Bad Times

I’m not doing well.

Believe me, that’s a sentence I hoped never to write. However, I’ve no choice, unless I wish to kick the truth aside.

Not doing well. That’s why it has been so long since my last entry in this blog. I now spend almost all my time in bed, so tired I can hardly walk, weak, uninterested in any food other than chocolate ice cream.

I want to write. Not just this blog. I have a novel to rewrite and, of more importance, my memoir. I try to write. But I can’t really. My memory is fouled by chemotherapy. Not just my memory of dates and names but my memory of spelling, of dates, of real happenings in my life.
As bad as I feel, as skinny as I am thanks to chemo, there’s still hope that I’ll get past the treatments and have a year or so to feel better and write and maybe head up to Virginia or someplace with Lynne. I hope that happens.

Now, though, I need to stop writing. I’m too tired.

Back to Work

I feel okay today.

Now, there’s a statement I honestly feared I’d never make again. But I do. Feel good, or at least pretty good.

Just two days ago, I honestly thought I would never feel worse. I was tired, shaky, nauseous, breathless and too weak to walk…the way I’d pretty much felt for the last couple of months, only worse. I figured it went with the territory.

My wife drove me to the VA for my regularly scheduled chemotherapy session.
It didn’t work out. As soon as a nurse took my vital signs, I was hurried to the ER. My blood pressure was 70/42. That’s low.

I’m not going to go into the diagnosis except to say that low blood pressure was partly a result of the cardio surgery I had a couple of weeks ago and partly caused by the fact that I was taking medicine that had been prescribed a year ago to lower my blood pressure. I wasn’t drinking enough liquids.

Anyway, I spent the day in the ER, on my back on a stretcher-bed with an IV something stuck in my chemotherapy port. By the late afternoon, I felt pretty good, able to walk. Yesterday was good and so is today.

Over the last few weeks – since my mother died – I’ve not been able to write much of anything. Oh, a lot of that inability stemmed from my physical condition but a lot of it was a reaction to my mom’s death. It just seemed that I couldn’t get my thoughts off my mother, largely because I hadn’t been able to visit her before her passing.

Stretched out in the hospital two days ago, though, I had something of a breakthrough. I realized, that my mother would be appreciative of my sadness, appreciative that I missed her and was going to keep missing her. She would have been enraged, though, if I allowed that perfectly natural sorrow to stand between myself and the writing I still want to do before my own death. "Stop it!" she’d say. "Get back to the computer. Show me you loved me by writing a good book."

My mother was proud of me. I know that. She was happy and proud and thankful that I’d fought my way from a terribly sick and sad and drunken life to a decent life. A life that included her and also includes a wife and my grown up children and my grandchildren. A life that includes some success as an author. A life filled with friends I’ve made since I took my last drink. But she wants me to finish the writing I started two years ago because she knows that’s what will make this period of my life make some kind of sense.

Lack of Memory

It’s Tuesday. Chemotherapy yesterday so I’m not feeling wonderful. I am, however, feeling a hell of a lot better than I might be feeling, so I’m thankful.

I know I’ve written a bit about memories lately. Not a lot, but a bit. I’ve even mentioned that one of my side-effects from chemotherapy, a relatively recent one, is that my memory is nowhere near as encompassing as it was last month. And it’s nowhere good as, say, six months ago.

Online, I’ve read that loss of memory is a not unusual side-effect involved in several types of chemotherapy and, when I’ve mentioned it to my doc or to the nurses who shoot the chemicals into my blood system, they haven't been surprised in the least.

I’d like to say it’s really bothering me, and it is sometimes. A couple of times at fellowship meetings, when I’ve started to say something I consider really meaningful and important, I’ve gotten in mid-paragraph and my mind has gone completely blank. That embarrasses me but seems not particularly bothering to my listeners.

