My Great Breast Cancer Adventure

Seven Months Gone By Just Like That - Wow

Last post to this blog was Dec. 16, 2012. Then I abruptly abandoned it. This was not a planned or conscious abandonment. I just stopped, felt no urge to try and keep it up, got distracted by other things—things I no longer remember—and now here I am seven months later, doing a post mainly because I noticed that someone just subscribed to this semi-abandoned blog of mine. And I felt guilty. I also wonder how many people wondered, if anyone wondered anything at all, if I had died. If I had been a reader of this blog, I might have wondered that.

Gee, shit, did she die? A reasonable question.

But no, here I am typing and eating my "zucchini pie." Not ketogenic, mind you. Let's get that bit of information out there, up front. I could not stick to it. But I learned a lot from it. It was worth the attempt. Just not in the ways that I had initially thought it would be.

If I resume with this blog, I want to change the way it looks. I'm tired of this template.

We'll see. I will also have to figure out how to do shorter posts. I also need a new, different slant. A better focus. I don't know what that would be, just know it's what I need if I want to continue.

Anyway. I am still alive, still running the Writing Salon, still teaching, still trying to do my own writing and some photography too. Still living happily with Jack. Still in love with our dear Olivia Bouchet mutt dog. Still a long-distance mom with an almost 29-year-old son who lives in Montreal and is and will forever be the great love of my life. Still wrestling with the cancer. Still just as interested as ever in this thing called living.

 

 

I've Just Joined a Very Cool Cult!

I think I've just converted to membership in the Cult of Denial. A friend of mine, in a not-too-long ago email, referred to denial as her savior, or something along those lines. I wondered what she meant by that. Now I no longer wonder. I get it.

We're told to see denial as a negative, an avoidance of "the truth." As a chicken shit way out of dealing with the issues. Denial means all you've done is sweep the dirt under the rug. Run away from "reality."

Fuck that. There are about a million things well worth denying. Temporarily. . . or even forever.

For example, I can work like hell to deny the supposed implications of my currently skyrocketing tumor marker numbers and my annoying CT/Pet scan results (extensive diffuse bone mets, including a lesion at T4 spinal vertebrae), blah blah blah.

Will this denial be a bad thing? A cop out? A coward's choice? (BTW, I and my docs pretty much already knew the gist all of this, without having had all the tests. I just didn't know as many of the specific details, and details make it seem scarier. But nothing has actually CHANGED except that maybe it's growing faster again, no doubt because I've been off medications because of the rash and the prednisone etc. etc. -- the conundrum that has affected all my best laid treatment plans ever since last July.)

Comin' Home Baby

Here's one happy musical interpretation of how it feels to have your long-gone child come home for a visit. Oh, I did mention, did I not, that my son Will arrived last Tuesday for a ten-day visit. Great excitement! Great joy! Oh upbeat, quickly beating heart!

Plugging (or Peeing) Away at Achieving Ketosis

Yes, I'm still committed to doing a ketogenic diet. Have been at it for about a month now. It's not an overnight thing. It's a transition from one metabolic state to another, and how long that takes varies with each individual's body, state of health, and goals. My own goal is, ultimately, to do the RKD (restricted ketogenic diet) which is at the far end of the diet (most restricted, hardest to do). I am nowhere near that point yet. But moving in that direction.

Every day I have been peeing on my Ketostix three times. Soon I'll move on to using my own little machine that measures both ketones and glucose. More precise. But for now it's the stix:

Considering that I've been able to reach a moderate to high'ish state of ketosis DESPITE the fact that my prednisone use raises my glucose levels (thus working against ketosis), I'd say I'm doing pretty darn good!

Happy Black Friday, Everybody! Don't spend too much money on crap, okay? But DO go ahead and splurge if you find a truly great deal. That's my sage advice. Take it or leave it. (I --well, Jack and I -- have already ordered a new living room coffee table and side table for a chair. So I am not above caving to the pressure. I can't wait for them to arrive! For the last five years, our coffee table has been an old piano bench. And the side table for the chair has been the floor.)

Quickie List with Lots of Exclamation Points

1. Still doing the ketogenic diet!
2. Son home for nine days!
3. Still battling the Evil Rash!
4. Going OUT to dinner on Thanksgiving!
5. Bought two new pairs of pants from Beyond the Rack, my new and dangerous online shopping obsession. $19.99 each. Autumn Spice and Berry (the colors). Love them!
6. Thank god for whipped cream sweetened with Stevia!
7. Coconut oil fixes just about anything!
8. Thank god for Bieler's Broth!
9. Still writing poems and happy about it!
10. Still fantasizing about throwing another huge dance party. The last one I threw was, ooops, 17 freaking years ago!

Because (every day doesn't have to be all about cancer even when you have cancer)

Because

Because the rain was coming down so
hard, and because the dog was whining,
and because there was so little time,
she took out the garbage naked.

Because it wasn't a spider bite or
poison oak like the doctor said, and
because she had a double chin,
and because she'd seen, once upon
a time, the inside of a cloud,
she allowed hope in.

Because it was Halloween, and because
the candle was sputtering, and because she
was a mother still, she put a colander
upside down on top of her head.

Video: Supporting evidence

VIDEO:

@BC » Feature Archive » Supporting evidence

Here's a link to a video that contains some background on the research of Thomas Seyfried, whose book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer is why I am doing a ketogenic diet (working toward the far end of the ketogenic diet spectrum, which will be more extreme than the less restrictive ketogenic diets that you can read about all over the Internet). I'll be trying to do the "Restricted Ketogenic Diet" (RKD), which would bring my body into a complete "ketotic" state of metabolism.

But before I can accomplish that feat, I have to get off the prednisone that I am STILL taking because of the Evil Rash that I wrote about in recent posts. Prednisone raises insulin levels, which means it works AGAINST ketosis. Wouldn't you know it. So until I'm done with prednisone, I can only go so far into ketosis. But I am hopeful that I will be able to taper off this drug sooner rather than later. Right now, every time I get down to 9 mg a day (down from 20 a day), my rash starts to come back. So...it's a battle. But an interesting one, don't you think?

Published: May 2009

An article in the December 2008 Journal of Lipid Research coauthored by Biology Professor Thomas Seyfried, links cancerous tumors to abnormalities in a complex lipid called cardiolipin. The research reflects new interest among scientists in the work of German physician and biochemist Otto Warburg, who won the Nobel Prize in 1931 for his studies in the field of cell biology. According to Warburg, “Cancer has only one prime cause. It is the replacement of normal oxygen respiration of the body’s cells by an anaerobic [without oxygen] cell respiration.” Warburg’s theory fell out of favor (supplanted by focus on genetic mutation as the cause of cancer) because, says Seyfried, “there was no biochemical evidence that would directly support his theory. Our work provides that evidence.”

Seyfried is part of a research team that includes scientists from Boston College and Washington University School of Medicine. Interviewed by @BC in his Higgins Hall laboratory on April 22, he discussed Warburg, the engines of cell metabolism, and the team’s ongoing work to understand cancer.

