Jim

I was feeling grouchy when I woke this morning. I didn’t sleep well and I’m still having some chemotherapy-related problems. I lay in bed looking at the alarm clock wondering why I should bother to get out of bed.

What the hell, I thought. It’s just going to be more of the same. Get up, get tired, go to bed, get up again, write for a while, then get tired again. What’s the point?

Sometimes that’s the way I feel. I have to force myself to write. When I write, nothing seems to work out. The thought of eating is enough to make me gag. I’m impatient with my wife, who doesn’t deserve it. If I had a dog, I’d kick him. Or, with my luck, he’d bite me.

That’s the way it goes.

But I forced myself to get up and dressed. I had to. I had an appointment with my therapist at the VA, a block of time when I could go tell her – her name is Linda – how miserable I was, not so she could cure me but simply because I need someone to hear me moan and groan.

Before I headed for the hospital, I stopped by the fellowship meeting I go to each morning. The meeting hadn’t started, so I grabbed a cup of coffee and said hello to a couple of acquaintances. I lied when somebody I don’t really like about asked me how I was feeling. "Wonderful," I said. "Everything is just hunky-dory." I didn’t care if he heard what I muttered about him under my breath.

After I walked out, I sat in my car for a moment drinking my coffee. As I was sitting there, a white car I recognized pulled into the space next to me. It was a friend who just came down here from New York to spend a couple of weeks in his vacation home.

I was glad to see him. About six months ago, he was hospitalized with kidney failure. I’d been in touch, so I knew he’d recovered, but this was the first time he’d been in town since then.

Jim, that’s his name, is about as different from me as it’s possible to be. He’s big and I’m not. He’s serious and I’m not. He’s a conservative Republican and I’m a liberal Democrat. He was an army ranger in Vietnam while I was demonstrating against the war on the streets of Chicago. He was a command-level police officer in New York City while I was…well, you get the idea.

You’d think we wouldn’t get along, wouldn’t you? But we do. He and I have only known each other about three years, but when he’s here I see him almost every day and when he’s up north, we stay in e-mail contact. We’re comfortable in each other’s company.

There is, though, another area of disagreement. He’s a hard-core Roman Catholic and I’m a used-to-be Catholic. He goes to mass a couple of times a week. I drop into the Episcopal Church a couple of times a year.

Jim really believes in the power of prayer. I pray, but it’s more like an insurance policy for me. I’d hate to die and find out I was wrong.

Jim told me a long time ago that he would pray for me every day. When I heard he was sick, I started praying for him every evening. My prayer probably isn’t as formal as his, but I don’t think that much matters. I believe God doesn’t worry too much about formalities and if He did he’d probably be too busy to help Jim or me.

Anyway, when Jim saw me this morning he laughed. "I see we’re both still on this side of the grass," he said. "it looks like the prayers are working."

I guess that’s right. And that makes me happy. As soon as I saw him, I was able to smile. The day was suddenly made better.

Friendship is like that, isn’t it?

Shopping

I haven’t been feeling great for the last week or so. I’m not in anything like terrible shape, I’m not in pain, but I’m still nauseous and so tired I spend almost all day in bed. My wife is taking good care of me. She lets me rest as much as I need and she lets me know she loves me. That’s what I need right now.

It’s nice, sometimes, to have somebody wait on me. For some reason a tuna sandwich always tastes better when someone serves it to me, on a plate, with a pickle slice or two, and tomato soup is great when I don’t have to open the can myself.

My wife is not real handy in the kitchen but she has been known to make me sandwich or a hot dog and she can mix a mean glass of iced coffee and that’s really okay. My mother taught me to take care of myself, so I know how to bake a strawberry pie and Yorkshire Pudding, iron a shirt and hem a pair of slacks all with the same masculine hands. I think my mom figured my personality would keep me from getting married so I’d better learn how to fend for myself.

Anyway, I believe I’m pretty easy to care for. I don’t like to be fussed over. When I’m in pain or sick I find comfort in being left alone. I think I got that from my distant ancestors who handled illnesses and hurt by crawling into some cave in Donegal, hiding under a pile of skins and trying to tough it out.

