences is how much they make you appreciate the good things you've got. For me, today, it's: a perfectly cooked egg and raisin bagel. A foamy espresso, freshly pressed. A beautiful, sunshiny day outside.

All we need to do is be.

When that I was and a little tiny boy

2010-05-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man's estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain, it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering I could never thrive,
For the rain, it raineth every day.

But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain it raineth every day.

A great while ago the world I begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.

--William Shakespeare

on trying to control feelings

2010-05-13T07:23:00.000-07:00

The good: no pain, pretty positive prognosis, all things considered
The bad: the mood....I get some pretty serious dismals at times.

Part of that isn't real: it's just the reaction of the body to some hard knocks. In fact, I've read that moods are never "real," in that frequently they don't reflect any state of reality you should be worrying about or trying to control. Frequently we're just talking about random feelings, and there we are tying to figure out why we're feeling them and what they mean when really they don't mean anything at all. After all, my prognosis at this point is pretty good. I've had some bad news at times when things didn't go the way we anticipated, but they're always tweaking things and making adjustments.

So I try not to think about things too much. Thinking isn't a real reflection of anything other than your perceptions at any given time, and perceptions are subject to change.

me and my hubby

2010-05-12T20:32:00.000-07:00

He's kinda cute, don't you think?

Of course, I hate it that he has so much more hair than I!

from a colleague's class

2010-05-11T20:07:00.000-07:00

This was just sent from a colleague's class: "I am selling my notes from class. I have an A. They include the page numbers that **** refers to. Tell me what you are willing to pay."

I wonder if this student knows that a professor's class notes are considered intellectual property and as such belong to the professor? The relevant wordage from the university cataloge follows:

(b) Unacceptable Student Behaviors
The following behavior is subject to disciplinary sanctions:
(14) Unauthorized recording, dissemination, or publication of academic presentations (including handwritten notes) for a commercial purpose.

You know, if I were this student, I'd rethink this one.

but I like bendable straws!

2010-05-11T19:44:00.000-07:00

I'm still trying to get over Sarah Palin's contractual demands for "bendable straws" when she visited CSU Stanislaus a while back. For those of you who missed the lovely Miss Palin's most recent PR shenanigans, there's a hot story afoot concerning her foiled agreement to speak at CSU Stanislaus's commencement ceremony this weekend:

"One of the documents recovered at the time appeared to be a portion of Palin's contract, detailing perks such as first-class airfare for two, deluxe hotel accommodations and bottles of water complete with bendable straws."

"Bendable straws!" Say what?!! I mean, if I were some bigwig who could get whatever ridiculous request I asked for I might be seriously tempted to ask for something. But bendable straws? When you could ask for anything?

I'm going to give Palin the benefit of the doubt and assume some dimwit staffer was responsible for this one.

Anyway, I'm going to hope so. The alternative is too terrible to consider.

beautiful day

2010-05-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

Here I am today. My hair's growing back a tiny bit; I'm on a new medication that everyone has high hopes for. It's a really beautiful spring day, and my head feels pretty clear and my memory is good. I'm drinking a great cup of coffee, and I'm surrounded by good books and by people who love me.

Things could be much worse, let me tell you.

sleuthing your way by

2010-05-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

Short term memory loss calls for lots of tricks and work-arounds to figure out what the heck is going on in your world. For example, I'm sitting here looking at a package with a small birdhouse and wrapping paper in it. It took me a while to figure out that this was a Mother's Day gift, probably purchased by my dad for me to give my mom tomorrow. Maybe....? Except that just doesn't seem like the sort of gift he'd get for her, nor does he shop at the name of the venue mentioned on the bag.

I guess I'll have to check.

Every morning is like this, filled with lots of imponderables that I have to sleuth my way through. Why is this bag lying here? Did I get my sweater out for a reason? Why am I holding a toothbrush? These are the mysteries that occupy many of my thoughts these days. Supposedly all this dazedness is going to pass, as my treatments continue and as my brain adjusts to the various assaults that have been made upon it.

