Chet The Scribe

April 26, 2008

2008-04-26T13:23:00.000-07:00

It has been 106 days – both a flash and an eternity – since Chet died and his family and friends began to come to grips with our deeply personal responses to losing him. Chet’s birthday, April 26, lends itself as a moment for us to remember him on the first of his birthdays without him with us. This space is provided for sharing some of the things we have been thinking and feeling at the many times Chet has come to mind for each of us over the past 106 days. Please feel free to add your thoughts.

Chet Meeks Memorial Fund

2008-01-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

A memorial fund has been established at the University of Wyoming in honor of Chet's life and dedication to academia. This is a project that gave Chet renewed vigor in his last few weeks and we had hoped to get it ready before he left us. He asked that the fund be used for summer research funding for graduate students in sociology. Unfortunately, Chet never got to see the scholarship in place. But he knew we would finish the job – and we are more determined than ever to make the Chet Meeks Memorial Fund a substantial legacy in his honor.

If you would like to contribute to the Fund, please contact Brett Walter at baw1000@gmail.com.

Chet Meeks (April 26, 1973 - January 11, 2008)

2008-01-11T15:38:00.000-08:00

A Celebration of the Life of Chet Meeks was held January 19 at the First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta. A celebration also was held at Northern Illinois University on January 25. These celebrations brought together many of Chet's family, friends and colleagues to remember Chet and to tell our stories of having shared in his remarkable, loving and accomplished life.

On August 9, 2008, a service will be held in Rawlins, Wyoming. Ace, Heidi, Asa and Andrea heartily welcome you to be with them as they mark Chet's passing at Lake Marie. Further information will be posted as the event gets closer. Ace & Heidi would like for those planning to come to Wyoming to let them know ASAP and they will try to reserve a block of motel rooms at a discounted rate. Their email address and phone number for anyone who might like to reach them: asameeks@msn.com and 307-324-3935.

As noted in Andy's post below, documents, pictures, links and other information about Chet are posted and available for download at Andy's Web site.

Please remember to financially support the Chet Meeks Memorial Fund, an important long-range initiative of Chet's legacy! Please see information above.

As Chet's family and friends continue to mourn our loss and remember his life, "Chet the Scribe" will continue as a place for remembrances, stories and condolences.

We love and miss Chet always.

Update and Instructions

2007-12-02T14:53:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone,

It has been a very long time since I've written on this blog. As most of you know, my condition has gotten progressively worse over the last 1-2 months. The "chemo light" version of therapy that I went on after Houston did not work and the cancer progressed. I developed a condition known as ascites. When tumors grow and build their own blood vessels, etc., they do so in a way that produces a lot of excessive waste fluid that pools in the abdominal region and peritoneum. Within a matter of weeks my stomach/abdomen grew to a grotesque size, even as I continued losing weight (which I continue to lose, despite a fairly healthy appetite and diet).

I switched to oxaliplatin and avastin, a more aggressive treatment, hoping it would get rid of the new cancer progression and ascites. It did not. While the ascites did not seem to worsen, the most recent CT Scan showed a marked narrowing of my vena cava, a major artery (blood vessel? I have no idea) that carries blood, etc. from the lower extremities to the heart. My vena cava is about 1/4 the size that it should be. This explains the edema that I began developing in my feet about a month ago, adding yet another grotesque feature to my increasingly disfigured, foreign body.

Several weeks ago, I had an accident because of the edema in my feet and legs. I had purchased some groceries and things around town, and by the time I got back to the apartment building, there was a downpour of rain in Atlanta (this was before Sonny's Sunday prayer for rain on the capitol lawn, so not divine intervention, unfortunately). I parked near the front door and did my routine -- the one where you make sure each thing you need to depart the car with is looped around at least one limb, then you count to three, then you open the door, then you count to three again, and jump out trying to frantically make your way from car to building without getting completely soaked (always a foolish endeavor anyway). All of this, of course, involves running, which I've always been able to do. Well, when your feet weight about 1/4 pound more than what you're used to because of the build up of waste fluid in them that your body no longer processes and expels, running becomes a little trickier. Bags in hand, I ran toward my apartment building, reflexively locking my car as I did. Only, as I bounded up the first step, I did not quite lift my right foot far enough to make it.

We've all fallen and had accidents. I've had many that turned out far worse than this one. But there was a qualitative difference in this tumble. There was something about the way my body reacted to the mis-step, or the way it didn't, or couldn't, react, that was very different, and very troubling. None of the usual reflexes we have developed for falling down worked. I didn't brace myself properly. I didn't fall the right way. I didn't protect my head (not injured, thankfully). Nothing really worked. On top of this was the fact that the newly acquired weight around my mid-section, coupled with the overall loss of weight around the rest of my body (20-25 lbs since May, or about 15%) left me with a more-than-compromised sense of balance, and an equally lame ability to react to said compromised sense -- etc., etc., etc., you get the picture. I fell, and I fell hard, leaving my hand, elbow, and knee badly cut and bleeding, and a wound somewhere else too -- on my ego, my heart, soul, call it whatever you like it......I think at the moment of that fall, I started into the downward spiral of this disease. It was symbolic and real: a real loss of bodily function and control, and a symbolic gesture toward what has happened, and toward what is to come.

Sure enough, life has gotten much harder since "the fall." I have been a lot more tired. I had another CT Scan after showing the doctor my new edema, which confirmed that the oxaliplatin and avastin combo were also not really working, at least not to the doctor's satisfaction. The next mix in the grab bag of poisons would be irinotecan and erbitux. Irinotecan, you may remember, was the drug I was put on here in Atlanta after re-diagnosis last year. Erbitux is a monoclonal anti-body that targets EGFR+ cancer cells like mine and kills them (supposedly). The problem with erbitux is that it tends to kill a lot of people, since it's made of 30% mouse protein that causes lethal allergic reactions in a lot of people who infuse it (when the FDA first learned of this, they cancelled a bunch of clinical trials for the drug, causing a fall in Imclone stock....which Martha got a heads up about, sold her portion, and yadda yadda yadda).

Apparently erbitux also causes catatonic forms of depression and immobility, because that's what I suffered from while on my first treatment of it. I had it last Thursday and, to be quite honest, feel lucky to be alive as I sit here writing this to all of you right now. If I had had the energy, I would have grabbed a something with not much give and garroted myself. I'm not being funny -- in the least.

On the upside, my nurse mentioned to me that I might get an indication that erbitux is working on the ascites and edema (and the tumors, presumably), because I'd have to urinate a lot. And I can confirm that this does indeed seem to be the case with me and erbitux, because I woke up at 8am soaked in my own urine.

One has to wonder what sort of meaning there can be left in a life when waking up in one's own piss is "the upside."

Well, I know this is all very uncomfortable to read. And the real purpose of this blog is to apologize for not keeping people updated. I know that, especially during the last month, many of you have waited patiently for me to return phone calls and emails, which I have ignored or forgotten. The truth is that getting through a day for me now requires a lot more work and energy than it used to. The truth is also that I'm becoming much more selfish with my time and, as someone who never liked talking on the phone in the first place, tend to avoid my Verizon albatross as much as possible. Same for email.

The problem is this: most of you ask the same questions; you have the same concerns. But there comes a point at which, after explaining for the fifth time in a day what drugs one is now taking, how those drugs work, what the doctor thinks about x, y, z, or the new wart I've developed (there are no warts, really), or any of other minutia of my disease and treatment, one wants to literally pull one's hair out. The blog was an easy way to remedy this situation at first, but after a while, everyone wants their own personal blog, from me, on the phone. It's exhausting, and I can't take it anymore. I love all of you with all of my heart, and there is nothing in my life that I am more thankful for than all of your support, warmth, care, and love over the last two years and this nightmare that my life has turned into. But I cannot continue to be the link between everyone's worries and concerns about my disease, and the disease itself.

So I'm putting Wendy in charge. Her phone # is: 404-210-4980 and she can be reached between 11am and 5pm. She'll return voice mails and will know everything there is to know about my condition. She can even report whether or not I've urinated on myself that day.

And it goes without saying that I want you all to continue to call me. I love hearing each of your voices, and I feel like the luckiest person on earth to have all of you in my life. The only thing I ask is that you NOT ask me any details about my doctor's visits, the specificities of treatments, drugs, side effects (again, the minutia of my disease and treatments), etc. I cannot talk about cancer anymore. All of that stuff should be directed at Wendy. And if you call me and don't hear back from me within a few days, Wendy can easily update you on what's going on with me.

I'm really sorry for the bitchy tone of this post.....I wish there were some way I could show each of you how much I care for and love you.

Chet

Cancer Update

2007-09-28T08:01:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. I'm sorry I haven't written on here for a while, but I was kind of sick of blogging after Houston and wanted to give it a rest for a time.

As many of you know, I haven't been feeling very well lately. I have lost some weight, and my stomach has become very bloated. Humiliating as it is to say, I look like one of those old men with little, tiny pencil legs and a great big stomach. Not attractive. In addition to the bad body-aesthetics, I have had a tremendous amount of abdominal cramping and pain that has been really awful, followed usually by vomiting. All of this has weakened my appetite, which has compounded the weight loss problem. Most days I eat things like soup or just soup broth, although Sidney Walter sent me some chocolates recently that I can't seem to resist.

Well, Monday I had a CT Scan. It was time for one and they wanted to do it in order to try to figure out what the cramps and bloating were all about. The scan shows that the cancer has not really "grown" but that it is definitely active, producing a lot of fluid in my abdomen (hence the bloating), and "thickening" my small and large intestines (hence the cramping, vomiting, and weight loss).

So, yesterday, after meeting with my onco, I went directly back on Oxalaplatin. Many of you will remember that this was the first chemo drug I was on. The doctor believes that my cancer has become "resistant" to 5-FU (also Xeloda), which requires that I step up to something stronger and a bit more aggressive.

So I feel fine today. Yesterday was exhausting but today feels great. I had a decent breakfast and even feel a little hungry as I write this. Many of you will want to know what you can do. Well, just visualize me with a smaller stomach and a bigger butt. :-)

Love, Chet

General Claims Innocence on Rape Charge

2007-09-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

After selling a two-ton bag of feces to Congress this week, General David Petraeus will return to the catastrophe we've created in Iraq, but not before stopping off to defend himself against rape charges in St. George, Utah.

Petraeus, a Mormon polygamist leader, is charged with coercing a 14 year old girl into marrying her 19-year old cousin. Court documents and the girl's testimony claim that Petraeus coerced the girl by convincing her that, if she did not marry her cousin and consummate the marriage sexually, she would not attain spiritual afterlife in the celestial kingdom -- where good Mormons go and become Gods!! Polygamists believe that men have a god given right to marry as many wives as they can, including their sisters, cousins, and grandmothers. They have litters of children with these wives, and pay to feed them with welfare checks that come from your tax dollars, so that they can claim enough souls to create their own worlds once they become deities in the afterlife. I know: cuckoo.

Polygamists are also very adept at lying before Congress, and selling as shineola the shitty ideas of village idiots from Texas. Just remember that when a polygamist says the word "progress" to you, he really means "cataclysm." And when he tells you that as the Iraqis begin to take care of their own security, we will leave, he really means that we have every intention of colonizing them for the next 200 years, until their oil supply runs out.

Oh, wait a minute! That's Warren Jeffs..............sorry, General.

No Jail for the Libbster

2007-07-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

Americas Hilton -- Houston

2007-06-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

The worst part about cancer is that this voice inside of my head says, "this is so unfair........and there's nothing you can do about it." Nothing goes more deeply against the grain of my personal nature than to have to sit back and put up with victimization, do nothing, say nothing, take it, put up with it. I've always admired resistance and resisters, freedom fighters, warriors for the good. And with cancer, aside from listening to the doctors and doing what they say, there's really no way of fighting against the cosmic injustice of it.

I came to Houston this weekend to have a CT Scan and to meet with the oncologist here to make sure that she thinks my current thinking about treatment (which will begin next Thursday) seems reasonable. I left Thursday night in order to be here in time for my 7:15 am blood tests Friday morning.

I'm beginning to understand that a trip to Houston spells doom, so it should not have surprised me when I was detained by the Transportation Security Authority at the Atlanta airport Thursday evening. After waiting in the security line (the longest line I have ever seen, by the way) for the better part of an hour, I became enraged when I noticed that a bunch of 15-16-year-oldish airport employees were cutting in line in front of everyone at the metal detectors. I asked one of them what he was doing and he said, "we're airport employees." "So what," I asked. He scurried through the line and I saw him talking to the TSA guard. I couldn't make out what he said but I saw him look back at me and I heard the word "harass."

As I walked through the metal detector and handed my boarding pass to someone I would later come to know as "Leticia," I said, "why are you letting all of these people cut in front of us when we've been standing in line for nearly an hour?" "They're airport employees," said Leticia. "Yeah," I said, "but they're not like pilots or anything, they're just going off to McDonalds or something and you're letting them cut in front of us when we have planes to catch." "Look," she shot back, "I can let anyone through this line whenever I want." "I don't really think you can," I replied.

At this point, Leticia ordered me to step inside the detention booth. You've all seen these. They're little glass fishbowl hallways next to the security screening areas. It's where they send people who have set off the metal detectors or created some other airport security crisis to be frisked, magic-wanded, searched, etc. "I didn't set off the metal detector," I said. "It doesn't matter," replied Leticia, drunk on her own power. "You'll stay where I tell you to for as long as I tell you to." "I want your name and badge number," I told her. "You can have that later," she yelled.

Then, while I stood in the glass room like a circus exhibit, and while Leticia continued screening other wide-eyed, interested passengers, something like the following came out of her mouth: "some white boy thinks he's gonna tell me how to let people through this line when I can let them through who's going to go first, I show him, YOU AIN'T GOIN' NOWHERE TODAY I CAN TELL YOU THAT, we'll see how many questions you got once you get outta there, tell me how to do my job we'll see who's gonna go through the line....." And so on.

A lot of things went through my mind. I should demand that they formally arrest me for something. I should demand to speak to a supervisor. I should say something like, "hey Leticia, are you going to send me to Guantanamo Bay later? You gonna water-board me, Private Lyndie?" But thankfully the rational part of my brain prevailed. I figured that I was no longer in the realm of reason with Leticia, if I ever was, so I better just stay quiet, at least until I got out of the glass bowl.

Finally, "Eddie" came over to frisk me. When he was done I demanded to know Leticia's last name and badge number. "We don't have to give you that information," said Eddie. "Eddie," I said, my voice now quivering a bit, "some of us know the rules. I want her name and badge number now." Just then, here comes Leticia. "My last name is Zondo," she said, "do you want me to spell it for you?" "If I did," I replied, "I'm not quite sure you'd be able." And then I left. I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell her what an authoritarian, horrible bitch she was. I wanted to tell her that she was part of a trend toward un-freedom in our country and that if she had any sense of justice about her she'd quit her job. I wanted to call the ACLU. But then I thought, as I walked down the escalator, contemplating the phonetic similarity between the words Zondo and Sondercommando, I'm starting to get used to this: "this is unfair.....and there's nothing you can do about it."

