Half Time

Crazy day, didn’t get quite enough sleep. Susan, for once, got out to a yoga and Zumba class, good for her. Went in for the 18th rad treatment, 17 to go which means that in number count this is half way. I know its more geometric or at least nonsymmetrical increase in pain and problems as the treatments go on but each treatment is a step towards the end of the process. I was feeling relatively good and thought maybe I had a view how this will play out with pain coming and also tapering off that I maybe can see my way through. What hubris. When I got home I took a nap and woke up with  my mouth on fire, in new spots. Magic mouthwash and I still can’t eat anything. Not applesauce, apricot juice, pumpkin pudding. Susan is out to get some eggnog and see if I can handle that. I take a real pain killer, for only the second time, and that calms things down but I still feel my mouth and I worry that when the pain killer wears off it will not be good. And I don’t want to be on them all the time. It does seem like the pain in the back of my throat is manageable and the skin burn on the skin around my neck is manageable so I am hoping that this new mouth pain will fade to a state that is manageable with oral treatments that allow me to keep eating. Or, the possibility of a feeding tube intrudes into my consciousness. I already can’t taste anything and food is not interesting, I treat it like medicine and take it on schedules but If I cannot get food down because of mouth/throat pain then it may be necessary. But, no matter what, its half time. And progress towards the end. 

Theme song for this part of the journey, Ol Man River, also incidentally, my father’s favorite song: http://tinyurl.com/pry33cz

Chemo Part II/Spirit In The Sky

This is chemo day part II, or two down, one to go. According to my blood tests I am pretty close to ‘normal’ so I don’t expect there will be adjustments to the chemo treatment. The first one hit pretty hard in feeling invaded and waves of different energy every few minutes for a few days.The nausea was managed well by some meds from the Dr. I am three weeks into the radiation treatments and feel weak from that. I sense that I have a body memory of the first chemo. The last couple days my body has been anticipating the impact of the chemo and I felt weak with little waves of nausea. So it comes a a big surprise that the chemo goes really well. I do not feel nausea during the 5.5 hours of IV infusions. The chemo MD and nurse say I am doing well and for once it doesn’t seem like they put on a fake cheery face for a patient. They do say it will get worse before it gets better but it is good that I am still eating and have not lost much weight and my body is handling the chemo treatment well.

I have enough energy to walk three blocks for my radiation treatment (16 down, 19 to go) and the rad techs, again, ask about music choices, I, again, say Beatles please. But their music streaming channel must be ‘Beatles era’ not pure Beatles and I hear Yesterday, then a Led Zeppelin number, then Spirit In The Sky and then Yesterday again. 

Now those are good songs but I have mixed emotions about Spirit In The Sky. You know about mixed emotions? There is one definition I like: “when your 16 Year old daughter comes home at 4 AM carrying a Giddeons Bible”. Its kind of like that. Spirit In the Sky is a great song, truly inspirational. Just maybe not the one I want to hear locked in a clanging  X-ray machine with 7,000 RADs slamming through. “Take me up, Spirit in the sky’” and “I’ve got a friend in Jesus’; yes, seems true to me, just not right now please. How about sending some healing rays?

As it is Wednesday we meet with a staff rad MD. We are doing all the right things and if I can keep my weight up I may not need a feeding tube later as some people require. And post treatment recovery is better for those who keep eating and keep their weight up. She says the throat discomfort is part of the process but does prescribe a mouth treatment that it is hoped will numb things enough to keep me eating. And she suggests another skin cream to help manage the eternal radiation burn on my neck. I keep downing liquid protein drinks, need to hit 2,000 calories a day. Maybe the Spirit In The Sky is sending me protein drinks. The Spirit looks a lot like Susan.

Spirit In The Sky: https://tinyurl.com/3k35a22h

Bliss

Monday is a it rough day. I have enough energy that I can drive to the radiation session but Susan has to to drive back. I am focusing on eating. Food is not interesting and I need to keep up my weight and caloric intake. Susan makes up a food log  and I try to take in something like 2,000 calories. Mostly soft food: soups, protein drinks, ice cream and egg nog. So far its working I felt like I had a head ache in the back of my head, rubbed it a little and out comes a handful of hair. Chunks of beard are descending too. No playing Santa Claus for me this year. Not enough energy to go to Monday night dance. I could sit there and smile or walk around but my balance and energy are just shot right now. But there is still this daily progress, 14 down and 21 to go. Wednesday is the next chemo treatment and I am not looking forward to the waves of chemicals that will last for days and yet I know each day is closer to the end of the treatments. While I can’t dance, the music that is soothing to my soul are songs like ‘You Are Safe’ and more recently ‘Bliss’. 

Strange that a song called ‘Bliss’ would come present. Susan and I first heard it at Bhaktifest, a three day celebration in the desert featuring kirtan/chanting, yoga, lectures and some dance. The Sikh lady singing it was just on the event staff but everyone knew she had a good voice and one of the bands gave her a few minutes of their gig time to sing two songs. Big mistake, can’t remember anything about that band. She started singing and Susan and I were soon crying. A year later we heard her, now definitely on the program, and were crying again. Today I rock back and forth listening , singing,  crying. 