In the mean time, I'm trying to treat it as a whimsical chapter in my life that will cause me much amusement one day.

Actually, I find it pretty amusing now.

on bravery (or the lack thereof)

2010-05-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

I've heard so many people talking about the bravery of cancer patients as they faced their ordeals--how they kept their spirits up along with the spirits of their families, how they smiled even through the nausea, how their valor was unflagging.

Well, I guess that's not going to be me. I did not know this, but apparently I'm a pussy. I'm sitting here about to go into my all-day appointment with an IV drip, and I'll tell you right now that I'm feeling thoroughly sorry for myself. I can't even imagine what this process must be like for people who have needle phobias. I don't (not yet, anyway!). But give me time.

The worst of it is that my short-term memory problems have not eased. I was just heading back to the kitchen for breakfast when my husband informed me that I'd already eaten. What?!! It is really disappointing to be told you've already eaten--specially when you don't get to keep any happy memories of doing it!

And I'm worried about reading materials. This is going to be a long day. Send magazines and brainless mysteries or sci fi!

So if you're ever around a person with cancer....

2010-05-04T22:59:00.000-07:00

It must be impossible to predict how cancer is going to affect the people around you. I've read that dealing with loved ones and their reactions is one of the most stressful aspects of this particular disease.

So many people don't know what to do and just back off. They justify their reactions by telling themselves they don't want to put any pressure on you, even when you're just dying for someone to write even a 2-sentence email to tell you they're thinking about you.

And then still others, including some of the people closest to you, become demanding and overly expectant, interfering, hustling you into doing things you aren't up for, and taking umbrage at everything you say, no matter what it was or how you intended it. They get mad at you, and you don't even know why.

I'd heard before that this is one of the things that cancer victims find most difficult to deal with while they're trying to recover: the reactions and expectations of even their immediate family. When you have cancer there's just not that much you can do for everyone else. You may have been the most thoughtful person in the world at one time, but an illness like cancer doesn't leave much room for anything else. The bottom line is that you're not the same. You're trying to survive and you've got no promise you're going to. There are things you can't do anymore and things you can't be for other people. And the possibility is always there that maybe you never will be any of those things again.

But it's not like you did it deliberately.

good day

2010-05-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

I awakened in such a good mood today, I think things must surely be settling aback down again. I'm sitting at our big window in the kitchen--the one that looks out cross the canyon--and I'm browsing the newspaper and reading my email, and everything seems like a good thing to do. No pain today, just a little bit of fuzziness, and it's beautiful outside as I look back across the canyon into which our house is built. There's a tiny haze of fog still clinging to the trees that poke out on either side of the canyon walls. The birds are at it so cacophonously that they're drowning out the sounds of traffic and my husband clearing the breakfast dishes. I watch him as I guzzle down cup after cup of really good coffee.

I feel happy.

back at school

2010-05-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

I'm back at school today, attending my training sessions as part of that on-line teaching grant I received this semester. I love coming to these, but I have to admit that coming back on campus is always highly disorienting for me, even still. I have to do a lot of faking. I've come to look at the overall experience kind of as if I'm going on a fast ride at Disneyland--the kind with the claws that pick you up and shake you around until your brain plasters itself around the perimeter of your skull and you feel slightly like throwing up, preferably all over that loud-talker walking next to you who seems to have trouble moving in a straight line. I try to look like I know what I'm doing, where I'm going, and who this person is who just said hello to me, and as such the experience provides endless fuel for my ongoing bafflement about what it is that makes the brain able to work just fine in one context and not at all in another.

I'm also wondering why we'll pay $8 a pop for the one kind of experience when the other seems so totally unpleasant. Context again, I suppose--or perhaps it's the potential embarrassment factor. At Disneyland, it doesn't matter if you stumble around like a drunken sailor, tripping over your own feet and generally looking like an imbecile. It doesn't matter if you ARE a drunken sailor. On a college campus, it matters rather a lot. And of course there's the issue of the lack of control. People are constantly in motion on a college campus. We may be used to dodging out of the way in situations that are familiar enough to us that we know the drill, but that sense of accustomedness, I am finding, is very fragile. It takes very little to make you a stranger to your own familiar world.