Thursday night I was on my own in Houston, which I don't like. Houston scares me. I feel at war here even when I have company, but even more so when I'm by myself. So I went to Brasil, my favorite Houston cafe, had a few glasses of wine and numbness, drafted a letter of complaint to the Transportation Safety Authority, and then went back to the hotel for bed.

Friday I had my scans and Carla arrived. We met at our Hotel, the "Americas Hilton" (no apostrophe). Carla decided that rather than staying in the "Medical City" where MD Anderson is, that we should stay in downtown Houston, and boy was she right! We had a much better time than my previous visits. Our hotel was great (more below). We ate fantastic food. And I've actually softened on Houston a bit. If you have the right guide (Carla), there are fun places to go and eat, and I almost forgot, several times, that I was here for cancer shit. We had great sushi at a place called Azara. We went to some terrific museums, including the Houston Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Menil Gallery Museum. The Houston Museum of Contemporary Art had a great exhibit called "Black Voices, White Light," which included a house made of 8-track tapes, all black mo-town artists on the outside, and white artists on the inside (symbolism not lost). The Menil has a great collection of modern and surrealist art, including some Japer Johns pieces I had never seen. The Mark Rothko chapel is directly next door, and we enjoyed a serene moment there. Carla and I also went to a few movies (Mighty Heart, and 1408, the former good, the latter bad). We were going to go to the Cyndi Lauper concert, but decided at the last minute that it was too far of a drive, and I too tired.

By far the best time Carla and I had was on the 24th floor terrace of our hotel. This was Carla's idea. She spied it when we were driving back to the hotel Friday night and we decided to check it out. Carla decided that the terrace was "our place," even though, as I reminded her, everything, including the plastic cups we drank our $13/glass wine out of, were owned by Paris Hilton, ostrich-face, jail-bird, and hooker. "It's not fair," said Carla. "But there's nothing you can do about it," I lamented. We sat up there looking out at the lights of Houston stretching into infinity, and we eavesdropped on the mating ritual of a wealthy-but-homely American man and the 17ish-year-old Asian Geisha-boy he'd clearly bought from some kind of illegal website.

In fact, Carla and I saw quite a lot of interesting things at Americas Hilton. I've decided it would be quite fun to write an ethnography of hotels -- not necessarily of the low-end Super 8s, nor of the high-end Waldorf's of New York, but precisely of hotels like Americas Hilton, where one sees mixed together, as Carla and I did, Asian boy prostitutes and their "handsome American benefactors," American female would-be prostitutes who dress up as beauty queens, struggling American ladder climbers who try to act one class above their actual station (betraying their actual worth by wearing their cell phones clipped to their belts), and wrestling fans!

The first thing one notices when walking into the lobby of Americas Hilton is the enormous Dale Chihouly chandelier (shown above). I'm not even a fan of blown glass, but this chandelier immediately tells its onlooker, "you are somewhere special......you are special." This message is seconded by the marble floors, dark woodwork, deep red and purple textiles, and of course, the obsequious staff.

Playing unremittingly over the loudspeakers one hears the works of Vivaldi, Pachelbel, and Mozart (never Beethoven, Schumann, or Brahms). These works, like the marble and fine blown glass, tell their listener that he/she is a refined person, a person of taste and significance, an important and special person.

While you listen to this music, everything you consume in the hotel will cost you three-times as much as any reasonable person should pay for it: a glass of cheap wine, $13, a small cup of coffee, $2.50, a little cup of fruit, $2.00, the breakfast buffet, $20, parking overnight, $14 (yes, powdered eggs and overcooked bacon costs more than parking...it's true). All of these exorbitant prices whisper to you: "it's okay, you can afford it, because you are special."

And while you listen to The Four Seasons, and the Canon in D over and over and over and over again, you will be greeted by the permanent and overdone smiles of the staff. They will tilt their heads ever so slightly, smile, and say, "hello, sir." Or, if you need a car, they'll get it for you. They'll help you with a bag, or provide you with directions to a suburban movie theater. And, if you so needed, I'd imagine they'd tell you where to purchase a sex-worker for the evening, and then recommend that you take him or her to dinner at the terrace lounge, and all for a small tip. All the while, you can think to yourself, "I've finally made it. I'm a very special person."

In fact, everything about hotels like Americas Hilton is devised to trick the socially insignificant and politically/economically powerless classes into thinking that they are more important than they are. This becomes apparent to the astute observer when one considers the fact that these hotels, for all their finery and for the feudal-subservience of the staff, have a rather rigid system of rules in place, precisely to ensure that their customers do not become too disobedient, nor too empowered by all the shiny trickery.

The first rule Carla and I discovered is that adult glasses are not allowed on the terrace. We paid $13 for our wine, which we then had to drink from plastic cups. Even a bottle of water must first be poured into Dixie picnic-wear before being taken out to Le Terrace. Much to the chagrin of Carla and me, the terrace closes promptly at 10pm, at which point friendly security guards (with guns) come out to apologize for the inconvenience and then escort everyone back into the hotel. Breakfast will not be served even one minute past 11am at Americas Hilton, and if you try to take a glass of wine out of one of the bars into the lobby area so that you can admire to the Chihouly glass, you will set off some sort of silent alarm system that rings in the brains of the cyborg lobby attendants, who will then come and (very courteously) escort you back into the "bar area."

So there are many many many rules at Americas Hilton because the owners of this establishment have to pull off a rather tricky trick. They have to convince people in economically disadvantaged classes that they are not economically disadvantaged. Then they have to convince them that they actually have way more money than they do which can be conspicuously and foolishly spent on all of the wares the hotel hocks in the restaurants, coffee bars, and news shops to help this class of people ape their social superiors. All of this requires putting all of the props in place to convince this class of people that they are wealthy uppers. BUT, at the same time, the Hiltons are afraid of this class and believe deep down that it doesn't know how to behave itself and so installs a byzantine lattice work of rules to ensure order, stability, and passivity.

That's why the Vivaldi is played so loudly -- it's crowd control. Beethoven might inspire revolution -- Vivaldi inspires a nap.

Aside from the invisible regulations that organize and control life at Americas Hilton, the charade also begins to fall apart once one truly examines the guests. One night, after a rather long and trying day, Carla, her friend Kate, and I were headed toward the elevators through the infinite lobby. It was not yet too late, but nonetheless late enough for people to have gotten a few drinks in them, and there were a lot of people in the lobby area and its surrounding bars. As we walked, I heard behind me....giggling. I picked up on it the way a predator picks up on the sound of prey -- it was unconscious to me and registered less like an actual sound and more like a slight irritation in the base of my spine.

Giggle. Giggle. Giggle. It got louder. It was unmistakably self-satisfied. I also began to hear another sound which, like giggling, sets me on edge: the sound of high heels clicking. Click, click, click. Giggle, giggle, giggle.

Finally, Carla, Kate, and I arrived at the elevators and walked into one. By this time the giggling was thousands of decibels loud and I had a splitting headache. I walked into an elevator and turned around to confront the source of my irritation: a giggling gaggle of beauty queens. They each wore a black dress with a sash reading the name of their origin: Germany, South Dakota, and Des Moines were ones I noticed most immediately. These sashes didn't say anything else, like the prize they had won, or who was ugliest, of what they hoped their future careers after prostitution would be, only where they were from. It felt like there were 9 thousand of them; the giggling and heel clicking felt like explosions inside of my skull. They were demonic.

Oh yeah, and each one of them wore tiaras that, as far as I could tell, were made of plastic.

Just as this horde of "women" began to board my elevator, one or all of them must have seen my face. As many of you know, my face often betrays my innermost feelings in ways that I am unable to control. I'm sure most of you have seen the particular face I was making: head cocked, eyes rolled and staring up toward the ceiling, a look of disgust settling around the general nose and mouth area, and an exasperated sigh confirming the latter. While I can never really control these expressions, what I could probably have controlled was what came out of my mouth, which was some kind of admixture of "oh good God" and "ugh, Wow," and "ohh nooo," which while slightly unintelligible I think nonetheless conveyed my disdain for the beauty queens. I say this because of the look that then came over their faces, which Carla described as "hurt." They were so shocked, in fact, that they stopped dead in their high heels right at the precipice of the elevator. One of them (Ms. South Dakota?) sort of gasped, and then they all just stopped, completely immobilized by the skinny, wan looking man who didn't appreciate their peacockish "beauty," who didn't like the sound of their giggling mating-call, and who was not only unimpressed by them, but actually revolted. I think it had never occurred to them that there were members of the human species with penises who did not like them, who might even hate them. The elevator doors closed without the beauty queens getting on.

So what do the beauty queens have to do with the social class puzzles at Americas Hilton? Well, underneath the giggling of these young "women" was a rather sad tale. They view themselves as glamorous, as someone. The click of their heels on marble floors sounds like success to their ears. Pretty soon, they think, they'll be just as wonderfully famous and glamorous as the person who owns the hotel: Paris, who elevates whorishness to the level of the sacred. But in reality none of these young "women" will ever have the fame or fortune of the worthless and talentless Paris. Americas Hilton helped offer them the illusion of self-importance for that one, special night, a night where they could be tricked into thinking that their looks would get them somewhere in the hierarchy, that they were special, and that they had arrived in the promised land. But once their hotel visit is over, they will either continue trying to advance their station in life with their beauty by becoming authentic hookers (which I really hope would involve keeping those tiaras), or they'll downshift into the lives of wives-and-mommies that society destines them for. They'll drive mini-vans, vote republican, and forget how to talk about anything but their children. Some day, years from now, after many babies and with desperation buried underneath the craggy face wrinkles of a valium-induced smile, their overweight husbands will take them on a long-awaited and saved-for (or charged) vacation to a hotel like Americas Hilton, which they'll take photographs of while reminiscing about the good old pageant days. They'll sense the sadness in it all, but will not quite be able to comprehend or make sense of it.

To prove that Americas Hilton had nothing to do with glamor or real money, around Saturday night, the wrestling fans began showing up. I wondered to myself if there had been any encounters between the beauty queens and the fans. I could imagine the queens being quite appalled by the fans, since the latter remove, by the sheer weight of their presence, any believable notion that Americas Hilton is for the wealthy, famous, and important. And I could imagine the fans wanting to rape (if male) or grind up and eat (if female) the beauty queens. The conflict that would ensue at such a meeting would mask the underlying sameness of each group.

Most of the wrestling fans have dyed hair and piercings. They wear things like big silver chains around their necks. All of them are overweight, having grazed on the working class diets of those who need lots of caloric intake. And all of them don t-shirts advertising this or that hyper-steroidal, puffy, male wrestler. Masculinity, long the badge of honor of the working class American male (a substitute for real power), is transformed by these individuals into sparkly, sacred iconography. So total is this transformation that wrestler-masculinity begins to get a bit blurry with its adornments and take on the appearance of homosexuality. None of the fans realize this, of course, and I didn't have the heart (or guts) to point it out to them.

Saturday night, after being booted off of the terrace, Carla and I snuck our drinks into the lobby. We sat and watched fan after fan file by after the wrestling match ended (it was being held in the auditorium next door). We noticed that many of them were carrying chairs, which seemed very odd. Finally I called a young woman with pink hair and acne (the anti-beauty-queen) over and inquired about her chair. I was very polite and curious-sounding: "we saw all of these people carrying chairs and were wondering what they were."

The chairs I'm speaking of were folding chairs, like the kind you save five or so of in your garage for that rare occasion when you have a picnic in the backyard and run out of the "good" outdoor seating. Usually these folding chairs are strictly metal (aluminum?, tin?). But the fans' chairs were padded! And the padding was done in life-like images of their favorite wrestler and the official logo of the WWE!

It's true!

Our wrestling fan explained to Carla and me that she had paid $200 for her chair, and that as soon as she got it up to her room she planned on wrapping the seat (the part where your ass goes and also the place where the wrestler's picture resides) in plastic!

To preserve it!

"For when it becomes valuable!"

I told her that this seemed like an awful lot of money to spend on a chair, and she explained that it entitled her to a sort-of front row seating assignment at the match. She complained about how, even after spending all this money, she still couldn't see anything. She seemed very disappointed by the whole ordeal. "All my vacation money," she lamented. She also lamented that wrestling had become "less of a real contest" and "more about drama." "It's all fake, you know," and then she wandered off to her room....to shrink-wrap her chair. I felt sorry for her.

Carla went upstairs. I decided to stay for another drink. The staff and the extra police force (no joke) who had been hired to control the wrestling fans were so busy with their duties, they didn't notice me take my wine out of the bar area and into the lobby.

I sat down and looked at the whole scene, at the mess of it. I thought about all of the cruelties and savagery contained within the marble walls and blown glass of the Americas Hilton lobby, all of the false hopes and silliness it offers people, of the fact that during the time I had my conversation with the wrestling fan who had spent all of her vacation money on a folding chair, Paris Hilton, the owner of this establishment, and hero of the empty headed beauty queens I had insulted the night before, had probably banked another couple of million dollars.

I thought about Leticia. Even though I hated her, what, I wondered, had happened in her life to make her so thirsty for revenge and empty displays of power? Had she detained anyone else? Did she make enough at her homeland security job to feed her children?

I thought about the people staying at the Waldorf Astoria, the real rich people, who were probably drinking out of real glasses on a terrace well after 10pm with no armed guards (or wrestling fans or beauty queens) in sight. What sort of gulag would Leticia end up in if she detained one of them?

And I thought about cancer.

"It's not fair," I thought, "and there's nothing you can do about it."

Then, I saw the child of one of the wrestling fans swimming in the lobby's reflecting pool as his father tossed pennies at him. I smiled to myself, finished my wine, and went upstairs to bed.

Out of Jail

2007-05-23T13:20:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

I'm out of the hospital and resting at the apartment. Mom and Dad and Asa and Andrea are still here. Carla left yesterday. I am feeling fine. I walk a lot and rest a lot. My appetite is getting better little by little. Asa and Andrea leave Friday. Mom and I will go to Atlanta Sunday, and Dad will go back to Wyoming.

As you know the surgery did not work out as we had hoped. In order for the surgeon to remove the cancer in my messentary, she would have had to also remove my entire stomach and what remains of my colon. But she did remove my omentum, which contained the largest mass of cancer, as well as my belly button, which I was sick and tired of looking at.

There is good and bad news in all of this.

