I Sing of Olaf

Memorial Day 2005. We honor our war dead. It is amazing to me that after all these years, the planet is still covered in what is essentially tribal conflict – Hutu v. Tutsi, Sunni v. Shiite, Muslim v. Christian, and on and on and on. Yet we honor it, by honoring the dead. What a waste.

e.e. cummings - i sing of Olaf glad and big... (XXX

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbeloved colonel (trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but-though an host of overjoyed
noncoms (first knocking on the head
him) do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments-
Olaf (being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds, without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightaway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but-though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skillfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat-
Olaf (upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ (of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you

My brain feels kind of like Olaf, and then I take the steroid to counteract the brain swelling and can’t sleep. I keep waking up at 4:30 or 5 am. Sheesh.
I do have these nifty photos of the new improved White Hat, check ‘em out!

The cranial irradiation is going OK, no major sunburns, some minor headaches, as I said, nothing else. As I emptied the dishwasher this am,two glasses fell victim to the numbmeup in my fingers, quite spectacularly too, as I crushed one between my arm and ribs as I dropped the other! Lucky not to get hurt there!

I played 11 holes on Friday afternoon, badly. It’s a funny thing in golf and some other skill games that you play good after a long layoff, then all the old mistakes creep right back in, all those old bad habits sneak right in.

I am getting really sick of watching the devastation on my body too. I have traded 20 pounds of muscle for thirty pounds of fat, weaker than Lara Flynn Boyle and looking like Nicholson. Whenever it gets to me and I vow to do something, I get tired thinking about it, then I go lie down. It seems to me that I am going to hit a long stretch of higher energy after the irradiation is done, and I better get my act together to have Life After Leukemia.

I got a card from Robert DeNiro this week, pretty cool. It said "Best, Robert DeNiro". I also received an invitation to have dinner with President and Mrs. Bush. Unfortunately they misspelled my name Flore, and it cost $2500 per person for the dinner. Dang.

Finally got this post fixed, sheesh.

Cranial Irradiation cont.

What was I saying? Oh yeah. Uuhhhhh. Heh heh. Urrrrrr.

Friday am early
It’s been an interesting week. On Monday I went into the Oncology Radiation Center, which we’ll call the Fry Shack, to be fitted for a new White Hat! You wear this hat to keep aligned with the machine that sends the DEATH RAYS into your skull. It is made out of this weird stretchy plastic mesh material, which comes in a flat sheet and they warm in a pan. They have you lie on the table in the position for frying, and then place this warm wet stretchy plastic goop over your face and head, and it clips into the table. They mold it down into your eyes, which you better have closed, and around the curves and giant lumps and deep gashes of your head. In ten minutes it hardens into this plastic mesh hat. If they find this thing in 2,000 years they will be sure the owner really looked like King Tut.


Tuesday I went back to the Fry Shack and they took a couple pictures of me in my new hat, to get their lasers and DEATH RAYS all lined up for the Armageddon to come. I asked a few questions, like would I call the dinosaurs and what other side effects would I have. They said the treatment I was getting was totally wussy, the real men get like 3 times the level of radiation for 6 weeks straight and then die. They said I would not call the dinosaurs, not get really bad headaches, probably remember my name and my address but maybe not where I parked. The doctor did say that the combination of spinal tap injected methotrexate and cranial irradiation did cause some loss of brainpower, i.e. you get stupider, but he said, you won’t notice. Ha ha. After he got up, he also said you might get a sunburn too.