But it's more than that. The disorientation is accompanied almost by a sense of nausea. I can't take very much of it before I have to find a place to sit down and be quiet for a while. The phenomenon doesn't occur in any public places I'm used to: the local grocery store is fine; walks out in the hills are fine; restaurants are fine, including, surprisingly, new ones that I might not have been to before. It's just certain kinds of experiences that I find are problems.

Of course, it could just be universities.

morning coffee

2010-05-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

I kind of have to wonder about the fact that I've got a brain tumor, and yet my worst, most pounding headaches are the ones I get in the morning, before I've had my cup of coffee.

We must be talking about one serious caffeine addiction.

And there's probably something seriously wrong with the fact that feeling the pain and anticipating the relief are all part of the enjoyment I get out of my morning coffee ritual. If I didn't get that little ecstatic "Ah!" as the coffee headache evaporated, my day just wouldn't be the same. The pain is part of what it is I look forward to relieving when I haul myself into the kitchen to make my first cup. Which means I have to experience it first.

It's a sick and twisted ritual I've established here; I admit it freely. And yet I'd never give it up.

And it's a more complicated ritual than that, of course. As I sip my coffee I read my email, scan the newspaper headlines, and generally sort my priorities. Not that I've done any of that so far. It seemed way more important, this morning, to shout, IT'S ALL ABOUT MEEEEE!

And so, as these first ten minutes of my day continue, I am all about the coffee.

But this, too, is part of the process, as I use these initial moments of the day to wave aside the world's concerns and concentrate solely on what it is that I alone want, right now.

I can't think of any other priority in my life that's so crystallized and yet so easy to satisfy.

unsporting advantage

2010-05-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

A typical conversation in our household:

"Excuse me?"

"What?"

"Did you just fart?"

"God no. Why would you say that?"

"You farted. I heard you."

"I didn't. You're making stuff up again. It's your tumor."

Now SOME of us happen to think it's unsporting to take advantage of the tumor. It's like stealing candy from a baby. But apparently I am in the minority. My cat is the worst, trying to convince me over and over again that I still haven't fed her breakfast, despite the fact that she's probably been yowling at me at that point for an hour and there's a suspicious layer of catfood-dander still dusting her face. I may be a little absent-minded these days, but trust me, no one could miss that.

As the old joke goes, I may be crazy, but I'm not dumb.

anyone up for onion soup?

2010-04-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

The short term memory loss that results from chemotherapy has been an ongoing problem for me. What's especially interesting to me, though, are all the things that, for whatever reason, I do remember. For example, I always remember to get onions at the grocery store--whether or not we need them, and mostly we don't. Right now I have a bowl overflowing with onions on my countertop. I have no idea what to do with them. However, I'm very confident that I will forget I have them and buy even more next time I go to Henry's, which will probably be later today.

I'm not sure what's guiding my sense of priorities here. Apparently, at some point in my past, I decided for whatever reason that it was important to always have onions lying around, probably just to keep my dinner options open. 'Cause you never know when you're going to need an onion.

So now I always have them. Lots and lots of them.

Which just goes to show we should probably all be very careful about what habits we establish in our everyday activities. Once you ingrain that neural connection, you're kind of stuck with it--at least, if you get brain cancer, anyway.

At the very least, make sure it's a food you really like before you get into the habit of buying another one every time you head for the store.

Things I wish I'd said to the Bible Thumpers at my door

2010-04-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

Of course, hindsight is 20/20. But it's a real shame that all my best zingers occur to me way too late.

Just now I had a visitation by some Bible-toters of undetermined denomination. I dispatched them quickly, but still--now I'm regretting the missed opportunity. I could have had such fun with them if only I'd remembered to remove my beanie cap, thoughtfully scratch my bald head, and ask if they really thought a few extra prayers uttered on my behalf at church this Sunday would make a difference.

