Today is the fourth--and probably last--day without the chemo. I'm to call the oncologist tomorrow morning before resuming, but I think he'll recommend going back on the treatment. I'm not sure whether we'll maintain the current dosage (600 mg.) or go down to 400 mg. Very few of the subjects in the clinical trials were able to maintain the intial 800 mg. dose, and most went down relatively quickly to 400. I stayed on 800 for only a month or so because the meds drove my blood pressure up so much, but I've seemed to support the 600 mg. relatively well for over a year now. The other time that I suspended treatment, I had a feeling of exhuberance when I didn't have to open the bottle of pills and pop three in my mouth. This time, my feelings have been more matter of fact.
During the first thirty hours after I stopped the Votrient, I felt almost like my old self: I didn't take a single nap on Monday, I didn't have any emergency trips to the john, and by evening, I had a good appetite. Tuesday morning, I woke up feeling energetic. And then suddenly--at the exact moment that a repairman arrived to replace the icemaker in the refrigerator (for $281)--I could only point toward the kitchen as I ran to the bathroom. I had no appetite for lunch, and plopped myself in bed for over two hours of sleep. By late afternoon, I had cramps and then vomiting. And then suddenly, as quickly as they had struck, the symptoms disappeared. I was ravenous and knew exactly what I wanted to eat: a wedge of iceberg lettuce (a reversion to childhood tastes?) with feta, golden raisins, bacon, and apple slices and a half pound of medium rare hamburger, no bun or other accoutrements. I cleaned my plate and kept it all down. Wednesday was sort of up and down, and this morning I feel good.
I wish the results of suspending the chemo were more clear cut. But there are so many variables--of both causes and effects--that it's hard to pinpoint what causes what.
Last time, I mentioned that my colleague Mo was thinking about self-censorship in writing memoirs. Her reflections made me think of what role self-censorship plays in writing this blog. The most obvious example for me is that while I love my friends and would be lost without their support, many of them are academics and many of those teach English; ergo, there are a number of eccentrics (or more nicely eccentricities) among them. When I'm writing an e-mail to an individual, these quirks make for what I hope are amusing stories. I often try for vivid and humorous character sketches. But in a public blog, I can't include what I think, but others may not, is funny. I'd like to enliven the blog with more humor, but I stifle the impulse to do so.
It's also difficult to preserve my own self-image, to find a balance between an honest description of my feelings, indignities, and fears and my sense of myself as a "tough cookie" who doesn't like to complain. If I write that for the 46 days that I was in the abduction brace I couldn't even wipe my own tuches, it's hard to maintain much dignity. Should I have left that out? How many times can I write about diarrhea? Even if that influences every decision about going out, isn't it ok to skip some of the details? If in the back of my mind, there's always the nagging thought that maybe I've turned the corner (and not in the right direction), do I need to mention that in every blog? It's hard to know what is just sparing the reader repetition and what is self-protective.
And then there's one relevant fact that I've been most conscious of not mentioning, the most flagrant example of self-censorship: I smoke, as does Mohamed. Of course, my friends here know it, as do those elsewhere whom I've visited or who have visited me here. But for those others, I've kept quiet. I didn't start smoking till I was 45 (not logical, I know, but true). That means 22 years of doing something that almost all of society thinks of as disgusting and that everyone knows is dangerous. After I had a heart attack in September of 2010, Mohamed and I made a concerted effort to quit. We got down to three or four cigarettes a day with certain rules: no taking the cigarettes with us when we left the house, no smoking in the house. During the brutal 2010-11 winter, we would stand in the snow and cold for a puff or two and then retreat, smokeless, into the house. Since we thought we were selling the house and moving to Florida, we had pulled up all the carpet and refinished or installed hardwood floors; all the wallpaper came down, and all the curtains were replaced. The house smelled pristine. We never got down to zero cigs and it was always a struggle, but we had almost succeeded. But then in April of last year, the prognosis was that I had less than a year to live. And rationalization being what it is, it was easy to say "this is a really stressful tme" and "what the hell...why should I spend the last few months being grumpy if I'm going to die soon anyway?" And so we backslid and resumed the smoking. Before the last series of results, my friend Darrell very reasonably suggested that if the results were good (and they were), it would make sense to stop. Why fight the cancer if I was going to drop dead of a heart attack? But we haven't stopped, so what's the rationalization now? It's feeble, but it's still "well, it's a stressful time and smoking is relaxing" and "I don't enjoy food or wine and I can't travel or even drive, so why not enjoy one of the pleasures that's left?"
Censoring the fact that I smoke, however, changes some of the earlier thoughts. In a much older blog, I talked about someone's having asked me whether I felt as if in some way I deserved the cancer. I answered in what passes for philosophical discussion here, in terms of final causes (and their absence). But I left out the obvious efficient cause. Although no one really knows what causes kidney cancer, smoking is always listed as a contributing factor. Later, when I talked about why bad things happen to good people, I talked about perhaps not being viewed as a good person by some because I was gay or an atheist, but I conveniently left out a much more obvious detail: bad things may have happened because I asked for them.
So a casual comment by Mo leads to a little less self-censorship.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Monday, August 27, 2012
I didn't take my chemo this morning. I'm beginning a 3- or 4-day break from taking the Votrient. The last couple of weeks haven't been great (and having a cold and cough didn't help matters). The diarrhea has been a constant, countered as much as possible by Imodium. My appetite has also waned: I look at food, and my desire to eat evaporates. I'll eat a couple of bites, and then I can't go on. My jaws just don't want to chew. This feeling is especially true in the evenings, when I've also been having cramps. All of that is debilitating; my energy level has been extremely low. And the fatigue seems to have grown--two long naps during the day and sleeping till 7 or so in the mornings. No more waking up at 5:30 or 6 to write the blog.
What finally precipitated my decision to suspend the chemo was that Saturday night we went out for dinner at Topeka's best restaurant (the Rowhouse) with our friends Danny and Tami. In the late 70s and 80s, Topeka had a wonderful, authentic French restaurant, La Picardie. The Rowhouse is the best we've had since then. Open only four nights a week, it changes the menu every week. Usually, we get the tasting menu--small servings of everything on the menu. Fortified with Immodium and knowing that there would be no fried food and reasonably sized servings, I was, as always, looking forward to the dinner. We stayed for nearly three hours, and the company was funny and lively. And, at least for the others, the food was superb. But I took one mouthful of the amuse-bouche and could barely swallow it. The salad was delicious; I ate half of it. That was followed by a small bowl of succotash soup; most of that went to Mohamed. The main course included polenta, which I moved around my plate, two small salmon cakes, which I simply couldn't eat at all, and very tender beef, of which I could eat only a little. I'll have to admit that I did better with the three samples of dessert. Although I made it through the evening without rushing to the bathroom, I was up several times during the night, and Sunday morning, after taking my dozen pills with orange juice, I had a bout of vomiting.
