Egg-stravaganza

It must have all started when Dorothy Provine, star of the 1960s television series, The Roaring Twenties, began doing commercials for something called Feminine Deodorant Spray (FDS, as it was named). I was around 13 when the show went off the air and could not figure out why women would need a special deodorant, but later caught on when Esquire Magazine, in its Dubious Achievement Awards, gave her the title of “Sweet Peas of the Year.” Provine’s groundbreaking work broke ground for all manner of commercials dealing with all manner of issues, the personal nature of which one would have assumed rendered them taboo. To cite H.L. Mencken, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people.” Today proved it.

Driving down Main Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut, I saw the sign of the future; somebody’s future, anyway. There, amid convenience stores, travel agents, insurance agents, cell phone dealers and various types of restaurants stood the building which, according to the sign, houses the Center for Gestational Surrogacy. The CGS has no website that I was able to find but there are several others listed on the Web and the first one I went to states that in order to be a surrogate, the first requirement is that you be female. Glad they cleared that one up. But what about the prospective parents?

DISCLAIMER: I HAVE NO CHILDREN LOF MY OWN AND HAVE NEVER HAD A HAND IN THE RAISING OF CHILDREN EXCEPT FOR BABYSITTING MY SIBLINGS. Yeah, that includes diaper changes.

The whole issue bothers me, though, and I suppose there is no reason in the world that it should. However, when looked at through a certain lens, it becomes apparent to me that people believe they have a right to have children no matter what. Having observed various parenting behaviors in public throughout my life, it is my belief that there should be some sort of test given before people are allowed to procreate.
Before running off to Wombs-R-Us, they should be tested for the ability to handle the stress of an unruly child in public places. Before being accepted as prospective parents by Egg-Stravaganza, Inc., perhaps there could be a sleep deprivation test.

Having children may be a right, but I consider it more of a privilege than a right and, I am afraid some people consider it more a rite than a right. Two teenage girls were walking through the shopping mall I refer to as Trumbull Babylon, one pushing a baby carriage and complaining that she could not get her homework done due to caring for her child. The other commiserated but then said, “I really want one, too. I don’t care about the homework.” Maybe the Egg Farm should move to the mall. I can see it now: Eddie Bauer Wombs competing with Womb-A-Rama. Wombs To Go cheek by jowl with Discount Wombs. Victoria’s Wombs going up against Select-A-Womb. For home delivery, just call Dial-A-Womb. The list could go on and on, but I’ll leave it here as I go to bed and curl into the fetal position.

Ship of Jerks

It has been two days since I picked up Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter. That is to say, two days since I have read any more of it. Out of 497 pages I have read 290 pages describing sheer hatred, malice, backbiting, detestation, repugnance, disgust, vitriol, abomination, loathing, abhorrence, resentment, petty jealousy, displeasure, anti-Semitism, spite and just overall bad behavior among a group of passengers and crew aboard a second-rate steamer sailing from Veracruz, Mexico to Bremerhaven, Germany circa 1931. There is not a happy character among the bunch except for two out of control children whose fun is always directed toward the misery of others. If there is any joy at all among this cast of misery-laden folks it takes the form of a particularly vile form of Schadenfreude. There are no real chapter breaks in this edition I am reading, so it has been a hate-filled marathon of 290 pages since I began. Little more than halfway through, I needed a break; the real thing is available any time I want to look for it. I can’t wait to see the movie.

Knowing less than nothing about the life of the author I still am wondering how she avoided the despair that leads to suicide. That she lived to be 90 years of age is a sort of miracle if this book is to be taken as evidence of her view of human society. I suppose reading her biography might be advisable. I am open to suggestions as to a good one. Right now I am looking for a copy of Pale Horse, Pale Rider, which apparently is a fictionalized account of her time recovering from the flu which she contracted during the 1918 pandemic. I am also in knowing whether the following quote is attributable to her. "I have lost children in all the ways one can." I would like a citation for this. Apparently, she suffered more than one miscarriage, at least one stillbirth and at least one abortion.

In fact, if anyone knows anything about Porter’s life and/or literature I certainly would appreciate hearing what you have to say.

Next up will be Joan Didion, beginning with, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I have read nothing but reviews of Didion and have been impressed by what I have read. That is to say, most of the reviewers give her what seems to be only grudging respect, a sure sign I may be on to something good.

Finally, I will confess that my reading of female writers has been pretty much limited to Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers and Edith Wharton and, among these, only Cather and O'Connor to any great extent. It is good to discover these others, to have one’s horizons broadened, if you will forgive the pun. Perhaps all this reading of women authors is proof of my growth as "an evolving male," as the hip would term the event. It pays to keep up with the evolutionary stuff, I suppose.

Oh, Frabjous Day, Calloo, Callay

Well, the rest of the radiology report finally came through and there is news to report. Compared to the scan that was done on February 4 of this year, “The mass involving the anterior rib cage and pleura has significantly decreased in size and currently measures 1 x 3.8 cm decreased from 3.1 x 5.5 cm.” Amid all the medical terminology there is not much of interest beyond the material quoted above except for the final statement which reads, “Impression: Marked improvement in the patient’s known metastatic lesions predominantly involving the right chest wall. Complete resolution of the small right effusion.” The small right effusion was a bit of fluid in the lung and that obviously has disappeared. Good news all in all and I am grateful for it as well as for all the thoughts and prayers that went into this and, I hope, will continue to go on.

The radiology report was good, but the timing here could be improved. The timing involved concerns the infusion. I get four bags of one of the 5-FU and each bag takes 24 hours. Ideally, this works out to 96 hours. Ideally seldom works out. In fact, it looks as though my Monday departure may not come about until Tuesday. The separate bags of the 5-FU get interrupted for fluids and other stuff, such as anti-nausea meds, etc. And sometimes the pharmacy gets backed up; it seems I am not the only patient here.

But overall, the news is good and that is what I am thankful for. Another day in here will not make that much difference in the long run.

More Chemo Plus Cardinals and Forsythias

It’s been a while, but not much has been going on in these parts. One round of chemo follows another. Right now, it is May 1, a Saturday, and I am here at St. Vincent’s chained to the IV tree for my tri-weekly 96-hour chemo. I’ve been here 48 hours and should be out of here in another 48, although it never seems to work out that way. I usually don’t get out of here until late Monday or even Tuesday. Then it is back here every Thursday for a short chemo treatment. No end in sight so far.

A chest and neck scan was done on Thursday when I came in and the neck came back perfectly normal, but there is no word yet on the chest. This is most likely a clerical error, i.e., someone sent one part of the report and failed to send the second part. My chest and neck have been violently separated and have been apart for two days as of this writing. Leaving neck and chest to find one another, let’s visit my house or, more accurately, the house where I rent a room.

In the mornings I like to take my coffee out to the patio in back where the sun shines. It is a nice, warm spot and the birds chirp, tweet, twitter, caw and whatever else it is that birds do vocally. Mostly these are wrens, sparrows, crows, and some unseen species whose calls I cannot identify. There are bushes and trees and some of the birds feed on the ground under the bushes. There is one bird in particular that comes every morning. He is a cardinal who feeds on the bushes and trees. I first saw him my first morning out in back and then it was a few days before I saw him again since I was in the hospital. When I came out of the hospital, though, he was there the very next morning. The cardinal was my Dad’s favorite bird, so I call him, “Buford.” He doesn’t seem to mind.

Forsythias were one of Mary’s favorite signs of spring. Among the bushes out back at my place is a forsythia. One morning, while the wind was blowing particularly hard, the forsythia blossoms were being blown everywhere, but mostly toward the neighbor’s yard. It was pleasant surprise, then, when a single forsythia blossom landed on the table next to my coffee cup. It was a nice reminder but I did not see it blow away. It went while I was having a sip of coffee. I don’t even know what direction it went. It was just gone.

Grave Matters

Social custom requires certain things of people and usually these rules are followed and sometimes they are not fulfilled for various reasons, some valid, some otherwise. There is a custom that I do not follow and for good reason. Or so I believe.

Mary and I were married for 16 years, 8 months and 5 days when she died at 10:04 p.m. on the second of April, 2006. We had known one another just shy of 20 years by that time. When we were married on July 28, 1989, she told me we would be lucky to have another 20 years together. I replied that we would have at least 25 years together from that time. I was 40 at the time and she was approaching 47 years old. I figured my actuarial prediction was the more accurate one. As in most cases, Mary was right. Mary was buried on April 5, 2006. That was the last time I visited St. Michael’s Cemetery.

I do not visit Mary’s grave for one very simple reason. That is not her in the ground. What lies in the ground are the mortal remains of the woman I still love.

For a time, I dwelt on the physical aspects of death. I know what the undertakers do to make the body presentable to the living for whom the entire funeral industry exists. Without the living, there would be no money in death. From thoughts of what the undertakers were up to I began to dwell on the physical aspects of decay and eventual putrefaction of the body. If you think about this stuff long enough you can go crazy. None of these physical things had one thing to do with Mary.

Mary gave me a copy of Skinny Legs and All before we were married. She was always self-conscious about her legs which were, in fact, pretty darn skinny. She hardly ever wore shorts and usually wore long dresses or skirts. When she gave me that book, I told her that she was not her legs or her famous Bowe nose or any combination of body parts. The point I was trying to make is that it was her very self that I love and not a collection if tissue, fluid, bone and blood. It is the very idea of Mary that held me then and holds me now.

Mary Bowe Koechig was full of love, joy and wonder for everyone and everything around her. Lying in her lounge chair on the deck at Mary’s Cove, a fuchsia plant hanging above her, she would quietly smile when her hummingbird appeared, making its regular visits. She never said a word, but rather enjoyed the presence of this remarkable bird who gave her so much happiness. She found what she called “faces” in the petals of flowers, especially pansies. Mary found reasons to be happy with life and sought to bring that happiness to others. Her regrets were not many, but one regret she carried with her to the grave was that she felt she never did enough for her daughters.

