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Like full diapers and broken automobile batteries that release their contents at a moment's notice, the Gomery Inquiry has has experienced a major security breach. Imagine that.
"Take a few moments to read the stories of courage...touched by cancer." The expression "touched by" almost suggests that cancer could be contracted through having random strangers brushing against you. The gentleness implied refers to the Currier and Ives image of a cancer patient lying in bed, frail and delicate in a darkened room. Maybe they mean it like a chilly draught across your neck.
On page 3, it is reported that "death rates from most common lymphocyte cancer reduced by 50 per cent" so that catches my interest. BC has one of the best treatment facilities in the country and there are better survival rates so you might get to die from something else.
The rest of the Special Advertising Feature talks in glowing detail about research, giving many fine examples of how donations have been used. There's a list of donors. I used to get solicitation letters from the Cancer Foundation which prompted me to send e-mail demanding to know how I got on the Christly list. Receiving an innocent letter asking for money to help cure a wicked disease had triggered a primitive impulse in me. I snapped. I thought the Cancer Foundation should go straight to hell. A nice woman replied and told me that I must be on a subscription list, so thanks very much TV Week. My name's off the list.
In the supplement, there are vivid plans of additional good tidings...bright futures...and despite re-reads I cannot make it sensible in my head. It's a written sensation similar to hearing Charlie Brown's teacher and, irrationally, I am slightly furious that the newspaper I was reading with my breakfast had some fucking cancer article in it.
In 1994, I was 33, busy having a good time, busy being good-looking, clever and ambitious. Then one afternoon I was in an exam room with one of my best friends, two or three oncologists, and quite possibly a nurse, being told that I had Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a cancer which affects the immune system and cannot be cured unlike its Hodgkin's counterpart. It's because of cell structure. The other shoe dropping was that I have both aggressive, fast growing and indolent, slow growing lymphomas lurking in my system. They reassured me that there was plenty of medication to take care of it, and I was praised for my early detection. After an awkward silence, my response was "Well...how about that," as though, being told of a tragedy on the other side of the world, I felt moved and interested to know more, or that some people I knew in the next block had somebody die and I wanted to bring them a casserole.
I remember the few seconds before the diagnosis was delivered as being some of the sweetest even though I knew the shite was hitting the fan. It's a bit like being in a fast elevator going in either direction with crisp audio and bright lights. I heard a sound sort of like the PNE roller coaster as its brakes are unleashed. The same drill applies to this ride: grip the bar firmly but leave your elbows loose; hope that nobody barfs; try to hold onto both your dignity and your hat.
Imagine that you're about to be diagnosed with a big-ticket health item. Generally you receive the news in a roomful of people: two or three strangers, all medical professionals, one or two loved ones, and you. Everybody wants to know how you feel and it creates an unnerving sensation, a weird sense of obligation in you to come up with a suitable response, and don?t worry about how hollow your voice might sound. You?ll become accustomed to having people ask after you all the time, and on occasion, the answer will even be provided. Nobody?s really listening, but you need to decide how you want to present yourself in this new phase of your life ? AD - After Diagnosis. Here?s a tip: everybody in your world will be looking at you differently and sometimes it?ll be hard keeping up with expectations and fighting stereotypes.
Good Patients and Fighters. To my mind, these are the identities people with illness are refitted with by others. The Good Patient is unconscionably sunny, and slightly preoccupied with their condition, as though they've joined a new club and creep everybody out with enthusiasm. They?re also really trusting. Good Patients strike up conversations during which they sometimes ask what you've got. I thought they grouped patients throughout the week - I'm there on Lymphoma Thursdays as opposed to Melanoma Fridays. Furthermore, it?s impertinent to come out and ask somebody what they?re in for, at least by my proudly draconian standards. To whoever wants to know, remember that strangers asking me questions like that earns you a mental ?Fuck you, pal,? without putting too fine a point on it. Even in correctional institutions, the inmates display more sense than to ask.
Fighters often do more research than Good Patients, have slightly aggressive optimism and go through every procedure under the sun largely because they are higher stage patients with a genuine cause for alarm. Cruelly, some of them have shorter after-diagnosis life spans. Christ knows what you?re meant to do with a 6-month prognosis. In the meantime, they've made radical changes in their lives and hold on tight. I see them, slightly wraith-like, in the waiting room. Some of them have their own file folders with various colour post-its hanging out and big felt pen lettering on the cover. They remind me of refugees.
