How're you doing? you ask.  I can't complain.  I remember writing those last three words a couple of times in earlier blogs.  But, of course, I do complain--at least in my head.  Maybe it's time to do it outloud.  It's too early to be a grinch stealing Christmas.  And it's too late to ruin Thanksgiving.  So here are some things I'm not thankful for.

I'm not thankful for all the discomfort that has followed the surgery on my right leg.  I was incredibly naive; I thought that it would be like a hip replacement and that after a little therapy, I'd be as good as new.  But none of the bone in the top half of my femur was salvageable; it's pure titanium for the top several inches and plastic for the ball joint of the hip.  There was no bone left for the muscles to attach to, so they had to be artificially attached to the titanium and plastic.  I don't mind the slight limp or having to carry a cane when I leave the house.  And there's not really pain.  But if I sit in the same position for very long, the discomfort makes itself known.  To stand up, I have to put down whatever is in my hand, and push myself up using at least one hand.  Every set of stairs requires a deep breath before I take the first step.  Getting dressed or undressed involves sitting down, standing up, sitting down, standing up--one item at a time.  Putting on my right sock is an ordeal.  I can't cut the toenails on my right foot.  When I had the surgery, we had an Altima coupe.  I loved the car, but getting in and out was a nightmare.  The lease was up in August of 2011, and we ventured out in the Kansas heat to search for a new car that would be more comfortable--one dealership a day.  We leased a Toyota Venza, the biggest car I've ever had.  The seat is ass level, so I can just sit down on it.  What I can't do is get my right leg in the car by itself.  Every time I have to use my hand to haul it in.  I realize that this is hardly a major problem, but on each occasion it seems like a small symbol of frustration.

I'm not thankful for all the stomach problems caused by the chemo--or by the new meds I take (three blood pressure pills, for example) to combat the side effects of the chemo, all with their own side effects.  Food and drink are no longer sources of pleasure.  I rarely have much appetite, and even when I do, after a few bites, I've lost my taste for whatever I'm eating.  I no longer enjoy wine--or even Diet-Coke.  At least, I get my eight glasses of water a day.  The frequent bouts of diarrhea are really debilitating.  They're both physically and psychologically exhausting--and potentially embarrassing.  I can't leave the house without taking a couple of Imodiums, and I always have some with me.  Many days I don't leave the house at all.  I'd like to find a cause-and-effect between what I eat and its consequences, but after 18 months, I've given up the search.  Thai food, which I love, seems to be (usually) just fine.  Mexican food, as anyone more rational than I am should know, is (usually) disastrous.  Sushi is my fallback; it always looks and tastes good.  I can eat it at my own pace since I don't have to worry about its getting cold, and it is fresh and cooling.  Still, three or four sushi dinners a week is probably enough for anyone.  Other than that, however, what doesn't have unfortunate effects one day doesn't work the next.  For a long time, I was successful in avoiding nausea, usually a common side effect of chemo.  That's changed lately, and I find myself with my head in the sink having the "dry heaves."  I've got yet another pill that calms my stomach down and is also, according to the label, effective against schizophrenia, just in case the voices that I hear aren't coming from the TV.  It generally works well, but what it can't do once the nausea has passed is give me an appetite.

I'm not thankful for the constant bouts of fatigue.  I always write the blog first thing in the morning, because that's when I have the most energy.  Then, maybe four hours after I've taken the chemo, I crash.  If I have to, I can power my way through the first bout, but whether I have or not, I will always need to sleep for a couple of hours after lunch.  It's not a choice; it's not a power nap, or any other kind.  It's a sudden black curtain that descends.  The fatigue organizes my day.  I'm a gregarious person, and visitors or lunches out are always energizing for me.  But I know that those good hours are going to be followed by the crash.  When you've always thought of yourself as energetic and independent, the fatigue, especially when complicated by the diarrhea, causes a whole new sense of self--and not one that I like very much.  Instead of my personality being a mosaic--or hodgepodge--of many characteristics, living-with-cancer seems to have taken over as the boss of all the others.

I'm not thankful that travel is out.  I'm not thankful that driving is a rarity these days. 

Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch.  Let's hope it's out of my system for a while.  When I started writing this, there was an ad on TV supporting the Wounded Veterans Project.  What the veterans in the commercial were struggling to overcome was so much more serious than anything I've mentioned here that I felt guilty about continuing.  But continue I did.  Otherwise, cancer shmancer, abi gesund!