Losing her hair to chemotherapy, Mary asked me to meet her halfway. After telling her I did not marry her hair, I disappeared into the bathroom and shaved one half of my moustache off and asked if that was what she meant. She merely suggested that I would be more socially acceptable if I shaved the other half. But she did laugh.
This and more is what I carry in my heart. I carry the memory of her smile, her laugh, her tears and worries. This is Mary. Her skinny legs did not matter; she mattered.

Our friend Charlotte tends the grave and tells me how it looks and I appreciate what she does. Mary appreciates it as well. For me, however, it is enough to carry her in my heart. That is all I need and all I can handle.

One Man’s Tea Partier is Another Man’s Embryonic Terrorist

Bill Clinton was heard on the news today describing the Tea Party movement as somehow reminiscent of Timothy McVeigh, the notorious Oklahoma City bomber, responsible for the deaths of over 160 people in 1995. Clinton claims the activism and anger of the Tea Partiers mirrors the anger of McVeigh which ultimately led to his despicable act which included the deaths of 19 children.

This clearly is either delusional on the part of our former president or it is a blatant attempt to discredit an organization which seeks rightful active participation in government. Clinton is not alone in this. From the very beginning of its administration the Obama White House and its supporters have resorted to ad hominem attacks on opponents, labeling them as racists, ignorant, angry, recalcitrant and worse. Now, nascent terrorism is on the menu.

That Clinton would chose anger as one focus of his argument is ironic. One remembers a day in the not too distant past when a sitting President of the United States chose to lie to the nation, angrily stating, “I did not have sex with that woman.” Did his anger lead to an act of terrorism? I doubt he has the testicular fortitude for such an act, except perhaps by proxy. Is he capable of such a thing? Well, to quote someone, “It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.”

Speaking of that famous quote (right up there with, “I am not a crook”), this is an attempt at controlling speech. In a tyranny, one of the first things to go is freedom of expression. It was done in China. It was done in Germany. It was done in the Soviet Union. It has been done all over the world with the same disastrous results. Joseph Goebbels famously said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” He also went on to state that truth is the greatest enemy of the state. This is control of speech at its utmost height. To challenge the truth as proclaimed by the state is to be traitorous. Yes, it is that serious. But it also is ridiculous.

This is all too ridiculous to even note except for the fact that so much effort is being put into an effort to quell criticism of the government. If argument is fair and open, what does anyone have to fear? It is as if government had never in the history of the world been questioned. All the criticism is being treated as a blasphemous, heretical challenge to Holy Writ, which is not surprising since Mr. Obama was elected on a wave of what can only be called a kind of messianic fever. But there is just one more thing that rankles.

Clinton has managed to cheapen the deaths of over 160 people by his comments. He has used the Oklahoma City murders to make a political point, a point, by the way, which really is lost in translation. Clinton joins the ranks of those who compare their ideological enemies to Nazis. It is a cheap shot, easily made and without basis. Once the charge is made it tends to stick. I quoted Joseph Goebbels above, not to compare him and Clinton, but to point out the direction the whole debate is taking. Looking down the road, it doesn’t look as if it will get any better soon.

Save This Man from Mall Ratism

There is a danger of my becoming a mall rat. Horrible as this sounds, it is my solution to the absence of wireless in my new residence. The landlord says I am hooked up but Windows is not able to connect to the thing. I get it for free here at Trumbull Babylon which has the advantage of being only one bus ride away; that is, I do not have to change buses in order to get here.

The constant blasting of music is a bit hard to take, but it is only a matter of attempting to block it out. Most times I am successful, but at others it does come through one ear and out the other like a rusty dental drill.

Another advantage to this place is the presence of not one, but two – count ‘em, folks, two – Starbuck’s locations. One is in a Target store and the other has its own storefront. Today I had lunch at the storefront location and did not have my normal venti caffe' Americano. Instead, I had a smoothie of banana and mango. I will not have this again for a while. The smoothie itself probably was very good but my taste buds seem to be a little disordered from the chemotherapy.

Speaking of chemotherapy, the rash from the Erbitux shows up primarily on my face and is a sight to behold. Periodically, chunks of my face fall off and they are not particular as to when, where or in front of whom they do it. I have gotten used to it, but it seems as though every stranger I see is staring to see this bizarre wonder that used to be my face.

Meanwhile, here are Trumbull Babylon, it seems fair to stare back. Some of the fashion statements here are no less bizarre than a scaly face that sheds unpredictably. I have seen in just a couple of hours sights that no one should be made to view. Exposed skin seems to be the indicator of fashion awareness. The more adipose tissue that is revealed the better, the rule seems to say. That and ugly tatoos.

Another thing that strikes me here is the fashion posters. Most of the male models in these posters seem to have their arms folded, chins tucked into their chests with their heads tilted to one side or another, with what I suppose is the gangster glare cominbg from their eyes. The majority of the female models seem to be either extremely angry or horribly constipated. Just the stuff to make me want to get into fashion.

Well, if I do turn into a mall rat, I certainly hope to be able to live up to the image here. There already is a start to a roll on my gut, so if I start cutting my shirts off at the bottom, I could get in on that count. A surly look will surely need to come along in time and I am sure I can manage that if they keep playing that outlandish stuff they call music. Meanwhile, I’ll just try to remain undercover.

Friends in Indiana

There is a couple in Indiana who became very special to me during my recent stay there. Although my time with them was relatively short as relationships go, they remain special to this day. Al and Gretchen are special people and it shows in nearly everything they do.

I first became acquainted with Al when my friend Larry signed me in to a private club where Al was the manager. Al and I became nodding acquaintances at first, but I would listen as he and Larry would talk at the bar. After a month or so, Al mentioned that the man who vacuumed in the morning was laid up and there was no one to volunteer to take his place for a while. This club has in common with others of its type a problem with lots of members but very few volunteers when it comes to getting anything done. There is a small core of volunteers who regularly show up when needed, but they are few and far between and as it is always the same people it becomes easy for others to assume that things will be done whether they pitch in or not. At any rate, when the issue of no one to vacuum came up, I had my first real conversation with Al.

"I can run a vacuum, but I'm not a member here."

Al replied to the effect that I didn't need to be a member to volunteer. He simply said that he was usually there by eight in the morning and that if I showed up, it would be fine with him. Words of a man who has heard too many unfulfilled promises. That was my first lesson in dealing with Al. Don't tell him what you will do; simply show up and get it done. I was there the next morning and quite a few after that. It was not a difficult job and I was not doing anything in particular, living in a homeless shelter and looking for a paying job when I was able. During all this time, I would hang out with my friend Larry at the club in the evenings and we would occasionally see Gretchen and we became nodding acquaintances and that was about it, except for a few short conversations. I mostly spoke to Gretchen at the monthly steak dinners where I had begun to volunteer as a dishwasher with a couple of drinks and a steak dinner (paid for by Al and Gretchen) for pay.

One day, after I had finished vacuuming, while I was sitting at the bar, drinking a cup of coffee, Al came up from the office and sat down and we began to talk about this and that. Eventually, talk turned to Al's rental house where he had to evict the man who had been renting it. In the process of living there, the man had pretty much destroyed the place. On my initial visit to the place, there was petrified dog manure throughout the house. We began to call the place The Project.

It was not too long before I was vacuuming in the mornings and heading over to The Project immediately afterward. It also was not too long before Al learned that I told the truth when I told him I was cut out for lugging and hauling and not much else. He probably shudders to this day to even think of me with a paint brush or roller in my hand. But I did manage to lug and haul a whole bunch of stuff. Again, I was a volunteer, but working with Al was a great experience and that had a great deal to do with his management style. We would start our shifts at the project with him telling me what he hoped to accomplish that day. From there, it was pretty much up to me to determine where my capabilities lay and then to act on that determination. I remember his remarkable patience with me as I found the hard way to do things and proceeded to do them that way.

One day, Al asked what plans I had for after our shift at The Project. I told him that, as usual, I had no definite plans. He simply said, "Well, you're with me the rest of the day."

We finished for the day and then headed over to his house where we immediately had a drink out on the deck at his tiki bar. Gretchen soon came home from her job downtown and we had another drink. Then it was time for Al to cook steaks on the grill while Gretchen put the rest of dinner on in the kitchen. I ate like a king that night and many more after that at Al and Gretchen's. They both are accomplished cooks. As often as not, on nights when we did not eat at their house, they would take me to one of their favorite restaurants for dinner and drinks.

Eventually, around February, 2009, I got a part-time job as a teaching assistant at an adult education center in town. It was only three hours per day, but that knocked out my vacuuming. I was able to continue at The Project, however, and that had become very important to me. I was determined to see this thing through to the end. There were times when it seemed as though it never would end, as in the case of The Screwed Up Shower Door. Enough said about that, except I can get you a consultant for this kind of thing real quick. Just remember that a consultant is the guy who will borrow your watch to tell you what time it is and then tell you why you need a new watch. Eventually, The Project was finished and that was that.

Al and Gretchen had me over for dinner after all that and I continued to volunteer at club dinners when I was able. But I knew I had made friends for life. There were others involved in all this, but this is mainly about Al and Gretchen, even though I have spoken primarily about myself and my experiences with them. Al knew there was a right way and a wrong way to fix his damaged house and he got it done right. Looked nearly like new and a darn sight better than you would have thought possible. Gretchen is the same way in what she does which, incidentally, has a lot to do with those steak dinners and other functions at the club. Don't miss Gretchen's desserts or her prize-winning chili. Al does all the industrial shopping for these dinners, which is not part of his job as club manager. He just knows it will not get done if he does not do it. I have been on these trips with him. They are multi-stop, labor intensive trips that take up a good couple of hours. Then it all has to be put away. Al gets it done. Gretchen gets it done when it comes to the setting up of tables, cooking side dishes and desserts, serving and just being her gracious self.