Of course, when I’m hiding in my cave I don’t get to do some of the things I’m still able to do. I can’t, for example, go to the grocery store. And that means I don’t feel very useful.

I enjoy the grocery store. I go to the big Publix not far our home early in the morning almost every day. I walk the nearly empty aisles and I almost always find something I’ve never seen before. A lot of interesting things are sold in grocery stores now, things that weren’t sold in the store my I went to on the south side of Chicago with my mom when I was a kid. This morning, in the aisle where the dog beds are sold right next to the butane candle lighters, I discovered a kind of air freshener I’ve never seen before. I won’t go into details, but I stood there and read the instructions for about ten minutes. I enjoyed that.

I also enjoyed saying hello to the men and women I see every morning stocking shelves and working behind cash registers or just walking around looking for something I guess they never find. There’s one guy, James, from Jamaica, who’s about my age and he smiles as soon as he sees me and then we compare our aches. And I buy treats for myself.

And every day, at some point, Lynne thanks me for going shopping. That’s good because it makes me feel as if I’ve accomplished something. So this morning I left the cave and, just like the hunter-gatherer I am, I went to Publix and brought home the cottage cheese and frozen pizza.

Everyone dies

I’ve complained before about some of the senseless things well-meaning people say when they’re trying to make me feel better or ineptly expressing their concern.

The other day, for example, a woman friend said she thought chemotherapy would be a wonderful way to lose a couple of dress sizes. I was barely able to fight the sudden urge I had to teach her about the joys of chemotherapy by puking on her shoes. How about that?

Then there are the off-beats who swear that a diet of nothing but raw vegetables or boiled yak or palmetto fronds will cure incurable cancer and who become offended when I refuse to run out to buy vegetables, kill a yak, or climb a palmetto.

And, of course, there are all those who prescribe faith or good thoughts as cure-alls as if those of us who have cancer don’t have faith, enough faith, the right kind of faith, or are just too cranky to live. A lot of good, God-fearing people die of this disease every day.

And that brings me to the dolt who heard me talking to a friend this morning – another friend who’s fighting cancer – and interjected himself into our conversation.

"Well, everyone dies," he said after listening for a few minutes.

Wow.

Look, I know from my own experience how difficult it is talk to someone who’s got a terminal disease. I’ve done it with friends and, I’m sure, I’ve said some goofy things myself. But, really. If "everyone dies" is the best you can do, please keep your mouth shut.

I often wonder how these individuals who make such senseless comments will do if they find out they’ve got terminal cancer or they need a heart or kidney transplant they can’t get. I wonder how they’ll feel if the doctor looks at them, grins, and says, "Well, everyone dies."

Here’s what I know. If you have a broken heart, I can quickly tell you to move on, that it happens to everybody, to be grateful for what you have, and so on. When I have a hangnail, the only thing I can think about is the pain I’m in.

I guess everybody’s that way, to some degree. I guess that’s how it’s possible to say something as true and as ignorant as, "Well, everyone dies."

Mixed Feelings

I went for chemo yesterday and was told they couldn’t pump any more poison into my system for a week or so. My white blood cell count was so low, the nurse said, that if I had the treatment I’d almost certainly get some sort of infection.

That happened to me last year. It started after a chemotherapy treatment when I went through a couple of terrible days. I thought it was just a rough patch, so I tried to ride it out. My wife kept saying I should go the hospital, but I refused until it couldn’t be put off any longer.

I passed out in the elevator on the way from our apartment down to the parking lot, came to, then passed out again as Lynne was driving me to the VA hospital.

I hate it when she says something I disagree with and then is proved right.

Anyway, by the time I was at the ER, my blood pressure was 80 over 40. I’m not a doctor, but on House or Gray’s Anatomy when a patient’s blood pressure is that low they start warming up the machine to jolt his heart back into working condition.

The doctors didn’t have to jolt me back to life, but I did spend about a week in a segregated room, flat on my back, too weak to sit up.

I was scared.

