TNT speech and race pics

I promised to post the speech I gave Friday night, so here it is.

Hello, my name is John Fiore from the SLOHS team. I am living proof that your efforts save lives. I am very glad to be here among so many of my heroes, and I am so happy to be able to thank you all for your outstanding effort. You helped to save my life, and the lives of many others. You have raised money to help the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and it is your effort that compels me to be here today, saying thank you.

Here in this room we see one response that people have when friends or family are stricken. They bond together to find solutions, to do what they can. They undertake great efforts and withstand great pains so that others can have a better chance at life. We have gone through the massive effort of raising donations in a tough economy, asking everyone we know, and some we do not, to donate to the LLS. Tomorrow, while you are walking or running the race, and you start hurting, think of the people that you have already helped with the monies you have raised, go to a peaceful place in your mind, and take another step.

When they told me in Feb.’05 that I had acute lymphocytic leukemia, I was stunned. The next day my wife and I were on our way to Stanford Medical Center, where I was treated with a cocktail of drugs called CALGB8811. That stands for Cancer and Leukemia Group B trial number 8811. Research by CALGB is sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and in part funded by the LLS, by monies raised by people like you.


F Ground is the ward at Stanford for cancer patients with compromised immune systems, and this would be home for 4 weeks or so, while they slammed me with the chemotherapies that would shock my bone marrow back into line. This was the room they first gave me;

Just kidding, this was the actual room, all to myself because of my low immunity, with a nice garden just outside.

Every six months or so a patient comes into F Ground, takes all the chemo, and for some reason, does not get very sick – little nausea, minor illnesses, generally healthy. I was that patient.



I roamed the halls of Stanford Medical with my IV pole, imagining I was in a big art gallery, looking at the artwork that lined the halls.

When family came to visit, we meditated in the meditation room.

When your life is threatened by cancer, you have time to ponder your existence and your mortality. At sleepless moments, you ask ‘Why me?’ The answer is of course, ‘Why not you?’ You ask yourself, ‘Why go through this?’ The answer is that while I don’t mind the fact that I will die, I am not done living yet.

I want to see my sons pursue their dreams, and I want to travel the world with my wife, so I needed more time. I thought if I had a few more years, ongoing research could help me keep going. Thanks to all of you and those like you, that research has given me that gift of more time.

You can walk around for hours in the hospital halls, and that is what I did, pushing my IV pole and wearing my HEPA mask

(show the mask). Since I was in an isolation room and effectively isolated when outside the room by the HEPA mask, I resolved to be this lone warrior, this monk trekking to health.

I settled into my isolation room with a laptop, and quickly tired of sending multiple emails to people saying the same things over and over. When someone suggested I write a blog I jumped on it.

“Holy Cow I Have Leukemia” was born, and there I documented what it was like to be in the hospital with leukemia.



The blog would be my job, and I took my job seriously. For my blog profile, I used the poop catcher as a hat;

it reminded me of the hat worn by The Flying Nun on TV when I was a kid, and later it figured prominently in my stay.

The way it is supposed to be used:

(quickly to next slide)

Of the 22 people on F Ground, I saw one other actually walking around; the rest were too sick. I walked all around that hospital, day and night. During all my walks, I saw lots of things in the hospital, and I wrote about them in my blog.



I wrote about the gardens, especially the rooftop garden of the Children’s Hospital, and all the sick and frail kids in the Childrens Hospital.

I wrote about some of the experiments I performed while in the hospital. The best experiment was double Menu Day, when I tested the limits of the kitchen. Here is the menu,

here is the lunch

As I reread the blog looking for pictures and funny stories to bring to this podium, I realized how crowded it was in that isolation room. All sorts of friends were reaching out to me through the blog, the phone and email, writing comments, offering support and inspirational quotes, and writing crazy stories and cool poems in the comments. The lonely trekking monk, me, was actually part of a large group making a push up Everest. If I wobbled toward a crevasse, many hands held me up, and with this great support, I kept trekking to this point. Here we all are again, a large group that has come together to conquer a mountain, to hold up those that need our support.

