Cancer!!

I already knew. There was some reason besides hemorrhoids for my pain and blood in stool, etc. I went to my newest doctor today. When the doctor AND his nurse AND a young guy I didn’t meet before all came into the room together. The old doctor said, “I don’t like you.” He said he thought I was only bringing him a hemorrhoid problem but I brought a bad thing. Today, May 23, 2014....exactly two months past my 56th birthday, I was told that I have cancer.

At the moment he says I have cancer just inside my rectum...rectal cancer. This explains, he said, why I have had such continual pain just from sitting. No kidding. It also explains to me much of why it is that I have lost about 35 pounds in the past three months or so. It was because I was eating much less but THAT was because I was afraid to eat because of the pain that would follow in the bathroom and, no doubt the cancer has affected my appetite.

I have a PET scan scheduled for next Wednesday to determine if it has spread anywhere else. If not, he says, I may only have to have some radiation.

I know for sure that at lest one, maybe more, of my friends has cancer. It seems I have joined your club even if mine is different from yours.

At this point I don’t know how much or what kind of future I have. I have told Melinda that she HAS to get herself acquainted with driving this car. I say the following, not because I am interested in any sort of debate or argument, but only to inform any of my friends who may not know, that I am not afraid of death. I know with absolute certainty what death is and is not. I know, for several reasons, especially the wealth of neuroscience on the matter of the brain producing consciousness, that it is merely the state of non-existence that “I” was in before biological processes brought me into existence. If this were my “belief” or opinion I would say so. I do fear pain though, that which might well come before the dead part. I can only hope that I can escape most of it.

“While you are asleep you are dead; and whether you stay dead an hour or a billion years the time to you is the same.” - Mark Twain's Notebook, 1896 He is, er, was correct.

I want to tell all my friends that I truly love and appreciate you.

That Weird Guy

addendum: and as if THAT were not enough....doc also mentioned colostomy bag, which I had thought of to0, but I don't know about that yet.

Hey Y'all

As I write this, in about eight hours I will turn 56 years old. I am surprised by this. There was a time when I was much younger that it didn’t seem at all surprising to me that I would one day be 56. I was born around 5:30 in the morning, which is why I hate, loathe and otherwise detest early mornings. How rude. But there has been a lot of water under the bridge...and a fair amount over the top of it...since those ancient times. Even when I was a teenager, the year 2000 seemed impossibly far away. It was The Future. Now, 14 years into the mess I have come to think that The Future does not actually exist...and never can or will. It is always now.

A little more than 20 years ago I started, almost unconsciously, mentally marking mile posts in life. The only two actual friends I had from childhood have long since ceased. They were both slightly younger than I, one related to me by blood, one not. There were times when we were together that we would muse to each other about being old men, maybe 70, sitting on a porch in rocking chairs somewhere. Sam, the one not related to me, died when he and I were 33. That was the first time this “milestone” thing came into my head. He died of Kaposi’s Sarcoma related to AIDS. Last I heard his ashes were on a mountain in Denver. His dad would not go to his funeral because Sam was gay. I couldn’t because I had no money.

Jimmy, who was both my nephew and my cousin, died when he was 42. I don’t know an exact cause, but his doctor had told him that his body was in worse shape than an average man of 70. Apparently, mostly due to the ravages of extreme alcohol and drug use. I do know he could chugalug a whole pint of whiskey and he drank aftershave once because he couldn’t get any other alcohol at the time. As teenagers he had been beside me as pall bearers at my dad’s funeral. I didn’t get to go to Jimmy’s funeral either. I learned of his death while sitting in a truck stop parking lot in Tennessee. I had to tell my dispatcher I had to wait a few hours before I could drive again. I was already 43 by then, and so....the three of us would never be 70 and sitting on a porch somewhere.

This next milestone, tomorrow, I measure by the fact that I will have made it (see? I can be optimistic) to the age my wife Philis was when she died. She went “due to complications of diabetes” in 2008. It was a whole week, and well after her funeral, before anyone thought to inform me of her death. These “milestones” are not about just people I knew or know...people who were very close to me in life, a huge part of my life. The next such milestone for me is a fer piece...20 years more. My dad was 76 when he died. He was born in 1900. I might well make that one, though given my heart disease, COPD, diabetes, sleep apnea, depression, etc., I am not so optimistic about it. Should I make that one, the only other one I have is my maw...she made it to 87 years old. Another 31 years? Wow...that would be the year 2045.

I’ve had the front porch for several years now. Not mine of course, just rented. For several months I’ve had the rocking chair...not one of the regular kind, an old recliner...but it rocks. It seems emptier than I thought it would in some ways, though the advent of the Spazz and the Farce, as we sometimes refer to them, allowed me to have a great many more friends than I ever would have otherwise. To all of you who have been and are my friends...thank you. I hope we make it to a time when 3-D holographic presence is as common as Facebook and Youtube now.

TRB

Our Car

This is what I consider the oddest blog I’ve ever done. I have no words to express to you how much I hate and detest doing this sort of thing, and I would not, except that it is a genuine need. My wife and I currently have a ‘96 Dodge Neon. It runs ok except that I am told there is a plastic part somewhere on the bottom of the motor. This part seems to be cracked and it leaks water...a LOT of water. It has gotten so now that we can’t get more than three or four miles before having to stop, let the engine cool, and add more water.

According to MANY mechanics I have talked to, the people at AutoZone, and the local Dodge dealer, this part no longer exists at all. This means this car cannot be fixed except with another engine or another car. Even junkyards will not sell the part if they have one, except on another motor. Yeah, it feels bad to do this, especially when there are so many people out there whose needs far exceed my own. But I am a heart patient. My docs have declared me 100%, permanently disabled. We manage on my disability check and Food Stamps. My wife last worked well over three years ago. For a while, she tried hard to get another job, but she found nothing. Meanwhile her health has also deteriorated to the point that it seems very unlikely to me that she could work if she had a job. She is fighting for her disability but has not yet had any success with that.

We both have doctor appointments we need to get to and to the grocery store. That is pretty much the extent of our going anywhere...we just don’t have the money to go anywhere else. I picked this site because they seemed the most honest and direct to me. They take 5% straight-up and swear to never ask donors for anything.

At the risk of sounding like Bartles & James, “I thank you for your support.”

TRB