I’m always scared when I’m admitted to the VA hospital. Don’t misunderstand, it’s a great hospital with wonderful doctors and nurses and orderlies and maintenance workers. The food is good and so are the televisions. But there’s part of me that can’t seem to let go of the idea that one day I’m going to walk into that very hospital and not walk out.

I’d rather not know where I’m going to die.

So, I have mixed feelings right now. I'm glad I'm not suffering from the nausea and the other stuff you'd rather not hear about and I'm grateful they caught my low white cell count so I don't have to worry about being hospitalized for now. But I don't like the idea of giving this thing that's eating me alive from the inside out any kind of rest to get bigger or stronger.

Life Story

I’ve been working on a memoir for about two years writing in roughly two-hour chunks as often as I’ve felt up to it. I wrote it through, then rewrote and rewrote again. Now the writing is pretty much done. My wife edited it and now a friend of mine, himself a fine writer, is helping me polish.

I don’t know if it will sell or if anybody outside my immediate circle will ever read it. I hope so. I think any writer who is content writing into a black hole is probably not much of a writer.

I often tell a story about a famous writer at a cocktail party. I’m not sure who it was, though I usually say it was Faulkner. Anyway, this famous writer was at a cocktail party when a woman approached. "I should write my life story," she said. Every writer has heard that line. "I should write my life story, it’s really interesting."

"Madam," the famous author said, "most people think their life stories would make a good book. In truth, most life stories don’t even make interesting sentences."

I agree with that idea, so I was hesitant to write my own story. It does seem a bit presumptuous, doesn’t it? But a couple of people who work in publishing suggested I give it a whirl, so I decided I would. I’m calling my memoir Low Bottom Alky. That’s a term for alcoholics who end up on the streets, losing just about everything. The book is really the story of my drinking career and what has happened since I got sober. The first part of the book is a lot longer than the second.

I sent the book to my editor-friend yesterday. All except the last chapter. That’s the chapter that tells of this current bout with cancer and how I’ve dealt with the disease. I’ve written that chapter but I’m just not ready to let it go.

You see, I’m really not sure how to end the story. Oh, I’m pretty confident that I won’t start drinking again. That just doesn’t seem to be much of an option. But beyond that, I’ve no idea what will happen.

I’ve written more than a dozen biographies for young adult readers. I never wanted to write about someone still living. I’ve always been afraid that as soon as I wrote the life story of some famous, living person they’d do something terrible that made the book worthless.

Years ago, I met Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the famous environmentalist. She was 99 years old at the time and she impressed me so much I determined to write her life story. I didn’t want to start, though, until she died. I don’t know for sure what mischief I thought a centenarian could get into, but I didn’t want to take the chance. And, darn, she just kept living and living and living. She didn’t die until she was 107. As soon as I saw her obituary, I started writing.

The end of her book was, I thought, particularly moving. I hope the end of my memoir is as well. I just don’t know when and how it will come, do I? I may live for another two years. I may not make it until the new president gives his State of the Union Address.

Hey, there could be a miracle, right? I don’t think that's going to happen, but it is possible.

Wouldn’t that be something to write about?

I'm Sick

I don’t feel well.

The new chemo is rougher on me than I thought it would be. At least for today it is. I won’t go into details, but trust me, it’s not good.

I’ve been spoiled so far. For most of the time since I was diagnosed, there hasn’t been a great deal of pain. There really hasn’t been much discomfort, except for that associated with the chemotherapy. For weeks, even months at a time, I’ve been able to convince myself that I’m not really sick. I feel too good to be sick. I don’t really look sick.

Today, I know I’m sick. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in agony. I’m not even in a great deal of pain. It’s just enough to let me know who’s boss, at least for today.

I try not to complain because I know what it’s like to be around a complainer.

I have this good friend, Jimmy Black. Jimmy was married to a complainer. One time she had a cold and every ten minutes or so, she would complain. About her nose. Her throat. About her cold, over and over. Jimmy was reading a book, trying to concentrate. After about an hour of her complaints, he lost his temper.