Great Way to Start Your Day

Stage Four

One foot in the grave and alakazam! The whole world
opens up to skin, your soul re-covered in ermine, new gray
boots with silver studs, skinny jeans aflame in Orange
Spice and Autumn Berry, a flirtation (that's all!) with

cancer. Why not paint the den, buy an Indian rug? And
how about a copper candelabra? Why not revamp the
the biz, revive those drowning dreams, churn out fifty
extra poems, pure butter. Get a new pup who'll perk up

the old one. It's magic. Heaven cavorts in the smell
of Italian parsley. Every morning, dancing on the red
linoleum while singing karaoke into the kitchen mirror
and sliding through your Michael Jackson moves you

groove, could be the next American Idol. Abracadabra!
Braver than ever before, ignoring the skeleton's boney
finger, the one that has just now grabbed your big left
toe. White ceramic flow of the bedside lamp melts into

its own light, just so, angelic. One foot in the coffin but
there you are, aglow in faithful denial, awash in an April
shower. All the right ideas have broken out of prison.
You throw some wild pastrami into a peanut butter and

jelly sandwich, get high on picking up socks off the floor.
But one sock has disappeared. No problem. Your old friend
can't have gone far. Just hunt until you find it. Or simply
wait, don't fret. It will find a way back on its own.

A Bad News/Good News Post (more good than bad)

I'm back! Finally. Whew. My last three months have been so interestingly packed with the unexpected and challenging. I will attempt to give you a nutshell version, something I am NEVER good at. But I will pretend to try. Maybe bullets would help me with that.

• Back on July 20th, I went to the oncologist and we made Big Plans for me to get going on the new improved treatment plan, which I've written about in earlier posts. I'll call it the Recchia protocol. It involved using Interleukin II, Acutane, and low-dose Xeloda (oral chemo). I was already on Xeloda (for a year) but this, we hoped, would further improve my chances of living longer with stage four cancer (maybe even living long enough to be able to take advantage of some new breakthrough treatment). It is a very expensive, out-of-pocket therapy, but after much tearing out of my hair, and some creative money-juggling, I handed the doctor my first $600 for one month of partial treatment (to go up to $800 the next month).
  
• However, right before I left his office, I pointed out to him that I had sprouted a red itchy rash on my collarbone/neck area, and was concerned that I most likely having a new reaction to the Xeloda, and was hesitant to begin a new therapy that involved using a drug that would ramp up my immune system (because the rash showed that my immune system was already in overdrive, and the Interleukin II might make that worse not better. Just my lay person's opinion.)
• Well, he blew me off. Said it was probably just a spider bite or poison oak. Huh? I told him no way, that's not what it was. I KNEW, in my gut, that it was the Xeloda. I've spent the last seven years getting better at paying attention to my body's messages. Getting to know my disease and how my body responds to it. But all I could get him to do was advise me to try some over-the-counter cortisone cream.
  
• Nutshell now: Of course the cream didn't work. The rash got worse not better. I tried other things but it began to rage out of control. Doctor went on vacation and I couldn't reach him because although he'd given me his email address, turns out my SOS pleas for help were going into his spam folder. I sought other help but it was too late; we hadn't nipped it in the bud in time, and soon my arms, legs, and several other areas of my body were covered in a wildly itching, inflamed mess of a rash.
  
• A whole huge convoluted saga of dealing with this Evil Rash took over my life. I was one big Walking Itch Machine. Torture. 24-7.
• Long Nutshell Short: Three months later I am still dealing with it. Am on prednisone to control the rash. Have tried three times to taper off prednisone, which is a nasty and dangerous drug, and each time, at a certain point, the rash begins to flare up again. The dermatologist has said that the worst thing possible would be to allow the rash to rage out of control again. So we up the dose of prednisone.
• This has meant that the Recchia protocol had to be put on hold. In fact, I've also had to stop all my supplements, which is what you do when your body goes into hyperactive allergic reaction. Even if the reaction was to a specific thing, ie. Xeloda, that reaction eventually takes on a life of its own -- your body's immune system starts "reacting to the reactions" rather than just to the original allergen. Like a chain reaction.
  
• Anyway, okay, forget the Nutshell Fantasy. Geez. Why do I ever even try?
  
• Oh, also, the dermatologist, mid-way through all of this, "Don't ever go back on Xeloda. It could kill you."
  
• Oh. Okay. So. Hmmmm. Change of plans.
  
• Now to the good news. At some point in this saga, I began to wonder if I could find a silver lining within this mess of a scenario. Was the universe trying to tell me something? Could there be a reason my plan to do the Recchia protocol had been stymied?
  
• So I started to focus more, again, on alternative options. I doubled my visits to the acupunturist, and he began to give me a new kind of herbal concoction. I also took advantage of my temporary "prednisone energy" (it's a steroid, and the one good thing about it is that it gives you lots of extra energy in the beginning, before it fucks up your body in all sorts of bad ways). I got way more creative with some creative entrepreneurial stuff I wanted to do for the Writing Salon (like getting the ball rolling on starting a reading series). And I started writing poetry again. I even began taking a private poetry tutorial. Because I wasn't dealing anymore with Xeloda side effects (not the rash, but other ones that I'd sick with for the past year), I felt elated DESPITE the rash! I felt wildly energized and pardoxically optimistic. I felt, dare I say, HAPPY. Because I was back in my more "normal" mode of living.
• I also looked really really hard to see if I could find ANYTHING else to do, outside of the box, to replace the shelved Recchia plan. I sought out more help from Dr. Renneker. We began looking into clinical trials for new cutting edge immunotherapy treatments that are different from the Recchia protocol. I also went back to see Dr. Cowan, my alternative doc, who I hadn't seen in many many months. I updated him on everything, and then said, "So, do YOU have any suggestions for me now? Any ideas for some new out-of-the-box treatment I can try?"
• And he said, "Yes. One." And I said "What is it?" And he said, "A medically supervised ketogenic diet, based on Thomas Seyfried's new book, The Metabolic Management of Cancer."
  
• This was only three days ago. But for those three days I've been a busy bee, studying up like crazy on this subject, and setting into motion a whole new plan of action. Finally! Something I am excited and hopeful about, again.
  
• I have lots more to say about it, but for now you can watch, if you want, the YouTube video above, which is one woman's experience with the ketogenic diet. This woman is not medically "sophisticated" in the way that she talks about it, but that doesn't matter. The gist of what she is saying is what's important. There will be more "sophisticated" ways for me to fine-tune my own ketogenic diet plan, which WILL be carefull supervised and monitored by professionals. This is what I am working on now.
  

So stay tuned. :-)

Heavy Loads

As I was leaving the classroom yesterday at around 6:30 p.m. (after having been there since 9:30 a.m.) I hoisted first my heavily packed black purse onto my right shoulder, putting the long strap over my head so that it wouldn't slip off, then I added the much larger leather tote bag that's big enough to hold the big stack of manila files filled with handouts, plus my laptop. Then I picked up the grocery bag that contained the seven books I had recommended to my workshop students, my water bottle and leftover lunch foods, the laptop adaptor cord, and a final flurry of the misc. this's and that's . . . that go into running a one-day workshop.

I stood by the door, turned out the last light, looked around the almost dark room to make sure everything was as it should be, then opened the thick, extremely heavy front door, a door that you might imagine at a prison not a classroom, except that it's a nice deep apple green color, not prison gray. And it opens onto a room filled with orange, the color of joy, and warm cream, and brick red and many of my treasured belongings that once lit up my cottage home— a small, gold framed Modigliani print, a paper tote bag with a Picasso painting on it (that Toby gave me long ago), two mosaic-tile framed mirrors with tiles of green, blue and deep yellow, scrounged at some garage sale eons ago, and many other special things, each one that contains meaningful and good memories.