A long-time friend asked why in my pre-Thanksgiving blog about family traditions, there was no mention of cousins.  Didn't I have any?  I had eight cousins, seven on my father's side.  But my father was the second youngest of seven children, and my mother was nearly 40 when I was born (a very late pregnancy for a first child in 1945), so my cousins were all 15 years or so older than I was and by the time I had childhood memories weren't a part of anything that I remember well.   I was always struck by the idea that my father's siblings and their spouses had the ugliest names imaginable: Clifford and Leila, Wilma and Willard, Roy and Maxine, Lucille and Les, Ava and Ralph, and Melvin and another Wilma.  My parents, Howard and Ruth, seemed to have gotten off easily.  Although all seven of the siblings talked about the joys of growing up in a large family, all but one of them, who had three children, had either one or no children of their own.   My paternal grandparents had a small farm in southern Iowa.  My grandfather, who died before I was born, had either an illness or a farm injury (it was never talked about) that limited his abilities to farm, so the children carried a lot of the load.  I remember occasional visits to my grandmother's house, but she, unlike my mother's mother, always seemed dour, and I didn't look forward to visiting her.  She died when I was young, and looking back, I can see that raising seven children on a small farm wasn't exactly a prescription for levity. 

My favorite aunt and uncle were Roy and Maxine, who lived in a big (or so it seemed to me) white farm house where, when we visited, I slept in a feather bed.  They laughed a lot, cooked big meals, and had a dog named Skipper.  Roy would throw pieces of chewing gum to Skipper, who would give them a chomp or two before swallowing them.  As a child, I thought this was extremely entertaining, especially because I had always wanted a dog, and my parents would never get me one.  Dogs made my father nervous, and my mother professed to be afraid of them.  There was one short-lived and unfortunate experience with a dog.  I don't know where he came from or why my parents broke down, but for about a week, I had a dog which I named, with a distinct lack of orginality, Skippy.  My parents didn't want him in the house, and we didn't have a fenced-in yard, so Skippy spent his few days with us in the breezeway between the house and the garage.  He cried and whined a lot, which didn't endear him to my parents.  And one day when I came home from school, my mother told me that Skippy had suddenly contracted some unknown disease and had died at the vet's.  I wasn't convinced by the story, but Skippy was never talked about again.

Once I lived on my own, I promptly got a dog, which I named Caleb (Hebrew and Arabic for 'dog') and which my parents loved.  Later I had a cocker, Ryder, for 16 years, and he provided good company for my mother once she had moved to Topeka.  My French-Egyptian friend Mona always had five dogs at a time (as well as three coyotes).  Most of them were English cockers, but she also had a rottweiler (a sweet dog which once in a moment of anger ripped my right arm to shreds and then bit me in the ass), a shepherd, and others.  My parents loved Mona and soon got over their resistance to dogs.

On my mother's side, I had one cousin, and she did live in Story City, but she was eight years older than I was, so I wasn't particularly close to her either.  I've written about her before: she became an evangelical Christian who told me that she "wept and prayed" over me every night because I was going to hell.   She also told me she never put a cake in the oven without a prayer that it would be successful.  I refrained from asking why a god would be more concerned about her cake than about starving children or whether, if the cake didn't turn out perfectly, she thought she was being punished.  When I was in my 20s, she asked if we could meet for a talk.  I knew what direction she was going to take, but agreed as long as we'd meet in the bar of a restaurant.  Story City had always had a "beer parlor" or two, but once Interstate 35 was built a mile away, several restaurants with bars opened at the exit.  The conversation quickly turned to religion, and Mary asked whether I didn't think the reason that I didn't love "God" was because I was unmarried and had never loved another human.  I said that I had been with the same man for seven years, so I had indeed loved a person.  She shuddered.  That was what she had thought, but didn't want to believe: her only cousin was gay.  She charitably told me that God hated the sin, but loved the sinner, so she would pray harder for me now that I was doubly damned.  So far, I don't think her 40 years of prayers have had much effect.  I hope they've worked better for her cakes.

When my mother died, Mary created a scene at the funeral because the funeral director put my partner, not her, in the lead car to the cemetery.  We didn't speak for years after that, but then I decided that since I was her only cousin (she did have four children, and her whole family remained evangelical), I should make peace, so I wrote her a letter saying that we should be friendly.  She wrote back that as a Christian, she had of course "forgiven" me, but that she was surprised that an atheist like me would even ask for forgiveness, which hadn't been a word that figured in my letter.  She added a P.S. to her letter asking that a water color that her mother had done and which, Mary said, her mother had "lent" to my mother be returned.  And that was the end of my attempt at reconciliation.

So, yes, I had cousins--eight of them.  I know that two are still alive and that one has died.  About the other five, whom I never really knew, I have no idea.  Roy and Maxine's daughter sends me a Christmas card every year.  Her daughter teaches at a private school in Kansas City, and for 25 years, we always say that we should get together when my cousin comes to KC to visit her daughter, but we never have.  Since I never knew my cousins well (except for Mary, or Mary Margaret as she was called when I did know her), I never really felt the lack.  Not having a dog--that's a different story, but a lack I remedied as soon as I could.

Thanksgiving day, like the days that had preceded it, began beautifully.  The temperature reached 74º, a record for Thanksgiving here.  But as the afternoon faded too early into night, the temperature dropped and the winds picked up, a reminder of the winter that soon may come.  Robert Frost might be described as a poet of onset--of night, of winter, of death.  And one of my favorites of his poems is called "The Onset":

Always the same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
I almost stumble looking up and round,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend
Upon him where he is, with nothing done
To evil, no important triumph won,
More than if life had never been begun.