The bad news is that this pretty much officially removes me from the "cure" category. Like Elizabeth Edwards and many, many others, I will likely struggle with this disease for the rest of my life. There is a slight chance that more chemotherapy could reduce the tumor in question to a point where it could be removed and I could be back in the "cure" category, but unlikely. So that's disappointing since a cure is what we were all hoping for.

The good news is that cancer is not what it used to be. Increasingly, many individuals live with cancer as a chronic illness, just as people live with high blood pressure and diabetes. There are all kinds of new drugs coming out all the time, and these drugs are increasingly not as poisonous as chemotherapy. I will likely be on some version of chemotherapy or biologic therapy for the rest of my life in order to keep this cancer at bay and to keep it from damaging me. But the good news is that they have had remarkable success at doing this, and that so far, as all of you know, the cancer itself has not infected any of my organs and has not affected my health in any way. The current plan of attack (subject to change) is to go on a "chemo light" plan that will enable me to do chemo while not interfering with my work and life schedule. Given what I've been through with chemo for the last 2 years, that sounds like a good plan to me!

I want to thank all of you for your support through this. Many people provided resources. Many provided love. Many provided both. I feel like the luckiest person on earth to have so many amazing friends. Thank you for all of your emails and phone calls, and thanks for supporting my parents. And thanks for keeping up on your phone tree assignments.

Hope to see all of you soon.

Love, Chet

Update from Houston (via Chicago)

2007-05-21T19:40:00.001-07:00

Chet, unsurprisingly, has been ahead of the surgical recovery time curve from the start. By Saturday morning (after having surgery on Friday morning), he sat in a chair and walked a short distance. By Saturday evening, he had walked several times more. According to a conversation I had with Carla on Sunday, he had just taken a wheelchair ride to the rose garden and had gotten a little sun.

This morning, I talked with Chet to relay the names of a couple of MD Anderson medical oncologists that I requested from a friend of mine who also is an oncologist there. He will discuss these recommendations along with recommendations made by his surgeon and others and will arrive at a decision about a treatment plan.

Chet’s surgeon allowed him to start a liquid diet a day earlier than we were told he would be able and he has started to eat solid food again. Carla today told me that he also was able to stop epidural medications, that his IV was removed, and that his pain is being managed by oral medications. It appears it will just be a matter of a few days before he will be able to be released from the hospital and able to travel again.

This will likely be my last post on behalf of Chet, since I am now back in Chicago, have not seen him for over 24 hours, and expect I soon will be scrounging around for information like everyone else. ;) The Scribe will return soon to keep you informed about his progress. Stay tuned.

Best to all of Chet’s supporters,
Tom

Update from Houston

2007-05-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

Chet came through surgery fine. The surgery took 2½ hours. It was not possible to remove as much of the tumor as the surgeon had hoped, so she was not able to perform the heated chemotherapy that was planned. She was, however, able to remove Chet’s omentum and reduce a substantial amount of the tumor. Chet is still a little foggy, post-anesthesia, but his vital signs are strong and he is able to carry on conversation. He is in good pain control.

The surgeon told us that she will consult with a medical oncologist about her findings and that the medical oncologist will make recommendations about another round of chemotherapy and possibly monoclonal antibody therapy. While recovering from the surgery, Chet is free to decide whether to receive further treatment at MD Anderson or return to Atlanta for further treatment. We have been told that he will likely be released from the hospital in about a week (assuming he will choose to return to Atlanta rather than stay in Houston to pursue further treatment).

The surgeon spoke with him soon after the surgery and explained to him the surgical benefits she was able to provide for him. Ace, Heidi, Asa, Andrea, Carla and I have all seen and talked with him. Although Chet (and everyone else) is clearly disappointed that the benefits of surgery were not as great as we’d hoped, there are viable chemotherapy (and possibly monoclonal antibody therapy) options available to him that can provide benefits.

Chet, as always, is concerned about how all of us are doing and has, of course, grilled all of us as to whether or not we are fulfilling our phone tree obligations.

To say anything beyond this would be no more than arrogant speculation. We are all hopeful – for good reason – that there are further options to pursue.

Tom

Thanks -- Here We Go

2007-05-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

I'm going to the hospital soon. I'm waiting for them to call me once they get my Doctor's orders and then I'll head over to start doing my "bowel prep." FUN!!!

I want to thank all of you for supporting me and being such amazing friends to me. I don't know how I'd be able to get through this mess without all of you. I don't know what else to say. Words fail me.

Please remember your phone tree assignments, and I'll see you on the other side of this.

Love, Chet

Satan is Dead -- Welcome to Houston

2007-05-15T11:02:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Hell, I mean Houston, today. My apartment won't be ready until 3pm so I came to this coffee/sandwich place called Brasil, opened my laptop, and learned that Beelzebub (aka the Lord of the Flies, aka Satan, aka Lucifer, aka Henry Baranczak [oops], aka Jerry Falwell) is DEAD!!!

According to yahoo.com, The Beast was found unresponsive in his office at Liberty "University" this morning at 10:45. Yahoo.com says that he was 73 years old, but I think we all know he's quite a bit older than that.

I guess the work of the Dark Side will now have to be carried out by Dick Cheney and Pope Ratzinger, but it's hard to imagine how they'll carry on without Master.

It's an interesting question isn't it -- when the Devil dies, does he go to Hell? I would imagine so. I wonder what he's doing right now? If there's any justice in the universe, it involves Ronald Reagan, a Teletubby, and a LOT of rectal pain.

Seems like a good omen to me. I arrive in Houston for radical surgery on the same day that the Lord smites Belial. Miracles CAN happen, people. If Pat Robertson or Karl Rove suddenly drops dead, I might even start to feel optimistic about things.

Calendar Update and Directions

2007-05-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone. Below is an updated calendar. Also, here are driving directions to the apartment from both Bush Int'l and Hobby airports.

From: George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) 2800 N Terminal Rd
Houston, TX 77032 US
To: 8181 Fannin St Houston, TX 77054-2911 US

Driving Directions
1. Start out going WEST on TERMINAL RD N. (0.08 miles)
2. Turn SLIGHT LEFT toward TERMINAL B TICKETING/CHECK-IN. (0.22 miles)
3. Turn SLIGHT LEFT onto TERMINAL RD S. (0.02 miles)
4. Turn SLIGHT RIGHT onto JFK BLVD/JOHN F KENNEDY BLVD. (2.99 miles)
5. Merge onto BELTWAY 8 E/SAM HOUSTON PKWY E via the ramp on the LEFT
toward US-59. (1.86 miles)
6. Merge onto US-59 S toward HOUSTON. (15.73 miles)
7. Merge onto TX-288 S toward LAKE JACKSON/FREEPORT. (3.79 miles)
8. Merge onto I-610 W. (0.96 miles)
9. Take EXIT 1B toward FANNIN ST. (0.23 miles)
10. Stay STRAIGHT to go onto S LOOP FWY W. (0.35 miles)
11. Turn RIGHT onto FANNIN ST. (0.43 miles)
12. End at 8181 Fannin St Houston, TX 77054-2911 US
Total Estimated Time: 33 minutes
Total Distance: 26.64 miles

From: William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) 7800 Airport Blvd Houston, TX 77061 US
To: 8181 Fannin St Houston, TX 77054-2911 US

Driving Directions
1. Start out going NORTH on E RENT CAR RD toward AIRPORT BLVD. (0.08 miles)
2. Turn RIGHT onto AIRPORT BLVD. (0.19 miles)
3. Turn LEFT onto BROADWAY ST. (1.93 miles)
4. Turn SLIGHT LEFT onto GULF FWY. (0.11 miles)
5. Merge onto I-45 N/US-75 N via the ramp on the LEFT. (0.74 miles)
6. Merge onto I-610 W via EXIT 40C on the LEFT. (6.80 miles)
7. Take EXIT 1B toward FANNIN ST. (0.23 miles)
8. Stay STRAIGHT to go onto S LOOP FWY W. (0.35 miles)
9. Turn RIGHT onto FANNIN ST. (0.69 miles)
10. End at 8181 Fannin St Houston, TX 77054-2911 US
Total Estimated Time: 16 minutes
Total Distance: 11.12 miles

Calendar (for one month, since I'm optimistic):

May 15: Chet arrives
May 16: Asa and Andrea, Mom & Dad
May 17: Mom and Dad, Tom, Asa and Andrea
May 18: (Surgery Day) Mom and Dad, Tom, Asa and Andrea
May 19: Mom and Dad, Tom, Asa and Andrea
May 20: Mom and Dad, Tom, Asa and Andrea
May 21: Mom and Dad, Tom, Asa and Andrea
May 22: Mom and Dad, Asa and Andrea
May 23: Mom and Dad, Asa and Andrea
May 24: Mom and Dad, Asa and Andrea, Carla Goar
May 25: Mom and Dad, Asa and Andrea, Carla Goar
May 26: Mom and Dad, Carla Goar
May 27: Mom & Dad, Carla Goar
May 28: Carla Goar
May 29: Carla Goar
May 30: Carla Goar
May 31: Bob and Memo, Carla Goar
June 1: Carla Goar, Ben Ash, Bob & Memo, Michael R.
June 2: Ben Ash, Michael R., Katherine H., Andrew Vail
June 3: Ben Ash, Michael R., Katherine H., Andrew Vail
June 4: Andrew Vail
June 5: Andrew Vail
June 6: Wendy
June 7: Wendy
June 8: Wendy
June 9: Wendy, David
June 10: David
June 11: David
June 12: David, Kirk
June 13: Kirk
June 14: Kirk
June 15

Ode to Carla

2007-05-06T19:41:00.000-07:00

If I had a hammer (toe)
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening
All over this land
I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

If I had a bell
I'd ring it in the morning
I'd ring it in the evening
All over this land
I'd ring out danger
I'd ring out a warning
I'd ring out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

If I had a song
I'd sing it in the morning
I'd sing it in the evening
All over this land
I'd sing out danger
I'd sing out a warning
I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

Well I've got a hammer (toe)
And I've got a bell
And I've got a song to sing
All over this land
It's the hammer (toe) of justice
It's the bell of freedom
It's the song about love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

My Birthday, and the War of the Roses

2007-05-02T16:41:00.000-07:00

Carla and Henry were here for my birthday last weekend. They arrived Friday. Carla requested that I pick them up late, because, as she stated it to Henry, "we need some 'us' time before Lucifer picks us up."

Friday night we had a dinner party at Enat, an Ethiopian restaurant here in Atlanta. After dinner, we went to Wendy's house for Birthday pie (one pie was chocolate and the other was fruit). I got lots of good presents, including a "roast" by Andy. Don't ever email anything to Andy -- he will use it against you.

Saturday we went to Inman Park festival. It was great -- lots of art vendors and most of the art is not of the cheezy variety one usually sees at community fairs. I almost bought a $100 black walnut salad bowel, but came to my senses. Saturday evening Carla and Henry had had enough of me; they had dinner with Henry's friends Hank and Mindy, and I had dinner with Katherine Hankins, her husband Jeremy, Andy & Jody, and one of Katherine's new colleagues in Geography.

Sunday, the idyllic courtship between Carla and Henry came to an abrupt halt.

Anyone who knows Henry or who has even been around him for 2 and a half minutes knows that his only source of pride, dignity, and self-worth is his feet. Henry could brag about his law degree, his expansive knowledge of US political history, or any number of other things, but he reserves his boasting rights solely for his FEET. Henry could (and has, believe me) go on for hours and hours and days and weeks about his feet. He spends hundreds of dollars at a time on pedicures. I've caught Henry before, by himself, in an empty room, LOOKING at his feet, with a self-satisfied smile on his lips.

So anyone who knows Henry Baranczak knows that his feet are about the only source of positive self-identity the man has -- everyone, apparently, EXCEPT Carla. The two major, universal taboos that I can think of are (1) incest, and (2) insulting Henry's feet, and Carla would have been better off this weekend if she had flown home to Texas and had sex with one of her cousins.

The peaceful events of Sunday morning were interrupted when Carla looked downward toward Henry's feet to tell him he had a "hammer toe," not just once, but repeatedly. I can't say whether or not Henry does have a hammer toe because I try not to look at his feet, but all I know is that Carla and Henry's cloy, disturbing, sickening two year love affair is over.

Of course Carla and Henry will chime in now to say that all is forgiven, that I'm just jealous of their special friendship, that I'm simply reveling in their tiff because they love each other more than they love me, etc., etc. But I know how Henry Baranczak's mind works, and I know that one of these days, when Carla least expects it, Henry will reach into Carla's chest and pull her beating heart out with his sausage-like fingers. Carla won't even see it coming. She'll gasp for a moment; she'll look shocked and betrayed; her eyes will flutter, and it will all be over. I have insulted Henry innumerable times and in the cruelest of ways over the years, but never ever ever, even during my most suicidal moment, would I dare to insult his feet.

That's Carla and Henry above before the Great War began. Carla is holding a little statue she bought, and Henry is wearing Carla's "Mrs. Roper" blouse. The next time you see Henry wearing orange, it will probably be at his arraignment.

Phone Tree

2007-04-17T11:26:00.000-07:00

When I have my surgery, we will have to have a streamlined way of keeping in touch with one another, getting news, etc., especially during the initial aftermath of the surgery when I'm unable to talk on the phone myself.

Therefore, I have devised the following phone tree. I am not going to post the phone numbers (as I've tried to hook all of you up with people you know and I don't want to violate people's privacy), but if you have been placed in charge of phoning someone whose phone number you do not know, let me know and I will get it to you.

The names that appear in bold italics below are callers; if your name appears in bold italics, you are in charge of calling the people whose names appear after the colon following your name. Read the entire list, as your name will likely be posted twice, both as someone who will be called, and as a caller to someone else.

If I've forgotten anyone, let me know and I'll add them.

Tom Murray: Jason Hendrickson, Michael Roberts, Carla Goar, Asa & Heidi Meeks, Andy & Jody Walter

Jason Hendrickson: Chris Pierce, Steve Seidman

Steve Seidman: Nancy Fischer, Joseph Sullivan

Asa & Heidi Meeks: Asa & Andrea Meeks, Christine Macros

Carla Goar: Henry Baranczak, Chad Scott, Kelly Happe, Deirdre Oakley, Sue Kidera

Kelly Happe: John Butler

Andy & Jody Walter: Brett Walter, Eli Walter, Sid & Ollie Walter, Katherine Hankins, Wendy Simonds

Brett Walter: David Ashley

Sid & Ollie Walter: Peter and Gail Shive (and anyone else at UW)

Wendy Simonds: GSU Sociology, Kirk Elifson, Brian (Seven) Fissette, Ben Ash, Andrew Vail, Stephen Downing

Houston Calendar

2007-04-17T05:41:00.000-07:00

I think it would be easier for me and all of you if we had an online calendar for the Houston trip, so that we can keep track of who is coming and going, when, and so on.