I left Indiana last October and leaving these two was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I missed them as soon as I left them the night before when I told them goodbye and I miss them now. It is especially difficult now that I have found out Al has cancer in both lungs. There was an appreciation dinner for him yesterday at the club and when I first heard of it, my initial impulse was to jump on a bus and get there. I had the time and the money to get there and back. I had one other thing. Nearly six months of sobriety that I knew I would blow if I went there. I know Al and Gretchen will understand this.

My New Home

As mentioned earlier, it is time to describe my new home. It is important to note that since my return to Connecticut, if I have not been hospitalized or in one protected environment or another, whether shelter or nursing home (as in the lamentable Bowels of Hell, also previously mentioned). These places, while less than ideal, have served their purpose insofar as food and shelter are concerned. They also have kept me away from the bars and liquor stores and other near occasions of sin. The test for that comes now I am in my own place.

My room is not huge but it is on the front side of the house with two windows, one facing the front, generally west, and the other faces generally north. These windows actually open and there is a ceiling fan. My furniture at this point consists of a mattress on the floor, a round table, a wooden hamper, a bookcase, a wooden folding chair, and a folding camping chair. If things hold true to form I will soon be in need of more bookcases.

My book collection at this time is a bit sparse, especially in the reference section where I have nothing at all. When present, I take my dictionaries for granted; when I have none, it is a real feeling of loss. The plural case is correct, too. From The Compact Oxford English Dictionary to my old Liddell & Scott Latin-English dictionary (lost after all this time), to all my foreign language-English dictionaries, these are books that are essential to any place I call home. Their absence will not cause me any irreparable harm, but their presence sure would be reassuring. Time will solve this. This is not to mention the books that I habitually read over and over, but, again, this will all come in time.

The house itself is very light and I have the run of the first floor which consists of an adequate bathroom, a fairly large living room, and a big, airy kitchen. There are two bedrooms in the basement which I have not yet seen. Both are occupied by men named Mark and I, of course, am Marc. Pronounced the same, but orthographically different. I have asked the other two to call me Marcus (my actual, given name) if it will make things easier. There also is a sick cat (thyroid) named Kitty, but who is so thin due to her condition that I call her Stick when no one else is around. She doesn't seem to mind. One of the Marks living downstairs is half-owner of the property and that helps to assure that the place is well-kept and that behavior is kept at an acceptable standard.

The front yard and my front window look out on Main Street which is busy, but the traffic noise is soon blocked out except for the occasional suicide jockey on his crotch rocket looking for a speeding ticket. The back yard is even quieter and on Thursday morning, my first and only, so far, I saw a male cardinal light in a bush and then flutter up into a tree. This was favorite bird of my Dad's and I took it as a sort of greeting from him. A good beginning.

The Bowels of Hell Skilled Nursing Facility

Having moved from the Bowels of Hell skilled nursing facility where the nurses have to supply their own blood pressure cuffs and stethoscopes, I got to spend one night in my newly rented room before reporting back to the hospital for another round of chemo. But let's backtrack before talking about our new home. That may be a while in coming. The Bowels of Hell skilled nursing facility deserves a lot of attention, so the new home may have to wait until next time.

I headed up to the Bowels of Hell after my last hospital stay and went there knowing nothing about the place. Talk about songs of innocence and songs of experience; old Mr. Blake ain't got nothing on me. "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright," my foot.

On my first night at the BOH, I was placed in a room with two bedridden men with whom I spent my entire time while incarcerated in this place. The one next to me asked an aide who happened to be in the room if he would empty his bedside urinal. From my bed, I was able to witness the emptying as the bathroom was straight across from me. The aide grabbed the urinal, walked it to the bathroom, held it over the toilet a little over waist high, emptied it into the toilet, returned to the man's bed without rinsing the urinal and hooked it on the man's bed rail. The aide then left without changing gloves, washing hands or any other of the things you might expect in a skilled nursing facility.

Because of my dressing changes, I am only able to shower at certain times; that is, just before a dressing change. These occur three times per week. The day finally came for my dressing change and I proceeded to the shower room but could not get in due to the fact that there were patient lifts parked in front of both shower stalls. So, I went on to the big shower room where there is only one stall but also a large bathtub for the non-ambulatory patients. Both shower rooms have in common the fact that they have no place to hang your clothes, place your soap or shampoo, or even to hang a towel. Makes it a bit of a challenge. What made it even more of a challenge for me was the fact that there was a large pool of brown water in front of the shower I was forced to use. It made me wonder if I really wanted to use the shower since it is a straight walk-in affair with no lip between the shower and the main floor. And no curtain, either. Somehow I managed and got out alive and uninfected.

The staff give a lot away by their conversation. For example, I learned, simply by sitting and listening, that management did not buy toilet brushes for cleaning, but got "scrapers" instead. There also seems to be a problem with maintaining a supply of trash bags and bags for soiled linen. I was paroled from this Devil's Island on a Wednesday, the day of an inspection. All day on the Tuesday before my release, there was massive cleaning going on. Early on, someone asked for bleach and was informed that the facility had no bleach. Imagine a skilled nursing facility with no bleach.

Back to the staff who were for the most part friendly and amiable. I must note however, that they seemed to always communicate by yelling, usually with all parties involved yelling at the same time. This was not necessarily angry yelling; it was simply a matter of volume. And then there was the frequency of the use of the f-word; it seemed to be in use in every four or five words or so. An indispensable part of their vocabulary, it could be used as noun, verb, adjective, you name it.

That is the most I can tell you about this place at this point. There are things I may have blocked from my mind. When I think of it, I can only remember Kurtz, from Heart of Darkness, and exclaim, "The horror! The horror!"

Charity as a Verb

Charlotte and Grant probably first came into my life shortly after I moved to Connecticut in October, 1986. Mary was a teacher in the local school system and so was Charlotte. I know I met Charlotte long before meeting Grant.

Charlotte immediately impressed me as one of Mary’s friends simply by her manner and way of dealing with a variety of people. The first several times I was able to be in Charlotte’s company happened to be at various social occasions for teachers. These events were for me usually difficult since I do not like crowds and a lot of noise. I usually found myself sitting alone at these gatherings as I felt not much in common with most of the people there. I was struck, however by the way Charlotte usually managed to find the time to come and say hello and to see how I was getting along. This is simply part of who she is. Caring and sharing are integral to Charlotte’s peronality.

I remember Wednesdays when Mary was sick. Wednesday was always a good day because this was when Charlotte would deliver to our house a complete home-cooked meal with instructions for heating in the oven. This was done without fanfare of any kind, always very quietly. Charlotte always seemd to prove that the best charity is done in secret.

Grant is another story. I didn’t quite know what to make of Grant when I first met him. What that first occasion was is hard to say, but I tend to think it was at his home for dinner. He seemed friendly enough but there was something that made me a little uneasy. Later, I found what it was. Grant is at least as big a smart-ass as I am. When you find in others that which disturbs you, it may be that you are seeing a .case. You have never met a more caring and loyal friend.

Living conditions have been less than ideal since my return to Connecticut on the 31st of October. I have either been in the hospital or a nursing facility or a temporary residential program. I only was able to move into my own place on the 7th of April. Since the beginning, Grant has been there, providing rides to wherever I needed or wanted to go. I remember when I first went to the Temporary Residential Program, I was standing outside performingh an air quality check (aka, smoking) when Grant rolled up and said, “Hey, you want to get out of there for a while?” That began a five-month long series of nearly daily rides.

Those rides generally ended at Charlotte and Grant’s where I mostly slept on their counch only to be awakened for supper. Shortly after supper, Grant would get me back to where I needed to go. This was a great burden to him in the last few weeks, since that is when I was in the alleged skilled nursing facility, which was about 35 miles from Grant’s house. Think of the math a moment. This involved to 70-mile round trips almost daily for a couple of weeks or, a minimum of 140 miles per day.

One of the nicer things about being at home with this wonderful couple is that they both recognize that there is a time for conversation and there is a time to just be silent. I have just spent the last five motnhs among some people who never have had an unspoken thought and it has been less than pleasing, to say the least. It is so nice to be at home (they do make you feel at home) with Charlotte and Grant and not have to fill every second with noise.

There is much more to say about these two, but there is not enough time. Examples of kindness could be compounded ad infinitum but would likely emabrrass them. Suffice it to say that they are examples of charity, in the oldest and truest sense of the word, in action. They make charity a verb instead of a noun.

Curious Times in San Francisco

This is a true story and a tragic one. It happened this way.

I ran away from home after quitting high school in the middle of my senior year. Eventually, I ended up in San Francisco and its famous Haight-Ashbury District. But there is more to Baghdad by the Bay than Haight-Ashbury. There is the Sunset District, the Presidio, the Tenderloin, the Fillmore, the Marina, and there is North Beach. Ah, yes, North Beach, home of Carol Doda's and all the other topless joints. Home of the City Lights bookstore, Ginsburg's home. There are a few other bookstores around and these are mostly frequented by out-of-towners in dark glasses who lurk furtively in and out of these places. And then there was Enrico's.

Enrico's is gone now, destroyed by fire from what I understand and, while this is not the tragedy I spoke of in the first sentence, it is a tragedy in its own right and should not go unremarked. Enrico's was one of the finest Italian restaurants in America and it had both indoor and outdoor seating. When I began going to Enrico's I decided that the outdoor seating was fine for me. I was underage and was ordering wine that came in these glasses that resembled goldfish bowls. The traffic in the outdoor area was thick and the waiters paid me very little mind, or so I thought.