Yet all the precedent is on my side:
I know that winter death has never tried
The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap
In long storms an undrifted four feet deep
As measured again maple, birch, and oak,
It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;
And I shall see the snow all go down hill
In water of a slender April rill
That flashes tail through last year's withered brake
And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake.
Nothing will be left white but here a birch,
And there a clump of houses with a church.

 

Two days till Thanksgiving.  I don't have lots of memories of childhood holidays; my parents didn't make a big to-do over them.  I'm not sure why.  We didn't have a lot of money, but I think it was probably more temperamental.  I remember that most Easter mornings, I went with Kathy Johnson, my best friend, to a sunrise service at one of the local Lutheran churches.  Afterwards, there was a breakfast.  I think it used to be one of the two semi-annual lutefisk and lefse meals (lutefisk is truly one of the most disgusting and stinky culinary inventions ever), but my memory may be faulty about that.  A couple of years I remember dyeing Easter eggs, and two or three times we bought small, dyed chicks with the predictable disastrous results.  But usually I'd come home from the Lutheran service, and my mother would have hidden candy on the window sills behind the curtains.  Since the chocolate eggs were always in the same place, the "Easter egg hunt" wasn't time consuming.  And then the Sunday went on as other days. 

Christmas was a little more festive.  The tree went up a week before Christmas and came down a few days afterwards.  My mother was always convinced that it would catch fire from the lights, so two weeks was an absolute maximum.  It was always a small tree that we set on a table.  On Christmas eve, I got to choose the meal; it was always sloppy Joes, which we called "made-rites."  I remember waiting eagerly for my dad to get home from work, so we could rush through the meal, and I could open my presents.  On Christmas morning, Santa would have delivered some small additional gifts, but the best ones came the night before.  I'm sure we must have gone to church either in the evening or on Christmas day, but I don't really have any memories of it.

Nor do I really remember many Thanksgiving dinners.  I think we usually went to Aunt Olive (my mother's sister) and Uncle Glenn's.  They also lived in Story City, a couple of blocks away.  There wasn't much class difference in a town of 1500 people, but Olive and Glenn had more money and a bigger house than my parents.  They had lived in a small house while Uncle Glenn built their bigger one, in front of which he placed a sign reading "Coffman Manor," much to the disdain of my parents.  They had a huge rec room in the basement with all sorts of games and a bar.  I loved it there.  My parents thought the addition of the bar confirmed their suspicions about Uncle Glenn, who walked around every day carrying a glass bottle of Coca-Cola, which my parents were sure was laced with bourbon.  I think we spent some Thanksgivings in Des Moines with Aunt Lucille (my father's sister) and Uncle Les.  Aunt Lucille worked at a large, local department store and seemed to me the height of sophistication.  Uncle Les was a traveling salesman, who, it later turned out, had enjoyed the privileges of his itinerant lifestyle.  I remember many happy times with Olive, Glenn, Lucille, and Les, but I don't have any specific memories of Thanksgiving dinners. 

One tradition that we definitely didn't have was going around the table saying what we were thankful for.  I can't even imagine anyone suggesting doing so or feeling anything but embarrassment if they'd been called upon.  But now, fifty or sixty years later, maybe I'll start the tradition.  I'm thankful this Thanksgiving that
     I'm still alive (and kicking, though not so well with my right leg)
     I am sharing my life with Mohamed
     Without biological family, I'm surrounded by friends--old and new, distant and near--who give me limitless support and lively conversation and good food and love
     Someone invented Votrient (and Imodium)
     The doctors and nurses at KU Med inspire confidence and are always compassionate and give personalized care
      No one has ever treated Mohamed as anything other than my spouse
      Despite the first six entries' being about health, my "diminished" life is rich in so many other ways
      Mitt spent his weekend seeing a "Twilight" movie rather than planning his move into the White House
     Obamacare won't be dismantled and others will have access to insurance like mine that will keep them out of bankruptcy
     Newt and Reince and other appropriately named Republicans won't go away and will continue to be sources of outrage and comedy
     Calista's hair remains invulnerable
     Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will keep me amused and informed
     There is an unending supply of wonderful books--familiar and new--to keep my mind active
     My Kindle will deliver them to this impatient reader within sixty seconds
     Kimber, our German shepherd, has decided that her new orthopedic bed is comfortable after all
     Like last year, we'll spend Thanksgiving with Laura and François and their two sons, and there will be good food, good conversation, and good laughs.

I'm also thankful for Frosted Mini-Wheats, sushi, Susan Flannery, Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris-Perry, "Frasier" re-runs, and TextTwist.

Now that I've started the tradition, I promise that next year, the list will be even longer.
    