I don't think I have a category. Here's what I do: I've researched NHL and the drugs and now I'm done. I bitch about how long I have to wait for stuff to happen at the clinic and ask to have my card mailed whenever I can. I always sit in the small waiting room because it makes me think of business class. On my way to appointments, I like somebody to piss me off a little bit in traffic so that I'm less afraid. I don't know what to do with myself a lot of the time, and I talk to my cat more than with other humans. Apart from being crap at making plans before I was diagnosed, now I'm afraid to, or maybe I'm just lazy. I don't remember if I have dreams of things I'd like to do or just rely on To-Do Lists.
I'd known one other person with cancer, a boy I went to junior secondary with. Andrew Norton had had some sort of bone cancer and after childhood operations walked with a cane and didn?t go to gym. We spent many happy hours entertaining each other with Monty Python skits and although I realise just now that I loved Andrew, he was never my boyfriend. That wasn't the point. A couple years after high school, I ran into a woman named Laura Kruk, whom I knew in Grade 10, and she was wearing one of those sad looking headscarves that they try to interest you in when you first come in for chemo. Laura had cancer, and I forget what kind, and when I told her I was sorry, she looked unmoved.
Eleven years later, after 2 doses of harsh chemo (consisting of drugs whose names I can no longer say out loud or even think about without feeling uncomfortable), one cycle of which was accompanied by a dash of radiation, and two of chemo light, featuring fludarabine, I still cannot fathom that this is happening to me although I?ve seen the films. It?s a very subtle disassociation, anything to dull the pain, which isn?t always physical. Note that I haven't included any diagnostic procedures in the Have Done list, so add umpteen x-rays, 3 or 4 MRIs, over 300 blood samples and counting, more than 2 dozen CTs, 2 bone marrow extractions, and 3 open biopsies in a pear tree. Two biopsies were in the same armpit. I think my type is Good Sport.
I have been bald twice. It's not so much my vanity that suffers but more my sense of privacy. Baldness is obviously a fashion statement in some circles; my neighbourhood, Commercial Drive, is an ideal place to be bald as opposed to the Westside of town in which people assume you're having chemo. I wore a bright blue bandana and looked as tough as could be expected. As we are always judged by our ensemble while we're out in the world, we ought to devote some time to our creations. I think I make others in the waiting room slightly nervous - for the most part, they're a slightly older, well-coiffed crowd and I dress like a teenage boy. I prepare for visits to the Cancer Agency by wearing boxer shorts, flannel in winter and cotton in the summer because after being prodded and examined by dozens of strangers I was damned if I would wear inadequate undergarments. My self-preservation had to start with something. During an early examination, some comedian noted that my boxers matched the gown I had on. Work socks are perfect for CT scans and MRIs, but do mind the slippery floor. The piece de resistance is the undershirt; I favour black because, Lord knows, the last thing I want is to look vulnerable, and I don't wear gowns unless forced. That's the deal.
I won't use the expression "my cancer" for the obvious reason that it isn't mine although I have no qualms about saying ?my cold? or ?my bunions,? if I had any. Cancer is like a squatter, neither homeless nor a tenant. I will use the word "cancer" in sentences about me, sometimes with the word "patient" right after it to make a point that has nothing to with self-identity but with classification or description. Ergo, "I am a cancer patient but I'm not one." I don't go to seminars about NHL and the few times I went to a support group, I felt like I had nothing to say and had trouble hearing other people?s stories but it wasn?t from self-centeredness. The words "journey," "challenge", "gift," or "survivor" used with any frequency provokes ill temper in me. Am I like the alcoholic who won't go to AA because it's full of drunks? No, it?s that for me, dealing with cancer, as with all the other shitty things that have happened in my life, is primarily an individual effort. I have a time-honoured tradition of not asking for help until it becomes an emergency although I appear to be improving. I am not a group person and I?m not easy to be close to. Ask any of my ex?s.
Try reading Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor to see what it means to be a person with an illness. It upsets and confuses the others if they think you?re not getting enough attention even if you don?t want it. Suddenly your family will want to know all about you because they think you?re dying and they better act fast. One of my oldest friends, an ex-girlfriend, had inexplicably severed our friendship 6 months prior and only acknowledged me in the most perfunctory way in social settings when she couldn't avoid doing so, at least had the decency to keep that up after she heard I had cancer. I applaud her integrity, and I know that she genuinely wished me well. I?ve had a friend offer to pray for me and to put me on a prayer list, and my response was similar to that when I received a birthday present entitling me to have strangers come and clean my apartment. I?m afraid that grace was not the order of the day.