I’ve also run into serious problems working the New York Times crossword puzzle, a near-daily challenge I’ve given myself for almost 30 years. In the past, I never bothered working the Monday puzzle because that’s the easiest of the week. Infrequently, I’ve been stumped by a Thursday puzzle (usually the trickiest) and, a few times, by the big Sunday puzzle. That all changed about two months ago when I found myself unable to solve almost any Times puzzle. Even the Monday ones.

That’s disheartening. It is specially bothersome since my mother and I talk on the phone each evening, and, for years, one of the things we chatted about was that day’s crossword experience. No more. She is kind enough not even to bring it up.

And, of course, the lack of memory sometimes causes difficulties when I’m working on my memoir.

There is at least one benefit, though.

You see, I’ve discovered that my memory of books I’ve recently read is terrible. In fact, I can read a book…put it down for a couple of weeks and then pick it up and start reading it again. Oh, it may seem familiar but not very.

Saturday, Lynne and I went to our local Kroch’s to look around. I found a memoir written by a journalist-alcoholic, picked it up, looked at it and found it interesting. So I bought it.

I finished reading the book - Drunkard - yesterday. As I read it I had, again and again, the sense that it was not new to me. Three or four times, I got out of bed (my constant reading location these days), and searched my bookcases and stacks of books and books dumped in the corners of my room, figuring I’d find a copy of Drunkard I’d read a couple of months ago, finished, and not recognized in the book store.

I didn’t.

Until this morning. I could not find one of the shoes I needed to go outside. Finally, I knelt by my bed and lowered my head to search. I found the shoe. But I also found a copy of the book, a bit dusty, but the same book.

Of course, there’s a downside here. I spent money I didn’t need to spend. But, think about this for a moment. If I plan correctly I can take five or six books, or maybe 15 or 20 books I really enjoy and stack them on the floor next to my bed. I can work my way through the stack one book at a time, carefully arranging the books I’ve read in a new stack on the other side of my bed. The second stack, of course, would have to be arranged in reverse. It could be done though, couldn’t it?

I would save hundreds of dollars a year. And I would consistently be reading something I enjoy.

Right now, in fact, I’m reading one of Garrison Keillor’s books and loving it. I know I’ve read it before. There’s no doubt. In fact, I read it last month. As I turn the pages, I feel a slight sense that I’m revisiting prpse, but not a strong enough sense to diminish my pleasure.

I’m okay, then, with my memory loss. For now. I do hope it doesn’t get any worse. I’d hate to start forgetting names. If I do, and we meet, I hope you understand, whatever your name is.

Pal

I’m sick of being sick. I’m also sick of writing about being sick and talking about all the stuff that goes with being sick.

This is the right kind of day for me to feel this way because this is one of the days just before chemotherapy when I’m able and allowed to feel pretty good.

That’s all that I want to write about cancer, for today.

I’m sitting here – at the big desk in my room – thinking about the past and the times I had fun. I’ve no idea why I get some of the good memories I get when I get them. My best thought is that the good memories, the ones that make me smile, are gifts from whomever to allow me to forget about where I’m at and what I'm facing right now.

I just remembered my sixth birthday when my dad came home from work and I ran to meet him in our basement because I knew he’d have a present for me. He was dressed, as always in cold weather, in heavy boots and a workman’s pants and a sweater under a thick U.S. Navy peacoat guaranteed to keep him warm. His work clothes, as always, were covered with dust that settled on him as he loaded or unloaded grain from a Chicago River cargo vessel.

I don’t remember what I said but I’m pretty sure it was something like "Daddy!" I guess he smiled. What I do remember is him sliding his big left hand into his huge peacoat pocket and me standing still, waiting to see just what he brought me as a birthday present. I hoped it was some kind of toy, maybe even the slingshot I’d wanted ever since I’d spied a drawing of one on the back of a comic book.

I held my breath for a moment, then yelped as he pulled from his pocket a tiny, black and white puppy just big enough to fill his hand. The dog barked once or twice, then whimpered, then kicked all four legs as my dad held it so I could grab it for myself.