"Denise," he said. That was her name. "Denise, trust me. I know you have a cold. Trust me. If I have dementia and I forget everything including my own name there’s one thing I won’t forget. I won’t forget you have a cold."

That’s the way I am around a complainer. So I try not to complain. But guess what? I don’t feel well.

I'm sure it’ll pass, but today I right now I’m sick.

It striked me that what I really don't like about feeling this way is that it makes me wonder how I'll bear up later, you know, when the fun really starts.

Good Eats

I know there are a lot of cancer patients, most I guess, who pay a great deal of attention to their diets as part of their treatment.

I’m not one of them.

I figure I’m going to lose weight in any case, right? So that’s certainly not an issue. I already take medicine for high cholesterol, blood pressure and baby aspirin as a blood-thinner, so I don’t have to worry too much about those issue. Chemo continues to make me nauseous so I have to force myself to eat most times. So when I do eat, why shouldn't I eat stuff that’s appealing. To me. Not to my wife.

My oncologist and the nurses who treat me have never, as far as I remember, given me any orders or suggestions to moderate my diet. A lot of the pamphlets and magazines in the waiting room are filled with sample diets featuring things like raw vegetables and cereals I’ve never heard of. My General Practitioner used to make suggestions, now she just asks how my appetite is and when I tell her I often eat two chili dogs for dinner she shakes her head and goes "tsk-tsk."

My wife keeps talking about eating blueberries. Or maybe cranberries. I’m not sure. Along with cancer, I’ve developed an amazing power lose my hearing at will.

I had chemo yesterday. I was nauseous before I walked from the hospital a quarter of a block to my car. On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store. I bought two pounds of baby back ribs and two bottles of bar-b-q sauce. When I got home, I put the ribs and one bottle of sauce in a crock pot and turned on the heat. Then I took some anti-nausea medicine. I had a polish sausage and cheese with onion sandwich. Lots of mustard. Then I went to sleep.

I woke late but managed to work for a couple of hours, then ate dinner. When I carried my plate of ribs past Lynne, she shook her head and made the same "tsk-tsk" sound my general practitioner makes when I talk about food.

The ribs were great. Greasy, but great. They almost overloaded my plate. And I ate ‘em all. My wife is trying to diet so she ate a Weight Watchers meal, then had some boiled squash (no butter).

Before going to sleep I had a slice of devil’s food cake with marshmallow icing and a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Then I took my pills and pretty much passed out.

When I woke this morning, I was sick to my stomach. I threw up once before I left the house for a fellowship meeting and an appointment with a psychologist. We didn’t talk about food.

And guess what? I would have been nauseous and thrown up this morning even if I’d eaten nuts and berries last night. I just wouldn’t have enjoyed my meal at all. I wouldn’t have been able to dig into my bar-b-q ribs and cake and ice cream.

My wife swears she enjoyed her diet dinner and squash without butter. For some reason, I don’t buy it. I think that’s strategy she using to try to make me change – with the best intentions in the world, of course. What I know for sure is that loved meal.

Listen, I know my high-fat-anti-good-stuff-diet isn’t going to make my cancer go away. But it also isn’t going to make it any worse. It does keep my weight up enough so that a strong wind won’t carry me away. I haven’t yet had to buy any skinnier clothes. But what it does, and what it will continue to do as long as I’m able and have anything to say about it, is provide me with pleasure.

Tonight I’ll have either chili and eggs with melted cheese or two cheeseburgers. Oh, yeah, and more cake

Enough

I got the call at about 8:30 Wednesday night. As soon as I heard Jacky’s voice, I knew.
"Kevin died this afternoon," she said. "Thank God it’s over."

I heard her catch her breath.

"At least he’s out of pain," Jacky said. Then we spoke for a few moments about what a great guy Kevin was and about how I wished there was something, anything, I might do. Of course, there wasn’t. Jacky cried and I tried not to cry and failed and then we hung up.

You remember Kevin? He’s my friend, the one who came down from Georgia last month so we could go to a Chicago Cubs/Florida Marlins game together. He’s the guy who learned just a few months ago that he had incurable pancreatic cancer.

