thoughts – cranky and droll – from a feisty geezer determined to ride his quick cancer into the ground

What can I say?  I’m still here.  But, I’m not quite “well”.  I’m sure not real happy.  The first snow of the year happened in early November – a real Duesey!  (The term “Duesey” was a slang abbreviation for Duesenberg, a very elegant, expensive automobile  back in the golden age of American automobiles.  A “real Duesey” was anything that was unusually fine or classy.)  The snow came early, and then stayed late.  We’re half way through December, now, and November’s snow is still on the ground, here and there.  The weather bureau says we set a snowfall record for the month of November at Spokane Airport.  I mention the weather, in part, because I’ve been hoping for some nice clear, warm, sunny weather for my burial party.  Oh, and I’d also like the ground to be thawed, please.  Fat chance!  Nine days in ten, the month of January features a daily high temp of 31, and a nightly low of 21, all with overcast skies.  I can accurately predict Spokane weather for all but 3 days of that entire month.  Enough of that.

I went to visit the doctor who diagnosed me last February.  He “insisted” – said he needed to see me because I’d been on narcotic pain-killers for so long, and needed to make sure I wasn’t becoming a raving addict.  I was on Oxycontin for several months, before I got to the point where the pills were too big for me to swallow, and I had to switch to liquid Oxycodone.  You know – I was on that Oxycontin stuff for over 3 months, and still, I never had the urge to suggest that “the White House has a new dog (?)….. Sasha!” (an updated version of a Rush Limbaugh “joke” made by the most overpaid right-wing-radio-thug of our time, the day after Bill Clinton was inaugurated).  I still hope there actually is a Hell, and that Mr. Limbaugh might rotisserate there for all eternity.  Slinging fecal stuff at presidents is fair game, I say, especially considering the past few decades worth of US presidents, but doing that sort of thing to anyone’s child…. I still haven’t come up with a satisfying retribution for that one, Russ, you bloated sausage casing.  Grrrr…   You know – if Bill Clinton really had been the sort who would have assassinated people… Rush Limbaugh would not still be around, spewing his endless offal.

But – back at the doctor’s exam room.  After peering into my mouth to look at my throat and tongue, the doc sat back on the exam room bench, eyed me thoughtfully, and announced: “You know, this cancer of yours is infinitely treatable.”  (OK, maybe he didn’t say “infinitely”… maybe he said “quite”.  ”Infinitely” makes a better story – since I have the idea that treating any of us “infinitely”, for most any ailment, is what the medicine industry lives for.  I think he said “infinitely”.)  He then proceeded to all-but-beg me to reconsider submitting to conventional cancer therapies.  I asked what sorts of things he had in mind.  He responded with the usual suspects – surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.  We talked briefly about what some of those might entail.  He said he thought I might still have a fair chunk of my tongue left after doing surgery on me.  From what he said, it didn’t sound like there might be enough tongue left to meet my standards, though.  I didn’t like the thought of waking up after surgery on my tongue, to find out that they decided they needed to remove 75% of it, after all.  I told him I’d give it some thought.  I did give it some thought.  Ughh!  I thought I’d already done crossed this Rubicon ten months earlier.  But, I did think about it.  Just before going to bed, that night, I made my decision.  I was going with Plan “A”.  No conventional allopathic treatment.  We all gotta die one day.  Something was going to get me.  In my case, it seemed predictable enough – cancer was going to take me down, one way or another, eventually.  I figured I had the choice: “We can do this the easy way… or we can do this the hard way.”  Where human suffering is concerned (especially my own), I’m for the easy way, every time.  The thought of committing to who-knows-how-many surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy treatments – over the course of who-knows-how-many months, at a cost of who-knows-how-many thousands of increasingly-worthless US dollars, in order to have a chance that a hoped-for semblance of normal life might be extended – for who-knows how-many years, months, weeks of additional time – would it be anywhere near enough time to pay for a significant part of the medical costs incurred?  It just didn’t add up to a good bargain, to me.  So, it’s Plan “A”.  We go with what Mother Nature has served up.  Phew!