The outdoor seating area at Enrico's fronted the width of the place and my best seat was in a corner at the left as you faced the place. In this corner I sat at least one evening every time I visited San Francisco then and in subsequent years. And I mean the entire evening. It was too good a spot to give up watching the people show on the passing on the street. Eventually, I became fairly well known to the staff and the regulars. After twenty years away from the place, a bartender still recognized me and remembered my name when Mary and I walked in one day. "Hi, Marc," he said. "How have you been?" Before I got a word out, Mary had turned a funny shade of whitish-red and said, "My God. Those stories are all true." Most of them.

At any rate, going back to my very first visit to Enrico's in early 1967, I sat in my corner seat and watched people, especially a long line of people lined up to go into a place next door. There were men in tuxedos and women in the most fantastic gowns this Michigan boy had ever seen. The women were absolutely gorgeous and I was having the time of my life watching this slow-moving parade waltz (there is no other word for it; it's how they moved) past me on their way to the door that would hide them from my sight. I was so seated that my back was turned to part of the line and I really did not think too much about this as I was getting quite a show as it was. But then it happened.

Someone had pinched my backside and when I turned to see who had done me this outrage (it was the first time this had ever happened to me and I was not yet 18), my outrage turned to amazement as I saw one of the aforementioned beauties fluttering her eyelashes at me and giving me a little wave. Her escort was oblivious and it came to me that I could grab her hand and run off with her right there, him never knowing what happened. It was about that time that my regular waiter came over and we had the following conversation.

Leaning very close in to me and speaking very quietly, he said, "You're not from around here, are you, kid?"

"No, I'm not," I admitted.

"Well, son, you're in San Francisco where not everything is what it seems to be."
I told him I didn't understand.

He finally came out with it and said, "That woman is not a woman."

I looked and said, "Nooooo."

He said, "Yes. Check out her feet and hands. Oh, and the Adam's apple while you're at it."

Next door to Enrico's was Finnochio's, at that time one of the most famous drag clubs in the world and just seconds before I had been all set to be dragged away. Now, scooting my chair as far from the rail as possible, I pondered the possibility of heading back to Michigan. But that was out of the question; I figured there was still more to see and learn. I headed into the night.

No. Regrets.

Looking back to another time I realize just what I missed and, like most realizations of this sort, it comes around a bit late to do anything about it. Well, I can do half of it, I suppose and hope to know what the other half is doing in response to all of this. I have a pretty good idea but a rather late life lesson for me has been to learn to not to presume too much.

When Mary and I first met in 1986, we talked all the time. There was all manner of give and take about all manner of things. We did not confine ourselves to the usual talk about others. We talked about ideas and events around us. Some of our greatest times together were spent discussing books we had read and the ideas behind those books. We introduced one another to various authors and writings, ideas and thoughts. Before we were married, I told Mary, a cradle Catholic, that I (a cradle mongrel Protestant would be the best description) would never become a Catholic simply because she was one. Whether she knew it, it was her conversation that got me moving in the direction of the Church I was to enter at the Easter Vigil, 2001. But all that conversation slowed down, at least on my part, and eventually came to a grinding halt.

I do not know why this should have been the case. Another thing I don't understand: It has been just about a week and a half short of four years since she died and in all that time I have found more to say to her than I did in the four years previous to her death. Sometimes I think I hear answers. Not that I hear voices, but more like I have an ear in my mind that picks up on what she might be saying.

At one point I suppose I decided that I write better than I talk. This was long before I met Mary. In fact, it was probably somewhere along in high school when I first noticed this. Much of this may have had to do with home life where all was chaos and it was best to keep silent rather than get caught up in the ongoing fray. I learned early on that opening your mouth could put you directly in the line of fire. This is the training I received that put me on to the smart-ass remark, the witty rejoinder, the snappy comeback or, to put it another way, the secret of communicating while not appearing to do so. By turning everything into a joke, no one would take me seriously and yet my point would be made. Thus I became the class clown at school and at home. Realizing at one point that jokes were not always appropriate, I learned the rest of the time to keep my mouth shut and to lay low.

So, the major regret is that I missed out on all the wonderful things Mary could have and would have told me. Her mind was so alive and willing to share what she had in there and I was alive and willing to share jokes. She used to come home from a day of teaching elementary art saying, as she entered the door, "I need to talk to an adult right now." This was a defensive measure for her, I think, since she got to know that a joke would be coming unless it was forestalled. This is something for which I can never forgive myself. Yes, we did continue to have conversations that were joke-free, but they were too few and far between. I would have been a far richer and wiser man today had I bothered to converse with Mary on a regular basis. The fact that I did not is a crime against her and her memory.

Dangerous Books

Going through a book fan website and checking off books that I have read, books I need to read, panning some books while praising others, there arises a trend similar to the one I spoke of concerning music and its influences on me. There are certain books I am certain that set me on the road for my 20-year jaunt on the road around North America. This includes most provinces in Canada, every state in Mexico and the contiguous 48 states of the United States. Since this roaming began in the middle of my senior year of high school, the time-frame for reading these books can reasonably be set at anywhere between my 8th-grade year and December, 1966 when I hit the road.

One of the earliest read and most influential books for me was Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The thought of grabbing a raft and just floating down the river stays with me to this day. When I first read Huck, there was no question in my mind about the language, especially the controversial language, since somewhere along the line I had been alerted to something called, "historical context." Of course, this was before actual history was replaced by something called, "social studies." In other words, someone had managed to pound enough sense into my skull to allow me to read certain words with the knowledge that the manner of speaking in this book was not necessarily the way people in my era were supposed to speak, but that su8ch language may have been perfectly natural in another time. Go figure. I hope I never forget my lessons in historical context.

It was sometime around the 10th grade when I read, The Great Imposter, by Ferdinand DeMara, a man with a knack for impersonating just about anything he wanted to impersonate, including a teacher, a surgeon and I forget what all else. A movie starring Tony Curtis was made about this real-life character. But the main thing is that DeMara traveled a lot and gave me another nudge to hit the road.

The Catcher in the Rye was influential but to me not the great book it had been hailed as by people around me. I know it was the first time I had read the infamous "F" word in print and remember being both shocked and amused at this novelty. Beyond that, the book was not directly responsible for the sand in my shoes, but it did give me a push in the right direction, attitude-wise. And I already had a wise-ass attitude. Congenital, most likely. It ain't me; it's my genes, Your Honor.

Back to Mark Twain just long enough to mention that I read most of his travel books long before I read his fiction. Life on the Mississippi, The Innocents Abroad, Following the Equator and A Tramp Abroad were important to me, especially the first one listed in this sentence. I have always found myself attracted to rivers and lakes. The ocean is okay, but I prefer tamer water, not that you can tame the rivers in this country or anywhere else. Just look at the Mississippi, the Red, the Platte here in this country. Twain's talk of going here and there almost effortlessly helped to hook me on peregrination as a way of life.

There are more books that guided my feet out to US 24 to foolishly head north that stormy December day and I am sure I will mention more in the future. The decisions were all mine and I long past the age of reason, so no one takes any blame for what came after but me. These "dangerous books" were not at all dangerous to me, but I am sure my elders would have found them so if they had known where they might lead me.

Seven East

There is a form available to patients here at St. Vincent's. The form is called, "You Touched My Heart," and is for reporting an employee's extra efforts, good work above and beyond the call of duty, etc., etc. As a rule, I do not like forms of this nature and the reason for that may be that whenever an employee of any business impresses me to the extent that comment is called for, I generally find their boss right away and let them know in person what a good employee they have on their hands. I remember when Mary was here for one of her frequent visits to the Oncology Unit, she was as always given unstintingly excellent treatment by one and all, from the housekeeping people to the oncology nurses. It seemed as though there was not enough anyone could do for her. That treatment was not reserved for Mary; it was consistent throughout the unit. I went and spoke to the nurse manager and told her what a great staff she had. She was gratified to hear it and I like to think she passed my comments on to those who needed to hear them.

My experience of the care here comes from both sides; I have seen it as a husband watching his wife waste away from cancer and now I am experiencing that care first hand as a patient undergoing treatment for skin cancer. When I first arrived here as a patient on October 31, 2009, I was immediately greeted by several nurses who had treated Mary. The last they saw of me was the day of Mary's funeral, April 5, 2006. It was like I had never left the place. Two of my brothers and a sister-in-law helped me bring flowers over to the unit from the funeral parlor. There were too many to keep (they would not all fit in an eight-foot pickup bed and the extended cab) and this seemed the appropriate place for them. I asked that they be distributed among the patients, but should have given them to the nurses. Clear thinking, never my forté, especially did not come in to play that day, however, and the nurses went home flowerless.

As for specifics there are a couple of areas; performance and personal names. Since this covers every person working on this unit, I will not use personal names. These people know who they are; if they work on this unit, they are the ones I am talking about. That leaves performance.

Difficult patients are no match for the personnel here. I have witnessed a particularly recalcitrant patient hurl his pills across the room while calling the nurse every name in the book. The response was measured, calm and professional. Except for the patient, voices were kept to a low whisper and very soon the incident was over. Personally, I would have used an axe handle, but have been told that sort of treatment is not therapeutically indicated. There seems to be a certain unreasoned prejudice against my methods.

The nurses here also must contend with patients such as myself whose humor has been described as very dark. Jokes about death, the pleasantries attendant on various chemo side effects and disease in general just sort of come pouring out of my mouth whenever an audience appears. This is the direct result of what Mary told me about once. She said that there are all these words in my head and that there is my mouth. She further informed me that most people have a filter between the two locations that saves them from embarrassment, but that I seem to have been congenitally deprived of any such filter. This is what the nurses have to put up with on a daily basis from me. They humor me, but never seem to lose their professionalism.