Maybe I should go call them back.

slings and arrows

2010-04-29T07:57:00.000-07:00

I woke up feeling extremely sorry for myself today. Weepy, hopeless, overwhelmed, and like what's the use, anyway. I know this is an effect of this cocktail of drugs I'm on, which interact in ways that surely can't be predicted. So days like this have to be expected. But they're tough when they come.

Depression, I think, is one of the largest of the problems for cancer victims. When they pump you full of the steroids it's fine. You feel like superman. You do things like send emails to the entire university telling them cancer is great and that everyone should try it. But the steroids are only a temporary fix, and the mood is artificial. Afterward you crash and start dwelling on all the things you had once planned to do with your life that literally evaporated overnight with the pronunciation of a single diagnosis. Projects that oriented your set of priorities and punctuated the years with their goals and projections become suddenly pointless--what's the use of any of it when we all die--usually painfully--in the end anyway?

And so on and so forth. It's incredibly easy for someone with a debilitating illness to fall into this kind of pattern of thinking. I'm aware of this, and I've developed certain remedies for coping with the depression. But it's not easy.

What helps, though, is to remember that depression is a luxury. If you're feeling well enough to feel sorry for yourself, you're probably well enough to do something about it.

As long as it doesn't involve going anywhere, anyway.

another night in the ER

2010-04-25T08:06:00.000-07:00

Today I resolve to spend no more nights in the ER room getting my brain scanned.

I mean, at some point you just fail to see the point. We know what I've got. It's a TUMOR. We know why it hurts. We know why I sleep all the time (except for when I really want to) and periodically bump into walls when I don't. We know all that.

So today I hereby resolve that even if I have another horrifying night like last night, I'm just going to swallow a bunch of Tylenol and go back to bed.

I'm not sure what happened last night. I don't even remember a lot of it. I just remember weeping with pain, calling for help, and spending hours and hours in the emergency room at Scripps while they took additional scans of my brain (yep! it's still there!) and shoveled pain medication down my throat. And finally, after what seemed like hours and hours, the medication kicked in and we were able to go home.

So the take-home lesson here (and it's not like this is the first time we've learned this lesson) is that we--and by "we," of course, I mean "I"--just have to accept at some point that when I'm having a bad night there's really nothing that can be done about it except take lots and lots of pain killers and steroids and try to sleep it off--and a doctor doesn't have to be there to witness it.

But there's the rub: steroids and sleeping are two great things that do not go together. The steroids are intended to reduce swelling and pain, but they'll also have you bouncing off the walls just as soon as the anti-inflammatory effect kicks in. Sleeping is just not on the roster. Normally I can balance the steroids with a mighty dose of nighttime magnesium/potassium and and Omega-3s, and maybe a Tylenol pm if necessary. But not always. I've spent a great many sleepless nights these past few months.

But these cocktails have become my new way of life, and it could be worse, I suppose. I've managed to keep away from the scary high-dose pain prescriptions, mainly by carefully managing my diet, exercise, and schedule. It's very easy to become addicted to some nasty pill or other and I'm just not going there. In general, if it's not something that's necessary to keep me alive--like, say, coffee!-- I won't take it.

So it takes some discipline and a lot of patience to make sure I'm able to manage the bad times then they come. But that's just the way it is. My plan here, of course, is to become completely normal again. And I'm definitely getting there.

on the mysteries of how things taste

2010-04-23T09:09:00.001-07:00

I was just heading into the kitchen for, oh, my sixth cup of coffee or so, when I realized that coffee no longer tasted good, despite the fact that I'd just expressed it out of my machine and it was fresh and, visually at least, topped with a perfect crema. This is a well-known phenomenon in my taste history: the one-too-many-coffees syndrome. It's a shame, but evidently my body has a turn-off mechanism, and it has now decided that I don't get anymore coffee today.

That's very odd, though, isn't it? How is it that something that tastes so perfectly delicious and is so exactly what you want at one moment can become repellent in the space of ten minutes? It's not like anything happened in that time period. I didn't eat anything that might have affected the taste, for example. My coffee desire simply shut off.