When my father died about ten years ago, I barely wept. He was ninety and had already had bypass surgery. His death was no surprise. It made me sad, of course. It should have. But my dad’s death made sense, it was part of the natural flow, as proper as a tide or a sunset.

Not Kevin, though. He was too young by far. He left not just his wife but three little boys, the youngest of whom is only three years old, so young he’ll never remember this wonderful man who was his father.

And that’s why I cried when I heard the words. "Kevin died this afternoon." That and because of the truth that he may have been the best friend I’ll ever have and I miss him already, can’t believe I’ll never see him or hear him again, never laugh with him again.

Believe me, I grieve for Jacky and the three boys. I also grieve for me. And, dammit, I feel like it’s not fair and I want to tell God to lighten up. No more pain for a while, hunh?

How terrible is it when a wife finds herself saying, "Thank God" when her husband dies. To find relief – if any can be found – in the truth that "at least he’s out of pain."

Enough, God. Enough, already. Cut us some slack. Kevin’s family. And my friend Brian, the one I wrote about Monday. And Brian’s daughter. My friend Greg who just learned he has cancer. And me, too. And my wife.

Enough for a while.

Giving Up

I’ve known Brian for about a dozen years. We get along because we share a world view that’s either cynical or realistic, depending on your perspective. We laugh at the same things, usually human foibles. The people we know rarely disappoint us by acting rationally.

When I want to let Brian know how much I like him, I tell him he’s the kind of guy I would have gone drinking with back in the day when I used to drink. He says the same thing about me.

In our circle, the compliments don’t get much better or more genuine than that.

Brian discovered he had lung cancer about the same time I did. He had surgery and I remember being jealous because I figured he was so much better off than I was.

How’s that for an outlook? Being envious because a friend gets a big chunk of his lung excised?

Well, I’m not envious anymore.

Brian is not doing very well. He had the surgery but he never really recovered. He was forced to quit work. He lost weight and found it difficult to get around. Of course, drawing each breath was a struggle.

Now he’s on chemo and he’s miserable. He came into a meeting I was at the other day and only stayed about five minutes. I caught him in the parking lot.

"I’m ready to give up," he said. "It’s just not worth it." He was sitting behind the wheel of his car, his head bent, breathing as if he’d just run a mile.

"Oh, Christ," I said. I couldn’t think of anything else. What else could I say? Hang in there? Don’t give up? Life is worth living? None of those statements seemed appropriate.

A little later, when I was home, sitting on the side of my bed, my wife asked me how I was feeling. I tried to answer her and I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I just didn’t know what to say.

"I wish you could talk more about what you’re feeling," she said.

I wish I could, too. And I do try. I tell her I’m sad. I tell her I’m angry and frightened. But those words don’t really convey what I feel. I guess I’m lucky – she and I are both lucky – because if I was really able to tell her what I feel we both might start crying and raging and shaking and maybe never stop.

So I say I’m okay and I say whatever I’m feeling will pass soon enough, but, dammit, there are moments when I’m not at all okay and when the feelings don’t quickly pass.

I’m not okay when I see a friend like Brian because I realize that someday soon I’ll be just like him. Or worse. Maybe, just maybe, I’m closer than I imagine to the point where I say I can’t take it anymore. Maybe I’ll be ready to give up.

There are simply no words I can say or write to adequately describe how that makes me feel. And if I could express those feelings, I wouldn’t because, in truth, you don't need or really want to hear or read those words.

But I’ll be okay. It’ll pass. It always does.

The Blob

I had the first chemo session of my new course of treatment yesterday. I’ll get chemo once a week for three weeks, then take a one-week break, then repeat the cycle, probably for about six months.

It had been several months since my last session. I’d forgotten what it was like to sit in the oncology waiting room early in the morning, one of a dozen or so patients, all of us trying to make believe our lives are somehow normal.

I’ve been on what’s known as a "drug holiday." That sounds like it’s the kind of vacation I might take to buy marijuana, but it’s nowhere near that much fun. It’s a break I was given so my body could recover a bit from the side effects that go along with injecting toxic stuff into my bloodstream.