So enough is enough. I think my body needs some time to recuperate and, I hope, return to its previous plateau. I'm tired of being tired. I'd like to be a fun person again--to have some energy and a sense of humor. Other than the Rowhouse, we didn't go out for lunch or dinner at all last week, and most of the time I let Mohamed run errands and go shopping solo. I don't know how many times I ate sushi last week, but the fresh combo platters at the grocery store sushi bar are virtually the only meal that looks appetizing. I'll take these days off and hope that not swallowing toxic chemicals every morning will provide some relief.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend and colleague Maureen (Mo) mentioned that she was participating in a writing group that was focusing on memoirs. That week's topic of discussion was self-censorship: those things that memoir writers consciously choose to leave out. I was going to write about my own self-censorship this morning, but I'll put it off till next time. Still, I don't like writing entries like today's. If this is truly a blog about living with cancer, I know I need to be honest about the times that are discouraging and the side effects that aren't so pretty. But I don't like to think of myself as a complainer, and it's hard for me to think that that's how I'm coming across. What do I censor? Well, I've been thinking about serials and cliffhangers lately, so tune in Thursday--same time, same place--for my confessions.
What finally precipitated my decision to suspend the chemo was that Saturday night we went out for dinner at Topeka's best restaurant (the Rowhouse) with our friends Danny and Tami. In the late 70s and 80s, Topeka had a wonderful, authentic French restaurant, La Picardie. The Rowhouse is the best we've had since then. Open only four nights a week, it changes the menu every week. Usually, we get the tasting menu--small servings of everything on the menu. Fortified with Immodium and knowing that there would be no fried food and reasonably sized servings, I was, as always, looking forward to the dinner. We stayed for nearly three hours, and the company was funny and lively. And, at least for the others, the food was superb. But I took one mouthful of the amuse-bouche and could barely swallow it. The salad was delicious; I ate half of it. That was followed by a small bowl of succotash soup; most of that went to Mohamed. The main course included polenta, which I moved around my plate, two small salmon cakes, which I simply couldn't eat at all, and very tender beef, of which I could eat only a little. I'll have to admit that I did better with the three samples of dessert. Although I made it through the evening without rushing to the bathroom, I was up several times during the night, and Sunday morning, after taking my dozen pills with orange juice, I had a bout of vomiting.
So enough is enough. I think my body needs some time to recuperate and, I hope, return to its previous plateau. I'm tired of being tired. I'd like to be a fun person again--to have some energy and a sense of humor. Other than the Rowhouse, we didn't go out for lunch or dinner at all last week, and most of the time I let Mohamed run errands and go shopping solo. I don't know how many times I ate sushi last week, but the fresh combo platters at the grocery store sushi bar are virtually the only meal that looks appetizing. I'll take these days off and hope that not swallowing toxic chemicals every morning will provide some relief.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend and colleague Maureen (Mo) mentioned that she was participating in a writing group that was focusing on memoirs. That week's topic of discussion was self-censorship: those things that memoir writers consciously choose to leave out. I was going to write about my own self-censorship this morning, but I'll put it off till next time. Still, I don't like writing entries like today's. If this is truly a blog about living with cancer, I know I need to be honest about the times that are discouraging and the side effects that aren't so pretty. But I don't like to think of myself as a complainer, and it's hard for me to think that that's how I'm coming across. What do I censor? Well, I've been thinking about serials and cliffhangers lately, so tune in Thursday--same time, same place--for my confessions.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Several years ago, I watched an interview with Toni Morrison on C-SPAN. Someone asked her what she read "just for fun." I'm sure the questioner expected Morrison to say John Grisham or Danielle Steele. Instead, Morrison said Faulkner or Flaubert. That might have sounded pretentious except for what she added: "Because they never disappoint." Since I've been doing a lot of reading in my retirement, I've tried to alternate between contemporary works and the "classics," those works I know will never let me down. Recently, I've been reading Thomas Hardy, though actually I had read only one of his novels, The Return of the Native, and that over 40 years ago in graduate school, and knew only one of his poems, "Hap," which I often taught in a course like Intro to Lit, one of the few occasions I got to teach works that I loved that weren't American. Here's "Hap":
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"
Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
It's a dark version of my own beliefs about the arbitrary nature of the world and a reminder of the
etymology of our word 'happiness,' which comes from chance, good fortune, accident, rather than from
character or choice. It echoes Stephen Crane, though Crane is more laconic, or Robert Frost in its traditional form disguising its biting message.
So I decided to explore some more of Hardy's fiction, and thanks to Kindle--four novels for one dollar, all delivered within fifteen seconds--I began with Far from the Madding Crowd. Hardy's style is in many ways conventional--an elaborate plot, an alternation of showing and telling, and an omniscient point of view that eschews the experimention with perspective that marked the beginning of Modernism. But the novel is permeated by Hardy's dark vision, especially involving human capriciousness (seemingly small gestures that lead to dire and unforeseen consequences) and nature's flat indifference to man's concerns. There are fires and floods that destroy even the best of man's intentions. In one of the most harrowing scenes in the novel, the cad Frank Troy has a moment of repentance for his treatment of Fanny Robin, whose love for him he's several times encouraged and then rejected. When she and his baby die, he buys a tombstone for her open grave and then painstakingly arranges flowers and greenery in preparation for her interment. But before that can happen the next day, a storm arrives and washes all his work into a chaotic mess. Indeed, the plot is set in motion in a scene of very dark "humor" when Gabriel Oak, the main male character, rising in the world through decency and hard work, is ruined by a young, untrained sheep dog which drives Oak's herd of sheep to their death over the edge of a cliff. Far from the Madding Crowd was a long, engrossing read; it didn't disappoint. But it was pretty much what I expected from what I remembered of Hardy. It didn't prepare me for the novel I read next.
Jude the Obscure was Hardy's last novel, and it must surely be his most bitter. The role of the natural world is greatly reduced, except for the fact that every character walks for miles and miles, often in a hard rain, to have any sort of encounter with another character. It was exhausting just to contemplate. The institutional world plays a much larger part as Hardy attacks the exclusivity and parochialism of British higher education, the hypocrisy of religion, and especially the constrictive nature of marriage. Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead spend 400 pages attempting to be happy. After disastrous and ill-conceived first marriages to others, Jude and Sue live together and have children (one critic of the time called the novel Jude the Obscene), initially without being divorced from their first spouses. Of the two, Sue is the more interesting--a free thinker and open critic of marriage and religion, but also labile and prone to sudden and unpredictable reversals of her ideas, by the end of the novel, she has converted Jude to her point of view but abandoned it herself in a misguided attempt to do penance for her past mistakes. She returns to her first husband who has physically repulsed her (though he is one of the decent people in the novel) and finally as an act of supposed atonement and abnegation insists that they sleep together, her mortification of her flesh. Jude dies (walking in the rain); Sue resigns herself to her new life, but loses all her energy. Only Jude's vulgar first wife prospers, refusing to mourn Jude and latching on to a prospering quack doctor in her search for husband number three. The novel is, as someone wrote, "unbearingly sad." It's unfortunately marred by one unbelievable character ("Little Father Time," who appears late in the novel, a son from Jude's first marriage, and by his sensational and melodramatic hanging of Jude and Sue's children and his own suicide). But for unrelenting frustration of intelligent hope and hopeful intelligence, the novel must be unique.
Jude was published serially, and Hardy isn't the most graceful artist of temporal transitions. My friend, colleague, and distinguished scholar Linda Hughes is an expert on all things serial. I'm an amateur, my immersion mainly through soap operas (and Jude with its constant alternation of hope and frustration reads something like a soap). It was a sad day for me when, after 54 years, As the World Turns was cancelled. I remember when an unknown David Hasselhoff replaced William Gray Espy as Snapper Foster on The Young and the Restless. I remember when an unknown Dixie Carter replaced Maeve Something-or-Other on Edge of Night. After years of frustration, she and her lover had finally gotten married and gone on a honeymoon, only to have the bride fall overboard and seemingly drown. When she re-appeared, the actress was suddenly Dixie Carter. As with Hasselhoff, disappointment and suspicion were rampant. I remember when Christopher Reeve was about to be raped in a prison shower scene on a Friday (of course) episode of Love of Life. And then on Monday there was a new actor. Ah, the golden days of soaps!