I managed to get this slab of a door open, manueveured myself and my gear out into the hall, got the deadbolt locked, and then headed down the eerily long long hallway (one person told me it reminded him of the halls in that hotel where they filmed The Shining, with Jack Nicholson!) toward the stairs. Early last summer, I would barely have been able to walk down this hall even if I had been carrying nothing at all. In fact, someone might have had to carry me. If I had walked on my own, it would have taken me ten minutes instead of thirty seconds to get from one end to the other. And at the end, I would have been out of breath and, most likely, in a fair amount of pain.

This sad memory, even when not a conscious one, is embedded in my cells now. But that is not a bad thing, because along with the memory I also carry an abiding gratitude for having been given this reprieve for the last year-plus. Every weighty load I hoist over my shoulders, every heavy, book-filled bag I lift, every leaden slab of a door I drag open . . . I count as a blessing, not a curse.

Ode to Autumn's Cauldron

Ode to Autumn's Cauldron

I had to post this as a file, because the line breaks don't show up correctly, when I do a direct post (unless I make the text so tiny that only a munchkin could read it).

Also, btw, in case you wonder about the "womb" at the end, it's there because in mythology, a witch's (or goddess's) cauldron symbolizes the womb:

When one sees a picture of a Witch, she is usually depicted with either a cauldron or besom or both, as there is much association between a Witch and her cauldron.  In the Wiccan tradition. . . it is the cauldron that is the true womb of the Goddess.  Its shape represents the womb of the Goddess. Because of the association between the Witch and her cauldron, this gives great power to the cauldron.

The Celts associated the cauldron with fertility, abundance and rebirth. The magic of the cauldron is the magic of the female.

The cauldron is seen as rebirth and transformation in that we go from life to death to life again. As such, the Cauldron is associated with the Crone Goddess such as Hecate and with the womb of every woman. 

Oh Glorious Day!

Walking home after
the doctor's decree
one leaf quivered
above her head,
like the memory of
of a love she'd
never had.
Sometimes
that was enough.

She wore the cold,
climbed the hill.
Another leaf
fell down to her feet.
Camera in tow, she
stopped to shoot
a close-up of its face, then
placed it in the palm
of her hand
and asked a question.

Curmudgeonly gingko,
faded yellow,
cracked all over,
dying and soon
to be covered in
piss, said only
this: Beware
false prophets.
Then turned its
deaf ear,
refused to discuss
her prognosis.
Oh glorious,
glorious day.

My Year on the Couch

When cushions
held my spine immobile
I learned to dwell
as a serpent does,
more amphibian
than woman. Pink pills
bought me time.
An inch or two or three
from done, I gripped
the remote
on my makeshift raft
and watched the screen,
unwavering. My eyes
glazed over -- beady,
reptilian, rudimentary --
unable to interpret
the truth of my location.

Now I can stand and
make my way down the hall
all by myself. It feels good
to reach the door, to
have a hand that's
strong enough to
turn a knob and pull.
I stroll outside, feel the wind,
am dumbstruck by
my neighbor's stairs--fifties,
gray, cement—skinny rails stark
next to barren stucco walls.

Back at home, I return to
the couch, sit down
in front of the fire we bought
from Overstock.com. Flames
draw me in
despite their lack of
crackle or smell.
It's so much easier
to please me now,
now that I know
where I am.

Battle Call

 
New cupboards stand
at the end of the bed.
Two matching soldiers
at my command. They
just now arrived
on a truck from Ikea.
 
Particle board, moveable
shelves, pale birch veneer.
I hunker down here in
my bunker boudoir,
preparing to spring
into action.
 
My handbags begin 

their mobilization. Stacks

of jeans and pairs of heels
form battalions. Black
and blue, red and brown,
chartreuse green--all
await my orders.
 
One breast gone,
the 
other rests
beside 
the chest
that's now a

holocaust 
inscribed
with scars. What a
warrioress
 I am,
oh yes.
 
So here's the plan:
handbags, dresses, pants
and shoes will guard 
against
the foes that plot
to raid my fortress. 
Mirror mirror
on the wall, who's
the fairest of them all?
That will be my battle call.

Seance: A Message from My Former Left Breast

Spirit is here, sends
you her love,
wants you to know
she's sorry she had to leave
so soon. But says
not to worry,
she's doing fine.

There's something
about a scar, it's fairly new.

Do you understand?
She wants you to know
it's less of a monster

than you imagine.
Stare it down.



She says to perceive her

as a loyal emissary,

the part of you
that has gone on ahead
to clear the brambled path.

Your sadness
isn't necessary.

She's chuckling
because she adores
that she no longer needs

to be lifted, contained,
restrained or redone.



At times
 she'll feel
an ache of desire,
to be
 suckled,
fondled or kissed.
But mostly
those wants
are just wisps of the past.


At the moment
she's exploring Jupiter.
Soon she'll leap over

to Mars. She maneuvers
like a hummingbird,
rapid and strong.
There's nectar
everywhere she goes,
even in the stars.

Can Immune Therapy Fight Cancer? : The New Yorker

In the summer of 1890, an adventurous seventeen-year-old from New Jersey named Elizabeth Dashiell travelled across the United States by train. During the journey, she caught her hand between the seats of a Pullman car. The hand became swollen and painful, and, when it didn’t heal after she returned home, Dashiell consulted William Coley, a young surgeon in New York City. Unable to determine a diagnosis, he made a small incision below the bottom joint of her pinkie finger, where it connected to the back of her hand, to relieve the pressure, but only a few drops of pus drained out. During the following weeks, Coley saw Dashiell regularly. In the operating room, he scraped hard, gristly material off the bones of her hand. But the procedure gave only fleeting relief. Finally, Coley performed a biopsy that showed that Dashiell had sarcoma, a cancer of the connective tissue, which was unrelated to her initial injury. In a desperate attempt to stop the cancer’s spread, Coley followed the practice of the time and amputated Dashiell’s arm just below the elbow. But the sarcoma soon reappeared, as large masses in her neck and abdomen. In January, 1891, she died at home, with Coley at her bedside.

Continue reading this article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/23/120423fa_fact_groopman#ixzz24steuDfv

 

 

 

Can Immune Therapy Fight Cancer? : The New Yorker

Big Challenge: Nutshell Post (pretend it's Twitter? Ugh)

Inability to do short posts leads to doing no posts. So here goes:

Medical update: Everything still in limbo since the advent of my mysterious rash. Best guess, though no proof or any way to definitively know, is that it's an allergic reaction to Xeloda, a delayed allergic reaction due to my body just finally saying, "Enough already. Enough of this toxin. It may have gotten your tumor markers down from over 1000 to 200, but that took a year, and a year of subjecting your body to poison is not a great thing. Yes, this is a paradox. It is also the reality of what chemo does to us, even low dose chemo such as Xeloda."

Because of this reaction, I had to stop taking Xeloda, which meant that I also had to put my plans for implementing the new immunotherapy, which was to have been done in conjunction with the Xeloda, on hold. That was five weeks ago. Nothing would make the rash go away, until I took the unwanted but necessary step of taking prednisone, which I now better understand can only be a very short-term solution, because prednisone taken for longer than a couple of weeks is fraught with bad side-effects, including atrophy of your adrenal glands. Even after being on it for only two weeks, the process of getting off of it is laborious. Let me show you a recent email exchange with one of my doctors, who will remain anonymous, of course (and so much for nutshell posts):

Me: Hi Dr. Anon,

"I finished my one-week round of prednisone on Tuesday (5 milligram pills, going down one per day, 8,7, 6, 5 etc. to zero). Also just finished the second tube of Clobetasol 0.05% (used it up in one week, though it's supposed to last for a month).