So there I was, waiting to start my treatment and nodding hello to the other men and women in the room. It’s pretty easy to figure out pretty much where any patient stands in terms of treatment.

The first-timers, especially, are obvious. They’re usually not alone. Most times some family member or loved one sits alongside, not quite managing to look brave. The new patient usually looks stunned, as if he’d opened a newspaper to find his own obituary. There’s a lot of eye movement, looking for an exit, a place to run and not finding a way out.

Most of the patients, by the way, are men. Not many women show up for cancer treatments. I think that’s because until very recently women were not as prevalent in the service so most of the women veterans just aren’t old enough, yet, to have come down with cancer. There are plenty of young women in the hospital. I see them being wheeled down the halls or limping along on crutches or in the mental health clinic looking as if they’re trying to get free of some fear or demon that chased them home from the desert.

It’s also easy to identify the patients who, like me, are in the middle of treatment. Most of us look resigned. We know what’s going on and don’t like it a whole lot but, what the hell, there’s no choice. We know there's not really any hope but we can still fake it. Like me, the others try to present a cheery face. We know enough to bring something to read or a crossword puzzle and maybe a cup of coffee to make the wait more bearable.

There’s a lot of waiting. Blood has to be drawn and taken down to the lab. Tests have to be run. The doctor has to give the okay for the actual chemotherapy and then the pharmacy has to see to it that the chemicals are mixed properly. I guess they can’t pre-mix this stuff. Given enough time it would probably eat its way out of the plastic IV bags it’s kept in. Like the Blob in the horror movie.

Then there are the patients who are near the end of their treatment. Not because they’re getting better but because the road they’re on is coming to a halt. Sure, there may be something waiting on the other side, but this side is about all played out. No matter what your faith or belief the knowledge that you’re near the end can weigh you down.

I didn’t enjoy my time in the clinic yesterday. It was brief. I’m getting what’s known as a "push" – a relatively quick dose of what looks like about six ounces of some clear liquid. As always, the nurses and the volunteers who work in the clinic were wonderful. They know every patient by name and they smile and deliver a steady dose of kindness and real love even as they have to be careful not to care too much.

So, I got my infusion. I left. When I left, I made sure I didn’t look in the waiting room again. It felt good to leave the hurt an the anxiety and the feigned cheerfulness behind.

Now, I’m nauseous. I had the hiccups for about an hour earlier. I've puked a couple of times. But overall I feel pretty good.

Bread

I go to the grocery store every morning. I could, I guess, go once a week or maybe twice like most people do but I like stopping in after I attend the morning fellowship meeting I usually go to. Anyway, it seems as if we’re always in need of something: milk and diet soda and coffee-cream are almost always on the list along with the diet food my wife eats with amazing consistency.

When I was a boy, growing up on Chicago’s south side, my mother often sent me to a bakery for a loaf of fresh bread. I’d run the two blocks from the apartment building my parents owned to 79th Street and turn west to run along the street in front of Our Lady of Peace Church and then cross Jeffrey Boulevard to the bakery.

There was a newsstand on that corner, 79th and Jeffrey, where a short, dark, old man sold the Tribune and, I guess, magazines and cigarettes. In those days, if you were in a car and wanted the newspaper, all you had to do was stop, roll your window down, and honk. Joe, I think that was his name, would fold a paper in half (unless it was Sunday, when the paper was too thick) and run to the car to deliver it, all for a nickel.

I don’t recall the name of the bakery, though I do know it was run by an elderly couple. It seems like all neighborhood stores then were operated by gray-haired husbands and wives who, for some reason, hardly ever spoke to each other. The bakery couple was no exception. They didn’t speak to each other, but they knew every customer by name, even the customer’s children, like me.

It’s funny, I don’t remember the name of the bakery, but I do remember the husband who worked behind the counter seemed always to have flour on his hands. "How can we help you?" he’d ask. I’d tell him I wanted a loaf of white, thin sliced, or of pumpernickel, thin sliced, and he’d slap his hands together and laugh as if I’d just told him the best joke he’d ever heard. "You got it," he’d say. "You got it." And then he’d put a loaf of bread in automatic slicer that fascinated and frightened me.