So here's how this will work. If there are days when you think you might be able to come to Houston, you can leave a comment to this post. I will periodically edit this post and put everyone's dates up.

--Chet

Calendar (for one month, since I'm optimistic):

May 15: Chet arrives
May 16: Asa and Andrea, Mon & Dad
May 17: Mom and Dad, Tom, Asa and Andrea
May 18: (Surgery Day) Mom and Dad, Tom, Asa and Andrea
May 19: Mom and Dad, Tom, Asa and Andrea
May 20: Mom and Dad, Tom, Asa and Andrea
May 21: Mom and Dad, Tom, Asa and Andrea
May 22: Mom and Dad, Asa and Andrea
May 23: Mom and Dad, Asa and Andrea
May 24: Mom and Dad, Asa and Andrea, Carla Goar
May 25: Mom and Dad, Asa and Andrea, Carla Goar
May 26: Mom & Dad, Carla Goar
May 27: Mom & Dad, Carla Goar
May 28: Carla Goar
May 29: Carla Goar
May 30: Carla Goar
May 31: Bob & Memo, Carla Goar
June 1: Carla Goar, Ben Ash; Bob & Memo
June 2: Ben Ash
June 3: Ben Ash
June 4
June 5
June 6: Wendy
June 7: Wendy
June 8: Wendy
June 9: Wendy, David
June 10: David
June 11: David
June 12: David, Kirk
June 13: Kirk
June 14: Kirk
June 15

Bake and Jen

2007-04-15T13:27:00.000-07:00

I mean Jake and Ben.

When I was sick and staying at Wendy's all the time, I promised Jake and Ben (Wendy's sons) that when I was better we could have a sleep-over. Well, last night Wendy and Gregg went to a concert, so it seemed like the perfect night for me to live up to my promise. Plus I've been wanting to put pics up of Jake and Ben for a long while, so there they are!!

The night began with some cuisine courtesy of Ben. He made some potato falafel with a really delicious yogurt sauce. That's him with the curly hair above in my kitchen. He did a really good job and even cleaned up after himself. Ben is a real talent in the kitchen. He already has his own growing collection of cook books (one of them a present from me), and I think he watches Food Network even more than I do, which is saying quite a lot.

After Ben's dinner, we went to see Blades of Glory with Will Farrel and that guy who played on Napoleon Dynamite. It was really really really funny. Anything with Will Farrel is bound to be funny, but when you add the Will Farrel factor to the fact that this movie is about FIGURE SKATING, you have a sure winner.

After the movie, Jake and Ben helped me find my car and we went home in the rain. Jake had a headache, which concerned me, but it seemed to go away once we got home. I think Jake was a little disappointed that we didn't make it to Radio Shack. He wanted to help me purchase a special cord that will help me hook my IPOD up to my stereo components. Jake is very good at electronic stuff. If any of you need help buying a cell phone, or re-organizing your cell phone plan, or if you want to figure out how to do something with an ipod or just about any other electronic thingamajig, just ask Jake (he's the crazy looking one in the photo above....don't you LOVE his t-shirt??).

I had fun Jakeyben.

Love, Chet

MDA Information

2007-04-10T09:36:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

A lot of you have been asking about my surgery and Houston and how to go about visiting me there. I figured it would be easier to just post the information here.

My surgery is on the 18th. I have to be there on the 15th, but the 18th is the "big day." I will probably be there for about three weeks, although it is difficult to determine how long I will be there until I actually have the surgery.

MDA has a travel agency that can provide those of you who want to visit with discounted airline, hotel, and rental car prices. Their phone number is 888-848-9992. You have to give them my patient number (706480) in order to get the discounted prices.

All visitors are welcome, though I have to warn you that I'm not going to be looking very pretty.

Love, Chet

Springtime with Tache

2007-04-08T18:03:00.000-07:00

Chet encrypted his password for this blog and it has taken me quite a while to figure it out. I'm sure all of you have missed me quite a bit so here I am!! I have to write this quickly before Chet gets home.

I'm quite in love with this surgery thing Chet is undergoing, because he has started feeding me Fancy Feast!!!! Tache approves.

Still, I hope all of you aren't fooled into feeling sympathy for Chet. This surgery of his is just one con in a long line of lies and disinformation. Chet LOVES the attention he's getting. I have started sleeping on his bed with him and sometimes I even slide myself up next to his face to make him think I love him, but it's only in order to keep the Fancy Feast coming. Chet's a fool and he's easily deceived by false affections. Just ask Carla or Henry. I was really nice to him today, but he fed me about an hour ago and I've ignored him ever since. Tomorrow I'll play the same game and Chetty poo will fall for it, because he's stupid.

Chet's friend Andrew was here for a visit this week. If you want to see someone act like a fool, watch Chet around Andrew. He's positively gushy. It makes me sick! I let Andrew pet me, but only because he didn't make eye contact with me, otherwise he would have pulled back a bloody stump like Chet's foolish friend Michael Roberts did when he visited. Chet has been sad all week long since Andrew's departure. What a sap!

I've been reading about the 1960s. I've come to the conclusion that America and the rest of the world would have turned out just fine if babyboomers weren't such navel-gazing, self absorbed ninnies. Rather than seeking change by altering existing institutions, they looked inward. "The personal is political." Well, no it's not. Or, at least, it's not nearly as political as, say, legal and economic institutions, or broadly shared civic values. I'm not quite sure how "consciousness raising" was supposed to change the world; it seems like a fairly weak and American notion to me. But I'm not surprised that the generation of 1968, once they left school and got well paying jobs, turned out to be the most spoiled, consumeristic, and conformist generation to ever inhabit the planet. The hippies became the yippies, and the yippies became the yuppies, and 39 years after 1968, this generation re-elected George W. Bush.

Of course, a lot of people think that cats are self-absorbed. But that's because people project their own sense of self onto the animals who live in their houses.

Meow.

Shit, here comes Chet.

MDA Visit, "Shake and Bake," and Andrew Vail

2007-04-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

Most of you know that last Friday through Monday I was at MD Anderson in Houston.

On Friday, they gave me a CT Scan to evaluate my cancer's status after chemotherapy. Monday I got the result of those scans and talked with the doctor about surgery.

Can I just say one thing? These doctors are truly sadists. They scan your body to see how much cancer is in there, and then they leave you to stew about it for a good 72 hours. The scans are available immediately. Granted, they have to look closely at them and examine them, but 72 hours? I think they truly derive some sort of sick pleasure from making you wait. It's the power they have over you. They are the life-or-death information gate keepers. I hate all of them, no matter how good they are.

See how you've been waiting through that last paragraph for me to tell you the results of my scans and how nervous it made you feel? Multiply that times a million and that's how I felt last weekend.

The scans show that cancer remains. MDA feels that my "good scan" from 12/4 (the one that showed no cancer) was overly optimistic. They claim that PET Scans (and even CT Scans) often understate the presence of mucinous tumors like mine. Indeed, the doctor even pulled up my December follow-up CT Scan, which the radiologists at Emory claimed showed nothing, and showed me where cancerous "grey areas" were on those scans. So.......that's the bad news.

The good news is that (1) the cancer has not progressed beyond its original recurrence areas, and (2) it appears to be resectable through surgery (in other words, most of the mets are small and there is no organ involvement with the liver, spleen, kidneys, bladder, etc.).

So, on May 18th, I will undergo a surgical procedure called the "Shake and Bake." These doctors are macabre, I tell you. The surgery involves resecting all of the areas where there was cancer. They try to leave no more than 1/2 cm of cancer, which, "studies show" can be killed by chemotherapy. What chemotherapy, you're asking yourselves. "We thought you were done with chemotherapy, Chet!" Indeed, so did I! After resecting the cancerous areas of my messentary, omentum (a new word I learned), and peritoneum, Dr. Lambert (that's the MDA surgeon's name) is going to "perfuse" my entire gut with "heated chemotherapy" which will hopefully kill any remaining cancer cells. So they put the chemotherapy in you (that's the "bake" part), and then they literally move your body around from side-to-side on the operating table (the "shake" part) in order to get that juice into all the nooks and crannies of your stomach. After they do that (it can take anywhere from 8-20 hours), they insert a feeding tube on one side of you, a draining tube on the other, and they sew you back up. Then, they whack you with a mase, boil you in tar, and then you're all done.

I will have to be at the hospital in HOUSTON (home of Enron and Halliburton [until they relocate to Dubai where they don't have to pay American taxes]) for 3 weeks, then a hotel in HOUSTON for about 2 weeks, and then I can come home (once I've learned how to use my feeding tube).

While in Houston, I was accompanied by my friend Tom (from Chicago) and John (also from Chicago). It's a good thing these two were there to help entertain me, because let me tell you a little secret: Houston is one boring, awful town. We found one little neigherhood (Montrose) that was fun. Thankfully it was close to the hotel and hospital, because we pretty much stayed in Montrose the entire trip. You'd think that they would put one of the world's leading cancer hospitals somewhere interesting -- like Paris. Being stuck in Houston just adds to the depressing aura of cancer.

So anyway, I came home from Houston feeling optimistic, but still a bit deflated. And the next day, Andrew Vail, from Saugerties, New York swooped in and saved me from despair (again). That's Andrew above. Doesn't he look cute and silly? We spent Tuesday at a coffee house near my apartment grading papers (well, I was grading). Then we joined Wendy, Gregg, and the gang to celebrate Wendy's mother Bobbie's birthday (Happy Birthday Bobbie). We had pizza and then dessert at Wendy's house. Bobbie showed Andrew and me her pictures from Antarctica. Yes, Bobbie went to Antarctica......it's really beautiful.

Wednesday I had to teach all day so that was sort of a drag. But Andrew occupied himself by trying to go to the Coca Cola museum (they closed right after he got there), and we cooked dinner together later. Yesterday (Thursday) I took Andrew on a little driving tour of Atlanta neighborhoods. We went for a long walk in Piedmont Park, and we ate at the Graveyard in East Atlanta village, followed by a few drinks at Mary's (yes, it's a gay bar).

I met Andrew about 10 years ago in Albany. When I met him he lived in a little farm house out in the middle of nowhere and he raised goats. I thought that was about the cutest thing I'd ever seen. Andrew has since gotten rid of all the goats, but he still lives in the little red house that I love. And see that really nice brown sweater Andrew is wearing in his silly picture? He gave it to me before he left! Isn't he sweet?

I dropped Andrew off at the airport a few hours ago and now I'm a little bit depressed again. Come back, Andrew! (I have a little plot that involves getting all of my friends to move to Atlanta. So far, Deirdre is in, and Kelly is moving to Athens......I think Andrew should be next).

Visit from Seven and other Updates

2007-03-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

From a few weeks ago....I'm behind on blogging as most of you know.

This weekend my friend Seven, from Albany, came to visit. He arrived Thursday and we immediately went condo shopping. We looked at 4 places. Most of them were pretty mediocre, but two sort of stood out as possibilities. Shopping for condos is fun, but I am imagining that actually purchasing one will be a lot more stressful. The condo I really like (a really cool mid-century modern building in Brookwood Park) is a no-go from the start because the association fees are $561 per month. I'm thinking of buying so that I can STOP wasting money, so fees like that would defeat the purpose.

Friday, Seven and I were hanging out in Midtown, the "gay area" of Atlanta, when we saw a man walking his pet Pig. As you can see in the above photo (sorry for the blurriness, I took the photo w/ my phone cam), the old adage that people come to resemble their pets turns out to be true. One time when I was in Manhattan, I saw a woman walking a cougar. Having a cougar for a pet seems exotic and dangerous and New Yorky. But a pig? Only in Atlanta would you see something like this. I was reminded of the fact that Susanne Sugarbaker, in the show "Designing Women," had a pet pig (named Penelope), and Susanne was also from Atlanta. They say that pigs are very clean animals, but I think they're still gross. This pig, whose name it turns out is -- get this -- Beef, was really, really, really disgusting. He has wiry hair that is about five inches long. His entire nose is wet from mucous. And even from a distance he smelled -- so much for clean pigs. His owner, whose name I did not ask, asked me if I wanted to feed Beef some cereal. He poured some in my hand and I knelt over closer to Beef (who didn't even raise his fat, lazy head.....he just wiggled his nasty snout some more), and I sort of tossed the cereal in his nose's direction. Then his owner said, "no you gotta hold it in your hand because he likes the human contact." To which I wanted to reply, "well if he likes human contact, why is he with you?"

Anyway, pigs are filthy, gross, ugly animals; I don't care what anyone else says.

Friday night Seven and I went to see Ben (Wendy's son) perform in his school's talent contest. Ben and his partner Yassin were really good and the other children were awful...except for one group of prodigious siblings named the Kliebers who did an interesting jazz medley. Ben and Yassin sang "We are Going to be Friends" by the White Stripes. Ben played his guitar really, really well. Then, afterward, we went to a nice Tapas restaurant, followed by wine and cookies at Wendy's house. Fun day.

Saturday, we went to the Scott Antique market. If you like antiques this is the place for you. There are thousands upon thousand of booths. I didn't buy anything, thankfully, but I talked my friend Katherine (who joined us) into buying $600 worth of dining room chairs. I love watching my friends spend money, knowing that I'll go home richer than they are. It's fun! After the antique market, Seven and I went to Decatur and walked around in the sun for a while. Then we went to see Zodiak (great movie......as is any movie with Jake Gyllenhaal....I would watch a movie with him in it without any sound and still like it). And THEN, we went to dinner at Fritti, a really yummy pizza joint.

Today (Sunday) is Seven's last day in Atlanta -- until I talk him into moving here, that is. We went to breakfast at Crescent Moon in Decatur (their food was great except for my bagel, which was too moist and too chewy). I also had a side order of bacon -- sorry Beef! Then we went to East Atlanta Village for coffee and more walking around. Then we came back to Little Five Points for even more walking around in the glorious sunshine.

I think Seven really likes it here. What's not to like about sunshine and 70 degree weather (sorry Northern readers)? I have to take Seven to the airport in a little while. This is the first time I've seen him in THREE years!! I've really missed him a lot and I'm so happy that he came to Atlanta to see me, a pig and his owner, hundreds of 6-10 year olds singing out of tune (but not my Benny), and all of the other wonderful things Atlanta has to offer!

Love you Seven!

Update

2007-02-22T09:36:00.000-08:00

I don't have anything to report except that, for some reason, I feel almost care-free today.

Update: Surgery

2007-01-29T18:27:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

I was finally able to meet with the surgeon at Emory. He is a wonderful man named Charles Staley.