(I apologize for the left margins. Whenever I cut-and-paste something, as I did with "Hap," in this system, spacing of margins or between lines goes amok.)
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Yesterday we went back to KU Med to see Dr. Templeton, the orthopedic oncologist who performed the surgery on my right femur and hip in May of 2011. Our friends Scott and Kelly (she's a pediatrician at the Med Center) were there to greet us and have a short chat before it was time for x-rays of the femur. Everything looked good: "no new holes in the femur," as Dr. Templeton breezily put it. I pushed her hands apart with my knees; I pushed them together. I pushed her hands up with my extended legs. And then she said I was doing well and looking good, and that was that. It seemed like a long trip for such a short consutation, but it's always worthwhile to get good news. On the way home, I was feeling fine and thinking that I really should drive more since I was alert. Mohamed asked whether I was tired. I said a little, and then promptly fell asleep for the rest of the drive back to Topeka. The fatigue is constant in that I know that a couple of times a day I'm going to crash. What's unpredictable is when, and what's frustrating is how suddenly and completely it comes on.
Classes started last night for Mohamed, and he has two more this morning. Friends always ask whether I miss teaching, miss the excitement of the first day of classes when there are both fresh and familiar faces and when one of the pleasures is discovering who's in the class and what kind of students you're going to have. Maybe my dreams indicate I do, and maybe if it weren't for the cancer, I'd have a different reaction, but I don't really think about teaching very much. As much as I hate to say it (and despite the fact that everything is going well), my primary sense of myself went overnight from being composed of various facets, including teacher, to one. From the moment I wake up and sort through a dozen pills and then wait for Mohamed to give me my morning anti-coagulant shot through every time I go up the stairs or rush to the bathroom and fall into bed, I'm aware of the diminished quality of my life. More than the actual limitations, I hate the feeling of dependence, the fact that the one subject of conversation I always have at the ready is my health. And after 15 months, that's an awfully boring topic, especially since there's rarely anything new to report.
So this'll be a short posting--and a boring one.
Classes started last night for Mohamed, and he has two more this morning. Friends always ask whether I miss teaching, miss the excitement of the first day of classes when there are both fresh and familiar faces and when one of the pleasures is discovering who's in the class and what kind of students you're going to have. Maybe my dreams indicate I do, and maybe if it weren't for the cancer, I'd have a different reaction, but I don't really think about teaching very much. As much as I hate to say it (and despite the fact that everything is going well), my primary sense of myself went overnight from being composed of various facets, including teacher, to one. From the moment I wake up and sort through a dozen pills and then wait for Mohamed to give me my morning anti-coagulant shot through every time I go up the stairs or rush to the bathroom and fall into bed, I'm aware of the diminished quality of my life. More than the actual limitations, I hate the feeling of dependence, the fact that the one subject of conversation I always have at the ready is my health. And after 15 months, that's an awfully boring topic, especially since there's rarely anything new to report.
So this'll be a short posting--and a boring one.
Friday, August 17, 2012
A hodgepodge of thoughts today:
Health: We're both on the mend after the battle with summer colds. Both of us still have occasional bouts of coughing, but in general, they're fewer and most of our energy has returned. I can't say that my stomach is in great shape, and I haven't had much appetite lately, but I assume that's just part of the cycle I'm becoming used to. Monday morning we have an appointment at KU Med with Dr. Templeton, the surgeon who operated on my leg and hip. That means a 75-minute drive in, a wait (though since the appointment is at 9 a.m., perhaps we're her first consult of the day), a 10-minute exam, and then a 75-minute drive home. I'll push Dr. Templeton's hands apart with my knees, then push them together. I'll raise her hand by lifting my leg, and then she'll say that everything is fine. I'd probably skip the appointment, but Mohamed thinks we ought to go.
Classes start Monday for Mohamed, though his first class isn't till 5:30 on Monday, so we can easily work in the KC trip. I'm not sure why the summer passed so quickly since we didn't do anything eventful, but with the beginning of school and a break in the awful heat, it does feel as if summer vacation is over, and it's time to establish a new routine. We went to school on Wednesday so that I could turn in some financial information and Mohamed could buy his texts. The English department had just had a department meeting, so we got to see lots of old colleagues whom we hadn't seen over the summer. That was the good part. Mohamed bought four books, two of them used, for nearly $500. The fifth one we found online for literally 1/20 of the cost at the bookstore, which was out of them anyway. In an earlier blog, I complained about disjointed history texts and blamed the Texas Board of Education. But I glanced through the text for microeconomics ($93 used), and it was equally confusing. The book begins with 45 pages of acknowledgments and tips. The pages of thanks are so extensive that they're organized by state and by edition. When chapter one finally begins, there's a blank page followed by a picture of Bill Gates. By page 3, there are actual words. But it's not really the text: it's two paragraphs of a case study, at the end of which the reader is directed to page 18. That is followed by a new section--8 lines of text which are continued on page 16. I turn the page, and voila the text begins with three key economic ideas. There is a paragraph about idea #1, a paragraph about idea #2, and then...no, it would be too much to expect that we get idea #3. Rather there's a "Making the Connection" digression, followed by a graph, followed by a teeny symbol in three different colors that says "myeconlab" and directs me to problem 1.7 on page 21. Once a student finally reaches a section called "Conclusion" (page 17), one might think that chapter has ended. But no. There are 18 additional pages of summary (the summaries are longer than the original points), graphs, learning objectives, review questions, etc. How much of this is a student actually going to read? And given the incoherence of the actual text, how can anyone be expected to follow the ideas? Is this really the most effective way to hold a student's attention?
Simulacra and Truthiness. I watch more television than I ever have in my life. I'd like to think the TV is just on as background noise, but I'm afraid I find myself actually paying attention. I've been thinking about what Jean Baudrillard, who argued that in our current world, what passes as reality is not a copy/simulacrum of reality, but has become its own hyperreality, would make of life in 2012. What Stephen Colbert calls "Truthiness" is more prevalent than truth. So-called "reality" TV shows are an obvious example. At some level, we know that all is staged and scripted, but that belief is often suspended. The most egregious new example (though there are certainly an infinite supply to choose from) may be "Stars Earn Stripes." (I haven't sunk so low as to actually watch it, but it's hard to escape the promos.) We're already used to the fact that we don't even recognize most of the "stars." In the 30-second promo, the word 'real' is used a half dozen times, a clue that the producers know how slight the reality is. One star says that he knows he might not come out of the experience alive. No. He doesn't know that because it isn't true. Another says it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience that could never be duplicated, though as Colbert pointed out, he could have had the experience any day in the last eleven years simply by enlisting in the army.
The commercial that has brought simulacra to a new level seems to me to be one for Colgate where a supposed machine measures the amount of plaque on teeth twelve hours after one actor supposedly has brushed with Colgate and another hasn't. The ad is described in small letters as a "creative representation" and a "dramatic illustration." The dentist isn't a dentist, the two people supposedly being tested are actors, neither of whom has brushed with Colgate, the equipment isn't measuring anything, and the results are, well, creative, though whether they represent anything is arguable. Baudrillard died too soon. His work would have been even richer after a few hours in front of American television.
