The last month or so was particularly eventful: the trip to Iowa and our marriage, the party Saturday night at Raylene and Doug's, the million dollar scholarship donation in my name, and the reassuring tests at the KU Cancer Center.  Now it's time for a quieter fall routine.  Mohamed is in the second week of school, and by now assignments have begun.  Yesterday I downloaded page after page of  forms and instructions for the green card application.  The applications themselves are fairly straightforward, but each must be accompanied by a lot of supporting documentation. 

Meanwhile, after a rather mild summer, we're in the middle of a two-week heat wave with daily temperatures in the high 90s and no relief at night.  The Merry Maids are here now for their monthly visit; usually we'd sit on the back deck, but it's already too hot and muggy for that to be a pleasant choice, so reruns of "Frasier," all of which we've seen many times, are on in the background while I type and Mohamed is focused on his iPad.

The television runs from morning till late night; it's mainly white noise, though I think I know the words to almost every commercial  (a recent report found that 41% of TV time is devoted to advertisements), a doubly sad commentary.  News coverage is especially dispiriting, both for what's happening  and for its focus on trivia.  When Miley Cyrus's tongue gets more coverage than the situation in Syria, it's no wonder that viewers are turned off--and are turning off.  I could die a happy man if I never heard the word 'twerking' again. 

As you can tell, the quiet routine doesn't lend itself to writing an interesting blog.  Maybe the weekend will lead to some more entertaining thoughts for Monday's entry. 

Saturday night, our friends Raylene and Doug threw a party to celebrate our marriage.  There were 16 invitations to our friends in the Topeka/Lawrence area, and everyone who was invited showed up.  Raylene and Doug are natural hosts, who love to cook and entertain and make it all look effortless.  Everyone has or had some connection with Washburn--some people we see regularly, others whom we hadn't seen in a while.

The first part of the evening consisted of tables full of various hors d'oeuvres and wine.  My favorite was a three-layer dish with a chicken liver paté as the center, but there were plenty of choices, many of them exotic, for the group.  After a couple of hours of mingling, good conversation, and indulging, the next part of the evening shifted from wine to champagne toasts.  I got to hold the floor for a few minutes, thanks to Doug's gracious introduction, to describe both the $5.5M gift to Washburn and the scholarship in my name that some of it will fund and the three-day trip to Iowa for our wedding.  Although almost everyone knew some or all of the details of our marriage journey, it was fun to put it together into a brief, but consecutive narrative.  

Even though we're having our first real heat wave of the summer, some of us repaired to the back deck.  In the spirit of celebration, two of the guys smoked cigars, and a couple of non-smokers decided they'd indulge in just one cigarette.  It reminded me of the old days in British novels when the men retired to the drawing room for cigars after dinner, except that we weren't only men, we certainly weren't British, and the 'drawing room' was full of the summer sounds of locusts and cicadas. 

The evening concluded with coffee and dessert--a flourless chocolate cake and/or Raylene's famous Italian cream cake and/or Doug's homemade bourbon peach ice cream.  One, two, or three.  I don't think anyone went for just one of the choices.  By 11, the party guests dispersed.  Mohamed and I were full and very grateful for the truly lovely and convivial evening, though we felt a tad guilty when we surveyed the tables of food, the empty plates, the glasses and cups with the remnants of wine, champagne, and coffee.  A tad guilty--but not enough, I'm afraid, to stick around to help clean up.  A very good time was had by all, and we're extremely thankful to Raylene and Doug for such a lavish but relaxed and happy evening.

With this entry, I'll hit 20,000 pageviews.  As I said at 10,000, it's not exactly going viral, but still, it's a very gratifying number, especially since when I began, I expected the blog to be short lived.  A special shoutout to the regular followers in Russia and Ukraine.  I don't know any details about international readers except that the difference between those who have just stumbled across the blog and read a few entries and those who keep up regularly is clear.  Here's to the next 10,000 views.