There were a lot of problems scheduling the doctor that was doing the spinal tap and methotrexate injection, since it had to be done for the next 5 weeks. We finally nailed down Thursday morning, so yesterday at 7am I went to Sierra Vista for the 8am treatment. The doctor showed up around 8:45, and got right to work. I curl up into the fetal position and she starts poking this long needle in until she has found the nerve bundle that goes down my left leg. Somehow, without moving, I jump four feet and say “I think you’re on the nerve bundle”, maybe not that calmly. It was pretty strange, because it was so instantaneously extremely painful, and then gone. I’ve always loved that about some types of pain, just light you up and then gone. It was strange too that the first time she did it the pain shot through my hip, and the second time it was the calf and foot. I imagine she is barely touching this nerve bundle, but man oh Marathon Man, “It’s Safe!” She is very apologetic, and after some more fishing around she decides she can’t get it. The doctor at Stanford had a hard time, and this doctor had a hard time the first time, and she says it will be better to do this with Xray guidance. That means I have to come back at 10:30. I call the Fry Shack, who is waiting for me to finish this, and tell them to keep my order warm.

The XRay guys are da bomb. It is clearly easier to do a spinal when you can see what you are doing. They can’t see the nerve bundle, but they can see where they want to go, and it is all pretty painless. They tell me I have to lie flat for 24 hours! The first doctor wanted me to lay flat for 1 hour, and at Stanford they wanted me to lay flat for 3 hours. I get wheeled on a gurney back to the day treatment area, and the nurse says the Xray doc is very cautious with the 24 hour recommendation. I have to lay there an hour, have some lunch while horizontal (spaghetti and salad, that’s tricky), and then go across to the Fry Shack.

They are ready for me. I get on the table, they plug me into my hat, tell me there will be whirring and sizzling and popping as the DEATH RAYS bombard my skull, then I’ll get rotated and they will bombard the other side, and it will all be over in 2 minutes. Now normally I can control the fear reaction and my breathing, but when they all left the room and that machine kicked on, and all that whirring and sizzling started up, I could literally feel my brains heating up. I didn’t want to swallow or move in any way, lest I fry some unfryable part, and that didn’t help my anxiety level. I could feel my skin heating up, but I kept thinking I shouldn’t be feeling anything, and wondering if they were giving me the he-man dosage. Then it was over.

Started at 7am, home at 2:15, 1 hour of procedures, 6 hours of forms and waiting. I get horizontal, but not for 24 hours. At 5:30 Mikey and I go to his school, where he is playing and I am dealing in the annual Blackjack Tournament. I feel fine, a little warm under the hat. Mikey makes the final table, takes fourth place and wins an MP3 player. Home at 9, eat dinner, in bed at 10:30. What a day.

Today I go in at 10 am for DEATH RAYS. A great thing happened that will help my recovery. I had appealed to the Superintendent of Golf Courses for the county to reinstate my volume discount card and cart sticker from last year, and he has agreed. In ’03 and ’04 I laid out $600+ for these cards, and each year was injured by April. The whole idea of the volume discount is that at a certain volume, you save money. Anyway, they are giving me a discount card and cart sticker for this year. That is awesome.

And hey, listen up Mac, I went out Monday at Morro Bay and shot 91, 3 months ago I didn’t think I’d ever golf again, but sweet mother that felt great. I even went Mac on a couple holes, and I mean big Mac, rippling Mac, barking howling feed the kitty Mac. Short game was pretty iffy, but it always was.

Blog comments are getting really funny. I am bringing up Tim’s thoughts about the ir part of irradiation with the Fry Shack people, but it scares me to say anything negative with these people. One little nudge of the dial, one little oops, and it’s Chernobyl time for Johnny. I should point out also, everything they give me for chemotherapy causes cancer! It’s downright crazy! It’s almost like some sort of planned obsolescence of humans. Sure, you’ll beat the leukemia, but we’ll be seeing that colon of yours in 5 years!

I think I may be moving to Korea, or one of the other advanced countries, where old embryos can be used to save humans, and are not revered as ‘living things’. My toenail clippings are technically ‘living things’ but nobody objects when I throw them out. Americans are going to start leaving the country to get quality health care, and it will only be the wealthy doing this. This so-called ‘Culture of Life’ government is so full of shit. And to think GWB had a sister die of leukemia. Don’t get me started.

