Tuesday was yet another six-week visit to KU Med.  This time it was just blood work, a consultation, and a bone-strengthening shot.  Everything went smoothly except that once I got there, I noticed a large blood stain on the front of my shirt.  Once in a great while, the daily morning shot will bleed a little; it is an anti-coagulant after all.  I had noticed a few drops of blood when I was in the shower, but I'd put a Band-Aid on it.  Evidently that hadn't worked.  But all the results were within normal range, so nothing has changed there.  I don't mind shots, but the expensive one that strengthens the bones sometimes hurts a bit.  This time, the nurse said, "One, two, three," and I waited for the prick but felt nothing.  When I turned to look, she was taking the needle out. 

The physician assistant didn't seem as impressed as we had thought she'd be when we told her that we had stopped smoking--or at least switched to e-cigarettes.  We're using a modular system that satisfies all the characteristics that make smoking satisfying: something to do with your hands, inhaling, exhaling vapor, and tasting.  The system comes with a variety of flavored "e-juices" that soak a wick.  It's not a perfect solution, but it's a step.  The doctors haven't mentioned giving up smoking since the beginning.  One resident mentioned it a few months ago, but then said, "Oh, well, you've got terminal cancer anyway, so I suppose it doesn't make any difference."  So far, Mohamed has been perfect: not one cigarette in ten days.  I cheat about twice a day. 

Obviously, I've lost--temporarily, I hope--the momentum for posting.  The days, especially as winter lingers, are marked more by routine than by excitement.  There's the routine of pills: I get up and swallow 8 or 9 pills while waiting for Mohamed to give me my daily shot in the stomach.  After literally a thousand shots, it's hard to find a place for the next one.  He swabs my stomach with an alcohol rub and says, "Sorry.  This is going to hurt."  It never does (or at least not very much or very often), and when he pulls the needle out, I say, "Thanks, sweetie," and the day continues.  At noon there are two pills, before dinner there are four more, at bedtime two more, and in the middle of the night one last one.  There's also the routine of sleep.  Three hours awake in the morning and then the black curtain descends, and there's 90 minutes of sleep.  Two more hours of wakefulness (lunch time) and then two hours of sleep.  Another couple of hours awake, and from 6 to 7 p.m., one last crash. 

Meanwhile, over the last two weeks, the stomach problems have returned--and there's no routine for them, just complete unpredictability.  More worrisome have been pains in my right thigh and hip.  For about ten days, it was as if I'd strained all the muscles at once.  Walking hurt, standing from a sitting position hurt more, and climbing stairs was worst of all.  The surgeon who had done the operation nearly three years ago was unresponsive to my messages.  A few days ago, the pain started abating on its own.  It's not completely gone, but it's much better. 

So my health isn't exactly an uplifting topic for posts.  We go back to the oncologist next Tuesday, though just for blood tests.

In Topeka, the major news story is the death of Fred Phelps Wednesday night.  One of the disadvantages of being an atheist in this case is not believing in an afterlife.  I'd settle for just a thirty-second one, long enough for Fred to have an oopsie-moment.  While online and in town people debate whether to picket his funeral, the argument is moot, since there'll be  no funeral.  The official WBC explanation is that they "don't worship the dead," but one of his estranged sons has blogged that last August Fred was excommunicated from the church and evicted from his home on church property.  The clan was out yesterday, smiling and laughing, as they picketed on one of their favorite corners.

And now for something completely different: one of the joys of teaching was always the very bright students, the ones whose papers I put on the bottom of the pile when grading so that when I didn't think I could face another essay, there was one I could count on to be a pleasure to read, the ones who made me question whether I wrote that well when I was an undergraduate.  One such student, Melissa Sewall, has kept in touch occasionally via e-mail.  After I wrote that the tumor had grown, but we weren't going to treat either "by surgery or by ablation," Melissa wrote that she found that a particularly poetic phrase and wanted to write a poem using it.  That sounded like a challenge to me, but here's the lovely poem she produced:

By Surgery or By Ablation

for Dr Faulkner

 

Tempus fugit and does not fugit

hour by hour, month by month,

the bones eroded silent

while you gestured   chalk-dusted

Dickinson into existence

It was not Death, for I stood up

 

No point in removing the tumor

by surgery or by ablation,

scapula   femur

cells gleefully propagating new cells

grown from dime to nickel-sized

by hook or by crook

by nausea   by fatigue

And all the Dead, lie down

 

I dreamed you needed me

It was not Night

I moved two couches

organized the clutter

made the flow of space better

I forgave that one B

for all the Bells

let bygones be bygones

wrapped my arms around you

Put out their Tongues for Noon

 

sickness takes you by storm

you lose more weight

there is no hurry

we sit idly

by