    

Yesterday was sunny and pleasant.  We left Topeka at 8:45; it seems no matter what the traffic is like, it takes exactly 75 minutes to get to the KC Cancer Center.  The parking garage was nearly full, but we found a place on the roof (and, being able sometimes to read lips, got cursed by an elderly person of indeterminate sex who wasn't happy that we'd beaten him/her to the spot).  Although the waiting room was packed, we were called almost immediately by Anisa, one of our favorite nurses there.  She took my vitals, all of which were good.  Despite my erratic eating, my weight remains stable; I've lost about 10# over the last 18 months--none of it, it seems, from my stomach.  I guess that's ok, since it gives Mohamed plenty of targets for my daily shot.

Our first visitor in the consultation room was an intern (or resident) who seemed moderately informed about my condition.  He got off to a good start by noting that the problems had started two years ago in my left shoulder.  His knowledge quickly went downhill, though, when he didn't know about the surgery on my femur or which chemo medication I was taking.  He was quite confident, indeed overconfident, and I finally asked whether we were actually going to see Dr. Hozbeierlein.  He got the hint and left "to have a conference with Dr. Holz."  Luckily, Dr. Holz entered immediately and was friendly and frank.  From the first, we felt confidence in him.  Dr. Vanveldhuizen speaks slowly and softly.  Despite the fact that we were in a small, windowless room, Dr. Holz talked fast and loudly.  He said that if we decided to have surgery, he would do a nephrectomy and remove the entire kidney.  Trying to remove just the tumor would require open surgery and would be more invasive and dangerous.  The entire kidney could be removed laproscopically with two or three days in the hospital and, perhaps, a three-week recovery time before I was able to return to my normal routine and, for example, lift heavy objects (as if I worked on a loading dock).  He said that there are some data that suggest that removing the kidney might prolong my life by a few months, but that there aren't many data and certainly not enough to make real predictions.  He also said--and this was new information--that a nephrectomy might further compromise my immune system and thus actually be counterproductive.  He suggested that if I decided to have surgery, I would probably want to wait till after the holidays.  I said that if I chose that option, it would probably be better to do it between semesters, since Mohamed would be tasked with the increased caregiving.

Finally, I asked the question that I would think doctors don't really like (though that's just a guess): if he were in my position, what would he do.  He said that the trajectory of my cancer wasn't "normal," that it's quite common for chemotherapy for kidney cancer to be effective against secondary tumors (as mine has been) but not so much against the primary tumor.  But although my tumor has grown, at 4.1 cm. it is still relatively small.  His approach would be to wait and watch.  I have a Dec. 10th appointment with Dr. Van, but just for bloodwork and discussion.  The next CT scans will be about six weeks after that, and he saw no harm in waiting to see how the kidney tumor has progressed (that doesn't seem like the appropriate word) at that point.  What did I think of that option?  Since my inclination had always been not to have the surgery and was more so after his point about the possibility of  a more severely compromised immune system, I was perfectly happy with that decision.  So the status quo remains in place till the end of January, and then we'll re-evaluate where I am.  We were both pleased with Dr. Holz, whose opinions were clear and balanced.

We left the Center, and met two KC friends, TJ and Scott, for lunch on nearby 39th Street, which is a restaurant row.  I don't think I made the best choice of places to eat, but I was the one who made the choice, so I won't be too hard on myself.  Both TJ and Scott are funny and smart, so that compensated for the so-so food.  For some reason, though we hadn't had to get up early and though there was nothing stressful about the consultation, I fell asleep on the car ride home, and then slept for an additional two hours once we got here.  The waves of energy followed by sudden and lengthy crashes are one of the most frustrating parts of my daily life.

Scott is coming in today for a visit.  Mohamed will have a less fun day, as he has tests in statistics and microeconomics on Tuesday.  And, having finished an article on Kid Rock in The New Yorker, which came yesterday, I have an article on Diane Ravitch, whom I find the sanest of writers on education, to look forward to before the rest of my day unfolds.   

"If a man lies with another man, he should be stoned."  Leviticus 20:13.  Marriage equality, legalized pot.  Who knew the Bible was so prescient?

I thought that I might be able to enjoy a certain schadenfreude watching the Republicans after the election as they tried to re-invent the party.  Instead, it's as if nothing has changed.  Four times in the last two days, I've had to endure TV interviews with Newt Gingrich--from "Today" to "The Colbert Report."  And softball interviews at that--unlike Jon Stewart's evisceration of Mike Huckabee a couple of nights ago.  Although the Republicans may talk nice now about immigration reform, for example, it's not because of any change of beliefs (and they don't even pretend that's the motivation for their revised stances) but because of their fear (different tune, same motives) of the new demographics.  Huckabee and Gingrich are just two of the same, old, failed faces that are still pontificating.  Punditry has no consequences--except inflated bank accounts.

When Elizabeth Warren debated with Scott Brown, she was asked which Republicans in the Senate she could work with if elected.  The best she could come up with was Richard Lugar, who by that time had already been defeated in his primary by the ineffable Richard Mourdock.  Her response was widely mocked.  But if we think about it, who is there?  Is there one single Republican Senator who lives outside the bubble or who isn't afraid that if s/he makes the slightest compromise, there isn't going to be a challenge by a Tea Bagger in the next primary? 