Sunday morning
Oops, a day late, I forgot to post this dang thing. I can’t seem to get the picture of the white hat I took on Friday to email to me, camera phones! I will have to post it later, or take a pic with a real camera tomorrow. I was fried again on Friday, and my head is lightly sunburned and I have a killer headache, maybe a cold or allergies and not from the DEATH RAYS. Dana is off to San Fran for the weekend with her sisters, and I am doing laundry and chauffeur duties, which mean watching golf. By next weekend I may be feeling pretty fried. I better go golfing later today, it's boiling hot here!

Cranial Irradiation

Uhhhhhh eeerrrrrrrrr

I feel OK


heh heh

Or else! Or what?

I get the week off from chemo, and catch a stinking cold! Either that or the pollen count is so high even those of us without hay fever are being effected. Pretty nice week off though. I have to try to get young Mike Fiore to the driving range today, try to rekindle his golfing passion.

The irradiation guy’s nurse called me yesterday, and wanted to know what I would like done. He had a message to call me and set something up. Seemed like an odd way to proceed to me, fraught with potential, the lunatic running the asylum. In spite of all the opportunity, I told him the doctors should probably stick to the prescribed regimen, which it turns out they were planning to do, and their asking of my wishes was so much bunk. First they are going to make me a new hat, to replace the White Hat, filled with holes for the DEATH RAYS. It also has laser guiding nocks on it, so they can laser-align me and ensure the DEATH RAYS hit the holes.

The nurse ensured me that the DEATH RAYS would probably not make me sick in any way, and in fact the dosage I was getting was wussy, George Bush had had nearly twenty times as much and look at him, heh heh, he has no problems with nucular rays. So I felt better about that right away. He suggested that my doctor should prescribe some steroids for the brain swelling, but I told him I was married and had little ego left. We’ll see.

Anyway, before we start with the DEATH RAYS I wanted to write down some of the possible endings for the story of my life, and maybe warm up for the 55 fiction competition in New Times coming up. The 55 stories have to be only 55 words, check it out at http://www.newtimes-slo.com/index.php?p=55fiction

Here we go.

MY LIFE
I lived to be 98 years old, but really struggled with post recovery, always wondering if one the leukemic bastards was hiding out somewhere. Within a year of full recovery I had to leave the house as my tirades were threatening the family. I became a transient and followed the Pan Pipe players from Peru, like a Deadhead only more solitary. I met an Inuit grandmother living in Anchorage that took me in and made me eat blubber as chemotherapy, and my hallucinations about the leukemic bastards ended when I was 72, and I became a scrimshaw broker.

OR

I lived another five years. In the paper it said I had fought a brave battle against leukemia. I went through another five years of chemotherapy but the little leukemic bastards were hiding in my liver, and the lack of alcohol allowed them to thrive. The numbness in my limbs had progressed to my lips and eyelids, so I kept walking into stuff when my eyes closed unexpectedly. When I tried to yell ‘Oh Shit’ it came out ‘Ashes’, and in the end I was cremated.

OR

I started inventing little fun devices that helped people have slightly more fun when they were having fun. Things like the Golf Beverage Caddy, which attached to your golf bag and held your drink so it never spilled. Or the Poker Pot Scooper/Stacker, that scooped and stacked your poker pots, enabling you to win even faster at the casino. In three years I was completely leukemia-free, but court suits from people with spilled drinks and tipped stacks drove me to bankruptcy and divorce. I died at 64 of cirrhosis of the liver.

OR

I became a writer of bad science fiction, but finally made it big at 60 when my book Driven got on Oprah. This was a story about a driving vigilante that starts to outfit his car for small acts of vengeance on stupid drivers, and it escalates on him, until he realizes that he is the psychopath, and yet he is a regular guy. When the LA freeways actually try to institute some of the ideas from the book for traffic control, drivers rebel. They saw me on Oprah, and a small violent group breaks into my house and drags me out to the street, where they drive over my broken body repeatedly.