There does not seem to be a typical day here and the fact that none of the nurses ever seems ruffled is a testament to their adaptability and resourcefulness. They respond to daily, sometimes hourly, emergencies with equanimity, without a flutter. It is pretty amazing to see people perform life-saving actions under stress as if it were all just in a day's work. The truth of the matter is that it is all in a day's work for these special nurses. They do it daily and come back for more the next day.

Gratitude for the actions they perform is not in sufficient supply to go around fairly to one and all, which is why this is being written. Although the words are less than is called for, the address is to the nurse manager, every nurse, graduate nurse, nurse assistant, housekeeper and food service worker who works on 7-East. Thanks to one and all for all you do.

I baffi é morto Lunga vita al baffi

My moustache came off today. The Erbetux rash got beneath what experienced bushwhackers said was impenetrable scrub and started acting up, causing some significant discomfort. With one brief exception, this moustache has been with me for 42 years, warming my upper lip, gathering crumbs, getting in the way, especially when I forget to trim it. The one brief exception was when Mary lost her hair due to chemotherapy. After telling her I would meet her halfway, I shaved the right half of my moustache the day her hair came out and asked if that was enough. At her suggestion, I shaved the left half as well. Less than two weeks later, Mary was asking me to grow the moustache back again.

In December, 1966, I dropped out of high school in the middle of my senior year (public education has to be stopped somewhere) and ran away from home on the same day. Running off seemed like a good idea since I did not think my parents would take too kindly to having a high school dropout son. Although I was gone for a mere six months, there was nothing mere about the time to Mom and Dad who were subjected to all manner of suspicions concerning my fate. Imagine them finding out in the end that that fate simply meant a vagrancy charge in Las Vegas along with a sentence of what then was known as "thirty days or out of town." You had a choice of doing 30 days in jail or getting out of town. I told them I would just as soon get, but they held me due, I suspect, to a missing person report. My parents' revenge was in not sending me a plane ticket. I rode a Greyhound bus from Las Vegas, Nevada to Detroit, Michigan, reading Lenny Bruce's self-congratulatory How to Talk Dirty and Influence People and a great book by Wilfrid Sheed, called, Square's Progress. Bruce's book I suppose was subversive while Sheed's was simply fun. While I became more of a fan of Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, Wilfrid's parents, the junior member of the family always makes me smile with his writing. It was on that bus trip I discovered I would rather be fun than subversive, although subversive fun had and still has its attractions. My subversive life was not nipped completely in the bud, however, since I had fomented a plot to grow a moustache.

Moustaches were not quite in vogue when I left Haight-Ashbury in 1967 on that ill-fated trip to Las Vegas, but I knew enough Old and New Testament history to know that changes in name (Abram to Abraham, Saul to Paul) usually indicated a change in life. Why, I reasoned, would a moustache not mark me as a changed man? I was barely 18 and had traveled (hitchhiking) the length of Route 66 (Chicago to Long Beach) long before it was closed by the interstates, been to Haight-Ashbury, smoked some of those left-handed cigarettes (nope; don't do it no more; sorry, can't help you) and could roll my own, drank whiskey and wine out of the bottle, could down a 40-pounder of beer without letting up, stay up half the night and get up first thing in the morning to get it started all over again. I had already roughnecked in the Permian Basin of West Texas and worked as an underpaid loader and unloader of trucks; rough work and sometimes dangerous at long hours for low pay. Always managed to find good people to work for, though, no matter how lousy the conditions. In short, I was a full-grown man and my upper lip was prime real estate to display a proper sign of my testosterone-fueled ego.

It was only later that people began to call my initial attempt a Sergeant Pepper moustache. I never claimed that name for it. Originally, what I was going for is called in the old hairstyle charts a, "chevron." Just a basic moustache stretching the length of the lip and turning down at the corners just a bit. What I ended up with has always been sort of its own creation. It keeps the original basic shape, but goes into free-range mode with the slightest encouragement. Now, moustache maintenance is a critical task, especially to the gentleman who wishes to appear well-groomed, and to maintain an attractive and comely moustache is no mean feat. It takes work and dedication on an almost daily basis. There are those who succeed admirably in this task and they have the growth to show for it. Moustache maintenance also takes a home base and this is where I came up short.

Shortly after returning home, I took off again, hitting the road for what would total 19 1/2 years before settling down with Mary. All those years and beyond, my moustache was one of the first things people would speak of when describing me, usually noting its prodigious growth. Comments ranged from the sarcastic ("Nice moustache") to the envious ("Wish I could grow me one like that"). Usually it was somewhere in the middle with people trying to pass a compliment and that is how I usually took their remarks. But I could also see for my own eyes that life on the road was not conducive to establishing a shining example of topiary on my upper lip. "Brush islands" are those areas in, say, a well-groomed park, where brush seems to simply grow up on its own and sit there. What I ended up with was more akin to a brush island on my face than a moustache. But is was my brush island and I was proud of it. It kept the basic shape of a moustache, but just barely.

Through the years it has been a part of my face, of me. I am not sure it is gone for good. It may just come back on its own but probably not until the Erbetux is all used up. And that's all I have to say about that.

Job for Which I May Be Qualified

Did you ever sit and wonder what job for which you just might be perfectly qualified if such a job really did exist? You can bet I have. Otherwise, why would I have brought it up? I like to think of my ideal job as being in the public relations/marketing niche, with my particular corner seeing me as a freelance, independent agent serving all manner of offices and businesses where the public happens to congregate for any period of time. This would include doctors' offices and other medical waiting rooms, restaurants, especially the outdoor type in good weather, bars, and other venues where people do not expect anything out of the ordinary. Herewith, my prospectus.

What I have in mind is my patented Local Color® option to be put in place by my client companies. My role, simply put, would be to sit in the public areas of the various clients and engage their clients in good conversation, witty repartee and, for a slight additional charge, the occasional metaphysical dialogue. As far as the other clients would be concerned, I would just be another person waiting to be served, but with a distinction, and that distinction is the ability to rattle on and on about nearly any subject with a good deal of savoir faire, wit, humor and assumed intelligence.

Let us say someone enters the waiting room and begins, as people will do, to comment on the weather. There is nothing to lower the tone of a waiting room like some buffoon going on and on about the weather a la, "Hot enough for you?" Once that first thunderbolt is off, most people would give up and die of ennui on the spot. That is because they have never been served by Local Color®. "Hot enough for you," is routinely met by me with references to my time in Hell when I was given a personal tour by some of the nastier names in history. Modesty forbids the revelation of those names, but I am sure you would recognize a dictator or two, the man who invented PowerPoint, and one or two Karaoke stars. (Yes, without going into details, I am able to give complete assurance that there is in fact a special Karaoke Hell.) I then give a physical description of the place, very much similar to Dante's depiction in his famous work. By the time I have finished, those still waiting for appointments are trying to sign up for times when I will have a future appointment. I am often asked in these settings, "Hey. Come here often?"

Doctors will be especially interested in Local Color's® special attention to pharmaceutical representatives, especially the pesky ones who never bring lunch. A carefully scripted scenario has been worked out for the specialty of each medical office. Let us take, for example, the oncology office. Now first off, you have a roomful of patients who are none too happy to be there. The next thing you know, some kid, about one third the median age of your patients walks in, dressed in a suit and shoes that cost more than two of your car payments. And you know, along with that crease in his trousers and that shine on his shoes, he has a song on his lips and a sales pitch in his black heart. Well, let's just see how Mr. Pharma Rep handles a routine patient query, such as, "Psst! Buddy! Got any psychotropics? No? Got anything with any street value?"

It is immediately apparent to the astute person the customizable opportunities available to each business and even to specific lines of business within large organizations. Why let your business simply exist one more day when the Local Color® professional is ready to serve you at a moment's notice? Make that call today and put us to work. We need the cash.

In and Out and Back Again in Less Than 24 Hours

Danger: Rambling ahead

Speaking of things one cannot get rid of, kind of like dog doo on a Vibram sole . . . Here I am. Out on the first, back on gthe second, and here it is, the fourth. Still at St. Vincent's.

Go figure. You get released from the hospital and go back to the Pharm (called that by me because of the all the drugs the residents are on) only to get put back in the following day for yet more side effects from either the Erbetux or the 5FU. Who knows which one is to blame? In recent entries we have elucidated quite enough on the situation in the lower GI tract, so let us go on to something else. This rash sounds like a good idea.

The rash is caused by the Erbetux and, according to the best information available, is actually a good sign that the Erbetux is doing its job. In fact, the worse the rash, the better the outcome as far as the cancer goes. You must take the bad with the good, it seems. It also seems that part of the bad is going around with at least your face looking like a leper with a bad case of acne who appears anxious to join Job on his dungheap. Scoot over, pass the potsherds and let's get scraping. Feels kind of like someone has worked my face and throat over witht a brand spanking new piece of forty-grit sandpaper and then threw a little itching powder on there just to get things going..

At any rate, I was on what they call Contact Precautions for a while yesterday and today but I am sure they will be calling that off soon. It was more of a precaution for the other patients; just making sure I was not carrying anything around to them. Of course, that also keeps me cxonfined to my room until this is all called off. It would just be nice to get out of here and spend a week or two doing semi-normal stuff. Maybe heading to the library, having a Cafe Americano at Starbuck's. Stuff we too often take for granted. It would be nice to go over and play with my grandchildren. Right now, however, my face might just run them off in the opposite direction. Especially nice right about now would be getting up to walk around without worrying about an IV tube hanging from my chest. Even so and despite the continuous whining, I must say that I seem to have it so much better than a lot of folks here. There are people here who truly are hurting but who do not have this outlet as I do. That is not simply an afterthought as I see it everyday I am here, whether people are being wheeled by my room on their way to a test or a "procedure," or whether I am out (when allowed by the infection control folks) and walking by their rooms, unavoidably witnessing what they and their families are going through. God bless 'em all.