My father had found the dog, he said, below deck on some ship that had spent time in Alaska. "I think she’s a husky," he said.

I named the dog "Pal." Not because that was a great dog’s name but because it was the name of the dog in a book I was reading for school. It made no difference to me that Pal was a boy dog’s name while the dog I was holding was a little girl. I didn’t care a bit.

We, the family, had Pal for a dozen years. At first, she was my dog then, as time passed, she became the family’s dog who always seemed fondest of the stevedore who’d carried her off the cargo ship.

It’s enjoyable thinking about that part of my past. Hey, it’s enjoyable thinking about anything other than you-know-what. So I’m going to stop right here.

Memories

I had chemotherapy on Monday.

I planned to write this on Tuesday. I couldn’t.

Now, it's late Wedesday, so here goes.

As always, my doctor was a lot like Dr. House in the television show. Heavier and older, but every bit as succinct. His news was only so-so. I may be able to write twelve months worth of blogs, or six months or so. Maybe less, if something happens he doesn’t foresee. He just can’t promise.

The nurses in the oncology department were kind as they usually are. The treatment was quick and not too rough. I felt pretty nauseous by the time I made it home, and tired, but not too nasty. That’ll come later.

I had an e-mail waiting from Mickey, my older son’s wife. A wonderful e-mail including a bunch of photos of Chloe, my beautiful, five-year-old granddaughter, and Dylan, the son I haven’t seen in twenty-something years.

I believe that sentence needs to be explained (if possible).

Years ago, when I was an active alcoholic, I treated my wife of the time, Catherine, terribly in every way imaginable. I loved her, and she loved me, but my love was drowned by booze and hers was understandably eradicated by my actions.

For a time, briefly, we had a few on-and-off passable years. I was sober enough to father two sons. Dylan and Eamon.

Because of my actions, illegal and dismaying, I spent some time behind county and finally state bars not long after Eamon was born and Dylan was three. Behind bars, I received little mail. My father wrote to me once a month, but wouldn’t use my name, only my prisoner number. The biggest letter I ever got was a formal divorce from Cathy. I don’t blame her at all. Not a bit. I think of her fondly, remember her as a young woman undeserving of any pain, badly hurt by a sick man.

Anyway, because of my actions I only saw my sons together once, for half a day, after my release. We met in Clearwater. We went to one of the big fishing piers and to a mall where the boys had ice cream cones. That was it until about five years ago. Since then, I’ve seen Eamon a couple of times. He was in the service. He got out and went to work. Then he married Jennifer, as nice a girl as any that ever drew breath. They had a son, Aidyn, and I was blessed enough to hold him in my arms for a few moments.

That’s a memory that can still make me weep.

Dylan and I have spoken on the telephone a few times, sent e-mails and a few letters. His wife, Mickie, has sent me a ton of pictures of Chloe. I have six hanging over my desk along with an equal number of Aidyn.

I’m always glad to hear from my sons or their wives. Mickey and I have never spoken, however she’s sent me quite a few e-mails. The one I got yesterday was really pleasant. Enjoyable. She said Dylan and she read this blog from time to time. That made me feel good. Then she said I was an "incredible" writer. That’s the best compliment I’ve gotten in a long time.

Mickey, I love you.

For some reason, later, as I rested in my bed, the television on but without any volume, I began thinking of the days of almost sixty years ago, when was I right around Chloe’s age.

I didn’t remember much.

I remember sitting on a steam radiator in my bedroom, looking out a window at the snow falling on Chapel Avenue on Chicago’s south side.

I remember going to mass with my mother and going with her and my brothers on the elevated train to the Loop and walking into Marshall Field’s department store.

I remember my mom buying me a book when I was ill and me in bed struggling my way through Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses.

I couldn’t read much in those days, only some of the easiest poems. The shortest ones. Hey, I was only five.

I just looked the book up on line. I’d like to lie and say I remember some of the poems, but I don’t. Maybe I did before the chemo started. Anyway, I do remember my mom giving me the book and me in bed turning pages. It’s one of my favorite memories.