Dr. Anon. #2, when I told him this morning that I still have a substantial rash (oldest parts of the rash are improved; newer parts are still more active/popping out) and that I'm starting to itch again, quite a bit, after only one day off of the prednisone...said he thinks I should take one more week of prednisone at 20 mg a day, no tapering down this time. And another tube of Clobetasol.

I left a message at Dr. Anon. #3's office this morning, telling him what Dr. Anon. #2 said. Am assuming he'll defer to Dr. Anon #2 unless he says otherwise.

I'm also supposed to call Dr. Anon. #3 tomorrow, to decide about whether to start the Interleukin 2 on Monday. He seemed to think, when we spoke this past Monday, that I should start it even if the rash hasn't disappeared. I have my doubts about doing that. I fear it could exacerbate the rash big-time..."

Dr. Anon. #1:

That's a good sign, that facets of the rash are resolving, though some new ones are still appearing - all of which, I agree, supports staying with the prednisone (don't be surprised if it may be needed even longer than a week).  I still have doubt as to whether this is solely the Xeloda - one would imagine as you get greater temporal distance from it that the rashes would stop appearing.  Let's hope so.
 
When it comes time to taper off the prednisone, keep in mind that anyone on more than 10mg or so for longer than 2 weeks will likely have already developed some adrenal gland atrophy, and require tapering off the prednisone more slowly (over a couple of weeks, particularly when you get down below 5mg/day - going below that, for some people, requires not dropping more than 1 or 2 mg every 3 or so days, eventually getting to 1 mg every other day, before finally coming off.  Acupuncture and various Chinese herbs (licorice extracts) can be helpful in getting off prednisone.
 
As to the IL-2, I still would warn against starting it until the rash is clearly under the control, and there are NO new lesions. IL-2 is a non-specific stimulator of immune response, and it could jack your skin reactions!  Also, the IL-2/CRA type of Recchia protocol is NOT about actively treating or reducing the cancer, as, say with a chemo, but rather to try to correct the underlying immune disorder that allowed the cancer to grow and progress to begin with, as well as to "bend the survival curve," as those cancer immunotherapists put it.
 
. . . it doesn't make a lot of sense to be using IL-2 or ANY kind of immunotherapy when you are on relatively high dose prednisone, which will tend to negate such immunotherapeutic intentions!  (Would need to get down below 5-8 mg of prednisone).
 
Keep me posted,

Dr. Anon #1 

I could say more, project into the future, speculate as to what will happen next, but I am tired of this post. It's already gone from nutshell to a whole nut to a whole bushel of nuts. So that's enough for now. To write any more would further negate my attempt to have good quality of life today. I can only stand so much.

Two Monks and a Nun

I am still itching like crazy. I want to scream. I have been an itching machine for three weeks now. Enough already. Thank god my appt. with the dermatologist is this afternoon. I am praying he will give me a shot of cortisone or a dose of prednisone, and that it will work (make the rash magically disappear or at least stop itching).

In the meantime, I am sending out a bunch of class rosters to teachers, pre-class emails to students, and emails to myself (of ongoing revisions of the monk/goddess poem). Not sure why I am giving this poem such devout attention.

Yesterday I started reading a book by poet Ted Kooser (U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006) called The Poetry Home Repair Manual. He says he averages 20 to 40 revisions per poem. He says he heard poet Linda Pastan say, in a radio interview, that some of her one-page poems go through a hundred revisions. So...I feel validated. Revision is good. Round and round the poem goes; where it stops, nobody knows! You subtract from it, you add to it, you subtract what you added and put back what you subtracted, over and over and over until finally, hopefully, something clicks and you decide that's it. Over and out. That all being said, here I go again:

Sermon

Two monks and a nun walk into a bar, order a round of Zombies. God
gazes down and sees a design: parking lot, bar, patrons, environs. He
thinks, Jesus, this view looks a lot like a Rorschach test! He thinks, What the hell, why not have a little fun? He stares at the blot until he sees a

bell, a bone and a skull. Then voila! An inkblot man appears on an
operating table, encircled by a team of surgeons. His chest, split apart, is yet another blot. A blot within a blot. Holy shit, thinks God. I can see his heartbeat. Man, I never get tired of that. But then the beat stops, and a

bird made of energy, shimmering, free, rises from the static chest, hovers in the ceiling corner. God forgets it's just a test. He thinks, Do I let this guy live...or not? He sighs. His breath becomes a mistral that sweeps across the coast of France. Just take it one small death at a time, he chants.

Two monks and a nun get hammered, wobble from a bar into the realm of night and stars. The lights have burned out in one lone O of the neon sign. Even so, the remaining glow casts an electric blue over their wayward souls. God gives them a tired nod as they head back home.

Let us pray.

Why So Much Poetry Lately?

By the way, the reason I've been writing so many poems (that is, attempts at poems) is that working on poems puts me into the Now and Now alone. I focus only on the poem, and for however long I work on it, I am free from worry, free from fear, free from all the constrictions and restrictions and delusional convolutions of my daily routine(s). It's not as much about the poem itself as about the process of making it. That's the core. That's the anchor.

But FYI, here's my daily routine update of what has been piling up: On July 20th, I went to the doctor and picked up my $600.00 bag, with a big hazardous materials warning on it that said, basically,"This is Some Heavy Duty Chemo Shit, So Beware." But it wasn't actually chemo, it was a month's worth of Interleukin 2 shots, with the first two weeks being only half-shots, because the doctor and I were worried that if I started out with full shots, it might exacerbate the red itchy rash that had been bothering me for several days and seemed to be getting worse. So he told me to go buy some over-the counter cortisone, use it for two or three days, get rid of the rash, and then start the new therapy shots.

Long'ish story short: I still haven't started the therapy because the rash got worse not better, has spread signficantly, itches like a motherf.....kr, and won't go away despite cortisone, Benadryl, this other cream, that other cream, Lotrimin, prayers, rain dances, voodoo, begging, pleading and cajoling.

So yesterday, when he returned from his vacation and finally, after getting my phone message asking why he hadn't yet responded to my email to him about all of this, he found my email in his spam folder, and we talked it all over, and I am now going to go see a dermatologist. We THINK that the rash might be an allergic reaction to the buildup of the low dose chemo drug, Xeloda, that I have been on for a year. Or it could be cancer (but not as likely as an allergic reaction, he says, and I hope). Or it could be my body's reaction to the cancer itself.

So yippee! I get to go to another doctor's appointment! And I got to go to one yesterday, too. An opthalmologist who took a look at my new left eye development, which began a few weeks ago. Another long'ish story short: I suddenly couldn't see for shit out of my left eye. Bummer beyond comprehension. After much adjusting of eyeglass prescription, many hundreds of dollars shelled out for that, to no avail, my optomotrist peered again into my eye and said, "Oh. Wait. I see something I didn't see before."