Now I have to wait twenty-four hours until my coffee will start tasting good again. I'm not sure how this works, but I'm quite sure I know why: if it weren't for my built-in shut-off mechanism, I'd probably keep drinking the stuff until I hurt myself. I never did have much self control.

vicissitudes of chemo

2010-04-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

I don't understand chemo at all. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason why, an entire ten days after finishing the last dose of a relatively benign week of treatment, I suddenly decide to start throwing up all night. You just never know how it's going to be with this stuff (other than generally awful, of course). Sometimes chemo is okay, other times it's just not. At all. I thought we had the procedure down for minimizing the unpleasant side effects and getting through that single week. But what works one month just plain old doesn't the next. I can never tell how it's going to be.

I also don't understand why vomiting affects your brain and body the way it does. You don't just throw up until your stomach empties out; you feel dizzy and unstable afterward, too, almost as if your inner ear had been affected by the crisis. Or at least, I do. That's what makes being sick like that so awful. If you could just throw up and be done with it, things would be fine. Unpleasant for a few minutes there, yes, but ultimately fine. But with this stuff you puke your guts out for a night or two and then you go to bed for the rest of the week, because all that vomiting destroyed what you had left of your brain cells.

And I get to do this for another nine months, too.

But at least it's not like this every time. Sometimes nothing happens at all.

Go figure.

morning walks

2010-04-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

It's taken all this time before I could do my morning walk/run again in a half-way normal fashion. Before I got ill, I used to do a very modest, 2-mile loop around the base of the canyon up the street from us every day. I never pushed it very hard; you can't when you're running along unstable and narrow canyon trails. My mantra was always, "walk the uphill parts, run the downhill parts." I still called it "my morning run," of course. But the running was not the point so much as simply getting out there, getting a little exercise, and adding a dash of natural perspective to my day.

We live in an ecosystem called "the coastal chaparral," and right now the flowers are in full bloom. Because of the wet winter we've had this year, the flowers have been outrageous. They're akin to the infamous desert wildflowers, popping up almost overnight and lasting only a week or two before disappearing again. So these past few days I've been trudging around in the mud with my California Wildflowers book identifying them (for what it's worth--with my short-term memory issues I retain the names for maybe a day before forgetting them all over again). But I've also been photographing and documenting as best I can. I don't remember seeing such a spectacular season before, and it's probably only going to last a few more days.

This is a photo I took this morning of a Chaparral Yucca; you see these in the super-expensive floral arrangements of 5-star hotel lobbies. They are incredibly dramatic, growing some 6-7 feet high seemingly overnight and producing clusters of vibrant cream colored-flowers streaked with delicate pink lines. Our canyon is dotted all over with them right now. They bloom only once during their lifetimes; after the bloom withers, the whole plant dies. By the end of this month, they'll all be gone except for their dried-up stalks, which will mark the hills like walking staffs planted in the ground.

I remember seeing these dried-up stalks even from when I was a little girl. I just never knew what they were before now. I thought a fire had swept through the region and just left these burnt-out sticks behind, because that's exactly what these skinny dried-out forests of stalks look like--burnt-out forests. But of course that didn't make any sense. Even I, oblivious as I am as to my ordinary surroundings, would have noticed a huge wildfire if it had occurred right down the block from me.

Now I know where these odd stick forests come from.

overheard in the alzheimer's facility

2010-04-16T20:18:00.000-07:00

It's always nice to know I'm not the only one with memory problems these days. My grandmother has recently been established in an Alheimer's facility, where lunch time is always a dramatic event.

One of the patients there is a woman named Genelle, who hasn't yet realized she's in a hospital. Genelle thinks she's still back at her old job in corporate America, and every lunch hour she thinks she's chairing a meeting. As the food is served she stands up and opens proceedings by saying, "if any of you have a more efficient way of doing things, bring it up and we'll discuss it. I'm open to new ways of doing things."

So then Mildred interjects, saying, "I saw you talking to my son Damien, and I want to know what he said to you and where he is going today."

Whereupon Genelle puts down her soup spoon and says, "I can't answer your questions."

So Mildred stands up, points her finger, and says, "Just be like that! I'm leaving."