What else do I remember? I remember getting lost on a foggy day when I had to walk home alone from the first grade at Our Lady of Peace School. I remember having to go to the bathroom and walking up to knock on the front door of a bungalow. A lady answered my knock.

"I’m lost," I said. "I’m lost and I have to poop."

She saved me and after I pooped she walked me home, about a quarter of a block from her house.

Those are the kind of things I remember. Not much more. I have pictures given to me by my mom, pictures of me walking with my father, of me dressed in a white suit to receive my first communion, of me in a uniform to assist a priest during mass. I don’t remember those events, those days.

There are later years, many later years, I don’t remember at all. That’s a blessing, I think.

I hope my grandson and granddaughter do better than I do in terms of memory. Of course, in the old days, my days, pictures were taken with a little square camera. The black and white pics were only slightly larger than postage stamps. Nowadays, pictures end up on computers. Thousands of pictures that should tell clear stories for decades. When Aidyn and Chloe see themselves in color pictures big as a computer screen they’ll probably remember more that I do.

I really, truly hope that all their memories are better than mine.

God

Some of the people in the sober fellowship I’m in have a habit of saying things I don’t understand. Usually these are things they assume they know about God.

Of course, belief in God is not a requirement of this fellowship. Belief in a higher power is. Often, over time, what begins as faith in a higher power morphs into belief in God with an upper-case G. At that point, men and women who once questioned God’s existence start to talk as if they share God’s private moments.

"God won’t give you more than you can handle," is one of the things they say, often.

What the hell does that mean, anyway?

Does it mean this higher power won’t bring down on me anything bad enough to cause me to pick up a drink? Does it mean this God of theirs won’t afflict me with a problem so severe that suicide becomes attractive?

I wonder how anybody can say that.

The way I see it, the only people who use this line are people who’ve never been given more than they could handle. The ones who were given too much of a load are either drunk or dead, I guess. Or maybe mad. Not angry. Mad. And often, they didn't do anything to deserve it.

The survivors are the ones who have a reason to be upbeat. Not the ones who suffered. And those who are upbeat usually didn't do anything outstanding to deserve their good fortune.

Woody Allen once said that anybody who doesn’t consider suicide from time to time just ain’t paying attention. I’m not saying I’m thinking of suicide. I’m not. But I’m thinking I can sure understand how suicide might look attractive.

I had chemo today and I’m not feeling great but, as I said, I’m nowhere near suicide. I also had an appointment with my shrink. He’s a good doctor. If anything, he’s too good, that’s why he always runs late.

Anyway, in the waiting room I saw a young woman sitting in a wheelchair. Young enough to have been in Iraq or Afghanistan where ever-changing front lines put women in deadly combat. This young woman didn’t appear to be physically wounded. But she was wounded. She was closed in on herself. She had her hands over her eyes. She rocked. Though I didn’t hear it, I bet she moaned.

Later, I heard my doctor and his nurse talking. I didn’t plan to or want to overhear and they never broke any rules because they never said anybody’s name. But I heard the words.

Severe depression. PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder. Suicide attempt.

Anybody who doesn’t consider suicide from time to time just ain’t paying attention.

God won’t give you any more than you can handle.

Indeed. Somebody forgot to tell her.

The Kids

People who know me well, and there are several, know my story and know why I was not involved in my two sons’ lives as they were growing up.

I wanted to be, I truly did. But I simply wasn’t able to do or be what I could and should have been. It is the greatest regret of my life.

The boys – Dylan and Eamon – are men now, both married, and each with one child. My elder son, Dylan, and Mickie, his wife, have a beautiful daughter, Chloe. Eamon and his wife, Jennifer, have a marvelous little boy, Aidyn.