More of Just What Everyone Needs

Looking through the various applications available on Facebook, not that I need any, just more out of curiosity as to what people could possibly want to spruce up pages that already seem a little busy, I found the perfect application for people one hates or, at least for whom one has a certain minimum amount of good old fashioned ill will.

First, I must say that I have sat through numerous unrecoverable hours of my life in various meetings, all of which seemed deliberately designed to put to a slow and torturous death any mental life within a radius of 100 miles. Once I was at a state-mandated all-day meeting, the point of which was to tell us how to hold brief, successful meetings. In my job as the community service labor supervisor for this agency, it was not my custom to call the community service guys in for a meeting. My job was to get them out to the city and state parks and get them to clean them up. That didn't take much meeting time; in fact, all it usually took was an explanation that failure to complete community service hours meant time in jail. Anyway, our "facilitator" at this meeting basically had one message which was that it is a good idea to plan your meeting with others, necessitating, of course what I suppose professional "facilitators" would call a pre-meeting. Hearkening back to the paradoxes of Zeno, I asked where the pre-meetings would end and was met by a blank, unknowing stare. I mean, it simply makes sense that to have a meeting requiring a pre-meeting, the pre-meeting should likewise be preceded by a pre-pre-meeting, ad infinitum, ad absurdum.

Some of the worst meetings to which I have been subjected are the ones that are dominated by the PowerPoint demonstration. What tortured soul in the depths of hell came up with PowerPoint and what demented Prometheus saw fit to give this knowledge to man? I hope his vulture is working overtime ripping out pieces of his hopefully cirrhotic liver as I sit here thinking about it.

PowerPointers all seem to operate under the illusion that their audiences are solely made up by the illiterate and the vision-impaired. Projecting a slide upon the screen, they will read, exactly as it appears, every word of text on that slide and without further elucidation, will proceed to the next. Suppose your PowerPointer has just read through Slide A and has gotten to Slide B. For fun, about halfway through the reading of Slide B, ask a question about Slide A. This will have your PowerPointer skipping back to the previous slide, reading it over and, once again, proceeding without further elucidation. PowerPoint is just one of those tools that makes people feel that since they have done something, they have accomplished something. The accomplishment they feel and the actual results usually are two different things.

This wonderful application I have found for Facebook is a way for folks to share their favorite PowerPoint slides. As a public service, I will include no further information about this application in the hope that people will not be further tempted to give it a try. If you do decide to go down that highway of sin and shame, please don't send it to me. As Huck Finn said about Aunt Polly's plan to "sivilize" him, "I can't stand it. I been there before."

Stops and Starts - with Some Infliction of Indignity

Speaking of the evocative power of music as we were in the last entry: I must say I find underwhelming the lack of response to my call for a song to be played here at St. Vincent's whenever someone's constipation finally lets go. My argument is brief and I will repeat it here.

The Argument, Briefly Stated: A few bars of a lullaby are played upon the birth of every child here. Why the birth canal should get sole attention here is beyond me. Anyone who has experienced a stoppage of the alimentary canal can surely agree that the re-opening of the works is song-worthy. The question remains, "What song?"

My message to the nurses here whenever I come for one of my periodic visits is that I will attempt to be as low maintenance as possible. "Low maintenance" takes on quite a different meaning when the lower portion of the alimentary canal simply clamps down. Lots of screaming for a LaMaze coach and an epidural ensue while one ponders the claim that childbirth is the worst pain of them all. I am more than ready to argue this point. I would never say childbirth is not painful; I simply am ready for a good argument over something that cannot be empirically proven by either side. That's one way in which constipation affects my mind.

"I'm Drinking Canada Dry," would do for the amount of fluids I have been taking, but that only covers effort and not the results of the act. Yes, the effort is extraordinary and, for my money, I could sit on the toilet listening to The Pretenders singing Back on the Chain Gang all day long for all the good the effort seems to do. Maybe the Cowboy Junkies could come up with something. Their Cheap is How I Feel, is close but doesn't quite cover it, although it would cover some of the procedures involved. After today's bout and resultant resolution, the "procedures involved" had me asking the nurse if we are now engaged and if she will respect me in the morning. A leering, "No, on both counts," has left me feeling cheap and degraded.

There are specific lines in certain songs that would cover the situation, such as those great words from Chantilly Lace originally sung by The Big Bopper and later on by Jerry Lee Lewis: "Makes you feel real loose, like a long-neck goose, ooh, baby, that's what I like." Maybe there is not an entire song and there is the possibility that a line taken out of context such as the one just mentioned may have to suffice. This does not seem fair to me, however, so the search goes on.

Waking up to Townes Van Zandt, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Nanci Griffith, June Tabor and Gram Parsons

Waking up to Townes Van Zandt, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Nanci Griffith, June Tabor and Gram Parsons isn't a bad way to wake up if you have to be in the hospital. Found a free service that has a wide selection of music. There are 25 free plays per month, but it keeps resetting my remaining selections to the upper teens or low 20s. I'll take it. Just finished listening to Banks of the Guadalupe and am about to listen to Red Chevrolet. All hospital rooms should come with this rather than the television. At $13.00/month for individual subscriptions, they should be able to work a deal with the company that would likely be a fraction of cable television, the full menu of which is blacked out here, anyway. It is a much more relaxing way to write this.

Listening to some of what I refer to as "my music," that is, music that instantly calls up a time, a place, a mood, I realize how much this stuff means to me. In my "lost years" from December, 1966 to June, 1986, I remember always being around music one way or another, whether it was at a concert, live music or the jukebox in some bar, or at someone's house or in a car or truck, music always seemed to be playing, although there are those who argue that it's just the road buzz in my head from 19 1/2 years of turning down just one more highway, following one more lead to Utopia. "And I saw my devil and I saw my deep blue sea; and I thought about a calico bonnet from Cheyenne to Tennessee." That's from the Flying Burrito Brothers' song Return of the Grievous Angel.

It took me nearly 20 years to find that calico bonnet (and she didn't even have the decency to be wearing one, but I recognized her anyway) and I had to go further from Cheyenne to Tennessee. Had to go to Washington, D.C. and let her find me sitting on a park bench at about 6:00 in the evening of June 25, 1986. She was from Connecticut and I was from the road. After making a rubbing of her brother's name off the Viet Nam Memorial for her, I walked her to a free concert on the Capitol lawn. Later we went for a few beers and then I walked her back to her hotel. She asked me to meet her there for coffee in the morning and I agreed. We met for coffee and then she was on her way back to Connecticut after giving me her phone number and telling me to call her if I ever got up that way. Nine days later I was in Connecticut with everything I owned.

Now, that was July 4, 1986 and "everything I owned," consisted of a change of clothes, a razor and a toothbrush, along with a spiral notebook and some kind of reading material, the name of which I forget, all of which was packed in a gray cordura bookbag. A more disreputable looking person never graced the bar of the Stamford Marriott from which I called her, only to discover that I was not in Stratford. My ears had not been attuned to the loudspeaker on the commuter train on which I was riding and I mistook Stamford for Stratford, only a 20-mile error. She came and picked me up, anyway. From there, it took me three years to get her to marry me and even then she had people telling her not to do it. I don't bear them any grudges, however, since I was cut pretty rough and the first eight years of our marriage were hell for her due primarily to my drinking. Once I got myself cleaned up, we still had another eight years and a few months, not enough time, to be sure, but it was all good time. We were married for 16 years, 8 months and 5 days. That one song, Return of the Grievous Angel, sort of replays my whole life until I met Mary. It signifies the end of one time and the beginning of another. Good stuff.

Neutropenia and Wheat Germ: Infection Menace or Myth?

Be very careful what you wish for. Checking in to the hospital today for my 96-hour infusion of chemotherapy, my biggest concern was whether I would get a bed by the window. As luck would have it, some interloper was there ahead of me and I got assigned to the other bed. Apparently, this man and his family have more money than God and spent from around 2:00 p.m. until at least 6:30 p.m. figuring out their stock purchases and sales. I was thinking how nice it would be to have a room to myself if this was what I had to listen to, when my nurse came in to inform me that I was being moved to a private room. The stock talk was still going strong at 6:30 when this occurred and I assumed it would go on through the night as long as the Nikkei opened on schedule. This news of a move immediately made happy and suspicious. Happy: No more stock trading or whatever those folks were doing. Suspicious: You get a private room here for one reason; you need to be isolated for one reason or another. In my case, it is a low white blood count, specifically, the neutrophils. The count is 0.6 and should be between 1.4 and 6.5. Neutrophils are white blood cells that form a pretty good part of the immune system. I call it a low white count. The technical term is neutropenia, the adjective being neutropenic; e.g. I am neutropenic and you're not, so there. So, what does this mean? Glad you asked.

Right at this moment, I am being infused with Erbetux. I was scheduled to get the Cisplatin 5FU tomorrow. The plan at this point is to forego the FU and let my levels come back up. This almost assuredly will see me in here longer than 96 hours. If I leave my room, I am required to wear a mask. Other than that, not really all that much to worry about.

Nearly 11:00 p.m. and I just got busted walking the hall without a mask. Time for bed.


Morning and I just had a box of bran flakes explode all over me, my bed and the floor. Good thing I ordered two boxes. Will wheat germ give me an infection?

Now for the, "Boy, did I ever not know what I was talking about," section.

I just found out from my nurse that Cisplatin and 5FU are two different agents, not one. I have been getting the 5FU since sometime yesterday. The Cisplatin still is on hold as my blood levels as of 11:30 this morning (Friday, February 26) have not come back up to par.

It has been a few days since I have been here but that has been due to a lack of access rather than a lack of anything about which I would like to bellyache and complain in public. Today is different, however, and I am at the house of Sheila, Nick, Genny and Cole. Sheila is Mary's youngest daughter and therefore my step-daughter. She was kind enough to bring grandpa out for a field trip today. I need to be back at the home by 12:30 in order to catch my ride to my three times weekly dressing change. But meanwhile, I get to drink real coffee ands not the decaffeinated stuff the home gives us.