As a respite from thinking about politics and health (and generals who go "haywire below the belt," as my friend Carol would put it), I've been immersed in two wonderful novels.  One was written 350 years ago, the other 80 years ago; one was in English, the other in French; one I had never read before, the other perhaps four or five times; one I read on my Kindle, the other the old-fashioned way.  Both were disjointed, "modernist," comic romps.  The first was Tristram Shandy, which I'm embarrassed to say I had never read; the second was Le chiendent by Raymond Queneau, one of my go-to novels that gives me pleasure every time I read it.  Tristram Shandy was familiar for its famous scenes of the narrator's misfortunate life--from his father's interruption of Shandy's conception by the mother's suddenly asking her husband whether he has remembered to wind the clock to Tristram's inadvertent circumcision by a falling window as the maid has forgotten to replace the chamber pot and Shandy is relieving himself through an open window.  But most of all what's famous is Sterne's theme and variations on human "hobby horses," the obsessions that drive human behavior and channel it into narrow but persistent routines (like winding the clock and having sex on Sunday nights).  The novel goes nowhere for hundreds of pages, but it never ceases to be sharp witted and keenly observant.  Sterne calls it at last a "cock and bull" story, but, like most human lives, one with less of a dramatic arc than with silly and repetitive diversions.

Le chiendent (literally a weed, but colloquially a dilemma, a "pickle") is equally playful, especially with language.  The main character, as much as the book can be said to have one, is Etienne Marcel (a real 14th century French politician who has a major street and a métro stop in Paris named after him), who begins the book as a silhouette, evolves into a two-dimensional being when he breaks his daily routine in leaving the bank where he works to notice rubber ducks swimming in a waterproof hat, and then into a fully human character before disappearing from the "plot" for several chapters and eventually diminishing back into a silhouette.  The book is full of characters with their own hobby horses, the most disastrous the assumption that a junkman's blue door conceals a hidden treasure.  But to try to re-tell the plot would be as futile as summarizing Tristram Shandy, and as in that novel, traditional notions of plot and character are discarded in favor of the often very funny, but completely non-linear, vagaries of human nature and the language through which they are expressed.

Since I was re-reading Queneau, I also treated myself to another trip through Zazie dans le métro, the story of a foul-mouthed young girl who is babysat by her uncle (a happily married man who dances in drag for the amusement of tourists, his tour de force being a tutu-clad performance of "The Death of a Swan") while her mother has a weekend tryst.  Zazie's sole desire during her weekend in Paris is to take the métro, which is unfortunately on strike.  This very funny (and even more playful with language) novel was made into a wonderful movie by Louis Malle. 

Friday morning, to shift topics, we have an appointment in Kansas City with the surgeon who would do the procedure if I decide to have the kidney tumor removed, either by surgery or by ablation.  Saturday's blog entry will let you know how the discussion went.

After several days of beautiful, warm weather, at 12:15 this morning, a cold front came through--temperatures started dropping (and will continue to drop throughout the day) and a hard, cold rain began to fall.  Sometimes, Topeka has beautiful, long autumns.  Not this year.  The combination of a very hot, very dry summer, an early hard freeze, and many windy days meant that the autumn leaves fell abruptly.  We have a large, old cottonwood tree in the backyard.  A year or so ago, it was struck in the night by lightning.  We heard a loud, cracking sound, and sparks began to fall from the branches.  It was a frightening time: did we need to call the fire department or would the rain put out any fires?  After a few minutes of hesitation, I went back to bed, telling Mohamed to keep an eye on it.  (What a thoughtful husband I am!)  The fire never spread, but the tree was badly damaged, and perhaps 30% of it had to be cut away.  Still, the tree survives.  Every year, it loses most of its leaves early in the fall.  But a few always hang on until after the rest of the trees in the yard have lost their foliage.  And every year, when I look at those few leaves, I think of Shakespeare's sonnet 73, which begins "That time of year thou mayst in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang..."  Last year, when those lines went through my head, I was pretty sure that it would be the last time I needed them.  Luckily, I was wrong.

I always recalled too the time when two final candidates for a vacant Shakespeare position came to campus for an interview and a presentation.  Both interviewed well.  The first candidate's presentation involved deconstructing a rather obscure history play, one of those plays that probably none of us had read.  Even in a graduate class or seminar in Shakespeare, it was an unlikely choice.  In 1977, I had been a post-doc Fellow at the School of Criticism and Theory, then held at U Cal-Irvine.  This was near the beginning of the theoretical revolution that brought an end to the close reading of the New Criticism, as it had always been called, and brought Deconstruction, Reader Response, and the New Historicism to the center of academic lit. crit.   Our teachers were among the biggest names in the new direction: Edward Said, Stanley Fish, Barbara Herrnstein Smith.  For a small-town guy from Iowa who had gone to grad school at a university much more known for its football team than for its English department, this was a heady summer.  Everyone was in awe of the handsome and exotic Edward Said.  Stanley Fish was the friendliest, often coming at night to the co-ed dorm where the Fellows lived.  (Since he later married one of us, Jane Tompkins, who became famous herself as a critic, perhaps his motives were not as social as we thought.)   I'm not sure many of us actually understood what we were hearing, but that didn't seem to matter.  And it didn't hurt that almost every afternoon, we took a break to lounge on the sand at nearby Newport Beach.

