It Might Get Messy

Not as messy as if the Mayans, the Egyptians, Nostradamus, the Greeks, the Romans, the Rosicrucians, the Martians, the Alien, the Predators, the Blob, He, She, It, Them, The Thing, and the giant terrorizing rabbits (!) from “Night of the Lepus” were right and we’d vaporized on 21 December last week. But still sloppy, if not apocalyptic. 

When I was in school (and I was in school for a long time), I lived one year in a communal house with a doctoral candidate who had dedicated his Master’s thesis to Marshall McLuhan. In fact, his introduction said something like “this thesis should be considered an appendage to the work of Marshall McLuhan.” 

I read a bunch of McLuhan when I was a kid, and I was never really sure what his “work” actually was. As a semi-impoverished academic in an obscure field (usually described as “philosophy of communication theory”), my impression was that he spent most of his time hustling for enough income to support himself and his family. Still, the man who told us "the media work us over completely…so pervasive are they in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, or unaltered” has to be given his due. Especially since he divined that in 1967. I’m sure he’d be apoplectic here in the 2010s, where corporate interests are shared among weapons manufacturers, mass media, news reporters, news makers, drug makers, political powers, and those who set policy for all that and more. 

Nor was I sure how a guy who’s master’s was kind of a think-piece essay on advertising theory fit into a school of oceanography. Turns out in general that he didn’t, and he eventually drifted into computing and IT. Go figure. I’m still grateful to him, though. He was one of the few people who understood that physiological constraints of my chronic asthma could be bypassed by preparing marijuana as ingestible brownies. 

Anyway. One of the things McLuhan would be useful for, were he still around, would be to help us sort out how generational growth and accumulation affect media. Specifically, a line like “Just when I think I’m gonna make it out…they…pull...me…back…in”. The line is actually from the third Godfather film. But it’s been a standard since then when a movie quote was warranted, and was especially favored in TV series The Sopranos. So what you have now is a line that one generation thinks is from the Sopranos, one missed and just has to muddle through, and one older one that knows it from its actual source. 

Am I overthinking this? It just seems like something that would have interested McLuhan. 

Anyway, I used that line the other night because I now suspect that this new growth that Doctor H spotted down in my throat actually may be a problem. Last time we did this (what, 6, maybe 8 weeks ago?), I had a painful sore in my throat. The pain subsided the morning Doc H did the biopsy, and the biopsy, despite Dr H’s pessimism (he told Cathy and Molly he was pretty sure it was malignant) was negative. This time, Doc H was checking me for a palate infection and happened to notice the ugly throat sore, which did not hurt at that time.

It does hurt now. Hurts enough that I’ve pretty much slid back off solid food and onto full time chocolate milk. And that spot is generating its own brand of thick, icky mucous, interfering with both breathing and speaking.

Which is the real frustration. If this turns out to be malignant and I have to be treated again, I’m going to be really ticked off. I’ve just about worked my way back to being a functional professional. I can do public speaking and be understood. I can travel and not be daily exhausted. I can work days of reasonable length, and balance multiple projects. I can sell and do projects. With the great patience and assistance of my professional colleagues, I’ve finally gotten HEALTHY again. 

If I have to go back into the bowels of the medical system and be irradiated and chemo-treated and get weak and screw up my speaking I am going to be really really pissed off at the universe. Which, as we’ve established over the almost two-year life span of this whiney cancer weblog, is completely pointless and a waste of rage that might be channeled productively elsewhere. We’ll see. This week I go to my GP’s office for the pre-op stuff required by the anesthesiologist’s or the surgeon’s insurance company (blood physics, chemistry and biology, EKG), the following week I’m back under the surgeon’s knives to have tissues for the bioassay carved out of my throat. Updates next week, all. With a little luck, the following week I’ll have more photos of my throat and some idea regarding Dr. H’s preliminary visual take on the bad spot. 

But there is this. We’re all here to walk away from one more New Year. And THAT’S something to celebrate!!!!!!