It's all good.  Well, yesterday's trip to the cancer center didn't start all that well: it's exactly 75 minutes from our garage to the center, so we prepared to leave at 7 for our first 8:15 appointment, but our good intentions went for naught, and we were late leaving.  Then, at the first turning, the supposedly leak-proof coffee mug fell over, slopping hot coffee on my jeans and the car seat.  The drive to KC was uneventful until for some inexplicable reason we drove right past our exit from the interstate and ended up in the stockyards district.  Mohamed kept asking me where to turn--I who was completely lost--until he said, "Oh, if we turn here we'll end up at the McDonald's on Rainbow," which was exactly where we needed to be.  And once arrived, I got Marci, my least favorite phlebotomist.  She seemed to be on her game yesterday.  Sure, she dropped the needle on the floor, but she replaced it, got all the blood samples on the first try, and put in the right sized port.

It was all uphill from there.  I had taken some of the revised legal documents (durable power of attorney for health care decisions and living will) with me, and within five minutes they were scanned into the system.  (The day before we had taken care of the last matter at the bank, so now I have no excuse for not starting the green card application process.)  After the blood work, I went for the CT scans.  Usually, this takes about an hour, beginning with the drinking of two large glasses of what they keep assuring me is only water.  But I was the only person there for the scans, and the tech said to drink as much as I could, but not to force myself, and he'd be back in 15 or 20 minutes.  And 20 minutes later, I was lying on the table, jeans pulled down to my knees, listening to the familiar mechanical voice saying, "Breathe in.  Hold your breath.  Breathe."

We had a 45-minute wait before we saw Jennifer, the physician assistant whom we like a lot.  Certain that she wouldn't have the results yet, we debated whether to wait until she did have them or just discuss them on a later phone call.  But when we got in--and unlike Dr. Van, Jennifer is always punctual--the results of both the blood work and the scans were already there.  The very good news is that the kidney tumor has not grown at all.  It has changed its form a little, but it has exactly the same mass as before.  After worrying about the bulge on my left side for the last weeks, we both greatly relieved by the results.  Jennifer examined the bulge, which is clearly visible, but there's no real explanation for it.  It hasn't grown in the last month, so we'll just keep monitoring it, but it doesn't seem related to the cancer.

The drive home was uneventful.  As usual, I slept for a few minutes, and then once home, I crashed for about three hours, despite the fact that there's nothing particularly fatiguing about the tests.  Mohamed brought me sushi for dinner, and since I'd lost weight since the last exam, I felt justified in finishing off the sushi with some double chocolate gelato and Chips Ahoy--the wonderful capacity of the human mind for rationalization!

Last week, Mohamed and I were invited to what was billed as a small dinner at the home of the university president.  We envisioned about eight people, gathered around a dining room table, making awkward small talk.  We were rather dreading the occasion.  Instead, there were 30-35 guests for a dinner on the patio of the president's home.  Topeka has had a mild summer after two brutal ones, and the weather was perfect.  The occasion was to honor Lisa and Mark Heitz, Washburn graduates who have been generous donors to the university in the past--and to announce a further $5.5M gift, the largest single contribution in the university's history.

The Heitzes are remarkably modest, and instead of going for buildings with their names plastered on them, the money will go for scholarships--in law, athletics, and English, which was Lisa's major.  Although the exact distribution of the funds won't be announced till next month, it will certainly be the most significant contribution ever to the English department, and in a time of rising tuition costs and student loan debt which exceeds credit card debt, the scholarship fund will leave a legacy for generations of students.

Lisa always tells the same story about her first English class with me.  She had breezed through high school with solid A's and expected the same in college.  On her first essay, I gave her a C or a D.  She was so furious that she immediately dropped my class.  Later she dropped out of Washburn, got married, and had a baby.  When she decided to return to school, she remembered that in addition to the infuriating letter grade, I'd also written something like "You are capable of much better work than this" and decided that she should give my class a second chance.  This time she did the work she was capable of, and she took several more classes with me.  Who knew 40 years ago that giving someone a disappointing grade would contribute to such enormous consequences?

The dinner was also pleasant in that many people, learning of our wedding, congratulated Mohamed and me (and Lisa and Mark sent us a beautiful bouquet the next day).  This may be conservative Kansas, but at least in the gown part of the town/gown division, the reaction was definitely celebratory.