I did my final paper for Murray Krieger, an old-school New Critic who was, I thought, often treated rather badly by the new guard.  No one has ever said that academics were above petty frays.  Adlai Stevenson once said that powerlessness corrupts, and absolute powerlessness...  I wrote my major paper for Krieger on ekphrasis in Light in August and was temporarily proud of it.  But the last day we were there, I was browsing in the university bookstore and came across a collection of essays by Krieger, which included one on ekphrasis in Light in August.  Mine was a pale imitation of Krieger's, and I was panicked.  I rushed to his office to try to explain, though no explanation could account for how I had ignored my own professor's scholarship on this narrow topic.  Krieger was the kindest and gentlest of men, and he was extremely gracious in understanding and assuring me that he took my coming to the same conclusions as a form of flattery.  I left his office and the summer Fellowship feeling only slightly reassured--and much more strongly embarrassed.

But to get back to my point (and I do have one, as Ellen used to say), I was duly (and snobbishly) impressed by the first candidate's presentation.  The second candidate, Maureen (Mo), was much smarter.  She did a traditional explication of sonnet 73.  All of us knew the sonnet, and she passed out copies of it to revive our familiarity.  All of us understood and practiced close reading.  It was amazing how quickly we fell into the role of students.  We all puzzled over phrases; we all asked questions.  I still remember mine: wouldn't it, I asked, have been more logical to reverse the order of 'none' and 'few' in the second line?   I thought to myself that the presentation was a great success and an example of how good teaching worked.  I also thought that it was too easy, and so I voted for the first candidate.

Fortunately, I was in a small minority, as Mo was hired and became one of our most effective and popular teachers, to say nothing of a wonderful colleague and friend.  After three years on phased retirement, she retires completely at the end of this year.  I told her once of how I voted, and, like Krieger, she said she understood completely.  I never brought it up again, though.  There was no sense in pushing my luck.

Today's blog is my 100th with over 8,000 pageviews.  When I first created rabbitpunched, I had no idea I'd be around for so many entries.  Looking back at the early entries, I wrote a lot about cancer, death, and atheism.  Since then, I've wandered off into many byways.  Thanks to those of you who read the blog regularly and often send kind words via e-mail (almost everyone has given up on trying to post comments).  I hope those readers from around the world who drop in now and then find something to enjoy.  I can't tell anything about the audience except which countries are represented, and I have no idea how they find the blog.  I've lost what were for several months faithful readers in Russia; today, though, there are readers from Poland to Peru, from Indonesia to Israel. 

Between health and politics, I'm feeling much less anxious today.  The surgeon called, and we'll have a consultation next Friday, the 16th.  At the least the doctors at KU Med work for salaries, not fee-for-service, so Dr. Hozbeierlein's advice will be disinterested.  The appointment is scheduled for 10:30, which means I won't be exhausted by having had to get up early and there won't have been any tests.  No matter how attentive Mohamed and I are, there is information that on later reflection seems ambiguous.  When we talked with the Fellow last time about alternative chemo treatments, my understanding was that a clinical trial would involve Votrient + either a placebo or the trial drug.  But one of my readers interpreting what I described thought it meant stopping the Votrient and taking only the new drug (or the placebo).  So now I have something else to add to the list of questions for the doctors.  Although nothing has been decided about either surgery or chemo, I feel relieved at least to have the next two consultations scheduled.

And, of course, post-election we can breathe a huge sigh of relief--and more, celebrate some real happiness.  Results in Kansas weren't any surprise; from the national level to the statehouse, everything is controlled by ultra-conservatives.  There are no longer any checks on our right-wing governor.  There hasn't been an elected Democratic Senator since 1932, the longest streak of any state in the country.  I did manage to vote for three winning candidates--Obama and a couple of county officials.  Topeka re-elected two Democratic state senators, but my district re-elected the last moderate Republican, the only one who survived the intraparty purge in the primary.  For my state representative, I could have voted for Gandhi (diversity comes to Kansas) but his Republican affiliation ruled him out.

Tuesday evening, for me at least, lacked the tension of 2008.  Between Nate Silver and Chuck Todd's key county projections, it looked pretty early as if Obama was going to win.  There were wonderful Senate wins: Elizabeth Warren, Claire McCaskill, and Tammy Baldwin, to name three.  And Tammy Duckworth, after disgusting attacks from her Republican opponent, won a House seat.  The House, unfortunately, remains at least as conservative and intractable as it was before.  Sometimes I feel sorry for John Boehner--his copious tears running over and blurring his spray-tanned face until it's the same color as his nicotine-stained fingers, all the while Eric Cantor is waiting to push him out of the Speakership. 