May Bliss find you wherever you are:http://tinyurl.com/oyuzlrw

The Second Hubbard Street City Dance Wonder

Susan arranged for season dance tickets with the Hubbard Street Dance group being the top of the list I wanted to see. I saw them some years back and they were sweet and contemporary without the distractions that sometimes come with more avant guard troupes. As I am a Chicago boy I lived in walking distance (although its a rough neighborhood, taking life in ones hands to walk it then) of their Hubbard Street location. I did see that Second City is to perform with them, so I figured I can’t lose, Second City is one of the funniest comedy clubs in existence. We saw them a couple years ago in Chicago and laughed ourselves silly. I even forgive them for their building displacing Piper’s Alley, the first head shop I encountered in Chicago in 1964. A place full of black light posters, incense, Indian prints and other things magic to a 14 year old. I figured that they would alternate skits/dances and that would be fine.

Giving a literal description of the performance would miss everything. This blending works remarkably well. I think it was a big risk for Hubbard Street and could have gone wrong, but it didn’t. Its mostly a light, laugh filled performance but the dancing fits in perfectly with the comedy. And there is one set of a series of couples doing duets that is so beautiful I wish I were 20 again and could train to dance like that. I not only laugh a lot I actually forget that my throat is aching. Don’t miss a chance to see this show. Don't believe me? Read the critics:

Critics Review: http://tinyurl.com/pou5bm4

Mouth has been miserable, beard hair falling out in chunks. I think of my ‘theme’ song, ‘I’m So Glad’ but that is a later song, a victory song, now I am comforted by hearing ‘You Are Safe’ playing in my head.

Be safe: http://tinyurl.com/nos6bhs

Dancing With The Boovs

Things are feeling just a shade of early grim. My mouth is in discomfort. The Dr  says there are ulcerations in my mouth. Not a surprise, actually expected, just later in the process. He thinks that radiation reflection off my crowns and fillings are frying local tongue and mouth skin. He prescribes a ‘miracle mouthwash’ which is blended mylanta, lidocaine and who know what else but it works. If I gargle with it my mouth is numb enough to eat and its good for getting to sleep too. 

So at this time, rather than the deep, darker films I feel like watching (The Grapes of Wrath or even better The Seventh Seal) Susan gets the DVD ‘Home’. Wonderful animation.  It maybe helps to have grandchildren, to see it through their eyes. But here I am laughing and dancing through it. And there is one wonderful scene where the Boov hears some funky music for the first time  and their multiple feet cannot stay still. Seems like music and dancing are common across the galaxy not just on planet earth. Susan & I dance around the room to all the songs in the extras part of the DVD. Life is good.

Heck, I want to heal myself and  heal the earth and now maybe we can heal the galaxy with music and dance.

Dancing In The Dark from Home:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaSN4265Tj0

I Hope You Dance

For the last couple years I have been a member of a mens group. Mostly we meet and discuss things and support each other through good times and less good times and the transitions between them. Tonight we met to help one of the group pack for moving. This fellow has been in a wonderful house for 25+ years and it is now time for him to sell the house and move on to new adventures. While there are some positives in moving on, this is a night based in sadness even though the spirit in the room is quite cheerful. We sing theme songs from old movies, get up to date with each others recent developments and actually do get 20 or so boxes packed. He is a friend and also a dancer. He passes on to me a small book with a CD in it, ‘I Hope You Dance’. I am not sure I know of a C&W song that hits the spot so well. We all just keep dancing through good times and bad.

http://tinyurl.com/o4m963l

I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack

Boys Don't Dance

When I was about five I can remember dancing and swaying to music. That was the last time for many, many years that anyone thought my dancing was cute or attractive in any way. It was very simple, boys don’t dance. In grade school and high school I pretty much avoided dancing since I would look like a jerk, college too. Oh, it was nice to have a slow dance every now and then, loved the contact and no one, expect my poor partner, could tell my feet weren’t synchronized to anything. 

I was 30 in 1980 when I arrived for a NASA position in Pasadena after a 3 year US Navy job in  London  and shortly decided I could do things I never had done. I learned to swim, did some rock climbing, jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. And, gulp, I figured out I wanted to dance. I took one swing step class at the community college but I wanted something beyond social dancing. So I went to a local dance school where Jamie took my money and put me in a level 1 jazz/modern dance class  (they didn’t have anything lower or remedial). It was a real class and I felt like a lumbering giraffe among the fluid gazelles. I learned that after lots of practice my capacity to remember a routine increased and that lessened my embarrassment.  In the all level classes there were people who danced for a living or dance was part of their fitness for the entertainment industry. They were on commercials, music videos and in performances. No one ever had an unkind word to say to me maybe because they sensed that I was ‘serious’ in my efforts and bliss would break out across my being occasionally. 

I remember the first time, it was a routine to On Broadway by George Benson. Suddenly it wasn’t work, a memorized routine or watching others trying to synchronize. It flowed from outside and within My feet went where they were supposed to go, all by themselves. And I couldn’t stop. 

I was still never much of a dancer, never performed. The only role once offered to me was to play a stationary tree. They were trying to include me but, no, thank you. After a year or so I stopped going to the class, still a desire to dance but didn’t feel that class was where I needed to be. And I had proved, to myself at least, that I could dance. And that was my dance experience for the next 25 years. I no longer felt socially or personally blocked from dancing just not many opportunities crossing my path. 

But come relive that first time with me; kick ball change, cross step, cross step….http://tinyurl.com/p26umtn