Over the last several months, my sons and their wives have sent me two hundred pictures, maybe more as attachments to e-mails. There are pictures of birthday parties, of visits to the zoo in Denver, of Aidyn wearing a leather jacket and of Chloe wearing a Barack Obama sweatshirt at an election rally. How great is that!

There are pictures of Aidyn and Chloe together and pictures of the kids with my sons. There are pictures that make me laugh aloud and some that make me want to weep for joy and for sadness at missed opportunities.

God, I feel so fortunate to have these boys and their wives and children in my life right now, no matter how peripherally, no matter how impermanent the contact is.

I print the pictures out, pictures of the two kids, my two grandchildren, and Lynne buys frames and I hang them, as many as I can, on a wall where I see them as I work. Chloe and Aidyn. A dozen pictures so far, and more to come, I’m sure.

I used to think the grandparents I knew were saps. No kid, I knew, could be as beautiful, as smart, as perfectly charming, as the grandchildren these idiots talked about. Now I know I was right. Oh, their grandchildren were okay, I’ll give them that. They were cute, maybe. And perhaps they weren’t quite as slow as they appeared in the pictures these proud grandparents showed me. Maybe someday they’d look more presentable.

But if you want to see a truly beautiful child, or a baby as smart as a little engineer, drop in my room and look at the wall over my desk. Those kids, that Chloe and that Aidyn, they’re really something to see. Trust me. They’re worth looking at.

Looking at their pictures, I sometimes forget what's going on, that tomorrow I have to get chemo, or that I may never see them or get to hug them. I forget cancer and think only good things, for a while. And that's wonderful.

The Vote

I’ve just passed a milestone in my experience facing terminal cancer, one of the three goals I gave myself when I was first diagnosed.

I think I’ve mentioned that I want to live long enough to see the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame win another national championship and to watch the hapless Cubbies play in a World Series.

While the football season isn’t over, the Irish have already lost three games. That means they’re out of the hunt.

The Cubs were eliminated from the playoffs in the first round. So, as I have my entire life as a Cub fan, I just have to wait ‘til next year.

My other goal was to vote in one more presidential election before I shuffle off to someplace where attack ads are not allowed. (They won’t be in heaven, I figure, and as far as hell is concerned, even Beelzebub must be tired of them by now.) Anyway, I mailed in my absentee ballot a couple of days ago. So I’ve accomplished that one.

I promised myself I’d stay away from politics in this blog. Not because it isn’t important but because I have a tendency to rant. That comes, I know, from being the son and grandson of Irish political junkies, union guys and organizers who found their survival linked to politics and politicians. My Grandfather, Mike, and my dad, Patrick, both saw "No Irish Need Apply" signs and both, with the help of political muscle, fought to work and ultimately became homeowners able to send their kids to college. No surprise, then, that when I was a kid, we breathed politics. We didn’t have a television then, so I didn’t know who Howdy Doodie was but I knew about FDR and Ike and Keefauver and Mayor Daley and about Eamon DeValera and Michael Collins and the hard men of Ireland, too.

So, poliltics were important in my house and are still. But I’m not going to say who got my vote.

Suffice it to say I figure this is the most important election of my lifetime. It’s also the first time I’ve really been excited about casting a vote since 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was killed and I marched aginst the Vietnam War on the streets of Chicago. That should give you a hint.

I’m going in for chemo again tomorrow. I know I’ll be ready to puke by the time I leave the hospital. I’ll also be tired. But I’m going to sleep all day and mainline compazine if I have to so I can stay awake and watch the election returns tomorrow night. My 93-year-old mother – who curses like drunken mariner when she talks about the current political scene – says she’ll stay up all night if she has to, praying the right man wins. If she can do it, so can I.

That’s how important this is, I believe. And I’m thankful I had the chance to cast one more vote. And if things go the way I hope, I'll hang on for Inauguration Day.

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.

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

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.

Soda Bread

I’ve been part of a writers’ critique group for a dozen years or more. There are half-dozen of us, give or take one or two, depending on our schedules. We meet once a month, always at someone’s home, and read and critique some of our recent work.