Staley was extremely impressed with my response to chemotherapy. On the other hand, he admitted to me that my recurrence is extremely rare. Most colon cancer recurrences occur in the liver or lungs, whereas mine is the in the mesentary and peritoneum (i.e., in my guts and the surrounding "bag" that lines the intestines, stomach, liver, and surrounding areas).

Staley is the "best" surgical oncologist in Atlanta. Yet, he told me that the surgery recommended for rare recurrences like mine is one that he has never done. So he is referring me to the surgeons at MD Anderson in Houston, TX.

The surgery will occur after my chemotherapy is over + one month to recover from the avastin (which causes bleeding, so they wait for surgery after avastin treatment), so mid to late April, early May. The surgery is gruesome. It involves doing small resections of the mesentary and peritoneum. The problem here is that the mesentary and peritoneum contain networks of blood vesseles, arteries, and so on, all of which are connected to very specific locations in the gut. So in addition to resecting areas of me that were infected with cancer, they then have to "follow" the blood vessles these areas fed with blood and nutrition, and then resect those areas too, since once they resect the blood vessles in the mesentary, they have to also take out the areas that will surely "die" once those blood vessels are dead and gone. So, for example, if they resect an area of my mesentary that supplies blood to a 1 foot section of my small intestine, they have to also go on and resect that area of my small intestine. So there is no way going into this surgery to tell what you'll come out with. I could come out with areas of my small intestine, stomach, bladder, or liver (among other things) gone.

In addition to resecting areas of the mesentary and organs they supply blood to, this surgery involves perfusing the mesentary and peritoneum with "hot" chemotherapy. They insert a needle into one area of the mesentary and peritoneum with a solution of heated chemotherapy drugs (heating the chemo makes it more able to permeate small, microscopic areas) to kill any microscopic cancers that may still exists therein. They then insert a drain in my abdomen and sew me back up. the drain is removed a few days later, once the chemotherapy has left the system.

Sounds awful, I know, and I am worried, as are my parents. They call this surgery the MOAS (Mother of All Surgeries). It's also called the "sugarbaker," after the DC surgical oncologist who pioneered it, but which also sounds like a pastry. Is it a surgery, or a cookie? It's rough. But, on the bright side, it will increase my chance of remaining disease free (of having no other recurrences after 5 years) by about 50%. So even though the surgery sounds awful, I have hope about the fact that the surgeons at MD Anderson are some of the best surgical oncologists in the world, and that once this is over, it will FINALLY be over for good.

Wanted to just let you all know what's going on. If I die, I hope it's not in Texas!! Especially the home of Enron. If something goes wrong, just be sure that I am not buried anywhere near Ken Lay.

Love, Chet

#8: Ben

2007-01-21T13:55:00.000-08:00

Treatment #8 was covered by my friend Ben. Ben flew in from Albuquerque, NM, where he works as a government spy.

Kidding -- sort of.

Ben and I met in Albany, about 9 years ago. We were young and foolish. We both loved classical music, and I used to attend Ben's performance of "The Messiah" every year. For those of you who do not know, it takes quite a bit of effort to sit through the Messiah, especially on the hard wood seats of Troy's Fleet Bank Music Center, where Ben used to perform. But I used to enjoy going to see Ben perform this and other pieces every year when he was part of the Classical Singers and Albany Promusica. He has a nice voice, among other things. My favorite was when Ben and Albany Promusica performed Verdi's requiem at a really, really old Catholic church in Albany. It was beautiful.

I have a favorite memory of Ben. When I first met him, he was an officer in the Navy. Ben spent his young adulthood spending 6-month stints on submarines! This isolation explains his tenaciousness and character, by the way. Anyway, I used to hassle Ben all the time to salute me. He never would, claiming that it was a very specific gesture only meant to be used in certain situations and to certain people. But one night, after several glasses of wine, I was walking Ben back to his car. I trailed behind him, bothering him the whole while to salute me. Finally, just as Ben got to his car, he spun around on one heel. His heels clicked together like thunder, and his right hand shot up, making a sound as it whipped through the air. And he saluted me. It sent shivers down my spine.

This treatment was pretty easy. Wednesday, of course, was awful. But Thursday Ben and I went to campus to see my friend Wendy give a talk about her new book, with her co-author, Barbara. We had a good time. It's unusual that I'm able to pack in this much activity during a treatment. I think Ben thoroughly enjoyed himself, as he commented that he never knew Birth (the subject of Wendy's talk) was so complicated and interesting.

Friday was a pretty bad day, but I got through it -- mostly on the sofa. Ben rubbed my feet (yes, Carla and Henry, my feet). Saturday, Ben and I went to breakfast at the Flying Biscuit. Then we went to Outwrite Books, and bought some stuff to read (Hollinghurst's "Swimming Pool Library" for Ben, and a book on dissent in America, for me). After that, we went to see Pan's Labyrinth, a truly gory movie which illustrates the horror of Franco's Spain (just in case you were under the illusion that fascists were nice and played by the rules). Then we were joined by Jody, Andy, and Lexy. We went to dinner at La Fonda, yum yum. Lexy was quite concerned about the fact that Uncle Chet no longer has any hair. "Hair gone," she kept exclaiming. When asked where my hair went, she replied: "Hair went byebye." I tried to tell her that Uncle Chet's hair would grow back in time, but she just kept looking at my bald head with a furrowed brow and a look of deep concern. She seemed to like feeling the top of my head, but would then instruct me to "put hat back on," so that she wouldn't have to look at my naked melon any longer. Sweet girl, that Lexy.

Ben left today (Sunday). He's going to move from Albuquerque to Seattle, where his boyfriend Marc works for Microsoft (he helps design the XBox). Ben is going to earn a pile of money in Seattle and then open up an organic sheep farm on an island in the Puget sound. I can't wait!!! I love cheese!

Ben is also going to support me during my retirement. Thanks in advance, Ben.

Naked, Blue, and Unafraid

2007-01-14T21:39:00.000-08:00

Naked and Unafraid

2007-01-14T08:20:00.000-08:00

#5, 6 and 7: Wendy and Gregg

2007-01-13T06:49:00.000-08:00

My last three treatments have been chaperoned by my friends Wendy and Gregg, as well as Wendy’s boys, Jake and Ben (pictures of them later), and their cats, Hinky (shown above) and Bumble (too much of a diva to be photographed, even more of a diva than Tache). Wendy is my friend from school and she just published a new book called "Laboring On." Go buy it.

I haven’t written lately because of the holidays. My trip to Wyoming was cut short by two days thanks to global warming and Denver weather. It’s 71 degrees in New York today, and 20 degrees in Wyoming: anyone see a problem here?

So my treatments are now more than half-way over. I really hope this is the end of everything because, to be quite honest, I cannot imagine doing more chemotherapy after this set is over. This is actually the end of my 19th!! Treatment, and by the time I reach #24, I wonder what’s going to be left of my body. I know my kidneys are in bad shape because I can feel them throbbing sometimes. My hair is now basically coming out in gobs. I'm shaving it all off soon. And even though, compared to others, I tolerate these treatments quite well (recovering quickly, leading a basically normal life for about 8 out of every 14 days), I’m really, really, really getting sick of it.

Everyone keeps telling me it looks like I’ve lost weight, but in actuality I’ve gained 4 pounds since beginning chemotherapy. I’m convinced that this weight gain is poison….4 pounds of poison trapped inside of my screaming body. Today I feel like my entire body has been marinating in toxins for the last 6 months. The poison is coming out of my skin. I have acne again, like when I was 13 but even worse. My hands look like the hands of an 80 year old, and my skin is peeling off. My sweat smells like a something you’d scour the bathroom with. I won’t sicken you with a discussion of my digestive tract.

Thank God for Wendy, Gregg and troupe. When I’m at their house I never really feel like a sick person (except for the actual being-sick part). Ben and Jake are always excited for one of my treatments because it means I’ll be staying over. They think I’m cool and I’m not quite sure why. Ben watches stupid Lifetime TV with me, which he cleverly calls "Deathtime" because all of the shows on Lifetime are about women being murdered by bad men and because all of the commercials on lifetime are about life insurance and dying. Jake, meanwhile, often just sits in my room doing something ingenious on the computer, trying to explain it to me in simple terms that a non-techy like me can understand. I like Jake and Ben because, unlike most other kids their age, they talk and, usually, what they say is pretty interesting. They also have good taste in movies and music. And they cook! Speaking of music, Gregg has the most amazing collection of music (all kinds of music – jazz, classical, opera, blues) I’ve ever seen. He gave me a recording of Rachmaninov playing Rachmaninov for Hanukkah. And even when I’m sick Wendy’s food is always delectable. If you ever want good Indian food go to Wendy’s house (be invited, though, don’t just show up...I don't think she'd appreciate that).

Well, I don’t feel like doing much besides complain today, so here’s a poem by Ted Kooser, the poet-laureate of the United States, introduced to me by my friend Gail Kohler-Shive.

PS – I started writing this a few days ago and actually feel fine now (1/13 CM).

At the Cancer Clinic, by Ted Kooser

She is being helped toward the open door
that leads to the examining rooms
by two young women I take to be her sisters.
Each bends to the weight of an arm
and steps with the straight, tough bearing
of courage. At what must seem to be
a great distance, a nurse holds the door,
smiling and calling encouragement.
How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

We No Longer Live in the First World

2006-12-22T08:32:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't posted in a while, except to solve the various personality conflicts that arose in the comments-section of my last post. Truth is, I've been busy with grades and finals and the inevitable "trail of tears" that follows final-exam period.

I was supposed to fly to Denver this morning for the holiday. But then Denver was deluged with 22 inches of snow. And because airports are no longer staffed with people capable of managing such a crisis, the earliest new flight I could get to Denver (mine was canceled right away) was for MONDAY. MONDAY!

I'd like to write about something other than cancer for just a moment. Humor me.

I've been flying for quite a while. I also grew up in Wyoming, and I know that big nasty snowstorms are not a new thing in the Rocky Mountain west. I remember, in particular, flying from Albany to Denver in December of 1996 when there was a similarly awful snowstorm. I remember seeing the snowplows on the runway, dozens and dozens of them, as my plane landed -- on time!

I called Delta Airlines last night after learning online that my flight today had been canceled. After waiting on hold for an hour (truly, it was 65 minutes), I finally got to speak to probably the one telephone agent Delta still employs -- in India, for sub-standard wages, I imagine. This friendly woman explained to me that "this is not Delta's fault, it's the weather in Denver."

Well, true enough, a snow storm like this one is going to set things back a bit. Understood. But, on the other hand, it IS Delta's fault, and the fault of all of the other airlines who, after 9/11, cut their airport staffs down to the bone. They replaced the people who used to staff the counters (the ones you could schmooze, if you were like me, into a roomy Exit-isle seat, or even an upgrade) with kiosks that dumb American travelers find "convenient." And I'd wager that those people lucky enough to fly into Denver today (all 20 of them) will not see the convoy of snow plows that I saw back in 1996. Maybe 3 snow plows and a man with a shovel.

The federal government, of course, refuses to regulate any of this mess.

So, thanks to the fact that America has been down-scaled to a developing nation, my Christmas plans are all screwed up. I moved my chemo treatment up two days, and all for naught. I am now going to miss Handel at the Denver Symphony, and all of the visits I counted on will now be condensed.

Delta, meanwhile, is still bankrupt, and if you want efficient travel on this planet, where people can still manage a crisis, you have to go to India, or China.

The Cancer is Dead

2006-12-06T12:34:00.000-08:00

"Whole-body FDG PET-CT from the skullbase to the mid-thighs demonstrates no scintigraphic findings of residual or recurrent malignancy."

Quick Note from Tache

2006-12-04T19:39:00.000-08:00

Dear "People":

I wanted to let all of you know that Chet is claiming to have had a CAT and PET Scan this morning. I tell you this, because I believe it is proof that Chet is playing a game, as I was not, I repeat NOT, scanned at all today. I would remember such a thing, believe me.

So do not fall victim to Chet's histrionics. I tell you this for your own good. I'm not sure why anyone would scan a CAT, or any other PET, but I know for certain that I have been sitting in the same chair all day long, taking intermitent naps and reading Slavoj Zizek's new book (total trash, by the way), and no such scan has happened. I've attached a photo as proof. Chet's clearly in need of attention, sinking to a new low and claiming to have had me scanned. Don't play his game. Chet is a LIAR! And if any of you "people" ever do try to scan me, I will scratch your eyes out.

Ta,

Tache

Autumn and Melancholia: Tache's Return

2006-11-27T13:09:00.000-08:00

Dear "People":

Chet thought that he could encrypt his password and keep me from writing. But as I have tried to explain to him, I write not because I wish to write, but because I must write. Chet does not understand this, because he is thick-headed, and because he is not a writer.

Last week we were visited by Exhibits A and B of Chet's psychopathology: Asa and Heidi Meeks. It was a veritable Oedipal orgy around here -- enough sublimated anxiety and unrequited desire to choke a horse. And also, way too much niceness!

Asa and Heidi arrived Tuesday evening and Chet made dinner for them. When, I ask, does Chet ever make dinner for me???!!! I did not punish you as a child, Chet; nor did I instill in you all the neurotic energy needed to supply a small city with electricity during the month of December. Those nervous habits you have -- they didn't come from me! Yet Asa and Heidi get green curry shrimp? What an ingrate!

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I had to witness something truly disturbing: Asa & Heidi taking turns RUBBING CHET'S FEET. Chet believes that the "toxins are collecting" in his feet. There's enough in that one statement to keep New York's best analyst busy for a year. I tell you -- I wish I could bottle and sell parental guilt. Dear Asa and Heidi, let me tell you something -- this child of yours would have turned out bonkers no matter how you raised him. I don't know why on earth you would allow yourselves to be cajoled into being Chet's servant, but stop it! We're talking about someone who used to chew off his jacket sleeves with his own teeth! This was long before his oedipal resolution, so trust me, it's not your fault. It's not your fault he's crazy. No amount of foot-rubbing is going to cure what ails Chet.

Fantasy and reality are not separate ontologies. Nor are they antinomies. Rather, fantasy structures reality, yet never in a straightforward way. What we see before us as "real" is always the result of some hidden desire we cannot see. The basis of this fantasy, this desire, then, is the only properly suitable philosophical question. For fantasy is not a thing. It is, rather, the internalization of a loss -- and not a real loss, but rather a hypothetical one -- a melancholic loss. All loss -- of the mother, of love, even of life itself -- is not a real event, but rather only the negative effect of an imagined presence, which combined create desire, and then, reality itself. To put it more plainly, the oedipal drama is not the result of the actual loss of the mother, but rather of her hypothetical and melancholic loss -- the result, that is, of the child's imagining that he ever possessed the mother in the first place, giving rise to all of the desires that plague you poor humans.