Normally, the next post would be on Thursday, but we leave early that morning for tests at KU Med--blood work and the newly-scheduled CT scans, followed by a consultation with at least the physician assistant.  I'll wait till Friday when I hope I'll know more to write the next entry.

Lost causes:

Between you and I, for Mohamed and I
very unique
graduated high school
not my forte (last word pronounced with two syllables, hence meaning 'loud')

No way:
Him (or her) and I

Personal peeve:
Educated people who think 'whom' and 'whomever' are always more elegant than 'who' and 'whoever' and thus are correct.  Recent example: John Oliver (who did a fine job hosting "The Daily Show" in Jon Stewart's absence) pulling out a note that read "To whomever finds this."  No.  You can see his logic: 'to' is a preposition and needs an object.  That would be fine if the sentence ended there, but it doesn't.  John, who I'm sure is reading this, the verb 'finds,' like all verbs in English, needs a subject, and the subject is 'whoever.'  The noun clause, "whoever finds this," is the object of the preposition 'to.' 

In yesterday's mail, we received a set of three CDs, the Sounds of the Prairie, as a wedding gift from our friend Margy, a dedicated lover and defender of the Flint Hills and the Kansas prairie.  I woke up early this morning, perhaps worrying about what I would say in today's blog.  It was still dark and cool, as it's uncharacteristically been for a Kansas August these last few days.  The birds are singing loudly and, I assume, happily, though Frost might have a different opinion about that.  But the first sound I heard at 5:20 a.m., even though we live miles from a railroad track, was the sound of a distant train.  I had already wondered whether there would be the sound of a train on Margy's CDs, as I had thought about Thoreau's chapter "Sounds" in Walden, which begins not with the expected sounds of nature, but also with the sound of a train.  For those of us who live in 2013, the hooting of a train is nostalgic, a reminder of a slower, gentler time.  But in the mid-nineteenth century, the attitude toward the train was much more ambivalent.  It represented the intrusion of technology into and onto the prairie.  The frontier was suddenly permeable.  Even Thoreau couldn't escape the sound of the train.

Emily Dickinson has a famous poem, #383, about the intrusive nature of trains:

I like to see it lap the Miles -

And lick the Valleys up - 

And stop to feed itself at Tanks - 

And then - prodigious step

 

Around a Pile of Mountains - 

And supercilious peer

In Shanties - by the sides of Roads - 

And then a Quarry pare

To fit it's sides

And crawl between

Complaining all the while

In horrid - hooting stanza - 

Then chase itself down Hill - 

And neigh like Boanerges - 

Then - prompter than a Star

Stop - docile and omnipotent

At it's own stable door - 

 

Like so many Dickinson poems, there is an abrupt change of tone in the work (here, marked by the word 'supercilious').  The first stanza seems approving; rather than the train as iron horse, it's almost like a domesticated cat, lapping and licking.  But soon the train is all-powerful, condescending, yet complaining.  Its sounds are 'horrid' and 'hooting,' as if in derision.  And the brilliant coupling of 'docile' and 'omnipotent' gives the poem its final kick.

 

I'll listen to Margy's CDs and appreciate the sounds of the prairie.  I'll listen, too, for what sounds of civilization intrude.

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Update on last blog: on Saturday, a couple of hours after I had posted my last entry, the oncologist e-mailed.  He's scheduling a CT scan for my next visit on the 22nd.  Dr. Van didn't seem particularly concerned about my worries, but thought a scan was worth the time just to be sure.  I feel relieved.

Yesterday we went to my lawyer, who had rewritten and updated several documents, including my trust agreement and durable power of attorney for health care decisions.  Until the changes, the decisions about end-of-life care were in the hands of my attorney.  I thought this was a good decision that spared Mohamed the anguish of having to make such painful choices.  But since my medical care is at KU Med in Kansas City, the chances that Mohamed will be there when decisions must be made are greater than that the lawyer will be there.  Moreover, as we prepare (slowly) to apply for a green card for Mohamed, all these documents can be added to the file to prove the "reality" of our marriage.  I also want to get photocopies of the original documents filed over two years ago at the Med Center, where they listed Mohamed as "life partner."  Although after six years of being a couple and after all that Mohamed has been through in also being a caregiver, I can't imagine how any official could question our marriage, I'll have to admit that I keep putting off accumulating and arranging all the material, downloading all the instructions for the four forms we have to fill out (the instructions are longer than the forms), downloading and completing the forms, soliciting attestations from friends, writing the checks, and sending everything to an anonymous bureaucrat in Chicago.  Fortunately, the interview part of the application takes place in Kansas City.  We'll do it, of course, but so far we've made only very small, reluctant, and tentative steps.

