i am thinking now of saying goodbye. how to say goodbye. to my mother. trapped in her body. mouth open, eyes glazed and fixed. staring. and her odd ungated voice, robbed of consonants. her dry uncooperative tongue. i tell her i love her. and then i tell her, under my Continue Reading
cowgalval
knowns and unknowns
Well, friends, here’s the info we’ve got so far today. The CT scan shows disease progression. Almost all the “target lesions” (specific nodules of cancer they’ve been tracking) show some growth. There are now a few lesions in Val’s liver, as well. Evidently this is typical of non-small cell cancer Continue Reading
the underside looking up
i am waking up this morning. if my body is under me, or on top of me, hard to tell. then i am standing. and the slant in this old floor pitches me sideways more than usual. that is a clue. there are thousands of clues. the feeling of ten feet tall Continue Reading
the sunrises, surprises and surmises
oh the vagaries. 3 weeks ago i was in the ER with breathing problems and a fever. not pneumonia, not a pulmonary embolism. no, they say, it’s just the tumors. oh those. dang. i was hoping for something new. it was a saturday and they’d gotten bigger since sunday. the Continue Reading
de lay, de light, de spair
friends i have been infused. and the result is that i had to go on without my white blood cells. they would have only slowed me down. the masters of the universe wouldn’t give me treatment last tuesday because my white count was too low. it is a potent cocktail. and also a bone Continue Reading
the grass the mastodons and your homeland
i will tell you about this thing. but i can’t tell it all at once. there is no road to summary. i want so very much to be able to answer accurately people who ask me how i am. i think, well, i can walk. deborah can’t hardly walk. and Continue Reading
4-year election cycle
today we parked in the parking garage at 9:25am and rode up the elevator area of trauma. at various times we’ve tried to run and hold our breath to be spared that rear brain memorial to the past terrors. the smell near the elevators at kaiser interstate holds in its Continue Reading
two-step
Dearest and fondest and best, i am here! still. and i realize it has been a big vast silence for these many months and i am sorry. i went to new zealand. and after that i did some laundry. on Monday they scanned the inside of me. i suppose somewhere Continue Reading
a thousand things have happened
PART 1 I hate to begin with such melodrama. But it is almost 2 years ago. And I am lying in a bed. A recovery room. I am remembering what they said I would forget. Remembering the drug they gave me that was supposed to make me forget. The camera Continue Reading
downhill
i know i keep saying this, but it’s hard to know what is happening. really, truly what is happening. so many things are true at once. and so many people are so many things at once. and it is so rare to be just one thing, at one time, doing Continue Reading