We got started around 9 every morning (I passed the only Starbucks on the walk from my hotel, so I showed up with gallons of coffee), and shut it down around midnight. We had pizza, pasta, Chinese, sushi, or barbecue shipped in every evening so we could “work” through supper. Then we did the drill. We turned the barely-legible marginal notes that we had marked up report copies with into a formal set of numbered, checked, cross-checked, edited, and nicely produced comments for submittal to the government. The process involved discussion, argument, writing, re-writing, re-discussing, re-arguing, about every word and punctuation mark in the subject report. And then subjecting our draft comments to the same painful “methodology” (which is preferred, because more letters, than the perfectly adequate “method”). Sometime on Saturday night we cut off the comment process to allow for document production and “final review”. And on Monday, we had our fat, plastic-bound comment document ready to be boxed up, hauled off, and handed to the regulators.
Actually, this particular matter turned out to be a lot more dangerous than “normal”. When we set up the conference room on Day 1, there was a candy dish of M&Ms on a sideboard. So, we nibbled handfuls of M&Ms while we worked. Day 2, the candy dish was empty. But when I went into the little kitchen area and rattled around looking for coffee, I discovered an enormous bag full of M&Ms. And I don’t mean “relatively” enormous. I mean like the size of a 40 pound bag of dog food. Full of M&Ms. At that point, things started to break down physiologically. In place of the candy dish, I found a 4 quart Tupperware bowl in the kitchen. From that moment on, whenever the supply of M&Ms in the conference room started to look low, I would haul the 4 quart bowl into the kitchen and scoop it full of M&Ms from the dog-food sized bag. Which means, of course, that we were eating M&Ms for 15 or 16 hours a day, for 8 days running. That was, in fact, the most disgusting week I’ve ever spent in my life. And remember who you’re dealing with here. I’ve eaten duck tongues In Hangzhou with the hyoid apparatus intact. Spent an afternoon wading waste-deep in a free-running river in Jordan, whose unidirectional flow turned out to be 100% secondary and/or combined sewage effluent. Dug my rodent trap out of the massive pile of shit a black bear took on it over night in the Nantahala Mountains of North Carolina. So I’ve got sterling credentials to judge degrees of “disgusting”. And 8 days of unlimited M&Ms took the prize by a long shot.
I was so disgusted with myself when I finally made it home from Tulsa (there has to be a bad country song in this somewhere) that I immediately went on the Atkins diet. Which means, of course, that I swapped unlimited bacon, butter, and mayonnaise for the M&Ms. Still, motivation is motivation.
And why, I hear you asking, did the Tulsa law firm have dog-food sized bags of M&Ms in its kitchen? Well, because one of the Partners successfully defended Hershey’s in some litigation matter. Hershey’s gratitude wasn’t limited to paying whatever massive billings were involved. They sent said Partner dog-food sized bags of M&Ms for life. Which, in my case, given my usual standards of self-discipline, would have put me in the morgue in no time. Where the Medical Examiner would probably have had to stuff me into a drawer, perhaps by slathering my carcass with mayo.
Which brings us neatly to the nominal subject of this weblog. My health status. In general, I continue to be able to breathe clearly and deeply. Except, of course, when I go outside on a hot, humid, pollen-filled summer day. Then I start to go anoxic within minutes, and must return to the supplemental oxygen in my hospital-style bed in the corner of the living room. Given typical summer conditions here in the mid-Atlantic region, my physical stamina has declined because I can’t really spend enough time outside walking to improve things. We took a drive up to the National Park on the Catoctin Ridge this week while Beth was out here visiting. I made it down the trail about 200 meters, then had to lean on Colin to make it back out of the woods to the car. Cathy, Beth and Colin walked further in on the same trail when it became clear that I had reached my limit. Where they found an intensely agitated family staring at a rotten tree stump. The father was giving a breathless lecture about how deadly the local “Cotton Head Snakes” are. Colin took a peak into the stump, where the sleek, strong body of a black rat snake could be seen. Nobody tried to disabuse the museum-docent wannabe father regarding the differences between rat snakes and copperheads, much less the fictional deadly “Cotton Head Snakes”.
Anyway. The deal is that my malignancies have been quiescent for another week. I continue to struggle to maintain/gain weight via the milk-like (but milk-free, because in most of the world, everybody older than a couple of years is drastically lactose-intolerant) liquid emergency rations. But even that I seem to be coming to grips with. I’m going to guess that Dr. T’s curiosity is going to get the better of her next time we see her. I think she’s going to send me in for a CT/PET scan, since that last one I had was something like 7 months ago. But I continue to be free of overt symptoms of cancer. And until such symptoms appear, I stay as comfortable as possible. I can now play all 5 of the instrumental pieces I’ve written for guitar, so it’s time to write another one. I get as frustrated over my inability to “sing” as I do at my inability to eat actual food. But then, of course, I consider the alternative. And, difficult as it is, I’m still alive.
Rock and roll, everyone! A few photos below for your interest. Use ‘em while you got ‘em. You can’t bank ‘em, save ‘em, or hide ‘em. You have to maximize your living now, while you have the opportunity. I’m pullin’ for you. Thanks everybody!!!
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