Fast foward to yesterday. Found out I have something with a name I have already forgotten. Basically, a sheath-like film of membrane that has grown over my retina, puckered, and thus causes my vision to be "wrinkled." It is not all that uncommon, apparently. I will spare you all the more nuanced details. Suffice it to say that he wants me to just live with it for the next six months. Says it will probably vacillate between better and worse. If I am lucky, maybe it will vacillate toward better and then stay that way. If I am not lucky, it will get worse. Or stay the same as it is right now, which sucks and is driving me crazy. The words on this computer screen, as I type this, are blurry and make me dizzy. It's like I have the wrong eyeglass prescription. If worse comes to worse, I can have eye surgery that would most likely fix it, but would then most likely cause cataracts to develop, thus causing the need for a second surgery for the cataracts. Or I could also be one of the small percentage of people for whom the surgery fucks up their eye in some nightmarish way; I (mercifully) have already forgetten what the specifics are, for that possible outcome.

So there you have it, my mini-update on the state of my body, which is what this blog is supposed to mostly be about, although my digressions are frequent and far-ranging, as you know.

One Book, Two Bookends

One book, two bookends.
One me, two animals on either side of me.
I am a crying book, this morning.
My bookends keep me from falling over.
I am a wailing, fearful book.
My bookends are my guardian angels.
I am a human, crying book.
My animals can't talk to me.
I am a wailing, fearful human woman.
My dog and my cat sit beside me, quiet as can be.
I cry out loud. I wail. I try to talk to God.
They lie curled on either side, peaceful.
I listen to my dog's breathing. Steady, slow.
The cat makes no sound at all. She is a furl of silent fur.
I am filled with dread, terrified of pain and death.
I am itching, I am looking up "pale yellow stools"
on the Internet. I am imagining all the worst
case scenarios for a human woman who has
breast cancer that has metasticized to her blood,
her bones.
What will become of her, of me? I ask myself this
as I wonder
if I am the only God there is. Seriously. This
could be the case.

Meanwhile, the emails keep arriving, as if nothing
is wrong, as if everything is as it should be, as if
they are saying to me, "Hey, what's the big deal?
You are but a tiny cog in the big wheel of humanity.
Every crying book ever born has gone through some
version of your current meltdown. Your pages are
being turned, and you don't like this particular
chapter. We get it. We sympathize, but at the same
time, well, we don't, not really. Our time for
dispensing sympathy is limited. We are busy doing
other things. Each to his own. Hasta la vista, baby."

The bookend on my left lifts her head, looks
toward the window, seems to be listening to
something
out there.
I stare at her exceptionally sweet paws.
The bookend on my right has not moved, not
a whit. She sleeps like the feline goddess that
she is. She knows what she is.

My bookends are wise.
I am not wise, not a wise book at all.
I am a crying, fearful book of many
dog-eared pages, with too many
unreadable scribbles in my margins.

Down the Road

He's driving down the road, away from her.
She's staying behind, in a new room.
At home alone, he turns the lights out one by one.
When dawn arrives, he walks across the snow.

She's staying behind, in a new room.
Twenty years ago becomes today.
When dawn arrives, he walks across the snow.
Old rock & roll, betrayals. All remembered.

Twenty years ago becomes today.
He shovels the driveway but stops before he's done.
Old rock & roll, betrayals. All remembered.
She forgets to comb her hair.

He shovels the driveway but stops before he's done.
There are puzzle and games for her to play.
She forgets to comb her hair.
He visits a neighbor whose name he never knew.

There are puzzles and games for her to play.
She doesn't know her husband anymore.
He visits a neighbor whose name he never knew.
She turns to touch the man in the wheelchair beside her.

She doesn't know her husband anymore.
He tells her they've been married forty years.
She turns to touch the man in the wheelchair beside her.
He says he loves her still, will never leave her.

He tells her they've been married forty years.
"Oh my, that is a shock," she says.
He says he loves her still, will never leave her.
She fusses over the wheelchair man, who doesn't speak.

"Oh my, that is a shock," she says again.
He thinks of the neighbor, whose name is Abigail.
She fusses over the wheelchair man, who doesn't speak.
In her new room, buttons become aliens, unknowable.

He thinks of his neighbor, whose name is Abigail.
At home alone, he turns the lights out one by one.
In her new room, buttons become aliens, unknowable.
He's driving down the road, away from her.

The Visitation

There was this tiny, untapped part of my brain,
and one strange night as I lay dreaming, as I
lay fetal and curled and afraid (of the fury of
the woman whose guinea pigs I had allowed
to escape into my nightmare's muddy yard)
a visitor appeared--some sort of angel on
a mission, I believe, to open an unused door
(padlocked, dark) that existed in my head.

She was dressed in a gown of transcendent gold,
a billowing swirl that looked like dawn and was
sewn of insights that explained not a thing
but helped me to see that a life without answers
was fine, just fine. As I lay sleeping on the bed I
had made and unmade for so many years...so many
love affairs, mattress pads and streams of tears–I
watched my guest as she waltzed her way past
my horde of midnight tidal waves, rotten teeth
and forgotten high school locker combinations.
I observed her as she knelt inside my brain, flung
the door wide, allowed a flock of birds to burst
from within what had been a most terrible absence
of light and sky. She wove a spell, and the nightmares
dissolved into a Sunday morning revelation featuring
my beloved singing in the kitchen, and the jingle
of clean spoons being tossed into the universal
wisdom of our incredibly amazing utensil drawer.

Muted

In the twilight zone of our muted television,
we cling to a dinner of boneless chicken thighs,
red skinned potatoes, and fresh green beans.
You tell me about the broken transom line at
the job, how it almost caused Taper Dave to fall
from his ladder, mud pan in hand, and crash
through your client's magnificent picture window
(with its zillion dollar view of the Golden Gate
Bridge). But Taper Dave held on, kept his balance
despite the weight of his sizeable belly, and all
remained intact.

Then I tell you about my typical day of working
at home, my laptop now an integral part of these
ever-widening thighs. I've become a paper-pusher,
resigned to dealing with the eternal whine of repetition
and routine. I don't even need to embroider my story
with the gory details; you've heard them all
so many times before.

I've muted the television so that we can sit together
and eat, free from the roar that arrives each day
through the wires and the waves, bearing the jargon
(softened by scenes of sylvan meadows) dispensed
by pharmaceutical marketeers who sweetly warn us
of all foreseeable side-effects (cancers, suicides,
heart attacks). They bring us the news (rarely if ever
new) of a world that is more than we can handle,
juggle or endure, although we try.

Unknown to us, a close friend's spouse has today
made the choice – perhaps is making it even as we test
each bite in our evening quest for tenderness and solace
– to be taken off his ventilator tomorrow, to acquiesce
to the demands of his fed-up flesh. But we will not learn
of this heroic exit until four full days from now, after
he has already bowed and left the stage. I remember
to tell you that I tried a new recipe for the chicken
we're savoring. I used numerous, thunderous shakes of
Mrs. Dash, that old-fashioned blend of dependable
spices combined with scattered showers of lemon-pepper
and onion powder. I added butter and onions, too,
then wrapped it all in a silvery missile of foil. I
wanted you, as I prepared this meal, to know how
much I still love you, from the depths of my boredom
and the bottom of my beleaguered soul. I wanted
you to feel how I kneel in thanks, day in and
day out, before our dowdy brown evenings
spent (perhaps too often, but even so)
in the glow of Samsung's forty-two-inch screen.