The most frightening commercial is one for a lending service called Western Sky, which promises to put $5,000 or $10,000 in your pocket the same day you apply. In some versions of the ad, the spokesperson says, "Sure, the money's expensive." That's not an understatement. If you read the very fine print at the bottom, to borrow $10,000, you must repay $743 per month for seven years. That's over $60,000. And the Republicans think that there is too much regulation!
On HGTV, which seems intent on convincing us that we all deserve second homes, walk-in closets, open concept kitchens with six-burner stoves, and a lifetime of debt, the show that puzzles me most is "Property Virgins." In one recent (and typical) episode, filmed in 2011 long after the lessons of the housing bubble, a first-time home buyer was described as having been pre-approved (which is somehow different from being approved) for a $360,000 bank loan. She had $9,000 as a down payment, so was told she could buy a house for $369,000. A 2.5% down payment? A buyer who had managed to save $9,000 and was buying a house for forty times that amount? I thought those days had passed, but evidently not.
And those are my random thoughts on a Friday morning. Normally, I'd post an entry next on Monday, but since I'll be in KC Monday morning, I'll wait till Tuesday.
Health: We're both on the mend after the battle with summer colds. Both of us still have occasional bouts of coughing, but in general, they're fewer and most of our energy has returned. I can't say that my stomach is in great shape, and I haven't had much appetite lately, but I assume that's just part of the cycle I'm becoming used to. Monday morning we have an appointment at KU Med with Dr. Templeton, the surgeon who operated on my leg and hip. That means a 75-minute drive in, a wait (though since the appointment is at 9 a.m., perhaps we're her first consult of the day), a 10-minute exam, and then a 75-minute drive home. I'll push Dr. Templeton's hands apart with my knees, then push them together. I'll raise her hand by lifting my leg, and then she'll say that everything is fine. I'd probably skip the appointment, but Mohamed thinks we ought to go.
Classes start Monday for Mohamed, though his first class isn't till 5:30 on Monday, so we can easily work in the KC trip. I'm not sure why the summer passed so quickly since we didn't do anything eventful, but with the beginning of school and a break in the awful heat, it does feel as if summer vacation is over, and it's time to establish a new routine. We went to school on Wednesday so that I could turn in some financial information and Mohamed could buy his texts. The English department had just had a department meeting, so we got to see lots of old colleagues whom we hadn't seen over the summer. That was the good part. Mohamed bought four books, two of them used, for nearly $500. The fifth one we found online for literally 1/20 of the cost at the bookstore, which was out of them anyway. In an earlier blog, I complained about disjointed history texts and blamed the Texas Board of Education. But I glanced through the text for microeconomics ($93 used), and it was equally confusing. The book begins with 45 pages of acknowledgments and tips. The pages of thanks are so extensive that they're organized by state and by edition. When chapter one finally begins, there's a blank page followed by a picture of Bill Gates. By page 3, there are actual words. But it's not really the text: it's two paragraphs of a case study, at the end of which the reader is directed to page 18. That is followed by a new section--8 lines of text which are continued on page 16. I turn the page, and voila the text begins with three key economic ideas. There is a paragraph about idea #1, a paragraph about idea #2, and then...no, it would be too much to expect that we get idea #3. Rather there's a "Making the Connection" digression, followed by a graph, followed by a teeny symbol in three different colors that says "myeconlab" and directs me to problem 1.7 on page 21. Once a student finally reaches a section called "Conclusion" (page 17), one might think that chapter has ended. But no. There are 18 additional pages of summary (the summaries are longer than the original points), graphs, learning objectives, review questions, etc. How much of this is a student actually going to read? And given the incoherence of the actual text, how can anyone be expected to follow the ideas? Is this really the most effective way to hold a student's attention?
Simulacra and Truthiness. I watch more television than I ever have in my life. I'd like to think the TV is just on as background noise, but I'm afraid I find myself actually paying attention. I've been thinking about what Jean Baudrillard, who argued that in our current world, what passes as reality is not a copy/simulacrum of reality, but has become its own hyperreality, would make of life in 2012. What Stephen Colbert calls "Truthiness" is more prevalent than truth. So-called "reality" TV shows are an obvious example. At some level, we know that all is staged and scripted, but that belief is often suspended. The most egregious new example (though there are certainly an infinite supply to choose from) may be "Stars Earn Stripes." (I haven't sunk so low as to actually watch it, but it's hard to escape the promos.) We're already used to the fact that we don't even recognize most of the "stars." In the 30-second promo, the word 'real' is used a half dozen times, a clue that the producers know how slight the reality is. One star says that he knows he might not come out of the experience alive. No. He doesn't know that because it isn't true. Another says it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience that could never be duplicated, though as Colbert pointed out, he could have had the experience any day in the last eleven years simply by enlisting in the army.
The commercial that has brought simulacra to a new level seems to me to be one for Colgate where a supposed machine measures the amount of plaque on teeth twelve hours after one actor supposedly has brushed with Colgate and another hasn't. The ad is described in small letters as a "creative representation" and a "dramatic illustration." The dentist isn't a dentist, the two people supposedly being tested are actors, neither of whom has brushed with Colgate, the equipment isn't measuring anything, and the results are, well, creative, though whether they represent anything is arguable. Baudrillard died too soon. His work would have been even richer after a few hours in front of American television.
The most frightening commercial is one for a lending service called Western Sky, which promises to put $5,000 or $10,000 in your pocket the same day you apply. In some versions of the ad, the spokesperson says, "Sure, the money's expensive." That's not an understatement. If you read the very fine print at the bottom, to borrow $10,000, you must repay $743 per month for seven years. That's over $60,000. And the Republicans think that there is too much regulation!
On HGTV, which seems intent on convincing us that we all deserve second homes, walk-in closets, open concept kitchens with six-burner stoves, and a lifetime of debt, the show that puzzles me most is "Property Virgins." In one recent (and typical) episode, filmed in 2011 long after the lessons of the housing bubble, a first-time home buyer was described as having been pre-approved (which is somehow different from being approved) for a $360,000 bank loan. She had $9,000 as a down payment, so was told she could buy a house for $369,000. A 2.5% down payment? A buyer who had managed to save $9,000 and was buying a house for forty times that amount? I thought those days had passed, but evidently not.
And those are my random thoughts on a Friday morning. Normally, I'd post an entry next on Monday, but since I'll be in KC Monday morning, I'll wait till Tuesday.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
The last eight days haven't been great. Early last week Mohamed developed a summer cold--first a sore throat, then a runny nose, and then most persistently a cough. There isn't really much you can do about a cold except let it run its course, but we got some OTC medicine, and it seemed for a day or so that the cold was improving. We were mistaken, and it came back with a vengeance. Despite my belief that after 45 years of students' coughing and sneezing on and at me I am virtually immune to colds and despite our best efforts not to share the cold, by Wednesday or Thursday, I had it too. I missed the sore throat, but the cough has been really bad. At least, thanks to NyQuil, we've been able to sleep. Colds aren't terribly serious, but they really are tiring and frustrating--and they can hang on. Yesterday we both were still coughing, but felt somewhat better. We stopped taking the medicine, but I coughed a lot in the night (and I hear Mohamed coughing even as I write this), so I re-started the pills this morning.
