It Might Get Messy

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a “Death Star”, a large-scale Leggo-like construct holding a sort of death-ray thingie of unkown technology destroyed the densely inhabited planet Alderaan, home of Princess Leia Organa. Of course, once the Rebel Alliance got a copy of the blueprints, it turned out there was a special on/off, or EZ Destruct, switch attached to a little vent hole on the surface of the Leggo assemblage. At the cost of a few fighters and their pilots, experienced “Womp Rat” hunter Luke Skywalker dropped an explosive device down the vent, eliminating the Death Star threat to the rebellion. 

Flash forward to the moist, muddy, and seemingly endless wetlands north of New Orleans, Louisiana, some decades ago. At the close of a long-day’s exploration of access points for an upcoming impact assessment, we had an oddball assemblage in the rental car. First, there was me. Then there was the client, a biologist employed by the headquarters operation of the owner of the local facility (for some perspective, a regular reader of this column, former inhabitant of Taiga Forest landscape in northern New England, now splitting time between humid Texas coast, Alaskan tundra, and same Taiga camp, is now employed by same company). And there was the driver, at that time my boss and a senior consultant specializing in sediment management issues. He was, at the time of this adventure in the sticky deep south, in the early stages of becoming a “Consultant for the Lord”, which his business cards now actually state (I swear to…uh…well, God, I suppose…). He was fairly annoying at that time. But in comparison, his present persona is nothing less than frightening. And not just because of the “Consulting for the Lord” business cards. He is raising an adopted child, and when he wanders off into endless stories about the young man’s difficulties, the vocal inflection when he refers to his “step son” truly make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. 

So we’re flashing across one of the long, long causeways that allow motorized vehicles to cross the enormous forested wetlands characteristic of the region. And suddenly traffic grinds to a complete halt. We are the lead vehicle in a long line of cars looking at the immediate aftermath of a really nasty accident that happened moments before during the intense thunderstorm that blew across the landscape. It’s a little hard to put together precisely what happened. But from what we could see, there was a young woman with blood pouring down one side of her face, screaming hysterically and periodically peering into the passenger side of her flipped-over, aged VW bug. There was a double-rigged long-haul truck, jackknifed around the VW, with the young driver in a rain jacket on the phone sounding rather hysterical himself. 

So, our “Christian” leader makes his snap judgement of the situation: “well, looks like they have things under control here. Guess we’ll just drive through carefully and keep going”. My jaw dropped and I stared at him. I came very, very close to punching him out. Instead I said “No, we need to help here”. I jump out of the car into the pouring rain. I grab the lady from the VW, who has a deep cut—exposing bone on both her forehead and her cheek—across her left eye. Remarkably, her eye seemed to be intact. Which was good—my limited “first responder” abilities don’t include any notion of what to do about a slashed eye. The girl was clearly sinking into shock. I made the trucker give me his rain jacket, wrapped the girl in it, and handed her over to a nurse who wandered up out of the line of cars. The girl now started yelling about “Pedro”. I mean really, really yelling. And crying. And shaking. I look in the VW at the passenger side. Nobody there. Back to the girl. “Is Pedro with you? Was he in the passenger seat? How old is he?” Girl looks at me as her eyes glaze over when she begins to pass out. “Pedro is my parrot. In his cage. Please find him. Please find him. Please fffiiii….” . Bang. She’s passed out on the nurse’s lap. I go back to the car. No bird cage. I search the debris field of shattered bits of VW and industrial-steel components of the truck. No bird cage. I get a bad feeling. I look over the rail of the causeway into the dark water below. No bird cage. But at least half a dozen large- to very-large alligators, plus an uncountable contingent of small ‘gators. I swear they were smiling. I go back to the girl, who is drifting in and out of consciousness. “Did you find Pedro?” Not really certain what to say, I try: “Uh…I think Pedro might have escaped.” Thankfully, before she could pursue the line of questioning any further, she passed back out.

By this time, the State Police, the Sheriff, and the ambulances showed up. Cop asked me what happened. I told him I had no frickin’ idea. He said “Oh, good Samaritan, huh? Thanks. We got it.” I gave him one of my soaked-and-falling apart business cards just in case and let our “Christian” leader continue with the journey back into town. He asked me to join him for dinner. I told him I was getting room service and watching TV.

We couldn’t know at that time that a Death Star in the form of Hurricane Katrina would soon devastate Planet New Orleans…well, yes, I suppose we could have. In fact, the organization that coughed up my “Consulting in the Name of the Lord” boss had intimate responsibility for same. Possibly explaining a lot more than I’m comfortable even thinking about.

So, here I sit, perched in my hospital-style bed in the corner of the living room. Had a semi-Death Star experience this morning when I kicked over the large pitcher of water I need to eat and take meds. Fortunately, no electronics were in the direct line of fire, although my tough little Roland Micro Cube amplifier took a bit of liquid. 

But the more critical potential aspects of Death Star Destruction—such as the reappearance of clear, undeniable symptoms of active, spreading malignancy—continued this week to keep their butts out of my face. As I’ve said repeatedly in this odd interregnum between my healthy, functional life and my soon-to-be nasty and messy death, not only do I not know what’s going on, but my doctors don’t, either. They (the docs) clearly expected me to be dead by now. It’s been more than 13 months since the medical consensus on the longest I should expect to live was 13 months. I continue to live with the physical difficulties of years-long cancer and cancer treatments. Breathing difficulty, energy difficulty, weakness, various pains, tendency to vomit for no good reason, inability to walk more than a few hundred meters under the best possible conditions. I continue to struggle to maintain my weight. I’m afraid I’m losing that battle. I just can’t digest enough of this milky goo to make enough room in my gut to pump in enough to provide the extra calories needed to maintain, or, more desirably, gain, weight. 

However. When the malignancy does indeed return to wreak vengeance on my physiology, my body weight will seem like a trivial issue. In fact, depending on whether it’s even possible to treat whatever form and location sprouts the next batch of cancer, when it becomes time for me to let go of this life and see if I can locate Pedro in the next one, unless Maryland passes the physician-assisted euthanasia bills pending in the State Legislature (and there is a realistic possibility of that, apparently. Seems a little too enlightened for a state with a Republican governor, but he himself just began a course of treatment for leukemia), there may be hope. Because the way you die if you can’t get access to a lethal dose of powerful opiates is to simply refuse food and water. A couple days later, you’re outta here.

But I’m not outta here anytime soon. Just waiting for the return of blood in the sputum and painful inflammation in my oral cavity and/or thoracic infrastructure. When that happens, you all will be among the first to know. You’ve been fantastic to hang with me this long, and I’m convinced you’re an enormous part of why I’m still here.

So, use ‘em while you got ‘em, my friends. They’re not cumulative. Find something funny, and find something to learn, every day. And please let me know about it. You know where to find me!

Apologies for the lack of photos this week. I’m having some software issues. I’ll sort ‘em out by next week. Rock and roll, everybody!!!