With the support of my friends and family, I did go home after three weeks, a little ahead of schedule, and then went through two more years of chemo and radiation.


Since leukemia tends to hide in the skull, around month 4, mid-May ‘05 , I wore this great-looking mask [show mask]

and was strapped to the table for cranial irradiation. I like to wear the mask every now and then, it makes me look like I am going fast, but kind of freaks out the neighborhood. [put on mask]

When I asked the doctor about side effects from cranial irradiation, he told me ‘Oh, you will be stupider, but you won’t notice.’ What was his name?




The radiation did strange things to my hair

When it all fell out, I got some new headgear

And when the eyebrows fell out, I just pasted on some tomato hornworms I found in the garden.

My friends joined in at a big BBQ and changed their eyebrows – these are Bushy eyebrows

I think most of us who have had cancer live with the fear that the cancer will return. I know I did. Last July ’08, I was training for the Nike half-marathon as an honored teammate of the SLOHS TNT team, when leukemia returned. I had relapsed. This time, I would need a bone marrow transplant.



Twenty years ago, I would have had no chance of getting a bone marrow transplant. At age 53, they would not have even tried it, as such a person could not withstand the rigors of the entire procedure. Thanks to continuing research funded by efforts such as yours, the regimen called CALGB9511 was ready to save me.




When you are preparing for a bone marrow transplant, the first thing is the induction phase, just as when leukemia first struck, to stop the leukemia from progressing while you wait for a donor. This is 3-4 weeks of intense chemo.

Back I went to Stanford, back to F Ground, back in time two and a half years. Thanks to new drugs, I was healthy, but the anxiety of finding a bone marrow donor was ever-present. Some patients die while waiting for a donor match.

After the 4 weeks of induction, I went home, and waited for a donor. On August 14, I found out that I had a great match in my sister Lisa. She is an identical twin, so my sister Leslie was my spare! I had some time to kick it, so I went to a music festival, and then to Yellowstone for some hiking in the backwoods with a friend who is a doctor, and a pirate.

When everything was ready, I went back to Stanford. This treatment was much tougher than the first go-around. This time they kill the bone marrow and completely replace it, starting with out-patient radiation and some very nasty chemo four days before you go into the hospital.

Here I am in the total body irradiation booth. Behind me are little dinosaur stickers that kids have put up while they are being irradiated, and that always inspired me to be strong! Four days of this and I got glowing reviews!



Here is my sister Lisa donating her bone marrow through the relatively painless apheresis method.

Thank you Lisa, you are a superhero.

This is how I looked just after I checked into the hospital, and 5 days later, when the chemo and radiation started to slam me.

I received that bone marrow transplant, a simple transfusion, on September 30, and then the effects of the chemos and the irradiation took hold. I lay in the bed for almost 20 days, fed by an IV of what looked like chicken broth, unable to eat and barely able to drink, barely alive with no white blood cells, red cells or platelets.



On the eve of the Nike marathon in San Francisco, Oct. 18, my wife and son were at the pasta party with the TNT teams. She felt guilty for being there and not at my side, but there was nothing she could do for me. The Central Coast team cheered when my picture came up on the screen. Later the emcee called for a few moments of silence and reflection about the reasons they were all there.


Back in the hospital that very night, the doctors came and told me that my blood counts had ticked up slightly. The bone marrow transplant was engrafting and my new marrow was making blood cells. I would probably live.

I would live to enjoy Thanksgiving with my family.

I would live to visit Zion and Bryce Canyons with my brother.

I would live to see my son Mike graduate from high school.

I would live to hang out with my family on Penny Lane, and roam around Scotland and Ireland.

I would live to visit my Mom for her 86th birthday.

I am now cancer-free and leukemia will not kill me. Once again, thanks to all of you and those like you that have made the efforts to support this worthy cause. Some day I believe this disease will be cured with a shot in the doctor’s office, a shot that will have been created from research funded by people like you that come together and make a great effort.