After the lawyer, we had a very late and heavy lunch, which soon gave the lie to my claims of G-I improvement.  I managed half a plate of sushi as a late dinner, but that was my limit, and I was up at 2 a.m. paying the consequences.  I did have a culinary pleasure a few days earlier.  We were at our go-to restaurant, where an unfamiliar server was very aggressive.  She told Mohamed that he should have a pork dish, and when he said he didn't eat pork, she suggested pork chops as an alternative.  He settled for chicken puttanesca and a salad.  I had fish which came with alligator croquettes.  And the alligator was delicious; it tasted rather like chicken livers.  Mohamed had a croquette and then worried that alligator wasn't halal.  A web search revealed that it isn't.  Nor is it kosher.  While he was looking at lists of what was halal and what was haram, I found a site with a list of about 1500 foods, divided into kosher and treyf.  What a lot of work it must be to worry about this!  And the reasons for distinctions were so complicated and often contradictory ("this food is technically forbidden, but since Jews have been eating it for many centuries, tradition has now deemed it kosher") that I had further occasion to mutter about the irrationality of religion.  At least, I ate my alligator guilt-free and enjoyed every bite.

I seem to have become asymmetrical.  Mohamed noticed it first: a slight bulge on the left side of my abdomen, the bottom of which is level with my navel.  It doesn't hurt when I press on it, but the flesh feels firmer when pushed than the other, flat side.  We're concerned that it is the kidney tumor (it's the left kidney that has the tumor) that has grown enough to be visible from outside.  I e-mailed the oncologist two days ago to ask whether that was a possibility and if so, whether I should have another CT scan when I come in on the 22nd of this month for what is just scheduled as blood work and a consultation with the physician assistant.  So far, he hasn't replied.  Usually e-mailing has been the most effective means of communication--no phone tag--and he's always replied the same day.  I'll try again today, this time including Jennifer, the physician assistant, in case Dr. Van is out of town.  (Still, he must check his e-mail.) 

I think I've done a pretty good job of keeping calm and carrying on over the last two years, but it's difficult not to be a little scared by this development.  I find myself looking in the mirror before I take a shower, pushing on the bulge and trying to reassure myself that this is just one of the consequences of the body's unpredictability as one grows older.  And during the day, I find my hand wandering under my t-shirt to see if I can still feel the bulge. 

The norm for stage 3 and stage 4 (mine) kidney cancer is not to remove the kidney, since by this time the cancer has metastasized to other parts of the body.  For me, the first signs of cancer were the erosion of bone in the scapula and the femur, and there are tumors in other bones, including the spine.  Perhaps three or four months ago, when the primary tumor in the kidney was growing, but slowly, we talked with a surgeon about removing it.  Taking out the entire kidney rather than just the tumor could be done laparoscopically (spell check doesn't like my spelling of this word, but it looks right to me); removing just the tumor would require full surgery.  I liked the surgeon who wasn't gung-ho to operate.  Removal wouldn't prolong my life; what it might do is make the symptoms less severe at the end.  And there could be additional complications because of my compromised immune system.  We decided against surgery.  Now, however, should my fears be grounded and should the tumor continue to grow, maybe it's time to re-think the decision if only for vanity's sake.  I don't want to look lopsided.  Vanity of vanities--all is vanity.  Sometimes the Bible got it right.

