Holy Cow I am 50

This is sunset from Frigiliana Spain




First off, it is my birthday, the big 50, so everybody please raise a glass to my Mom, who did all the work, kept pushing for 20+ years! Thanks Mom. I consider today, the big 50, to be intermission, halftime so to speak. Tomorrow we start the second half. Let’s hope the FCC is not around for my halftime show.

Age is a funny thing; you chug along for years feeling a certain age, and then one day you wake up some new age. I remember being 34 for a long time, about 6 years, then one day I felt 38, then about 5 years later I felt 46. I am not sure what age to feel right now, I noticed that today, I was feeling around in my psyche and couldn’t really come up with an age. That must be because my body has lost it’s reference points, the balance is a little off, the head is a little light, the expected remaining time has turned to flashing 12:00, system reset, must’ve been a power outage. I took the mug shots of my body today, and my gut is huge if I push it out, I mean like 8 months pregnant. Impressive. Weighed in at 174, so it’s not all gas. I need some damn blood so I can start walking again.

Dana got me a full massage for my Bday, and I just came back from that. It was great. I was too relaxed; I almost fell asleep. The masseuse couldn’t do deep tissue massage because she was worried about bruising; she had done some reading up on massaging chemo patients. A sign of a good masseuse, I guess. I was very conscious of leaving a lot of hair behind; I had this image of the masseuse looking at her oil-and-hair covered hands and thinking, OK, new job. I asked her to do the through-the-blanket massage, which is really a little more comfortable than the oil-the-hell out of the body hair massage. If they don’t use gobs of oil, they pull the hair, and that wrecks the whole relaxation thing of massage.

The masseuse wanted to know if there were any sore areas she should know about. One of the great things about aging is the loss of vision, so everyone still looks good. Another is the loss of memory, so you can forget where you hurt. As she was massaging about every 5 minutes I would remember another sore spot. Oh yeah, I have sciatica on the left side. Oh, that’s right, I have a neuroma on my left foot. My ribs are pretty sore from the expanded gut. They took a bone marrow biopsy on the hip. My fingers are dead at the tips. And on and on. I for one can’t wait to be the bionic man.

I have long held this theory that the first bionic man would not be some super soldier or athlete, but instead would some really rich guy that wanted to dunk or kick ass at tennis. And it makes sense, too. If you had $10 billion, what would you spend it on if your back was killing you all the time? A new back, that’s what. My money is on Gates for the first person to transplant his brain into some 20 year old body. We can’t be that far off if the going rate for a kidney in Pakistan is $1500. Whole villages are sold out. Sold out of kidneys. In the US we are afraid to annoy God and do stem-cell research, so instead the rest of the world will sell off their bodies piece-meal, to feed their families.

Speaking of the material world, this pic is for Tim; here is my car waiting for Pimp My Ride!




Call 911
There was a funny story from the first day I found out I had leukemia, the day they checked me into Sierra Vista. I was wheeled up from ER and into room 101, just off the main lobby of the hospital. There was an 84 year old guy, Al, in the room already, by the window. He had a section of his colon removed with a tumor two days before, and all he wanted was something to eat or drink, which of course he could not have. It was about 4 in the afternoon. I introduced myself, gave him the lowdown, and offered to have a spitball shooting contest with him to see who controlled the TV, but he was a basketball fan and said he was happy with the game on. We watched the Lakers lose.

Much later, about 9:15 or so, my brother-in-law Bill comes in to visit, after hours, tsk tsk. The Celtics are on. We are chatting away, Bill wants to help somehow, and nurse Julie comes in to talk to Al. We hear her asking who he was calling, and telling him he needs to dial 9 for an outside line. Julie then comes to me and says “Please do me a favor and call me if Al starts to call anyone, he is trying to call the police.” I agree. Bill leaves shortly thereafter, and two minutes after he leaves I hear Al dial the phone, boop boop beep beep. I think, 9 9 1 1. Then I hear him say “This is Al ------. There are 2 men in the room and they are trying to kidnap me. Yes, at Sierra Vista Hospital, room 121. (Wrong room).” I hit the nurse call button, and Julie comes flying in and takes the phone from Al. She explains what is going on to the 911 dispatcher on the other end.

I ask Julie to open the divider between our beds, and I say “Al, remember me, John? The guy with leukemia? I am not trying to kidnap you. I had a friend here and we were talking, I think you dreamt that we were kidnapping you.” He starts to realize what has happened, that he is sedated with Demerol and had this waking dream. We all settle down and he goes back to sleep. The police do call Julie’s supervisor, and she has to come down and check the whole story out. The next day he is mortified that he called the police, but I tell him not to worry, all in good fun.

Flamenco
Who is always looking out for me, yet filled with the passion of the flamenco? Dana, that’s who. When we were in Spain we saw various versions of flamenco, and after we saw La Lupi we all had to try our flamenco poses. I used Dana’s pose for the eyebrows. Today’s Eyebrow Lowbrow.



Here are Dana, Mike and I in our flamenco poses! Muy passionata!

But Tia Lia and Tia Stacy really captured the look!