What we see before us, then, as the real thing, is not, in fact, a thing. Reality is the result of a double-fantasy -- a fantasy first of having had something, and a fantasy second, of the loss of that something.

Freud (above), of course, never understood this, believing foolishly, as moderns did, far too much in the reality principle. Only dear Gerhard Richter (whose "Family at the Seaside" appears above-right) truly understood the double role of fantasy in the tenuous construction of reality and, indeed, in the human dilemma itself.

Of course cats don't care about reality -- only you humans do!

#4: Mom and Dad

2006-11-25T11:07:00.000-08:00

For treatment #4, my parents came to Atlanta. Above, you can see my mother cooking a turkey (which is sure to be delicious because we used the Williams Sonoma turkey, and b/c my Mom is a good cook). And you can also see my father doing one of the things he's really good at -- sleeping on the sofa and watching football.

See Tache and Carla -- people CAN relax on my sofa.

Treatment #4 went fine. It's basically the same routine, which I'm getting used to: Wednesday I feel like a dead man; Thursday I feel surprisingly well and energetic; Friday I feel exhausted and ready to crawl out of my skin (because I truly, truly hate that little bag that's connected to my chest and it makes me claustrophobic); Saturday and Sunday I have Neulasta flu, but feel ready to face the world again.

Wednesday we went to the hospital. My father, who has heard me complain about my "doctor," wants to "kick his ass." I explained to him that this might be how business is done in Wyoming but that I prefer to hit the man where it really hurts -- his pocket book. While having my treatment Wednesday, I told my "doctor" (through his nurse, since I never actually SEE the man) that I wanted an appointment with my surgical oncologist after the PET Scan to get his opinion about how to proceed. The "doctor" said, according to the nurse, that "he would handle talking to Dr. Staley [the surgeon]" after the PET Scan. So, this week I'll have to write "Dr." Carr another letter explaining my rights as a patient to him and telling him that I am not asking, but demanding, an appointment with Dr. Staley.

After the infusion, we came home and I slept while my parents, saints they are, rubbed my feet. Did you hear that Carla? Henry? They rubbed my feet!

Thursday we went to Wendy's house for Thanksgiving dinner. So it was Wendy & Greg (hosts), Ben (magician and photographer), Jakey (violinist and humorist), Bobby (Wendy's Mom, from Toronto/Florida), Michael (Bobby's partner), Beth (Bobby's long-lost best friend from childhood and now from LA), Andy (cool friend of Wendy's from Spellman {I believe....sorry Andy}), Bill (friend of Andy), Henry (Diabetes specialist and trombonist), Hinky (nice cat) and Bumble (sometimes nice cat, but not so nice lately to his brother), Asa & Heidi (Chet's parents), and Chet (me). That's 13 people, if I'm counting correctly. Good job Wendy and Greg!

It was a very fun night. We arrived at 6ish and I actually made it until 10:30!! The food was amazing. Ben dazzled everyone with his magic tricks. (You're not fooling me, though, Ben!) Michael taught my Dad how to save Wyoming's economy. Bobby told us what she would do to Bill Clinton, where, and how (Bobby is funny, funny, funny). We had THREE desserts! Well, Wendy and I had FOUR desserts, but that was our special treat, just the two of us. The only thing I regretted was that I couldn't have any wine, but you'd all be quite surprised at how much I ate. I know I was surprised. All and all it was a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Friday, Bob and Mimo came over. Mimo also teaches at GSU/Sociology, and Bob, her husband, is a nurse at Emory. Because my "doctor's" office was closed Friday, Bob agreed to come and unhook me from my chemo bag and give me my $6000 Neulasta shot. That was so nice of them. Bob was far nicer about unhooking me than my usual nurses, who jerk me around like a puppet. And I think he did something special with the Neulasta, because I don't feel nearly as fluish today as I usually do the day after Neulasta.

Today is my parents last day. I wish we could have done more fun things while they were here, because I think they really LOVE Atlanta (what's not to love -- it's 72 degrees today). We've walked around my neighborhood a lot, which is fun, but they haven't gotten to see much. I'm sure my Dad is going nuts wanting to golf, which he could easily do today, but he's patiently sitting around my tiny apartment, not being too obvious about the thumb-twiddling. We're making our own Thanksgiving food today, which we'll eat tonight. While the Turkey is cooking, I'm going to take my parents to show them my office.

My parents' visit was made much easier by the generosity of Kirk and Claire. They are in Hawaii and offered their house to my parents while here. This made life much easier because, as everyone knows, my apartment is the size of a postage stamp, and my parents snore (sorry Mom and Dad, but you do, and you know you do). All jesting aside, Kirk and Claire's place is literally a one-minute drive from my place so it provided my parents with comfort and privacy, and we didn't have to worry about me getting sick and not having anyone close-by to help me out. I hope Kirk and Claire had a wonderful time in Hawaii.

So, PET Scan a week from Monday. I'll let you all know what's what.

I've really, really, really encrypted the password this time, so don't expect any poison-pen posts from Tache.

News from my "Doctor"

2006-11-16T09:58:00.000-08:00

I was under the impression all this time that I would have a pet Scan after my 4th round, followed by surgery. I was mistaken.

The purpose of the upcoming scan is only to determine if the cancer is shrinking, how much, and how fast. They won't be doing surgery for quite a while, even if the cancer has backed away from the "danger" areas (my sigmoid colon, bladder, liver, and abdominal wall). I'm sure this is what my "doctor" meant all along; I was just conceptualizing the process differently than he, and wrongly.

So this means chemotherapy into the foreseeable future. But the upside of it is that I will be able to travel home for a bit over the xmas break. I don't know when just yet, but I will definitely be coming for a visit. If I'm not in the hospital or recovering from surgery, I'm certainly not going to just sit around Atlanta in the moderate to warm weather and the blue skies.........wait a minute.....

In other news, in terms of blood counts and such, my "doctor" says that I am tolerating the chemotherapy quite well. A normal, healthy adult has a white blood cell count of somewhere around 8000-10,000. My white count, thanks to the $6000 Neulasta shots I get, is -- are you ready...........

15,000!!

That means that I'm healthier than all of you who are reading this.

My doctor did not bring up the subject of the letter that I sent him, the one where I detailed the incompetence of his office staff, etc. He stood across the room from me until it was time for him to actually examine me. I think he's clearly afraid of me, which means that aside from all of his shortcomings as a physician and a professional, he's not entirely stupid.

Hacking Something Besides Hair

2006-11-14T21:07:00.000-08:00

Hello “people.”

The above picture was photoshopped by Michael R. in response to the way I insulted his weight. Michael, this photo is very clever -- and by clever, I mean stupid. I particularly like your use of shading, making appear as if a microwave light is shining on me from above, irradiating me. Very sophisticated, Rembrandt. Photo-realism is for people with weak imaginations, and emotional insecurities. Annie Liebowitz would have you as an appetizer – if she required food for survival. I suppose you're an Ansel Adams fan.

Well, I see that none of you has listened to my advice regarding Mr. Sick Boy. Don’t you know what a shallow, bottomless pit of narcissism you’re dealing with? Do you know anyone who uses the words “therapy,” “analysis,” “psyche,” “desire,” and “Freud” more than Chet? And this is the person upon whom you heap your nurture and good graces? Dear, sweet, knaves. I still don’t know what this “cancer” stuff means, but if I were any of you, I would have asked for copies of the scans before reserving flights. Chet would do anything for attention – anything!

He would even pretend to write as a cat!

Chet’s friend Chris came for his second treatment. There are two things I like about Chris. One is that he’s allergic to me, which meant that he left me alone. And I left you alone, too, didn’t I, Chris? I don’t understand this allergy business, though. How could someone be allergic to me? People make me sneeze, too, but you don’t see me complaining. Nonetheless, at least Chris’s “allergy” to me made Chet get off of his lazy, convalescing *&)$@ and sweep my hair off of the floor. Believe me, that’s about a 4000% improvement on his usual activity. He’s lazier than I am, and that takes quite a lot of sitting around.

Second, I like Chris’s approach to art. He’s not an emotional wreck like the modernists. And this is because he does not refuse to confront emotion in his work by trying to turn it into some set of abstract blobs, lines, and splats. I wish Chris’s art were more severe, like Annie’s, but I nonetheless admire the unabashed way in which he confront the human condition, especially in his nudes, without making his work look as if it belongs in an airport restroom (like Rothko, one of Chet’s favorites, and so a fool from the start).

Oh, and one final thing I like about Chris is that he corrects Chet’s English. Can you feel my glee? Chet, the “Professor,” the queen of manners, having his English corrected? Sweet justice! Here’s a little clue, “people”: Chetty Chet Chet does not know the difference between “like” and “as.” And he uses the word "like" AS IF (you listening, Chester?) he were a valley girl. "I'm like, so sick today. This chemo is like really awful. Oh My Gawd!" What a fop!

Then again, Chris flattered Chet by photographing him for a drawing. Again, “people,” don’t feed this bottomless-pit’s need for an ego-boost. You’re setting yourselves up. Do as I do (take note, Chet – not “like,” you bumbling goof), and ignore him.

Well, “people,” I have to go now. Chet, the local password sheriff, is getting out of the shower, and I need to finish reading an article on Anselm Kiefer (pathetic sentimentalist).

P.S. Don’t think it escaped my notice that my posts get far more response than any of Chet's. Rightfully so. And he thinks he's a "writer."

#3: Chris P.

2006-11-10T14:15:00.000-08:00

Treatment #3 has gone pretty well. My friend Chris Pierce came from Shushan, NY to take care of me. Chris, shown above, is an artist. Also above is a picture of his (spectacular) studio in Shushan, as well as some of his work. Also, here's a link to Chris's website with some of his other work: http: christopherpiercestudio.com Chris and his partner Tommy have taught me more about art, music, and theater than I ever could have hoped to have known. I'm going to Boston the 1st week in December (hopefully) to see Tommy's production of "Queer Theory," which will be shown at the MIT Kresge Little Theater. And here's a link to that: web.mit.edu/slippage

Yesterday I felt really amazing. In fact, it was quite odd that I felt so well. It was the first time that I've done a chemotherapy treatment and basically felt almost entirely normal. Chris and I went on a long walk around my neighborhood. Then, we met up with Stephen at a coffee house. After that, Stephen, Chris, and I went to an antique store to look around. And then Stephen gave Chris and me a ride to Whole Foods to buy groceries. Chris made dinner when we got home, and then we all went to my friend Wendy's house for birthday cake (HAPPY BIRTHDAY WENDY!). And then we came home and watched "Heights," a really good movie with Glenn Close, all of whose lines are from Shakespeare.

So that was a pretty packed day, and I felt great for almost all of it. Very, very suspicious!! I think it might have something to do with the Reike treatment Melissa T. gave me. Thanks Melissa.

Today I feel a bit worse, but not too terrible. I went to the hospital at noon to get "unhooked." I've felt tired since then, but I actually think it's the Neulasta (white blood cell count booster -- price tag = $6000/injection) that does it to me. So tonight will be more movies and relaxation, and I plan on getting to bed early.

I also want to thank Kirk E. for bringing so many goodies for Chris and me yesterday. Kirk and his wife Claire also got tickets for Chris and me to go see a play at Emory this evening, but I had to skip because I don't want to overdo things (like I probably did yesterday). And I want to thank Dawn B. for lending me Eddie Izzard and Gone w/ the Wind (which I've never seen but now must see since I'm officially a Georgian), as well as for the fresh supply of Dolly Madisons (delicious).

And I want to thank God for letting the Democrats win. I know you did your best with that Harpy Barbara Cubin, God, and I know you're as sad as I am that she appears to have won.

But at least she's not pretty.

Dear God

2006-11-07T09:18:00.000-08:00

Dear God,

It's Election Day. Please send this gargoyle to hell where she belongs.

Love, Chet

Haiku

2006-11-05T13:10:00.000-08:00

Oh bellybutton
Why do you look so creepy
Cancer made you gross

I'm Firing My Oncologist

2006-11-04T16:58:00.000-08:00

I went to see my "doctor" yesterday. I have to go there every non-chemo week so they can test my blood and make sure they're not killing me. Then, afterward, the "doctor" comes to see me and measures the thing on my navel (which is now practically gone).

So, my appointment was for 2pm. I showed up at about 1:55 or a bit earlier. And then I sat there -- for an HOUR! At 3:05 I walked up to the front desk, smiled at the receptionist and said, "I'm leaving, and I want my $15 back." (I have to pay a $15 co-pay at each visit). She wanted to know what was wrong and I said, "Look at the clock." Then the PA, who was standing nearby, sort of perked up and said, "what's wrong Mr. Meeks." I told her I was sick of waiting, "especially when I can hear the lab nurses playing grab-ass in the back room. I have a meeting [which I didn't], and I have to go." And then I left.

When I got back to my office I faxed my "doctor" a letter telling him (for the second time....he and I have already had one conversation about this, mind you) that I wasn't going to tolerate waiting that long and that whether or not he was aware of it, the message it sent to people like me was that, since we are probably dying anyway, our time doesn't matter.

I doubt if he'll get it. My overall impression of the man since meeting him is that he's not entirely bright. It might be that he looks like a red-headed version of Santa Claus, or it might be the way he constantly interrupts me (which I had to ask him to stop) when I'm asking him questions about my illness. But basically, I hate him and he's finished.

More important than any of the above, though, is what I noticed on my "doctor's" website, which I looked at after faxing him my letter of contempt. I had never thought to do this before, for some reason. You can look on the website yourself by going here: http://www.emoryhealthcare.org/find_physician/physician_detail1.jsp?physicianid=10875&sessionid=1270154&search=Search%20by%20Name

Notice anything? Anything jump out at you?

HOW ABOUT THE FACT THAT THIS GHOULISH JACKASS DOESN'T EVEN LIST COLON CANCER OR CARCINOMAS AS ONE OF HIS AREAS OF CLINICAL INTEREST?

I had already planned to change my insurance to the University's more expensive but better "indemnity plan," which will allow me to see any specialist I want. I can even go to Egypt under this plan, if I want. But now I'm changing for sure, and when the change takes effect Jan. 1, "Dr." Carr is history. Aside from clearly being incapable of running an office that resembles anything other than a circus, why couldn't this idiot just say, "Mr. Meeks, your case is very serious, and I have to be honest with you and tell you that colon cancer is not one of my main specialty areas."