In the 1970s, which seem like just a few years, not four decades, ago, one of the highlights of the week was the arrival of The New Yorker.  Pauline Kael was given as much space as she wanted to review movies, and often she'd go on for pages of prose that mesmerized me.  Her reviews of such movies as "Nashville" and "Last Tango in Paris" are legendary, but I can still quote lines from dozens of her other reviews.  When she was mean, she was very, very mean (and very funny); when she was enthusiastic, she could make a movie.  Nowadays, at $7 an issue, the reviews are usually limited to two pages with a graphic taking up more space and are often written by people who aren't experts on what they're reviewing.  There are two movie reviewers: David Denby, whose opinions I usually trust, but who rarely says anything revealing, and Anthony Lane, who is much more interested in being clever than in saying anything enlightening about the films.

For the last few months, the television reviewer has been the very peculiar Emily Nussbaum.  Recently she reviewed the plethora of Food Network shows, although she admitted in the first paragraph that she didn't watch cooking shows, not an encouraging beginning.  She got the initial step right in dividing them into two kinds: competition shows ("Top Chef," "Master Chef," "Iron Chef," "Top Chef Masters," "Chopped"--the list keeps growing) and "stand and stir" shows.  She decided to watch a few episodes of "The Barefoot Contessa" from the second category and draw her conclusions from that.  I watch way too much TV these days, including many hours of the Food Network.  As a novice with a very limited sampling, Nussbaum missed almost everything there is to say about "Barefoot Contessa" and its host, Ina Garten.  Every gay man loves Garten, who seems never to have met a heterosexual male except maybe her husband who appears about once a month.  She's one of the few chefs to include her spouse or family, and when he's in an episode, they make a great show of kissing, giggling, and being affectionate.  It's not easy to watch.  But mainly she surrounds herself with the gay men of the Hamptons, who are always coming to dinner or for whom she is often delivering meals.  In return, they make flower arrangements for her table or pick up cheese for her.

Garten is unusual on the Food Network because she rarely appears on other network shows.  Otherwise, the network is almost incestuous as chefs and analysts move from show to show in an endless procession of cross-promotion.  With rare exceptions, Garten keeps her own company.  There is much less product placement than in other network shows, which are shameless about zooming in on the names of produces and appliances they're using.    Despite the title of her show, she's Jewish, not Italian, and about once a season, she'll do a traditional Jewish meal.  (Like all the Jewish chefs and commentators on the network, she embraces pork.)  Her characteristic line, which she uses many times in each episode, is "How easy/delicious/beautiful is that?"  When she has guests, which is often, she giggles a lot, one of those laughs that sounds charming the first few times, and then quickly becomes irritating.

She has tics as a chef: she uses a food processor much more frequently than other Food Network chefs who are now using Vitamix (we focus on the logo many times) blenders almost exclusively .  She measures almost everything; if she's going to add a teaspoon of salt, she actually takes out a teaspoon and measures it (before measuring the half teaspoon of pepper that's always the next ingredient).  She's the only chef who adds oil to pasta water; she thinks the oil keeps the pasta from clumping, while everyone else thinks adding oil prevents the sauce from sticking to the pasta.

I don't remember what Nussbaum said about cooking shows in general or Ina Garten in particular, but that seems to be my common reaction these days to New Yorker critics.  I still read the issues from cover to cover, and I still admire the political coverage, but by the time I get to the reviews that conclude each issue, my enthusiasm is flagging, and I'm wondering who's standing, who's stirring, and what's cooking on TV.

I think I put a kenahoreh on my health by bragging about how much better I was doing.  I didn't say m-sha'allah (being an ecumenical sort) or even knock wood either.  And yesterday turned out to be a fairly miserable day.  My usual one-hour morning nap turned into more than two hours, and after a misconceived lunch, I crashed again.  For the rest of the day, any activity that involved an upright position seemed just too difficult to negotiate.  Meanwhile, I had cramps all afternoon.  We decided that at 8, we'd go out for dinner, though where was a mystery since nothing sounded good.  But we thought getting out would be a good change.  Unfortunately, by 7:45, my head was in the sink (making it up the stairs to the bathroom was out of the question) and the remains of lunch were being washed down the drain.   I hope it was a one-day exception to the recent pattern, and I'm feeling peppy so far this morning.