I did have to change the name of my blog

I would like to thank my fantastic wife Dana, who has been my primary caregiver and who made many sacrifices to keep me going, and the medical teams at Stanford Medical Center and at the Oncology Hematology Group of San Luis Obispo, for keeping me alive.



I have been on this journey now for almost five years, and I have met people that fought valiantly against this disease, but were not lucky enough to find a donor match, and died. So please, if you can, sign up for the National Bone Marrow Registry. Donating bone marrow is now a nearly pain-free procedure, and you can save a life. Again, thank you to all the heroes out there who helped save mine, and good luck in tomorrow’s race!

Thank You, and GO TEAM!

That is the speech and all the slides, just about as I delivered it.  The remote for advancing the slides failed me because of distance, so I had to signal (slap my ass) one of the TNT people (Stephanie, thanks Stephanie) to advance the slide.  In the end it all worked out.  If I can clean up the audio portion of the video I will post it, but probably not here, just a link to it.

Alien vegetables

"Romanesco" cauliflower

I can't wait for this weekend to be done.  It should be a great weekend, but I haven't been able to sleep a whole lot, tossing the whole speech around in my brain.  Today, Dana and I will drive down to Santa Barbara, about 90 miles south, to the Fess Parker Resort.  We will check into a garden suite for 2 nights, which we get because I was one of the top 3 fundraisers for the SLOHS team.  How nice, thank you donors!  Check in is around 4:00, get all the race stuff, Inspiration dinner at 6:00, give an inspiring speech at 7:30 or so, and asleep at 10:00.  Get up and walk 13.1 miles starting at 8:00, nice cool weather, and the walk is along the beachfront.

It is going to take me about 4 hours, anything less is fine, anything more is fine too.  This has been a taper down week, and my hip feels worse than ever.  My body is trying all kinds of tricks to get out of this, faking a cold yesterday, ankle aching every day under no strain, body bullshit and I am calling it a liar and a fake.

We get this box of organic vegetables every Thursday from a local farm, filled with good things.  This week we had "braising" mixed greens (a bunch of oriental stuff), green colored "Romanesco" cauliflower or broccoli florets, celery, carrots (thick manly tubers), lipstick peppers (to go with the carrots), salad mix, butternut squash, "sierra gold" potatoes, a bag of "Valencia" oranges and a pomegranate. 


Every week we struggle to eat all of this, and I end up having to make things I have never tried before.  A couple of weeks ago I made apple cobbler and apple pie - the cobbler was good, the pie just ok.  Last night Dana braised the braising vegetables in oil and garlic.  She ate hers like a bowl of spinach, and I wrapped mine with roast turkey and cheddar in a burrito.   I think she had it right.


I started my Literacy Council tutoring this week with a student from Mexico City.  He speaks okay English, but needs reading and writing skills.  We had some mix-ups on scheduling, and I had to find him parked out fron of the meeting place, in his Lexus.  He has been here 7 years and works (worked) in construction, now unemployed and waiting out the economy.  Smart of him to upgrade his skills during the lull.  We will have a good time getting this done.


I am stepping up and volunteering at the Hearst Cancer Support Center also.  I have been going there and meeting with a support group, and started taking Tai Chi Chen.  I am the only guy, and the youngest, but it is a lot of fun.  Maude from Harold and Maude is in the class.  I also went to a laughing class last Monday, and it was a lot of fun practicing laughing.

Saw my Doc yesterday and all is OK.  Testosterone level is trashed and I will be supplementing as soon as we get prescription straightened out, so this may be my last week in choir.  Steroids are still kicking my butt as far as sleep cycle, but oh well, maybe I should quit all the coffee and Cokes, duh.  So, good luck to me, bon chance, buena suerte, I will post the speech with pics when I get back.

Zen what?

Mo outdid himself this time!  Thanks, Mo, I always wanted a Zen garden, but figured I can't buy one, it has to find me somehow.  This inspires me to move faster on some of my other projects, like the large driftwood bonsai holder that had termites.  I sprayed it last week, and need to stabilize the wood with varnish or something.  I have another load of jade tumbling away in the garage, on the second week (medium grit), so a few more weeks to go.  I have always had the idea that I would create a fountain of all the jade.  I have been giving pieces of it away to cancer patients I meet.