A Contender

Damn it and praise it. Life is piling up so fast. I'm thinking Make the chowder first, cook the fish before you get trapped in the rest. I'm thinking this could be a good day for cleaning house, I could use the new dustpan with its special contraption for trapping fallen hairs that rarely consent to being caught, that float back out to the floor or stay stuck in the broom. But I'm thinking, too, that I could've been a contender.

I've could've been, way back when, way back before I got that bee in my bonnet (about having a child on my own, then braving it alone. My own finely engineered conundrum, no doubt about that. And also no regret, even though I'm now caught up in the bumbling hum of the humdrum -- and past my prime).

I've got russet potatoes, frozen corn, milk and cream and bright white sole. I've got bay leaves and onions, paprika and fresh green thyme. I own a fancy slo-cooker, a hand-held blender. But I could've been a contender. I could've turned it all into iambic pentameter. There's a poetry submission deadline impending, one of many on the horizon. They've been out there all along, but I've ignored them. I could try to catch up today. I could set out on a belated hunt for lyrical choruses and luminosity. I could hunker down into creating enchanting rhythms. I could swim deeper into the surreality of being sixty, of having raised a son who now lives in Berlin, of having spent too much time jabbing needles into my squirming abdomen.

I could labor some more over the latest poem, revising the lines again and again until I've redone my soul a hundred times over. Or I could sweep the grimy floor, stare at a pile of wispy hairs that look like they could have come from the head of the old woman who lived in a shoe, or if not a shoe, a wheelchair at that rundown nursing home in Small Town, USA.

An orderly has pushed her out into the hallway, locked the brakes, and left her there, next to a trash bin and a mop bucket. She's waiting for a nice young teenaged girl to come along, a volunteer who'll wipe the drool off her chin, shape what's left of her coif into pin curls, to be combed out later. She wants to look pretty for her dead husband when he finally arrives and they can share a nice dinner together.

Good Luck with All That

If it's not working now, maybe later, maybe then. Maybe we can count on that. A craving for toast and eggs pops up. Anyone could die tomorrow, right? Luck of the draw. Hit by a bus, a train, whatever. A craving for comfort emerges. So human, so predictable. Tax time can do that to a person. It's those damn numbers. Addition, subtraction. Anybody could die tomorrow, get hit by a bus, a car, or a baseball bat. That's fate. The numbers! Oh my god and the dollars, the astrologers and their starry constellations. It's inevitable, it's statistical. It's the numbers. 8:39 a.m. Stage IV cancer. Wish for luck. It's all about the time you've got left divided by the sum of your bucks. 8:41 a.m. Stage IV cancer and still holding. No wait! Ignore the stats! Lotteries galore. Luck or divine intervention? Can less be better than more? Sure! It's about your time left on earth, divided by the roil of chaos and death. It's a mess. Luck equals personal interpretation of the irrational. You make up a fairytale.

Is there really any difference between plain old luck and fantastical thinking? If I hadn't opened that door when you were sitting in the tree...what then? Luck equals the irrational in collaboration with the magical. Where would we be now, if I hadn't unlocked the lock? You see? Voila! Here we are. If I hadn't opened that door when you were sitting in the tree...what then? We wouldn't have gotten our red-haired terrier, declared our love, moved in together. Where would we be now, if I hadn't turned the knob? But here we are. The circumstances decreed it, the universe arranged it. You can't always expect things to work out, though. Oh no. Luck can be fickle. It's tricky. You can structure your luck if you tell the right story, hatch a plot, get psychic, get smart. If it's not working now, maybe later, maybe then, when the stars all align. Wait for a sign. There has to be a meaning, a purpose to the accident, the forest fire, the crumpled wreck. Right? Just make up a story, give it lots of chutzpah. Will time really tell before the bell tolls? There has to be a meaning, a purpose to wars, to hate, to all of the terribles. Isn't that so? Isn't that right? I don't know.

One Balmy Evening

My friend Steve died one balmy evening
as I was resting after teaching. I had
no idea that he was gone. I went right on
like nothing bad had happened. Wish
I'd known sooner, though I'm not sure why.
What difference would it have made? I clearly

remember the first time we met. He sat with
a blanket drawn up to his chin. Side-by-side
we'd bide our time (in the infusion room,
grappling with our fear). I can't get the picture
of his death bag out of my head. So plastic, so
black. I should be stapling handouts now, I've

got a lot of work piled up. His doctors said
there was nothing more they could do. But he
hadn't given in. I can't get his sweet smile out
of my head. Not a hint of guile. His doctors
gave him six months to live, give or take a few.
No one really knew. He owned a store, sold

salvage decor. I'd poked around in there before.
Never could've guessed I'd someday meet
the owner of the place, especially not like this.
We sat together, infusions flowing, twice a week
at least. We laughed and talked a lot, but sometimes
not. Needles pierced our veins until they scarred,

jammed up, collapsed. I saw on Facebook that he'd
died. His wife had done a post. The post revealed
she'd loved him well. But still, to learn on Facebook
that he'd died, that was hard. We'd kept each other
buoyed, shared the ride. But then we went our
separate ways. She said he often fell asleep in

sun, toward the end (basking, warm). In truth, I'd
barely known him. She said they'd made it back
to Yosemite, Bridal Veil Falls, one last time. As I was
teaching, one balmy evening, my friend Steve died,
a blanket drawn (I like to think) up to his chin.
And I went on.

Fed Ex-pectations

Listening for the song
of the Fed Ex truck,
waiting for that lonesome
tune of an engine whine
   idling
outside my door, the tread
of footsteps on the stairs,
and then the greedy beat
of my heart as it longs
for delivery.

I can see my duvet
in the clear plastic bag
that zips all the way round,
a giant gingko print,
  coming
my way from Amazon
dot com, rolling along
on Interstate 5, past
rustic barns, Holiday
Inns, strip malls, car beams, 
incumbent dreams.

I can track my box if
I so desire. Click
the links, see the route, count
the weeks, the days, the doubts
   that lead
me back to square one. Oh
Fed Ex man      I know our
crosses must be hard for
you to bear, the loads you
carry – so many things,
things, things you bring to us,
and even as you do
we're poring over
lists of all the things,
you've not yet delivered
to our doors.

Medical Cannabis Helps ALS Patient Outlive her Own Doctors - Philadelphia medical marijuana | Examiner.com

Medical Cannabis Helps ALS Patient Outlive her Own Doctors - Philadelphia medical marijuana | Examiner.com

This short article was a good read. Sheesh, is about all I could say when I finished it.

Patients, Too, Turn to the Internet for Fund-Raising - NYTimes.com

Patients, Too, Turn to the Internet for Fund-Raising - NYTimes.com

A friend sent me this link, yesterday, after I told her that I am about to start a new treatment that costs $1600 a month out-of-pocket. I blogged about this treatment (immunotherapy, Dr. Recchia) in some recent posts.

There's no way I can come up with this amount of additional income, so I am just going to see how much I CAN come up with, and then do the treatment in a "partial" way. So...if I can come up with $800 a month, I'll do the treatment at a 50 percent level instead of 100 percent. No one knows if the results will be correspondingly less...or if maybe doing less will still lead to just as good of results. They don't know because no one is doing any of the big clinical trials for this treatment, here in the U.S., because it would not be a big money-maker for the pharmaceutical companies. There's no way they are going to spend millions of dollars on a study that won't lead to big profits for them down the road.