I've been lucky so far in not suffering nausea as a side effect of the chemo--or at least I had been lucky. But a couple of night's ago, I got about four bites into a burger, when suddenly I was overcome with nausea. And then last night, just as we were getting ready to go out for dinner, I became nauseated just at the thought of food and had another bout of vomiting. At any rate, we haven't been very active or social for a week or so.
Without much to report, I'll fall back on another dream; the ones I recounted a couple of blogs ago elicited lots of I-have-that-dream-too responses from current and former colleagues. Last night, I had a different sort of academic dream: I was sitting alone at a huge table covered with books and a manual typewriter. I was writing articles on African-American authors, something I did with regularity when I first started teaching. The key was that the articles had to be 5% better or longer or something (it wasn't at all clear in the dream what) in order to be accepted. I had just finished one on Ishmael Reed and was turning my attention to Richard Wright. And unlike in the previous dreams, this time there was no anxiety because Wright has always been one of my favorite writers and his Black Boy a book I taught as often as any other. Until the last decade when I had some released time for administration, like almost everyone in our department, I taught four courses a semester, two of them composition. During one period of eighteen years, I chose to do developmental English for my comp courses, and although most of my colleagues didn't understand the choice, I loved teaching those classes. The students often came in with a chip on their shoulders: they didn't like writing, they had been told they didn't write well, and now they had to take nine hours of composition instead of six as the majority of students did. But after some initial resistance, they (well, most of them) were willing to learn, and they often formed a cohesive group.
Most of the texts available for remedial classes seemed to me insultingly simple. After some searching, I found one I liked with essays of at least moderate length. It had a series of photographs, and we'd spend time analyzing the photos and trying to move beyond focusing only on content and think about some of the techniques involved. And then, we'd always go to the Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn to generate a comparison/contrast essay about two works there. It was almost always the first time any of the students had gone to an art museum, and their reactions were fascinating. I could never predict which students would choose realistic works, which had an obvious content and were probably easier to write about, and which would choose completely abstract or expressionistic works.
I wanted to supplement the anthology with a longer book, and I'm not sure how I first chose Wright's Black Boy, but once I had found it, I used it semester after semester. Getting the students to write, even getting the students to get involved in grammar--those weren't hard. Getting the students to read was another matter. But every semester, I'd assign the first chapter of Black Boy and by the next period the students would have read halfway through the book. The first few semesters I didn't believe it (but after years of hearing it, I realized that it was true), but student after student would tell me it was the first book s/he had ever read. In addition to its compelling content, Wright's autobiography had wonderful stylistic features. As is common in much African-American political and religious rhetoric, Wright loves parallelism. There are three very long passages where Wright stops the narrative entirely for parallel lists of imaginative comparisons through similes. I've read lots of lists that colleagues have written that make me wince because of their lack of parallel construction--here an infinitive, there a gerund; here a verb, there a sentence. So the students could work not only on avoiding faulty parallelism but also see how a master could use the technique and how they could imitate it for rhetorical effect.
Even though Wright's work is autobiographical, he uses patterned and resonant imagery to enrich and structure the work, particularly hunger, fire, and optics. It was always exciting to watch the students discover the patterns and then to analyze them and their effects.
I looked for another work to complement Wright's work. My most disastrous choice was Catcher in the Rye, which spoke to the students not at all. In the last section of developmental English that I taught, more than 50% of the students had been or were in the prison system; they hardly needed Holden Caulfield to tell them that the world is full of phonies. What I finally found that worked is going to sound surprising, but Carson McCullers's Member of the Wedding, as gauzy and poetic as Wright's work is gritty and hard-edged, for some reason always engaged the students. One of the pleasures of teaching was always how unpredictable, how unaligned with rubrics and percentages students and material could be.
So I fulfilled my dream's assignment and wrote something on Richard Wright. I just hope it's 5%...
I've been lucky so far in not suffering nausea as a side effect of the chemo--or at least I had been lucky. But a couple of night's ago, I got about four bites into a burger, when suddenly I was overcome with nausea. And then last night, just as we were getting ready to go out for dinner, I became nauseated just at the thought of food and had another bout of vomiting. At any rate, we haven't been very active or social for a week or so.
Without much to report, I'll fall back on another dream; the ones I recounted a couple of blogs ago elicited lots of I-have-that-dream-too responses from current and former colleagues. Last night, I had a different sort of academic dream: I was sitting alone at a huge table covered with books and a manual typewriter. I was writing articles on African-American authors, something I did with regularity when I first started teaching. The key was that the articles had to be 5% better or longer or something (it wasn't at all clear in the dream what) in order to be accepted. I had just finished one on Ishmael Reed and was turning my attention to Richard Wright. And unlike in the previous dreams, this time there was no anxiety because Wright has always been one of my favorite writers and his Black Boy a book I taught as often as any other. Until the last decade when I had some released time for administration, like almost everyone in our department, I taught four courses a semester, two of them composition. During one period of eighteen years, I chose to do developmental English for my comp courses, and although most of my colleagues didn't understand the choice, I loved teaching those classes. The students often came in with a chip on their shoulders: they didn't like writing, they had been told they didn't write well, and now they had to take nine hours of composition instead of six as the majority of students did. But after some initial resistance, they (well, most of them) were willing to learn, and they often formed a cohesive group.
Most of the texts available for remedial classes seemed to me insultingly simple. After some searching, I found one I liked with essays of at least moderate length. It had a series of photographs, and we'd spend time analyzing the photos and trying to move beyond focusing only on content and think about some of the techniques involved. And then, we'd always go to the Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn to generate a comparison/contrast essay about two works there. It was almost always the first time any of the students had gone to an art museum, and their reactions were fascinating. I could never predict which students would choose realistic works, which had an obvious content and were probably easier to write about, and which would choose completely abstract or expressionistic works.
I wanted to supplement the anthology with a longer book, and I'm not sure how I first chose Wright's Black Boy, but once I had found it, I used it semester after semester. Getting the students to write, even getting the students to get involved in grammar--those weren't hard. Getting the students to read was another matter. But every semester, I'd assign the first chapter of Black Boy and by the next period the students would have read halfway through the book. The first few semesters I didn't believe it (but after years of hearing it, I realized that it was true), but student after student would tell me it was the first book s/he had ever read. In addition to its compelling content, Wright's autobiography had wonderful stylistic features. As is common in much African-American political and religious rhetoric, Wright loves parallelism. There are three very long passages where Wright stops the narrative entirely for parallel lists of imaginative comparisons through similes. I've read lots of lists that colleagues have written that make me wince because of their lack of parallel construction--here an infinitive, there a gerund; here a verb, there a sentence. So the students could work not only on avoiding faulty parallelism but also see how a master could use the technique and how they could imitate it for rhetorical effect.
Even though Wright's work is autobiographical, he uses patterned and resonant imagery to enrich and structure the work, particularly hunger, fire, and optics. It was always exciting to watch the students discover the patterns and then to analyze them and their effects.
I looked for another work to complement Wright's work. My most disastrous choice was Catcher in the Rye, which spoke to the students not at all. In the last section of developmental English that I taught, more than 50% of the students had been or were in the prison system; they hardly needed Holden Caulfield to tell them that the world is full of phonies. What I finally found that worked is going to sound surprising, but Carson McCullers's Member of the Wedding, as gauzy and poetic as Wright's work is gritty and hard-edged, for some reason always engaged the students. One of the pleasures of teaching was always how unpredictable, how unaligned with rubrics and percentages students and material could be.