I have been going to a cancer support group at the local cancer support center, and have now met two people that are trying to decide or have decided not to have chemo and radiation, but to fade away instead, they don't want to deal with the pain and sickness.  This actually hurts me, but I have to shut up, it is their choice.

Today I will get my Literacy Council student and start out on that journey.  I am eager and anxious to begin, knowing that I will have to muster all the patience I can, all the positive energy I can, and especially all the empathy I can.  It should be fun and rewarding, zen-like even.

I had my last long training walk yesterday, 12 miles, and I had to go it alone.  The scheduled walk/run was Saturday, but I had Literacy Council training all day.  I planned to get going at 8am while it was still cool, but one thing led to another and I started at 9:30.  It was already in the mid-70s.  As usual my left hip was crying in the first mile, but the prednisone and Aleve kicked in and it shut up.  The temp was climbing and it probably was up to 87 or so, but I chugged along and finally made the shady Bob Jones Trail in Avila for the last two miles.  Various body parts were crying out the last three miles, but I acknowledged and then ignored them.

Avila Beach was packed, but I found a table in the shade at a coffee shop and got a frosty mocha, against the advice of the training manual, and Dana showed up with ice packs and our dog.  She says, 'Want to go for a hike on the beach?'  Wow, what could I say?  So we went to the dog beach, where dogs can go off leash, and Woody was overwhelmed, lots of dogs, lots of balls, lots of fun.  It was probably best for me to keep moving anyway.

I love these prednisone-off days, waking up at 4am and charging into all the things that need doing without making any noise.  The tutoring is at 7:30 tonight, so I may have to take a nap when the 3pm crash comes.  I usually don't, but end up asleep at 9pm.  That won't work today.

So if my karma was broken before, I am taking steps to fix it.  The poemery about the broken cow in the comments on the last blog was awesome, as is always the case with poemerizing of Manny, Mo and Mac, the Pepcid Boys. 

No more bubbles
is what caused my troubles.
In the rag bag
in the shed
I grabbed old skivvies,
what was in my head?
I wrapped that cow
with old underwear,
that it would shatter
I had no fear.
Too small a box, too little padding,
and now the cow is not so fine.
I feel bad, I'm really saddened
that I hurt my karma with that bovine.

Love and Hope and Sex and Dreams

I'm in tatters!  I had this crazy idea (ok, one of many) while I was in Florida .  My Mom had this ceramic cow that had 4 parts, front, middle, back and head, and each section had an opening, so it was meant for something like sugar, flour and cocaine, or other dry goods.  It was nothing special, made in China and with peeling (and maybe toxic) paint.  She didn't want it and I was going to leave it.  However, then I spotted a copy of an In Memoriam of Pope John Paul II, and a postcard depicting Jesus, and another of the Virgin Mary. 

I had never sent Mac anything to say thanks for all his support, so I packed up the cow with the religious iconography inside, and sent it to him, anonymously.  It was a test, to see if he would figure it was a Holy Cow.  He figured it out instantly, but the middle section was SHATTERED!  I'm in tatters.

M. Jagger/K. Richards)

Shattered, shattered

Love and hope and sex and dreams

Are still surviving on the street

Look at me, I'm in tatters!

I'm a shattered

Shattered

Friends are so alarming

My lover's never charming

Life's just a cocktail party on the street

Big Apple

People dressed in plastic bags

Directing traffic

Some kind of fashion

Shattered

Laughter, joy, and loneliness and sex and sex and sex and sex

Look at me, I'm in tatters

I'm a shattered

Shattered

All this chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter 'bout

schmatte, schmatte, schmatte -- I can't give it away on 7th Avenue

This town's been wearing tatters (shattered, shattered)

Work and work for love and sex

Ain't you hungry for success, success, success, success

Does it matter? (Shattered) Does it matter?