Sometimes it’s not a lot of fun to be part of a group like this. Egos can clash. Feelings can be hurt. If, as sometimes happens, you’re forced to sit and listen to really terrible writing at every meeting, violence may ensue.

I’m lucky. The group I’m in is comprised of writers who’ve already published or who deserve publication. We’re good for each other.

I haven’t been able to attend every meeting over the last year or so. Sometimes chemo has gotten in the way and sometimes I just haven’t been up to it. But these friends have steadily let me know of their love, with phone calls and e-mails.

I went to a critique group meeting yesterday. There were only a few of us there: Sylvia and Linda and Donna and Peter and me. I was asked to read first. So I did. A couple of sections of the memoir I’m working on. And then we talked. Sylvia told me how much she’d learned about me by reading this blog and by hearing parts of my story. Donna and Linda and Peter agreed. They told me they were happy I was finally opening myself up a bit.

I know I’ve spent most of my life not disclosing anything real about myself. Some of that is cultural. Irish men aren’t known for sober displays of emotionalism. It’s easier to hide behind a façade of toughness or to tell a joke or sing a song or just act as if it – whatever it is – doesn’t really matter.

Some of it is because there’s some stuff that’s always been too painful or embarrasing.

But I realized as we talked yesterday that I was glad I’d found a way to open up. This is new for me, but it’s okay. It’s not so bad having people know how I feel, that I’m afraid or sad or happy or whatever. As important as these people – Sylvia and Peter and Donna and Linda – have been to me they’re more important now.

We snack at these meetings. Yesterday, there was cheese and fruit and crackers. Since it was Linda’s birthday, there was a cake. And before I left, Sylvia gave me three small loaves of Irish soda bread.

I’d never eaten soda bread until I met Sylvia, who’s from Ireland. My mother didn’t bake much. Only an infrequent pie or one of her noteworthy cakes that always seemed to be listing slightly to port or starboard after they were iced. She didn’t bake bread because that wasn’t something one did with one’s rare leisure time. When she was a girl, baking bread was a time-consuming and necessary chore. Buying bread already sliced from a bakery was, for her, the beginning of women’s liberation.

Anyway, I’m not used to soda bread, but I love it. Served with what the Irish call a thick "lashing" of butter it’s good enough to make me close my eyes. I had some this morning for breakfast. And as I ate it, I thought of the group and of how lucky I am to have these friends and of how it’s really okay with me that they know more about me than they used to.

The View

My wife and I are fortunate. We live in an apartment overlooking the Lake Worth Lagoon, in Florida. The lagoon is part of the Intracoastal Waterway on Florida’s east coast. When we look out the sliding-glass door that serves as the eastern wall of our living room, we can see the lagoon and beyond that the barrier island just south of Palm Beach. By straining just a bit we can see, beyond that narrow island, the vast sweep of the Atlantic Ocean.

People travel hundreds, often thousands of miles and spend a lot of money to see the view we can see every day of the year. The few visitors we have always, or almost always, stop to look out the window, remark about the beautiful view.

I’m spoiled.

I’m so accustomed to the view that days or weeks go by without my looking out the window. I walk across the living room with my eyes open but unseeing. In the three years we’ve had this apartment I’ve only sat on the balcony outside that sliding glass door, looking to the east, a half-dozen times, no more than that.

That’s a shame.

Before I got sick, I used to be too busy. For months and months I was too busy to look out the window. I sat at a computer day after day writing an average of 2,000 words each day. A million words every 18 months, give or take 100,000 words or so.

Now I can barely stand to work more than a couple of hours at a time. I’m just too tired. And still I have to remind myself to look out the window.

This morning, when I took the time to look I saw an osprey soaring right at the level of our sixth-floor apartment.

I’m going to look more often. I promised myself. Why not? I can’t work so I may as well enjoy myself.

Go Irish!

I’ve been a Notre Dame football fan as long as I can remember.