'Kenahoreh' (really kein ain horeh) is an expression which is used exactly contrary to its real meaning, which is 'no evil eye.'  Now it's used as the equivalent of putting a jinx on something, but literally to invoke 'no evil eye' ought to be a good thing.  The curse out to be to put 'ain horeh,' an evil eye on something, but somehow over time and the diaspora, the meaning has been turned on its head.

There are just two more weeks before school resumes for Mohamed--six more classes over two more semesters and then his degree.  The three required texts that the bookstore is selling for $800 arrived from Amazon in a few days each for "only" $250.  We've been collecting e-mails, cards, and letters of congratulations on our marriage as support for the green card application, since absolutely everything needs support and documentation.  When I think about gathering all the financial information and actually filling out the applications, though, it all seems so cumbersome that I put it off for another day.  I've had a lot of experience with the INS (its old name) over the last twenty years, and it seems that the only certainty is how arbitrary it is.  At each step, a bureaucrat gets to make a decision, and most of those aren't subject to justification or review.  Mohamed was turned down twice for a student visa ("I don't think you're serious" and "Why would you want to go to Washburn?") and approved the third time when he changed his university acceptance from Washburn to KU and got an immigration officer who was a basketball fan and thought KU was a fine choice.  (Once you have a student visa, you can switch universities; Mohamed took three hours of summer school at KU before moving to Washburn.) 

It is raining comme une vache qui pisse, as the French so elegantly say.  Kimber has no desire to go out, so is sleeping at my feet.  We've had a lot of rain lately, which is good, though once it stops, the afternoons and evenings are uncomfortably humid.  It's been an hour since my chemo and 16 hours since I ate anything, so it's time for a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats (I think I should get some compensation for product placement; Imodium would owe me a lot) and a cinnamon roll.

The Merry Maids are here for their once-a-month visit, the three of us are on the back deck enjoying some uncharacteristically mild weather for the first of August.  It'll be 90º by this afternoon, but for the moment it's lovely.  The only problem is the glare from the sun on my computer screen, which makes it virtually impossible to see what I'm typing.  Mohamed has retreated to the balcony steps, where there is more shade, but no back support.  And Kimber is lying in the sun, waiting for a squirrel or rabbit to put in a morning appearance. 

It's now been 3½ weeks since I reduced the dosage of the chemo and of one of the three blood pressure meds.  (The most immediate effect of the chemo when I started the daily treatment over two years ago was to dramatically increase my blood pressure--well, that and to turn my hair white.)  So far, the blood pressure has remained low.  Of course, there's some worry that reducing the chemo by 1/3 might also reduce its effectiveness, but at least one of the side effects has happily abated.  The fatigue level remains about the same: I made it through the trip to Iowa with just one crash per day, and I managed to have them at convenient times.  But since we've been back, I still need my morning nap, the afternoon sleep may be a little shorter, but now around 6 or 6:30, I fall asleep again for about 30 minutes.  Then I'm good till bedtime around 11:11.  On the other hand, my stomach problems are much improved.  First, my appetite has returned, and I often have healthy appetites for both lunch and dinner.  I've become obsessed with fish--not just my three-times-a-week sushi dinner, but trout and mako shark and whatever else I can find.  We've found good fish in restaurants where you'd least expect it (Longhorn Steak House has an excellent rainbow trout), and as a confirmed carnivore, who used to like nothing better than a bloody steak, I'm a little surprised that fish always looks better.  But it's a wonderful change when eating dinner doesn't seem like an ordeal.

More importantly, I don't feel as if I'm chained to the toilet any more--a four-hour car trip to Iowa?  No problem.  After two years of calculating every outing, preparing with Imodium, searching for the restrooms, and at home making innumerable trips up the seven steps to the john, it's an enormous relief to function relatively normally.  I haven't had any serious bouts of nausea.  Gastro-intestinally, I feel human again.

I know this entry is short, but the glare is driving me nuts, and there's a previously unpublished short story, "Paranoia," by Shirley Jackson in the latest New Yorker, that's tempting me.  I'm giving way to temptation.  (And I'll proofread this later, when I can actually see the words on the screen.)