So I fulfilled my dream's assignment and wrote something on Richard Wright. I just hope it's 5%...
Saturday, August 11, 2012
I recently came across a blog by the Rev. Timothy Keller, a Presbyterian minister in New York and the author of the New York Times best-seller The Reason for God. When Keller was diagnosed with cancer, he asked himself "Why me?" When he survived and others died, he asked himself the same question. In his blog, he attempts (and, I think, fails) to explain the inadequacy of four responses to the problem of suffering.
First, he wants to answer the response that the prevalence of suffering and its seeming randomness proves that there is no God. His answer is unsurprising: with an explicit nod to Nietzsche (and an implicit one to Dostoevski), he answers that if there is no god, then all would be permitted. The problem with Keller's argument here is that even if his conclusion is true, it doesn't prove that there is a god, but only that man needs there to be one. When I was in graduate school, a lot of us read a novella by Miguel de Unamuno, "St. Emmanuel the Good, Martyr." Emmanuel was a priest who had lost his belief in God, but who continued his vocation because he believed that people couldn't survive without faith--and hence became an existential saint. It seemed profound at the time, but looks a little threadbare and condescending now. And I'll assume that Keller isn't mirroring Unamuno and sincerely believes his own argument. But there is a second problem with the argument: although appeals to authority are a long tradition in argumentation and although Nietzsche and Dostoevski are certainly heavy-hitters, Keller needs to provide some actual evidence that his conclusion is true. Are people and societies who don't believe in god less moral than those who do? Are these non-believers running amok in immorality? And are those who do believe in god more moral? Given the long history of religious wars and violence, to say nothing of the decent lives of many atheists, Keller would be hard-pressed to support his point. Indeed, I would argue that throughout much of history the opposite of Keller's proposition obtains: if there is a god, then all is permitted--as long as it's done in His name. So he doesn't support what he wants to prove, and even what he attempts to prove (that man needs there to be a god) isn't what he finally intends to prove.
Keller treats the other three arguments much more briefly. The second "inadequate" response is that God isn't fully in control. That was the argument made by Rabbi Harold Kushner in his popular 1981 book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. After struggling with his belief after the death of his young son and, like Keller, examining the possible implications, Kushner came to the conclusion that God can't be both omniscient and omnibenevolent. Unwilling to give up God's goodness, Kushner came to the conclusion that God is not omnipotent. Keller will have none of that and dismisses this argument with the assertion that "that kind of God doesn't really fit our definition of 'God.'" So what? Isn't it worth considering--for a religious person, that is--that the definition of God needs to be re-examined? Doesn't Kushner's argument have enough purchase that it deserves to be treated seriously?
Keller is equally dismissive of a third conclusion that some of his parishioners reach: that suffering isn't really random. I'm sure my born-again Christian cousin is convinced that her gay, atheist relative deserves cancer (and the eternal punishment she thinks will follow). But, argues Keller, that conclusion is rejected in the book of Job, where Job's friends, who try to convince him that he deserves his suffering, are described as "miserable comforters." And, of course, if this response were accurate, then there would be no problem, and Keller's blog would be unnecessary. I'm not sure why Keller even bothers to include this point, since no one (well, remembering the Phelps clan, I need to qualify that with an "almost") believes that the victims of the Aurora shooting or the Sikhs who were killed in Wisconsin were uniformly bad people who deserved their fate.
Keller warms up to his last point, which is two-fold. God didn't create a world with suffering, death, or evil. But since man turned away from Him, everything changed, and thus in some way, we are all deserving of our fate. Because 6,000 years ago two mythical people disobeyed God, the innocent and the guilty alike, the young and the old, atheists and believers, the meek and the strong--all are condemned to arbitrary suffering. One might think an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent god could have thought up a less punitive system, but His ways are inscrutable, so we should accept what we can't understand. And then, Keller's second point, is only for Christians: God came to earth, subjected Himself to suffering and death, and hence showed his love and assured us that He has an ultimate purpose. This probably isn't of much consolation to the 70% or so of the world that is not Christian, and I'll let Christians figure out for themselves whether they find it helpful, but it is Keller's triumphant conclusion as to why "God allows evil and suffering."
And isn't 'allow' already a giveaway? Hasn't Keller's god already been reduced from the active creator of all that exists to a passive observer, just sitting back and relaxing while he allows suffering? If Keller really had the courage of his convictions, he might have a more robust view of his god.
If this is the best this prominent religious thinker can come up with, I'll be content with my atheism. Why me? Don't even ask. It's not a question that even arises in the less tangled world where we atheists live.
First, he wants to answer the response that the prevalence of suffering and its seeming randomness proves that there is no God. His answer is unsurprising: with an explicit nod to Nietzsche (and an implicit one to Dostoevski), he answers that if there is no god, then all would be permitted. The problem with Keller's argument here is that even if his conclusion is true, it doesn't prove that there is a god, but only that man needs there to be one. When I was in graduate school, a lot of us read a novella by Miguel de Unamuno, "St. Emmanuel the Good, Martyr." Emmanuel was a priest who had lost his belief in God, but who continued his vocation because he believed that people couldn't survive without faith--and hence became an existential saint. It seemed profound at the time, but looks a little threadbare and condescending now. And I'll assume that Keller isn't mirroring Unamuno and sincerely believes his own argument. But there is a second problem with the argument: although appeals to authority are a long tradition in argumentation and although Nietzsche and Dostoevski are certainly heavy-hitters, Keller needs to provide some actual evidence that his conclusion is true. Are people and societies who don't believe in god less moral than those who do? Are these non-believers running amok in immorality? And are those who do believe in god more moral? Given the long history of religious wars and violence, to say nothing of the decent lives of many atheists, Keller would be hard-pressed to support his point. Indeed, I would argue that throughout much of history the opposite of Keller's proposition obtains: if there is a god, then all is permitted--as long as it's done in His name. So he doesn't support what he wants to prove, and even what he attempts to prove (that man needs there to be a god) isn't what he finally intends to prove.
Keller treats the other three arguments much more briefly. The second "inadequate" response is that God isn't fully in control. That was the argument made by Rabbi Harold Kushner in his popular 1981 book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. After struggling with his belief after the death of his young son and, like Keller, examining the possible implications, Kushner came to the conclusion that God can't be both omniscient and omnibenevolent. Unwilling to give up God's goodness, Kushner came to the conclusion that God is not omnipotent. Keller will have none of that and dismisses this argument with the assertion that "that kind of God doesn't really fit our definition of 'God.'" So what? Isn't it worth considering--for a religious person, that is--that the definition of God needs to be re-examined? Doesn't Kushner's argument have enough purchase that it deserves to be treated seriously?
Keller is equally dismissive of a third conclusion that some of his parishioners reach: that suffering isn't really random. I'm sure my born-again Christian cousin is convinced that her gay, atheist relative deserves cancer (and the eternal punishment she thinks will follow). But, argues Keller, that conclusion is rejected in the book of Job, where Job's friends, who try to convince him that he deserves his suffering, are described as "miserable comforters." And, of course, if this response were accurate, then there would be no problem, and Keller's blog would be unnecessary. I'm not sure why Keller even bothers to include this point, since no one (well, remembering the Phelps clan, I need to qualify that with an "almost") believes that the victims of the Aurora shooting or the Sikhs who were killed in Wisconsin were uniformly bad people who deserved their fate.