However, a small study was done in Italy (with 500 women who had stage 4 breast cancer, as I do) and the results of that study were remarkably positive. The 10-year survival rate for these women went from approximately 23 percent to 45 percent. So you can see why I am highly motivated to find a way to do it, myself.

I've kept this idea of "fundraising" for my medical treatments on the back burner for a long time. I don't want to resort to it unless or until I really truly absolutely can't figure out any other way to do it on my own.

I don't know if I'm "there" yet...but I think I am moving closer. It's hard to ask people to just give you money, especially in these difficult economic times. Everyone is nervous about what's going to happen to our fragile economy.

So...we shall see. In the meantime, wish me luck with my "challenge."

Celebrating Gratitude: TOMORROW, JUNE 23rd

Check this out: Celebrating Gratitude

Sounds good to me. I've become a big fan of gratitude these past seven years since being diagnosed. I was grateful for things before that, too. But after... much more so. Because the closer you come to losing it all, the more grateful you are for every single thing, great or small.

I know I sound corny as hell, but oh well. I don't care!

Jane Underwood Art Prints - Shop Canvas and Framed Wall Art by Jane Underwood

Jane Underwood Art Prints - Shop Canvas and Framed Wall Art by Jane Underwood

Time for a little more Shameless Self Promotion. Just happened to notice that ImageKind has a good sale going right now, but it ends today. So if you have a hankering for some wall art, maybe you'd like to check out my ImageKind "gallery." It's fun to shop at ImageKind because you can buy just the prints OR you can play around with all sorts of frame and matting (or canvas or "floating frame") options, seeing how they would look, BEFORE you buy them.

xo,

Jane

Distant Friend

Eleven years
and three thousand miles
ago
we sat in rooms together
and talked
without the high-tech
crutches

Now I learn
you are on your way
to Aruba
for a short vacation,
(your iPhone response
--sent from the plane--
to my most recently emailed
"how are you?").

I look up Aruba
on my laptop
in order to fashion
a vision of you

and decide to place your image,
walking,
on a sandy beach
gazing at blue
iguanas.

Upon your return
I learn that you are
"very much
in transition
about what's important" . . .
This news flash
is explained in
shorthand
(five to seven words,
give or take a few)
"time being
what it is" (says you).

"I need," you add
(one blink prior
to signing off)
"to make some choices."
No further clues.

But you do reveal
(for which I am grateful)
that you are lying prone
upon your couch,
alone,
on week three of antibiotics
for the sinus infection
from the cold you caught
on the island.

I gush my own
abbreviated tome
(smiley emoticon)
in return: "Take lots
of probiotics!"

Then I google the question
"What (pray tell) are the choices
for my distant friend?"

Yahoo responds
with advice (about space
and time, blah blah blah).
Plus, it notes that:
"the Chinese moon is round"
and something else as well,
about a "ghostlight tango."

I try again:
to tell you how I'm craving
being privy
to more.
I want to know
for example, if you are still
writing poems. If so,
could you send me some?

You reply:
"I'm studying
spirituality instead.
It's fascinating."
The End.

You make me want to race
in circles
around ten Chinese moons,
and do the crazy fandango,
dressed
(in ghostlight)
to the nines.

Either of these
would be easier, in the end,
than this, our far-fetched
stretch from west to east

though at least you did send
that attachment
(solo photo
of blue iguana
perched alone on rock).

You tell me that the locals
call them Bleu Bleu's.
I drag this gem of detail
to my email folder
where I swaddle
every byte, dear friend,
(remote or not)
then cradle it
for future reference.

Another Poem (free verse this time)

Interior Design

Puzzles and clues
disturb your field
of vision when
when you're on a roll.
Evenings that
would've been calm
get wildly undone by
your scribblings.
You try to whirl,
sufi-like, to travel
blissfully through
everyday fractals but
rarely succeed.

Why, when you were
seventeen, did you veer
away from a career in
interior design? What
swayed you over, woman,
to the fiscal ruin
of poetry? Some
idealistic notion? Your
dreamy, roaming soul?
Poor girl!

On a Retro Roll (Baring my Age)

Sharing some of my beloved Laura Nyro, who died of ovarian cancer at the age of 49, btw. But what a legacy she left us. She has the voice of the most soulful gutsy funky tender hardcore angel of music in the universe. Finally, finally they inducted her into the Hall of Fame, just last month, a mere twelve years after her death. But hey, better late than never.

Monday Monday Retro

So True, So True: At the Scary Doctor's Office, Mum's the Word

Afraid to Speak Up at the Doctor’s Office

Doctor and Patient |

By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.

| May 31, 2012, 12:01 am 368 Comments

Thomas Barwick/Getty Images

 

A friend of mine, a brilliant and accomplished academic in her 70s who once specialized in history and literature, recently phoned to ask for medical advice after being discharged from the hospital for what sounded like a mini-stroke. Ever eager to learn something new, she pressed me on “the latest research” and asked what doctors around the country were doing for her condition.

Oh Happy Day!

In my last post, I wrote about how I don't buy into the whole pink fundraising for breast cancer brouhaha. And also, tucked away in the middle of my post, I mentioned my current interest in a new (in the U.S., anyway) immunotherapy treatment for women with stage four breast cancer. I said I was "begging" my oncologist to consider helping me to do it, and then I lamented about how, if he ever did agree to it, I had no idea how I would be able to pay for it. So...it wasn't a very heartening post.

The tyranny of pink - Breast cancer - Salon.com

via www.salon.com

This latest article (click on the link above to read it, and PLEASE read it) in Salon.com voices many of my own frustrated and angry thoughts, which I've had ever since the beginnings of this PINK nonsense got so stupidly out of hand. It's just another "dumbing down" of a complex, COMPLEX subject that deserves and demands and REQUIRES so much more than these idiotic pink getups and pink ribbons and pink consumer crap. Once again, it's the mass "herd" reality. Everybody jumps on the big pink bandwagon, holds up signs, runs in a pack, and thinks (more like hopes or believes than thinks) that this money that gets raised is actually going to make a significant difference. Well, it isn't. What will make a difference is women REALLY learning about why treatments for breast cancer are so slow to change, why they aren't working for the most part, why the research and treatment paradigms must be radically altered.

Do-Over

another day
(a scrub jay shrieks,
in your back yard)

newly minted minutes start:
feed the cat, wash your plate; litter shit (scoop it out),
sit on toilet, read a poem

crack it open
break some eggs
scramble yolks

sun transforms linoleum, curtains morph to
cream of melted bone, feather down, angel wings,
tones of mayonnaise

another breath
you feel a breeze
of air

brush your teeth, sweep the floor, do your blog, walk the dog,
turn a knob, comb your hair. Do you care? Are you there?
Rat-a-tat-tat, listen to that, clinkity clink, fork to sink,
drink your coffee, eat a bagel, check the weather forecast.

another day
repeat the joy
(find a way,
make it last)

 

My Poem Obsession Continues (rusty though I am)

Seance

Spirit (the voice 
of your deceased
left breast) is here,
and she comes with
a message for you.
 
She says not to worry,

that she's doing fine.

She wants me to send you

her love. She says
she is sorry

that she had to go

so soon.



Something about a scar,

she's trying

to tell me

something about a scar.
Do you know what this means?

She's saying it's fairly new.
Yes, a recent scar.



Do you understand? Very well,

she wants you to know

that the scar is less of a monster

than you imagine. She is telling you

to stare it down.