And Genelle, who still thinks she's running a meeting, says "Maybe I should just step down from running this meeting."

And so forth and so on.

What fascinates me is the patterns people keep repeating. Mildred perceives every comment through her lens of administrative power and the job at hand that needs to get done, whether or not those were the conditions she lived under when she had control over all her faculties; others in the room are living in a world of suspicion and fear of betrayal by the ones closest to them. What happened to them to make them like this? Where did they come from? Did Mildred once work under constant conditions of corporate backstabbing? Or did she just grab those images randomly from the many that percolate through our TV shows, newspapers, and pop magazines? My grandmother is in that facility, too, but their perceived world is entirely different from hers, though not any the more realistic. Hers is almost as unrecognizable as theirs. I think each of them continue to replay their inner fears through projected dramas of their own making, based on images and symbols derived from the most potent of their real-life memories.

It makes me think about the importance of making sure that whatever images you take with you into senility are beautiful, powerful, and positive. We may never be able to escape the negative patterns we establish in our active life, not even when we enter old age and dementia.

brain meds

2010-04-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

The timing and rules surrounding the special brain-cancer chemotherapy I'm on seem a bit much. I mean, I have a brain tumor, fer cryin' out loud, which means I have a hard time even remembering whether I ate breakfast today or not. I suspect that sometimes I eat it twice. And trying to remember whether I've taken my meds? Oh my God. The meds are the worst, because there are a lot of them and they all have to be taken at different times, some of them in complicated relations to each other. I have those little pill boxes with the days of the week marked on them to help me with some of them. But what about the pills you take three times a day, not at very specific hours, but in a time relation to another pill you're supposed to take later? I have pills for which you literally need to be carrying around a timer: this pill you take two hours before that blue one there, but no more than one hour after you've taken the pink and white one here. It's a nightmare.

And you have to wonder about the irony of drug companies of brain tumor medication asking a BRAIN CANCER patient, of all people, to remember and keep track of all this! Isn't it absurd? I mean, come on: I have a big ol' TUMOR right in the middle of my BRAIN, and they're asking me to remember non-specific time relations between events? It's hard not to see the process as a deliberately concocted mind-f***, designed just to mess with us. I need a small minion to follow me around and take away my pill bottles once I've taken the one specified for that particular hour. Otherwise I'm quite likely to go back, see the bottle sitting there, and take another of the same. And maybe even another one after that. Asking me to check off a little box to keep track doesn't help, either, because when I see (or fail to see) a check I still don't remember making it, and so I doubt myself anyway.

It's quite frightening, really, especially on the days when I'm home all alone. What do people do who don't have round-the-clock caregivers to check up on them?

cozy corner cat poop box

2010-04-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

My cat uses something called the "cozy corner cat litter box," a triangular shaped box with a domed lid and a little door the cat can enter so that she can enjoy her privacy as she does her business. The closed lid is very important. So it's a better arrangement by far than the normal, open-air cat box, but still, I have to ask how a box full of cat litter and poop and smelling faintly of deodorized urine could possibly be considered a cozy part of anyone's house? For the cat, maybe, but it's not like she spends any quality time in there.

Although maybe she does. My cat has a very special relationship to her cat box. She is a very regular beast, and she has her rituals. Every morning she enters the bathroom just off the garage, where we keep her box, and starts shoving around the litter with her paws until she gets it positioned exactly the the way she wants it. She likes her litter just so before she pees, and this ritual of litter-placement is a highly important part of the event. Then she backs inside, butt first, with her head poking out the little door in front so that she can survey her surroundings as she pees. It's enormously undignified looking. But the cat pretends otherwise, studiously ignoring the sounds of our giggles as this ritual proceeds. Then there is a brief silence--utter, concentrated silence--and she tucks her head back inside the box to clean up, and we hear the audible sounds of cat litter being vigorously shoved into place. If you happen to enter the bathroom at this moment to point and laugh (which is great fun when you're dealing with an animal who takes her pooping so seriously), she will ignore you, with great dignity, a slight sneer on her lips to indicate how completely immature she thinks you are.

And of course, I am. That's the whole point.