The other day I went in to the vet's, as I tell my cat, and I got one of those nurses who thinks that using a Pretty Doggie voice when speaking to patients will be soothing. The nurse?s job is merely to call your name in the waiting room, escort you to the exam room, weigh you, and make a polite enquiry as to your current state. "Hello-o-o! How are yoUUuu?" she said, and, as my Dad put it, you want to bark at them. I?d like to tell them to fuck off but it really pays to keep the nurses glad to see you. I am pleasant but not encouraging. She asked me about 3 times while folding the nighties, as she called them, how I was until I sighed heavily and mentioned that I?d had to reformat my computer and what a pain in the ass that was. You have to keep reminding medical professionals that your brain is still functioning so look busy. Crossword puzzles done in pen make a good impression. Maybe next time I'll bring in a clipboard and draw elaborate diagrams on graph paper.
So, about that Special Advertising Supplement about Exciting Advances in Cancer Research. Rarely does a week pass when there isn't another announcement. Used to be on Wednesdays that new cures would be unveiled - cheery pieces for the evening news to put people at ease, just a little bit, for one damn day. There. That oughta keep them quiet. What bleak prospects for drug companies should cancer be cured. On a personal level, I want nothing better than to be rid of what's come to afflict me yet I'm afraid to be [insert word like "hopeful", "optimistic"] because I'm afraid there's nothing there. Not a big gambler, me. Sounds like the X-Files, doesn't it? I Want To Believe.
I don?t spend much time pondering how I came to be in this jackpot because I recognised immediately the futility in that, and because it's like being mugged. Whatever hit you is miles away by now. My soul mourns for how I used to feel before I had cancer, for the confidence, the desire, the vision. My soul aches for how I feel now, for what I imagine I could?ve had: opportunities, adventures, perhaps the love of my life so naturally I take time to review every bad decision I've ever made. After I'm done, I can rely on Teutonic genes enabling me to better accomodate these frequent periods of angst in an otherwise only slightly depressed existence and bury the melancholy until next time it oozes out. Lately, I have been reaping the benefits of frequent cannabis use. I?m able to lead a relatively happy life and think Wow! I?m not dead yet and Let's have a snack. Most days are like that but I sometimes feel like the Coyote holding an umbrella as a shield against a falling boulder and then I can?t bear to hear anything about courage.
The Cure - Pictures of You
Nanette Workman - The Queen
Bruce Cockburn - Wondering Where the Lions Are
INXS - New Sensation
Iggy Pop - Lust For Life
Booker T & the MGs - Time is Tight
Jim Croce - I Got a Name
Bryan Adams - Diana
Jesus Jones - Right Here Right Now
Glen Campbell - Witchita Lineman
Valdy - A Good Song
Neil Diamond - Holly Holy
Max Webster - Paradise Skies
Andrea True Connection - More More More
Harry Nilsson - Everybody's Talkin'
The Stampeders - Oh My Lady
Tommy Tutone - 8675309 (Jenny)
Madonna - Ray of Light
Exhibit A reveals that I am willing to listen to kitsch, and suggests that I'm capable of singing in my car. In a recent article somewhere it was posited that most people favour the music of their youth. I own many, many LPs, several of them rescued from Value Village, some (Santana, the Doors, Simon & Garfunkel, Peter & Gordon), donated from my aunt and uncle, and the rest bought. The old turntable's belt had disintegrated after 20 years, necessitating the purchase of an entirely new grammophone from A&B Sound. It was a purchase that I was grateful and a bit astonished to be able to make.
Thanks to technology I can copy analog to digital, not to tidy up the scratches, but to archive the songs. Behind the massive audio/visual shelf is a network of wires and cables that allow me to do these cool things because I haven't a real job to go to. I download a lot of songs from newsgroups and often find obscure titles like "Timothy," by the Buoys. You know what that song was reputedly about, right?
When I was a typesetter at the The Peak I could listen to a walkman and typeset at the same time. The trick was that I didn't actually read the copy, I only looked at the letters and my fingers did the rest, and if I made a mistake I could feel it because what I saw and what I sensed in my fingers didn't match. With this web log, I can compose with music playing and be uninfluenced lyrically by the words but still experience sensory images and write. This is to say, my imagination is unleashed but I'm not copying what I'm hearing. Wow... Although I have a preference for rock, I also enjoy big band jazz (Bix Beiderbecke, Paul Whiteman, Billie Holliday, etc), true classical (Mozart, Sibelius, etc), and some opera although they aren't helpful to my writing. It helps that I love typing; I'm fast and accurate and it turns out that the composition feature of my brain can be shut off or enhanced at will. Have I mentioned the extensive editing?
Chat rooms used to hold quite a draw for me and I'd routinely fire up Winamp before logging on. Gordon Lightfoot, a fine example of a sensitive singer suitable for even the toughest customer, was a good choice for exorcising unhappy karma yet not so much for encouraging intelligent conversation. The temptation to chastise participants for using ill-considered grammar or poor spelling, and brow-beat Americans for lacking sufficient knowledge or interest in the rest of the world just because I could had to be put to rest.