He knew, somehow, that I loved to eat the end slices from the loaf of still-warm bread as I walked home. He never handed them to me, though. He’d take them, a slice from each end, and wrap them together in paper and hand them to me without a word. Maybe he did that for all the boys who ran errands for their mothers. Girls, too, I guess, though almost every family in our neighborhood had at least one boy big enough to send to the bakery.

The grocery store I go to these days is big and modern. It sells lottery tickets, outdoor furniture, cosmetics, greeting cards, Miami Dolphin tee-shirts, appliances, and other inedibles as well as food and drink. I’m there so often that the women and men who work the front registers know me on sight and always ask how I’m doing. The manager calls me by name.

That’s nice. But what’s really nice is the huge bakery in the back of the store. I stop there almost every day for a loaf of thin-sliced pumpernickel or something called White Mountain Bread. There’s a baker behind the counter, a middle-aged woman named Judy, who always says hello. She knows I like bread thin sliced and knows I like bread warm. She can’t always give me warm bread. I understand that. But when there’s fresh break cooling on racks in the back of the huge bakery she grabs one for me and puts it in a slicer that looks and sounds exactly like the one from Chicago almost sixty years ago.

I asked, once, for the end slices from a loaf of pumpernickel she was slicing and she handed them to me with a smile. I like that. Now she always gives me the end slices of any warm loaf she slices for me.

Isn't that something?

As Good as it Gets

I just got off the phone after talking with my mother. She’s 93 and lives alone in Clearwater, on the other coast of Florida. I call her every day because we love each other and I don’t want, ever, to have to think I missed an opportunity to speak with her.

I told her the news. I had to shout a bit because she’s very hard of hearing, but, after a couple of tries, she understood. My visit with the oncologist this morning went about as well as could be expected. The main tumor, the big one in my right lung, has grown, but only slightly. I go back on chemotherapy in a few days, for a short course with chemical recipe that, I was told, isn’t particularly virulent.

My mom was pleased by the news. So was my wife when I called her from the hospital. My friends will be relieved, I know, when they hear I’m not out of the fight.

It takes me about twenty minutes to get from my house to the VA hospital, driving north on Interstate 95, one of the busiest highways in the country. It’s rare to drive on I-95, no matter the time of day, and not get stuck in some sort of traffic jam.

Today was no exception.

I’m not a very patient driver. I’ve been known to grumble when I’m behind the wheel. Once or twice, I’ve indicated my displeasure with a hand gesture that, I think, is understood in almost any culture.

So, there I was this morning, on my way to have a conversation with a doctor about some vile thing that’s eating me alive from the inside and I was getting angry because… I wasn’t going fast enough!

How crazy is that? How off-the-map senseless is it to be in a hurry to get to a cancer ward? I had to laugh.

So I slowed down and I made it in plenty of time to have blood sucked from my veins and then to hear the news.

On the way home, I didn’t get angry. Instead, I thought of my wife and my mother and of all the people who will be pleased by the news that though the cancer has grown, I am still in the fight. There are a lot of people like that in my life and that’s a blessing. It really is.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to suddenly turn into some saint on the superhighway. I’m not that kind of guy. What I’ll try to do, though, is remember how blessed I am to be able to hear relief in my wife’s voice, and to have the opportunity to call my mother another twenty times or maybe a hundred and twenty times or more than that. I’m blessed to have friends who care – there are a lot of people who don’t. I’m blessed to be able to get stuck in a traffic jam and blessed to be able write these words.

Fear

I went to the VA hospital again today. Nothing serious, I just had to talk to my therapist, Linda Vesley. She and I like each other. We’re friends and I’m glad she’s in my life right now. But that’s a different story.

Today was a routine visit. She always asks how I’m feeling and how I’m getting along with my wife and about work and so on. She’s not a shrink so her insights, while useful, aren’t so much about what makes me tick as what will enable me to keep ticking.