I came by it honestly. My maternal grandmother, Delia Malloy from Mayo, was such a fan that when she was, herself, dying of cancer in 1943 she had my dad carry her from her bedroom into the living room where she could rest on the sofa and hear #1 Notre Dame play #2 Michigan in a game that determined the national champ. Notre Dame won, the story goes, she cheered weakly, and then died.

I like that story. I have a picture of my two brothers and me on my living room wall. We’re each wearing a Notre Dame letter sweater. Kevin is six, I’m four and my brother Pat is two. It’s the only picture I have of myself in which I think I look handsome.

When I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I promised myself I wouldn’t die until I saw the Fighting Irish win another national championship.

I don’t know if I can make that promise stick but I sure hope I can.

Last year the Irish had their worst season ever. They won only three games. They lost to Navy for the first time in 43 years. My emotions were mixed. I was sad for the team and the school but I was kind of happy because I figured I had at least one more football season to go.

The Notre Dame Irish took to the field for the first time this year two days ago. They were playing San Diego State, a team they should have beaten without too much trouble. Things did not go so well during the first three quarters. The San Diego State Aztecs pushed the Irish around and looked like they were on the way to a big upset.

My wife went to church during the game and came home early in the fourth quarter.
She asked me how the game was going. She knows about my promise to myself not to die before ND wins it all.

I answered without thinking just as Notre Dame gave up the ball after a third-down run that didn’t pan out. "For this I stayed alive?" I said. "They look like bums."

My wife was shocked. Of course I was joking. Kind of.

In any case, the Irish came alive in the last quarter, scoring two touchdowns and winning the game by eight points. Then I felt pretty good. I felt good because, all joking aside, I do want to live long enough to see Notre Dame win big.

I guess I should be unnerved by every ND win. But I’m not. In fact, I feel pretty secure. That’s because I’ve also promised myself that I’m going to stay alive until the Chicago Cubs win the World Series. The last time that happened was 1908. So the odds of them both winning all the marbles any time soon seem pretty slim indeed.

I thank God I’m able to enjoy small things like football and jokes about the cancer. If I couldn’t laugh, who knows what I’d do?

When I was at the VA hospital the other day I walked past a young vet who almost certainly just returned from Iraq or Afghanistan. He was in a wheelchair being pushed down the hall by a nurse. He looked like he should have been a freshman at Notre Dame or at San Diego State or someplace. Instead, he was sitting in the chair, unable to hold his head up, leaning precariously to one side. Both legs of his sweatpants were folded around the stumps of his limbs.

After I watched the ND game, I remembered him. In an instant, I realized how unimportant Notre Dame football is and the Cubs, too. Immediately I remembered that even a guy with terminal cancer could have it worse. And though I may be wrong, I thought the young man in the wheel chair would be willing to change places with me in a heartbeat if he could just walk into a room, sit down and watch a football game.

When not knowing is best

I went to the VA early today. It wasn’t for anything serious, just to pick up some medicine I take to help fight fatigue.

The hospital is about fifteen miles from here. It’s a state-of-the-art hospital, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve been an inpatient there four times in the last two years and I’ve been treated much better there than I’ve been treated in a lot of other places I’ve been in my life. The people who work there are great, and I mean the doctors and nurses and aides and everybody else. Even the guy who walks around with a tiny little broom and dustpan picking up pieces of paper and dust bunnies smiles when he says hello.

Everything looks new. Well, at least they have had all the machines they’ve needed, so far, to give me tests and take pictures and stick me and prod me and everything else they do in hospitals.

I have to say, though, I’m a pretty good patient. I don’t like pain, so I’ve been known to whimper and even groan when circumstances require it. But I don’t complain about the food even when its broth and Jell-O and I don’t demand a lot of service from nurses because I don’t like too many people bothering me under any circumstances.