And so – I still weigh about 110 pounds.  I still look like Gandhi, with an Abe Lincoln beard.  I still have trouble (increasingly) with talking, tasting, chewing, swallowing, gagging, coughing, spitting, drooling, sleeping, breathing (occasionally), relaxing….   I’ve had a few episodes of acid reflux, often erupting while I’m sleeping, or trying to (No fun!).  So far, I’ve only had one real duesey of a panic attack (No fun!)  I still have to drink more water than I’ve ever drunk in my life, in order to have any chance of re2laxing enough to go to sleep at night, let alone be reasonably comfortable during waking hours.  If I don’t drink two-&-a-half to three quarts of water per 24 hours, I’m soon a stuffed-up, choking, gagging mess of a miserable specimen.  Unfortunately, it seems that about 75% of all that water is only willing to cycle back out during the hours most people sleep.  So, I manage to wake up about once every two or three hours, to pee.  That often turns into a 30-minute awake period – just happens that way, sitting on the edge of the sofa with my head in my hand for a spell.  I never was a very good sleeper.  I’m an even-worse sleeper, now.

I’m about worn out.  I did ride the scooter on a couple of errands, one day last week.  That was a kick I didn’t think I’d ever get to again, when I saw all the snow piling up three weeks ago.  Here I am, though, still kicking.  But, I’m telling you, my kicker is just about gave out.  I think, with some luck, and a good shot of what passes for grit on my part, I might be able to nurse this whiney, reeking gag-bag of pathetic human discontent on, a bit past Christmas, and then, maybe even up to New Years.  There’s another $1196 social security check in it, for me.  We’ll see.

Does “the dying one” have any new revelations to share… any epiphanies?  Yeah… one: Barack Obama is a close “second” to the awful “former occupant” (The Little Bush Child), for being the worst US president in my lifetime.  I read an interview with Max Keiser a few days ago.  (I also listened to Obama’s press conference, regarding the upcoming vote to end the infamous “Bush tax cuts” for the top “earners” on federal tax rolls.)  Keiser and I agree:  Obama is gutless beyond belief!  (If, by the way, you haven’t ever seen or heard Max Keiser, you might want to give him a google.  He’s smart & funny.)  Auditing Mr. Obama’s news conference, aside from his being incredibly whiney and repetitive, I couldn’t believe that he admitted that a majority of the American electorate supported ending the Bush tax cuts. And still – even with the bully pulpit, and with a majority of Americans supporting the end of the shameful tax cuts, and, even with all the other resources of the office of the most powerful elected official in the known universe, Mr. Obama claimed it just wasn’t possible to deliver the goods, not without selling out to a feckless “compromise” .   I was never any great fan of Lyndon Johnson – but, Gee Willickers!   Was I ever wishing LBJ could have been around to get this job done!  He’d have wrenched some legs off the Republican top brass in the House & Senate, and beat the rest of them weaseling Banana Republicans into a mewling bunch of urine-soaked fancy suits, who’d wish they’d never lifted a finger to protect those “poor, hard-working” billionaires – from a decent tax bite.  And, at the end of a rich lifetime of stealing and swindling from just about every noggin in sight, doesn’t it just make sense to shake some of that obscene gob of lucre back out of a pirate’s lousy corpse?  Really!  Granted – it wouldn’t significantly alter the trajectory of this washed-up, vainglorious, arrogant, bullying, has-been empire that was once the United States of America, but it sure would have given most of the 99.9% of Americans who aren’t billionaires a little something to cheer about – for at least a little while.  What I’m talking about here is the little matter of the federal estate tax.  Sheesh!  We all live on the same finite planet – every one of us dragged into it equally naked, vulnerable, and squalling.  Listen: Just because someone’s great-granddaddy made an emperor’s inheritance by clear-cutting (a 20th-Century-perfected form of environmental rape) the entire north-half of the State of Idaho… does not, by my book, entitle his eternal spawn to live like Chinese emperors from now through eternity.  Who falls for that?  (Unfortunately, a whole mess of our fellow pig-headed, dim-witted fellow Americans do.  We need an estate tax policy that goes some significant way toward leveling the playing field across the economic gene pools of all American families.  I don’t recall ever hearing any celebrity advocate giving the estate tax issue a good reaming – until Bernie Sanders took to the Senate Well, last week.)  What a sad lot of ignorant fools this country has become.  If I suggest the “average American” is a “dumb bunny” – does that unfairly impugn the intellect of the average rabbit?  Maybe so.

Maybe I’ll have the starch to do serious rant in another installment, if Mother Mary and Cousin Jesus will grant me just a few more free passes.  Like I always say: “We’ll see.”  Right now, I’m dead-tired.  Know what I mean?

Hail!… Bernie Sanders!

Ciao.