I'm shattered.

Shattered

Ahhh, look at me, I'm a shattered

I'm a shattered

Look at me- I'm a shattered, yeah

Pride and joy and greed and sex

That's what makes our town the best

Pride and joy and dirty dreams and still surviving on the street

And look at me, I'm in tatters, yeah

I've been battered, what does it matter

Does it matter, uh-huh

Does it matter, uh-huh, I'm a shattered

Don't you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up

To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!

You got rats on the west side

Bed bugs uptown

What a mess this town's in tatters I've been shattered

My brain's been battered, splattered all over Manhattan

Uh-huh, this town's full of money grabbers

Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don't mind the maggots, huh

Shadoobie, my brain's been battered

My friends they come around they

Flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter

Pile it up, pile it high on the platter

Muggy mug, as they say

Friday
It sure has been a sweaty week.  I am in Tampa airport typing this.  I just spent the week packing up my Mom's personal items from her Florida snowbird house and shipping them north, and making the place saleable.  We may have a buyer on the line, we'll see if I get the contract tomorrow.


Good old USAir forgot to load the pilot's cabin with oxygen on Monday, so I got to hang in Phoenix for an extra 5 hours, landed in Tampa at 10pm, and made it to Estero at 1am.  Luckily I had plenty of time to get everything done, wrapped it all up this am at 11, left my bathroom kit and bag of chocolate chip cookies sitting in the driveway, and drove through 2 hellacious rainstorms (squalls) that lasted about 5 minutes but were treacherous.


It was cooking hot and muggy in Estero, in the 90s on temp and humidity, but I had the AC cranked and work to do inside, so no matter except when I tried to do my walks.  Luckily it is a 'rest' week, meaning only 3 mile walks.

I drove through two squalls on the way to the airport.  It was pouring so hard I got the Corolla I rented airborne off the wake of an 18-wheeler I passed at 80 mph, did an Ollie off the guardrail, and right back in the fast lane.  Pretty smooth, as they say. 

Sunday
Been up since 3, who needs sleep?  Troubling times, trouble in mind.  I think my old cat is lying out in the yard somewhere, dead.  Woody has been having nightmares this morning, lying here and moan/barking (barmoaning?).  Does he know something I don't, in tune with a fellow animal?  I'll have to go look for Figgy.

Instead of doing the 7-mile training yesterday, I went to a 5 hour Literacy Council training session, so now I can read and maybe help somone else to as well.  After next Saturday's training, that is.  So I had to do the 7 miles yesterday, and ran out of daylight and only did 4, and now I have to 3 today instead of rest.  Next Saturday I will have go 12; the whole week is very tough with a total of 32 miles, yikes, my hip is crying out.  Just when I need those steroids they are being stepped down. 

We may have reached the lower limits for a while, because that mucositis in my mouth that was going away is lingering at an annoying level, and my eyes are still dry as a Utah BBQ.  It finally rained here in SLO, while I was in Forida.  Our umbrella took flight and landed next door, with no injuries.  We thought Mikey was inside the umbrella, but it turned out he was hiding in the trundle drawer under his bed.  FOX news was going to get this live, but found out we didn't subscribe to Conservapedia and that was, as they say, poop without a fly.

The finches in the yard have winged their beaks, as they chirp, at the new lot of seed I bought them.  I had to return it all and get the preferred and pricier nyjer thistle seed, sheesh, picky birds.  I guess here in the 'Arbors' (chirped while looking down their beaks), they have other options, so walk the talk or take a walk, as they say.

By the way, if I see them, I mean them they who say, I will display, so to say, some dismay at their way of having so much to say, enough said.

Speaking of which, if you didn't see the poemerizing from Mac and Pat in the last post, go back and read it.  Oh yeah, I researched who owns what, and what you post in a blog is yours unless you give that right away, as many sites make you do by having you check some box.  Who reads that crap, as they say?  So anyway, I will be sending all you commenters a contract that you will have to sign to get your cut of the action, your piece of the pie, as they say.  It will look like this, but don't worry, just sign it and send it back:
I hereby agree to give John Fiore all rights in regard to everything I ever write, and any money I ever make or have.  Agreed, check here.