I also don’t ask a lot of questions. I know I’m supposed to. I know I should get second opinions and all that and I’ve even done some of that in the past. But right now I just don’t want to be reminded of what’s going on inside my body. I don’t want to hear about it and don’t want to talk about it. I had colon cancer about eight years ago and had surgery and chemo and that worked out okay. But during that period, I talked about my bowels and bowel movements in public for the first time ever. I even said the words "bowel movement" to a woman. Now, I have a pretty rough vocabulary. You can’t live the way I have and not gain a certain fondness for some terms. But no man should be forced to say the words "bowel movement" to a woman under any circumstances, with or without cancer.

With this new cancer I don’t have to talk about my bowels but I do have to talk about other things I’d rather keep to myself. You’ll have to guess what those things are.

Sometimes people, strangers or passing acquaintances, ask me what kind of cancer I have and I tell them lung cancer. That’s as far as I’ll go. But they want to know more. Is it squamus or adenocarcinoma? Is it small-cell or non-small-cell? What stage? How many tumors? Where? What drugs am I taking? I don’t answer. I don’t respond because what they really want to know, especially strangers, is when I’m going to die. They’re like people who slow down to gawk at auto accidents not because they’re interested but because they’re hoping to see something ghastly. Or at least something they can talk about later. Or something that will make them feel better.

I don’t want to know enough to give them that kind of information about myself. I don’t want them looking at me like a smashed up Honda or Chevy. Hell, I don’t want anybody to know that much about me, not even myself.

I truly don’t want to know when I’m going to die. Fortunately, the real world isn’t like the movies. At least my real world. In the movies, some doctor is always able to say, almost to the minute, how long the patient is going to live. My doctor has never told me my prognosis except in the most general terms, in terms of averages. I know enough to know that when he starts talking in specifics – weeks or days – I’m not going to have too long to worry about it. That works for me.

That works for me because I never need to be reminded that I’m sick and I know that if I know just when I’ll die I’ll have more knowledge than I really want.

The Language of Cancer

I recently spent an evening with one of my best friends, a great guy who’s near the end of a battle with pancreatic cancer. We’ve known each other for almost a decade, grown close enough to say we love each other without any of the throat clearing or lack of eye contact that so often accompanies those words when said by two men. I consider him – his name is Kevin – one of the best men I’ve ever known. It was special to us both that he was able to come down to South Florida from Georgia so we could hang out together.

It was a great evening. We went to a baseball game between the Florida Marlins (his team) and the Chicago Cubs (mine) and though the Cubbies lost, we had a wonderful time. We watched the game, of course, and we ate hot dogs neither of us could really handle and we laughed a bit the way old friends should, at each other and things we shared. We talked, the two of us, how this disease has touched our wives and his young children and how we both wish things were different but just have to accept the truth. Of course, we got a little maudlin but that’s our right, I think. We also said "dammit" a lot and I think that’s our right, too.

Near the end of the evening we talked about the special language we share, along with other men and women who are facing terminal cancer. How when we say "goodbye" it sounds so final even when it isn’t because it has such a good chance of being just that, of being final.

Dammit.

How when we talk about being tired we’re talking about a tiredness that transcends any tiredness we’d ever experienced before this illness. And how silly it sounds when some well-meaning friend or family member responds by talking about how tired they are because they didn’t sleep well the night before.

We talked about how we know the names of drugs we shouldn’t know the names of and of medical procedures and different cancer stages that we wished we didn’t have to know.

We talked, too, about the fear we know, a fear it seems we can’t share with loved ones just because it would be too cruel to share it with them.

And we talked about how insulting it is to me and to Kevin or to anybody else with cancer when someone, anyone, tells us to keep a good attitude as if we or little babies with leukemia or Ted Kennedy or anybody else with terminal cancer got it because our attitudes were bad.

Dammit. Of course a good attitude is healthier than a bad one. But don’t use that fact to beat me up or make me feel guilty if I feel down or depressed or just like saying "screw it." It’ll pass.

Saying goodbye to Kevin after that evening was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I fear I’ll never see him again. And then who will I talk with?