She says to perceive her

as your loyal emissary,

the part of you

that has gone on ahead

to clear the brambly path.

She's chuckling now, she

wants me to explain

that heaven hath

no bras, that

she no longer needs

to be lifted, contained,

restrained or redone.



She says that at times

she'll feel a twinge

of desire, to be

suckled or fondled

or kissed. But mostly

those longings 
are just wisps
of the past.

Mostly, she has gladly

moved on.

At the moment

she is exploring Jupiter.

Soon she will leap on over

to Mars.
 
She travels near and far,
treasures her newfound
freedom. Sometimes
she
 comes back home

for a while, just to be

near you again. She says

you would love
how she can move now,
that she's even faster
and stronger

than a hummingbird.
 
She wants me to tell you
there is nectar all around,
even in the stars, and for you
to just keep living well,
even though you're without her.



She says she really must

be going now. She says

to tell you goodbye,

and for you to try

not to be so sad.

Dry Nights, Dry Nights!

Fingers and toes, hands and feet,
bedtime and cream, this isn't a dream,
I'm wrinkled and shriveled and dry.

Smearing it on, rubbing it in,
Thick cocoa butters, goo for the udders,
My soles and my palms require aid.

I take it real slow, I pamper my leather,
I coo to torn cuticles, try to be gentle.
We all fall apart. Oh look, there's a wart!

Learning Curve

In case you haven't noticed, I'm on a death-poem roll. Perverse as this may sound, I'm having a lot of fun with it, mostly because I'm playing around with formal verse and discovering that it's not necessarily as boring as I thought it would be. In fact, I quite like it. Free verse is more hip and modern, but formal verse can be just as conducive to a decently written death-poem. :-)

Learning Curve

I didn't see much death as a child.
My experience was vague and mild.
People got sick, but then they got better.
Later, however, my mother got cancer.
By the time she died, I was no spring chicken,
(but she'd been far away, like someone on television).
I'd never observed, up close, the drama
of a body caught up in that panorama
of bloody piss, sores and pus
or anything that was cancerous.
Of course I trashed and cursed
the ass who'd introduced
the crassness of mortality,
(oh thank you lord for that unreal reality).
I'd imagined cremation,
then studied up on heaven.
Did all that I could not to piss off god,
even stood on my head and knocked on wood.
But never did I touch my mother's
ashes, nor fling my little brother's
dust. Didn't even hold their urns.
But life has lessons (those vicious little turns);
thus came my awful diagnosis,
followed by a fucked prognosis.
Unexpected, to say the least.
But at last, at last,
I felt the power
of the beast.

Sonnet (Italian!) - The Right Idea

The Right Idea

When you have the right idea,
I say to myself, you'll know it.
Simple. So I drink tea and wait,
often for years, for that right idea.
It's such a relief when it finally
arrives (wearing sweats, out of the blue)
to tell me what I already knew.
(Sweats and an old shirt, so casually!)
I tend to expect more grandeur,
I suppose, from a right idea.
Not such a plain-clothed oracle.
But in one quick blink, no fanfare
The right idea can break thru rock, voila.
January, February, March. Then April.

INSTEAD of NSAID: 10 Inflammation Fighting Supplements

America is the “Inflammation Nation.” According to the Centers of Disease Control, 7 of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States are attributed to chronic low-level inflammation. Last week in our blog, we discussed diet changes to help reduce inflammation. This week we will go into the biology of the issue, and discuss how pharmaceutials are doing more harm than good.

via blog.radiantlifecatalog.com

Poem: Mother's Day

 
She has not been struck by lightning, true. Hurrah! 
It's Mother's Day, a holiday, the storm's been quelled,   
the chemo's kicking ass. She's safe and dry for now.  
She stands upright and stirs a soup of beans and kale.      

She's dodged the bolt, oh yes indeed, is feeling well,   
has not been stricken down; is neither ill nor lying   
flat upon the ground. Has not been knocked uncon-  
scious! It's simply Sunday 10 a.m., she's frying     

eggs. Her dish rack's full of cups and dishes drying.   
She just now read an email, loving, from her son,   
who says he'll call or skype her later. He's performing  
circus in Berlin (an acrobat, a cabaret), what fun!      

They'll play the usual catch-up game. He'll run   
a few things by her. She's fifty-nine, he's twenty-eight.  
She hasn't seen him in a while. The sky is clear, 
no rain in sight. But if that's so, what lies in wait if not  

electrocution (smile)? What's next? What fate?   
Another lump? A quick decline? When he was born,  
huge clouds of pain and bliss had drenched her house,  
drowned out the past. Had quenched her thirst and torn     

her world wide open. Oh tender bolt, oh crucial shock, 
oh baby boy adorned in angel light, a wonder to behold.   
But now? What now? Her future seems so small. . . and yet,
dear child, it also seems eternal as she watches you unfold.

Poem

Like a Honeybee

Okay, I admit it, I've been obsessing,
clutching at clichés: wise trees, mystic rain.
I've been waxing poetic, frantically embracing

a pseudo parental Universe, interlacing
holy rays of sun with magical visions; inane.
Oh yes, I admit it. I've been obsessing.

Spiritual messages prance in via angels, promising me
easy death, rebirth, breath turned to wind, no pain.
I've been waxing poetic, carefully caressing

the years since that lump appeared, confessing
my addiction to epiphanies: to seek the Aha! (that drain).
I admit it. For sure, I've been obsessing.

And I've become a photographer too (so surprising!).
Mystery after mystery lurks in my viewfinder. Reborn,
I've been waxing poetic, visually addressing

immortal leaves, fallen armies, mottled, torn, resting
their way through the portal, then bursting into oblivion.
Oh yes, I've been obsessing, and I'm confessing.

Will my fleshy body shift like sand, my cells all nestling
into new formation, millions of grains born yet again?
I admit it, I've been greedily fashion-hungry, dressing

myself up in every color, primping and requesting
solutions to size and hemline problems, petty and vain,
while honeybees are dying in droves, scientists left guessing

as to why. Okay, but I won't give in to obsessing about
this epithet: stage four. The beekeepers are forlorn, it's true,
and yes, we are all disappearing. It's distressing, but still I am
waxing poetic; they require all we've got, these arduous blessings.

Vanishing of the Bees | Documentary Film

A Purdue University study found multiple sources of pesticide exposure for honey bees living near agricultural fields, including high levels of Clothianidin in agricultural machinery exhaust, in the soil of unplanted fields near those planted with Bt corn, and on dandelions growing in those fields. The chemicals were also found in dead bees near hive entrances and in pollen stored in the hives.

via articles.mercola.com

Broccoli Targets Cancer Stem Cells- Quick Video

Here's a great video all about yes, broccoli! And breast cancer! And how they can occupy the same space, in a good way. But don't stop at the video. Be sure to follow the link below to the breastcancerchoices.org page from whence this video came.

That page, created by breastcancerchoices.org's owner and Breast Cancer Reseacher Extraordinaire, Lynne Farrow, gives even more information, plus a compelling little graph that gets the point across even better than words do.

via www.breastcancerchoices.org

Obama's new Wall Street foes - Taxes - Salon.com

Next Monday most Americans will be filing their income taxes for tax year 2011. This year, though, Tax Day has special significance. If there’s one clear policy contrast between Democrats and Republicans in the 2012 election, it’s whether America’s richest citizens should be paying more.

via www.salon.com