I have to get a smaller font so I can be more verbose and cut down on mailing costs, further spurring our economy.  Always happy to do my part, as they say.  This week's cancer writing prompt came with this cheery poem:

Larson's Holstein Bull



by Jim Harrison


Death waits inside us for a door to open.
Death is patient as a dead cat.
Death is a doorknob made of flesh.
Death is that angelic farm girl
gored by the bull on her way home
from school, crossing the pasture
for a shortcut. In the seventh grade
she couldn't read or write. She wasn't a virgin.
She was "simpleminded," we all said.
It was May, a time of lilacs and shooting stars.
She's lived in my memory for sixty years.

Death steals everything except our stories.

Monday quick update

I found Figgy down by the creek out back of my house yesterday, and went down there to get her.  She was still alive but looked very bad, and I didn't want to leave her for the crows or raccoons, so I carried her back to the garage and put her in her bed.  I just came back from the vet, and they agreed that she was beyond repair.  I will bury her ashes in her favorite yard spot, goodbye Figgy.


On a lighter note, I forgot to mention my washing machine adventure on last Friday morning.  I woke at Mom's in FLA around 5, and decided I should start cleaning the sheets and towels I used.  Normally I leave my dirty clothes until I get home, in case anyone tries to steal my stuff and can be warded off by the odor, but also because I am generally vacationing when I am travelling, so why use vacation time to clean clothes?


In this case, I had a half load, so I threw my dirty clothes in, started the machine, and it filled up.  Then, when the cycle kicked to churn, the motor made that sickening smell of $$$ burning, and the breaker popped.  Aaaarrrgggghhh!  I saw the slack time built into the schedule going away. 


I started taking out the clothes and sheets and towels, wringing them out and putting them in a hamper, to go to the laundromat.  I then hand-drained the machine, and with about 6" of water to go, I was about to take off the outer skin and decided to try the machine without much load.  Lo and behold, it drained, so I tried a short cycle with no clothes, and it worked!  Back in went the laundry, and all was fine, disaster averted.


There is some lesson in there about how to start up things that have been sitting idle for a time.  I think there was probably a small rust buildup or lime crust that needed a gentle nudge to knock off.


Make sure you check the comments; I am miffed to find I cannot make money on Manny, Mo, and Mac, the poemerizing posse.

Rocky start

Some years back Mo sent me a walking stick inserted through a rock, very cool use of the items always at hand.  I may have mentioned in some old blog that those were our essential toys as kids, a stick and a rock, and Mo has this company, 'Sticks and Stones' that makes 'Walking Sticks That Rock'.  He is at sticksandstones@surfglobal.net.  So, as I said a few posts back, here is a picture of the interactive 'Stones and a Stick' piece I sent to Mo, and which he has placed in a Zen sand garden.  This is simply some driftwood and some polished jade.  Awesome. 

We seek feng shui,
but in our own way

we hope that feng shui

finds us.

For many years Beauch and I have been going up to Plaskett Creek Campground, about 70 miles north, in Big Sur, surfing at Sand Dollar Beach, and hiking down into Jade Cove to collect whatever jade we could find.  This is California jade, nephrite, not nearly as workable as Chinese jade, jadeite, because nephrite is harder.

Google Earth shot of the area, Jade Cove on SW of pic, Sand Dollar beach on NW of pic

Sand Dollar Beach

A pretty big chunk of jade at the Jade Festival

In the early days we found some pretty nice pieces of jade by scrounging around in the coves.  Divers would get the big pieces such as the one above, called 'Blue Angel.'  The increased popularity of this spot (thanks to the internet and word of mouth) has Jade Cove pretty picked over, and the campground has changed from first-come first-served to half reservations, so now we don't go there until right after a big storm in the winter.  It's wet and cold, but the storm will churn up some jade, and we do the dance with the waves and end up wet and little jade.