Keller warms up to his last point, which is two-fold. God didn't create a world with suffering, death, or evil. But since man turned away from Him, everything changed, and thus in some way, we are all deserving of our fate. Because 6,000 years ago two mythical people disobeyed God, the innocent and the guilty alike, the young and the old, atheists and believers, the meek and the strong--all are condemned to arbitrary suffering. One might think an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent god could have thought up a less punitive system, but His ways are inscrutable, so we should accept what we can't understand. And then, Keller's second point, is only for Christians: God came to earth, subjected Himself to suffering and death, and hence showed his love and assured us that He has an ultimate purpose. This probably isn't of much consolation to the 70% or so of the world that is not Christian, and I'll let Christians figure out for themselves whether they find it helpful, but it is Keller's triumphant conclusion as to why "God allows evil and suffering."
And isn't 'allow' already a giveaway? Hasn't Keller's god already been reduced from the active creator of all that exists to a passive observer, just sitting back and relaxing while he allows suffering? If Keller really had the courage of his convictions, he might have a more robust view of his god.
If this is the best this prominent religious thinker can come up with, I'll be content with my atheism. Why me? Don't even ask. It's not a question that even arises in the less tangled world where we atheists live.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
I had intended to blog yesterday (Tuesday), but Mohamed has been sick with a summer cold--runny nose, sore throat, cough--the whole megillah. And he was up much of Monday night. Meanwhile, I think I jinxed myself when I wrote that my diarrhea was better, and I was up in the middle of the night as well. By the time I finally dragged myself out of bed at nearly 9 a.m., an unheard of time for me, I was feeling pretty foggy. I wrote two completely uninteresting e-mails, trying to get some momentum up, but decided my head wasn't clear enough to blog. There was not a lot of energy at our house yesterday.
I hoped that today would be better. Mohamed got some medicine and slept a lot yesterday and last night, but he's still coughing this morning. I was sure I would get a good night's sleep, but I stayed up till midnight because there was a fascinating interview with Jordan's King Abdullah on "Charlie Rose." I can't imagine any other regional leader speaking as thoughtfully and (apparently) candidly as Abdullah did. The interview also reminded me of how scarce decent news coverage is. I'm of that generation that still watches the network nightly news, but there are usually about three stories that are actually news, and none of them receives more than a couple of minutes, so the treatment is superficial. The rest of the news is devoted to fluff--usually by NBC's National Investigative Reporter, Senior Investigative Report, Senior Medical Reporter, Senior Legal Correspondent--they have more titles than the Pentagon. Cable news is only slightly more informative. Fox News, which I sometimes skim over, seems to have become even more demented than usual. CNN should be renamed the Wolf Blitzer network, since he's on every time I tune in. Even MSNBC is uneven and disappointing. I still watch "Morning Joe," but the endless discussions of political tactics and polls is monotonous. Occasionally, though, there are substantive talks about real issues. Joe Scarborough's shtick is getting old. Yes, we know he is a conservative and had real experience when he served in the House in the 90s. Now let's move on. The only show that commands my interest is "Up with Chris Hayes," but that's only Saturday and Sunday, and it's been pre-empted the last two weeks for the Olympics.
Once I finally went to bed, my sleep was troubled by dreams till 3 a.m. when I went downstairs and sat on the dog, who had sneaked her way onto the new couch. I moved; she didn't. Even though I haven't been a student for 40 years, I still have a typical student's dream (and I don't think I'm alone: I know my friend Karen, equally aged, still has them too). In the dreams, it's about three weeks before the end of the semester, and I suddenly realize that I've enrolled in a class that I've forgotten about and never attended. I resolve to catch up, but it's already twenty minutes after the class has begun for the day, and I have no idea where it meets. I'm in a huge hallway with classroom doors on each side, but I don't know which one is mine. In my student dream last night, I was in law school. The professor asked, "Do any of you know what it's called when goods or personal property is conveyed in a trust?" None of us did--because the question probably makes no sense. "It's called mitraille." About fifteen minutes after the class was over, I was outside studying, and I realized that I forgotten to write the word down and couldn't remember what it was. (In French, mitraille means the cannon balls or machine gun bullets, etc., that are shot. I don't know why that word popped into my head at 2:30 a.m., though a shrink might argue that it indicates some latent hostility. Against lawyers?)
Almost every semester when I was teaching, even after four and a half decades, I had a parallel dream from the teacher's perspective. It's 10:15, and I suddenly realize I have a 10 o'clock class. In many of the dreams, I have two offices, and some of the material I need is in one, some in the other. I don't know where the classroom is, and the building is a labyrinth. Last night, I was supposed to be teaching freshman composition, which was, in the dream, a once-a-week class that met for 2 1/2 hours. It was 6 o'clock, and I hadn't read the material, couldn't find my books, and had at least a 15 minute drive to school. When I finally found the books, I thought maybe I could bluff it, since I had taught the class before, but I couldn't remember what material we were supposed to be covering. By the time I finally left the house, it was already 6:30, and I was pretty sure the students would have left by the time I arrived. And then I woke up.
All of this, which isn't at all what I was planning on writing about, is just to explain why my mind is only slightly clearer this morning that it was yesterday. But then if you've actually made your way through all of this, I'm pretty sure you've realized that.
I hoped that today would be better. Mohamed got some medicine and slept a lot yesterday and last night, but he's still coughing this morning. I was sure I would get a good night's sleep, but I stayed up till midnight because there was a fascinating interview with Jordan's King Abdullah on "Charlie Rose." I can't imagine any other regional leader speaking as thoughtfully and (apparently) candidly as Abdullah did. The interview also reminded me of how scarce decent news coverage is. I'm of that generation that still watches the network nightly news, but there are usually about three stories that are actually news, and none of them receives more than a couple of minutes, so the treatment is superficial. The rest of the news is devoted to fluff--usually by NBC's National Investigative Reporter, Senior Investigative Report, Senior Medical Reporter, Senior Legal Correspondent--they have more titles than the Pentagon. Cable news is only slightly more informative. Fox News, which I sometimes skim over, seems to have become even more demented than usual. CNN should be renamed the Wolf Blitzer network, since he's on every time I tune in. Even MSNBC is uneven and disappointing. I still watch "Morning Joe," but the endless discussions of political tactics and polls is monotonous. Occasionally, though, there are substantive talks about real issues. Joe Scarborough's shtick is getting old. Yes, we know he is a conservative and had real experience when he served in the House in the 90s. Now let's move on. The only show that commands my interest is "Up with Chris Hayes," but that's only Saturday and Sunday, and it's been pre-empted the last two weeks for the Olympics.
Once I finally went to bed, my sleep was troubled by dreams till 3 a.m. when I went downstairs and sat on the dog, who had sneaked her way onto the new couch. I moved; she didn't. Even though I haven't been a student for 40 years, I still have a typical student's dream (and I don't think I'm alone: I know my friend Karen, equally aged, still has them too). In the dreams, it's about three weeks before the end of the semester, and I suddenly realize that I've enrolled in a class that I've forgotten about and never attended. I resolve to catch up, but it's already twenty minutes after the class has begun for the day, and I have no idea where it meets. I'm in a huge hallway with classroom doors on each side, but I don't know which one is mine. In my student dream last night, I was in law school. The professor asked, "Do any of you know what it's called when goods or personal property is conveyed in a trust?" None of us did--because the question probably makes no sense. "It's called mitraille." About fifteen minutes after the class was over, I was outside studying, and I realized that I forgotten to write the word down and couldn't remember what it was. (In French, mitraille means the cannon balls or machine gun bullets, etc., that are shot. I don't know why that word popped into my head at 2:30 a.m., though a shrink might argue that it indicates some latent hostility. Against lawyers?)