An argument could be made against my use of caffeine due to the tremors that are a constant source of embarrassment to me. Most of the time I look like an alcoholic who has not been able to get his morning pint and am unable to hold a glass or cup of anything without spilling it. Both hands are needed and sometimes that does not work. I need to get used to sippy cups. Do they make sippy cups for grownups? I would like at least one with Munch's "The Scream" on it. Typing is a difficult enough chore. For every character you see typed here you can add several more that are hit by accident due to tremors. But on the caffeine front, my motto is you just can't have enough.

The cause of the tremors is not yet certain. It could be the result of having a bunch of lymph nodes removed back in January, 2009. But that would not explain the left side being just as shaky as the right. It could be the chemo. It also could be an early sign of Parkinson's according to the doctor who is not going to commit one way or another just yet. Of course my theory that it is an unjust fate cast upon me by one of my four humors being out of balance due to the ill will of the gods has been rejected out of hand by the medical community. But they never saw the value in phrenology, either, shortsighted fools that they are.

Thursday will bring another admission to the hospital for a 96-hour infusion. That should put me out of the hospital on Monday if all goes well. The last infusion of this type kept me in the hospital for three weeks. While it was a nice change from the home, it really is not how I want to spend my time. I arrived back in Connecticut on October 31 and have spent a total of 10 1/2 weeks in the hospital since then. Not a stellar record unless looked upon through the lens of Munchausen.

One final note: The intrepid Sheila advertised for a free laptop on Craigslist and after getting a snarky note from someone who told her she was crazy for even thinking about it, she got one for me. It is a Toshiba Portege 7100 series with Windows 2000 Professional. The drawbacks are that it has no mouse which makes me rely on this little button set in the midst of the keys and there is no word processing program. All that is remedied easily enough, however, and will be in short order. It even has a wireless card. Wahoo. Here I am in at least the late 20th Century if not crawling in to the 21st.

Call me Mr. Tasteless. Nothing to write about yesterday without offending sensibilities. What does that mean? Here is a hint. I am in search of a song to announce the restoration of a natural function to its daily nature. The hospital announces births with a few bars of a lullaby over the building-wide intercom and all I am asking for is equal time. Why should the birth canal lord it over the lower GI tract? There must be an appropriate song out there but I am stumped. One of the nurses has suggested, "You Dropped a Bomb on Me," and while that sounds like a good choice, it remains the only choice and it hardly seems fair to base this important decision on a field of one. Any suggestions will be taken into consideration.

There is every chance that I will be discharged from the hospital today, after nearly three weeks in here. I have lost track of time in here and that can be a good thing, but it also cuts me off from reality. Of course, the reality to which I consign myself really has nothing to do with the real world. When you reside in a mental health facility you need to be on your guard at all times. I am not speaking of physical safety; what I am speaking of is the trap of letting your mental state being defined by others, whether they are inmates or staff. And good luck telling the difference.

My friend Grant has been very good about coming to visit on an almost daily basis. He always brings coffee and sometimes a pastry. He and his wife Charlotte both have been very good friends throughout this whole ordeal, providing me with countless services that just make life a lot easier. When my wife Mary was sick, Charlotte used to appear every Wednesday with a complete supper ready to go in the oven. On some Wednesdays, depending on how Mary was feeling, we would go over to Charlotte and Grant's and have supper there. Good people and in no way responsible for my opinions or remarks.

It turns out that I will spend one more night here since I am due to come back for a short chemo session tomorrow. Back here on Friday for a routine dressing change using the fantastic Hydrofera Blue, a kind of fabric that starts out stiff and dry and is antimicrobial. They cut it to the size and shape of the wound and then cover that with this clear stuff called Tegaderm. That gets outlined with tape and we're ready to go. Fascinating stuff, right?

The Sealing of the Paint Cans

February 15, 2006. It was the 46th day of the year with 319 left to go. It was to be another 46 days, April 2, the 92nd day of the year, with 273 left to go, until I would know a day as momentous as this one. It all began with a series of phone calls from Bill in Michigan to me in Connecticut while Mary, my wife was lying in the hospital in very bad shape.

It was only after I had definite assurances that Mary would be taken care of until my return that I finally agreed to drive the 700 miles from Stratford, Connecticut to Pontiac, Michigan. You're right, there is no way it is 700 miles, unless you take into consideration my perverse driving habits and turn north at Maumee instead of Toledo and perform a few other maneuvers that are simply incomprehensible unless you happen to occupy my mind.

It was not until the 13th of February that I left Connecticut and then only after many calls stating that Dad was not long for this world. Mary kept urging me to leave her in the hospital and get myself to Michigan, but she wanted me to stop at our usual place, the Budget Host Gold Eagle Inn in Brookville, PA, almost exactly halfway between each terminus of the trip. Great restaurant there run by the same family that owns the motel. I arrived there early enough in the day that I could easily have reached Pontiac early that evening, but Mary did not need further worry, so I stopped. Besides, there was something about the pickup that was bothering me.

I left for Michigan from St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport after saying goodbye to Mary. Heading north on Main Street, I turned onto the Merritt Parkway and lit out for the territory. Building up speed on the on-ramp, I noticed cars on the main road still going much faster than my truck and so brought my speed up accordingly. Looking down at the speedometer, I was surprised to see that it registered over 100 miles per hour. I knew that could not be right and so let up on the accelerator with, to my chagrin, no change in the speed registering on the speedometer. Once I got out into the flow of traffic and settled comfortably in the right lane, neither passing nor being passed, but just keeping up with the motoring public, I once again checked the speedometer to find that I was doing approximately 5 MPH. Quick study that I am, it took only seconds for me to say, "Speedometer's broken." Well, I still had the tachometer, the clock, the odometer and cruise control. Figuring 60 seconds for 60 miles per hour, I began doing timed miles and once I was within that 60-second range for several consecutive miles, I hit the cruise control and left it there until I got out of the 55 MPH area. It became easier once I hit western New Jersey and Pennsylvania since traffic was not so congested and there was less need to slow down. But more important is the fact that this speedometer incident gave me a chance to reflect on my relationship with my father, a relationship I insisted on making difficult for reasons still unknown.

Dad would have sat me down as soon as I arrived and would have diagnosed the problem with my truck in minutes as we drank coffee, while he sat at the head of the kitchen table and I sat to his left. Mary would have been to his right if this had been a normal trip. Years were wasted while I lived my life away from Michigan and while never drawing farther away from Dad, I never did grow any closer. Dad and I were strangers to one another even when I was a child. Dad was a gear head, a grease monkey, while I was a bookworm. Dad was an athlete (he played in the minor leagues for the St. Louis Cardinals) and I tripped over my own feet and still do. Dad had a practical common sense approach to things; I have always been a thinker of the very impractical sort. He always had a certain way of doing things and a reason that would back up his methods. There was a proper way to seal up paint cans, for example. It involved using the handle of a screw driver to tap the edges of the lid in a certain pattern that assured a good seal. No other way would do.

All these things seemed to matter no more once I took Mary to Michigan and introduced her to Dad. The two immediately fell in love with one another. He found another daughter while she found a father quite different from her own. Dad was quick to recognize Mary's intelligence and he was very proud of her, even though there was no blood tie there. You would have thought there was the way he treated her. Of course, Mary was a turning point in my life, she was the catalyst that helped to fire the change in me that allowed me to become a reasonably respectable person. He saw a change in me after Mary and I got together and he liked what he saw. It was now okay for me to be a bookworm; Mary added some sort of balance he recognized and of which he very definitely approved.

Dad was in and out of consciousness when I arrived on the 14th of February and I am sure I was able to get through to him enough for him to know I was there. He never asked about Mary but I am sure he would have if he had had strength. I am glad I did not have to answer any questions about her just then. There would have been no lying to him, but it would have been difficult to tell him just what was happening. I am sure he felt some sort of connection with her that allowed him to know what was going on. And speaking of which...

The paranormal, the occult and all that jazz do not impress me. I am sure there are spirits out there but I am just as sure they do not operate in any way that allows for human understanding; that is, I don't think they begin making rapping sounds or throwing jars against the wall or making clocks run backwards. I am sure these spirits do not cooperate with excitable "ghost chasers" who keep mugging into the video cameras on the various "reality" shows. All of this is to state what I witnessed with my six siblings.

Dad died on the evening of February 15, 2006. Almost immediately upon his death the seven of us heard coming from the basement the definite sound of someone sealing shut three or four paint cans. We all heard it and for the most part I never really have talked to anyone about it since it happened. I will say this, though. If Dad was going to have any final words, they would contain some practical advice, perhaps about how to cut your grass, put up a fence or some other project. Just as likely and just as important, though, he would tell you how to seal up your paint cans. After all, you don't want to sit there eating your arnj just to realize the one can of paint you need wasn't properly sealed and now is rarnt.

Be careful what you wish for

For some reason, I have been thinking about the silly asses of the European Union and their attempt to ignore the part religion has played in the history of that continent. They are not the only ones who attempt to either rewrite or ignore historical truth.

For all the secularists out there who are about to celebrate what has commonly come to be called, "Valentine's Day," rest assured that the original "St. Valentine's Day," owes its name more to Chaucer than to the martyrologies of the Catholic Church. Check out the Canterbury Tales, especially the "Parliament of the Fowles" for more on the mating habits of the birds. There are at least three Valentines in the martyrologies, all of whom have their feast days on February 14. There is no certain connection between any of the Valentines and the ideal of romantic love. But there it is, no matter how loose the connection.