I'll tell you why: because most doctors only care about money. These are the same individuals who, with total hostility toward their own Hippocratic Oath, lobbied like rabid dogs to block Health Care reform in the 1990s (see Theda Skocpol's book, Boomerang). My "doctor" didn't send me to another more qualified person when he was handed my case because my carcinoma and I are CASH COWS. I don't know how much this round of treatment costs, because I have not seen any of the bills yet, but I know that last time I went through this, each treatment cost about $21,000.00! One IV bag of Oxaliplatin cost $7,000. I know this treatment is more expensive because they're giving me Neulasta, a white-cell booster that costs -- are you ready for this -- $6000.00 PER INJECTION. I'm also on Avastin, which appears to be worth more than its weight in gold. Not all of that money goes to the drug makers, who themselves are uniformly evil; some of it -- a lot of it -- also goes to people like my "doctor," someone who is, it turns out, not even intellectually interested in my particular disease.

I want a doctor who goes to bed at night and wakes up in the morning thinking about colon cancer. I want someone who gets in fender benders because their mind is occupied with the particular mechanism of action of EGFR+, grade 4/4, undifferentiated, aggressive, metastatic carcinomas. I want someone who is so obsessed with all of this that they are incapable of forming lasting, meaningful relationships with other human beings because all they care about is killing this cancer -- my cancer.

And I want someone who, when their patients are sitting in the waiting room for more than an hour while their lab nurses are fooling around and laughing in the back room, looks at the lab nurses and says, "pack your things and be out in 5 minutes."

I want Rainman, not Santa Claus.

I guess I've become a very impatient patient.

Tache is in Trouble and Other News

2006-11-03T08:34:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone.

I'm sorry that Tache was so mean. I was busy with my brother's visit, and I had NO IDEA that she could type. I also had no idea that she was so cruel and insulting. And I certainly hadn't a clue that she was so opinionated about art. I've tried to tell people before what a bad cat Tache is, but no one ever believed me because she looks so white and soft and cute. Now you know! Anyway, she has been severely reprimanded for this little incident. Her response to said reprimand was to vomit, twice, in the apartment.

I'm feeling better, finally. I had a rough time recovering from this treatment. I felt good during the initial treatment, but the recovery period took longer than the last one. Let's hope this isn't a trend. I still taught my courses and everything this week, so it wasn't enough sickness to really knock me down or anything, just a general malaise. No biggie.

Asa and Andrea headed back to Wyoming yesterday. I was really sad to see them go. I wish they could have stayed on through the weekend, but I they had work to catch up on. They were probably also getting a bit bored with my naps, understandably. But I think they enjoyed Atlanta and our wonderful weather, and I certainly enjoyed having them around for a while. We had a great time.

I have my doctor's appointment today. They do a "complete blood count" every week that I'm not on chemotherapy. I also want to ask my doctor a bunch of questions, mostly because I can tell that he doesn't like it when I ask questions, but also because I do have some curiosities. I do not like my current oncologist that much, which will be the subject of a longer post some day, I assure you. He talks too much, doesn't listen well, and I can tell already that he has put me in a medical category and isn't doing a lot of active thinking about my disease. This recurrence happened so suddenly I did not have time to doctor-shop, so he'll have to do for now.

Hope everyone's well.

Tache the Scribe

2006-11-01T06:45:00.001-08:00

Hello "People," this is Tache. Chet is in the shower and he does not know that I can type. There are a LOT of things about me Chet does not know.

I have a few things to say.

First of all, that is not fat hanging off of the ledge in my picture (above right). I am just a very, very healthy cat. And that other picture (above left) is how I generally feel about all of you.

Second, I am sick and tired of Chet getting all the attention. Poor Chet. Boo hoo. Cry me a river. I don't know what cancer is, but I do know what tuna is, and I know that I haven't gotten any in a while. Chet says I can't have any tuna because all I ever do is lay around and shed all day. Well now all Chet does is lay around all day, so where's my $#@%% tuna? Chet gets to eat whatever he wants, and frankly, in recent weeks, he's been about as worthless as a cat, so I think what's good for Chet should be good for me.

Third, I am also sick and tired of you people coming over here and staying in MY apartment to take care of Chet. This is MY place, not his. If he's that sick, take him to a hospital. Or prop him up on a park bench. As long as I have something to eat, I don't care.

"Michael R," if you think that scratch I gave you on your hand hurt, just wait until you see what I do to your FACE the next time you come to my apartment. I've only just begun with you, my friend. Sleep with one eye open, that's all I have to say.

"Chad S.," thanks for teaching Chet his Sufi prayer -- you didn't think Chet already had enough annoying habits? Have you ever paid the slightest bit of attention to Chet's behavior? He's the biggest neurotic on wheels, a real nutjob, and you think some prayer is going to help?

And Lexy, my dear -- there's a reason I hide in the closet, okay? Everyone else thinks it's really cute when you wander around saying "Tache go?" but I don't. I'd pounce on you, but you're too close to my own size and it creeps me out.

Chet was always difficult to live with -- wish his clean-obsession and all of his other "tics" -- but you people and cancer have made him a thousand times worse -- and SOFT! At least he used to seem somewhat rational. Now all he does is muse about the meaning of life (gross), and how lucky he's been to have such wonderful friends (luck??? you get an adenocarcinoma and call it luck???). Poor deluded bastard.

What do you people do here anyway that I couldn't do? If Chet needs to eat regularly, I can take care of that. I'll feed the "cancer patient" some of this nasty kibble he's been feeding me for years. The stuff tastes like paper towels and goes through you like styrofoam. I'm sick of it. He says he needs bland foods anyway, and if there's anything I know, thanks to Chet, it's bland food.

Finally, I don't think modernists were modernists at all. I think they were sissy romantics who were afraid to face their own emotional investment in the human condition, so they tried to cover it up with all sorts of formalism and cynicism, but I don't buy it. I don't buy any of it. Arnold Schoenberg was just a no-talent who wanted to be like Beethoven, but couldn't, so he beat on the piano until his fists were bloody and they called it 12-tone. Picasso? You can't paint like Rembrandt when you refuse to use your thumbs. I should know. Pierre Boulez: I hate you!

Speaking of modernism, I'm really sick of Chet's furniture. None of it is comfortable. It's like balancing on the head of a pin to sit on the sofa (just ask Chet's friend Carla). I want it out of here. Now! Bring me something fluffy, and round -- something from Pottery Barn. That would really make Chet apoplectic, would it? *Snicker*

That's it. Chet is done with his shower. I'm surprised one of you ninnies wasn't here to help him bathe. Goodbye "People."

Happy Halloween!

2006-10-31T13:47:00.000-08:00

These pictures were actually taken a week ago.

Andy, Jody, and Lexy stayed over for Andy's birthday celebration. Then, on Saturday, we carved a pumpkin for Lexy. These pictures were taken in the yard of my apartment complex.

As you can see in the bottom left picture, Lexy was not nearly as interested in pumpkin carving as she was in carrying around a grocery bag with rocks she was collecting. The bag was a bit bigger than she, but as is usually the case, size did not stop her. The same logic holds true for shoes these days -- the bigger the better. The other day she insisted on wearing my slippers around my apartment while exclaiming "Show Asa!" Apparently she associates Asa with big things. I wonder why. I don't have photos of that, unfortunately, but it is a fun story to tell anyway.

Once the carving was done, Lexy became a bit more intrigued with Mr. O'Lantern, as the photo on the left above shows. She seemed most curious about the stem and the removable skull cap. I thought the most impressive feature was the soul-patch. Apparently our pumpkin is a pseudo-hippie, just like the man who carved him. (Come on, Andy, if Jody would let you get away with a soul patch, you know you would).

In photo 3 I accidentally missed part of Lexy's face, but I included it anyway, even though a photograph without a full face shot of Lexy in it is automatically of far lesser value than any other photo, by default.

My Brother's Here

2006-10-30T07:42:00.000-08:00

One of the things that got me through treatment #2 was looking forward to a visit from my brother (Asa) and sister-in-law (Andrea). Here are some pictures of us.

So far we haven't done too much, mostly because I've been tired. But we did go to the Atlanta Underground yesterday, and since it was nearby, I showed Asa and Andrea the Georgia State campus and my office. Then we tried to find them a new place to stay. Their hotel is way out by the airport, but tonight they'll be shifting over to the Gaslight Inn, a really nice B&B that's closer to my apartment. I think this afternoon we will drive over to Stone Mountain, a mind-blowing monument to Confederate Pride (really -- you wouldn't believe it).

My brother is sort of my hero. When we were younger I was absolutely awful to him, a really bad older brother. But he forgave me, thankfully. What I really admire about him is that he is so accepting of others, and of difference. When he was in high school he was always friends with the kids no body else wanted to befriend. Playing football and wrestling, he was easily a part of Rawlins, Wyoming's teenage in-crowd, but he had more fun hanging out with the kids who had no one else. He did not just befriend these individuals to do a good deed -- he really liked them. He was also accepting of me when no one else was. And even now, at 6-foot-whatever and the size of a house, he's probably gentlest person I know. I wish I could be more like him.

Andrea is the sister I always wanted but never had. She has tamed my brother (who, even though he is a wonderful person, had a wild side that would have probably landed him in jail if it weren't for Andrea) quite nicely. She calls me all the time and makes sure that I'm doing okay. And she is the only person living (besides me, I think...I hope) of whom Tache (my cat) approves.

So, here's to the start of my good week, made even better by a visit from Asa and Andrea.

#2: Michael R.

2006-10-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

Treatment #2 is now over. I went to the hospital this afternoon to get unhooked. I'm feeling quite well. Many Thanks to all of you who posted comments yesterday. Hearing from people warms my spirits.

The handsome fellow above is Michael. Michael and his partner Ron lived around the corner from me in Oak Park, Illinois. They took good care of me during Cancer #1. They had me over for dinner on Sunday evenings. Michael would make something on the grill, and then we would watch "Desperate Housewives," since it reminded us of the repressed, creepy suburbanites who lived around us in Oak Park. Michael brought me groceries and did my laundry for about a month after my colon surgery. Ron works for the medical-insurance-industrial-complex, and he averted many potentially violent crises at the offices of HMO Illinois by telephoning the supposed "people" who work there and talking them through the bureaucracy of my disease.

I am not always an easy person to take care of during these treatments. I try to remain as cheery as possible, but most people who know me know that I am not all that cheery by nature anyway, much less when I've just been hit with a chemical sledgehammer.

For example, I was not very cheery I awoke this morning. Then I tried to log on to my email account and realized that Michael had changed something on my Sprint card (which I use to get online, and which he has been using while staying here). I had what can only be described as a "fit," which involved me yelling and then a long, uncomfortable silence. Finally, I apologized and Michael fixed the computer. In other words, I was a bad patient and an even worse friend.

But because Michael is such a good friend he forgave me, easily. We laughed. Then, after he brought me home from the doctor's office, he went to Bed-Bath-and-Beyond and bought me a laundry cart with wheels, so I won't have to lug my heavy laundry basket downstairs to the laundry room anymore.

Thanks for putting up with me, Michael, and for staying w/ me through treatment #2.

Thursday Morning and Feeling Good

2006-10-26T06:13:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note. My treatment went okay yesterday. Better than #1, I think. I feel much less groggy and foggy headed this time. I think they eased off on some of the benadryl (which they say they have to give me because people have allergic reactions to avastin).

So I came home and laid on the couch and watched TV. Michael fed me (more on him later). (He's snoring in the other room right now). Wendy came over and gave me an eye rub (something they're giving me makes my eyes feel like they're bugging out of my head for the first day....probably the avastin), and watched LOST (which she hates for its violence and tedious plot). (By the way, if any of you understand WHAT ON EARTH the conclusion of LOST was about last night, please clue me in). Then, after Wendy left, I took my special anti-nausea drug and laid on the couch somemore and then went to bed.

And today I feel pretty good, so far. I always feel best in the mornings. I think I might try to go back to sleep for a bit longer just to be safe.

#1: Chad S.

2006-10-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

For treatment #1, my friend Chad came from Rochester, NY. Chad (above, with his wife Marie at left) arrived Wednesday night, after nearly 7 hours of flight delays, thanks to that snow storm in Detroit. I was very happy to see him. I only get to see Chad about twice a year, and 2 out of the last 3 times I've seen him, it's been so that he could tend to some illness of mine. He took care of me after my colon surgery, and this time he took care of me during the aftermath of my "first" new chemo treatment.

So, for three and a half days, Chad put up with basically staring at me and the inside of my (very small) apartment. He fed me and made me drink water. Thursday we took a walk to Sevananda, the whole foods co-op near my apartment in Little 5 Points, and that was basically the only real tour he got of Atlanta for his visit. He put up with these claustrophobic conditions with absolute grace.

I guess Chad did get out a bit. He got to meet my friend Wendy, who was taking care of me when he arrived. She fed us seafood pasta (yum, even on chemo....yum, yum) while we watched LOST (my favorite TV program). He also got to meet my friend Mindy, who drove us to the hospital for me to get unhooked from my take-home bag of 5-FU (yes, they call a chemo drug "FU"). This was the visit where I almost fainted because my blood pressure dropped, probably from waiting for my incompetent nurses to finally see me. Chad went with me to pick my car up from the thieving mechanics who jipped me out of $700 (the check-engine light is still on), and he gave me a stern lecture about getting hosed. We also went to Taqueria, my favorite restuarant (so far) in Atlanta. And we spent a few hours Saturday with Jody, Andy, and Lexy before Chad had to fly back to NY. We had breakfast, and then Andy drove Chad to the airport.

I'm really grateful that Chad could be here. He's a very peaceful person and he makes those around him feel very safe. He gave me a Reike treatment. And he taught me a Sufi prayer that has given me a lot of solace. I'm also grateful to Chad's wife, Marie. Chad is getting his PhD at SUNY-Buffalo, and because he has to commute back and forth, he and Marie do not get to spend a great deal of time together, so it was a special sacrifice on her part to spare him for a few days.

Thank you Chad and Marie.

The News Since Treatment #1

2006-10-22T12:21:00.000-07:00

So, I have completed my first treatment of "Folfiri + Avastin." The treatment was brutal...just awful, really. Irinotecan is much harder on me than Oxalaplatin was. (I guess my constitution must be better equipt at processing platinum than it is plastic....who knew?) Plus they give me so many other things to prevent allergies, infections, and the like, that by the time I left the office (after 6 hours! of infusion), I was like a walking chemical plant. They gave me an IV of benedryl (sp?) that was especially awful -- it made my head foggy and, in fact, I ended up not remembering a lot of the treatment because of it. This might have been a good thing, in the final analysis.

But I did recover from treatment #1 in about the same amount of time that I used to recover from the Folfox treatments. The treatment began on a Wednesday and I got "unhooked" from the take-home chemo on Friday. Then I relaxed over the weekend and, by Monday, I was back to work. I think the Neulasta shot helped. Neulasta is a drug that boosts white-cell counts. It makes you feel fluish for about a day and then, bingo, you feel like a normal person again. Better than normal, actually. It's a great drug. I guess that's why, at least if what I've heard is correct, Neulasta costs $5000.00 per injection. I'll address in another post the corruption, criminality, and goulishness of the medical establishment.