And it was a landmark night for the LGBT community.  Voters in three states--Maine, Maryland, and Washington--approved same-sex marriage, and Minnesota voted down a ban on such marriages.  (Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, whom I follow on Twitter, was a tireless worker on behalf of the no vote.)  One can argue that civil rights shouldn't be a matter put to majority vote, but still, this was the first time that voters--not the courts or legislatures--approved same-sex marriage after a string of defeats at the polls.  Minnesota also said no to requiring voter IDs, and more states legalized the use of marijuana, including for recreational purposes. 

We flipped around to watch the election returns (skipping CNN because I can't look at Wolf Blitzer any more), including some time with Fox news--and this time it wasn't even masochistic.  For some reason, Fox called many states--Wisconsin first, followed by Virginia, Ohio, Nevada--for the Democrats long before the other networks did.  The discussion on Fox seemed almost dazed, though you could already see the battle within the Republican party that is sure to ensue.  On the one side were the die-hard conservatives, like Charles Krauthammer (other than Donald Trump, is there a more repulsive Republican than Krauthammer?) arguing for moving harder to the right; on the other were the pragmatists, i.e., those who chose demographics over ideology.  I was trying to think why so many middle-class voters, especially of course white men, voted against their own economic interests (Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?" analysis).  Since one of the "common sense" assumptions of American life is that we're all following the American dream (there's no "French dream" or "Canadian dream"; our obsession seems to be part of the more general assumption of American exceptionalism) and since one fact is that that dream seems to be slipping away from the middle class (and even less possible for the poor, who were virtually ignored during the campaign), the fear of losing that dream to the interests of increasing numbers of blacks and browns trumps (no pun intended) the unreality of the promise that the wealth of the supposed "job creators" will trickle down and keep the dream alive.

Factoid:  this is the first time since Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe that three consecutive President have been elected to serve two terms.  For those of us who began voting in the 60s, when it looked as if one-term Presidents would be the norm (Kennedy was assassinated, LBJ didn't run for a second full term, Nixon resigned, Ford and Carter were defeated for second terms), the landscape has changed.  But even though Congress had a historically low approval rating, there were very few changes Tuesday in the overall composition; there the status quo remained in place. 

And so ends blog #100.

Yesterday, I received the e-mail reply from Dr. Vanveldhuizen.  He still wants to consider the surgery and is arranging a consultation with us and Dr. Holzbeierlein, I hope this Friday.  Although there was no real news, since I assumed that would be the next step, I was relieved to have a progress report; I'm not always a patient person, and I'm afraid I'd gotten a little testy the previous two days, though I shouldn't have been as we had nice visits with Doug and Raylene, who brought a delicious Italian stew (they had recently spent three weeks in Italy) and an equally delicious almond bread, and with Virginia, who brought two containers of DQ ice milk.

Tomorrow I'll go vote and, insha'allah, the interminable election will be over.  I have to add the qualification since there are several "nightmare scenarios," as CNN puts it, that could throw everything into confusion.  I could have voted early, but one thing that Kansas does right is to have a sufficient number of polling places so that there are rarely long lines, and I'm old-fashioned enough to enjoy the ritual of election day.  Neither the governor nor either of our two senators is up for re-election, so I'm unpatriotically hoping for a low turnout in Kansas--both to diminish a tad Romney's total vote and to give the few Democrats who have any chance a possible edge.  For U.S. Representative our Democratic candidate is named Tobias Schlingensiepen.  When I was a small child, I went to vote with my mother, a Democrat (unlike my father).  One of Iowa's Senators was a Republican named Burke Hickenlooper, and I was so enamored by his name that I wanted to vote for him.  At the polling place, in those more relaxed days, they gave me a ballot, and I duly checked his name.  But in the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished column, I saw the election official throw my ballot away and began crying and yelling.  Now the Republicans would probably have me arrested for voter fraud. 

There are some statehouse races here that could be close.  In the last legislative session, the moderate Republicans blocked the Republican-controlled house and senate from passing a gerrymandered redistricting scheme for Congressional representatives, for all state house and senate representatives, and for the always controversial state board of education.  The Republican party got revenge on the moderates who dared to buck the governor, and all but one were defeated in the primary.  All the redistricting went to the courts, and they actually got it right.  What the legislature couldn't do in three months, they did in 48 hours, creating compact districts with low population variance and ignoring political considerations: incumbents were thrown together in the same districts, other districts were left without incumbents.  Republicans will, of course, retain control of the Kansas House and Senate, but there are least some competitive races in the bigger cities, including Topeka, which counts as a "bigger city" in Kansas. 

After 25 years of voting in the same place, a fundamentalist church that gave me the shpilkes, I'll now vote in the state headquarters of the Seventh Day Adventists.  And this time I'll have to show a photo ID. 