Linda didn’t feel well today. I knew that as soon as I saw her. She was nauseous and achy. In fact, we cut my visit short.

That’s okay because I often don’t know what to say. I’m not real happy but I’m also not real sad. Lynne and I are getting along and – with the help of a new drug – I’m able to write a bit. My main problem is that the Cubs are already down two games to the Dodgers in a five-game series.

Imagine that.

Wait ‘til next year, Cubs fans!

Oh, yes. I did tell her I’m feeling a bit nervous about learning the results of may last CAT scan. I’ll go to the hospital early Monday morning to see my oncologist and get the news. I’ve been having a little pain, so I’m convinced I’m not going to like what I hear. It’s been about nine months, now, since my last chemotherapy, so I figure I’m due for some bad news.

I’m not often nervous when I’m waiting for test results. Once, after blood work and a colonoscopy, I could have sworn I heard the doctor say "liver cancer." I was about half dopey from drugs, though, so I let his comment pass. Later, after the drugs wore off, the only thing I could remember about the test were those two words.

Liver.

Cancer.

Unfortunately, It was Friday evening and the doctor’s office was already closed. I was scared. I was even more scared after I started doing research on my computer and read all about liver cancer.

When the doctor showed up at his office on Monday morning, I was sitting on the ground by the front door, waiting. When I told him why I was there he looked shocked. "No," he said. "No. I told you the scan was clear and the blood work indicated no signs of liver cancer."

I get my test results in writing now.

Anyway, I’m a bit nervous about this last cat scan. I’ll concentrate on the Cubs playoff games Saturday and Sunday, if they make it that far. I’ll watch Notre Dame play Stanford on Saturday. I’ll go shopping and maybe cook a small roast on Sunday. Lynne and I will go for a drive and maybe I’ll go to church with her on Sunday. She likes when I do that, though I think God doesn’t pay much attention to me since I’m not a regular.

Then I’ll get the results Monday morning. I hope Linda, my therapist, feels better by then. Just in case, you know. Just in case I need her.

Go Cubs Go

The last time the Chicago Cubs played in a world series was in 1945, the year I was born. In that series, the Cubs lost to the Detroit Tigers. Now, they have a chance to appear again.

I’ve been a Cubs fan since 1968 when my first wife, Patti, and I moved to Chicago so I could attend drama school at the Art Institute. In those days, we lived in an apartment close enough to Wrigley Field that we could hear the cheers or groans from the ballpark. In 1969, I went to every home game as the Cubs led the national league until the last month of the season when they went on an epic slide.

I always said I wouldn’t die until two things happened. The first was that Notre Dame had to once again win the national championship. The second was that the Cubs had to take home the World Series title.

Notre Dame is doing pretty well so far this season. They’ve won three games and lost one. They’re fun to watch and to root for, but they have little chance of winning the championship.

The Cubs had one of their best years ever this year. In Wrigley Field they were almost unbeatable. Tonight they play the Dodgers and they’re expected to win. In fact, for the first time in a long time, many people think they have a real chance of winning the whole shooting match.

Wouldn’t that be something.

On balance, though, I guess the cancer can’t kill me this year – at least it can’t kill me if I’m going to see Fighting Irish as champs.

Meanwhile, I’m going to watch the ball game tonight. I know it’ll bring back some of the best memories I have. Memories of sitting along the third base line, eating peanuts and hot dogs and cheering and groaning along with thousands of other fans.

I’m surprised how often I find myself feeling and thinking like I’m still that twenty-something guy sitting in the stands with a whole world of possibilities in my hands. I’m surprised when I look in the mirror and see myself so old.

I do have a lot of great memories though. Memories of climbing Mount Fujiyama and of anchoring my sailboat off a tiny island in the Florida Keys and watching in wonder as a million tiny shrimp turned the waters around me neon green with phosphorescence. I’ve loved and been loved. I’ve held a son and grandson. I’ve traveled most of the world on business or as a serviceman or tourist. I’ve had wonderful times and even sad times I wouldn’t want to forget.

These memories make the growing older easier because without one, I couldn’t have the others.