So I've felt fine since treatment #1, thankfully. A b it of tiredness here and there. It also appears that the lesion on my navel is shrinking! That might or might not be an indication of what's going on inside of my body, but I'll take whatever good news I can get.

Treatment #2 begins this Wednesday morning. After 4 treatments they'll scan me again and see whether or not I'm ready for surgery.

Starting All Over -- Again

2006-10-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, I was diagnosed with Stage III Colon Cancer in September of 2005. After that diagnosis, I underwent 6 months of chemotherapy to try to remove any traces of cancer that my surgery missed.

And, as most of you know, the chemotherapy I underwent did not work. I have had a recurrence of Colon Cancer. This time the cancer is not in my colon, it is in my "mesentary" (i.e., my "fat"). It may also have metastesized to my liver (something I will learn more about tomorrow). And since "Modern" medical science has not found a more sophisticated way of battling cancer than sledgehammering it to death, I will begin chemotherapy -- again -- tomorrow morning at 9am.

So while I used to use this blog to make fun of politicians and other public officials I didn't like, I am now going to be using it to update all of you about my condition. It's a bit more efficient than saying the same thing over and over on the telephone. I'm also going to post a calendar on here to try to keep track of who among all of my wonderful friends and family members is coming and going for the battery of treatments I'm beginning. And, finally, I'm also going to use this space to reflect on the meaning of illness and recovery, to complain
(a lot), and probably still to make fun of politicians and other public officials I don't like.

So the picture above is of me, today, on October 10th, 2006. I look and feel well, but I'm not. And beginning tomorrow, I will start to look, and feel, a whole lot worse -- thanks to the plastic-based chemotherapy drug (Irinotecan) I will be "infusing" on a bi-weekly basis. I hope that you will all read my blog, and I hope you'll also feel free to respond to what I write. It would be great if all of the great people I know who helped me with my last struggle with cancer could get to know each other a bit better.

So -- here we go. Nothing less than victory this time.

Sue

2006-02-20T21:18:00.000-08:00

I have a new, best friend. Her name is Sue. I have received a lot of gifts after my diagnosis with cancer. For example, I realized that although I consider myself a primarily lonely and isolated individual, I have a group of simply amazing friends. I never go through a chemo treatment alone. Someone is always here, even if they have to purchase expensive air fare, and even though being with me during chemo requires rubbing my feet and putting up with my horrible attitude. I’ll write more about all of these amazing people later, but for now, I want to write about Sue.

Sue is the best gift I’ve received as a cancer survivor. Sue and I met through an online chat website called www.colonclub.org I had posted several entries on the website and one day I received an email from someone named Sue. Sue explained to me that she had found my profile on the colonclub. She and I were diagnosed on the same day, and we had the same stage of colon cancer – Stage III. What was more, we were doing chemo on exactly the same days. Sue wanted to know if I wanted a penpal, someone to share experiences and insight with. I agreed happily, but at the time I still had no idea what a wonderful friendship would come of my fortuitous meeting with this new person.

Our emails to each other grew more frequent. On one occasion Sue sent me a picture of herself and her daughter. It was taken of them just a year or so ago, at a wine bar in Paris. When I looked at Sue’s image, I began to cry. She had such an amazing smile, and I could tell just from looking at her that this was someone who loved her life. She had a vitality in her 40-something smile that had always been missing from my own life. I cried because I worried that cancer had perhaps stolen this from her. I wanted to beat the living shit out of cancer, not because of what it had done to me, but because I feared that it had stolen something so precious from this woman, this wonderful person, and I feared that it would make her into a callous cynic like me. I would soon learn that Sue had not lost what I loved about her in this photo: she is a warrior times three, and she has enough vitality and love to save herself and me and hundreds of others.

Sue emails me every time I go through a treatment. She and I will ask each other, “have you made it through the other side yet?” We both know how chemo works. It knocks you down on all fours. And then, somehow, and quite magically, it’s over. The nausea and pain just end, like someone turning off a light switch. And then we go back to our normal lives: we run and spend time with family, and try to live a normal life for the 10 or so days we have until our next treatment. One time Sue emailed me to ask if I’d made it through, but I didn’t get back to her quickly enough. She emailed frantically: “are you okay? I’m worried.” She and I both worry about each other. We understand each other in ways that our families and friends simply cannot.

One time Sue asked me how I was doing “spiritually.” This was a tough question. I’m a Mormon by birth and raising, and an atheist by choice. I gave up God because I had come to think of him as a cruel authoritarian. Whenever I did pray in my life, it was usually in order to apologize – for some innocuous mistake or sin, for being gay, for whatever small infraction I had committed most recently. I prayed because I was afraid of God, because I didn’t want him to hurt me or someone I loved. And then, one day, I just quit talking to him altogether. I buried myself in intellectual life – and that became my God. But deep down, underneath, I still thought there was a God, and I assumed that he was mad as hell at me. So I figured that if I just left him alone, maybe “he” would just forget all about me. And after cancer, I assumed – unconsciously of course – that he hadn’t forgotten about me, and that now I was being punished for all of those suicidal thoughts and fantasies I had had as a teenager trying to come to terms with myself.

I explained most of this to Sue. And then she surprised me.

She explained to me that she had a different view of God. “I think God is just as pissed about our cancer as you and I are,” she wrote. She said that she did not think of God as an all-powerful being with the power to save and condemn. “There’s randomness in the universe, and I’m comfortable with that,” she wrote. When I read her email, it felt as if an enormous weight – 30 years worth of spiritual burden – had been lifted off of my shoulders. I felt as if, maybe, just maybe, I could once again have a spiritual life. Maybe, I thought, I could even pray – maybe it would be alright to do that.

One night I got home late and I checked my email. There was an email from Sue, only it was written by her daughter, Katie. Katie explained that Sue had to be taken to the Emergency Room. She had had cramps and pain for days. She had intestinal blockage due to some scar tissue that developed from her colectomy. She would have to have another entire surgery to remove the scar tissue. And she would have to delay her chemo treatments until she was well again. Sue – lying in a hospital bed somewhere in Rochester, New York, and in pain – had thought to have her daughter email ME. She was worried about ME!

I immediately began to weep in a way I have never cried before. I knew how terrifying this must be for her. When you are undergoing chemotherapy, your entire world becomes centered around FINISHING chemo. One’s biggest fear is that chemo might be interrupted, not only because this prolongs the horrors of chemotherapy, but because no matter how much we hate chemotherapy, we figure, at least it’s helping us, it’s killing the bad guys….so keep the stuff coming. I thought about how frightened she must be and my heart just split into a million pieces.

After reading Katie’s email, I cried and I went to my bedroom and I got down on my knees, just as I had done as a young Mormon before bedtime each night. And I prayed – for the first time in many years. I said, “please don’t let anything bad happen to Sue….make Sue well….and help her to be courageous and not afraid.” And I’m happy to report that Sue made a full recovery from her second major surgery, and she is now back on schedule for treatments. I don’t think this had anything to do with my prayers for her. It’s because Sue is, as I said, a real warrior. And it’s because that light in her smile that I saw in her picture still animates her. It animates me, too, most days. Cancer can take a lot of things from people, but it didn’t take that from her. And I figure, if there’s a God, it’s not some mean white-haired silverback living in she sky. God exists in the Spirit of people like Sue, and the strength they share with weaker people like me.

Sue and I have both applied to be colondar models. The colondar is a calendar put out by the colonclub to spread awareness about colon cancer in young people. We applied and insisted that we pose together. We hope we’ll get chosen, though we haven’t heard just yet.

Even if we do not get chosen, this much I know for certain. One of these days very soon I am going to fly to Rochester, New York so that I can meet Sue in person. And when I do, it’s going to be one of the best days of my life. We’re going to talk about her feminism, and her artwork (she’s a wonderful artist). We might go for a jog together or share a glass of wine (we both love wine). Or I might just sit there and look at her, if it doesn’t make her too uncomfortable, and contemplate all that she’s taught me and shared with me, the way she’s protected me in ways she’s probably unaware of.

A Little Something from my Cancer Diary

2006-02-20T11:44:00.000-08:00

On September 23, 2005, I underwent a surgical procedure to remove a lump that I found in my abdomen. It was in an area of the colon called the “caecum.” I felt the lump during the late summer of 2005 while I was in bed one morning. I felt it again later that day while showering. I assumed that it was merely a strained muscle from my ab workouts at the gym, or one of those benign cysts they tell everyone about. During the time I awaited the surgery, all of my friends and family had little theories about what this lump might be: an absorbed twin, an ovary, or a clump of undigested Brie. My friends have colorful imaginations.

The surgery was the most traumatic experience of my entire life. No one can prepare you for surgery. You fall asleep and your entire body falls under the control of someone else. But the trauma begins even before that. While relaxing on some version of valium, the nurse and anesthesiologist asked me to roll over so they could insert the epidural. This requires sticking a long needle between your vertebrae. “Arch your back like a cat,” the anesthesiologist said with his Hindi accent. It doesn’t hurt, actually, but the thought of it alone (and the noise it makes going into your back, a short, quick “pop”) can make you sick to your stomach if you ponder it long enough.

When I awoke from surgery at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Elgin, Illinois, I had a tube going through my nose, down my throat and esophagous, all the way into my stomach. This “NG” tube was attached to a hose, and if I crossed my eyes, I could see the bile it was pumping from my stomach. I was, additionally, hooked up to oxygen, which made my throat very dry, compounding the discomfort of the NG tube, and making swallowing and salivating nearly impossible. I also had an IV, which fed me nutrients for the 2 days I was bed-ridden. I had a catheter, so I wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom. Of course, every nurse who walked by my bed managed to bump the hose of this catheter, sending shivers down my spine as I felt the strange sensation of my bladder twitching back and forth with the rhythm of the moving hose. This little game continued until I forbade everyone entering my room from approaching the side of the bed with the catheter hose on it. And I had a contraption hooked to my right index finger which constantly measured my pulse, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation. When my Oxygen saturation went below 90%, the machine would honk at me, obnoxiously, reminding me to breathe more deeply.

All of this nonsense was attached to me with surgical tape. I had tape on my back, from left hip to right hip, and all the way up my spine, securing the epidural. I had tape on the bandage which covered my incision. Tape on my hands securing the other gadgets that kept me alive and monitored. Now, what they don’t tell you is that the glue on surgical tape is toxic. It’s not like scotch tape. The stuff could eat through lead. And it burns. By the time I was finished, I had burns on my wrists, back, and stomach, all of which were far more tender the new 4.5 inch long incision which went from beneath my belly button to my right hip. Even now, 4 months later, I still have a scar on the left side of my stomach, not from the incision, but from the tape burn!

Finally, I had two leg-warmer-looking devices attached to my legs. They looked like something Jane Fonda would have worn during one of her aerobics exercise video tapes from the 1980s. Only my leg warmers were plugged in to an air pump. About every 10 seconds they would fill with air, and then release. Psshhhhh, fwump. Psshhhh, fwump. Every 10 seconds. Try sleeping through that.

None of this mattered to me, because I figured once I was walking again, and once my little stomach started processing food again, I would walk out of the hospital and go back to my old life, with no changes.

That changed very quickly when, on Tuesday, September 27, 2005, at 12:15pm, my surgeon – a man named Preston Scott Reilly, came into my room to give me the results of my pathology. The lump I discovered in my abdomen was called a “mucinous adenocarcinoma.” It was cancer. A tumor. Not a benign cyst. Not an absorbed twin, and not undigested Brie de Meaux. This tumor, he explained, was an aggressive one. It had spread to 6 of the 11 lymph nodes they had cut out of my 32 year old ascending colon. Once it got in the lymph system, Dr. Reilly explained, it could go anywhere. “It’s like throwing seeds into the wind,” he exclaimed, proud of his metaphor. I had stage III colon cancer. I would have to have extensive chemotherapy, which might or might not help me survive.

As I lay there in my hospital bed listening to him, all I could focus on were the trees outside of my window, which had just barely begun turning colors. I was amazed at the way just one orange leaf on an entirely green tree could stand out and look so beautiful. And the sky that day was so brilliant blue; it was like standing on the inside of a marble. I remember thinking that it was as brilliant-blue as it was on September 11^th, the day terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I felt like Preston Reilly had just flown a plane into my brain – and my heart. I didn’t even realize I was crying until he handed me some Kleenex and place his hand on my leg, a hand which felt as cold and clinical and invasive as the NG tube had felt days before.

The percentage of people between the ages of 30 and 39 who are diagnosed with colorectal cancer is .07%. That’s 7 out of every 10,000 people.

I have never been a fortunate person. I was born into a working class family and I was the first person in my family to receive a full college education. I was also the first person to receive a PhD, to publish anything, to earn above the American median, and to have 20-somethings call me “Professor.” But I didn’t get any of this due to luck. I worked for all of it. I was always determined, from the time I was a young boy, to escape the conditions under which my parents had labored their entire life. Conditions which I, at the time, considered pathetic and mean. I cannot remember either of them being happy to go off to work. Nor can I remember a time when life had been easy for them. To this day, they still owe a mortgage on the little modular house they own in Sinclair, Wyoming, a house that most people in my “circle” would silently turn their noses up at because it resembles a double-wide trailer attached to a cement foundation, but which is the absolute pride of my parents (my mother can talk to you for hours about the flowers she’s going to plant in the yard). None of what I’ve ever had was due to luck – I worked hard to try to create a better life for myself, but also to give my parents something better through me.

And so, I suppose, I’ll have to work at this, too. Luck won’t save me, just as it didn’t put me through college. I have to save myself, but I also have to save my parents. I’m the only reason either of them believe that there is hope in this world. I’m the only reason either of them believes the American myth: that if one works hard, a good life is possible. That myth never worked for them; it cheated them. Asa and Heidi Meeks are people in their 50s who, due to the frequently hard nature of their lives, look more like they’re in their 60s. My Dad has rough, calloused hands and deep wrinkles under his sad eyes, and my Mom frequently sounds tired whenever I talk to her on the phone, and she complains about aches that, in my view at least, are due not to anything physical but rather to the stressful nature of her life. They get depressed about bills they still can’t afford to pay. They rarely take vacations. They view the world as a corrupt one which didn’t give them a fair shake – because it is, and it didn’t. I’m the only, single reason that they believe there’s any fairness in the world. So I have to live. Because if I don’t, their hope and faith and everything else that makes them beautiful human beings, will die too. And no matter how unfair the world really is, their humanity is real too, so that cannot happen.

My first post

2006-02-20T09:13:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. Welcome to my new blog. This is just a test-post to see if I can finally make this thing work.