Almost every semester when I was teaching, even after four and a half decades, I had a parallel dream from the teacher's perspective. It's 10:15, and I suddenly realize I have a 10 o'clock class. In many of the dreams, I have two offices, and some of the material I need is in one, some in the other. I don't know where the classroom is, and the building is a labyrinth. Last night, I was supposed to be teaching freshman composition, which was, in the dream, a once-a-week class that met for 2 1/2 hours. It was 6 o'clock, and I hadn't read the material, couldn't find my books, and had at least a 15 minute drive to school. When I finally found the books, I thought maybe I could bluff it, since I had taught the class before, but I couldn't remember what material we were supposed to be covering. By the time I finally left the house, it was already 6:30, and I was pretty sure the students would have left by the time I arrived. And then I woke up.
All of this, which isn't at all what I was planning on writing about, is just to explain why my mind is only slightly clearer this morning that it was yesterday. But then if you've actually made your way through all of this, I'm pretty sure you've realized that.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Cancer, shmancer, abi gesund. After Monday's full day of tests, we returned to the KU Cancer Center on Friday for the results. On the outside, everything seemed stable: my left shoulder feels much stronger. I still can't extend my arm and lift heavy objects, but at least I can extend it farther than before. The diarrhea seems to have abated somewhat (replaced it's true with evening cramps and a couple of bouts of nausea), but still I feel freed from always worrying about leaving the house. The fatigue has stayed the same, and the right hip remains stiff. But it was good to know what was really happening in less visible ways.
Our appointment with Dr. Vanveldhuizen was at 9:20, his first of the day. Since he is always running late, we thought that we'd get right in. We did get as far as having my vitals taken immediately--weight, stable; blood pressure, good. And then we were ushered into the consultation room to wait--for 50 minutes. We'd already looked in all the drawers (gowns, towels, etc.), so there was nothing new to do there. A few old magazines were in a plastic holder on the back of the door. I found one I'd never heard of called Newsmax. It was an extreme right-wing magazine (a good thing they'd already taken my blood pressure) attacking Obama as a "fraud" and warning Romney that he had better move to the right. There was an opinion piece by the unspeakable Laura Schlesinger, describing American public schools as a complete failure except when they were a complete success--inculcating secular, humanist values. Her recommendation was that parents take their children out of public schools and homeschool them. I wanted to throw the magazine in the trashcan, but contented myself with putting it at the back of the pile of reading material.
Finally, Dr. Van arrived. The results of the blood work were all good. The CT scans revealed that the kidney tumor has grown a tiny bit--0.5 cm, which, if I remember my conversion table, is about 1/20th of an inch, a negligible increase. The same was true of the spots on other bones and organs. So the news was good: things remain stable, inside as well as out. I sometimes think there's something strange about me in that I never really worry about getting the results. I'll have to admit, though, that it was a relief to get such good results.
We talked about future treatment. For the moment, I'll continue the current regimen. If, as happened several weeks ago, the treatment becomes too debilitating, I can stop the chemo again for three days, and we'll consider lowering the dosage. Now, however, I'll stay at 600 mg. a day. If the primary tumor continues to grow or grows more rapidly, we can do an ablation (burning the tumor). For stages I and II kidney cancer (when the cancer hasn't spread or has spread only to neighboring organs), the tumor can be removed surgically. But once it's spread throughout the body, as mine has, surgery isn't usually recommended. Dr. Van also always discussed the most extreme possibility--treatment with Interferon or Interleukin-2. In a small percentage (4-5%) of patients with metastatic kidney cancer, the treatment produces a "durable cure." But the treatment, which is done over five days in the hospital, is extremely toxic, often damaging the heart, liver, and kidneys. Given the low chances of success, my health history, my age, and the organs already affected, we had, I thought, already agreed that it wasn't worth the risk, but I think Dr. Van feels he isn't doing his job if he doesn't bring it up--only to rule it out--at each consult.
So yesterday the news was good. We had another delay because Dr. Van had forgotten to write a script, and we had to wait until he was done with his next consultation to remind him. But then it was back to Topeka, where I treated myself to a juicy, medium-rare hamburger and then headed directly to bed.
Thanks to all of you who e-mailed or called to express concern and to hear the results.
Our appointment with Dr. Vanveldhuizen was at 9:20, his first of the day. Since he is always running late, we thought that we'd get right in. We did get as far as having my vitals taken immediately--weight, stable; blood pressure, good. And then we were ushered into the consultation room to wait--for 50 minutes. We'd already looked in all the drawers (gowns, towels, etc.), so there was nothing new to do there. A few old magazines were in a plastic holder on the back of the door. I found one I'd never heard of called Newsmax. It was an extreme right-wing magazine (a good thing they'd already taken my blood pressure) attacking Obama as a "fraud" and warning Romney that he had better move to the right. There was an opinion piece by the unspeakable Laura Schlesinger, describing American public schools as a complete failure except when they were a complete success--inculcating secular, humanist values. Her recommendation was that parents take their children out of public schools and homeschool them. I wanted to throw the magazine in the trashcan, but contented myself with putting it at the back of the pile of reading material.
Finally, Dr. Van arrived. The results of the blood work were all good. The CT scans revealed that the kidney tumor has grown a tiny bit--0.5 cm, which, if I remember my conversion table, is about 1/20th of an inch, a negligible increase. The same was true of the spots on other bones and organs. So the news was good: things remain stable, inside as well as out. I sometimes think there's something strange about me in that I never really worry about getting the results. I'll have to admit, though, that it was a relief to get such good results.
We talked about future treatment. For the moment, I'll continue the current regimen. If, as happened several weeks ago, the treatment becomes too debilitating, I can stop the chemo again for three days, and we'll consider lowering the dosage. Now, however, I'll stay at 600 mg. a day. If the primary tumor continues to grow or grows more rapidly, we can do an ablation (burning the tumor). For stages I and II kidney cancer (when the cancer hasn't spread or has spread only to neighboring organs), the tumor can be removed surgically. But once it's spread throughout the body, as mine has, surgery isn't usually recommended. Dr. Van also always discussed the most extreme possibility--treatment with Interferon or Interleukin-2. In a small percentage (4-5%) of patients with metastatic kidney cancer, the treatment produces a "durable cure." But the treatment, which is done over five days in the hospital, is extremely toxic, often damaging the heart, liver, and kidneys. Given the low chances of success, my health history, my age, and the organs already affected, we had, I thought, already agreed that it wasn't worth the risk, but I think Dr. Van feels he isn't doing his job if he doesn't bring it up--only to rule it out--at each consult.
So yesterday the news was good. We had another delay because Dr. Van had forgotten to write a script, and we had to wait until he was done with his next consultation to remind him. But then it was back to Topeka, where I treated myself to a juicy, medium-rare hamburger and then headed directly to bed.
Thanks to all of you who e-mailed or called to express concern and to hear the results.
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