Jade hunting is just a meditative ritual anyway, and I have a bunch and Mike has even more.  I finally got a decent tumbler and it is tumbling away in my garage right now, and when I have it all done I will give the tumbler to Mike.  He likes his jade in its natural state, so he may not use the tumbler, and then I will sell it.

The annual 'Jade Festival' is this weekend, and we may day trip up there on Saturday, although I am bored with the festival (it's pretty small and nothing new) but it's a nice drive.  A bunch of hippies and kooks and rich Monterey people buying rocks will be there, grooving to the music.

With all the money we are going to make turning this blog into a bestselling book, Mo is going to make us a two-masted sloop, the 'HolyCowKetcher', and all of us will write the sequel to 'Holy Cow', about surviving at sea with a bunch of loonies.  Mac will be blasting my mucositis with down home cooking with Ho-spice, grilled on his converted Dell laptop.  Mo is playing guitar, Pat riding the bow waves and playing with dolphins, and Manitouboo and Jeanne sunning herself, and I will man the poop deck.  I know I have mixed up a slew of nautical terms; can I steer from the poop deck?  Does anyone need to steer?  Where the heck are we going?  We may need a bigger boat.

Obviously I am still in the grips of prednisone.  It's almost 5 am and I've been up since 3.  Every other day doses means every other other day early awakening.  I'm good on 5 hours, I guess.  Maybe a bit rambly and jangly, but I am here. 

The writing prompt at 'Writing Through Cancer' this week was 'Nature offers us many images and metaphors to describe the emotions and experiences of cancer on our lives. Think about your cancer journey, the seasons of survivorship, the seasons of life, of nature. What images or metaphors come to mind? Write about seasons, wherever they take you.'  So, my mind spun out and I wrote this. 

In 2002 I was living in Frigiliana, Spain, an Andalusian hill town. We had rented an old house near the top of the hill where the Moors had made their last stand as the Christians took back their country. In that last stand, the Moors were at the top of the hill, and when it became apparent they would be overrun, the women gathered their children and leapt to their deaths off the cliffs at the back of the hill.

In our yard in Spain there was an old lemon tree, twisted and gnarled but still producing lemons. One day my brother called to tell me that our father was very sick with cancer and probably would not recover. I asked how long, and he replied ‘Weeks.’

Soon after, we had a tremendous windstorm, and when I looked out at the yard in the morning, the old lemon tree had cracked down the middle. I asked the landlady if she would have it mended; half of it was salvageable. I came to think of that old lemon tree as a symbol of my father. The gardener came and cut down the tree. My brother called again and told me to hurry home, time was up. When I arrived I was too late to say goodbye to my father, he had died.

Rocks, sticks, trees, earth, sky.  Makes me think of an e.e. cummings poem I love.

anyone lived in a pretty how town

by e. e. Cummings

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain


children guessed(but only a few

and down they forgot as up they grew

autumn winter spring summer)

that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf

she laughed his joy she cried his grief

bird by snow and stir by still

anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones

laughed their cryings and did their dance

(sleep wake hope and then)they

said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon

(and only the snow can begin to explain

how children are apt to forget to remember

with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess

(and noone stooped to kiss his face)

busy folk buried them side by side

little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep

and more by more they dream their sleep

noone and anyone earth by april

wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)

summer autumn winter spring

reaped their sowing and went their came

sun moon stars rain

On November 7, I will finish that half-marathon that I have been working towards, and I will have given my speech.  Soon, I won't need to see the doctors more than anyone else, and the medications will be done.  This will be a funky period, the end of an era (it better be).

So now I am pondering my next act.  I don't see anyone hiring me, a 54 year-old two-time cancer warrior with big holes in his resume and memory.  I am not looking for advice; I know it's on me to come up with something.  I will start with volunteerism and take some classes (tai chi, Spanish, embroidery for my xx chromosome blood) and ponder yonder.  I can still do the daily jumble in under a minute, sometimes ten seconds, but who cares?  Look what that did for the Rain Man.