I laugh when I hear of the various political subdivisions of our nation attempting to scrub away any religious reference to their locales. One such happened out in California in either the City or County of Los Angeles. The uproar there had to do with the cross on the government emblem. It had been there for years bothering no one when all of a sudden somebody noticed it and the thing had to be got rid of, as it was in very short order. So, what do you do with the name of the city? It is named for, "Our Lady, Queen of the Angels." That's the shortened translation from the original, anyway. Up to the north, the state capitol of Sacramento was named for the Holy Eucharist. You might take a notion to visit, "The Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi," or, in its more common form, Santa Fe. If the secularists had their way, we would be busy renaming large portions of this country for years to come. Closer examination of our March celebration might bring us closer to the altar rail than to the bar rail if we properly honored St. Patrick on his feast day. Or it might, for the sake of secular consistency be done away with altogether.

The fact is religion has played a part in the history of the world no matter how you look at it. It is time to note something I feel is quite interesting and which has more to do with book cataloging than with religion in particular. Bear with me. The Dewey Decimal System for cataloging books has been in place for well over a century and its purpose is to give every book its proper place in the library's collection of knowledge. This must be done in some sort of order and so it is with the Dewey system. All man's knowledge can be filed in this system and it is done so from the most elementary to the most complex. Beginning with the 000 - 099 numbers are filed what are called "Generalities," that is, general knowledge. Books with 100 - 199 form divisions deal with philosophy. The very next division - 200 - 299 - contains works on religion. That is to say that among the most basic concepts in all man's knowledge, religion comes in nearly first once you get rid of generalities and then proceed through philosophy. It is almost as though the system says that all knowledge begins with philosophy which leads directly into religion. All the rest comes later.

Get that last bit straight and you cannot go wrong. Ignore or reject it and miss out on all the fun.

Hot Times on Saturday

Here it is, Saturday morning, nearly 11:00 and I have been up since 5:00. Spoke to a friend out in Indiana and had a visit from Grant, one half of Charlotte and Grant from Stratford. Grant came bearing gifts in the guise of pastries and coffee. He also brought finger and toenail clippers I requested since mine were thrown out along with my pants in the aftermath of the bowel unpleasantness of a few days ago.

More on that friend from Indiana. This is a friend who goes above and beyond the call of duty. She is helping me to retrieve some property of mine that has been held in benign neglect by an agency that long ago should have cooperated with me to get the stuff here to Connecticut. Melinda is a good friend.

It is with some sense of purpose and accomplishment that I announce the ordering of my brand new electric razor through Amazon. Sheila has been kind enough to do this for me. I asked her to go ahead and order it using next day delivery if it came in under a certain amount. The fact that I need this thing as soon as possible is reflected in the additional fact that I am giving serious consideration to cutting off my moustache. Any facial hair right now is simply a gathering place for dried blood, dirt and anything else you can imagine. With only one brief period of about a month, this moustache has been with me for over four decades. It will be strange to not have it.

Saturday has pretty much come and gone with my not getting much of anything done at all. What do I have to get done? I am in the hospital. Well, I could have read more but failed to do that. Stared out the window a lot and thought about my return to my temporary residence with some fear and trepidation.

Despite promises to the contrary, there are no personnel, nursing or otherwise, over at the Temporary Residential Program, where I reside, who can handle my situation, especially if it grows to the proportions it did the other day. If the double-ended purge, as I have come to call it, had occured at TRP rather than here, I would have been out on the street before I even got started. Not an especially great prospect to look forward to. The people there are nice enough and do their assigned jobs very well. It was the nurse who interviewed me who told me all these services would be available when in fact they are not. Of course, the interviewing nurse never is seen upstairs where she eventually sends people. She is selling a product the nature of which she has no idea.

My new roomie is a decent enough person who is sick to the point of frustration. He is not used to being sick or to having people take care of him. It is difficult for him to talk due to breathing problems, so I do not even try to engage him in conversation. I just wish him well and say hello whenever I pass his bed. His name is Charlie, so say a prayer for him if you want to. I do.

Shaving Habits Must Change

Friday on the cancer ward and we all look forward to a lovely weekend when, as far as time goes, things slow down from the speed of the sedated sloth to the glacial crawl of the clock. But there is a project afoot that may take up a good portion of the weekend and bring the perceived clock speed up to that of, say, traveling behind an indecisive senior citizen trying to decide whose turn it is at a four-way stop sign. I need to buy a razor.

When I say I need to buy a razor, it comes down to two simple choices, electric or manual. Since my choice here is predicated upon the side effects of the chemotherapeutical agents, I probably should be heading over to the electric razor aisle at about this point. My skin, especially on the face, is beginning to crack and bleed once again, so a manual blade razor seems a poor choice, especially given the constant tremors in my hands. Actually, without even looking at the razor, my face looks like someone has been trying out their birdshot on it. Further checking with the doctor on this subject may be advisable even though all the "consumer" literature (when did I become a consumer as opposed to a patient?) says electric razors are the way to go.

When I say I need to buy a razor, I most likely have no idea what I am talking about, especially if I pay attention to the marketing put out by the various manufacturers of such equipment. No, I do not expect to be let go with a simple purchase; I will need to be educated in what are called, "men's grooming" products, which cover God only knows what manner of strange appliances and devices, some of which appear to be giving a sly wink to the vaguely erotic. And I have seen some ads on the television that suggest the electric razors of one sort or another will have scantily-clad women about a third my age wantonly draping themselves all over me. I can barely take care of myself right now. At this point I have no idea what I would do with a woman of any age, scantily-clad or otherwise.

Getting on to the web sites to look for information for the various electric models is easy enough, once I figure out that I am not looking for an electric razor or an electric shaver, but am looking for something in the line of men's grooming essentials. It is all in the wording and in this case the marketers are in control. Once you realize you are looking for something called a grooming essential, you must decide on rotary or foil. Now we have to define terms again. What is rotary and what is foil? The pictures do help. The rotarys all seem to have three cutting surfaces as opposed to the one displayed by the foil models. Why not trihead and unihead? Those prefixes might make it too easy to figure, thus reducing the mystagogic nature of this selection. We are about to enter into, after all, someone's holy of holies.

The essentials dispensed with, not much is left but basic comparison shopping and it's barely lunch time late on Friday morning. It's going to be a long weekend.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

"No good deed goes unpunished," is one of those quotes the origin of which no one seems to be certain, but whose veracity can be proven in countless anecdotes from across the spectrum of human experience. Across the face of the globe there are hosts of do-gooders who bear the scars of what seem to be seemingly and completely unrelated causes. Well, then. It all began in a place not far from here, at about 3:00 a.m.

A nurse with something on her mind came by my room. What it was she had on her mind was rather a simple request and not that important to my mind. Of course, that small arms training John Wilkes Booth took bore no particular impression on anyone's mind at the time, either.

The request was that I give up my private room for a semi-private one. It is a measure of the treatment received by the nurses here that I immediately asked where they wanted me and when. If asked to do something here I never question; just doing it is all that is required as far as I am concerned. Or, in other words, there is nothing I would not do for these nurses.

This particular request, coming as it did at 3:00 a.m., seemed to bear some urgency, which my movements reflected. I was ready in minutes and spent the bulk of the next hour sitting in the visitors' lounge. Sitting in that lounge gave me time to think and to hope. Imagine you are on the cancer wing of a hospital, it is 3:00 a.m., and you have just been asked to trade off your ideal room for a room that could prove to be less than ideal. Where, exactly, would your mind wander off to? Lots of answers to that question. Not one of them makes much sense in the larger scheme of things. There is an answer that makes perfect sense and that is my acquisition of Bed #2 or, as I like to call it, the window seat. My mind was absolutely focused on Bed #2. Bed #2 had to be open and then all would be well. In this hospital, all Bed 1 assignments are next to the door while all Bed 2 assignments are next to the window. All I was asking for was a window seat on this flight. I prayed for that bed to be mine; yet, as I used to remind the sixth-graders in my religious education class on Thursday evenings (okay, kids, now that you can conjugate "smite," we are ready to begin), God sometimes will answer our prayers by issuing a loud and definitive, "No." God was in one of his negative moods the other day.

So, there I am, in Bed #1, wondering if I could survive long enough to displace the pretender currently in Bed #2 and then be able to make the move to the window seat. Assassination seems a bit premature, even though the next ides are not that far off. But then...It was meant to be! The interloper has gone home and I am in the window seat. He may have seen my lean and hungry look and decided to vacate the throne before being brought before my forum of justice.

Ensconced at last in my throne overlooking the mighty hub that used to be Bridgeport (Arsenal of Democracy, etc., etc.) I gloat over my rise to power in such rapid and easy fashion. I am at the pinnacle of my preening and pride when a voice carries down the hall and insinuates itself into my ear canal. A silent scream utters, inside my tortured brain, and its cause is the voice of a man who has shared a room with me on three previous occasions, none of which was pleasant. The person in question is called Ted. He shows up here every two weeks or so for chemo.

On each of the three occasions I have shared a room with Ted, he has managed to alienate the nurses and everyone else within hearing range. He is loud, vulgar, crude, rude, overbearing, physically a slob and just not a nice person. In short, Ted is an asshole of the first degree. I have been witness to his pill-hurling fits of anger, his rages when he calls the nurses every name in the book, questions their abilities and barks orders to one and all. My practice always has been to keep quiet simply because if I opened up on him, an argument, the volume of which would soon get out of all control, would ensue. Besides, I really do not think Ted would want to keep it verbal and I might be forced to validate his judgment and kick his ass so hard, his grandchildren would gave to blow their noses in order to fart.

Who says we no longer live in the age of miracles? Ted left today after a stay of less than 48 hours. That must have to due with the new infusion center here where the bulk of his work may have been done, making his stay with me blessedly short. Someone give my a round or two of the Hallelujah Chorus or the Ode to Joy, rinse, lather and repeat.