OR

Having laughed in the face of death, I take up hang-gliding and para-sailing, injure both legs in a bad landing, get gangrene and become a paraplegic, ending the foot numbness problem. I take up wheelchair basketball where it turns out I have a natural talent – I can shove my numb fingers in the other guys’ spokes, bringing them to a dead stop. I went to the Paralympics, representing my country, but I was killed by Chechen terrorists throwing a fake Scud missile at Bush to scare him, but it lands on me.

OR

Having gone through two years of chemo, I become addicted to stool softeners. I die a year later from a really really really irritated bowel.

OR

It turns out that was a secret love note from Angelina Jolie on that picture she sent me, and not her signature as some thought, told you so. She showed up just as I ended chemo treatment and wanted to adopt me, to live with her in her Thailand jungle compound. Dana was not happy about this, having put up with me all this time and just now finally getting her kitchen redone. She smacked Angelina in the mouth, and her lips burst all over me, causing some reaction between collagen and vincristine and making whatever was numb before now necrotic and causing a chemical prefrontal lobotomy. My hands and feet were amputated, Angelina loses interest, and Dana designs a special place in the new kitchen for her big ‘Vegetable’. With no way of taking up bad habits, I ‘live’ another 70 years, draining the family and even the county coffers.

OR

We held this really fun barbecue to say ‘Yippee’, and Mac was there with ho-spice, and Pat was there with twisted references that leapt across three borders you didn’t know were there, and Nick and Dyan and the energy boys came, and all the great Sinsheimer folks with tons more food showed up, and people flew in from Spain and England and RI and ‘Bama, and we had a great time. We drank beer, and some people were smoking, and I thought ‘Oh just one cigarette, no problem.’ Two years later I died of lung cancer, bam.

OR

I lived another thirty years but couldn’t remember much of anything after the cranial irradiation accident. A PG&E truck ran into a transformer just as I was being treated, and the resulting power spike blew through all the protections and super-dosed me. We moved to a 10,000 sq. ft. house with a bitching ocean view, and a kitchen to die for, but I forgot who I was. Dana reprogrammed me to think I was Robert Barrett Browning, and I spent the rest of my life writing sonnets to her.

OR

Who knows?

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother’s Day, hope you all showed your Moms some love today! As a Dad, I love having to coerce and harangue the boys into getting presents and cards, then trying to get them to help make breakfast and clean up after. Ha, that breakfast thing didn’t happen. John did get up early enough to eat breakfast, and Mike and John both wrote thoughtful notes and got Dana an orchid, so we shared some love this morning! Now I’m tired from making omelettes and bacon, but we’re going to make paella on the beach at Spooner’s Cove in Montana de Oro, so I must cowboy up!

Had my last 2 doses of asparaginase (punchmeinthegut) this week, no more of that subtle horror show, yippee. Tuesday’s shot feels like I was in the PBR bull-riding finals and lost, and Friday’s shot feels like I was shot with a .38 2 weeks ago, dull pain but tender to the touch. I actually get a week off this week, NO CHEMO AT ALL, nada. The blood counts are on the way up, and we need them even higher for what follows May 16, cranial irradiation and spinal taps. Brain fry for 12 straight days, and a spinal tap every Thursday for 5 weeks.

I had an IV of Vincristine (numbmeup) on Monday, and I keep getting that forever I think. The numbing isn’t any worse on the fingertips or feet, but seems to move into the forearms at times, especially after dosing. That is some weird stuff. You know the feeling you get when the lidocaine is wearing off after a visit to the dentist? That’s it, that slight tingling, can’t tell if something is hot or cold, numb but sensitive feeling.

One hope I have is that the brain fry will make me forget that I feel lousy and I will be active enough to offset some of this muscle loss. This lack of energy is really compounding, losing a lot of muscle strength and thus having less energy. I have been hitting the golf practice area, and my wedge work has gotten much better for it. Oh yeah, I did beat Mike B, so his reign as world champ only lasted for 2 games – I am back!

So just a quick update this week, nothing of note. If you think it’s boring to read this, try living it! I am going to have to step it up this week. We may go fruit-picking at a friend’s farm on Monday, mega avocadoes, oranges, other citrus, mmmmmmm.