I have no idea whether being able to compose and listen is a common trait; as somebody who regularly compartmentalises aspects of their life it seemed fitting that I would do the same for thought process. Please leave comments about what helps you write.
Here's money well spent and then some more, with a link to the BBC story. You knew that Diana was a couple of inches taller than Charles, right?
On the evening of my 13th birthday, after my parents and I had driven the last of my friends home from my party, we saw a cat running out of the garage as we parked the car. Somehow we figured out that there were a pair of kittens lying on the floor. They ended up in the house shortly afterward because we knew the mother wouldn't return. The brother was bigger and stronger than his sister, whom we worried about. We fed them baby formula for something like 3 months using an eyedropper, afterwards wiping the kittens with a warm, wet cloth. The brother died one day and his littler sister kept going. I named her Emily.When my mother finally moved out she took our dog with her and was going for Emily at one brief point. No fecking way was that happening and I'd have stayed home from school to protect my cat. My mother ended up stealing a dog from a friend of hers when she vanished to Alberta.
Emily's popularity preceded her. My father remarried 5 minutes after I graduated from high school and I was whisked to a suburb in the ass end of nowhere (Coquitlam) and she became the family cat. Renowned for her beauty, grace and gentle nature, her likeness was once painted on a plate commemorating an anniversary of my dad and step-mom and proudly displayed on the wall for years. When I left that house, after a tumultuous and far-too-long 3 years, I was not allowed to take Emily with me. I wasn't deemed responsible enough, and, anyway, she likes people, as if there wouldn't be any where I was going. Emily's response to me during subsequent visits was dismissive and formal for rather a long time. In the end, she forgave me. Sometime after her 18th birthday, during an afternoon when nobody else was home, Dad took her to the vet's.
I found solace though the classified ads in a listing from something called Aid to Animals in Distress. They had cats of various ages and sexes for adoption and I arranged a date to see who was available. It was a brother and sister I liked the best and it was the sister who came home with me. I named her Lillian, Lili for short, after the song Lili Marlene which helped make Marlene Dietrich enormously popular.
I'd always include Lili's name on my answering machine's outgoing message and for a while, some people thought I had a secret girlfriend. In fact, I did refer to her as my partner on more than one occasion. Our devotion to one another couldn't be measured. She often licked my head when my hair was growing back after chemo. Ironically, I lost her when she developed lung tumours; she was diagnosed on a Thursday and put down on next Monday. Buried beside the front yard with a note.
In many ways, I felt like I'd grown up with Lili because I found her when I moved from home at 21 and we'd spent 12 years together. She knew me at my happiest.
The month after Lili died I was absorbed with grief, coming home to an empty apartment day after day being neither use nor ornament. At the end of it, the grief settled into mourning and I needed to find another companion. Lili didn't want me on my own. She'd said.
One afternoon in November I went to the SPCA to see the cats, and the one I wanted had an aisle seat. I liked the way she talked to me in a chirping mew. Only 8 weeks old and sitting in a cage didn't seem right at all. Since then, I've heard that black cats aren't as easily adopted as regular coloured felines and I don't understand why. Anyway, this kitten had rich reddish hues and cream brindling mixed with her black fur and that made her a part-tortie.
Her first name is Piroska (pi-ROSH-ka) and it is Hungarian for "little red." I often call her Roska for short and have never been able to discover what sort of abuse I suspect I have been committing against the Hungarian language by truncating her name like that. Actually, the first definition I read said it was an ancient form of Priscilla, a name my friend Helen gave a foundling kitten who disappeared during an Edmonton winter. I wanted to honour that cat and the loss my friend had suffered. Piroska's middle name is Ilyena (il-YA-na), and it's also Helen Mirren's middle name. Often when I say my cat's full name to her she closes her eyes and purrs.
Life with me has not always been a bed of catnip for Roska. She has an entirely different disposition to either Emily or Lili, who would let nothing faze them. It must be the Siamese influence in Roska that makes her hit the deck and hiss at moments when I could've sworn everything was fine. My own temperment displays grace under pressure to the world and something else, dark and unhappy, inside and you can't hide that from a cat so perhaps I've aggravated her sensitivity over the years. It's gotten a bit better since I've figured out that I'm probably going to live and have started smoking pot again. Everybody wins.