Vanveldhuizen, Holzbeierlein, Schlingensiepen--these are the names running through my head these days.  They're a mouthful!

I've spent considerable time the last two days mulling over the choices for the next steps in treatment.  I e-mailed Dr. Vanveldhuizen yesterday, and though he is usually prompt in answering, he hasn't replied yet.  Perhaps he hasn't had a chance to confer the Dr. Holzbeierlein (is it a bad sign that both doctors' names have 13 letters?), who would do the surgery if we choose to go that route.  My next appointment with Dr. Van is scheduled for Dec. 10th, and it's just for blood work.  I suggested that if we're seriously considering surgery to remove the tumor in my kidney, we should probably meet with Dr. Holz before then. 

My current feeling is that since the surgery wouldn't extend my life, I'm not inclined to do it: it's an invasive operation, and I don't think the possible complications and the time spent in recovery are worth any possible benefits.  But I don't really have enough information without consulting the surgeon to make a final decision.  As for ablation of the tumor, that sounds considerably less invasive, but again, it wouldn't affect my long-term survival, and at a couple of points in our consultation on Monday, I think that Dr. Van implied that the tumor was too big for ablation.  (It's amazing that no matter how attentive I think I am, there's so much stress and I'm so exhausted by the time we get to the consultation that I miss or mishear or forget parts of what the doctor says.) 

The other decision we need to make is whether to change the chemo regime.  On this score, I think I'll just follow Dr. Van's advice.  My analogy (which some of you have heard in e-mails) is that if Dr. Van asked me which William Faulkner novel he should read first, I'd hope that he would trust my informed advice.  Although I've read about Sutent (the most likely alternative to Votrient), the side effects seem about the same as with Votrient and the survival rates are also similar; I really can't make an informed decision on my own.  Dr. Van has spent his life in oncology; his opinion is much more trustworthy than anything I could come up with.  I'm not very enthusiastic, however, about participating in an experimental trial where I'd get Votrient combined with either a new drug or with a placebo.  I feel somewhat selfish about feeling that way, since this kind of trial might help others down the line.  But the trials would involve more monitoring, hence more trips for tests, and all that seems rather too onerous.

Switching subjects: just when I said that we get no political advertising in Kansas (still true for national and state-wide races), we're bombarded with ads for and against two Democratic incumbents at the state senate level.  Surprisingly, the ads for the Democrats seem more sophisticated.  One Republican ad, however, drives me over the edge.  It's sponsored by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce (didn't chambers of commerce used to be rather bland pro-business organizations?).  It contains two claims, both patent lies, about the Democratic incumbent.  The first is that he voted to restore $600K to the Kansas public employment retirement fund and doesn't just imply, but actually says, that all that money went to line his own pockets.  The second claim is that he voted for Obamacare.  He's a state senator.  Does no one even monitor what PACs say in their ads?  Are there no regulations (Romney would like that) of what the PACs can say?

What we do have are plenty of ads from the insurance companies, since this is the period when Medicare recipients (like me) can change plans.  My bet is that few people actually change, since there's simply too much information to process.  Still, there are parts of Medicare that work very well.  For one thing, we all get a booklet from the government that explains as clearly as possible the alternatives and will provide for Part D (drug expenses) a program into which you can plug the list of drugs you take and receive a recommendation for the most cost-effective plan.  An even simpler guide is that for each alternative, there's a clear percentage figure for the plan's customer satisfaction.  Another efficiency that has surprised me is that I'm not deluged with confusing bills.   I've never received a single bill from a doctor or a hospital.  Instead, I get three monthly statements (that are actually comprehensible).  BCBS sends me a statement of what they have paid to supplement my Medicare coverage.  I get two monthly statements about my drug coverage, and they're not only clear, but I can see exactly where I am in the four stages of Part D coverage.  (In my case, it doesn't take long to move right past the "donut hole" and into the catastrophic phase.)  I get all but the Votrient from my neighborhood pharmacy, but the chemo, because of its expense, is mailed from an out-of-state pharmacy.  Because of electronic record keeping, this is all coordinated, and the statements reflect both sets of prescriptions.  Instead of being swamped with paperwork (I never have to save the numerous receipts from pharmacy visits), I just have my three sets of monthly statements, and that's that.

Let's say that Mitt Romney had the courage of his convictions (two oxymorons in just one phrase) and proposed that his health care plan (as much as we know about it at any given moment) would start immediately, not just for those 55 or younger.  Does anyone think that he'd get a single vote from people 65 or older?  And now that he's backed away from Ryan's ridiculous voucher program so that Medicare recipients would have a choice, does anyone think that having two separate systems would make Medicare more efficient and less bureaucratic? 

I'm certainly not arguing that Medicare is perfect or that Obamacare, while phasing in distinct improvements in health care coverage, is ideal.  There's a lot of work still to do, especially in controlling costs.  But much works surprisingly well--and should, step-by-step and frustratingly slowly, continue to make health care better, especially for those of us who are over 65 and are having much more experience with doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and insurance companies than we would like.