Lately, Roska and I have been having fun again. I dropped her food knife off the cupboard and it fell on the floor making a big noise that made Roska and I start. Later on that evening I got her a snack from the fridge and was puzzled by the puddle beside her empty water bowl, imagining Roska furiously tipping out the water in a temper over an unsatisfactory dinner. I asked her "What the hell happened?" and she looked at me thinking My god, she's finally flipped. Each of us as innocent as the other. I looked closer at the bowl and discovered two tiny triangular cracks across from each other on the dish's rim and a trail between them. The knife. Making a big noise.
Martha Stewart is home from spending five months in the big house for lying under oath. Remember, it wasn't the insider trading so much as the sloppy attempt at covering her tracks that landed her in so much grief. Stewart will have to wear an ankle tag and curtail her activities for another few months. Well, she still has her magazine. Earlier in this saga, there were suggestions, rumours, intimations, that her name might be dropped from the masthead; Stewart's name still appears albeit less prominently.
Stewart has a well-documented history of difficult relations with co-workers, employees, and loved ones, and it could be argued that one does not rise to the top being good to people. Nobody wants to be thought of as nice because that is tantamount to being vulnerable and inconsequential. Women in positions of power are still held largely in contempt because it is presumed that they have clawed their way upwards; whether or not it's true (and Oprah Winfrey, for example, seems to have retained, cultivated, her genuine kindness during her ascent to greatness) is irrelevant. We live in a sexist, misogynist society which doesn't trust women.
I used to watch Martha's show years ago and was enormously entertained by her seductive presentations of gardening tricks, extravagant desserts, and better living although none of it was ever going to be replicated at my house. Martha Stewart Living, Restoration Hardware, Lee Valley, and sometimes even IKEA amount to little more than domestic pornography to people like me who rent their dwelling and whose personal decorating style includes unframed posters on the wall held up with tacks. However, 90% of my furnishings and accessories come from IKEA and I have bottle brushes from Lee Valley, evidence that even the most incorrigible are willing to play along. I bought some MS bedsheets which incidentally don't fit all that well on futons.
What I did finish was Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, discovered during a web search. Somebody I admire raved about it so it had to be read.
The story goes like this: a teenage boy finds his neighbour's dog dead in the front yard and wants to know why this happened. The boy has an organised, complicated way of living with the world; situations arise and accomodations must be made. The thing is, he's incredibly bright with pretty much no emotional coping skills. He understands things about humans and their behaviour but has a clinical approach to feelings. Living with people becomes a bit like participating in some sort of sociological experiment. Which it is. I found some parallels, although the characters are completely different, in Peter Sellars' Chancy in Being There, and more in the character Monk from the tv show. I used to find Monk unwatchable because of his phobias but I've become more empathetic. Chancy broke my heart, as did Christopher, Haddon's young lead. He's a bit like Harry Potter crossed with Adrian Mole in dire need of a joint. That the book is written from the boy's perspective is what makes it so compelling. It's like an exploded parts diagram of life.
I get Christopher. I get that human behaviour and customs don't resonate with him and the only way he can make the world understandable is to break things down into a series of "If-Then-Else" operations and carry on from there. The poignant thing about most humans is their desire to behave logically and their inability to accomplish that on a consistent basis. Humans' lives are largely repetitious, from mundane activities like getting out of bed and readying oneself for the day, eating, travelling, and it's during interactions with others that things get interesting. Christopher hasn't got the wiring to enable him to disregard irrationality in others or to deal with unexpected events or even somebody touching him--it just leads to big freak-outs. The quest for meaning and safety, whether through ritual (counting cars and noting their colours)or through the tangible (like having a special food cupboard) becomes paramount.
Consider the amount of stimulus each person receives during the day, much of it unsolicited and unwanted. Sorting through and interpreting the world's messages in order to make a go of things is hard work and loads of folks either aren't up to it, need assistance in one form or another, or, like Christopher, create their own system. Some people are unable to decipher social cues, and, for example, often can't recognise anger in others or simply don't know how to respond in a given situation. It's akin to being illiterate or being dropped in another country. Christopher's behaviour and ideas make perfect sense given where he is in the world.
What motivates humans to act the way they do? Why isn't having what you want making you happy? Jesus, you just have to look at Paul Martin's face on any given day to guess what he's thinking: I thought this job would be a lot more fun. I've seen the same look on Dubya's mug, too. They're a cautionary tale, the pair of them, reminding us to be careful what we orchestrate.
I'm surprised that humankind has lasted this long, and I don't mean that in a necessarily pejorative way. Our individual approaches to the world are obviously influenced by our experiences in it; even in early childhood you get a glimpse of how things are conducted and for some of us, the trains didn't run on time. There isn't much documentation for being a human and if there is, it's written with the same clarity and ease-of-use as all others.
